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: music, songs on the internet | Tags: Micachu & the Shapes, mp3, music, pregame playlist
Woo! Happy Saturday! So I’m not even going to pitch this like dudes I just found this cool new band because, realtalk, I’m a little late on the uptake here.
Really the most disappointing thing about this whole scenario is that Pitchfork beat me to the Pokémon joke. bastards!
Not only p fork of course but everyone else who talks about music on the internet has already been losing their cool over Micachu et al since their album came out last summer.
All of this being said, I still felt the need to write about this band because I am feeling very good about them on so many levels. Their frantic, jumpy electrobeats make me think of Le Tigre or something, and that fiercely wide-eyed, technicolor spunkiness is a little bit Alphabeat-ish…
…but finally the music that the apparently immensely talented and classically-trained Mica Levi and her Shapes are making on their weird menagerie of homemade instruments is really just doing its own thing. Sometimes it’s pop for just a second, but then it clicks or it bloops or it sizzles or they shout something like “after this we’ll slip your disc” and suddenly you realize you’re at a birthday party in the 4th dimension.
Also, she looks like a boy but that’s ok.
You can buy all their records through their label’s website. Plus not that I condone this but pretty much all the songs off their new album are to be gotten free on various music blogs. Just ask the hypemachine.
PS Also props for not putting a ‘Crystal’ in their name like all the other little electropoppers are doing these days. Micachu and the Crystal Shapes? Nope.
Filed under: the internet & things we find there | Tags: blogging about blogs, blogs, music
Sometimes people ask me, Lis what is the secret to having a cool blog? Yikes! I Don’t Know!, I tell them bashfully. Mostly I think it is all about reading lots of cool blogs. Well today I am here to tell you about my favorite ones.
It’s like reading books only REALer, cuz I know u are sick of all that “using your imagination” bullshit.
*****
NE-Ways here goes, #1: here is the post that inspired this post about posts. It’s just too good to let it go by without some mad props.
IMBOYCRAZY is a blog by a girl named Alexi Wasser who lives in LA. she is funny and sassy as all sassafras. Here she writes to smartypants boys who are too obsessed with themselves to make moves for a quality girl.
You probably aren’t richard gere are you? Then you should probably read this!
*****
Next in line is Tom Oatmeal. I forgive him for only having a tumblr. because he is one of my favorite writers and a comic genius.
sometimes (#2) he talks to us about 2pac, but try not to get confused when he calls him 2-Pack.
*****
I’d be misrepresenting my internet self if I didn’t mention at least one blog about clothes and jewels. One of my favorite ones is Style Rookie which is written by a 13 year old girl called Tavi who seems like she is probably smarter and cooler than most grown ups.
No joke: we could all learn a lot from Tavi.
Here she is ( #3) making fun of that font “Curlz”. Dude why u gotta ack like u don’t know exactly what I’m talking about.
*****
I would also just be kidding myself (and all yall) if I didn’t say anything about Carles – the voice of Hipster Runoff, who is here to talk us through it when we struggle with defining our personal brand, or maybe our internet presence experiences an existential crisis.
He’s there when you need to ask yourself the big questions, like: do these child predator glasses (#4) make me look cool, or scary?
*****
And this post wouldn’t be complete without at least one music blog, but don’t worry! I’m not going to tell you about Gorilla vs Bear or (god forbid!) Stereogum. Said the Gramophone is the real deal. Writers writing about music.
Here is a great post which is just a list their fave songs of 2k9 (#5). Don’t miss it, plus (sssh) all the mp3s are right there for you to right click download. Careful there’s a lot.
*****
So there are 5 of my all time favorites from the past year — what does the blogosphere hold in store for 2010? What will be the next ‘it’ blog?
Haha! This one, of course. Or maaybe our macbooks will break and we will all go back to reading normal books?
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: bar, club, getting dancey, made in berlin, party | Tags: appartement, haus am köllnischen park 6, kitsuné, martini, music, partyy
TO DO:
<<i sincerely hope this isn’t some kind of sassy symbolism.
my fingertips are feeling the first phantom sting of subzero glass, i’m seeing the fiery candlelit twinkle of microscopic ice floes on glacial grapefruit-juniper tanqueray deeps. that slick slide of poison over frostbitten lips before it bites my tongue and anaesthetizes my esophagus.
