Note: I wrote this piece just shy of a year ago as part of a post-SXSW rundown entry I had planned. That never came to fruition, and this story has been idling in Simplenote ever since. With SXSW starting tomorrow, I thought now might be a good time to publish it.

He looked at me. Down to bearded me. Up to current, four-day-stubble me. Satisfied that the two men were the same, the doorman returned my ID and I crossed the threshold at the Austin Scottish Rite Temple. A leather chair, high-backed and maroon, sat beneath the order’s wall-mounted golden crest and behind a masterfully carved antique table. And in it sat a fellow scraggly twentysomething handing out wristbands. It reminded me of one of those magazine puzzles from the doctor’s office waiting room when I was a kid where you had to hunt for the unrelated object hidden within a scene. Except that those were sometimes challenging.

After receiving my wristband from the magazine puzzle, I proceeded into the temple’s main space. Whatever one architect designed every single Knights of Columbus, American Legion, and VFW hall also left his mark here. It was a large room, wooden floors and paneled walls, with a stage that was too formal for probably every event ever held there. The lights were low. A few people were laying about on the floor, others slouched in the chairs that lined the perimeter, all waiting.

It was time once again for our favorite puzzle game: someone wearing a full-body bear suit was DJing in the corner with a skull insignia projected onto the wall above him. Although our ferocious and furry disc jockey was pumping out some legit dubstep earworms, the number (40, give-or-take) and apparent enthusiasm (the whole laying on the floor thing?) of the patrons suggested that the scheduled showcase had not yet begun. I took a seat in a fold-down, 50s-movie-theater chair in the back, a welcome respite from the day’s constant standing. A few more people came in and milled about, but the space was still strikingly vacant when Kishi Bashi walked onstage.

Most stood up at this point, myself included, and began meandering closer. I was soon in the midst of a crowd, neighbors close on all sides but not quite touching. Had the room suddenly filled, I wondered, turning my head. No, the hall was still nearly empty, but the small crowd that had been strewn about were now pressed close, filling out a small semi-circle in front of the stage. The violinist that stood before us was dressed in high-tops, dark jeans fit precisely at the JNCO/hipster midpoint, a brightly colored sash around the waist, and a white button-down adorned with a bow-tie just shy of comically large. Mostly unknown, he had a clean slate with which to work; there were no cheers when he came out, no calls of support. But that soon changed.

His voice is grandiose – imagine Jonsi mixed with Arcade Fire’s Winn Butler – and lifts the listener easily, carrying him along with the music. He began singing and strumming guitar-style, violin turned sideways, clearly pleased to be there, but one could sense him itching to deploy the arsenal of pedals at his feet. When he could resist no longer, one Nike-clad foot reached over and his true style came to the fore. In place of percussion he began beatboxing, layering multiple tracks over one another. Violin riffs and vocals followed, all looped, free-form and seemingly unrehearsed. After mixing and taste-testing different combinations, he found a satisfactory concoction and set it to simmer as the backing track, allowing him to return to the verse.

Before long the crowd was completely his, ears grasping at every electrified pluck and voice-born down beat, savoring each lyrical whimsy. By the song’s conclusion – a disconcertingly contagious cacophony of Japanese and English words sung almost simultaneously – each person there knew he had seen something special. It was on every face, as plain as the grin across the musician’s.

Many people who hear him jump immediately to Andrew Bird. That’s not unreasonable; the core technique is the same. The utilization, however, is entirely different. Kishi Bashi’s more hectic songs recall the notes of Passion Pit or Animal Collective, too erratic to resemble Bird’s careful craftsmanship but nevertheless endearing in their own right, freed from any stricture of format. That said, the more downtempo among them do share the sublime elegance so essential to Bird’s renown.

Although he was (inexplicably) denied an official SXSW showcase, I’m betting Kishi Bashi will be headlining sold-out shows across the country within the year. Yet I had the opportunity to see him before all that, in a unique space north of downtown Austin with a small group who shared in the discovery. That right there is South By Southwest.