Vitalic!

The first time I listened to Vitalic I was amazed by his music's strenght and beauty. It was the perfect combination of anger, passion and elegance. His song was in Sven Vath's In the Mix- The Sound of the Second Season, and the song was La Rock 01, which I heard live once again on Friday at Webster Hall, and I have to tell you, it gets better with time.


It was Juanes' b-day on Friday and, lucky him, Vitalic played that same night. It was $1 before midnight and we got there early, so we did not have to suffer those long lines. We spent the first part of the night in The Studio where The John's were playing. Then we moved to the 3rd floor where the poor local DJs were trying to "open" for Vitalic. Poor guys! They did not know what they were doing! It was off-tone heavy non-sense techno, perfect for the college crowd present. Sigh! I am getting old!



When Vitalic took control of the knobs, it was a 180˚ change! He made our heads burst into light! His drums and baseline, as always, somber, but vibrant made us dance at the rhythm of his savage programmed beats, and the operatic voices and melodies combined with acid techno and electro were guilty of creating bliss in the dancefloor. The place was falling apart! Juliet India, Repair Machines, My Friend Dario, and finally La Rock 01! Well, just judge by yourselves.




It was a night to remember, he was, as always, magnificent and showed no compassion for the people in the dance-floor, he hit us with all he got, and that's how I like it! I just hope I do not have to wait another 3 years to see him playing again.

The best of 2009-April-The Presets

Even though that month I attended to several events (including Ladytron and The Faint), I decided that The Presets were the best! This Aussie duo rocked the house!!! As usual, the gig took place in Webster Hall. The good news is that it was Spring and it was not freezing outside. The bad news is that when my husband and I arrived it was SOLD OUT!!! Noooooooooooo!!!

I realized of the concert several weeks before, and, as I used to do, I waited until the day of the event to purchase the tickets directly on the venue because they always had tickets left. If they had tickets even for that terrible Justice DJ set! Common!!! After a miraculously short line, we got to the ticket booth and it was then when the fat oxygen-haired girl said with a high-pitched voice, "The tickets are sold out"!!! I was in shock! It never happened before! I was so pissed! Obviously the bouncers threw us out and said that without tickets we could not get in. Duh!

I was determined to get in and I knew that, as in Colombia and every country in economic recession, there must be a reseller near the venue. He was a very tall and fat black man with wide hips and narrow knees. Now, you must understand, in U.S. is illegal to resell anything; therefore, this guy was acting as if he had finally met his friends; that is talking to, and even hugging! the astonished young hipsters that were looking for tickets, hahaha. He was charging three times the original price! Damn! I wanted to get in, but I did not expect to be "rapped" in the process! so we waited, and then she appeared! This beautiful girl approached quietly, and, although se was dressed loudly, she was really shy. She told us that she purchased the tickets for 6 of her "friends" yet none of them came (I would kill the motherf#@®#s); as a result, she needed to recover some of the money invested by selling the tickets at HALF OF THE PRICE!!! :)))

The Presets were magnificent! Julian Hamilton's vocals were incredible! He sang better than in the recorded tracks, he danced, he played the keyboards; in two words: simply perfect! Kimberley Moyes was not the exception, he played the drums live and there is a hugh difference between sequenced drums and the real thing! He also performed "Aeons" with a xylophone, that was too beautiful!

When they played "My People" and "Are you the one?" the venue was trembling, it felt like an earthquake because the crowd was insane, we were dancing our asses off, we were in love with them! Live drums should be mandatory in every electronic concert. Thank God for the snares! I do not want DJ Sets anymore, I want the real thing! Combined with the mesmerizing lights setup, it was the perfect performance, sick!

For those who attended this gig, you know I am telling the truth, this is not an exaggeration, The Presets earned all my respect and admiration, they delighted us with an energetic, up beat, and sensitive show I will never forget; also, it was the first time in 2009 that I danced this hard, I was head-banging! Certainly, this is something I can repeat anytime. Just bring it on Presets!

The best of 2009 - March - Morrissey

OMFG!!! The king of Indie British Pop Rock! The Voice! His non-conventional lyrics, the somewhat mean, sweet and sad guitar sounds so known and loved by all of us filled the space and possessed the 2,500 fans that screamed and jumped all along the concert. My youth years idol was standing there! I could not believe I was listening to him and his band live.

