Eyebeam’s MIXER event series continues this weekend with an Olympic-themed art and design marathon. The Chelsea art + technology hub will host Benton-C Bainbridge, CHERYL, Conveyors of Misguided Hits and Misses, Double Happiness, Erik Fabian, Jeff Crouse + Aaron Meyers, NYC Resistor and Stephanie Rothenberg + Scott Kildall, as well as Tanlines, Maluca and Justine D for late-night music performances.

Full press release here.

Housebroken
Flux Factory
39-31 29th St (at 40th Ave) [map]
Queens NY 11101
On view Saturdays & Sundays through March 21, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, February 19, 8pm-2am

Size Does Matter
curated by Shaquille O’Neal
Flag Art Foundation
545 W 25th St, 9th Fl (at 11th Ave) [map]
New York NY 10001
212 / 206-0220
February 19, 2010–May 27, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday, February 19, 6-8pm

» Switch – A Bit Patchy (6:31) – 9.9MB mp3 @ 212kbps (embedded music player in the near future)

I doubt I’ll make it over there, since I was actually thinking about heading to Bruar Falls after the openings tonight, but who knows…

Girls & Boys is (are?) bringing some more noteworthy acts to Webster Hall over the next few weeks. The graphic design is painfully uninspired, but that’s not the reason why people go to these things.

I wonder if Vitalic is any good live. I just downloaded the new album; haven’t listened to it yet, but I like the album art:

Brooklyn Vegan has more concert listings as always.

It’s pretty stupid and boring.

Honestly though, I don’t really know why I’m doing this—especially without photos, which might somehow justify the tedious and grossly underdeveloped prose. (It reads like something I would’ve written for a 9th-grade English class.) The closest approximation of a rationalization I can come up with is that I’d like to have some really terrible, shameful writing on the record to spite the rest of the content on my blog.

It’s also littered with hip NYC namedroppings and a cast of ancillary characters who barely qualify as devices. There is no symbolism or allegorical value to speak of. I’ve done my best to minimize foreshadowing… but that’s asking a lot and I’m not that good of a writer.

At best, it’s an exercise, an uncharacteristically intimate portrait of contemporary bohemia, largely unembellished albeit esoteric to the point of being skewed. At worst, it may be remembered as the first symptom of an otherwise untold descent into madness.

We’ll see how long it says online before I decide to delete it. (I’m tracking stats now so I’ll know exactly how many people clickthrough and read it.)

9:55 – Wake up. Already off to a late start. iTunes shuffle is doing a pretty good job of keeping me in bed (a few incongruous songs in a row is a sign to get my ass up), so I read about 15 internets—the Times, Gothamist, Hypebeast, Designboom, etc.—on my MacBook Pro before venturing into the kitchen to fix some breakfast. I think about making a donation towards Red Cross efforts in Haiti.

11:11 – I spend the rest of the morning working on a new version of my resume, which I started yesterday afternoon. (I’ve decided that I don’t like the bulleted list format for my previous work experience, but I’m struggling with paragraphs, which inherently look dense and unreadable.) It’s not going well.

At some point my roommate Tony wakes up and we probably shoot the shit for a while. He suggests that we get some lunch. I have leftover pork fried rice, which I made yesterday, but I decide that it will be just as good, if not better, for dinner.

12:52 – He wants to try a Filipino place called Umi Nom, a couple blocks up Classon, on the corner of Dekalb. I consider bringing my camera but I don’t (their website happens to have decent photos). We talk about Twitter during the short walk.

Umi Nom’s sign is painted over a ‘Coin-Operated Laundry’ sign. The logo suddenly reveals a striking similarity between Helvetica Neue Condensed—which I’ve been using for the header of my resume—and Impact, a font that I’ve never particularly liked (though it works for Umi Nom). As for the interior, the decor is natural and elegant, unambiguously Asian without seeming generic or contrived.

We end up splitting a grilled pork belly sandwich and a Filipino dish called Tapsilog. They are described (in the online menu, which presumably echoes the print one) as: “sliced pork belly, atchara, cucumbers, sweet chili aioli” and “house cured beef tapa, garlic fried rice & 2 eggs scrambled or fried,” respectively.

Both dishes are excellent. The sandwich is basically a Bánh mì (atchara is pickled carrots and daikon): the sweetness of the sauce complements an equally generous portion of super-tender meat, while the vegetables cut the richness and add texture. The beef, on the other hand, is at once more and less familiar: warm slices of jerky over a sparsely seasoned jasmine rice with two fried eggs and an essential side of rice vinegar. The beef itself is delicious; the rest of the calories are tasty but the dish seems less coherent as a whole.

