Group show featuring work by local photographers. Opening reception 11 AM-6 PM.
Queens rapper and former chef Action Bronson spent most of last year supporting Blue Chips, a Reebok-sponsored mixtape cut with Brooklyn producer Party Supplies. It was one of the most celebrated rap releases of 2012—the Reader’s Miles Raymer praised its boldly sloppy subversion of NYC hip-hop—and a wave of year-end best-of roundups that mentioned it began right around the same time Bronson released the Alchemist-produced mixtape Rare Chandeliers (Vice/Warner). Though Rare Chandeliers doesn’t have the rule-breaking, free-for-all aesthetic that helped make Blue Chips a hit, Bronson preserves the playful energy he demonstrated on the earlier recording, delivering lines about his lothario-foodie lifestyle with a just-blazed attitude that smooths out his rough, sometimes piercingly nasal voice. Alchemist’s beats recall 70s exploitation-film soundtracks, their dramatic horn melodies, burning guitar solos, and buoyant bass lines bolstering Bronson’s outsize rebel-without-a-cause character—together they’re as much fun as a midnight screening of a grindhouse flick with a half dozen rowdy friends. —Leor Galil Calez, Alex Wiley, and Impala Sound Champions open.
$22, $20 in advance, $40 VIP tickets
According to a Village Voice profile by Michaelangelo Matos, San Francisco postrocker turned Brooklyn dance-music producer Daniel Martin-McCormick considers Malcolm X his primary fashion inspiration and says that he tries “to exclusively wear Bob Marley shirts”—in other words, he’s either a completely radical guy or the worst kind of obnoxious smirking ironist. But I don’t care which—Dream On, the 2012 album he released under the pseudonym Ital on incredible British label Planet Mu, is so good that I’d forgive behavior more egregious than fake Marley fandom. Martin-McCormick also plays in noisy experimental group Mi Ami, where his work has grown increasingly electronics-based, but nothing he’s done there has suggested that he was developing into what Dream On has revealed him to be: a full-blown techno producer with one foot in the form’s Detroit roots and one in its wiggy, art-damaged fringe. The album is full of odd sounds and challenging ideas, but more crucially it’s also the sort of thing that can get a crowd moving. —Miles Raymer Chrissy Murderbot and Hieroglyphic Being open.
$8
Local folk hero Al Scorch assembles some of the city's best instrumentalist for a musical revue that promises "alternate instruments and room for improvisation."
Cinephiles and audiophiles alike ought to check out the Music-About-Film & Film-About-Music Show, an event hosted by Hopscotch Cinema in which film artist and cellist Tatsu Aoki and professor Lori Felker illustrate the unique properties the two disciplines share. Additionally, four 16mm short films directed by art-rock band the Residents will screen, while our own Ben Sachs teams up with Edward Crouse to form what's likely the world's first film-critic band—the two will perform "pop songs about films and film directors" under the name Farewell Scarlet.
$10
Authors John Kersey, James McManus, Cecilia Pinto, and Suzanne Scanlon take part in this reading series.