After 14 years being his follower and fan I finally got to go to one of his gigs and it was magical! The performance occurred in Webster Hall (We already told you about this historical nightclub) and it was so crowded it was ready to burst out.

It was very hot inside even though it was Winter. I got in a little late and a have to stand behind a couple of gigantic men (well, maybe I am just so small, hehehe) and, as usual, I could not see very well, only Morrissey's hair and the stage lights and decoration. I was so mad! but then something wonderful happened! The girl that came with the tall guys fainted and they carried her out! Wheeee! The space was suddenly free of tall people and I could see everything! yeeeeeaaahh!

The show was a serious one, just like him, although he loves to joke. In one occasion he said "I hope you were charged $20 for this concert because my dressing room was composed by a tacky chair and a table, this place is a rat hole...", hahaha.

The concert was everything I ever dreamed of Morrissey, he is older, a little fat, but his voice is just the same. His behavior might not be so explosive as it was when he was younger, but you can tell: once rebellious, always a rebel. He changed his shirt several times, because he sweats profusely during his shows. In one occasion he took off his shirt on stage, WOW!!! We were screaming our lungs out!


Without any doubt, Morrissey's stage presence is something you cannot ignore or disrespect. He is the British Indie Pop genius of all times. Certainly, every Morrissey fan should experience one of his concerts and I am thankful because I already did!

TRILOGY: The first strike

Hey! Did you go to Trilogy last night? It was cool! We were among friends and had a blast! Considering it was the first party this new collective ever made it was pretty organized, the place was warm and cozy and the sound was clear and very appropriated for the size of the venue.

In contrast with other most expensive and flamboyant parties this one had a great VJ. I know it might sound silly but it is important to have visuals! Why in the name of God the event organizers do not think about that simple meaningful thing? Do they really think we want to remain in the dark for hours and our minds do not need this kind of stimulus? Well, in the state of mind people usually are in this parties it is a must to have, not just visuals but upbeat, colorful, interactive ones! Just as Trilogy's: futuristic, beautiful and sophisticated as always Eli Q performs. I also loved the setup of 5 television sets!

Among all the different DJ sets, tendencies and rhythms we enjoyed last night I loved Frank Olivo's funky sexy DJ set and finally the killer set performed by Giovanni. I do not know what came into Giovanni's skin but he was on! I have been listening to his DJ sets for the last year but last night was the best ever! God blesses wet hyper techno music! Oh yeeeaaaahhh! Everybody was dancing, even those friends who did not like electronic music that much! We just could not stay still! Sadly it was only 1 hour long :( but it was enough to leave a permanent smile on our faces.

I had a great time, shared with my friends, listened to some great music and I hope we have the chance to enjoy another Trilogy soon.

The best of 2009 - February = Matthew Herbert

The best of 2009 - Matthew Herbert

I had just moved to NY and this was the first of many wonderful gigs I had the chance to attend last year. For me, 2009's calendar started with Matthew Herbert also known as Herbert (and also as Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, and Wishmountain), the mastermind whose Avant-Garde electronic work,influenced by the techniques of Musique Concrete, helped pioneer the Micro House genre.

The gig began filled with the micro sounds that have been identifying him for years. His avant-garde velvet jazzy house, the shimmering of the sweet voices and the deconstruction of the big band melodies were mind-blowing! It was an spiral crescendo of beautifully intricate minimal swing sounds that became the deepest techno I ever heard, so deep I felt my clothes flying away from my body with every beat, yeah!

So, when this amazing performer ( also a known political activist) asked me (yes, we spoke!!) in that cold February night, why the place was almost empty, I answered that his performance was like a very delicate and elegant dish that only the most trained and sensitive palates were able to taste and enjoy...at this, he laughed a lot and said I was right, then he finished the night with his remix of Louie Austen's "Hoping", I just love this song!

For me, this British producer is the best ever! I hope to see him again and enjoy his wonderfully intricate mind mechanics.

