Decisions, decisions...
Far too much going on Wednesday night in NYC:

1) Wire at Irving Plaza.
2) Ladytron at Lit.
3) Memory Systems + the Bunker tour at Luxx.

Staying true the new, look for me at Luxx.

To The Bitter End: Six emerging clothing designers from Brooklyn to stage a group show on September 17th. Here's the press release in its entirety:

"This is not the usual group show.

On the eve of Fashion Week, six independent, yet like-minded designers from Brooklyn will present their collections with a common thread and theme; decay. In a world where mass production flourishes these designers fearlessly confront past ideals of beauty and craftsmanship with a vision of the future. In the spirit of collaboration, the designers have enlisted the aid of visual artists English Kills and musical artists Mike Skinner & Hungry Wives to create a multimedia experience, promising to be above and beyond the standard fashion week fare.

Date: September 17th, 2002, doors at 8PM, show begins at 9PM
Location: The Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts, 172 Norfolk (b/w Houston & Stanton - Lower East Side)

For more information or tickets, please mail tothebitterend@earthlink.net or call 718 643 1083

Featuring:

Yoko Devereaux: Conceptual men�s line sold at Isa and Selvedge. Seen in Nylon, WWD, Sleazenation & Interview.

David Henry Brown: Concept couture for men sold at Isa and in Japan. Seen in Jane, Vice and Paper.

Sarah Spratt: New generation of couture for women sold at No. 436. Seen in Time Out NY, URB and WWD.

H. Fredriksson: Specialty women's clothing and accessories sold at No. 436 and Flirt.

Claudia Brown: Specialty t-shirts (for women) and housewares (for Yoko Devereaux) sold at Nikki B. Seen in Nylon.

Poisoned Cat: Conceptual lifestyle presentation
With Special Performances:
Emerging electronic band Hungry Wives
DJ - Troy Pierce (top electro dj)*
Prelude by producer and composer Mike Skinner (Soviet/Miracle of 86)
Visual elements are being created for the entire event by English Kills"

*nice qualifier ;)

Just confirmed: The November Core77 OffSite will be at Galapagos Art Space in Williamsburg Brooklyn on Tuesday 11/19/02, 6 - 10pm. Brian Kritzman and myself will give a presentation on design theory, our past and current projects as Engram and a brief history of Burnlab at 7pm. Dave Pinter [the designers' DJ] starts off the event at 6pm, and Magda will be doing a Final Scratch set from roughly 8 - 10pm. [Exact schedule subject to deviation.]
Mark your calendar and book your flights now!

Terrence Parker announced today that he will retire from club DJing in 2003. After 20 years on the decks and spending no less than 45 weekends of any given year on the road, Mr. Parker has decided to dedicate more time to his family, personal growth, and the business side of music. TP began his career in 1982 as hip-hop DJ Mixmaster X, and became perhaps Detroit's most acclaimed house DJ and producer in the late 80s and throughout the 1990s. He continues to operate Intangible Records and the Soundworks label.

Hell, Hell, Hell. Munich's DJ Hell - sharp dressed emperor of the International DJ Gigolos label, who's forward thinking brought us now household names from Miss Kitten and the Hacker to Fischerspooner [and has been subject to endless envious criticism from around the electro world] is set to release a new double mix CD on October 28th. CD1 focuses on house and techno, including tracks from Underground Resistance, Recloose and Metro Area, while CD2 takes a look at the darker, industrial roots of modern electro with cuts from Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, Bigod 20, Chris and Cosey and 'teknopunk' Green Velvet. It's like he dropped by when I wasn't home, rifled through my CDs, made a mix... and is now going to sell it back to me.
Freaking genius bastard ;)

Thanks to Dave Pinter the the above news.

Apparently it takes three of us in different parts of the country to sort through the electro-drama and piece together a story: As reported last week, electro auteurs The Hague Underground took a very vocal stance on the commercialization of the genre. In a new effort to bolster the integrity of electro [generic, no-wave, or whatever you like to call it], H.U. label Bunker Records has teamed with Safety in Numbers and champions of subversion and sarcasm Vice Magazine to present the North American leg of their world tour. Okay, actually, it's a whole lot of hype and it doesn't seem like anything has actually changed... other than DJ Hell won't be guestlisting anyone from H.U. anytime soon. In any event, what we do get are a slew of great shows from up-and-coming artists - including [as BitBoy just brought to our attention] Memory Systems in Brooklyn on the 18th, along with Orange Sunshine, LegoWelt, Orgue Electronique and more. The beautiful synth circus hits Detroit on September 14th.

