Bklyn Sounds 5/1/2026—5/6/2026

This week's events include Mark Leckey exerts the physics of mysticism / Love Injection + Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy / 75 Dollar Bill / Black Eyes + Nu Jazz / 'Long Play Festival' / and a few more

Clockwise from upper left: Black Eyes, 75 Dollar Bill,

A few years ago, a dear friend who is a longtime editor of my work and a very early Dada Strain subscriber, gave me a piece of advice that I also took as encouragement: “Don’t apologize for when you publish! You are doing a ton of work. You don’t need to be sorry if it’s a bit behind.”

I have generally tried to heed this. I do have a strong obligation to myself and to Dada Strain subscribers to deliver a weekly Bklyn Sounds newsletter, especially to the ~10% who are paid subs. I also feel a deep responsibility to the musickers of Bklyn, whose work I try to put in front of people—work that has, quite frankly, been my lifeblood the past few years.

One of the primary goals of Dada Strain is to close the community loop, to bring audiences and artists together in a connective rather than performative or commercial way—i.e. promote as many meaningful [open definition] shows as possible, in as timely a way as possible. I recognize that occasionally this doesn’t work out how I want it to. Or how you want it to.

Obviously, the reason for that preamble is that you are not only receiving this email late on a Friday (NYC) afternoon—not a great time to publish, or useful to plan the weekend around—but that it’s also much thinner than usual. And while I will stick to my unapologetic guns, I feel that an explanation for this lateness—and for the newsletter’s overall deeper-into-the-week slide the past few months—is in order.

My daytime gig, in as much as I have one, is as an adjunct at a local university, teaching writing to (thankfully) bigger and bigger classes. This semester, I have also been overseeing an independent study, so the teaching load since January has been greater than at any previous time in Dada Strain’s (now five-year-long) existence. And over the past few weeks, as my students have been writing their final pieces, the workload of reading and editing their prose has been massive. The best-laid plans of secondary Dada Strain publishes have been kicked down the road, while the research/production of the weekly newsletter has also been delayed. Until this week, exhaustedly, I simply ran TF out of time.

The end of the semester is just around the corner—so a reset of sorts is in the cards. This week, I wanted to get the Long Play Festival discounts out on time as kind of mea culpa.

For those who can pivot more quickly, there are also (as always) a bunch of great events this weekend too, listed below. I wish I could do it all, but I can’t. Again, no apologies, but figured you should know what’s happening underneath the Dada hood.

Thank you for reading, listening, following, and supporting the work; and thank you for living through this with me, and with each other.

THIS WEEK’s SHOWS:

The work of British artist Mark Leckey has been buzzing around popular culture—and especially, spirituality and rave culture—as long as I’ve been familiar with it. That can prolly be dated to the release and dissemination of his pre-millennium video, “Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore,” which tied together an end-of-the-century pathos with the evolution of British dance culture. Sound, video, pop and survival have always been adjacent to the work. The programmer at GPS, who have made it something of a mission to bring sonic thinkers around the art world into their bunker/Buddhist center, invited Leckey to create three-night program which began on Thursday; and Mark Leckey exerts the physics of mysticism is a unique gathering of artists, musicians, writers and thinkers. An embarrassment of creative riches if you recognize the names involved: Friday’s program includes a video by Mark Leckey, performances by Mick Barr and Jay the Bucket Drummer, a reading by Hari Kunzru, a lecture by Gideon Jacobs (with Cassandra Jenkins and Jak Ritger), and concert by the recently reunited Deli Girls. On Saturday, there will be a video by Proc Fiskal, performances by Switch Angel and the New York Gregorian Chant Project, plus a lecture/DJ set by Leckey (an NTS regular), entitled “Batter my heart, three-person’d God.” Guaranteed to NOT be boring. (Fri 5/1 & Sat 5/2, 7p @ Giorno Poetry Systems, Manhattan - $20)

Lots of great stuff at the Long Play Festival all weekend long. Check out the full post, and maybe see you around over the weekend…if I can finish grading some more of these papers. Whew! (Fri 5/1 —Sun 5/3 @ various locations, Bklyn)

