Upon arrival to PS1, I immediately met up with SCVSCV and Deforrest. Phew. The MoMA Warm Up homepage focuses on the fashion and social atmosphere of the event, all the beer-lines and activities and cafe menus — rarely showing musicians/producers working/performing — and here I was, looking like Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction wearing a Craigslist hat, though, it was good to look swag next to two pretty/stylish fellows, standing outside the cement wall (that Jeff Ravioli and I had installed a few years back), smoking cigarettes and whatever else that’d get you kicked outta MoMA PS1, listening to a trashy Vessel faux-trap meets minimal UK garage set, eye-rolling its inevitable predictability to gear up the crowd, totally demographed for the consumerist in all of our radio-play, dance move-bombing highs.
Inside, the three of us were curious how this crowd of [generally] (personally) terrifying people who are super-clean/scrubbed, accessorized, and claiming to be Brooklynites with a variety of American accents, mostly Midwest and Northwest, would take to Cut Hands, the Hospital Productions duo (Ninos Du Brasil), and the Minimal Wave goddess, Veronica Vasicka. DeForrest gave me the first piece of gum I’ve chewed on in three years. As Vessel finished cleaning up his equipment, Ninos Du Brasil took the stage, introduced themselves briefly, began a sparse-but-head-nodding beat, and took that fucking crowd HARD with an ULTRA level of enthusiasm. Like, I had been to two or three other events prior at PS1 MoMA so far this summer, and no other act (PC Music or Night Slugs or Janus artists) could match the level of intensity Ninos Du Brasil brought/dropped. If you weren’t dancing, you were the prick (me) yelling into a dancing DeForrest ear, “This is definitely the next Animal Collective side-project.” The live drumming mixed with samples, paired with vocals and just enough ego to keep the crowd going, made their set an experience that demanded participation.
As the duo finished up, DeForrest asked (holding his giddy for Cut Hands), “When do you think Ninos Du Brasil will be signed to Warp?” To which I <_<’d to, but was too stoked for Cut Hands to feel them lawlz. I was expecting a WHITEHOUSE-punishing dance treatment by Cut Hands, but it turned out two ways: (1) the sound was such a decrease in volume from Ninos Du Brasil to Cut Hands that I was worried people in back of this prison-style courtyard (by the hydroponic installation SCVSCV helped create) wouldn’t hear him, and, (2) people were still so turn’t from the duo before that half the crowd was still with whatever the fuck was firing out them speakers, continuing to build a storm cloud of sweat evaporating into the air.
I think we went out for another smoke as Veronica Vasicka began. And even though I’m more of a water drinker than SCVSCV is a Pepsi guy, I’d never heard Veronica Vasicka prior to DeForrest asking if I liked minimal wave, which is a label I’m unfamiliar with, but can still pretend to enjoy. When we re-entered, the sound was immediately conducive to every bit of movement I could muster in my body, and then ALL the smiley-face balloons ever were released and freed upon the crowd, with begrudging looks from the patio jutting in the middle of the courtyard. But Veronica Vasicka played that old-old and some new-new jams (she was fronting work on a DJ set), and I nearly got us into a lawsuit after sweating so much it nearly drowned all attendees.
More about: Cut Hands, Ninos Du Brasil, Veronica Vasicka
