Beatique

Beatique

  • Club Underground’s Fontaines D.C. Night Coming Soon + What’s Happening This Weekend

    Mark your calendars for Friday, October 16. Fontaines D.C. will be releasing their new album, Dopamine Chamber, and we’re doing a listening party at Club Underground. Doors are at 9:30 p.m. and album play starts at 9:45 p.m. sharp. After the album, stick around for dancing because both floors of the Grand Star Jazz Club will be open and Larry G. and I will have plenty of Fontaines D.C. on us. Tickets are available online now.  

    As for this weekend, head to Club Underground on Friday, October 2 for indie, Britpop, post-punk, synthpop, etc. Advance tickets are available.   If you’re going to see Marlon Magnée at Pacific Electric on Friday night, stop by Underground after the show. The venues are close to each other.

    On Saturday, October 3, I’ll be DJing at Harvard and Stone from 10 p.m. until close. No cover! If you’re going to Corpse Bride at Hollywood Forever, Perfume Genius at Barnsdall Gallery, Poison Girlfriend at The Vermont or The Growlers at The Greek, Harvard & Stone is pretty close, so stop by afterwards and say hi. 

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  • San Gabriel Fights Off a Case of Adult Onset Goth on New EP

    San Gabriel James Bookert promo photo by Kassy Balli
    San Gabriel’s new EP, Adult Onset Goth, is out now. (Photo: Kassy Balli)

    James Bookert is trying not to get jaded with age. “Especially being from Austin, there are a lot of older, jaded musicians,” he says on a recent video call. “I was really at risk of becoming one of those people. Maybe, in some ways, I can be and I have to actively fight not to be.”

    That tension found its way into Adult Onset Goth, the EP that Bookert released in September under his alias, San Gabriel. “The older I get, the more serious I get,” he says. So Bookert imagined a medical infomercial tackling grown up teen angst. The title, though, isn’t a description of the EP’s sound. San Gabriel’s brand of synth-heavy melancholy is tempered with a touch of sweetness, a style that’s closer to Air’s soundtrack for The Virgin Suicides or Tame Impala on The Slow Rush. There’s a dose of rebellion on the EP too, in the form of the song “Fuck the Money,” where Bookert sings, “I was so tired of 9-5/Working for the weekend.”

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  • New Music from Arab Strap, Club 8 and Murex

    Arab Strap Half-Told Tales Album Cover
    Cover of Half-Told Tales by Arab Strap

    Long-running indie duos Arab Strap and Club 8 both released new albums in September. Plus, Swedish singer/musician Murex released her debut. Keep reading for the reviews.

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  • New Hercules and Love Affair + More of What You Heard at Underground 9/25/26

    Hercules and Love Affair Danseur album cover
    Cover art for Danseur by Hercules and Love Affair

    There’s a new Hercules and Love Affair album out now. It’s called Danseur and it’s fantastic. If you were upstairs at Underground last night, you might have heard “Heaven,” which features Faris Badwan of The Horrors on vocals and is my favorite song on the album. (Read the review here) Other new releases in the set include the title track from Soft Cell’s final album, Danceteria (review) and “Exploded View” from Actors latest, Our Love Will Live Forever (review). 

    It was The Cure Nite, but, I was playing in the not-The Cure room upstairs. Got a few Fontaines D.C. songs in for those of you who came to the club after the show, and those of us who didn’t get tickets. As usual, releases from the past two years are highlighted and link back to other mentions on the blog. Thanks for dancing. 

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  • Soft Cell Returns to Danceteria for Swan Song

    Soft Cell Danceteria album cover

    On my first trip to New York, I connected with an L.A. friend who was at NYU. We were going to meet up in Times Square. “Meet me by the Disney Store,” he said. 

    The Disney Store? I don’t know if my shock and disappointment carried over the hotel lobby phone. This was the end of the 1990s, the era of Rudy Giuliani and TRL if you will, but the Times Square in my head was closer to the one Marc Almond describes on the latest Soft Cell album, with B movies playing in rundown theaters.  

