Filed under: club, concerts, getting dancey, music, party, style | Tags: CTM, electropop, glass candy, Ida No, Italo disco, music, Planningtorock, Transmediale, wmf
Curses how is it possible that I have let fully two weeks go by without providing any sort of update on my comings and goings? I hope you weren’t worried about me. My withered soul was only huddling indoors feeling horribly depressed about the hopeless glacial permafrost darkness aka Berlin in January. Did you know they don’t clear the sidewalks here? Haha! I didn’t! What a zany surprise.
ANYhow now I have gained access to one of those fake sun lamps by mysterious means which I won’t explain here, I am throwing caution to the icy gale force winds & staring straight into its UV glory, my vitamin D levels are through the roof. I am feeling fresh, my typing fingers are nimble and limber, it’s blogtime yall.
So on the itinerary in Berlin right now is the Transmediale festival for art and digital culture. It will run from Feb. 2-7. Running sort of parallel to this is Club Transmediale (CTM) which is all about “adventurous music” (wha? I know.) and started on Jan. 28th. So the upshot of all this is that Glass Candy and Planningtorock were playing at WMF last night. WMF which btw I have decided is not that cool per se but anyways moving on.
The only thing I know about Planningtorock is that she is really named Janine Rostron, lives in Berlin, and just collaborated with The Knife on an opera, “Tomorrow, In a Year“. Awesome? Check, check, check. So obviously I was stoked to see her and really sad when I got distracted by things like prosecco, chatty Lufthansa employees, and vietnamese spring rolls and missed the whole thing. Gah.
Glass Candy though has gotten some blog love from me before, they were in Berlin this summer, and I was not about to miss them again.
It should probably come as no surprise that I love singers who a) wear sequins b) prance around like ponies on stage and generally just bask in their own glamor as if being beautiful and crazy were the ultimate answer to everything.
Check, check, check. Ida No is not messing around.
She was fabulous in leopard print and and sparkles and a flowy platinum mane and knew it. This sort of creepy dude had his iphone camera all up in her george foreman all night and she was all about it.
You’ll notice I kept my iphone camera at a tasteful distance.
Glass Candy is a weird and stylish duo. Their spooky Italo-disco-electro-pop makes my dance muscles tingle in a dangerous way. I was not to be stopped on that floor, friends, especially since it was not so packed and there was room to whirl and twirl — taking brief pauses to make pretty pictures (apologies for the fuzzy phone pics, they’re ‘shopped with love).
Forget fancy sun lamps. I can & will survive this winter on champagne, disco and sequins.
Filed under: concerts, music, songs on the internet, travels | Tags: electropop, Fever Ray, Hamburg, Heartbeats, Kampnagel, The Knife
Boys and girls, a momentous moment in the short but glorious history of glow.like.berlin: I left Berlin.
dramatic pause
If this doesn’t make you shudder & gasp as it should, let me point out that it was the first time Berlin & I have spent apart since we made it official, when we moved in together in May. Tru Story!
It doesn’t help matters that my little indiscretion took place in Hamburg, of all places!
Let me start at the beginning. It was a classic Friday night; lounging in the kitchen, expecting calls & company, but tired of waiting — one hand on the cell phone, the other idly hitting the ‘next’ button on the Facebook photo album of the drunken suburban shenanigans of a person you don’t know just because someone you went to high school with is tagged making a kissy face in one of the pictures — my housemate and I started the party ourselves. There was wine, there were cookies, it got later & later. Very soon we were feeling cozy: candlelight and “Heartbeats” by The Knife.
We were seized by a fervor for Swedish electronic pop music. In just minutes we had booked tickets to see Fever Ray in Hamburg, on a Wednesday night weeks away. Confirm! Done and done.
File this under: split second drunken decisions turned epic adventures.
AKA the best kind.
Enough talk! I need to learn to shut up. The concert was mystic, tribal, hypnotic electronic swedish enchantment.
There were lasers and mirrors
there were kooky lamps that blinked on and off, like confused jellyfish in a sea of artificial fog and neon light
and there was Fever Ray, deeply cooing electropriestess.
Did i say lasers yet?
(is he throwing up the jay-z diamond?)
As an added element of surprise and suspense to our little one-day adventure, the ride home we had planned backed out at the last minute, leaving us trapped like rats in Hamburg! My heart was hurting for Berlin and I was scared and confused. BUT they redeemed themselves by hooking us up with an apt to crash at. As we battled the coat check mob and spilled out the venue into the frosty night, in my head I was already preparing myself for a brown pull-out couch and a sticky bathroom floor. What we got were freshly ironed sheets & a soft guest bed, impeccable taste, and a pair of gracious architect hosts.
Made it extra hard to slither out of bed at 5 am to jump the train in time for work.
I really wanted to give Fever Ray the last word, but I can’t figure out how to embed video from pitchfork. Somebody needs to talk to WordPress about that.
just CLICCKKKKK fools
***Fever Ray – Keep the Streets Empty For Me (video)***
Filed under: getting dancey, music, party, songs on the internet | Tags: Birds & Batteries, electropop, mp3, music, pregame playlist, San Francisco
O MY! How have I left you alone in a world of silence without giving you any new music to listen to for so so so long? Were you bored? I’m sorry!
