Tag Archives: Brooklyn

ReSolute packs the house & The Martinez Brothers burn it down.

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https://i0.wp.com/www.residentadvisor.net/images/events/flyer/2009/us-0906-113467-front.jpgThe bass was impressive, so I was having trouble hearing what the Resolute staff member was saying. I had asked how much the price at the door was again, as I didn’t believe I’d heard it correctly the first time. There was no VIP at this event and I’d not gotten wind of it until right before, so I didn’t have time to get advance tickets (mandatory for the budget-conscious partier). He repeated himself, and I realized that yes, I was waiting on a line to eventually hand someone $40+ to stand in a room. A big room, with a huge skylight, and 3 stories of exposed brick, a room with nice speakers and bar, but still just a room. I had plenty of time to let this sink in, as the line didn’t really maintain any pretense of moving.

With the line soon poking out the door like nakedness in ill-fitting bathing clothes, I made it to the front, saw a somewhat maudlin door-girl casually request two weeks of metrocard rides, and haphazardly apply my wrist-band. The inertia of being away from the packed rectangle of stasis kicked on and I swung over to the token-based bar for a stiff drink. Or, a token, such that I could go wait on another line for said stiff drink. The “bread line” construct drifted through my mind as I meandered from the front of one line to the back of another, twice.

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Minnesota Bumps Bass at Brooklyn Bowl

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My social media feeds exploded with joy at the return of the L train Thursday afternoon. This lifeline to Brooklyn, which had been out of commission since Sandy sucker-punched Gotham, started running limited service in time for the Thursday night party cycle. When the trains aren’t running, people are just not going to party. At all. And there’s not a damn thing a promoter in the city can do about it. The return also allowed me to check out a DJ I’d been watching for about a year now, who was set to drop absurd beats at Brooklyn Bowl.

Brooklyn Bowl has carved out a nice little niche off of Bedford Avenue over the last several years. The combination bowling alley, bar, restaurant and open assembly stage has a lovely Thursday night party called Bowl Train curated by DJ ?uestlove (of The Roots), brings in consistently quality talent from out of town, and is also the world’s first LEED certified bowling alley. Because yes, in Brooklyn, even the bowling alleys are environmentally friendly. That means 100% wind power, a stage floor made of recycled goods, HVAC efficiency controls and locally sourced/brewed beers. The last point is super important. The best way to deflate the gigantic “eat locally” argument is when it is being delivered by someone who is drinking beer from Germany or whiskey from Scotland. “Drink Locally” is far more important than we give it credit, a thought I pondered as I picked up my glass of Brooklyn Weisse. The service was prompt and the dance floor was slowly coalescing. The crowd of flannel rockers, stoners, IDM geeks, ravers and the people that (somehow, you just knew, you didn’t know why but you did) only listened to dubstep all day, every day. Minnesota had taken the stage, and the bass was building.

The sound that Minnesota creates is one that requires the DJ to walk a very fine line. Few performers have really gotten this right in the past. EdiT, MC Front-a lot, MC Chris and YTCracker are a few of the handful of artists who are able to use hip hop lyrics, samples, beats, styles and atmosphere without coming off cheesy or as the sad little stereotype Fred Durst was. The ability to flow through the different sounds and keep the beat feeling vaguely menacing, while enticing at the same time is difficult to develop because if you fuck up, you look kind of like the biggest nerd ever. The thick rim glasses & t-shirt are a stark reminder that you’re listening to West Coast beats being performed by someone who’s name isn’t 50 Cent, or Tupac Shakur. It’s a bit like having your suspension of disbelief broken when you’re watching a movie. Interestingly, DJ Minnesota did not have any of these moments, something that made me so very happy, especially considering the gangsta-ness of his beats.

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Sensation Soars

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So there I was, surrounded by 15,000 intoxicated people, all dressed in white, seven years late on the other side of the world. I’d missed my last chance to catch Sensation when I was backpacking through Europe in the summer of 2005. While my experience traveling through a dozen countries (including a particularly excellent weekend in Ibiza) was all that and a bag of chips, there was always that one missed party. That is, until this weekend.

The speakers & sound system did not disappoint. It was massive arena with stadium seating  above the totally packed GA floor, filled with ravers, euros, hippies, brokers, club kids, junglists, chibi goths, bridge & tunnelers, guidos, creepers, jocks and thousands upon thousands of the same pair of white jeans & yoga pants. The chaos of large festivals like Ultra or Electric Zoo seemed utterly absent, as there was pretty much one choice of beer readily available (Bud Light Platinum), and there was one stage, so if you weren’t ok with at least one of those things, you probably shouldn’t have swung by.

Dennis Ferrer’s sound was starting to explore the speaker system and the people shuffled to a sexy, groovy, organic house sound. About thirty minutes into his set, an astonishingly funky remix of Come Together started tugging on the room. Each verse & word, drawn out along this infectious bassline with a remora of a staccato twang, drew more of the floor into unison, as people from across the world slowly recognized the Beatles lyrics, clicked into the beat, moving with it and the rest of the room.

Some people were impatient for some sort of break or drop, but five minutes after people found themselves dancing to the pre-drop tune, they seemed to forget that the music needed to go anywhere as long as it sounded this good while it was there. The set remained funky & groovy, without cheesy disco standards or any confused attempts at injecting R&B into moments that doesn’t need it. The former is annoying, while the latter just kind of quietly sad/creepy. While his set was neither of those things, I was getting a bit hungry, so I swallowed my fear and headed over to see what manner of sustenance I could find and whether I would need a co-signer to pay for it.

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