Bklyn Sounds 12/20/2023—12/26/2023 + Dada Strain Holiday Mixer & Coat Drive

Thursday night! Good times x Good cause, come if you can + Shows: Nikki Nair + Jubilee / Bookworms + Lester St. Louis / 'All I Want For Xmas is ACID' with Mike Servito / Dee Diggs / 79.5 / more

I’m swamped by end-of-semester paper-grading and holiday madness, and also working on a few upcoming Dada Strain initiatives. (2024 is shaping up heavyweight.) As might be expected around Christmas, the live shows have slowed down, but boy-oh-boy is the dance-card full this week (scroll down). There’s been A LOT of new free subscribers the past month, so I am gonna keep all listings free through the holiday period (please consider upgrading your subscriptions to paid). In the meantime, I am also working on Thursday’s holiday mixer/coat-drive, so if you are in Bklyn, come on by. Reprinting the details below. If you already know, FFWD to the listing at the bottom. Happy Holdays y’all!

TL;DR version

Dada Strain is having a Holiday Party that is also a Coat Drive for refugees new to New York City. Price of admission is winter clothing, feminine hygiene products, baby/children’s products and new bathroom products. (Please no canned/hard-to-open goods.) Or a suggested $10 donation.

The event will take place on Thursday, December 21st, at 8p until it’s over. At Sisters, 900 Fulton St. (at Washington), Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

Music will be provided by a team of great local musicians, DJs and musickers, regulars in Dada Strain and Bklyn Sounds, with a few special guests.

Please come and please bring friends. Good times x Good cause!

Long-winded, Over-sharing Piotr version

Dear Dada Strain community -

First off, I want to thank you for your time, for reading, following and supporting the werk. 2023 has been — and continues to be — a hard year on many levels. But if there have been positives to take away, it’s that the objectives being drawn up here — connecting artists and audiences, aligning musicians and musickers, erasing falsely drawn distinctions, illuminating community relationships around music and all it engenders — are finding their mark. The feedback to Dada Strain and Bklyn Sounds has been absolutely incredible. And it’s all because of the beauty that many of you help put out into the world, and others among you graciously accept. Thank you. I am beyond excited to keep the loop going in 2024, to inspire more changes in the world. Rhythm, improvisation and community into the future. Call it measured utopianism.

I’ve always loved holiday parties. And now that Dada Strain is more than an idea, I wanted to find a way to bring folks together before they head out on break, to create a space for friends, readers and great local musicians and DJs to share a drink, a chat, and meet each other in a relaxed setting. Less of a performance — more of a hang. There were two immediate impetuses: An old friend from Berlin, who is also an excellent DJ, was coming to visit NYC and up for playing a few tunes (as long as it wasn’t “work”). Then the good folks at Sisters, whose back-room has been hosting incredible musical get-togethers all year long, had an open date close enough to (and far enough away from) the big holiday, that it all made sense. Some of my favorite Bklyn musickers agreed to DJ for a bit (as long as it wasn’t “work”— and they weren’t officially billed). A low-key party was forming.

I also thought this opportunity for gathering could be put to good use. Riding the subway this year, seeing many new-refugee arrivals to New York, hearing stories of their under-served needs, I’ve had constant flashbacks to arriving in the city as a seven year-old immigrant kid, clinging to my mom, being overwhelmed. Some of our circumstances were markedly different. Other details feel eerily familiar. Many of my first pieces of clothing in America were out of refugee-donation bins, my then-pregnant mother and I were regularly reliant on goods and services provided by charitable good-will. So here is an opportunity for the Dada Strain community to give locally during the giving season: With guidance from the office of my NYC councilperson, Shahana Hanif, I am gathering winter clothing (coats, but also sweaters/sweatshirts, socks, longjohns, etc.) as well as hygiene and health-related products for migrant families spending their first winters in New York. If you have such items, please bring them to Sisters, bins will be provided. Otherwise, admission is a suggested donation of $10.

