live at the — [dj mix] (10:28)
Sep. 18th, 2023 01:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
draftissuea few notes about clubbing.
i am currently living through my spontaneous era, in which i say ‘yes’ to almost anything that comes my way. this has recently resulted in a few nights out and associated Realisations; chief of which being that i go out to actually dance, which makes me awfully picky when it comes to the dj-ing. am i too pretentious to enjoy shitty house music? the answer is a resounding ‘yes’.
/
let’s start with the bad: the seed for this little rant got planted while i was in the middle of the dancefloor at a big gay club, which should tell you how much fun i was having at that moment.
i’m obviously aware that dancing to pop songs while yelling out the lyrics is a part of the culture and a rite of passage, in a way. the problem for me lies in the fact that this type of music cannot sustain me for an entire night. it’s all fun and games when you’re in it and can scream along on a one way nostalgia trip, but as soon as a song comes on that i do not know, i get jolted out of the zone so badly it’s jarring. in the few minutes it takes for the song to end i’m reduced to sort of awkwardly swaying to the beat i don’t know (and the beat is Not Good - this is very important), becoming increasingly aware of the sweaty bodies around me, and feeling like i’m a part of a rolling mass - in a bad way. if this happens enough times in a night (and it always does), i do end up being quite annoyed.
this is not really an issue - it’s a specific kind of night, for a specific type of mood; perhaps better suited for a type of night where you’re not out there to actually dance. i’ve tried it again - it wasn’t my thing at 21 and it isn’t my thing now either, which is fine! the amount of dj work there is absolutely minimal, so i don’t feel like it’s even worth it to comment on that any further - this is a me problem, and that’s cool. the real trouble starts when there is dj-ing taking place, but it’s bad. which brings me to queer night out #2, which was also a disappointment.
so for me, but i also think for many many people, good dj-ing is about pacing. it needs to flow, build up, hold, release. it has to bring you up and push you down, no matter the particular genre. it doesn’t have to be dubstep style big bass drops, but there has to be a shift happening every now and again. even techno (well, ok, good techno) has a flow! so if a dj holds the same pace for the entirety of the night things become dreadfully boring; and if i am bored during a night out then i might as well just pack up and go home, because what is the fuacking point here. and things get worse! picture this: we are out and about, the night seems promising - it’s a cool warehousey area (nice!), the event is explicitly queer and self-organised (fantastic!), admission is free (wonderful!). and then we get there and the music makes me want to start chewing through the concrete floor in frustration. the vibe was as if we were mingling while holding champagne at some tech startup launch party, with the music intended to provide a steady thump that is as inoffensive and bland as a piece of toast (unbuttered). so not only was it boring, it was also vaguely corporate and ideologically incompatible. which makes me sound deranged, i am well aware, but my god, if i feel like someone is about to approach me to start talking about investment opportunities at a queer party, then something has gone terribly wrong.
not all is lost, however! night out #3 was a warehouse queer techno rave, more specifically oriented towards trans celebration, and it was GOOD. the atmosphere was so lovely - very joyous, if a bit rough around the edges, with people admiring each other's costumes and generally just vibing. aside from everyone attending putting in a maximum amount of effort into their outfits - we felt underdressed, so we undressed to match the vibe - the dj-ing was varied and progressively got better throughout the night. the pacing was just right most of the night, and the djs didn’t take themselves too seriously and weren’t afraid to be funny - i vividly remember a techno remix of the scooby doo theme at some point which made me cackle out loud. there were times when you could get lost in it - which is when you know it’s good, when you reach a point of not even being too aware of who is around you as you enter a bit of a meditative state. like, this is it. that’s what it’s all about and this can sustain me for the entire night. we left at 4am happy, satisfied, and dead tired.
the last night out i want to talk about is more of a concert, really. this was a darkside show, which is a band of nico jaar and dave harrington. i’m lumping this together with the others, because jaar is masterful at pacing and the music veered towards clubbing territory, anyway. with long stretches of uninterrupted sound the songs were barely distinguishable and simply flowed into one another; the rhythm ramping up and coming down at intervals. i’m actually now struggling to describe the exact proceedings, i just have a general feeling of euphoria that lingered. what is important is that the music was transcendental, loud enough to be felt through the entire body. i wouldn’t even describe what i was doing as dancing, it was more like shaking and bowing over... i had my eyes closed quite often throughout, i remember opening them at some point only to be surrounded by white smoke so thick i could see nothing at all. just shaking in this white fog and sound… beautiful.
(this reminds me a little bit of seeing tim hecker live, who also deployed plenty of fog… a similar feeling there too - hecker made drone noise sound so emotional a woman sitting next to me was full on sobbing. good stuff!)
what is the conclusion here then? the first one is that i must be more careful about picking my nights out, obviously. the second is that having a good time really is about joy, and feeling, and flow, which sounds terribly new age-y but is TRUE.
