PART TIME PUNKS takes place at The Echo on 1822 Sunset in Los Angeles, every Sunday night.
PART TIME PUNKS is a club that takes over noted Echo Park live music venue, The Echo on 1822 Sunset, every Sunday night. The night focuses heavily on DIY and Indie vinyl coming out of the U.S., UK and Europe from 1977 to the present: Punk, Post-Punk, Synth-Punk, Synthpop, Minimal Synth, Dark/Cold/Minimal Wave, NDW, Industrial, New Wave, No Wave, C86, Indiepop, Twee, Shoegaze, Baggy and even Krautrock…
- 05.26 SMITHS/MORRISSEY NITE with a special acoustic set by Jose Maldonado [from Sweet & Tender Hooligans]
Not only will Jose Maldonado be Guest DJing this time around, but he will also performing a very special acoustic set of Smiths & Morrissey tracks with some very special friends--starting at 9:30pm!
Then, stick around and spend the rest of the evening oscillating wildly to the songs that saved your life...aka your favourite tunes by Morrissey and The Smiths! With a healthy dash of Moz's inspirations and contemporaries (and even a few Smiths clones thrown in to see just how big of fan you really are...) Of course Cut Out Morrissey will be there courtesy of PTP photog, Dylan Gordon aka D-M-A-X, for all your endless dancefloor contortions and photo op demands...
[And since Monday is a holiday you don't even hafta call in sick to work or school...!]
@ THE ECHOPLEX (1154 Glendale Blvd.)
Doors open at 9PM sharp. As with ALL PTP events, anyone 18+ is welcome...
- 06.02 ADULT. + FRANK ALPINE + VON HAZE + Guest DJ SILENT SERVANT
Electro pioneers ADULT. return in May with a dark and devastating new LP, "The Way Things Fall" on Ghostly Records, and in June take The Echo stage for PART TIME PUNKS (!!). Founded in 1998 and often (mistakenly) lumped into the Electroclash movement, the band are even more accurately described as Synthpunk or even Minimal Synth or Minimal Wave. Fusing analog synths with punk aggression and sparse 808 beats, the band were releasing these records well over a decade before a term like "Minimal Wave" was even coined. All to say...ADULT. are a band who have always been out of time. Still pioneers, innovators and true artists. And PTP is proud to welcome them back to Lost Angeles for the first time in more than half a decade.
Wierd Records' enfant terrible, FRANK ALPINE, makes his long-overdue return to Part Time Punks. Just back from an extensive European tour, Frank comes armed with an arsenal of new tracks, real darkness and true threat. Or, to paraphrase the Wierd Records bio: "While the atmosphere and gritty electronics might hearken to certain strains of industrial music or power electronics [...] this is an eccentric loner squealing from inside the decay, making noise with a pulse that’s paranoid and mechanical, yet unmistakably human."
Brooklyn duo by way of London, VON HAZE, are the latest transplants to the booming synth scene of Lost Angeles. Equally ominous and blissful, these are synthscapes interwoven with driving Suicide-style beats and bits of buzzsaw guitar. Both of the band's EPs (on Hippos In Tanks) and their LP (on Pendu Sound) are produced by Richard Fearless of Death In Vegas, so both Primal Scream and Spiritualized's fuzzy and blissful collaborations with Fearless come bzzzzzing to mind...
SILENT SERVANT aka Juan Mendez, one of the chaps responsible for DOWNWARDS RECORDS, home of Tropic Of Cancer, DVA Damas (aka one of PTP's favorite record labels), brings dark slabs of vinyl for the fray as PTP Guest DJ. (And in the meantime, check out his breathtaking debut LP, which is the link between early electronic, post-punk, noise and the modern brand of industrial-strength techno and nihilistic industrial music. For fans of Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Front 242, Skinny Puppy...and switchblades.)
- 06.09 FACTORY RECORDS NITE w/a live set of New Order covers by Flaamingos + Guest DJ Alex Transistor
Part Time Punks pays tribute to legendary Mancunian record label, FACTORY RECORDS...with Guest DJ Alex Transistor! So. In short ALL Factory Records ALL for freaky dancing ALL nite long. Joy Division, New Order, A Certain Ratio, Section 25, The Wake, James, Minny Pops, Crispy Ambulance, OMD, ESG, Durutti Column, Happy Mondays, Stockholm Monsters, James, Quando Quango, Blurt, Abecedarians, Tunnelvision, Royal Family & The Poor, Thick Pigeon, Biting Tongues, Nyam Nyam, Shark Vegas, Crawling Chaos, Ike Yard, Swamp Children, Abecedarians, Red Turns To... PLUS a live performance of New Order covers by FLAAMINGOS at 11pm!