Here is something fresh for your atrophied ears.
Birds & Batteries are from San Francisco. All the leading authorities agree that no one can agree what their style is. They are like a kaleidoscope of twangy clangy folk, rushing American rock, something kind of psychedelic, a bouncy chunk of funk, the tendency to sound a little bit spooky, and a healthy jolting current of electropop lighting the whole gig up like christmas.
I’m not going to say any more, because I want you to listen. This song is on my workout playlist and releases breathtaking adrenaline cascades whenever it comes on. I kick into hyperdrive and run all the way to next Tuesday. But you can stay right here in Saturday where the party is. Everybody wins.
**Birds & Batteries – Lightning (UTNG Version)**
This is off their new EP, “Up to No Good”.
Filed under: club, concerts, getting dancey, made in berlin, music, party | Tags: dance remix, disco, electropop, le salon de paris, music, partyy, stattbad, thieves like us
Filed under: club, concerts, getting dancey, music, songs on the internet | Tags: disco, drinks, electropop, mp3, music, tape, the whitest boy alive
It makes me sad sometimes that it takes me a week to get it together and blog about anything…that being the case here I am just bloggity blogging about a concert I was at LAST Sunday.
But here we go so The Whitest Boy Alive played a wonderful show at TAPE open air garden…a big dusty post-apocalyptic courtyard right outside the club, which weirdly enough started in the afternoon (4), which turned out to be a great idea because just as WBA went on, the sun started going down, making everything flash and glow.
<<outside the gas station…prosecco run, duh
(<<on the way back in after prosecco duly chugged)
We got there (we thought at 5, tho actually it was 6, as it turned out my watch was an hour behind), as the first opener was still on, a girl electroband called Laing. They were so much fun and the lead singer danced like a ballerina, also she was a friend of a friend of a friend.
Then DJ Erobique came on, which was funny because at first I kind of thought he sounded like he was looping instrumental Stevie Wonder samples over and over, also he kept dropping the beat for long periods at a time and then he would just stop making noise completely, or start talking, so we were like big thumbs down, and then all of a sudden it just got really good, kind of newage disco-ey with an R&B backyard BBQ vibe. I was dancing.
<<so were the kids on the rooftops right outside. get a job, hooligans. yea right, im just jealous i didn’t have that idea.
So as I was saying, as the sun sank sank WBA took the stage, and boy are they EVER precious. I dig the napoleon dynamite aesthetic of the lead singer.
He only *looks* like a dork tho. On the inside he is a rockstar. Anyway I guess the dork look is totally rockstar these days anyway, right? By “he” I mean the frontman of course, Erlend Øye, who is also the singer from Kings of Convenience, which I might characterize as a faded polaroid of Whitest Boy Alive, all washed-out and fatalistic and conducive to deja-vu-style memories of childhood summer vacations and rainy days indoors.
WBA bumps it all into a major key and makes you want to jump around.
…
which we did, until like 10.30. Or was it 9.30? Not sure, my watch was broken.
PS I ♥ this remixxx
**The Whitest Boy Alive – Golden Cage (Fred Falke Remix)**
UPDATE: O dude sorry I already posted that one ages ago!
Well here’s another song, whiners.
**The Whitest Boy Alive – Burning**
jk jk about the whiners thing. Don’t be mad, ‘s just a blog.
Filed under: club, concerts, getting dancey, made in berlin, music, party | Tags: dance remix, electropop, junior boys, modeselektor, mp3, music, partyy, pete doherty, tempelhof, whomadewho
Up until yester-eve at 1800 hours the tricked out electrofest that is BERLINFESTIVAL 2009 was not on my skejj for the weekend but the unexpectendess doubtless made it all the more awesome.
arrived around 9ish, when nothing yet exciting was happening. o yea except we were at the AIRPORT. word.
defunct tempelhof is WAY cooler than functional tempelhof.
got my tix at a steal from twitchy kids confused about which language they wanted to speak, in the parking lot, unclear whether they were aware of said generous discount.
anyway soon junior boys went on. front and center ppl were dancing, they were way sick.
thought i didnt know them but i totally know that song “too young”.
UPDATE whooops that song is actually called “in the morning”
give it a listen *Junior Boys – In The Morning*
whomadewho was fun too, cute in lil hats and suspenders.
then these plant ppl did a little weird dance and celebrated green growing things or something.
they were chill, i guess.
but it wasn’t all weirdos playing with hay. hot kids in hats were all around.
pete doherty looked a little tired, but he held it together. didn’t exactly bring it, tho.
O yea, drunkies, just in case u forgot u were at the AIRPORT, here’s an airplane bitches.
But real talk now. MODERAT brought it like i’ve NEVER heard or felt or seen. didn’t know what to expect from them but duuuuude. Didn’t actually plan on staying for their set but I can’t even imagine what my life would be like now if i had missed it. Freal.