2:02 – I get back home and back to work, alternating between researching potential employers and revising/reconfiguring my resume.

2:37 – I need coffee. I make coffee (a cup and a half worth of French press). I drink coffee.

3:30 – My resume is looking a little better. I’m finally satisfied with the copy but it still looks too busy and I can’t seem to get the spacing right.

I eventually have a (possibly deluded) epiphany and rework the header.

4:24 – I was hoping to finish by 4:30 (I specifically put on an album that would end by then) but it takes longer than I planned, as these things often do; any later and I would risk sending out cover letters at the end of the day, which I generally don’t like to do. I was also trying to squeeze in a bike ride while it was still light out, but I’m already past that point before I realize it.

I put on the another album, Disc 2 of The Bang Gang Deejays’ 2007 mix Light Sound Dance, hoping to finish before its runtime of 1:13:21.

5:14 – Coffee helps, but I still end up cutting it close. In my haste, I almost forget to hotlink the brand new PDF, so I have to spend a few minutes doing so in Acrobat. I finally send it nearly an hour after my self-imposed deadline and, just as I’ve finally prepared for my bike excursion, the album closes with “Sometimes” by Les Rythmes Digitales, a personal favorite.

5:39 – It’s not that cold out and I work up a little sweat during the 15-minute ride. It’s a straight shot up Classon to Kent, which takes me within a block of Brooklyn Bowl, my first stop.

5:58 – I’m trying to locate my keys, which I’m 95% sure I lost at Brooklyn Bowl on Saturday. I’ve been using a spare set since then, but the set that I lost has the only extant key to my U-lock, so I’ll have to buy a new one if I don’t track it down.

6:06 – No luck. I leave my name and number but I’m not expecting a call back. I head over to my friend Sean’s apartment.

I remembered to bring the Modern Sky Records compilation that I bought in China as a cheap and somewhat relevant gift (this was one of my preparations). He pops it into the CD player. It’s not that good: most of the songs are either too 90’s alt-rock or weirdly jammy.

Sean is also seeking employment (in independent music, hence the relevance) for some time now and we complain about job hunting, among other things.

7:32 – We eventually decide to grab a slice at Vinnie’s (instead of falafel at Oasis); the PFR will be just as good, if not better, tomorrow. I know Sean’s roommates to varying degrees and I decide to leave my bike at his apartment since I don’t have a usable lock. I smoke my first cigarette of the night. He has to stop at Matchless to pick something up. I wait for him outside, since I haven’t finished my cigarette, and I take the time to arrange to meet my other roommate Diego at Raandesk Gallery (see Images).

7:48 – The funny guy isn’t at Vinnie’s today. An older guy takes my order and somehow my slice is done before the two girls who ordered before me.

7:58 – On the way out of the restaurant, someone greets me on the street. I recognize Matt—a casual acquaintance at best—but he’s with someone and they keep walking in the same direction that Sean and I are going. We’re maybe ten feet behind them and it’s kind of awkward.

Sean and I part ways a block down the street when I head to the subway. I’m halfway down the stairs before I realize I’m behind Matt and his friend. Thankfully, one of them has to get a ticket so I pretend not to see them to save face and I walk about three quarters of the way down the platform, to the subway car that is closest to the NQRW transfer at Union Square. I don’t see Matt.

8:15 – The trains are pretty fast so I make good time to Madison Square Park, where I meet up with Diego. We find our way to 16 W 23rd Street, 4th floor, which appears to be some kind of shared office space that has temporarily been converted to a gallery.

The show is ok. While I knew that Jason Bryant worked in Kehinde Wiley’s studio, I learn that the two artists in the show—Bryant and Kevin Cyr—actually met while working for Wiley.

Cyr was actually the main attraction for me, since I was under the impression that his camper bike or kart would be on display. I’m disappointed to find that there are no three-dimensional works in the space, only paintings. I eventually conclude that Cyr’s ‘vehicular portraits‘ would make a good childrens’ book (I mean this in the best way possible).

As for Bryant, I was familiar with his photorealistic portraiture beforehand though I am rather surprised to see that he has incorporated trompe-l’oeil imagery (drawing inspiration from well-known skateboard graphics) into his latest work. I am undecided about this new development.

