ON THE FLOOR François K
Back to the old school I
t’s 5am on the first weekend of May, and DJ Mag USA runs into a mate who, in a drunken stupor, accidentally drops the perfect
assessment of Red Bull Music Academy (RBMA) 2013. “Oh man, I feel like I do at the end of SXSW, but we have four more fucking weeks of this!” he says, laughing. Over the course of five weeks, DJ Mag USA runs nothing short of a marathon as we attend the majority of RBMA events taking place in various boroughs around New York City. We’ve compiled our thoughts and highlights, reported straight from the sweaty heap on the other side of the finish line...
ORIENTATION DAY The energy-drink-gone-global behemoth has been making a habit of hosting music workshops and festivals at select international cities since 1998. The school side of things sees 30 participants selected from thousands of applications to attend miniature terms, in which they are privy to lectures, masterclasses, mentoring, and access to state-of-the- art studio equipment. Every night of the two terms is filled with events that feature headline performances by guest lecturers whilst current participants make up the rest of the bill. It’s a simple tried-and-tested formula that just keeps on giving.
TERM ONE: THE RITE OF SPRING We begin Term One still firmly plunged into a never-ending winter, but the gradual thaw that happens over the first
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two weeks eventually brings enthusiasm as we settle into the stride of our new non-stop school schedule. We are immediately impressed with the high quality of line-ups and venues each evening. Masters At Work play to a stunning view of the Hudson River and westerly Manhattan skyline. Mykki Blanco and Laurel Halo play one after the other in a most unusual pairing that both jars and captivates. Four Tet and Jon Hopkins wow us with their humanistic and dance-able electronic compositions, and even the semi-annual Brooklyn Flea Record Fair gets the RBMA treatment with more high-profile DJ programming and increased traffic to the Williamsburg waterfront site. We seize the chance to check out the Red Bull Music Academy Studios & HQ, which is situated in a repurposed office building in Manhattan’s Chelsea district. There’s a delicious canteen, a gargantuan SSL mixing desk dwarfing various pod-like recording studios, and even an art installation that samples a bird sanctuary in the basement and plays it back in the entrance of the lobby. We also get a rare opportunity to sit in on a few lectures at the back of the room. Each one is informative, inspiring, and we find ourselves taking notes whilst sitting in rapt attention, as if it were a decade ago and we were still at uni for music... if our uni’s budget had been 10 times bigger.
GAME OF DRONES One of Term One’s main highlights is the Drone Activity night dedicated to noise
Barely recovered from the onslaught of SXSW, we go hell-for-leatherat RBMA’s epic New York series...
and experimental music. It is held at the Knockdown Centre in Queens; a sprawling structure of brick, steel and wrought-iron chandeliers that used to be a place where glass was manufactured, and is partitioned off to have three separate stages. Brooklyn’s artisanal pizza institution Roberta’s has even been brought in to provide on-site refueling, but we spend the vast majority of the time running between rooms trying to catch all of the acts we came to see. Pete Swanson pummels us with his visceral wall of noise that verges on the lo-fi edges of techno whilst Dominick Fernow plays separate sets as his Prurient and Vatican Shadow aliases. We are simultaneously enamoured and horrified by the caustic sounds of Alberich and Pharmakon, and finally give our ears a rest after a jaw-dropping performance from the venerable KTL.
DUCK AND COVER: OUR TIME IN THE BUNKER It makes sense that one of the clubbiest nights of RBMA is in partnership with The Bunker, which is one of NYC’s premiere and longest-running nights dedicated to techno and experimental electronic music. Housed in Williamsburg’s Public Assembly venue, where Bunker has been for the last few years and is now facing closure due to double-edged sword gentrification in the area, the two rooms are packed and kept as disorientatingly dark as they are for their regular parties. We appreciate that RBMA has stepped back their visual branding and let Bryan
Kasenic and the crew keep their usual aesthetic. Atom TM drops his fascinating new A/V show at the same time as Octo Octa’s euphoric, dopamine-rush house. We especially enjoy Andy Stott, who slowly sinks us to the murky depths of his slushy take on techno, and dance into the wee hours of the morning with straight-up bangers, and eventually ghettotech and beyond from Objekt.
TERM TWO: ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH The week between terms passes by in a flash, mostly spent attending to our neglected work and life duties, and we begin Term Two only somewhat well- rested yet ready for more. The programming feels just as relentless, but the previous weeks have worn us down so in a way this go-round is more of a struggle to get through. It is only the music that keeps us going until the end, and what amazing music it is: from the opening party, in which promoter/DJ duo Mister Saturday Night go head-to- head with the legendary record shop Dope Jams, to the blow-out closer, there is hardly a dud amongst the events. Pantha du Prince & The Bell Laboratory and Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto explore the liminal space between art and sound while pushing both to their boundaries at their respective Kunst als Klang showcases. Oneohtrix Point Never braves technical issues to deliver one of the first glimpses of his new material, which is nothing short of breath-taking. Even dub-reggae’s finest delivers its riches as Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, Adrian Sherwood, The Congos, Sun Araw, Peaking Lights, Future Times and more open up the gates over one evening. The closing party, at new superclub Output, puts the spotlight on Brooklyn’s cultish outsider-techno L.I.E.S. label.
MORODER MONDAY Giorgio Moroder has done quite a bit to shape the face of disco and modern electronic music, so it’s no surprise that
Pics: CHRISTELLE DE CASTRO
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