Adult Swim Network Brings Entertainment to LA

Adult Swim's second annual festival blended an affinity for music, entertainment, and culture featuring prime Adult Swim content and panels as well as a line-up with rising stars and hip-hop legends alike.

Photograph by Randy Martinez / The Corsair

The smell of bacon-wrapped hot dogs greeted attendees walking into Banc of California Stadium for this past weekend’s Adult Swim Festival (ASF) on Nov. 16 and 17. The stadium pulsed with lights, roaring bass, and the chatter of people queuing in front of attractions like the Hot Dog Bucking Bronco. Huge arena screens played clips from "Off the Air," a surreal Adult Swim show featuring music set to animation.

Adult Swim, an offbeat channel featuring adult animated comedies, like "Aqua Teen Hunger Force" and "Rick and Morty," upgraded in its second year to the Banc of California Stadium. The festival blended an affinity for music, entertainment, and culture featuring prime Adult Swim content and panels as well as a line-up with rising stars and hip-hop legends alike. Headliners Dethklok and Jamie XX performed as well as big names in hip-hop like Vince Staples and Freddie Gibbs and Madlib.

Dethklok, which hasn’t appeared in years, is the metal band borne from Adult Swim’s "Metalocalypse," off the air since 2013. Dethklok frontrunner Brendon Small, also known as “Nathan Explosion," co-created the show, which satirized fame and metal culture with macabre humor. Dethklok’s performance, not just a tribute to "Metalocalypse," featured two new songs, brand new visual effects/animation by Bryan Wieder, and voice-over by Mark Hamill.

Among the acts performing last weekend on the "Calico" and "Tabby" main stages, (named after Adult Swim’s iconic cat/caterpillar twin mascots) were witty indie rockers Speedy Ortiz and noise-rock band HEALTH.

Saturday's line-up made a great showing of notable performances. Experimental folk artist Helado Negro took listeners on an acoustic journey with imaginative rhythms and airy vocals. Later on, North Carolina musician Rapsody broke into powerful raps.

Another showing of a talented female artist was Tierra Whack, known for her eccentric music videos, whose Saturday performance unfolded like a drama.

“The Eric Andre Show,” known for its antics, hilarious outfits, and increasingly disturbing circumstances, performed a live episode on Saturday, pushing the limits of cringe comedy with its practical jokes.

"Oh Jeez, I've been watching [Adult Swim] literally my whole life," said Adult Swim fan Payton Phillips. “We’re huge fans. We got temporary tattoos yesterday [of the AS cats] upstairs from the Ink Box."

Phillips pointed to Captain Murphy’s performance on Friday as her favorite act. Captain Murphy, Flying Lotus’s rap alter-ego, energized the audience through clever lyrics over heavy bass and hypnotic rhythms. Fooling the crowd with a guest appearance of fellow rapper MF Doom, comedian Hannibal Buress was revealed after taking off Doom’s iconic mask.

The Meatwad Dome, a 360-degree projection space shaped like the iconic character from “Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” presented a visual project titled, "6 Minutes of Your Life that You’ll Never Get Back." Viewers laid down on blankets with haptic wireless headsets that simulated motion.

An Adult Swim collab with the studio company Golden Wolf, "6 Minutes" took participants from a dizzying future cityscape to an underground post-apocalyptic civilization. The short was reminiscent of visual media Adult Swim has produced with "Off the Air."

Guests walking around the arena visited the various "Rick and Morty"-themed installations celebrating fan interactions with the show’s universe.

Screenings and panels also entertained festival-goers at the Babycat Stage.

Genndy Tartovsky, a prolific visual artist, director and writer/creator of shows like Cartoon Network's "Dexter’s Laboratory," held a panel discussing his work and his recently released Adult Swim show titled "Primal," which studies a man and a dinosaur who bond through tragedy, known for its lack of dialogue reminiscent of Tartovsky's "Samurai Jack" which also featured quiet, visually expressive storytelling.

The stage also hosted the Robot Chicken Intergalactic Power Summit, a panel featuring the writers, producers and voice actors of the show "Robot Chicken." A stop-motion, short-form animated series that parodies pop culture, the show has featured a wide array of celebrity voice actors, and is Adult Swim's longest-running show running for 14 years and has won multiple Emmy awards.

Creator Seth Green shared a new clip satirizing a plot from Netflix show "Stranger Things," to raucous laughter. Celebrating 10 seasons of "Robot Chicken," Green said, “I'm excited for you guys to see our 200th episode."

Green's camaraderie with his colleagues was infectious. The enthusiasm of fans at the panel typified the respect and admiration for the work of all the artists who've contributed to Adult Swim's anthology.