Clubs We Love: XY:XX at Miss T's Barcade

Miss T's Barcade is a retrogeek watering hole in Koreatown filled with classic video games and toys that date back to the time that Atari and Nintendo ruled the living rooms. For someone like me, who stopped playing video games when Street Fighter II got huge, this is the perfect spot to veg out whilst standing upright. But the truth of the matter is that I was never very good at anything outside of my personal Big Three (Ms. Pacman, Tetris and Super Mario Brothers), so, if I do join in the gaming madness, I tend to hit every button until I blow up something.

Saturday night, though, we didn't get to play anything, due to the huge crowd at the club and, at least on my part, a lack of quarters (been using up those in an attempt to avoid more parking tickets). Without the games, the Barcade is still a good time. Special thanks to the bartenders for pouring serious soju Cape Cods.

We typically hit up the Barcade for XY:XX, which is the new party from Job Leatherette and Eric Dead of M/R/X. The club takes place on the third and fifth Saturdays of the month and it's a can't miss party. XY:XX is far more low key than M/R/X. There are no bands and people tend to come as they are, no Vivienne Westwood or Cabaret outfits here. The music is primarily synth-punk, mostly stemming from the 1980s. I only have the vaguest idea of what is played here as Job in particular never fails to stump this electronic freak.

Part of what makes the Barcade special is its location. Koreatown is now what Hollywood was when I started clubbing in the mid-1990s. It's a place to people watch. For example, when headed out onto the sidewalk for a smoke last night, there was a bit of street theater going on at the corner and then, out of the crowd bolted a bike rider covered in lights. He kindly let me take his picture.

New Chicks on Speed

Chicks on Speed, the multi-media band of artists that had major club hits throughout the past decade, has unleashed a new song. "Super Surfer Girl" isn't just a single, though, it's musical accompaniment for the group's line of surfwear, designed in connection with Australian label Insight. It's called Insight on Chicks on Speed and you can check out images via this link. The song will also be released as a 12" single with remixes from Christopher Just and WhoMadeWho.


Whomadewho "Space for Rent"


Christopher Just "I'm a Disco Dancer (DJ Hell Remix)"

Glowstick Nation

A few weeks ago, I was at Anime Expo for reasons you should be reading soon. At the end of the first night, I walked outside and noticed a group of maybe six guys and one girl dancing with glowsticks. They were spread out across a 20 foot radius with a small boom box in the center of the haphazard geometric formation.

I talked to Bryce from glowsticking.com, who seemed to be something of a ringleader, and asked why glowsticks and anime? He said it just seems to work. Anime fans are often ravers. Ravers are often into anime. We chatted for a bit and he told me about the tutorial he and his friends were doing the following day. I wasn't able to make it. I did, however, get some pictures.







Then there was this guy Phil, who let me shoot the following video.



Of course, it wasn't until after I got home that I realized that I should have changed the settings to get that freaky, trailer look. On Saturday, I played around with my camera at an AX dance party.



I'll get the hang of the glowstick thing eventually.

RIP SWFT WNGS

Chris from SWFT WNGS live @ M/R/X, May 3, 2008

Photo by Liz Ohanesian

On June 16, local noise group SWFT WNGS, who were featured in my piece on the ongoing influence of Rozz Williams in Los Angeles, announced its split.

I had the chance to see SWFT WNGS at M/R/X when the band opened for Nervous Gender and it was one massive wall of noise. Thought we were going to go deaf in the most punk rock way possible. The band will be missed, but fortunately, the music will continue. Abraham Jay has gone on to form White Breath, which you can hear via the following link. Meanwhile, I have it under good authority that Chris and Lynette will be revealing a new musical endeavor soon.

The Coldwave Hits Chinatown

There are clubs that I like and clubs that I love. M/R/X-Wolfpack, which goes down the first Saturday of every month at Roberto's, falls into the latter category for three simple reasons. First, the dudes in the M/R/X room play things that I manage to completely stump me (and I'm actually a pretty good trainspotter). Second, the dudes in the Wolfpack room play things that I know but haven't heard in years (like "Giddy Giddy Carousel" last night). Third, the selection of performing bands is always excellent.