While they mixed it UP with outrageous soul gripping beats from the fourth dimension, and everykid grooved his/her own personal groove, little individualistic waves in one great grooving sea, the screen behind them showed mindbending scenes of surrealistic awesome. exploding plaster, wooden spiders, flickering t-rex skulls i don’t even know but it WAS majestic. damn o damn.
UPDATE did a little reading up. MODERAT are equal parts Modeselektor (an age old Berlin electro group from the illicit underground days,1 of Thom Yorke’s fave bands.) and Apparat (aka Sasch Ring; a Berlin-based electro guy). Their self-titled album just came out this March. a frantic frenzy of excellence.
BUT DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT!!! listen: **Moderat – Rusty Nails** (mp3)
o yea then peaches played some schizoid electrobeats while her dancers pissed on stage and she spit champagne on ppl while wearing some fifth element style modular sparklesuit.
o kids that means bedtime. tomorrow is another day. HEALTH and Digitalism, and Deichkind, o my.
Filed under: getting dancey, music, party, songs on the internet | Tags: dance remix, electropop, miami horror, music, partyy, pregame playlist, treasure fingers
WHOA watch yourself this is some treacherously catchy I-cant-believe-its-not-80s synthesizer mayhem here, the original will make you joggle your leg if you have lots of self control, the remix will make you moonwalk. true. f-in. story.
So Miami Horror, what is its deal, how is it all over the bloggs all of a sudden hmm?
let’s ignore the fact that blogs have been blogging about it since like ’07. who cares
the remixes are great (yea try like Pnau, Midnight Juggernauts, &c.), remixes of the originals, remixes of the remixes are great,
Miami Horror is a cute lil Australian hipstertype guy (band, whatever) and we just love it. listen listen.
O-RIGINAL
RE-MIX
**Don’t Be On With Her (Treasure Fingers Remix)**
Filed under: getting dancey, music, party, songs on the internet | Tags: dance remix, electropop, mp3, music, partyy, pony pony run run, pregame playlist, stereoheroes, work
Good god what’s gotten into me Ive actually been working these days and so haven’t been able to blog all day as I truly wish I could..
This means I’ve been sitting on a number of delicious dance remixes which I will deploy as the mood strikes& time allows.
Here a perfect one to make even Tuesday twinkle with magic.
Pony Pony Run Run name Weezer as one of their greatest influences, though I dont rly hear the likeness except maybe in terms of like, both make me want to move my feet, and it’s sort of impossible not to sing along by the time they reach the second chorus, &plus their songs display a special stealthy ability for getting played on repeat by me until I hear them quietly continue in my ears when they’re not even playing anymore.
They maintain a certain mystique, identifying their 3 members by only the letters G, A, &T.
What this is is fun fun synthpop, Cut Copy comes to mind a little, very much in the vein of the chimey dancey discoey stuff coming out of the French electropop scene these days. The early 80s come back to life with a yearning heart, a sexy french accent, adorable falsetto moments, & the whole thing lends itself amazingly to the creation of slightly more intense remix versions. I heard it first a week ago and thought it was sugarsweet, embarassingly happy stuff…but i sat on it, and listened to it again, and again, and it has gotten its claws into me somehow. I’m even falling for the cutesy video
And now presenting the downy little songlets themselves: “Hey You” is off their new album, “You Need Pony Pony Run Run” (check out their myspace to buy it for your own) which dropped earlier this month. First the original, then a remix which makes you want to run run like a pony pony.
**Pony Pony Run Run – Hey You**
**Pony Pony Run Run – Hey You (StereoHeroes Remix)**
original + remix courtesy Trash Menagerie
Filed under: club, concerts, getting dancey, music, songs on the internet | Tags: cookies, disco, electropop, glass candy, mp3, music, partyy, pregame playlist
True, this event has come and gone, but in honor of their appearance at Cookies on Tues. we raise our first glass on this Friday night to Glass Candy–Ida No (vocals) & Johnny Jewel (everything else), that is–an electropop (most recently with Italo Disco leanings, but they are prone to experimentation) outfit from Portland, OR.
The duo’s look is just as decadently retro eurosexy as their sound. Perfect soundtrack for rifling through ur lamé, diamonds, furs, painting your eyes pink and teal before venturing into the urban night.
(music courtesy Gorilla vs. Bear)
Filed under: getting dancey, made in berlin, music, party, songs on the internet | Tags: dance remix, electropop, fred falke, mp3, music, pregame playlist, the whitest boy alive
yea its monday but this is also berlin. anyway here is a lowkey, turn the lights down low and find the one you dressed for tonight kind of track.
**The Whitest Boy Alive – Golden Cage (Fred Falke Remix)**
the Whitest Boy Alive has existed since 2003, so why don’t you know about them yet? theyre based in Berlin and their singer is Erlend Øye, that guy from kings of convenience. they’re into making electronic dance music, among other things. they have a new album out called Rules. rule #1, listen to this song.