Memory: the Embodiment of Void, or the travel to the Black Heart of the White Chimera / Memory: la Encarnacion del Vacio

During our last visit to the Guggenheim Museum, while looking at the compendium of the wonderful process of Wassily Kandinsky, Veda and I had the chance to be in front of an amazing work of art, a giant sculpture made of steel, called Memory, the last monumental piece by Anish Kapoor, and commissioned by the Guggenheim and the Deutsche Bank, to be a twin sculptural installation, one in Berlin and the other in New York. The gigantic ovoid cocoon, built inside of one of the museum's annexed exhibition rooms, shows itself as an intelligent construction, that makes us instantly pay attention to the space, to the relation between the sculpture and the room, and the relation between ourselves and the object and the space, which lead us finally to a new acknowledgment of our own presence standing in that very same space and moment, the present moment, which I think is also one of the virtues of the building that houses the object, to make the people inside recognize the present moment, a experience that many of us take for granted, without paying too much attention to it...
Memory, barely contained between the white and perfectly edged walls of the room, seems to be forced to fit inside, to have been introduced into the building in an aggressive way, and acts as a massive obstacle to the fluid path proposed by the building, but it's because of this contrast that the pure essence of the space is clearly revealed. But there is something else, a question that comes to mind rigth after : what's inside?; the answer to that question shows the smart complexity of the object, but we need to go back, and walk and look for it, so it also becomes a game. Then we find the other "face" of Memory, the Void, revealed through an optical trick, but always present, always waiting, which made me think of the fake barriers that sometimes we built in our minds and become an obstacle between us and what we're going in life, and what we're looking for. We have to go around, again through the Tannhauser exhibition, to find behind a wall another little white, square, perfectly lit room, and in one of its walls, a perfectly drafted black square, with some shades of ocher at the bottom part. This is the gate to the void, right behind that "painting", the sophisticated illumination of the room used to conceal the opening beyond which the dark void inside Memory waits to eventually come into view. The surprising effect inspires different reactions in different people: some, like me, want to go in (unfortunately, you can't), others feel overwhelmed, others scream into the void and listen to the eco of their voices coming back; this makes me think that Memory is even more large deep inside, than when you size up its exterior. There is an also amazing effect, explained to us by the security guard : if you stand right in front of the opening and start walking backwards slowly, you'll see the square become completely black, the ocher "brush strokes" (which are, of course, the parts of steel close to the opening, that get some light from the ceiling) disappearing in front of your eyes. Memory is a "polymorphous" sculpture, which refers us to Architecture, Painting, and Installation at the same time, as explained by the artist in an interview recorded for the museum audio-guides, and, like his past works, its calculated effect is the result of the conceptual analysis of the relations between object and space and the phenomenology of space, which it's at the end the real work of art, not so much the objects and the rooms, but the revelation of their, until that moment, invisible interaction.