In any case, the complimentary wine helps.

8:42 – We leave. It’s still nice out, so we walk to Union Square. I smoke my second cigarette on the way to the Strand, my first time back since I returned from China. They’ve moved the bag check. Everything else is pretty much the same.

9:18 – We catch the L train right away even though I had to wait in line to refill my Metrocard.

9:31 – I decide that I want to get my bike from Sean’s apartment tonight instead of retrieving it tomorrow. Diego switches to the G train at Lorimer while I surface to figure out how to get my wheels. Sean’s still at Public Assembly so I call his roommate David, who I also know from college because we both had the same Arcade Fire shirt freshman year.

David doesn’t pick up but I figure it couldn’t hurt to walk to their place and try the bell hoping that one of their other two roommates might be home. As I walk under the BQE overpass at Union, I see a couple guys doing tricks on fixed-gears. I wonder if one of them is John Prolly.

9:49 – No one’s home. I arrange to pick Sean’s keys and listen to my iPod on the walk to and from Public Assembly. I smoke my third and final cigarette of the night on the walk there and I think about recounting my day in a blog post and donating money to the Red Cross.

10:24 – I get my bike.

10:33 – I return Sean’s keys.

10:50 – I get home.

11:00 – I start writing this blog entry.

Fin.

DJ Craze is playing a free show at Punk tonight. To be perfectly honest, I haven’t heard much of his stuff—I’m downloading his Fabriclive mix as I write this—but his reputation precedes him. (If nothing else, he keeps good company: A-Trak can do no wrong these days and I used to see Klever regularly around ATL.)

I hope I can make it out there.

DJ Craze
Punk
The Opposite House
The Village at Sanlitun
北京市朝阳区三里屯11号
Thursday, December 17th

I found the new Chinese sound…

…or at least a sound that I was new to me, by way of a Chinese artist.

But first the requisite tedium of time, place, overanalysis and a dozen other tangents:

After catching La Loupe last Thursday, I opted not to see Au Revoir Simone or Rahzel (playing separate concerts—Chinese people are crazy but they’re not that crazy) and take it easy on Friday because 1.) the shows were relatively expensive—150RMB [$22] and 100RMB [$15]) respectively, which sounds cheap but taking drinks and cab fare into account, would have made a relatively expensive night out; 2.) I was afraid I would go through another pack of smokes (a health concern, not a financial one; more on this shortly); and 3.) I was saving my energy, money and health for Saturday’s cryptically-titled “Great Beer, Bad City” concert, showcasing China’s finest electronic music talent, at 2 Kolegas, “Beijing’s Hottest Dive Bar & Live Music Venue” (according to their website).

You'll have to excuse the poor quality of my photos; low light, strobes, movement, inebriation and ineptitude are to blame.

Like D-22, 2 Kolegas has established itself as a legit venue since its founding by two expats a few years back, attracting indie acts from near and far (I regret missing YACHT’s Halloween show there). Also like D-22, it happens to be off the beaten path, but (unlike D-22) this does not work in my favor: 2 Kolegas is a 15 km / 25 minute / 45RMB taxi-ride away, in the northeastern reaches of Beijing… in the parking lot of a sketchy drive-in movie theater that I might have mistook for a carnival (further explanation is clearly necessary, but will not be provided.) As with most places I’ve tried to find in Beijing, I found it on the second try, after a 15-minute detour down a shady side street lined with empty cabs—I had hoped they were ferrying passengers to nightlife off the main road, but this was not the case.

I arrived to find a keffiyeh’d iLoop grinding out a hard techno set on his laptop. This was some heavy shit, from the relentless throb of the 4×4 beat and sawtooth snarl of overdriven basslines to the ghosts of melodies, mutilated into looped stutters and vocoded warbles, everything compressed as all hell. I wasn’t averse to the intensity, but I imagine that drugs and alcohol might have helped. (Insofar as Chinese drug culture seems conservative to the point of invisibility, it was no wonder that the place was fairly empty.) It was also too early for this shit—I figured more people would arrive later but the hypothetical crowd never quite materialized.

LIman was only nominally poppier: after opening with the telltale stabs of A-Trak’s remix of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Heads Will Roll”, he faded into harder tech-house obscurata. Like iLoop, LIman scarcely strayed from a driving 130 BPM beat, settling for dynamic regulation via filter and killswitch effects. Still, he managed to get more people on the floor, as about half of the 50 or so clubgoers left their seats for his set. If iLoop was the heavy metal of techno, LIman was grunge… and everyone likes grunge.

