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Sifting through the Darkmatter

Baseck live at Darkmatter.

Saturday night, we headed out to Darkmatter, which I was set to cover for the LA Weekly. We thought it would be a very cool event, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then Venetian Snares showed up for a surprise gig. You can read about it in the LA Weekly music blog, West Coast Sound.

I woke up Sunday morning convinced that I was going deaf. I could hear and there was no ringing or buzz, but my right ear, the ear that was pointed towards the speaker for a bit the night before, was massively plugged. After some Advil and countless sticks of gum, the pressure alleviated slightly. Fortunately, this morning I'm back to normal.

I'm still exhausted from the weekend, but it was incredible fun.

Related: "Weird Ripper: Baseck redefines dance music with two turntables and two Game Boys"

The Girl at the Bar Has a Blackberry

You know you spent too long in school when you're at a club and you start thinking about Hyperreality and Jean Baudrillard. That was the case last night, a night that could have been considered hyperreal for a variety of reasons, most of which won't make sense to people reading this. But the kicker during the evening was when I pulled out my Blackberry and realized that my friend Roo was online. I was in a bar where I didn't know a soul, where I was too tired to drink or dance, so I started instant messaging him. I told him where I was and he mentioned that people might think that I have issues, a variety of issues.

"That might be the case," I answered. "Were it not for the fact that half the people here are on their phones."

And that's when I started thinking about when I read Simulacra and Simulation. After postmodern French philosophy starts to make sense, it will invade your mind at socially inappropriate moments, like when you're trying hang out in a nightclub and IM your friend without looking like too much of a geek. I started to think of hyperreality in terms of the people I see everywhere interacting with other humans over a smart phone, a symbol of communication, as opposed to actually communicating with the people who are in the room with them.  And I wondered, if Baudrillard had lived long enough to see the iPhone or the Blackberry Storm, what would he think? 

T.H.E.M. on Logo

Thee Human Egomaniacs, aka T.H.E.M., are Justin Nylander and Christiana Eastman, two childhood friends who got their start in the dance pop world working for Stacy Q's fan club. I met the duo in 2002, when they released their debut album Sin, Win and Grin. At the time, West Hollywood wasn't the Z-list celebrity cesspool that it is now and I was DJing at this small club called The Parlour that turned into a bit of a hang out for every crazy club kid who worshipped Klaus Nomi and Grace Jones. One night, Justin and Christiana came to the party, which was called Transmission, and introduced themselves, handing me a copy of the new album. I immediately fell for a song called "Here We Go Again" and, afterwards, their cover of "Sex Shooter." Both became regular features in my Wednesday night DJ sets. T.H.E.M. then played live at the club (I think they were the first live act I booked there). They drove up that night in their cotton candy-colored limo and started unpackin a bunch of mannequins dressed in T.H.E.M. gear, who would surround Justin and Christiana as they played. It was great fun and probably one of the most successful live performances at Transmission.

Later on, I think right around the time I was ready to end Transmission, Justin and Christiana announced that they were moving to Florida. I haven't actually seen T.H.E.M. in person since, although we do keep in contact online, and I quite miss seeing the pink limo pull up to the side of the club and hanging out with them on Halloween (they always have great costumes, the best being when they came in drag as each other). But, despite moving across the country, T.H.E.M. hasn't lost their creativity or sense of humor. "Beautiful," the video above, is a good example. The video was released last year and is still making waves on Logo's video show "The Click List". In fact, you can vote for it, if you so choose on the television station's website.

Fullmetal Alchemist Is Back

I got all annoyed whilst searching YouTube for Fullmetal Alchemist AMVs. See, my favorite manga/anime also happens to be one of, if not the, favorite manga/anime of every person with horrible taste in music. Every time I look for FMA AMVs, I come up with dozens, maybe even hundreds, of clips involving metal bands that clearly failed remedial spelling (replacing a C with a K does not make you cool or clever, except maybe if you're a cat because cats can't spell).

(To my hipster friends: you might think this point of reference is incredibly dated, but if you listen to KROQ, than you know that, ten years after the fact, it is still a very real thing.)

Okay, back to the point, I was getting all angsty about the dearth of FMA AMVs that I could stomach when I came across the clip posted at the top of this entry. It may be two years old, but it's new to me and incredibly fun. AMV creator xShigurex matched up the Elric brothers and friends with "Un Lapin," a super-cute number from ye-ye girl turned children's music artist Chantal Goya (she starred in Godard's film Masculin Feminin). Then she drew the series' characters chibi style and mixed in some actual FMA footage.

All this is to say that Fullmetal Alchemist is coming back for a third season. The good people at The Anime Blog posted a teaser and, although I can't understand a lick of Japanese, it looks like it's going to be something special.

Related: "The Anime Collective: Baka Deshi Productions"

New Depeche Mode!!!!

My friend Annie, the co-founder and only other member of the San Fernando Valley branch of the Alan Wilder Appreciation Association (actually, it's the only branch), sent an email to advise me that she heard the new Depeche Mode single on KROQ and that it's apparently the second most requested song on the station (the site, though, says that it's number three). Since I've taken to listening to German courses in the car, I was unaware of this development. So, I hit up YouTube, typed in "Depeche Mode new" and came up with this clip from the Echo Awards in Germany.

And so the question remains, what do you think? I dig the bombasticness of it, which is something that you can only do successfully if you're a nearly thirty year old band that has spent the bulk of your career playing arenas. Part of the reason that I have been a hardcore Modie since the tender age of ten (Mom and Dad, I'm still pissed that you wouldn't let me go to the Rose Bowl) is because of the band's knack for mixing up the monsterous jams that scream like a crowd of 100,000 kids in black ("Never Let Me Down") with more intimate songs ("It Doesn't Matter") and combine that with some amazingly strange remixes (the On-U-Sound version of "Master and Servant"). Hope I get to see them at the Hollywood Bowl this August. It would be even better if I finally got to interview the band.

Update: MySpace just debuted the official video for "Wrong."

Electrohouse Party

If you are ever in Los Angeles, you need to hit up a Droog event. The DJ/promotion team's parties aren't like anything you would imagine if your only exposure to Hollywood nightlife comes from The Hills and TMZ. In plainer English, their parties are fun, no pseudo-celebrity bullshit and no poorly mixed banal radio hits. Last night's party at The Room on Cahuenga Blvd. was an amazing alternative to the local Oscar night madness.

The night's secret guests were Tiefschwarz (photo above), who are amongst my favorite remixers (seek their mix of Depeche Mode's "John the Revelator"). The duo played early, from 11 p.m. until about 12:45 a.m. and it was beautiful, tons of slick electro house that made dancing more of an involuntary response than an action. We made it up to the front of the packed crowd (an amazing feat in itself given that Sunday is typically horrible for 21+ clubs and the bulk of the Hollywood clubs I've seen have been slow for the past few months) and kept up with the groove until it got too hot to continue.



Following Tiefschwarz was Matias Aguayo, who popped into Los Angeles after playing a slew of dates in Mexico. Aguayo is a member of Bumbumbox, a Buenos Aires-based collective that performs live alongside pre-recorded DJ sets playing through a boom box. We got to hang out with Aguayo, who is based both in Buenos Aires and Paris, for a bit before the set and chat about things like City of Quartz. He played live with compelling Euro-electro vocals and tons of pop hooks. We hope to see him playing in LA again.