Thank you - and I hope to see you on Thursday, December 21st.

This week’s Shows:

Most New York record-diggers know The Thing in Greenpoint as a second-hand shop whose legend rests on the gems that lurk amidst its interminable chaos, and the next-level musickers, DJs and musicians who work and regularly populate it. So, it makes sense that The Thing Holiday Show brings together members of that community around a really cool night of electronic music. Dig the synth-heavy line-up, with live sets from Stallone The Reducer (ex-ADULT.) and brainwave research center, plus DJ sets from the always-dope Camille BWR, Elliot Lipp and Laura Vibes. (Wed 12/20, 7p @ Union Pool, Williamsburg - FREE)

Great collaboration alert. Sanna Almajedi’s always-on-point Satellite series for e-flux brings together two excellently diverse, electronics-fluent musicians for a program called Black Renaissance Fair, a playful pivot away from the over-saturated “Afrofuturism” that (according to the artist statement) focuses on an “imagined fantastical past,” that’s part-Bridgerton part-Harold Budd’s Fourth World. At the helm are the maestros, Bookworms and Lester St. Louis. Highest Recommendation! (Wed 12/20, 8p @ Bar Laika, Clinton Hill - $10)

Kyp Malone organized the Songs & Words For Palestine as a benefit for Anera, an organization that helps those affected by wars in the MIddle East, and it has an excellent line-up of local artist-musicians. Performers include Lizzi Bougatsos, Laura Ortman, Catherine Brookman (Sullivann), Haleh Liza Gafori, Sleepy Doug Shaw and others. (Wed 12/20, 8p @ Francis Kite Club, Manhattan - $15suggested)    

Saxophonist/composer Caroline Davis calls her Portals music an “immersive sound and haptic experience, drawing upon the idea of mourning and ancestral communications as textural entities…written to offer connections to ancestors who have transitioned and elements they would like to explore through the life-cycle portal. Through this music, the ensemble engages in the connective tissue between dual and non-dual realms of existence.” The last time I saw Davis perform it (last December - so maybe she thinks about these things seasonally), the singer-songwriter Julia Easterlin joined the quintet to add a vocal narrative. It’s wonderfully meditative music, full of deep melodicism but also of constant searching. (Thurs 12/21, 7:30p & 9:30p @ Jazz Gallery, Manhattan - $15-$30)

The new 79.5 — primary singer-songwriter-producer Kate Mattison, now with great vocal foil Lola Adanna, and local instrumental all-stars, drummer Caito Sanchez, bassist Andrew Raposo and saxophonist/flautist Izaak Mills — are responsible for one of my favorite NYC-dancing albums of the year (extended gushing here). They celebrate their creative triumph with a biggie at Public Records — also starring another homey/local-instrumental-hero, Victor “Ticklah” Axelrod, who’ll be DJing. Sad to miss it. Highest Recommendation! (Thurs 12/21, 8p @ Public Records, Gowanus - $20)

Seasonal Tradition! A variation of Phil Niblock’s Winter Solstice: 24 Hours of Music and Film has been playing at Roulette on the longest night of the year for 13 Decembers running. It’s a durational mixture of film collage and drone-adjacent minimalist sound, created by the Downtown composer who turned 90 this year. This year they’re presented as two 12-hour pieces that run noon-midnight each day, and will feature guest musicians and dancers around 8p at both performances. (Thurs 12/21—Fri 12/22, Noon-MIdnight @ Roulette, Downtown Bklyn - $25adv/$30)

