Arrived around 7:30. Line was modest. As I walked up, I noted the red carpet set up and glass window to the TV studio on my right. On my left, there was a parked white stretch SUV limo and the Red Bull "Monstrous mobile DJ soundsystem" (aka a giant fucking truck) that looked straight outta the Ferguson Police department. We wait in line till around 8:30. I cannot stress just how many hired hands there were for this events, endless amounts of people in branded Pop Cube black t-shirts and hoodies. The majority of these people were photographers who were everywhere, asking us to pose for pictures while we waited in line. The whole thing was overwhelming and seemed very deliberate.
QT (DJ)
Around 8:30, the limo left and presumably drove around the block. It pulls up and all the photographers and hired hands scream like its the Cannes film festival. QT gets out and makes her way into the Red Bull tank to begin a DJ set for the line. She was cool and robotic as usual, starting off with the A. G. Cook remix of Charli XCX's "Doing It (Ft. Rita Ora)" at a very low volume. A stagehand hopped up and pushed the volume up for her. She robotically nodded gratitude. We lucked out and were right in front of the truck for the majority of the set. I didn't recognize a lot of what she played, assuming there was some new stuff in there. I may have heard Sophie's unreleased "Higher."
During QT's set, the rest of PC exited the limo one by one to "paparazzi" cries and flash bulbs, posing for the cameras before making their way down the red carpet. A. G. Cook (Red Bull in hand) and Spinee came out together looking like a proper prom king & queen I suppose. Danny L Harle kept it casual. GFOTY came out with her two dancers (who I sat next to for 45 minutes on the subway today and wasn't able to place before getting off the train). She carried champagne and took a selfie in front of the photographer crowd. Sophie and Hannah Diamond came out together.
We were then led into the "TV Studio" through the red carpet. Everyone was asked to stop and pose with their group for the photographers in front of the backdrop (Sophie logo, PC Music logo, Hannah Diamond "HD" logo, GFOTY Secret Mix ring logo, QT logo) on the red carpet. This process forced everyone to be vain, participate with the pomp and circumstance, and it slowed the line down so everyone could see a bit of QT DJing up close.
TV Studio Room/ Dux Content They lead us into the television studio. We see a poster with the night's set times. The event's venue is a mixed arts space in downtown Brooklyn called BRIC House and it worked perfectly. In the main room aka the TV studio, there are two levels divided by a large pair of white platforms with a staircase on each side. Entering through the top level, the red carpet ends and a group of like Age of Aquarius looking actors in white, flowy dress were interviewing people with a Pop Cube branded microphone and a Pop Cube branded TV camera. To my right, the four Pop Cube promo images from Facebook and the PC site were hung on the walls. The place was filled with Pop Cube logo banners and an unmissable amount of green ferns. The lighting was bright and the mood was loose and club-y, far from the audience/performer divide you'd expect from a high profile show these days. The whole time people were running around. It was very difficult to avoid getting in the way of a photographer or a TV camera cord. Little film crews ran about interviewing people and frantically covering the event.
There were large posters on the walls on the top floor as well as in the hallway outside of the bathroom displaying Sophie's Summer clothing line (effectively announcing it). They also had some hundred odd postcards containing images of the collection. I took ten or so.
In the center of the stairway platforms between the two levels, Dux Content (Danny L Harle and A. G. Cook) DJed for an hour. You could have come up and sat right next to them for all they cared. No security, no dividers. Even for the most undivided attention giving fan, that hour was loose enough to allow for a trip to the bar, bathroom, general exploring the space. Dux Content's set was thorough without being too attention dominating. They played some One Direction song, A. G. Cook's remix of Lil' Wayne's "Strobe Lights," Like You, maybe Nu New Edition's "One More Day."
Opposite the platforms where Dux Content was playing, the far end of the bottom level of the TV Studio had a spinning glowing blue Pop Cube logo projected in the middle and two distinct areas sectioned off in each corner. On the right, there was some sort of Pop Cube branded sculpture garden. On the left, there was a walled in VIP Red Carpet area with a velvet rope across the entrance way and a lot of staff attending to it. A TV Camera crew went in there, people lined up, and (one by one) Hannah Diamond, GFOTY, & QT walked down the platform stairs next to Dux DJing, entered the VIP area, and did little meet and greets with fans. It was very easy to get in there. People were jumping up and down with Hannah Diamond, hugging QT, taking selfies with GFOTY. The area was surrounded by TV screens that showed live streams of what went on inside.
Thy Slaughter Towards the end of Dux Content's set, the TV screens on the VIP area wall switched to a shot of an empty TV studio with drums, amps, guitars, etc. Despite Dux still playing tunes, we quickly decided to go find the room. As we approached the right side of the top level of the TV studio, we found it. People crowded around the glass, peering in and trying to make sense of it. Behind us, Dev Hynes (Blood Orange, Lightspeed Champion, people don't forget!), the lead singer from Sick Feeling, Noah Rubin (Mass Appeal Editor-In-Chief), and Ben Raynor (fashion photographer) are walking with guitars in hand in a line. They quickly weave around the crowd, making kind of a u-turn, before entering the studio. My friend said he saw a staged argument between a blonde weepy girl and the lead singer Jesse that ended with him dramatically throwing her off his back and entering the glass enclosed band space. He says she proceeded to write hearts all over the glass window and bang on it screaming for him. Didn't see this at all but it fits.
