Photos and review by Sasha Maese
Tonight, Secret Project Robot is hosting Bottoms’ release of their Goodbye EP, released on Inge Colsen and JD Samson’s Atlas Chair Records. The venue can be tricky to locate. Its doorway is off an industrial stretch of Melrose Street in Bushwick and (when I arrived) hidden behind a repurposed school bus. You enter the space, pay admission, and are greeted with what looks like a summer camp on acid.
A wooden walkway opens into a courtyard featuring a large stage decorated with lawn ornaments and Christmas lights, with a long slide extending into the central seating area. Tonight, however, the only performers on this stage are a cat in a cat bed, accompanied by several bowls of food.
Following the music inside, the indoor performance area doubles as an art gallery. Large wooden pyramids dominate the space, acting as frames for the gauze draped across them, and become home to a series of works being projected onto the cloth.
Cartel is performing when I arrive. His swirling music beautifully accompanies the hypnotic projections dancing across the room. Huge, white cut-paper banners are hung up across the ceiling and throughout the stage area, and the colors dancing across them add to the psychedelic feel of the music. As the room fills up, it becomes clear that people are here to dance.
When JD Samson takes over, it’s with smooth disco-inspired mixes. The audience cheers when she breaks out Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls”. JD’s blend of disco and ’90s-style house music gets the audience going, and she dances along with them from behind her consoles.
At the first unmistakable strains of “My Body,” the audience turns to face the stage. Singer Jake Dibeler of Bottoms announces the new song and the room suddenly becomes so packed no one can move. The combination of Jake’s shrieking and guttural vocals adds an irresistibly industrial feel to the synth-driven tracks. Throughout the set, he alternates between microphones for different effects, at one point utilizing the handset from a rotary phone. Jake also loses and regains his blonde wig several times, turning the performance into another work of art at Secret Project Robot. Between songs, he thanks JD and Inge at Atlas Chair for “actually wanting to sell this album.” Jake follows this by threatening to leave, but goes on to perform the band’s last song, “HIV.”
After the intense performance from Bottoms, Ryan Smith’s set feels like a fever breaking. His new wave-style sounds feel liquid and cool, and people begin to dance again. A girl asks for my notebook and draws a smiley face and a heart, smiles at me, and then goes back to dancing. At this point, it’s begun to snow, but the people at the outdoor bar don’t seem to mind. It all feels slightly magical, and the night carries on.