    For their final album, Danceteria, Soft Cell takes listeners to the New York that inspired inspired so much of the English duo’s work. It’s the same New York that Madonna recalls on Confessions II and, if you listen to the two albums, you can hear similar perspectives that unfold in very different ways. Where Confessions II jumps back and forth through time, Danceteria maintains a narrative, and sound, that’s firmly rooted in the 1980s. You can hear the end of disco and the beginning of house in “Danceteria” and “The Space Inside,” which sit side by side on the album. 

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  • On Debut Album, waltzerr Reminds Listeners Tomorrow Will Be Better

    waltzerr press photo Photo by Will Harvey
    waltzerr’s debut album Tomorrow Will Be Better is out now. (Photo by Will Harvey)

    It’s been three years since waltzerr’s first show, but band founder Emily Waltzer remembers it well. “We had only been playing music in my friend’s bedroom for a year,” she recalls of the gig opening for Palettes at Seattle venue Funhouse. “We didn’t know how it was going to turn out. My mic didn’t work for half of the set.”

    In spite of the mic issue, it was a good night, she adds. “It was a really tiny venue, which was kind of nice because it filled up quickly, so it felt like a large audience.” 

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  • The Cure Nite at Club Underground + More Happening in L.A. 9/24 – 9/30

    The Cure Nite flyer Club Underground September 25, 2026

    Friday, September 25, is The Cure Nite at Club Underground with Larry G. and I DJing. Both floors of the Grand Star Jazz Clubwill be open, with one floor dedicated The Cure and the other to a mix of indie, Britpop, post-punk, new wave, darkwave, synthpop, etc. Advance tickets are available now and it’s 21+. Party starts at 9:30 p.m. and goes until 2 a.m., so if you’re going to the sold out Fontaines D.C. show at Hollywood Forever, stop by afterwards to hit the dance floor. For those of you who haven’t been to Underground before, the Grand Star is located in Chinatown’s Central Plaza, right next to the Bruce Lee statue. 

    As for the rest of this weekend, and early next week, here are my recommendations. 

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  • Who Are Moomin and Why Are They on So Much Stuff?

    Moomin Pop Up Kinokuniya The Bloc Los Angeles (Photo: Liz Ohanesian)
    Inside the Moomin pop-up at The Bloc. (Pic: Liz O.)

    The downtown L.A. Moomin pop-up is easy to miss. It’s on the same level of The Bloc as Kinokuniya, but it’s a couple doors down from the Japanese bookshop, lodged between a Botox salon and a vacant storefront. Moomin is understated in a very Nordic way, with lots of clean lines and earthy colors, so it’s easily overshadowed by the vacant shop’s hot pink window signs, which have been advertising a K-beauty photo studio “coming soon” for months now. 

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  • Is Get Mean Boy Harsher’s Pop Album?

    Boy Harsher Get Mean album cover
    Get Mean by Boy Harsher is out now.

    Let’s start this review with a confession. I like Boy Harsher, but I’m not the mega-fan that so many people I know are. Too many of their songs sound the same to me, to the extent that I frequently have to double-check what I’ve played when I’m DJing, lest I confuse “Country Girl,” “Give Me a Reason” and “Come Closer.” That said, I was very excited to hear “Jeans” when it was released as a single a few months back because it doesn’t sound at all like a Boy Harsher banger. At first it sounded very New Order to me. Now, it reminds me of “I Go Crazy,” the Flesh For Lulu song that’s in Some Kind of Wonderful. I love “Jeans,” but wasn’t quite sure that the club crowds would. In fact, it’s been one of the big hits on the dance floor this summer. Thanks to “Jeans,” there were a few nights where I didn’t have to play “Pain.” That’s a relief. 

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  • New Albums From Actors, Frankie Rose, Railcard and Perennial

    Actors Our Love Will Live Forever album cover


    New albums from Actors, Frankie Rose, Railcard and Perennial have been in my rotation at home this week. Maybe they’ll find their way into yours too. Keep reading for the reviews. 

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