Dave Wirth

Music can rebel against almost anything. Pick a cause - politics, war, capitalism, social norms, hunger - and someone's written a song for it, against it or danced all over the gray space in between. But music rebelling against music? That's what drives Austin's Dave Wirth, and the uneasy stream of sound flowing from his many musical personae at www.diehipsterdie.com.

A formally trained classical and jazz guitarist (at Bowling Green State University and Rochester's Eastman School of Music), Wirth has used his years of training, learning and playing for classical and jazz ensembles to figure out exactly what he doesn't want to do; be bound creatively by the rigid building blocks and structures of scholarly music.

"I got bored silly with it, and playing 'Take The A Train' again and again," Wirth said. "Classical was very structured and you only had so much wiggle room, so there's only so much you can do to express yourself using those building blocks. You miss out on plugging in and playing a power chord - there's nothing more direct and powerful. I take different blocks to make a different vibe, to maybe make it sound creepy. Making it all stick together is the challenge and I want to approach music so it doesn't stick on the first try.... challenging but approachable."

That rebellion from tradition led him to the songs and sound collages he's created, occasionally borrowing from the highly experimental instrumental ethos that marks his work as The Double Headed Seagulls, to turn traditional singer-songwriter creations inside out. Sigur Ros is an obvious marker - though with sharper edges - as are Four Tet, Juana Molina and the sonic middle ground between Radiohead's "OK Computer" and "In Rainbows." Dreamscapes that demand attention. Songs that won't let themselves be plainly seen.

"That stuff is far more solo/acousticy, emphasis on the song, but also has the same fun with textures," Wirth said of the songs made under his own name. "That's where the string quartet comes in, and/or feedback... soundscapes... any sort of texture - it's only after the lyrics and melody. Sometimes a song needs a texture. Sometimes it doesn't."

Many songs were written while Wirth played guitar in Austin power-poppers The Nasty Rumors and indie-punks Song of the Gun, and after letting them gestate a good long while Wirth is making 2010 the year his inner voice gets heard. To do that he's using songmonday.diehipsterdie.com to post a song every Monday and let the world grapple with the sound of a highly trained musician using his tools to dismantle just about every rule - time signature, pop song structure, major vs. minor key - he spent much of his life learning.

Wirth hopes to expand his sound in other ways this year, spending as much time as possible touring, be it solo with an army of effects and delay boxes, pedal steel guitar, with a keyboardist, or even a string quartet in an attempt to pull off a shotgun marriage between the order and structure of his training with the relative chaos of his solo work. No matter the configuration, Wirth plans on making his musical rebellion one that's easy to hear and hard to ignore.