/
appendix: jaar at C—
while not really a night out in the same sense as the other events, recently i’ve also been lucky enough to get tickets to a much smaller solo jaar show, which was a part of a series of events for a small electronic/experimental music festival.
the venue was very tiny, i think probably around 100-120 capacity? no stage to speak of, just a half-circle of chairs around a grand piano and a bunch of equipment. there were two other performers that evening before jaar, both of them very good.*
*i don’t want to mention names, because i think the scene is niche enough that a casual google search might throw up this post, so i’d rather not! also following the second act the grand piano disappeared somewhere without me noticing and i still can’t puzzle out where it could have gone…
a venue so small definitely created a different kind of atmosphere during the performances, very hushed and focused. it allowed us to also observe the performers when they were not performing, as they were just sort of… wandering about freely. it was very surreal to Perceive nico lurking in the corners and Experiencing the same music with the rest of us (he did it Very Attentively). he’s one of my favourite musicians ever, so i definitely had a moment of ‘swooning due to proximity of admired person’ but i played it real cool, i promise.
i’ve been to a few of his concerts over the years, each time the experience was very very different. this one leaned towards the ambient/experimental, which i was expecting - the venue is quite known for hosting very… avant-garde acts, let’s say. the piece was based around the saxophone, but he was really pushing the thing to its limits as to what it can achieve as an instrument. the first part was almost like playing with silence… just breathing filtered through the sax; arrhythmic as if playing a piece, but the piece had no sound - just the exhale and the clicking of keys. he has spoken before about the idea of 'a void being fertile' and a space for creation, which makes this performance look to me like an extrapolation of those threads of research... 'how can a sonic object have a void quality within it' - and that's the answer, or an attempt at an answer. at some point he was clearly doing some Electronic Magic™ to it, with certain sounds returning or additional clickety noises coming out, but no rhythm as such ever coalesced out of that thread. i think it lured us (or me!) into a sort of very patient, meditative state - the room was quite dark, the audience was dead silent - and then from all this suddenly clear melodies started breaking through on the saxophone which were so achingly beautiful… i think sax in general can be very melancholic, and when used like this it’s just so lovely. i got a bit teary eyed. at about ¾ of the way through a little beat started appearing as well for a while, people were swaying about, but it didn’t stay for very long and then sort of sunk back into the clickety noises. as a part of the Electronic Magic™ he was using some software on what i assume was an ipad, or a touchscreen of sorts?, where he kind of just… zigzagged his fingers over it and it responded with a bright light and associated noises. it was very cool. after he finished the performance he said a bunch of thank yous, bowed a bit, and then weaved (ha!) his way through the crowd to hide away in the storage room, bless him.
i spoke afterwards with a friend who attended the performance with me and we both agreed that we felt quite lucky to have seen this. it’s definitely a bit of an exploration/work in progress - i’m not sure how much of the performance was improvised, but i would bet Quite a Bit of it was. it built on the thread started in his latest solo album and latest collaborative album (‘weavings’ - see?) combined with the sort of… sonic narrative work he’s been sharing through telegram (and, as a side note, this is still hilarious to me as a mode of releasing music… like ‘hey, have you joined my freaking group chat’? obsessed with this). there is definitely a method to this madness and the network of sounds and influences is growing and growing… as the releases under his own name have slid towards the more experimental, i think there is a clear sense of searching for something, or for a way of expression that encompasses more than just the music and edges towards the spiritual, even. i remember hearing the first notes of tel*s (*a; sorry - self-censorship!) felt like suddenly getting shoved onto a precipice of some vast desert canyon, eyes wide open, as the wind rolled down the slopes…
i have been following him for so long - i think a decade by now… when the first album came out i was but a wee babe of 17!!! - that it’s such a genuine pleasure to see him grow as an artist and to tag along for the ride. this little show very much felt like seeing A Step Being Taken - towards where, i do not know! but very excited to find out, as it will be beautiful work - of this i am sure :)
/
this turned out to be very long and maybe a little bit less about clubbing and a little bit more about jaar being the best live act around (according to ME, at least), but what can i say... i am only spreading the good word!
/
linkety links to:
- the podcast episode about nico's current research which, having listened to it again now, puts the little performance in context quite clearly... https://open.spotify.com/episode/2PQjhNmXtzHVUv8S0N2Mca?si=453a218eb09449ae
- an (old-ish by now) RA nico profile which i think is not necessarily amazing, but gives some insight: https://ra.co/features/3672
- darkside live album, which gives a glimpse into the live show experience. it is not quite the same, obviously, but it’s still extremely good: https://open.spotify.com/album/1DrJZC4yLToqg5qbmJoRmu?si=5lPyNsNASxyWI6_OmW0D9A
i am currently living through my spontaneous era, in which i say ‘yes’ to almost anything that comes my way. this has recently resulted in a few nights out and associated Realisations; chief of which being that i go out to actually dance, which makes me awfully picky when it comes to the dj-ing. am i too pretentious to enjoy shitty house music? the answer is a resounding ‘yes’.