All the Together Again homeys are playing great separate gigs this weekend. Paul & Barbie Love Injection are reuniting with their occasional partner, and the late David Mancuso’s one-time protege, Cosmodelic Queen Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy for a long hard-disco session at Good Room on Friday. (Fri 5/1, 10p @ Good Room, Greenpoint - $20-$30) Saturday night, Brandon and Craig musclecars are playing another one of their signature all-nighters in the East W’burg room I am beginning to enjoy more and more, now that it’s built out an adjacent outdoor space. (Sat 5/2, 10p @ Signal, East W’burg - $25-$35) And brother Toribio come back together with his partner Mickey Perez and the Karlala Soundsystem to launch another season of Public Service, Brooklyn’s best roving park jam. (Sun 5/3, 2p @ Herbert Von King Park, Bed-Stuy - FREE/$uggested)

If I could pick a “contemporary hardcore” double-bill, this would be it. Once of DC but now far-flung AF, Black Eyes are a dub-skronk explosion of the highest order, a punk window through which to look at the world with none of the movement’s cliches. They’ve recently returned after 20 years to actually prove how ahead of time they were; and, to a great degree, still are. Opening is Bklyn’s mighty Nu Jazz, one of this city’s great WTF bands, also fluent in dub minimalism, free-jazz squalls, and rad propulsion, but with a rave element to boot. Goth-ambient folkies Leya are also worth rolling up early for. Highest Recommendation. (Sat 5/1, 7p @ Trans-Pecos, Ridgewood - $20)

Another of the city’s great long-running concerns, 75 Dollar Bill is (always) percussionist Rick Brown and guitarist/musicker Che Chen, often augmented by an all-star gathering of NYC post-punk, rhythm-improvisation-community lifers (which they call the Little Big Band), playing a kind of minimalist global-garage boogie. At times the sound is small and precious; at others, it’s expansive and rambling. All depending on who comes. This two-night residency at Union Pool, which I am pretty certain prefaces a long-overdue new 75$B album, promises one of each. Tuesday is the small group, with Yr Knives and Tiers La Familia also involved. Wednesday, it is the Little Big Band, alongside Felice Rosser, plus Shara Lunon & Cinque Kemp. (Tues 5/5 & Wed 5/6, 7:30p @ Union Pool, W’burg - $20-$25)

MORE RECOMMENDED EVENTS:

• Dance Hardware Sets in the Round (Fri 5/1, 8p @ Light & Sound Design, Greenpoint - RSVP + $20-$30) - if L&SD is inaugurating a monthly devoted to hardware dance sets, consider me even more of a regular than I already am. This one is a killer trio, with Prince of Queens, Matük and, visiting from Buenos Aires, FEDRA.

• Prosumer (Fri 5/1, 10p @ Signal, East W’burg - $20-$35) - once among the residents of Panoramabar most likely to Berlin house TF out of you, now having moved to Scotland, simply a great DJ in a million directions.

• Spaghetti Strap: Erika b2b Physical Therapy + Kiernan Laveaux b2b S4M23 + MORENXXX + SPRKLBB (Sun 5/3, 1p @ Signal, East W’burg - $35) - a Sunday afternoon bash with a bunch of psychedelic wonder-humans on the decks. What I wouldn’t give to experience this in Detroit

• Benefit for Community Members Impacted by ICE (Mon 5/4, 7:30p @ Sisters, 900 Fulton - $20suggested) - another massive bill of improvisers coming together to raise funds for community members: bill includes DoYeon Kim, Alex Zhang Hungtai & Kwami Winfield and Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones.

• Groove Trackers Club Night: Sweater on Polo + Russell EL Butler (Wed 5/6, 7p @ Bossa Nova Civic Club, Bushwick - FREE) - Groove Trackers, an excellent WKCR show that features all local DJs and live hardware conjurers, is launching a monthly(?) at the great neighborhood techno club.

• The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis (Wed 5/6, 8p @ Le Poisson Rouge, Manhattan $22adv/$27) - the punk-jazz 3 + 1 of the moment, when Fugazi’s rhythm section and guitarist Anthony Pirog crash into tenor saxophonist JBL.

UPCOMING:

• Shara Lunon: Alien video screening & EP release (Wed 5/13, 7:30p @ Sisters, 900 Fulton - $TBA) - Lunon, the mighty vocalist, technologist, improvisor and Dada Strain bestie, is rolling out her long-awaited audio-visual project, and myself plus the extraordinary film-maker Laura Sofia Perez are helping her launch this Alien into the world. Join us!

• Dada Strain @ L&SD (Sun 5/17, 5p @ Light & Sound Design Studios, Greenpoint - RSVP + $20-$30) - Save the Date!