I should also mention that the promoters create a nice ambiance inside goth sports bar Roberto's.

This was the Wolfpack room before people arrived.



This was the M/R/X room, also taken shortly after doors opened. (We went to Philippe's for French dip sandwiches, so we got to the club unusually early.)





Last night, the club hosted an event for Wierd Records, a New York label whose only band that rang familiar to me was Blacklist (I found them through Rich Girls Are Weeping and the name stuck in my head because it's a Legendary Pink Dots song). Apparently, Wierd is also an NYC club that looks far more interesting than all of the trite-sounding NYC clubs I read about in magazines.

Since this was a Wierd party, DJ Pieter Schoolwerth of the minimal electro and coldwave club/label played a lengthy and interesting DJ set. I'll be honest, I had no idea what he was playing, but the music prompted three most-likely-straight guys to strike homoerotic poses on the dance floor. Additionally, the two bands scheduled for the evening were from the Wierd family.

Xeno & Oaklander were the first to play. This is a Brooklyn based duo that sounds a bit like Depeche Mode in that phase between the loss of Vince Clarke and the full-time gain of Alan Wilder. I imagine that sentiment means nothing to people who are not Modies and, yet, I feel no need to explain further.






Martial Canterel played well after Xeno & Oaklander finished. In fact, Canterel went on so late that we were all effectively kicked out of the club as he hit the last note of his last song. Like his Wierd Record cohorts, there is a dearth of biographic information on Canterel. I will just say that he is one man with a keyboard setup that plays in a minimal fashion similar to Fad Gadget sans the nutty stage show.







At some point, Don Bolles spun in the Wolfpack room. This must have been while one of the bands played because we missed the set. I'm sure their were some darkly psychedelic and totally obscure jams involved.

Recoil

Recoil Party in Prague 9/29/07, filmed, mixed and uploaded by recoilogy.com

I found the link to this essay by Recoil mastermind Alan Wilder through a blog post by electronic artist James D. Stark. It's a fascinating read for those of you who, like me, enjoy obsessively contemplating changing technology and how the old fogies at the major labels can't keep up with the times.

Wilder is an innovator in a music industry marked by mediocrity. I say this as a matter of fact, not simply because I have been a fan of his work since I was 10 years old and bought a copy of Depeche Mode's Music for the Masses, which stayed locked in my tape player for months. Prior to the release of subHuman, he sent out various YouTube videos updating fans on the status of the project. This was an excellent move and other musicians dealing with loyal fan bases should take note of it. How can I prove that the films worked? Well, my friend Annie and I, aka the San Fernando Valley Alan Wilder Appreciation Association, couldn't stop talking about the then-forthcoming release for almost a year. He is also a stellar producer and I recommend any reader heed his wisdom on sound quality in the MP3 age. Personally, I tried to get with the times and download my music like everyone else, but it didn't take long for me to learn that the sound quality is abysmal. Wilder's example of Arctic Monkey's hit "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" is a great example of volume or sophistication. Thanks to Mr. Wilder, I now understand why I can't muster up the energy to care about much contemporary music. It's not that I'm old!

Anyhow, last summer, I had the privilege to interview Alan Wilder over the phone for The Rockit, the magazine I used to edit. I really enjoyed the interview, not so much because of my interest in his music (oftentimes, you can be a fan of an artist and find out he/she is a bore to interview) but because his answers were quite informative.

Since The Rockit never archived stories, I am posting the text of the article below. If you would like, I might post the Q/A later, but that might read oddly because the cross-seas connection was shite.