Y siguiendo con el Guggenheim, mi edificio favorito de Nueva York en este momento, Veda y yo tuvimos la oportunidad, mientras visitabamos la espectacular exposicion de Kandinsky, de admirar la ultima obra del escultor indio Anish Kapoor, el resultado de una comision del Museo y el Deutsche Bank, formalizada como una monumental instalacion gemela, una en Berlin y la otra aqui, en Nueva York. Memory, el gigantesco capullo de hierro, que pareciera haber sido metido a las malas entre las inmaculadas y perfectamente delineadas paredes de una sala anexa del museo, crece en uno despues del impacto inicial, y es ahi donde la curiosidad por tratar de saber exactamente como funciona, pone en movimiento la busqueda que lleva al espectador a apreciar la verdadera obra de Kapoor, no tanto el objeto, sino mas bien el objeto dentro del espacio, la revelacion del fenomeno exacto del espacio, resultado de la interaccion entre este y la escultura. Si antes compare al Museo con un gigante monstruo, con una quimera blanca, pues Memory seria su negro corazon; la membrana ferrea contiene un efecto paralelo al de la visualizacion del espacio, la revelacion del Vacio, que se ubica dentro de la gran escultura y a cuya vista se accede luego de rodear el objeto (pero para eso hay que salir de una sala y entrar en otra, lo que convierte la interaccion entre el espectador y la obra en un juego) para encontrarnos con otra distante pared donde un cuadrado perfecto, pintado de negro con algunas pinceladas ocres, se nos muestra en realidad como la boca de entrada al interior del gigantesco capullo; mas alla de una cierta porcion de hierro que logra ser iluminada desde afuera, no hay mas que penumbra perfecta, petrea, en donde no hay realmente nada, pero que te hace dudar. A mi me parecio supremamente invitadora, pero desgraciadamente no hay acceso. Veda realizo la sencilla comprobacion del vasto vacio mas alla de la penumbra, grito hacia adentro y escuchamos el eco, fenomeno tipico del vacio, pero que que se nos antojaba al mismo tiempo como una manera de comunicacion primitiva del objeto con nosotros. La experiencia para mi fue casi impactante, ese objeto nos estaba revelando el momento presente (que casi siempre damos por sentado), ubicandonos primero dentro de la zona creada por las paredes del recinto y la membrana exterior del objeto, zona donde se enfatiza al espacio puro y en donde, por consiguiente, logramos un reconocimiento de nosotros mismos y de nuestra propia presencia en el tiempo. Luego, la revelacion del Vacio, es decir, el vacio es nada!!, pero sin embargo ahi esta, presente de manera indiscutible, convertido en fenomeno discernible a la vez que ausencia. Una obra definitivamente polimorfa, con una cualidad que podria llamar de obra de arte total ya que como instalacion nos referencia a la Arquitectura, a la Pintura y a la Escultura al mismo tiempo, efecto buscado adrede por el mismo Kapoor, quien habla de la inspiracion que el edificio de Lloyd Wright fue para el y la manera como su obra se interrelaciona con el museo. El Guggenheim es un edificio concebido para que se den unos ciertos patrones fluidos de recorrido, que son los que permiten la experimentacion del espacio, pero la obra de Kapoor, nos obliga a explorar nuevos niveles de esa experimentacion, al formalizar su obra como un gigantesco obstaculo que obliga a seguir diferentes patrones, y al abrir un nuevo espacio negro dentro del espacio blanco original generando otros estratos de percepcion del edificio, nuevas maneras de acercarse emocional y conceptualmente a el.

When the Holy Ghost Descended Upon all of Us

Night of January 8th, Holy Ghost at Webster Hall. This awesome place, the first modern nightclub in USA, was built in 1886 by the architect Charles Rentz in the Renassaince Revival style. This venue has been the scenario for perfomances by artists like Emma Goldman, Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Tina Turner, Eric Clapton, Prince, Sting, Aerosmith, KISS, B.B. King, Guns N' Roses, Franz Ferdinand, Morrissey, The Faint, Sonic Youth, The Hives, Alicia Keys, Ladytron, among many others and since 2008 it's considered a New York landmark.

As usual, the long lines before 12 am, because of the $1 entry value, and, of course, the bouncers exhaustively searches in the girls' bags and clothes looking for any smuggled booze. After all the touching and searching was done, I was just ready to have an after sex cigarette!!!

The basement is called "The Studio" and here we found ourselves in the middle of the weekly event "Trash!" Party. Nu Rave, Electro and Rave sounds loudly filled the air, and so we danced, surrounded by drunk post-adolescents, while dancers on stage, wearing only underwear, made the experience more pleasant.

Finally we got to the second floor after rapidly passing through the Hip-Hop hall where Jay-z and Missie Elliot were being played. On the second level, Clasixx were delighting the audience with Retro Electro sounds, the atmosphere was cool and relaxed, and the music was equalized to perfection. We started to shoot video, to share some of the experience with you, but sadly one of the bouncers told us to turn off our camera after only a few minutes...

Then, the moment we were waiting for! The Holy Ghost descended upon all of us and enlightened our brains with Techno Electro Disco House Funk, with spiritual drums and sensitive vocals that melted us on the dance floor while our souls were in communion with the musical universe surrounding us. Now I see why critics say that Holy Ghost, the Brooklyn duo recording for the DFA label, is "redefining" the dance floor. Music of 4 decades mixed together to creat this experience of known but new melodies, elegant and refined, that don't let you stop dancing until the Dj's leave the stage for good, and we're left ready for another after sex cigarette..... (Ver video de Holy Ghost en Webster Hall en YouTube)

The evening, although very cold outside, was fun, filled with light and delightful sounds, and wrapped up with the music of Fever Ray, we said goodbye and headed home with a huge smile on our faces, which for just $1, was completely worthy!!

So remember fellas, listen to the Holy Ghost so you don't go to burn in the techno Hell flames, muaaahahahahaha........