Made a stealth trip to the Acheron tonight to check out Boston bred Free Spirit's set. Super fun show with the dudes (no ladies this time) up front swinging and kicking, but people these days would go hard to anything repped by the Lockin' Out label. Can't say I blame them, the label's bands (Cold World, Righteous Jams, The Rival Mob, Razzle Dazzle) produce some catchy hooks.
Taken from the sideline of the pit, the video above is the first four songs of the band's set. Enjoi.
Thank HEAVEN STREET I decided to come out of my hermit coma for once or else I would not have stumbled upon my new favorite record store. Located just skips away from the Morgan Avenue stop on the L, Heaven Street record shop just had its grand opening tonight and everyone from musicians to writers and designers salivated over the free PBR and impressive inventory. "New York's only counter cultural record store!" proclaims the Facebook event page. The shop is curated by Cult of Youth's Sean Ragon and is often run under the friendly hands of my buddy and former Hospital Production shopman, Jim Siegel. Whatever you can trace in the two's musical paths is what you will find in the shelves of this store. It's no surprise that a store that's run by total angels (though I know OF Sean through mutual friends but I'm sure he's a sweetie too) makes DETAILED labels on almost every release in stock. Now that's service! Believe me, it was very hard to keep my wallet shut tonight, and when I found out they accepted Paypal payments upon purchasing Chronic Sick's "Cutest Band in Hardcore" e.p., I willingly kept my account open on the shop's laptop.
The store is open seven days a week (I believe) and is currently cash only - and Paypal, if you're nice and ask. It's located on 184 Noll Street, opens from 12-8 p.m., and all you have to do is walk left on Flushing and see a big ass window with a red wall and records behind it. They really like pizza. Jim loves waffles, pretzels, and cats. You will probably see me frequent the shop on the reg.
I had two friends stay over at my place for the week, and when they weren't spending their day doing some mushy, lovey-dovey sightseeing, I took on the duty to personally entertain and introduce them to what I hope was a good introduction to the New York City nightlife scene. The first night they bar-hopped in Alphabet City; the third was spent at Weird Records' Chthulhukah holiday party/Thalia's continued b-day extravaganza at Home Sweet Home. Sandwiched in the middle was what I most anticipated, the holiday party.
The saying is true: third time's a charm. I've managed to learn and adapt from my frustration of getting into some previous Fool's Gold events, and this time around I gave my visitors careful instructions to be ready to leave the apartment around 9. It was a close call, a gust of wind escapes from my sigh of relief as the bouncer stamps our wrists. I looked backed over a long, wide congeries of people, certain that 90% of them were told to go elsewhere when it reached capacity.
For some of my readers who aren't in the know of the DJ/dance world and its labels/artists/producers, Fool's Gold is one in the top of the genre's U.S. establishments. To make this more familiar, some of its forefront artists include A-Trak, Kanye West's DJ, Chromeo, and, thanks to "Drive," Kavinsky. So imagine what the holiday parties entail. The Dream Hotel provided the perfect backdrop to the fancy shirting, leather (and hot damn there was a lot of leather in this room), and streetwear get-ups that could garner Kanye's shades tip of approval.
The real party people made a swarm around the stage, waiting for Danny Brown to make what would be his celebratory performance after snagging the #1 spot on Spin's 40 best rap albums of 2011. Surrounded by the label's most recognizable faces, founders Nick Catchdubs and A-Trak, and Dave 1 of Chromeo. As last year got a surprise appearance from Drake, A$AP Ferg's host spot made it no secret that A$AP Rocky would bring out a surprise short set: two songs, jumping into the crowd, and creating a rowdy pit that mocked the nature of clashing atoms. (Not sorry for that dork drop.) Just so you know, the A$AP crew has a show coming up in February at the Irving Plaza. Tickets for that show go on sale at 10 a.m. on the 30th. Happy holidays indeed.
Toronto's Trust supported Balam Acab's NYC show last Thursday and I gotta say, they were the headline of my night. Submerge yourself into some dark electronic dance by listening to "Candy Walls" and the Bulbform LP, both released by Sacred Bones. "Candy Walls" is a crooning sway that'll rock your body back and forth, while "Bulbform" whips the hips with a foggy techno sound that's abrasively hypnotic.
The Rival Mob performed at the Acheron in BK last night/tonight/right before the mindfuckery that is the end of daylight saving. This band is hard to catch live unless you happen to be at some major punk fest or live on the East Coast, but luckily I've arranged my residency to fix that problem.
I'm not going to talk too much about the band's set because every word I'd have for it is best exemplified in the moving visual above. I will say that the unusual blur adjustments throughout the video makes it look extra ominous as if this was my POV after getting punched in the eyes. Keeping it tough.
DAWN OF HUMANS: fuck it, I got a video of their set to make up for this.
