Welcome to Bushwick Nightly, our bi-weekly nightlife column highlighting intersectional parties with spotlights on queer and PoC Djs and crowds!
We’re in the thick of it now. Is the thick of summer or just the air quality? You take your pick. Luckily, most nightclubs are air conditioned which, when mingled with the shared body heat of dancing Brooklynites, makes for an interesting humidity. But we’re here for it.
Friday, July 12
GAY FOR BREAKS AT THE SULTAN ROOM, 11 P.M.
The Sultan Room may seem hidden, but that won’t last. The golden door that leads to their brand new nightclub lies next to the late night kabob shop (think Berlin after 2 a.m.) and the entrance to their supper club (think Wisconsin in 1958, and probably at a healthy 5:30 p.m.). The space, which looks like something out of your late ‘70s fever dream, is booking earlier evening live acts and exciting, experimental, and often night-long acts late into the night.
Friday, July 12 they’re hosting Gay For Breaks, a party that offers an all-queer and female-identifying lineup with heavy-hitting techno breaks and acid lines from the likes of Unter’s Rachel Noon, Bret Bowerman (famous from queer events nationwide, like NYC’s Spectrum, Pittsburg’s Honcho, and SF’s Polyglamorous), and Gay For Breaks head (and former booker at The Spectrum) A Village Raid. These artists and more will light up the space and give you the intro you’ve been waiting for.
WHIPLASH AT BOSSA NOVA CIVIC CLUB, 10 P.M.
Whiplash is your standard Bossa Nova programming in that it: a) happens monthly, b) features seriously pounding beats, and c) it often features queer, female-identifying, women of color on its bills. For tomorrow’s foray into the deep and the dark they’re hosting Femanyst (aka Lady Blacktronika), an unrelenting and innovative artist originally from NorCal and now residing in Berlin itself as she switches from Lady Blacktronica’s focus on deep house with her own vocals to Femanyst’s heavy techno. Also on for tomorrow tonight is Sublimate founder Sagotsky.
Friday, July 19
AIR 005 AT BOGART HOUSE, 7 P.M.
Air is a new series (this is only the fifth iteration) that takes place at Bogart House in the heart of East Williamsburg. The event features many hours and a larger focus on a holistic evening that runs from dusk into night, then into late night — an experience not often afforded by your standard clubgoer. The event will start with a healthful dinner, renewing tonics and elixirs, and a rooftop space contributes to both well-being and well-dancing. In addition to this still, somehow, surprisingly revelatory concept, the event also hosts a variety of hard hitting artists whose sounds range from the flowy kind of one expects to parties with a elixirs (we had to) to tonight’s headliner, DJ Minx, head of the Detroit-based female DJ collective Women on Wax. Also on the bill is Berlin-based Nhan Solo, another artist with deep house influences.
Happily Ever After — A Murder Mystery With Live Score at Rubulad, 10:30 p.m.
This one lands on here for pure outlandish excitement weirdishness. And isn’t that why we live in Bushwick after all? Forget travelling to Chelsea for Sleep No More, you’re getting the immersive experience right here and, actually, you’re going to be part of it. And it’s going to be a party. And it’s going to happen late into the night (1 a.m.) and it’s going to be at Rubulad, the longest running underground artspace in Bushwick and one revered for its wacky avant garde band shows and experimental works. Also, there will be live music from Brooklyn local indie popper, Rebounder, soundtracking this night of experiential-theater-partying. Yes, we’re coining that phrase.
Lauren Flax All Night at The Sultan Room, 11 p.m.
Back to the Sultan Room we go for another night of what is quickly becoming a speciality of the venue: all night sets from some of Brooklyn’s most verbose electronic artists. The kinds of artists with deep crates with even deeper sounds. Tonight’s event features Lauren Flax, who recently released the humorously (and aptly) titled track “One Man’s House is Another Woman’s Techno” on the Bunker NY label and was recently seen at the all-queer Pride lineup of that label at the Market Hotel. Flax also is a resident DJ for UK-based radio show RinseFM and, to top it all off, she’s also in a trip-hop band, CREEP, with uber-famous Sia. Just don’t ask them to do a techno cover of “Puppies Are Forever.” See where Flax’s influences take them on this wild ride through a long night.
Saturday, July 20
Christina Vantzou, M Geddes Gengras, JAB, and Voice Training at The Schoolhouse, 8 p.m.
We moved to New York because we appreciate culture and not because we appreciate well-sized closets or bedrooms that even function as well-sized closets on their own. Is this Bushwick in particular? Not sure, does your living room have a window? Didn’t think so. So when there’s an event at The Schoolhouse you go. The Schoolhouse, on Ellery Street, is a piece of Bushwick history: Operating since 1996 as a live and work space for artists and boasting late-Italianate architecture from 1883, this multi-story building, literally a former school, is definitely cooler than your railroad apartment. Saturday night they’re offering world-class experimental music. Belgian-based artist Christina Vantzou is both an experimental filmmaker and a soundartist, worked with the GRM (The Groupe de Recherches de Musique Concrète) in Paris where she workshopped this multi-channel solo electronic work influenced by the abstract minimalists. Joining will be M Geddes Gengras whose work has something to do with cassettes and synthesis and raw voltage. He’s worked with the Grateful Dead which means he knows a thing or two about sound. Joined by JAB and Voice Training, this invitation to a special neighborhood space is not exactly a night out, per se, but it offers the kind of electronic music training that invariably influences what you hear later at night.
Bassiani Night at The Basement, 10 p.m.
The Basement is New York’s newest answer to techno in what seems to now be an arms race with our friends across the pond in Berlin and even Poland for creating the spaces most adherent to the particular culture’s rules, cultures, and sounds. The venue boasts influences from the inimitable (although oft-attempted) Berghain, including the repurposing of an old factory space (in this case glass), the use of a Funktion-1 sound system, and the stringent rules of no phones, pictures, and most certainly no harassment.
This event stands out as something special in that it features two artists from the Bassiani label, a label that hails from the club of the same name in Tbilisi, Georgia, a land previously known for Soviet strife and now known as some of the most unexpected, exciting, and radical queer techno communities in the world. The two artists bringing out the sound from the edge of Europe are Hector Oaks (based in Berlin and with releases on the Bassiani label) and Ndrx (resident of the esteemed Tbilisi club). Both artists have strong histories in intense techno with influences in cold-wave, experimental electronica, and a hearty dose of knowing how to play for a queer crowd. Expect it to be heavy, groovy, and totally Basement.
Cover image courtesy of Hot Rabbit.
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