Building on Michael�s electronic music update, denizens of Brooklyn should head out to Club Luxx on Wednesday Sep 18th to enjoy Phoenix and Brian�s (otherwise known as Memory Systems) first performance since moving from SF to NY, it should be a fine show indeed. Also, for the London set, be sure to catch Client tonight as they DJ at Brick Lane's 93 Feet East club. They�ve got an amazing lineup of DJs and bands for the evening including Pole, Echoboy, Komputer, Add N To (X), Chris And Cosey and the infamous Daniel Miller.

Well aware of the date [and staring at lower Manhattan] I sort of wish I had something to say about it, but I think I've said plenty over the past year. When Engram does decide to publish the new memorial designs, the pictures should speak louder than words.

Until then, let's talk about electronic music, shall we?...

The talented and gracious Lauren Weinger sent over three short audio segments from her composition for Picture Red Hook, which have been added to our documentation of the project.

Well, none of the speculated guests made it up to Tronic Treatment on Monday. [Supposedly Rich and Sven were working away in the studio back in Brooklyn.] It was still a very good night: in addition to Derek Plaslaiko, we were treated to DJ sets from Heiko Laux and Perlon's Sammy Dee, and a Live set from Fred Giannelli. Fred, as you know, was one of the first artists to work with +8 [as Spawn, and later as the Kooky Scientist.] Prior to that he was in a very influential and odd 'little' band out of the UK. Yep, that would be Psychic TV. Before that, he was building drum machines at home 'round about the same time Kraftwerk was putting together their little metal boxes and Neubauten were attaching their first pickups to stones and metal plates. Lots of pictures from the night in our newly re-introduced Photographic Evidence section.

This has been out for a few months, but since I mentioned Sven Vaeth, do go check out his video for "Mindgames" at Cocoon.net. [click his section on the main index to get to the video streams.] It's so wonderfully "Sprockets". I watch it over and over for that fresh Teutonic feeling.
No monkey though...

Not to be outdone by the Times, New York Magazine presents seven proposals for lower Manhattan, including work form Wolf Prix, Thomas Mayne and Lebbeus Woods.

New York City is bracing itself for Josh Glazer's next visit tonight. As he mentioned here last week, tonight is the 2nd anniversary party for Tronic Treatment - which has become NYC's number one provider of top-notch Techno events. Derek Plaslaiko is on the bill, as well as a number of surprise guests. We can speculate on who these may be: Currently in town are 'the father', as is his German counterpart, and our bald neighbor is back from a long summer of hard work in Europe. Any combination of the above will prove the measly $5 cover the best value in town.

Even more interesting to New Yorkers, yesterday the NY Times released a conceptual plan for the World Trade Center site and lower Manhattan by architecture critic Herbert Muschamp and his all star design team. Even though I don't love all the ideas [Peter Eisenman's collapsing towers in particular], this a very exciting proposal and well worth a good look.

September seems to be all about the �burn�. After kicking off the month in the Nevada desert with Burning Man, I�m pleased to be back in action at burnlab (which BTW has had so many great postings � it�ll take me days to absorb them all). If you�ve been keeping an eye on the LA electro scene, you�ve undoubtedly noticed �Mount Sims� aka Matt Sims, a known for his great electro performances at �Socket" at a local LA club. He�s now creating his own music, blending punk-soul and electro and a borrowed guitar from his brother (who used to play with Giorgio Moroder) he�s turning out some charged performances. Check out �How We Do� available in MP3 download here.

Be sure not to miss the self-organizing anarchy that is Dally in the Alley this weekend in Detroit's 'not as scary as it used to be' Cass Corridor. Opening set with Liz Copeland, closing set with Derrick May.

Enjoy the beautiful photography and design of David Wang.
[He's looking for work too!]

Composer Lauren Weinger has released a CD entitled "SILO". This "intriguing collection of sonic phenomena" is the soundtrack to the spectacular Picture Red Hook performance we were raving about two weeks ago. SILO is available from Downtown Music Gallery.

Detroit's only regular Electro night, THE FIX has been running for a couple weeks now. Jon Ozias has refined the format and is getting ready for an official kick-off party on Friday September 13th. HERE is the new flyer, plus there are two new desktops [our first new desktops in many months] in Purgatory.