<<and then there’s this.
update: the location for the kitsuné biznass has CHANGED. see here. plusss there’s like posters EVERYWHERE; i think it’s going to be a mess (or LAME, blerggg) and probs won’t go, fyi.
Filed under: club, concerts, food, getting dancey, music, party, restaurants, songs on the internet | Tags: diplo, major lazer, mitte, mp3, music, partyy, switch, themroc, wmf
You might say that the theme for this post is bad photography.
Or: what happens on a Friday night when you power through from work>>dinner>>club/party.
Namely, exhaustion, drunkenness, bad photography.
And fun times.
(Just don’t expect good pictures, is what I’m trying to get at here)
The night began righteously with a restaurant I simultaneously want to tell everyone about, and not tell anyone, so that it will stay a little lovely secret, because I don’t really like to share.
I’m talking about cozy-wozy Themroc on Torstraße, where we almost got turned away at 8 because of “reservations,” but after milling around the bar for 5 mins. we were apparently legit enough to be seated.
The awkward shuffle at the door was quickly forgiven and forgotten.
The view from our table was…the kitchen. As in sink, spice rack, cook. As in making our food. And no, this doesn’t mean we got hustled into the nosebleed section on account of no reservations. The kitchen is adorably right by the door.
As in any kitchen worth its guests, the refrigerator is covered in magnets/cute pictures. Jazz in the background and the gentle hum of various groups of people who like each other talking about things that make them feel good.
The menu is very small and exists only in the brains of the cook (1) and waiter (1). On offer was one appetizer, a sort of tabbouleh-style salad with shrimp. I like my tabbouleh with a little more zing and zest i.e. lemony-mintyness, but the shrimp were flavorful morsels grilled to perfection.
Next was a choice between something lamb and something chicken, I regret to admit that I was paying nil attention at this point, focusing more on like the wine-aspect of the meal (also excellent and plentiful), and so can tell you nothing about the lamb, since everyone at my table and at all the neighboring tables seemed to be going for the chicken.
The entree was solid and satisfying, if not spectacular. A little mogul of basmati rice mediated between a hunk of (baked?) chicken and a tzatziki salad. The chicken was tender and melty, basking but not bathing in a zesty-sweet-curry kind of sauce….mm now that I think about it, it actually was pretty perfect. It just didn’t stand out, exactly, but with the obvious theme here being that feel-good satisfaction of utter simplicity, wouldn’t anything more have been too much?
In any case, the dessert launched me to new heights of happiness: a warm fig amid fruity sauce and vanilla cream, all gooey and soft and choice with tiny caramelized crunchy nuts sprinkled on top.
All this warm and wonderful comfort food + drinks aplenty for less than the price of a pair of American Apparel leggings.
Speaking of which, the next stop was Major Lazer at WMF. This was really a great party, mostly because they had a little side room where the dj actually laid down the hip-hop all night long (this never happens in Germany), including some mash-ups that even though I feel negative about the mashup genre generally I have to say were pretty tight.
“MAJOR LAZER is a fictional cartoon character, who (according to press releases) fought as a Jamaican commando who lost his arm in a secret zombie war in 1984. He fights vampires and various monsters, parties hard, and has a rocket-powered hoverboard.” (Wikipedia)
I don’t feel like that requires further explanation, except that it’s the mutant science experiment of dj/producers Diplo and Switch and rocked pretty effing hard.
um you may recall I mentioned something about substandard photography. i think i should get points for even trying to take pictures and dance simultaneously.
why yes, thank you for asking, that is in fact a storm trooper in the right hand corner on stage. mostly blocked by some hombre getting way better pictures than me.
Forget the visuals, here’s an audio.
**Major Lazer – Hold the Line**
so get your dl on
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: bar, concerts, getting dancey, made in berlin, music, party | Tags: kim bar, music, partyy, 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: mp3, music, partyy, tape, the whitest boy alive
whitest boy alive will be getting their outdoors on. in the TAPE garden at 1600 hours. so will i.
