More photos and tunes below...
Went to Glasslands Friday night to get into a free (RSVP-only) Vice Records sponsored show by British band The Black Ghosts. I'd never heard them before, but they were pretty great in the post-techno dubsteppy "very British" vein occupied by artists like Burial.
What wasn't great, however was the ridiculous ordeal involved in actually getting into the show. When we arrived at Glasslands, we were treated to a laughably by-the-books situation of forced (and unnecessary) line creation. That is, there were bouncers outside--does anyone else find it bizarre that Glasslands, a pretty non-legitimate venue, uses pro bouncers?--getting aggro about the venue being at capacity and a need for people to "form two lines" and be patient for people to leave before more people would be allowed inside.
The situation was frustrating enough that even the Vice people were exasperated with the bouncers and trying to get folks in. We had arrived late, around 12:15, assuming that we'd miss the queues by doing so, but we were wrong. We waited for, I dunno, 30 minutes before finally being admitted, but even this was only after an aborted attempt to go inside where our hands were stamped and ok'd to enter, but a hardcore bouncer yelled at us to get back in line. And of course, when we got inside, a) they didn't even bother to check our names for the RSVP list and b) it became obvious that the venue was nowhere near capacity whatsoever--I would estimate that there were about 1/3 the amount of people that attended the Blue Album Group show there. By the time we left, the venue had filled up, but it still felt like the whole experience had been an exercise in the ways in which New York can sometimes be a total shithouse.
Despite all that though, Black Ghosts were truly great. Looking like two very typical hip English dudes, I found myself shocked at the impressive pipes of the singer, Simian's Simon Lord (the DJ being The Wiseguys' Theo Keating) . What initially seemed like it might be a boring DJ set of blah tunes was in fact an engaging set of very danceable songs with a nice "band" performance.
If you're interested, here's a few mp3s:
- Black Ghosts 63 min mixtape (click here for link to tracklist)
- Black Ghosts - I Want Nothing (Frankmusik remix)
- Black Ghosts - Face (Switch mix)
Music Video of The Black Ghosts: 'I Want Nothing'
And these are some photos I took:
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