2024: shows of the year
Somehow a lot to choose from in a year where I don’t think I went out that much, but it seems the floor was very high, pardon the pun.
Theo Parrish @ Nowadays Nonstop (Indoors)
I think I was already a big Theo Parrish fan, but this confirmed it — I’ll quote from the review I posted at the time: “I saw at least two people moved to tears at various points, someone brought a speaker cone to be signed, there were people who appear to have made their own merch for the show, etc” — and maybe I’ll add that he started from dead silence and an empty dancefloor, took it all in stride, and had everything locked in about 15 minutes.
Mutek: Water Drops AV, Kode9, Mateo Murphey, Cobblestone Jazz, Secret Jersey Club Fashion DJs
I spoke about this previously, but: a storming set of post-footwork from Kode9, Mateo Murphey’s dub-trance SAT-O-SPHERE excursion, Cobblestone Jazz’s we’ve-still-got-it live show, the astonishing water drops x strobe lights piece from Martin Messier … and not even at Mutek, the second stage DJs at the fashion festival playing redlined clu, zouk, and dancehall to about 12 people, all of whom loved it.
DJ Voices @ Nowadays Nonstop
Voices! The legend. The only thing I can say about DJ Voices is that my shazams for this set include a Moving Shadow record and a gospel ballad from 1976.
CCL, Four Tet @ Nowadays Nonstop
Well, Kieran’s a great special guest, but CCL ain’t no slouch: their set felt like taking modern bass music and dipping it in a trip-hop / shoegaze glaze .. and then adding totally obscure records (my notes say “this seems obscure” twice), and making it all make perfect sense.
Keith Fullerton Whitman @ Ambient Church
So I basically just go to Nowadays, but I make an exception to see KFW do his modern classic Playthroughs, live … at a church in Brooklyn Heights with full projection mapping, as one does.
Southern University Marching Band @ “Mystik Krewe of Mutts”, Baton Rouge
I think this was a pretty casual, “get off the bus, do the parade, and get back on the bus” from the band, but they were far and away the best thing going … and the sound of that much low brass is very, very special.
The Jambalaya Cajun Band 45th Anniversary @ Hideaway on Lee, Lafayette
I did a bad job of dancing a waltz with the local dancing teacher, but what a delight, and what great dance music. (I was also one of only three people between 23 and 60, but c’est la vie — and almost no good dancers of any age, tsk).
Delfeayo Marsalis @ Snug Harbour, New Orleans
Instant, and I mean instant, big-band jazz. Marsalis not only has a trombone with stained class in the crook, if no one takes a solo, he’ll point to some due with a horn who will, literally without missing a beat, jump in and blow for a minute or two.
Honorable mentions indeed, so much we’re just going to bullet-point it:
- Theo Parrish @ Mr. Sunday, killer again
- Objekt @ Nowadays Nonstop, see “Sets Of The Year”
- Lea Bertucci and Keith Fullerton Whitman @ Sleepwalk, flute ambient
- Verracco @ Nowadays, heavy avant-latin club
- Kanchelli @ Basement, doomscroll techno
- Avalon Emerson @ Nowadays Nonstop, sneaky-sleek prog
- Akanbi @ Nowadays Nonstop, deep afrobeats
- CCL @ Public Records, magic, magic, magic
- ANZ @ Mr. Sunday, Florida rollers
And a very special shoutout to everyone who stayed on the dancefloor for the torrential rain during Ariel Zetina’s Mx. Sunday set — we see you, we see you.