To my chagrin, meeting up with friends at Weird after gallery hopping in TriBeca was a challenge. Home Sweet Home, a bar/venue on Chrystie Street in which the most beautiful and most explicit of hell broke loose, was all fog and dismal lighting. Second, it's in the basement. So not only was my attempt to cell communicate one fat failure, but closing in towards the stage meant you couldn't see shit. Thankfully I've been to enough goth/darkwave club nights to fine-tune my capability of recognizing silhouettes in a smokey, dark basement and all was scarlet cherries and penciled-in eyebrows.
The night's bill was lacking in number, but the energy accumulation of Pharmakon and Dawn of Humans was on level to a four-band show. When it's past midnight and you're one of the surprising few who have to clock in at 9 a.m. in mere hours, all you really want is a happy meal show with a super-sized sensation. My friend Nick told me that Pharmakon, stage alias for Far Rockaway's Margaret Chardiet, was feeling very nervous about the performance tonight - but if anything, I was nervous about possibly being post-bewitched by her noise set!
The precedent atmosphere left an unusual playing field for Dawn of Humans, mostly because it was unusual to see someone monkey-scaling-the-ceiling-water-pipes action in the foreground of fog and strobe lights. I didn't whip out my camera fast enough to capture that, but I hope you can get my drift on how maddening this set was in the video posted above. I need someone from the show to confirm for me whether those are his real (purple) balls, or whether it's some rubber toy.
The show was not a usual one for Home Sweet Home's Weird Nights, which, in the past, has headline the label's rosters including Automelodi, Led Er Est, and Xeno and Oaklander. The inevitable finally happened during Dawn of Humans and the Weird disco ball on the low ceiling was knocked off and torn to pieces. I don't think there's any need to add words to that metaphorical gesture.
"... that awkward moment when you're posing and the camera's taking forever to shoot." - Tyler
My Fashion's Night Out was spent exclusively in SoHo. People chased after an Escalade with their smartphones because Pauly D was in the back seat. Anna Wintour was at Rag and Bone and uptown a crowd went nuts when Nicki Minaj walked in and out of Yves Saint-Laurent. FNO was less about shopping (freaking IMPOSSIBLE to pick up what you want and take it to the counter) and more about the chance for everyday people to jump into tabloid pages like some safari hunt. Oh, and the cheapest bar crawl you'll ever get out of this city. After my third and last store stop at Marc Jacobs, my purple feet and human clutter-induced hysteria beckoned me to go back to Brooklyn to call it a night. But really, my visiting friend and I split a pitcher of sangria at a swanky Spanish speaking bar (only non-Spanish there, ayo) called Bar Celona, and then gaily walked up Bedford for some gyros and the latest issue of Thrasher.
On the top photo: told Pharrell that I thought Tokyo Rising was beautiful (ps, directed by zee lovely Thalia Mavros), and Tyler came in around the time that I got into Billionaire Boys Club. (I can't imagine the reaction from the boys line when he walked in.) I gestured that he needed to be in the photo, so he agreed. He was probably most inclined to take the photo because it was also a photo with Pharrell haha. Tyler was a great sport and very sweet. Both are very fine gentlemen.
Trouble & Bass took over Scion's last Swimming with Sharks event and turned this night time hotspot into a Common music video - sans Common. Leave it to this sharp-dressed crew to make Labor Day weekend feel as labor-less as possible.
My friend Shannon and I took a cab north to Long Island City to check out the DIS_RT event at MoMA PS1. This was the closing party to LA-based artist Ryan Trecartin's first large-scale installation in New York titled "Any Ever." It's the internet culture of today coming to life: there's too much to see, hear, and feel that even the most jaw-dropping evoking sensation comes and goes like a passing Farrari only to be shown up by something new and flashy. There was a wait on the headphones that accompanied the installation, and I managed to snag a pair after 7 minutes in queue.
Outside, however was a throng of some of the gaudiest, sexiest, trippiest, and hippest kids (and I mean to list these adjectives in separates) of New York City. After having to first drown myself in this human sea to get a Brooklyn Lager tall can, Shannon and I gravitated toward the hip gyrating trannies with heels planted on an Escalade. (We love 'em.) I haven't heard of Glasspopcorn and his Tumbularity until tonight's show, and this odd popularity and fascination surrounding this kid that I was somehow oblivious to suddenly made me feel old - especially since he's 15-year-old and putting his rap career under the spotlight at freaking MoMA PS1.
The two draws for me, other than checking out Trecartin's exhibit before it closed, was #HDBOYZ (who I'll get to soon) and seeing turbo-fingers himself Araabmuzik pretty much recreate his work with seeming ease that we may as well have him draw a straight line on stage. This guy's works have been the voice nets of artists like Dipset, Busta Rhymes, and Fabulous, and you'd be an idiot to not check out "Electronic Dreams" if you're into this stuff. To prove that his live producing performance wasn't just putting a laptop on deck, there had to be a brief intermission during his set because I'm sure his fingers would swell to prunes otherwise. I knew there was a reason to stand up front, and I'm so glad I did.
