Pixel Grip’s third album, Percepticide: The Death of Reality is out now.
Chicago-based trio Pixel Grip released their third album, Percepticide: The Death of Reality on June 12. Three years in the making, Percepticide is also the band’s first fully independent release and the end result is a collection of a dozen songs that are rooted in the clubs, but defy expectations of what one might consider club music. It’s as punk as it is pop, as raw as it is slick and as menacing as it is euphoric.
Mostly, I want to encourage people to not doomscroll this weekend. And, by people, I mean myself as well. I really need to stop doomscrolling. Whether or not you’re out protesting over the next few days, we’ll all need a break from the news. So, set aside some time to watch a movie, visit a park or museum, go to the gym or do something to chill for a bit.
On Monday afternoon, a bit after 3 p.m., I went for a walk through Chinatown. It was the fourth day of the protests against ICE raids in the city and helicopters had been hanging over the neighborhood like gnats all day. The first thing I noticed while walking down Broadway was that I’m not the only person annoyed by the incessant buzz of the helicopters. An older man stopped in his tracks and looked towards one of them. I almost walked into him. Another neighborhood senior sat on a bench, tilted his head upwards and shook a cigarette-wielding fist in the air. I almost busted up laughing while thinking of the “Old Man Yells at Cloud” headline from The Simpsons.
It was business as usual in Chinatown. The Broadway shops remained open with racks of merchandise set up outside the storefronts. The local produce vendors tried to coerce me into buying more avocados and peaches than I could eat in a couple days.
Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra live at The Mayan in downtown Los Angeles for Exotikon 3 (Pic: Liz O.)
Our glasses weren’t 3D. We were watching a live performance inside downtown L.A.’s Mayan Theatre and, like the robot on stage told the crowd on Sunday afternoon, that’s already 3D. These were decoder glasses. Some in the audience had blue lenses. Others, like me, had red ones. The color of the lenses determined what you would see on the screen behind Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra, the human-and-robot duo from San Diego who were playing as part of Exotikon.
It’s early, at least by club standards, on a Thursday night in mid-May, but the dance floor at El Cid is poppin’. On stage, Ora the Molecule flits between the synthesizer that sits on a table cloaked in glittery fabric and a theremin off to the side of her. When she looks down at the synthesizer, beams of light shoot from her disco ball helmet towards the crowd. Dressed in a red jumpsuit with matching gloves and boots, Ora the Molecule looks like a space disco diva who has just arrived on Earth. Few, if any, people in the crowd can resist her intergalactic groove.
When Nora Schjelderup, the singer and producer behind Ora the Molecule, and I connect for a video call a couple weeks later, I tell her that the show reminded me of sci-fi disco performances from 1970s European variety shows that I’ve seen floating around online.
“Yes!” she responds through laughter. “That’s exactly what I’m aiming for.”
Swimming Bell plays Permanent Records Roadhouse on Thursday, June 5
I’ll be in Phoenix on Friday night with Klub Nocturno to play new wave and darkwave at Crescent Ballroom. Last time I played Phoenix with Nocturno was a blast and I’m excited to be heading back. If you’re in the area, get yourself tickets and join us on the dance floor.
Here in Los Angeles, there are a handful of events that I want to put on your radar. Swimming Bell, who were featured on Beatique just last week, opens for Sebastian Schub at Permanent Records Roadhouse on Thursday, June 5. Tickets are available on Eventbrite for this 21+ show.
Do you ever get the feeling that your friends can read your mind?
The other day, out of nowhere, I thought of Anoraak, the French musician/producer, whose tunes have turned up a bunch in my sets over the years. (Most frequently, “Gang,” a Disco Not Disco-style jam that I played often at The Lash coming out of lockdown.) I wondered if he had anything new out, but I was also in the middle of doing something else, so I didn’t look it up. An hour later, I get a text from my friend with a Spotify link, which just happens to be a song from Anoraak, “Magnifique (Italo Edit),” that was released a few months ago. It’s fire. His new album, Golden Hour, is a fun mix of disco, funk and synthpop, but my friend’s pick is the keeper. You’ll probably be hearing it in my sets soon.
Mike Myers in So I Married an Axe Murderer ordering a ’90s coffee house cappuccino
For a good while, Beatique was just a personal blog where I would post my playlists, updates on gigs and the occasional story. In January, I figured I should turn it into a regularly updated music and culture blog that’s still very personal. Now that we’re near the middle of the year, I’m happy to say that the project is going well. There are new posts most weekdays. Interviews are a regular feature, with at least one running every week. There are also album and live reviews, event recaps, record store spotlights and the occasional rant.
Not to brag, but even I’m a little shocked that I’ve been able to post that much in between working two jobs, one of which involves a lot of writing, without using AI. It’s actually because journalism is my day job that I started putting some actual effort into the blog. Music, arts and culture journalism— which has been my beat for my entire career— is in a dismal place. It’s not just that I missed getting the music and alt culture assignments that never really came back after lockdown, but I missed reading stories that aren’t about the World’s Most Boring pop star and TikTok hits. Basically, I’m writing what I want to read, so thanks for joining me on the ride. If you want to stay up-to-date, sign up for the new mailing list. Newsletters will go out on Thursdays beginning this week and it’s free. The only thing I’m adamant about with this project is that there will be no subscriptions or paywalls.
Please share what you like, whether it’s on socials or just directly with your friends. I’m not interested in the quantity of readers so much as the quality of them, so if you know someone who is all like, “I’m really tired of paywalls on stories about social media posts,” then send them this way.
I debated whether or not I should post the Top 5 stories of the past six months because I don’t want to judge a story by how much traffic it gets, but I think these five stories are also reflective of what you’ll find here and what I have in store for the future.
In 2023, Sally Shapiro released a gorgeous cover of the Pet Shop Boys song “Rent.” I came across the song a few months after its release and it quickly became a favorite. It turned up in a lot of my DJ sets beginning in early ’24 and people would often ask, “Who does this cover?” I’m mentioning this now because Sally Shapiro just released their fifth full-length album, Ready to Live a Lie. Yes, “Rent” is on it, but so are ten equally compelling songs.
Swimming Bell’s new EP, Somnia, is out now. (Photo: Lisa Bolden)
Swimming Bell squeezes onto a makeshift stage inside Oblivion, a Highland Park shop with a rack of surfboards propped up against a wall painted beach shack white and a cascade of houseplants falling over the front entrance. It’s a tiny space, where the crowd is gathered between racks of clothing and tables of accessories, while the sound board is set up behind a changing room curtain. Still, Katie Schottland has assembled six other musicians to join her for this Friday night gig, where they play shoehorned between drums, congas, keyboard, pedal steel and a bounty of pedals and cables.
“Of course, after making the EP, I was like, I need someone to play percussion. I need keyboard. I need pedal steel. Harmony. I need it all,” Schottland says on a video call the day before the show. It was a tight fit, but the band played well, reflecting the breezy, oceanic sound of Swimming Bell’s latest EP, Somnia, in songs like “Found at the Bottom of the Ocean” and “I’m Always Down.”