Recoil: It Doesn't End with the First Listen

By: Liz Ohanesian

Published: August, 2007 in The Rockit

The first notice came in October, 2006 by way of a video recorded a month prior and posted on YouTube by MuteChannel. Alan Wilder sat in an iron-trimmed chair in the corner of a neutral colored room, dressed in black and sporting sunglasses and messy auburn hair. His voice echoed as he spoke to his fans briefly and almost vaguely about the events of the past year, wherein he had taken to recording his fifth studio album as Recoil. More than half a decade had elapsed since his last album, Liquid, and more than 10 years had flown by since he left Depeche Mode. For people like me, who had followed Wilder's career throughout the majority of our lives, this video was a revelation. Finally, our beloved wizard of dark electronics was back.

"People definitely appreciated it," says Wilder of the initial YouTube message and several follow-ups that appeared over the course of the next 10 months. "One of the things that I really quite enjoy about the MySpace Generation is that the fans can talk to each other and also to the artist. With YouTube, it really lets you know who your audience [is] and what they want and what they think about."

Wilder's fans are a devoted and vocal lot. In the weeks that passed since the artist's first YouTube appearance, his legions took to message boards on sites like depechemode.com to share their excitement, wish him well and make a few cracks about his unkempt hair.

Whether coincidental or not, when Wilder made his second video message in April of this year (which, actually, wasn't online until May), he sported a new, clean-cut style. It was in this second video that fans were introduced to the voice of Joe Richardson, an Austin-based blues musician whose rough vocals drive the bulk of Recoil's latest album, subHuman. (British singer Carla Trevaskis also contributed to the effort and provides a thoughtful counterpoint to Richardson's often severe tones.)

With subHuman, it appeared to fans that Wilder was fully realizing an electronic approach to the blues that had been bubbling beneath the surface of his career for years. Throughout his two-decade tenure as Recoil, Wilder has often experimented with the style. The most noteworthy of these tests is "Electro Blues for Bukka White," which revolved around a recording of "Shake 'em on Down" from the renowned delta blues artist and was released on the 1991 album Bloodline. (Keep in mind that this was years before Moby utilized Alan Lomax's catalog of field recordings on Play.)

"It's more by accident than design," says Wilder of subHuman's leanings, "but it's clear that the blues keeps cropping up in my music, so it's obvious that it is something I'm interested in."

Recoil began in 1986, when Mute label head Daniel Miller heard some four-track demos Wilder had created. For years, the endeavor remained the musician's side project, something to entertain his less commercial leanings while enjoying the downtime between commitments to his primary band. After his 1995 split with Depeche Mode, though, Recoil became Wilder's full-time gig, sporadic as his releases are.

"I would say that all of the sounds that you hear in Recoil are a reflection of my musical tastes and the things that I listen to and have listened to over the years," Wilder explains. "There are all kinds of things in there, but this blues thing does keep recurring. I just go with it really."

He continues, "I just started making music this time around and it all seemed to naturally go off in that kind of direction, so I thought, I'm not going to fight it. I will go with the flow. From there, it was the case, let's go find an authentic blues singer to do some sort of justice to that. Hence, we have Richardson."

Wilder happened upon the singer while perusing the Internet for stylistically appropriate artists. Eventually, he traveled to Austin to record Richardson on the blues man's home turf.

"We actually recorded, I think, eight or nine tracks, of which we used five," says Wilder. "I had to record vocals, guitars, bass and drums, so we were stuck in the studio most of the time."

They worked in a studio filled with vintage gear throughout a week of 100 degree heat that gave way to the Texas-sized mosquitoes that made a meal out of Wilder.

On his night off, Wilder went to see Joe Richardson Express play at one of the group's resident venues. "It was really interesting and quite a culture shock, when you come from England, to suddenly be in the middle of that environment with every bar with an open door and a blues band playing."

For the bulk of the album, the two worked in standard Recoil fashion, where Wilder creates a "sound bed of atmosphere, some kind of loose structure" to which the collaborator adds a piece and the pair continues from there. In two exceptional cases, "Backslider" and "5000 Years," Richardson provided Wilder with the bones of the songs, which were then fleshed to perfection. In the case of "5000 Years," which deals with the current conflict in the Middle East, Richardson's lyrics became the centerpiece of the track.