The news keeps rolling in today...
Just got an e-mail from our friend Jared Louche [of Chemlab, h3llb3nt, etc.] who is hosting a web radio program out of London on Total Rock. Uhm... yeah it's a heavy metal station, but expect a lot of twisted "Glamdustrial" antics from the man once called [something along the lines of] "the Iggy Pop of the digital age" to put the earlier mentioned "Electroclash Inc." to shame. ;)
Tune in 3-6pm UK time and 10am-1pm EST, Monday through Friday for the next two weeks. Jared is also looking for a good programmer to work with. If you like Chemlab, live in London, know your way aroud a studio and are interested, I'll pass along the info.

Separating design from styling: The debate about Diller+Scofidio's ICA Boston gets interesting...

To follow up Josh's post, here is an interview with Drexciya [James Stinson] by Derek Beere at FutureBPM.com.

Some strong and refreshingly punk-rock words from The Hague. I wrote a long ramble about the inevitable gentrification of Electro which I decided not to bore you with. What I do wonder is exactly what The Hague Underground is planning to do. Are they simply closing up shop in a petty protest of something we all saw coming years ago, or is there some new musical assault in the works? Electroclash Inc. is nothing to feel threatened about. There will always be an underground - labels like Ersatz will be sure of this. Speaking of, if anyone hasn't read the most recent Adult. interview by six year old Lucas Merrill, it will certainly brighten your day.

This has been an awful week for electro.
Yesterday- Dutch electro/nu-disco master I-f announced the closure of the Hague Underground, including the websites for Bunker Records, Viewlexx, Cr�me Organization, Legowelt, Orgue Electronique, I-F, DJ TLR, Murdercapital, Global Darkness and Hotmix. In the statement posted on each site, they blame the current fashion trend of 'Electroclash' and take a particular shot at Gigolo Records. Its a shame that petty in-fighting must plague what is probably the most exciting music scene to happen in a while. And even more of a shame that it is the people I consider to be the 'best' practicioners of the genre that felt the need to raise such a fuss. Please- everyone lay off the asymetrical haircut (except Doyle- you've been kickin' yours forever)

Worse-
Today it was anounced that James 'Drexciya' Stinson passed away. Techno Tourist has all of the information.

Lots of renderings and background info on Diller+Scofidio's new Institute of Contemporary Arts in Boston released today. Yum.

We finally have reliable DSL at the Red Hook Lab. Now what to do with the extra 4 hours added to my day...?

For those of you who appreciated Stalking Detroit and may be in the Ann Arbor area this month, University of Michigan�s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning is hosting an exhibit related to the book: Sept. 4-25 in the Taubman College Gallery, room 2106, Art and Architecture Building.

The crew at Motherfucker put on a fantastic party for all the post-punks, gender-benders and art school kids who stuck around NYC for the holiday weekend up at Club Shelter. The music started with Ministry's "Every Day is Halloween" and closed with Joy Division's "Transmission"... what's not to love? As my friend Kurt best put it, "It's like being in a movie about New York in the early '80s." It was a sad state of affairs though when we could not find a good afterparty at the young hour of 4:30am. The best we could manage was a conference call to Detroit where Jon O and the Motown office were reveling with Magda and the rest of the Brooklyn contingency at Control 3. I briefly considered catching a cab to LaGuardia airport... Control may still be going on even as I write this.

For those holding their breath and saving their nickels, the official US release date for Ladytron's "Light and Magic" LP is September 17. Audio streams, reviews and tour dates at Emperor Norton Records.

Andy Malone will especially appreciate the mechanical sculptures of Arthur Ganson. [Thanks to Eric at Core for pointing this one out.]

Having a hard time drawing the line between cyberpunk and geek? Let us muddy the water some more: The ANIMATRIX, coming to DVD in 2003. Also, shooting of both "Reloaded" and "Revolutions" wrapped up last week. [What is it with everyone shooting multiple movies at the same time?] Thanks to Tom M�ller and Computerlove for the heads-up.

Appletalk: I've been waffling about what to replace my well used and well traveled 2 year old PowerBook with, and just when I had all but decided on this 42 lb. beast, word on the street is the Titanium PowerBook G4 is due for a major refresh in about four weeks time. Speculation includes a speed bump to 1Ghz, RADEON 9000 graphics card [twice as fast as the current card], L3 cache, possibly a 166 Mhz system bus, and just maybe DVD-R/W [a.k.a. Superslim Superdrive.] There's also talk of an even higher resolution display. My only question there is, will it come with a magnifying lens? Maybe that's a feature in OS 10.2.1.... In any case, I'll be first in line for Ti V3.0.