A warehouse party in Bushwick. It’s an expression that signifies, even in the years after the once-blank, once-warehouses of the greater empire of eastern williamsburg have slowly turned into office buildings, condos, co-working spaces and the occasional Michelin bib gourmand. One imagines it must have signified as much to James Thomas Smith, the popular, well-connected electronic musician who records as Jamie xx, who decided to expand a series of London club nights to Bushwick, before hittingdowntown LA. “Guests at the London dates included Charlil XCX and George Daniel, Romy, Daphni, Jockstrap, Axel Boman, and Two Shell,” some blog reported about this. As might be expected, tickets sold out within seconds.
Locations were not revealed ahead of time and turned out to be an enormous warehouse, hidden behind a gate and that used to contain an Australian cafe called Carthage Must Be Destroyed. According to the internet, this was a phrase that an ancient Roman politician named Cato the Elder used to like to say, but in Latin, not English. The place was all pink and had some kind of rule about not photographing most of it. Somehow, they had kept some version of idea going until last year, when their instagram page announced: “Carthage Must Be Destroyed was a beautiful dream of a place, thank you for almost 7 years, and for all the people who ventured down a strange driveway to find us.” It posted once more, last month, to mark the death of the actor Donald Sutherland. Now, all trace of it was gone and overpriced cocktails were now being sold instead from booths outside, while the latest generation of lite-techno heads congregated politely, without the benefit of indoor plumbing. The “heaven that fulfills all of your Pinterest fantasies” was now covered in darkness, lit only by occasional strobe lights and a bleak, glaring red dot.
It was the perfect place to find Jamie xx. The modal logic of his club music is nostalgia, for his own memories of going to 2000 garage shows and can often sound like foggily distant versions of what going to those much have been like, as if heard from outside a warehouse rave. As a DJ at a warehouse rave himself, Jamie used the opportunity to play a lot of his new music, from an album that’s coming out in September called In Waves, which has Robyn and Renaissance-era Beyonce collaborator Honey Dijon on it. Jamie played both of those songs good deal; an old pirate radio remix of a Mariah Carey record, a particularly funny ‘90s club song called “Big Dick Mutha Fucka.” A glitchy version of his old track with xx bandmate Romy, “Loud Places” was a logical ending point for everyone who remained standing, as much as Jamie himself, who spent the two or three hours or so sweating gracefully inside an Adidas tracksuit.
It was the first of about a week of club dates Jamie would end up playing there, which his brief residency appeared to be soft opening. Both its ownership and the name itself appears unannounced. In response to an email, a publicist for the club politely requested to “not mention the name ‘Refuge’ in the story,” which certainly must not be the name of the club yet, thought it was used in post about the show that appeared on r/avesNYC and was quickly deleted. Other posts describing the shows called them by its address, “222 Bogart,” a choice designed, perhaps, make one make think of the storied underground DIY spot 285 Kent.
Whatever the place was called, the mystery contributed to an air of ambient importance. A cafe in nearby Ridgewood, run by an A&R rep for a British indie label, even handed out some ten free tickets to some lucky hipsters. For his New York nights, Jamie had wheeled through a rolodex of notable DJs, like his compatriot Four Tet and the French DJ François Kevorkian. Some appeared to have just been in town, like the Baltimore singer Marcus Brown, who records as Nourished By Time, who had been hired to play a concert on Saturday for some random MoMa visitors, and appeared later that night in Bushwick, opening for Jamie on the latter’s last night in town, before flying off to LA.
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