Gabriela. is gonna be great for BklynSounds pt.1. Last week, Eli Escobar’s new club opened in Williamsburg to much fanfare (even from some MSMs). I’ve been — and it’s an excellent intimate space for the dancers, at a location (across the street from Wythe Hotel; tourist-Williamsburg Ground Zero basically) that assures the musickers will always be rubbing shoulders with nightlife rubber-neckers. But Gabriela. feels like the kind of spot that might change the perspective of a newly open-minded bystander. It also gives this current golden age of NYC DJs a great new spot, with a small-ish, warm’n’crisp-sounding room (For Moving), and a big bar where you can hear all the music (For Hanging). This first, non-star-studded opening weekend also betrays a knowing booking policy: great locals given time to stretch (“All Night Long!”) and keep developing their craft. Tonight it’s two of the dope selectors from the Soul Connection crew, Lovie and beewack.  (Fri 12/22, 9p @ Gabriela., Williamsburg - $20)

And speaking of… Tiki Disco Holiday Party is taking over Good Room the same night. What’s there to say? Eli Escobar, Lloyd and Andy Pry throw one of the best populist parties in the city, and one that — nightlife-snobs-policing-the-younger-post-EDM-newcomers aside — is a great vibe. Not for everybody — but for some, a lifeline in a sea of despair. So kudos Tiki, for making music matter to folks who may not have previously had it in them. (Fri 12/22, 10p @ Good Room, Greenpoint - $22)

House of Yes’ Prohibition Disco features a killer line-up. You got a pair of old-school NYC classicists — Italo-meets-house hands-in-the-air thrust of Sasha and Alex In Flagranti, alongside the soulful long crates of Big Apple legend Justin Strauss — joined by yet another of the city’s great young selectors (Miss Alicia Coleman, of the Sweet Kicks crew, and one-half of the electronic band Ūmboma). Guaranteed musical vibes. (Fri 12/22, 10p @ House of Yes, Bushwick - FREEw/RSVP—$40)

An evening of bass things on a fat soundsystem. Originally from Knoxville, Nikki Nair has traveled through a lot of variations of breakbeat, drum’n’bass, dancehall, grime, electro and post-EDM populist sounds, and has gained a huge global audience doing so. It’s big, it’s brash, but it’s also always warm. Nikki’s a perfect complement to Jubilee, whose Miami-born ideas of bass-heavy dance music are also expansive and generous to the people more interested in a Saturday night dance-party than in trainspotting. (Fri 12/22, 11p @ Public Records, Gowanus - $15-$30) (EDIT: Initially, I erroneously listed this as taking place on Saturday the 23rd — it is actually on Friday the 22nd. My apologies!)

Gabriela. is gonna be great for BklynSounds pt.2. Dee Diggs is responsible for one of my favorite singles of the year (click the above), and is a consistently adventurous, house-minded DJ. Beyond excited to hear what she might do with a seven-hour set in that wonderfully intimate room. (Sat 12/23, 9p @ Gabriela., Williamsburg - $20)

That party name is all you need to know whether Good Room is your Saturday night destination. LSD may be in the bloodstream of All I Want for Xmas is ACID, but (for the uninitiated) the reference is more about minimal-sounding acid-house and -techno records filled with the Roland 303 bass synthesizer, one of the greatest sonic signatures of the late 20th century. Mike Servito and Lauren Flax craft these records into massive free-for-alls. WTCHCRFT’s Drugs Here is a new high-point of the form. Don’t know the other DJs here, Elle Dee and Kellam Matthews, but they keep great company. (Sat 12/23, 10p @ Good Room, Greenpoint - $15)

Do people still put enough respect next to Danny Tenaglia’s name? One of Bklyn’s original house music dons, he went to Miami in the mid-’80s to develop an NYC-adjacent genre-fluid style that made him one of the “DJ’s DJ”;, but then descended into the full Pacha-meets-Global Underground trance morass by the early-’00s. That said, write his skills and crates off at your own peril. This evening is billed as Hard & Soul [a reference to his 1995 album debut, a decade into his career]. Danny’s gonna be playing “past, present and future classics” all night long. At least some of it will be glorious. (Sat 12/23, 10p @ Superior Ingrediants, Williamsburg - $45-$60)