"There was very much a focus on his words from the start," says Wilder. "So, of course, I started thinking, how can I enhance the feeling or the meaning of the song? Of course, I tried to create the picture to go with the words. In that case, it's going to be a comment on the Middle East conflict."

In "5000 Years," Wilder creates a densely-layered piece filled with the purr of helicopters and stomp of foot steps. Somewhere interwoven into the track is an assortment of Middle Eastern sounds.

"If I remember rightly, I kind of pitched it down and reversed it and then stuck it through an amp," says Wilder of the samples he used in this instance. He could not recall the actual source material.

"I've got such a strange library or catalog of bits and pieces that I turn to and then I kind of use my tools and various boxes until something comes out of the other end and has the right feel," he explains.

Through Recoil, Wilder has been able to foster a sound that is reflective of the era in which it was made without sounding particular to that time.

"In some ways, my music is very modern, but in other ways, I don't think it fits in with the current scene," he acknowledges.

"I just put music together in a way that sounds right to me and interesting and I do things that I want to hear," Wilder adds. "Maybe I'm influenced by those things because I don't hear them anywhere else…In that sense, I'm analyzing it, but, generally, I'm trying to work with it instinctively, intuitively and let one experiment lead to the next to see where it goes."

He concludes, "I'm always going to be interested in a kind of depth to the sound and space in the sound and trying to create a picture and my music always seems to have a lot of layers and depth to it because that is what I enjoy. Anytime I listen to a record, I want to hear something new with it. I don't want it to be over with one listen."

A Beautiful Mess

Five minutes after we arrived at 2nd Street Jazz in Little Tokyo last night, Paul Roessler, who has played with the likes of the Screamers, Nervous Gender and Nina Hagen, took to the piano. Yes, a piano. Just because you're status in the history of L.A. punk is somewhat legendary doesn't mean you can't tickle the keys in a lilting fashion. After the prompting of Monkey Bucket, aka the dude in the fez, the crowd sat on the floor.



This was the only point in the show where there would be some semblance of decorum within the crowd, which is fine because decorum is overrated, except for when someone is playing the piano and a little less chatter is necessary.

Following Roessler was the Tleilaxu Music Machine, which is the brainchild of D. Bene Tleilax of RoMak & the Space Pirates. Feeling at a loss to describe his music at 10:30 a.m., I am instead posting the following photo that might help you get an idea of his sound.



It is a blurry, red lit haze of electronic madness, the sound of frantic dancing and feeling like you might lose your shit, or at least your watch, as one person did last night.

The crowd tossed balloons like volleyballs as a sign of approval.



And a dinosaur pinata made its way into the crowd, where one guy hoisted it upon his shoulders as though it were a drunk, topless girlfriend at a Motley Crue show.



And then the mosh pit began.



We were sitting at a table on the edge of the pit, where patron after patron knocked back to granite table top. Fortunately for the club, the table was posted into the floor. Unfortunately, for the crowd, it was not conducive for bumping.

"That girl in the plaid is going to have one bruised back tomorrow," I told Carlos, which prompted him to recall a time where he hit the pit and took a cymbal to a rib.

"My mosh pit days are over," he said.

"So are mine."

Carlos laughed, knowing full well that I run away at the sight of swarming punks.

The mosh pit may have been fun for those caught in the wave, but it was hell on the balloons.



And then there was Baseck. After a few of his tamest pieces and a collaboration with a rapper wearing raver fingers (who was that cool dude?), Baseck got all grindcore on us and brought out his dancers to help establish the mood.



At this point, the dinosaur pinata had been slaughtered and most of the balloons were popped. And the crowd, well, I gather you can guess its response.



For his last song, "Creatures of the Night," the dancers reappeared in bunny outfits.



The outfits were supposed to be puffed out with packing material. Instead, feathers were used, much to the joy of the crowd and the dismay of whoever had to close down the bar.



I feel badly for the people stuck cleaning up this mess.