So I'm beyond anxious for a video of #HDBOYZ to hit Youtube, Vimeo, whathaveyou because I don't think some words on a screen would do its justice on explaining how this 20-minute set made the highlights of my summer list. They are, according to their first interview with DIS, "the world's first boyband in high definition." I could not refrain from bursting out in fits of laughter over the brilliance in the execution of their performance. If you love a throng of handsome man serenading words like "HDMI in love?" to you, then you better not sleep on their next potential live appearance. I can't guarantee that a spectacular fireworks performance would soon follow.
Images source (except for the blurry phone pics) and more photos at: Weirdmagic.biz
So for this sold-out, Crystal Castles show at Newport, I decided that for the first time, I wanted to watch the show from the balcony. One, because I learned my lesson about the misery of trying to dance in a tin-of-sardines-kind of a crowd when I saw M.I.A. at NYC's Hard Fest last year (and had a heavy storm come through and made it more miserable... go find the videos); and two, because I busted out the Rick Owens racer tank dress I gifted myself for my birthday and, although flexible and comfortable for a night of dancing, I don't think I trust its integrity rubbed against some sweating bodies. But cool story, let's move on with the actual show.
My two male buds and I arrived around 7:40 p.m. to 3/4 of the venue already crammed - the opening act didn't take the stage until 8:30! During that idleness, I pointed out to my friends a particular person in the crowd who may have, in the words of my friend Kent, "reached his peak a little too early." His enthusiastic jazz hands, hair whips, and air thrusts had us in hysteric. There was a good 30 minutes ahead of him before the show finally started. Poor dude couldn't hold it in any longer. The Columbus-based opener was not my cup of tea, but everyone else seemed to be gulping them up. To put it succinctly, whoever manned their lights should be paid generously, there was some rock 'n' roll (which I had little appetite for that night), and the keyboardist/vocalist would definitely do well in a mid-'00 Blood Brothers sounding band (which is not bad, really).
Crystal Castles finally went on around 10 p.m., though prior, members of the crowd and I speculated a possible second opener due to the presence of a drum set. (Did they always have a touring drummer?) Nope, that was for them, and of course the fogged up theater should have made it all more obvious. Amidst the flashing strobes in their hell of an impressive lights arrangement, they opened up with "Fainting Spells" and bulldozed through the first half of their set with all the hits. You couldn't see Ethan and Alice until "Baptism" kicked in, which is when their hunchback silhouettes had everyone go bananas and I'm practically losing my shit over the song's hypnotic trail. I've somehow managed to record the next song, "Courtship Dating," in its entirety (video below). If there was any problem I had about this show, it's that there were minor occasions, like the "Courtship Dating" performance, in which the vocals were hard to discern.
Sorry for the shaking camera. Can you blame a lady for dancing?
Alice will hand over anyone's ass in being the most energetic frontwoman for a live performance. Almost every time I come back from the dark, there goes Alice's feather-like body walking, sprawling, and fucking crawling through the sea of heads and hands gravitating to her beckoning like magnets. Those were the only instances of contact with the crowd, because otherwise they were completely removed. They did not check in on how the crowd was doing, verbally making it known that it's Crystal Castles on stage, or even said thanks. But really, is there any need or demand to break the mood with some small chat? Hell no. As the lights erupted and escalated like a fireworks show and hits like "Empathy," Celestica," and "Crimewave" (fuck yeah) had everyone feeling themselves up, and "Not in Love" had everyone nearly toppling over the balcony rail just to sing along, the group made sure that everyone was there to dance in their own ecstasy. If you didn't and you just stood there to "watch" them, then you're probably went bat blind staring at the violently pulsating strobe lights.
They came back onstage for the encore with not a word out of their mouth (no surprise there), and Alice comes out smoking a cigarette like a boss and swaying her shoulders and hips as "Intimate" slowly leaked out of the speakers. Two more songs came after that before they called it a night, but at that time my friends and I dashed to the door to avoid the crowd rush. And failed. It was in the rush that I noticed that the Crystal Castle male fanbase was total babe-topia, and it certainly wasn't saving me that these Josh Hartnetts and Simon Nessmans came through with shirts unbuttoned and hair side-swept behind their ears. (In Ohio?! How come I rarely see these men around?!) I met up with a friend who told me that being in the pit was, given the circumstances, surprisingly bearable. Now combining these two instances, I'm starting to wonder whether having all the free reign to dance on the balcony with this great view really was the better alternative.
Night accompanied by these lovely shits. I swear they were thrilled the entire night.
Post-graduate life and currently residing in New York City. Fashion stylist. Writer. I love punk, well-dressed punks, comedy, personal style, reveling in my own vices, and transfixing visuals and words.
