Kevin Bronson on January 5th, 2014

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Those who sought to assuage their Fear of Missing Out by attending the FOMO festival on Friday night ended up having to deal with another neurosis: conflicting set times that sent the hardest of the hardcore scurrying up and down the stairs between the Echo and Echoplex all evening.

With 11 artists (plus some spoken word) in the span of five hours, the Origami Vinyl- and DoLA.com-sponsored FOMO packed in all flavors of nascent next-big-things, some of it aesthetically and emotionally poles apart. There were the transcendent, string-laden meditations of Lo-Fang and the intense, inscrutable psych-rock of Fever the Ghost. There were the otherworldly pop noir of Liphemra and the bawdy gypsy-punk of Kera & the Lesbians [top photo]. There were the sublime guitar-pop of Avid Dancer and the sharp-edged indie-rock of Hindu Pirates.

• ||| Photos by Carl Pocket

It was enough to give you whiplash, along with a little leg fatigue. But a great kickoff to 2014.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the night was Liphemra, the new solo venture from drummer Liv Marsico (ex-Stone Darling, and others), playing only its fourth show. Rotating between “fronting” her quintet from behind the kit and singing/knob-twiddling at center stage, Marsico conjured up a jazz songstress more than the R&B singers who engage in Liphemra’s strain of hybrid music. Which is: a little bit trip-hop, a little bit Kate Bush and a touch of Björk. Liphemra employed dual percussion (acoustic drums and electronic pads), keyboards, often-rolling bass and atmospheric guitar, along with occasional vocal tweaking and, on one song, a mournful French horn. “I have a cold,” Marsico confessed. “How unfortunate.” It didn’t dampen the proceedings. Look for a mixtape from Liphemra in late February or early March.

Later, Lo-Fang lived up to expectations, with singer/guitarist/violinist Matthew Hemerlein holding the ‘Plex audience rapt with his breathy tenor. Lo-Fang’s string- and electronics-laden debut “Blue Film” will be out via 4AD on Feb. 25, and live Hemerlein has opted to keep it simple, fronting a trio that includes a keyboardist and a drummer and employing some looping. Not the kind of music you’ll want to talk over, so be polite.

Kera & the Lesbians played the kind of set that made you wish their Echo residency started tomorrow (it’s in February, so brace yourself). Frontwoman Kera Armendariz brought an outsized personality and some soulful vocal chops to the quintet’s music, half of which sounds like it was hatched at 4 a.m. in New Orleans and the other half vaguely Eastern European. An EP is due late this month.

More understated was Avid Dancer’s late excursion – frontman Jacob Dillan Summers led the five-piece through a set that built from romance-obsessed ballads to the noisy psych-pop of “Not Far to Go” and “Medication” at the finish. Producer Raymond Richards stood in as guitarist, but it’s clear as the band still formulates its release plans for 2014 that they are ready to hit the road running.

Earlier, Wet & Reckless – down to a three-piece from a quartet – previewed new songs off a forthcoming album that showed the band (Emily Wilder, Jessica Gelt and Jalise Woodward) edging away from girl-group garage rock and a little more toward post-punk, which favors vocalist Wilder’s “readings” of the songs.

Fever the Ghost continued to push boundaries with a raucous set of wonky-good psychedelia. They have an EP coming soon as well. Hindu Pirates, overdue for a release, impressed with a set of more-muscular-than-your-average-surf-rock.

Meanwhile, Arizona’s Bogan Via gave early arrivals a nice dose of electro-folk to start off the evening; Tall Tales & the Silver Lining delivered some polished folk rock in advance of the start of their Tuesday night residency this month at Los Globos; and Santoros ended the night with a celebratory set that bordered on chaos.

And bonus points if you were up front for poet/author John Tottenham’s too-brief reading between sets, which was largely well-received by the always-chatty music venue crowd. Then again maybe you can resolve to see him in a friendlier setting. It’s the time of year for resolutions, y’know.