week 39

– I went to the coldest rave I’ve ever been to – IglooFest, featuring Ben UFO. I can tell you that a windy -18 is very cold for a dance party, but not too cold. That fact that Ben UFO has amazing taste in music doesn’t hurt either. In 2013, he sounds like nothing so much as a total distillation of British dance music – house, disco, afrobeat, dubstep, nuskool, techno, and so on. He mixes like Juan Atkins, a sort of casual, make-it-look easy flow between tracks that is actually very hard to do. Highly, highly recommended.

– I somehow went to see the various Oscar-nominated shorts, and I can tell you that Asad is great, as is Head Over Heels.

– Night Slugs Allstars 2 is out. But you’ve already got it, I’m sure.

– Bless the CIRMMT concert series. I saw a great hyperguitar performance by Guillaume Barrette, and then an utterly mad jam by Preston Beebe, performed by Zachary Hale, on Ian Hattwick’s magic surface. Said surface listens to vibrations on it (in this case marbles spinning in bowls), and then plays things backed based on the frequency content of the vibrations. This sounds strange, but it makes instant sense when you see it.