/
let’s start with the bad: the seed for this little rant got planted while i was in the middle of the dancefloor at a big gay club, which should tell you how much fun i was having at that moment.
i’m obviously aware that dancing to pop songs while yelling out the lyrics is a part of the culture and a rite of passage, in a way. the problem for me lies in the fact that this type of music cannot sustain me for an entire night. it’s all fun and games when you’re in it and can scream along on a one way nostalgia trip, but as soon as a song comes on that i do not know, i get jolted out of the zone so badly it’s jarring. in the few minutes it takes for the song to end i’m reduced to sort of awkwardly swaying to the beat i don’t know (and the beat is Not Good - this is very important), becoming increasingly aware of the sweaty bodies around me, and feeling like i’m a part of a rolling mass - in a bad way. if this happens enough times in a night (and it always does), i do end up being quite annoyed.
this is not really an issue - it’s a specific kind of night, for a specific type of mood; perhaps better suited for a type of night where you’re not out there to actually dance. i’ve tried it again - it wasn’t my thing at 21 and it isn’t my thing now either, which is fine! the amount of dj work there is absolutely minimal, so i don’t feel like it’s even worth it to comment on that any further - this is a me problem, and that’s cool. the real trouble starts when there is dj-ing taking place, but it’s bad. which brings me to queer night out #2, which was also a disappointment.
so for me, but i also think for many many people, good dj-ing is about pacing. it needs to flow, build up, hold, release. it has to bring you up and push you down, no matter the particular genre. it doesn’t have to be dubstep style big bass drops, but there has to be a shift happening every now and again. even techno (well, ok, good techno) has a flow! so if a dj holds the same pace for the entirety of the night things become dreadfully boring; and if i am bored during a night out then i might as well just pack up and go home, because what is the fuacking point here. and things get worse! picture this: we are out and about, the night seems promising - it’s a cool warehousey area (nice!), the event is explicitly queer and self-organised (fantastic!), admission is free (wonderful!). and then we get there and the music makes me want to start chewing through the concrete floor in frustration. the vibe was as if we were mingling while holding champagne at some tech startup launch party, with the music intended to provide a steady thump that is as inoffensive and bland as a piece of toast (unbuttered). so not only was it boring, it was also vaguely corporate and ideologically incompatible. which makes me sound deranged, i am well aware, but my god, if i feel like someone is about to approach me to start talking about investment opportunities at a queer party, then something has gone terribly wrong.
not all is lost, however! night out #3 was a warehouse queer techno rave, more specifically oriented towards trans celebration, and it was GOOD. the atmosphere was so lovely - very joyous, if a bit rough around the edges, with people admiring each other's costumes and generally just vibing. aside from everyone attending putting in a maximum amount of effort into their outfits - we felt underdressed, so we undressed to match the vibe - the dj-ing was varied and progressively got better throughout the night. the pacing was just right most of the night, and the djs didn’t take themselves too seriously and weren’t afraid to be funny - i vividly remember a techno remix of the scooby doo theme at some point which made me cackle out loud. there were times when you could get lost in it - which is when you know it’s good, when you reach a point of not even being too aware of who is around you as you enter a bit of a meditative state. like, this is it. that’s what it’s all about and this can sustain me for the entire night. we left at 4am happy, satisfied, and dead tired.
the last night out i want to talk about is more of a concert, really. this was a darkside show, which is a band of nico jaar and dave harrington. i’m lumping this together with the others, because jaar is masterful at pacing and the music veered towards clubbing territory, anyway. with long stretches of uninterrupted sound the songs were barely distinguishable and simply flowed into one another; the rhythm ramping up and coming down at intervals. i’m actually now struggling to describe the exact proceedings, i just have a general feeling of euphoria that lingered. what is important is that the music was transcendental, loud enough to be felt through the entire body. i wouldn’t even describe what i was doing as dancing, it was more like shaking and bowing over... i had my eyes closed quite often throughout, i remember opening them at some point only to be surrounded by white smoke so thick i could see nothing at all. just shaking in this white fog and sound… beautiful.
(this reminds me a little bit of seeing tim hecker live, who also deployed plenty of fog… a similar feeling there too - hecker made drone noise sound so emotional a woman sitting next to me was full on sobbing. good stuff!)
what is the conclusion here then? the first one is that i must be more careful about picking my nights out, obviously. the second is that having a good time really is about joy, and feeling, and flow, which sounds terribly new age-y but is TRUE.