Doshy, the night’s guest DJ from Germany, picked up where LIman left off, lacing his more diverse set with a hint of funk and a touch of dubstep. He was the only performer who was not (as the joke goes) checking his e-mail onstage, opting for a hardware setup instead. Whether it was the meager turnout or jet lag, he seemed slightly off, missing several cues, though it was a nice change of pace when he varied the tempo a bit.

Sulumi in 2008 via PSFK (K Hessel Edit) – I'm 99% sure that's 2Kolegas

The crowd had thinned out to a scant dozen diehards by the time Sulumi (the long-awaited topic of this post) started his set at 1:00 AM. Thankfully, he didn’t mind, cranking out a non-stop set of original 8-Bit compositions as though he were playing to a full house at Studio B (R.I.P.). For some uncanny reason, I had high hopes for Sulumi, and he did not disappoint: I can’t say that I’ve ever listened to 8-Bit in earnest, but his high-energy set earned him at least one more fan.

The closest reference points I can think of are Crystal Castles, Surkin’s remix of Bionic Commando, and maybe Octopus Project (from what I remember; I haven’t listened to them in forever). Like CC and indie-electro darlings (I hate that term) Ratatat, Sulumi re-invents the punk / rock aesthetic electronically as Ninetendo bleeps and sine waves against a thumping techno back beat.

Even as the audience dwindled to just a few tireless ravers, Sulumi continued to thrash and twitch about his laptop and mixer. At some point in the middle of his set, a particularly infectious melody caught my ear, amid the endless sequence of chiptune motifs emanating from his ad hoc electro rig. (This happened to be his outstanding remix of his own song, “Kill Me Sweetly,” a Dan Deacon-worthy fist-pumper.) It was one of those singularly rapturous moments where I was instantly transfixed by an artist I’d never heard perform a song that I’d never heard—at that point, I was sold.

Following the show, I did some research and tracked down Sulumi’s latest release, Chaotic Dances the Function, available as a free download (37.4MB zip file). Apparently Sun Dawei is not just a solo act but a label exec for Shanshui Records and a promoter for Shanghai’s Antidote collective. Fellow member B6’s eye-catching poster designs for Antidote shows are quite phenomenal and have apparently been the subject of some controversy; check out the full gallery here.

This is what Time Magazine had to say about him a year ago:

Considered a linchpin of the avant-garde, Sulumi — the working name of 26-year-old Sun Dawei — cites Yellow Magic Orchestra and Aphex Twin as his influences, and his music correspondingly moves between the genres of 8-bit (electronic music that mimics the sounds of outdated computers and gaming consoles) and IDM (”intelligent dance music”). Live shows can be geeky affairs, with Sulumi hunched over a laptop, a hooded sweatshirt obscuring his chiseled cheekbones.

He is also a promoter and the founder of Beijing electronica label Shanshui Records. “The great thing about the experimental scene in Beijing,” he says, “is that it’s easy for musicians to get a foot in the door.” But it’s not that easy to make a living—in fact, Sulumi is one of the few to pull it off. “I do commercial performances sometimes, which is where I get my income,” he shrugs. “But making music is my life—I don’t need any other motivation.”

–Come On Feel the Noise
Time Magazine, 10/23/08

A brief review of the EP, should you choose to download it: opening track “Sweetly” is a sort of 8-bit ballad, which is pleasant enough, but the killer remix is more in keeping with Sulumi’s frenetic live show. While the rest of the songs tend towards the IDM end of the spectrum, his live set was more accessible: I recall a melody that echoed some Múm song from Finally We Are No One, as well as what might have been an interpretation of Blur’s “Girls and Boys,” though I would just as soon credit these to Sulumi himself.

The album version of the remix, linked below, can only give you an idea of what Sulumi is like, since it’s definitely best experienced in the club setting. I can’t say it’s for everyone, but it’s easily my new favorite song.

» Sulumi – Kill Me Sweetly – 4.5MB mp3 @ 192kbps

Related:

• Blip Festival 2009 is going down in Brooklyn. (Sulumi played Blip last year.)
• Yesterday’s New York Times Opinionator features a curmudgeonly piece by composer Glenn Branca entitled “The End of Music”. (My counterpoint is that I happened to be listening to Battles when I came across the article.)