It’s summer. It’s Friday. It’s a Summer Friday, which means you can leave work early, get smashed early and pass out early -- OR break your boozy routine and hit up DUMBO Summer Friday, courtesy of O Music Awards Unboxed, Northside and L Magazine.
Summer Friday is an extension of the O Music Awards’ new Unboxed live series, which mingles music, tech, art and interactivity into one wild party. This edition will feature music from Javelin, Prince Rama, Zambri and Bosco Delrey, as well as DJ sets by Russ Marshalek of Flavorpill and the band Silent Drape Runners.
Artists Laura Vitale and Gocha Tsinadaze will also be showing off their sound installations at the event -- Vitale a variation of a work called “White Sands,” in which she plays with the audio-visual qualities of gypsum plaster, and Gocha Tsinadaze part of his “Soundwalk series,” in which he will create an interactive multichannel soundscape in the DUMBO Arch.
Paul Lamere -- master hacker and director of the developer platform at music intelligence company The Echo Nest -- and his daughter Jennie will be showing off some rad music hacks, and a passel of app developers will be unveiling new music tools and tricks, including a new iteration of mobile tempo tool Backbeater. Brooklyn Flea’s vendors will also be on hand to provide all manner of food, drink and flea-type products.
The party kicks off at 2pm and goes until 9pm, and the whole deal with be livestreamed on the O Music Blog and MTV Hive, so even if you don’t get out of the office until 5pm (where the hell do you work?), you’ll still be able to take in the show deskside.
WHO: O Music Awards Unboxed, L Magazine, Northside
O Music Awards Unboxed: Music Awards Unboxed is a NYC-based event series that pulls together all aspects of the O Music Awards into one wild night: tech, music, audience interaction and our own brand of the WTF?! weirdness. Every event features music, an app or tech unveiling, an installation or instance of performance art, as well as audience participation.
In the past, we have hosted events around the themes "Interactivity" and "The Art of the Music Video," featuring bands like MNDR, Pyyramids, Miracles of Modern Science and Not Blood Paint. Events have also included the unveiling of photo/video-sharing app Cameo, an appearance by art piece-come-photobooth The Rainbow Machine, projection art from Shantell
Martin and an interactive music video shot for MNDR that premiered during our groundbreaking O Music Awards III (during which the Flaming Lips broke the Guinness World Record for the most live shows in 24 hours).
L Magazine: The L Magazine is a free bi-weekly magazine in New York City featuring investigative articles, arts and culture commentary, and event listings. It is available through distribution in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Hoboken.
Northside: Northside Festival is NYC's largest and most accessible discovery festival. Hundreds of bands, entrepreneurs, filmmakers, innovators, and over 80,000 fans converge on Brooklyn over eight days to witness the most incredible showcase of "what's next" in music, film, entrepreneurship, and art.
WHEN: Friday, August 17, 2pm-9pm
WHERE: The DUMBO Arch (and online on the O Music Blog and MTV Hive)
WHAT: An afternoon/evening of music, tech, art and interacitivity
BANDS
- Bosco Delrey: Bosco Delrey, producer and purveyor of experimental pop and rock n roll, spent early 2011 playing in support of like-minded, genre-blurring acts Sleigh Bells and CSS, previewing his debut LP, Everybody Wah, for crowds across the United States. Hailing from New Jersey by way of Memphis, Bosco's production and musicianship reference the sounds of Sun Studios-era recordings, southern rap, church hymns and dancehall, updating lo-fi guitar twang with pop beats and vintage synthesizers to create a wall of distorted dance-grunge.
- Zambri: Zambri is the ethereal duo of Cristi Jo and Jessica, sisters who have been making music together since they shared a bedroom as kids. Spending endless hours creating stories and building universes with their voices and toys, their debut album, House Of Baasa, out April 10th, 2012, is a powerful expression that embodies the spirit of adventure in all its glory.
- Prince Rama: Drawing from a collective mine of times and spaces, Prince Rama (made up of sisters Taraka and Nimai Larson) takes the threads of ancient symbolism and ritual and weaves a surreal universe that is wholly their own. Their often-unpredictable live shows graze the space between psychedelic ceremony, performance art and initiation rite.
- Javelin: Javelin formed in 2005-to throw a party of their own, one that sees nothing wrong with dropping crooked disco ("On It On It"), schoolyard funk ("Intervales Theme"), abstract R&B ("Dep") and pitch-perfect pop ("Mossy Woodland") in the same set. At least that's the way things unfold on Javelin's debut album, No Más, the eagerly-awaited follow-up to a self-released collection of demos (Jamz n Jemz) and a pair of limited Thrill Jockey 12-inches (Javelin, Number Two).
ARTISTS
- Gocha Tsinadze is an interdisciplinary artist working in installation, performance and new media. His work aims to bridge experience and fiction to create new topographies. Tsinadze holds an MFA from Brooklyn College’s Performing and Interactive Media Arts Program. Tsinadze has exhibited and performed at New Jersey Institute of Technology, Monkeytown, Bricolodge, 58 gallery , New York Electronic arts festival and more. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
- Laura Vitale graduated with an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in May of 2012, and holds a BA in Visual Art from Brown University, 2007. She has made commissioned installations and performances for WNYC, Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, has been a Van Lier Fellow at Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, and received a New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Grant in 2010.
APP & TECH
- Paul Lamere: Paul is the Director of Developer Platform for The Echo Nest, a music intelligence company located in Boston MA. Paul is interested in using data about music to help listeners explore for and discover new music. Paul spends his spare time organizing and attending Music Hack Days where he creates hacks such as the “Music Maze,” and “Six Degrees of Black Sabbath.” Paul recently won the MTV O Music Award for Best Music Hack for his “Bohemian Rhapsichord” and is the first inductee into the Music Hacker's Hall of Fame. Pau authors a popular blog about music technology called Music Machinery.
- Jennie Lamere: Jennie Lamere is a high school senior from Nashua New Hampshire. Jennie creatively looks for new ways that technology and music can be combined. In 2011 she was nominated for an MTV O Award for Best Music hack for "Jennie's Ultimate Roadtrip.” In 2012 she won the MTV O Award for Best Music hack for "Boehemian Rhapsichord.” When Jennie is not creating music hacks, she's programming robots for her local First Robotics team, or swimming with her High School's swim team.
- Backbeater: Backbeater is an easy to use drum tempo monitoring system. It keeps you on the beat and in time, every time. Coupled with the Sensor, Headphone Splitter, and Hi-Hat mounting stand for your iPod or iPhone - available at www.backbeater.com - the Backbeater App becomes a tempo-monitoring tool of unparalleled accuracy and clarity. The Backbeater App has a built-in metronome, adjustable sensitivity, 4 Time Signature settings, and an adjustable tempo averaging window (Nostalgia). There's no better way for drummers to monitor their tempo, whether they're playing live, in the studio, or just practicing. It's designed to work with your actual playing set up. The hi-hat mount holds your iPod or iPhone safely out of the way, but where you can see and reach it.