The first Best Dead City Music Festival also marks the release of the Turboslacker album

The main stage features Back Stabbath (Dayton), Lung (Cincinnati), Abertooth Lincoln (Dayton) and Death’s Dynamic Shroud: an electronic vaporwave trio from Dayton, now based in Los Angeles, playing their first ever show in their hometown.

Best Dead City will also welcome a number of artists from the area and those with deep roots in Dayton such as Moira, Bomb Bunny and Gran Gran. DJ Curtastrophe will DJ before the show.

Local Dayton pop-up vendors such as Heart Mercantile and Clash Consignment will complement this unforgettable night of music and community.

A name like “Best Dead City Music Festival” might cause some surprise, since the “dead city” is Dayton. But Nate Wainscott, the guitarist of Turboslacker who named the festival, says it’s more of a compliment.

“It’s not a bad thing, it’s an award,” Wainscott said. “All these different industrial giants have pulled out of the city. (I know) this person whose job it is to travel to different cities that have this kind of thing. They told me this was the best dead city they’d ever been to. They said, ‘This city should be dead, but it’s not…in fact, it’s alive.’ So we named it the best dead city. That’s a bit of a backhanded compliment, but it’s an award.”

Wainscott has lived across the country, but says he has never felt such a sense of community and warm welcome as when he moved to Dayton.

Nathan Peters, singer and keyboardist for Turboslacker, joked that next year’s festival would simply be called “Best City.”

Turboslacker began around 2021 as a recording project between Wainscott and bassist Brian Davis. Peters and drummer Gus Stathes later joined, taking the project from being recorded in basements to being played on stage.

The band draws inspiration from countless influences, including David Bowie, The Flaming Lips, Joy Division and Nick Cave, but creates a flair all their own, combining orchestral electronica with the pedal mashing of an experimental rock band. Turboslacker was featured on WYSO’s Kaleidoscope and regularly draws larger crowds with each enigmatic and electrifying live show.

“Pixelated Lithiums” was self-produced by all four band members, with additional production and mixing by Christopher Fudurich (who produced Ozma and Jimmy Eat World) and mastering by award-winning mixer Bob DeMaa.

The band takes all of their influences, not to mention the influences each of the veteran musicians brings from their other projects (such as Captain of Industry, Repeater, Passeport and The Sailing), and fuses them into a danceable, headbangable and inventive debut album.

Turboslacker released its first single, “Sleep Like Hell,” in November 2023. It opens with Peters’ haunting and unaccompanied vocals (“I’ll be your harvest, I’ll be your ghost / Just float me some oxygen, let’s decompose”), and then the band bursts in with a wall of distortion and power – similar to when the band entered the Dayton music scene.

The band’s second single, the eponymous single “Pixelated Lithiums,” was released in April.

“I think we’re all really proud of this album,” Wainscott said. “We couldn’t have done it without Brian (Davis) as our engineer… it wouldn’t have been the same without everyone in the band, but I think Brian was the driving force that made sure we captured it right.”

Stathes added that Davis was the brains and muscle behind it.

“When you’ve recorded in studios before and you have that time constraint, you always hear something later and say, ‘I’d like to change that,'” Davis said. “But because we did it ourselves, we were able to change it again and it came out the way we all wanted.”

Earlier this year, the band raised over $5,600 on Kickstarter to press “Pixelated Lithiums” on vinyl.

“All of us who have been making music our whole lives … we just give and give and often get nothing in return,” Peters said. “(Kickstarter) is a pretty powerful tool that we have that we didn’t have when I started.”

“Dayton gave us this album,” Wainscott added.

Or, perhaps more accurately, the best dead city.

How to proceed

What: Best Dead City Music Festival, Turboslackers album release show for “Pixelated Lithiums”

When: Friday, August 9. Doors and DJ at 5pm, bands at 6pm

Where: The Brightside Music and Event Venue, 905 E. 3rd St., Dayton

Cost: $20 in advance and $25 at the door

On-line: thebrightsidedayton.com/event-details/best-dead-city-festival