The Answer Is In The Beat

May 2013 NJ/NY/Philly vacation

So my good buddy OCDJ decided to play a couple shows in Philly and Brooklyn and Baltimore, so I absolutely had to drive over to the east coast and check out the Philly and Brooklyn shows. I convinced Eric to come with me because he’d never been to that part of the country and there’s a bunch of people I was going to visit that he’d never met before. I took a lot of photos, so here’s some highlights.

Chilling out at Justin and Becca’s new house near the Jersey shore:

Eric playing with Vader

Grilling veggies and veggie burgers

Frownies having a Pity Party

We drove out to Philly on Thursday to see OCDJ at a house show, but he was having computer problems. Eventually he ended up borrowing a laptop and playing some unreleased tracks, which were amazing of course. Also playing were a bunch of Future Islands related projects. Samuel T. Herring surprised everyone by rapping, and was pretty damn good at it. Moss Of Aura was seriously fantastic, definitely one of the better chillwave-ish projects I’ve heard. Not that anyone likes being labeled that, but as far as current downtempo instrumental electronic music, this and Discoverer are basically my 2 favorite artists. And The Snails played, and well, they’re snails! Basically they sound like Future Islands but not synth-pop, and there’s a sax player.

Samuel T. Herring

OCDJ and me

Moss Of Aura

The Snails

OCDJ chilling in a corner playing tracks off his laptop while everyone dances

On Friday OCDJ was supposed to play at Death By Audio, and he tried to get a laptop working so he could do the show, but that ended up failing so he backed out. But there was a Barcore show in the same neighborhood, and most of my friends were more interested in that anyway, and we all had a great time. Eric had never been to NYC before so we spent most of the day exploring Manhattan before heading to Brooklyn. I didn’t take too many pictures, except when there were a swarm of cartoon mascots hanging out in Times Square. I went to an awesome Vietnamese restaurant with my dad and sister, then we went to Barcade (a bar + arcade, obviously) and then I went to Barcore.

delicious egg+veggie+bagel creation Justin made me

Eric and some lifesize Muppets at Times Square

Dinner at An Nhau

Barcade

Barcade

Shayna playing Dig Dug @ Barcade

Digit216 @ Barcore

Rtype @ Barcore

Barcore

Barcore

Barcore

Diskore @ Barcore

Barcore

Barcore

Barcore

Barcore

Paul Blackout @ Barcore

Saturday we visited the beach, but most of the beaches in Jersey are still closed and damaged because of the hurricane. But that night we went to an art gallery in New Brunswick and saw my old WRSU buddy Pedro Serrano, and also Vulpine Smile who I’d never heard before but he’s on the newest Scolex tape compilation, which I’m also on. His set was incredible. Then we went to the grease trucks, where I had a vegetarian grease truck sandwich for the first time ever. Even without meat, it’s as disgustilicious as ever. We also paid a visit to WRSU, which is looking a lot spiffier than when I last DJ’ed there.

hurricane beach wreckage

Pedro Serrano

Vulpine Smile

RU Hungry?

Just Delicious

Falafel, fries, mozzarella sticks, lettuce, tomatoes, and a heart attack on a roll

So glad this Negativland poster is still in the office at WRSU. Seat Bee Sate!

I will never not find this funny. Courtesy of WRSU’s old metal director Mark Nunez

WRSU FM New Brunswick New Jersey New Music