/
appendix: jaar at C—
while not really a night out in the same sense as the other events, recently i’ve also been lucky enough to get tickets to a much smaller solo jaar show, which was a part of a series of events for a small electronic/experimental music festival.
the venue was very tiny, i think probably around 100-120 capacity? no stage to speak of, just a half-circle of chairs around a grand piano and a bunch of equipment. there were two other performers that evening before jaar, both of them very good.*
*i don’t want to mention names, because i think the scene is niche enough that a casual google search might throw up this post, so i’d rather not! also following the second act the grand piano disappeared somewhere without me noticing and i still can’t puzzle out where it could have gone…
a venue so small definitely created a different kind of atmosphere during the performances, very hushed and focused. it allowed us to also observe the performers when they were not performing, as they were just sort of… wandering about freely. it was very surreal to Perceive nico lurking in the corners and Experiencing the same music with the rest of us (he did it Very Attentively). he’s one of my favourite musicians ever, so i definitely had a moment of ‘swooning due to proximity of admired person’ but i played it real cool, i promise.
i’ve been to a few of his concerts over the years, each time the experience was very very different. this one leaned towards the ambient/experimental, which i was expecting - the venue is quite known for hosting very… avant-garde acts, let’s say. the piece was based around the saxophone, but he was really pushing the thing to its limits as to what it can achieve as an instrument. the first part was almost like playing with silence… just breathing filtered through the sax; arrhythmic as if playing a piece, but the piece had no sound - just the exhale and the clicking of keys. he has spoken before about the idea of 'a void being fertile' and a space for creation, which makes this performance look to me like an extrapolation of those threads of research... 'how can a sonic object have a void quality within it' - and that's the answer, or an attempt at an answer. at some point he was clearly doing some Electronic Magic™ to it, with certain sounds returning or additional clickety noises coming out, but no rhythm as such ever coalesced out of that thread. i think it lured us (or me!) into a sort of very patient, meditative state - the room was quite dark, the audience was dead silent - and then from all this suddenly clear melodies started breaking through on the saxophone which were so achingly beautiful… i think sax in general can be very melancholic, and when used like this it’s just so lovely. i got a bit teary eyed. at about ¾ of the way through a little beat started appearing as well for a while, people were swaying about, but it didn’t stay for very long and then sort of sunk back into the clickety noises. as a part of the Electronic Magic™ he was using some software on what i assume was an ipad, or a touchscreen of sorts?, where he kind of just… zigzagged his fingers over it and it responded with a bright light and associated noises. it was very cool. after he finished the performance he said a bunch of thank yous, bowed a bit, and then weaved (ha!) his way through the crowd to hide away in the storage room, bless him.
i spoke afterwards with a friend who attended the performance with me and we both agreed that we felt quite lucky to have seen this. it’s definitely a bit of an exploration/work in progress - i’m not sure how much of the performance was improvised, but i would bet Quite a Bit of it was. it built on the thread started in his latest solo album and latest collaborative album (‘weavings’ - see?) combined with the sort of… sonic narrative work he’s been sharing through telegram (and, as a side note, this is still hilarious to me as a mode of releasing music… like ‘hey, have you joined my freaking group chat’? obsessed with this). there is definitely a method to this madness and the network of sounds and influences is growing and growing… as the releases under his own name have slid towards the more experimental, i think there is a clear sense of searching for something, or for a way of expression that encompasses more than just the music and edges towards the spiritual, even. i remember hearing the first notes of tel*s (*a; sorry - self-censorship!) felt like suddenly getting shoved onto a precipice of some vast desert canyon, eyes wide open, as the wind rolled down the slopes…
i have been following him for so long - i think a decade by now… when the first album came out i was but a wee babe of 17!!! - that it’s such a genuine pleasure to see him grow as an artist and to tag along for the ride. this little show very much felt like seeing A Step Being Taken - towards where, i do not know! but very excited to find out, as it will be beautiful work - of this i am sure :)
/
this turned out to be very long and maybe a little bit less about clubbing and a little bit more about jaar being the best live act around (according to ME, at least), but what can i say... i am only spreading the good word!
/
linkety links to:
- the podcast episode about nico's current research which, having listened to it again now, puts the little performance in context quite clearly... https://open.spotify.com/episode/2PQjhNmXtzHVUv8S0N2Mca?si=453a218eb09449ae
- an (old-ish by now) RA nico profile which i think is not necessarily amazing, but gives some insight: https://ra.co/features/3672
- darkside live album, which gives a glimpse into the live show experience. it is not quite the same, obviously, but it’s still extremely good: https://open.spotify.com/album/1DrJZC4yLToqg5qbmJoRmu?si=5lPyNsNASxyWI6_OmW0D9A
