“Our goal wasn’t to create a label but rather to develop Bromance as a brand that would work as a guarantee for successful parties. Our brand is all about Music.” Words from Manu Barron, co-founder of the esteemed Bromance label. And indeed, I was originally drawn to Bromance by its sounds of SPK as stereo-totaled by Gesaffelstein on his album Aleph. Which in turn drew me to their New Year’s Eve party at Slake (an offshoot of Webster Hall), where we witnessed amphetamine-induced raving grapple with which musical battalions are going to reign after the apocalypse (they all have their own sacred dances): those raised by robots; the “we don’t like television-we don’t like new wave-we don’t like celebrities-we just want what we crave”; the nerd kings who talk through the vocoders of evil machinated lizard kings from outer space; the medievalists (trap-piano melodies-moaning sirens-“I’ll fuck your bitch”); the deep people in fur jackets; the well dressed, cage dancing types; the clockwork (insert color here); or the blue Mondays…Either way no one was sleeping and everyone was smoking cigarettes inside.
It was hard to tell if the DJs (Gesaffelstein, Brodinski, The Hacker, Para One, Lenvi X Don Clark, Hayawatha, Alex English) were making fun of or celebrating the bacchanalia before them. The vocal tracks were spare and ran the gamut from “this molly is going to kill you in five years” to “this is for your mind”; two messages which kind of skipped over the heads of audience members only focused on the amount of serotonin pounding out happiness in their brains, or focused on what kind of shot they were going to do next. The best overheard quote of the night was one man yelling to another, “What kind of shot do you want? Pick a shot, any kind of shot, I’ll do it with you.”
Gesaffelstein wrapped up his set with a sort of sadness, playing an almost classical solo piano track in a ghostly minor key followed by a purely mechanical drum n’ bass track and subsequently mixing them together. This sadness was eventually mended by trap music with basslines of starlit pop and the night proceeded on until 8 am. There was also lots of confetti! Check out the gallery below to sustain a little more New Year’s Eve bliss.