The band starts flailing away wildly but the room is sound proof. Dux's DJ set gets pipped into the speakers near the window and soft disco music plays as the band jams and the front man screams and hops about like a typical garage punk band. The band's audio fades in and they finish their first "song" and begin to play Thy Slaughter's "Bronze" just like the version from the Dead of Alive stream. I heard the singer say "This song is a cover." Might have said "that song is a cover," in reference to the first song though.
They finish and the whole room starts flashing with emergency esque lights. All the TV screens tell us to proceed into the main room. The TV message ends in a upsetting, violent glitch. Robot voices speak to the crowd and we follow their directions. On the way to the main room, I walked right next to Sophie. He was amongst the crowd the whole TV Studio portion.
Danny L HarleThe main room was a black box theatre converted for concert use. The space wasn't huge in any respect but the audience was pretty packed the whole time. There was a balcony level with built in chairs that a lot of people sat in the entire main event portion of the show. These cats didn't dance and reeked of online music journalism.
Entering the theatre, the stage was already set up for Danny L Harle. There was a Red Bull DJ booth in the center, a wooden harpsicord on the left, and chairs and music stands for two violinists and a cello player on the right. He opened with a five plus minute experimental piece with four musicians, combining classical swells, amazing harpicord noises played by a uber-casual looking guy with a backpack on, and brutal electronic noises. This piece's backdrop was a gorgeous, lush space landscape with a floating skull floating around.
The rest of his set included "In My Dreams" and a brilliant remix of "Broken Flowers" (typical to his live sets lately) that seemed to go on for seven or so minutes. The backdrop for "Broken Flowers" was a camera bouncing around a virtual reality/video game level mountain side. The synch between the lights, projected video, and music was top notch as the camera climbed a mountain up a mountain only to launch off the peak at a particularly soaring moment of "Broken Flowers."
Hannah DiamondEvery set in the main room was supposed to be 30 min long. The turn around was about five minutes.
Images of falling CG diamonds filled the screen. Hannah Diamond did a completely lip synch set from my understanding. She was flanked by two ribbon dancers. "Save me as a picture on your phone!" She exclaimed as she hopped on stage. She played "Attachment," "Pink and Blue," "Keri Baby," and "Every Night." One song was done to a backdrop of 2000s era green/red/blue iPod silhouette ads. She played the new single "HD"
QTThey set up a QT mini-fridge with tons of decals, logos all over it. It was filled with QT. QT got a phone call, an order asking for cans of QT. Led into the announcement that you can buy QT on the
www.drinkqt.com on May 11th. She was assisted by two actors in all white, lab ware, and matching strawberry blonde identical QT haircuts. They showed a video with DOSS in it.
Only song was lip synch "Hey QT."
A. G. Cook A. G. Cook played a great set. The background visuals were mainly his name in tons and tons of different fonts. I recognized one to be the Transformers logo font. He wore a Red Bull like motorcross long sleeve shirt. The visuals were also based upon like a camera filming him in front of the screen which contained the camera's feed so there was a hyper-realistic feel to it and a doubling effect on A. G.'s image. He played a song or two on the piano, really hamming it up. Wonderful.
GFOTYTitle cards like "900 MILLION ALBUMS SOLD" and "100x PLATINUM" flashed and then "NOW," "SHE'S," "FUCKING," "HERE," before GFOTY burst on stage. She had two background dancers and wore a bikini with giant fake bills stuffed in it. She opened with "USA," "Drown Her," an unbelievably choreographed "I Don't Wanna/Let's Do It," and a killer "Love's Undercover." In the middle of the set, two "wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men" popped up. One was Santa Claus. Pure chaos. They threw fake bills in the audience and GFOTY shed her clothing down to a bra and thong and proceeded to roll around on the stage with reckless abandon.
SOPHIESophie's set. Three potential Charli XCX collaborations, "Lemonade," "Hard" with GFOTY hopping out and screaming over it, this "QT pie" song that sounds like a QT follow up single, "Torture Garden Intro," a bit of his Friday Night remix, "Higher," and "Bipp." The visuals were a stark stock image pig, various scientific elemental words in the Sophie font for "Hard" and bright pink surgical footage of the inside of a stomach or something.
Side notes:
For the entire time I was in the main room, my friends and the people around us were pretty annoyed by this group of scenester looking kids with JACK댄스 beanies and HBA looking get ups. Between every set, they left the crowd to get drinks, returning time and time again by slamming through the crowd and knocking people & their drinks to the side. They took endless SnapChat selfies, spinning around the front row with their phones in the air during sets. One of them kept slamming people around in some sort of half-assed attempt at "moshing." They talked through every set. About the fourth time this girl slammed through my friend group while RUNNING through the crowd to the front, I told her to fuck off. Didn't seem to bother them.
The next day I realized that girl was this "ponibbi" artist on Manicure Records. Considering PC is down with them (taking pics backstage, etc), I was surprised at just how shitty they were acting. Didn't seem to be interested in the show at all outside of their snapchat stories. Rude rude rude. Plus from what I gather ponibbi's entire career is a soundcloud nightcore edit of a Matty B Raps song. Sigh
Onehetrix Point Never, DOSS were there.