Tectonic Temple at Telemagica

“I have the habit of making seemingly insurmountable goals for myself,” says Joe Mousey, an art student, musician, and promoter who will be constructing a 20-foot-tall pyramid and six 4-foot pyramids for an upcoming outdoor music festival in the deep east town of Jacumba.

Psychedelic video jockey Wind Spirit will be projection-mapping on the larger pyramid’s custom-tailored fabric while the smaller structures will be covered in fabric and animated by LED arrays.

“When you come over the hill at the site, you’ll see all these glowing pyramids, so it will be quite the spectacle to behold,” says Mousey, whose engineering experience includes a geodesic dome built for Haloa, a free November 2010 party in the Imperial Desert that saw a couple hundred in attendance and performances from 16 bands and electronic musicians.

“I didn’t finish it until the day before Haloa and never put it together until the day of the festival.”

Mousey has also produced two Tectonic festivals in the desert and Jacumba, which featured visuals by Wind Spirit and Moistrix and musicians including Snuffaluffagus, Wild Pack of Canaries, Free Moral Agents, Plant Tribe, Sleeve, HM.T DM.T, old-school projectionists Operation:Mindblow, and Mousey’s psych-rock outfit Pilots.

“We decided to call it Tectonic because the desert is earthquake central,” recalls Mousey. “We were going to be out there with our amplifiers and we wanted to cause an earthquake. Sure enough, the next day there was an earthquake and we were right at the epicenter.”

Mousey is gearing up to get seismic once again, this time in collusion with the nearly decade-running Telemagica festival in Jacumba.

On the night of Saturday, June 9, the Tectonic Temple at Telemagica stage will be aglow with acts including Pilots, Shiva Trash, Jamuel Saxon, Wild Pack of Canaries, Planet Tribe, Joy, Mystery Cave, Phen Swan, and DJs coordinated by Liquid Geometry.

To support the project, Tectonic will be holding a fundraiser at Tin Can Ale House on May 25 with performances from Pilots, Shiva Trash, and Lyon Crowns. Five dollars at the door.