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Crystal was in town from L.A. working a job and so we all got together at Acqua Santa, one of her favorite joints in Williamsburg. Sautéed calamari with capers and lemon, filet mignon, rigatoni with shitake mushrooms & spinach in a cream sauce, Salmon with green peppercorns, 'Suprema di pollo Fiorentina': breast of chicken with spinach, egg batter & sage-it was like that. The highlight of the night was Jane convincing Santiago to sing opera (not too hard) and he opening up and just silencing the whole restaurant with the power and beauty of his voice. We tried to convince a gentleman who works there, Mario I think his name is, to sing along with Santiago 'cause this is what they sometimes do, but he'd only do a little. Santiago sung alone for 10 minutes or so with that mournful, hefty voice of his, and it was stunning, we all transfixed. And then we sat back and had grappa, along with dessert.
"Ding Ding Dong, ding-ding-ding-ding ding-dong". This remix of the Erykah and (love R.I.P.) Common barnstormer ups the ante a bit by taking out Com and tossing in Bahamadia, Queen Latifah (didn't know she still had lyrical skills!), and Angie Stone, all spitting mad lyrics. All to that refrain from the old Sequence song "Funk You Up" that goes "Ding Ding Dong, ding-ding-ding-ding ding-dong."
E-Man is all famous now, trotting across the globe spreading musical love throughout Asia, Europe, South America. Recording everywhere-I can't pick up a UK music magazine without reading something about the brother. Rarely does it seem we get to hear him spinning at BTP these days. At this point in the year the party had moved back to Brooklyn, thank god, to the cool 667 Bar-Gallery-Lounge in Fort Greene, near BAM. Not only was E-Man back in town this night, but he brought house legend (and former early Madonna producer) Jellybean Benitez along too. The thing about staying away from BTP for so long is that sometimes you forget how spiritual it is, more than just clubbing, more than just dancing-it is like going to a church of spiritual, physical, movement. The dancing is serious, that is the purpose, forte, point. To dance, not "pose", not hit on potential lovers, or get fucked up (though much of this goes on too - hee! hee!), have a night out. But to dance: white, black, Puerto Rican (Asian, Indian, gay, straight, poor, rich). Taking in BTP always seems to refill my tanks, restore faith in what the scene is truly supposed to be about. Eric was glorious, rocked the shit out of the joint. Is it just my imagination or has all of this worldly activity got E taking his music to another level? More cool funky and less garage-y. Not only NYC garage but some Chicago, Detroit, & the UK too. Hard and soft. And as usual the heads on the floor just lost it. Jellybean jumped on afterwards and went straight into that Paradise Garage joy, the celebration on, but 40 minutes or so into his set even he had gotten a little harder, more abstract-hard joyous house. At three the space began to fill up, peaking. . .
Indie-rock meets a Goth new-waved out Cameo. They have a hidden track on here that's a cover of the Pixies' "Mr. Grieves", except they do it a cappella like a black barbershop quartet. Crazy. Beautiful.
Musicscapes, an amalgamation of (found) sound, music, cuts, beats, dialogue, all under the aegis of hip-hop (whatever "hip-hop", our god, the monster, actually means in 2004).
Movement. Architecture. Installation/Performance. What was most beautiful and stimulating about "Feast", performed in an old horse stable in DUMBO Brooklyn, was not simply the beauty and elegance of the dance movement, but the piece conceptually as a whole. More than just a dance performance it was an installation piece, the "audience's" perspective towards that happening "onstage" as important as the performance itself. An attempt to take the performance off of a stage and into a space, "sphere", where the audience would be forced to take it in not sitting in the seats of a theater but as a breathing performance one has to work to "view", to experience.
So the "official" afterparty for the Movement festival was held at an establishment a good ways out from downtown Detroit called the Tangent Gallery. It was the only place that Derrick May was scheduled to play. He seemed to play with a vengeance, aggressively so, as if he had something to prove. I don't know if there was something about the festival and all of the work and hurdles that it had to overcome that had him worked up but when he hit the decks (at 5:15 A.M.) you could just tell that it was no joke. He hit it running, off into some extreme tweakin' trickery from the start-notes and bass and tones dipping and soaring through the air as he tweaked here and there, bobbing his head, stepping back from the mixer like a pimp and then attacking it on beat. Amazing. It was as if the room had been lifted off the ground and raised a few feet into the air. There was undoubtedly a new Rhythim Is Rhythim track that had all of the strings washing over themselves that you associate with Derrick's production work, bass rolling underneath, mid-tempo. When the song finished and he went into something else I awoke from a little trance it had put me into and kissed the woman I was with on the cheek. She smiled as if to say, "Why the kiss?" "It was so beautiful." I said, waking. You felt an overwhelming need to spy him up there on the decks, beyond good, scary. The music just got completely inside. He dropped a techno remake of that Lou Rawls song, "You'll Never Find". He played a little of what I'll call "bass" breaks, not breakbeats-if you played breaks without drums and simply tweaked a bass line itself this is what it might sound like. Later, I swear to god, he would step away from the decks and look over the room, checking out the effect he was having on everyone (many of us stood in a daze). He looked at people individually and smiled, or smirked (he looked at me). In a way it was a little sadistic, but friendly too I guess. As we exited into the sunlight some of the old black guys who "ushered" for the Tangent Gallery asked us how it was, if it was worth it. "Yeah," we said, "yeah".
The little 1940's-like ditty the three sisters sing throughout this spellbinding animated film is so addictively catchy that I found myself singing it spontaneously weeks and weeks afterwards. Surreal yet simple, absurd yet approachable, a joyous film.