- 06.16 PTP's 8 YEAR ANNIVERSARY with INDIAN JEWELRY + DEATHDAY + NET SHAKER
PART TIME PUNKS celebrates its 8th Anniversary with live performances by some of PTP's favorite live bands EVER!
INDIAN JEWELRY was in fact, the first band who was ever asked back to play PTP a second time. If you've ever seen their seizure-inducing live show, you know why. Back in 2005, they were our Throbbing Gristle, our Cabaret Voltaire--or as close to what we thought we would ever get. (FYI: They were such an important band to Michael, that back in October of 2005 he decided for the first time he would actually make printed posters. The only thing was...he'd never done anything like that before. So off he went to the local Xerox shop with scissors and glue and a host of images and made the first ever PTP poster.) Now, they're coming back, armed with a dark and wondrous new LP to stun, paralyze and even deafen. What a way to celebrate another year.
DEATHDAY was constructed from the aggressive textures of early industrial music, the ambience of cold wave and shoegaze, and the carnal energy of post-punk. With releases on Downwards, Mannequin and Sweating Tapes, and a full length LP in the works, the only question is how long until the rest of the country tunes in to the fact that Deathday are one of the best new bands in the country. (That, and for how much longer will we tolerate mass murder?)
Described as "Macabre electronics, works of mourning, attempts to wake the dead" by The Wire Magazine in the UK, NET SHAKER's sounds are alternately minimal/moody and swirling drones. Come drown in their sea of dread.
- 06.23 MUTE RECORDS NITE with Guest DJs Alex & Ray (from Depeche Mode Convention)
Part Time Punks pays tribute to legendary London label MUTE RECORDS who are celebrating their 35th anniversary this year... Which means you can spend the evening dancing to a dazzling mix of the incredible acts this label has released beginning with The Normal, and continuing on to Depeche Mode, Fad Gadget, D.A.F., Cabaret Voltaire, Nitzer Ebb, Wire, SPK, Suicide, Virgin Prunes, Kraftwerk, Die Doraus & Die Marinas, Liasons Dangereuses, Yazoo, Erasure, I Start Counting, Recoil, Robert Rental, Silicon Teens, The Birthday Party, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Crime + The City Solution, Grinderman, Swell Maps, Throbbing Gristle, Non, Laibach, Die Krupps, Diamanda Galas, Einsturzende Neubauten, Mark Stewart & The Maffia, Meat Beat Manifesto, The Prodigy, Liars, Loop, Can, Inspiral Carpets, New Fast Automatic Daffodils, Art Brut, Richard Hawley, M83, A Place To Bury Strangers, and even The John Spencer Blues Explosion...but absolutely NO fucking Moby.
- 06.30 ELEVEN POND + LIGHT HOUSE + SOME EMBER
Several years ago Dark Entries reissued the debut LP by ELEVEN POND. Long sought after by collectors, the Rochester, NY band only released a single LP in their time together before dissolving into obscurity. Their sound–a merging of post punk, dark dance and synthpop full of melodic arrangements–reflected the originality of gifted songwriters who met in art school with a shared interest in 4AD and Factory Records. Fronted by Jeff Gallea, now living in LA and a near-constant figure the past few years at at the club, PTP is honored to offer this stage to the stunning band, who only now are receiving the attention they deserved over two decades ago... (And FYI, their new tunes are even better!)
LIGHT HOUSE are down, drowned sounds. Minimal synths and reverb-steeped guitars washed out in space and underwater. With Chris Relyea, an ex member from The Rapture on instrumentation and one of PTP's original dance crew from 2005 or so, Dawn Sharp, on stunning drop dead vocals. Fans of Mushy, Dead Can Dance, and "Pygmalion" era Slowdive, rejoice.
SOME EMBER are a dark lush landscape of brooding, swirling post punk cold wave minimalism, all pulsing muted synths, spare percussion, shimmery atmospheres, thick, crumbling industrial swells, hushed melancholic melodies, all blurred into a murky, washed out dirge pop dreamscape. These are the sounds of low-life, black celebration and disintegration.
- 07.14 DAVID BOWIE NITE w/Guest DJ Jose Maldonado [from Sweet & Tender Hooligans]
Back by popular demand! PTP devotes an entire evening to the 40+ years of David Bowie's brilliant back catalogue... From psychedelic folk to glitter and glam, from funk to soul and the thin white duke. From Ziggy to Iggy to Eno to Fripp to Bolan to Lennon to Jagger and Lou and Andy and Freddy (Mercury) and even Nicholas Roeg and David Lynch...all the best of Bowie's collaborations will get a spin, too, not to mention his glam contemporaries and post-punk disciples...
- 07.21 BLACK MARBLE + SOFT METALS + VOWS
BLACK MARBLE are one of NYC's most promising synthpop/darkwave outfits, with their debut LP, "A Different Arrangement," released in October on Hardly Art topping many critics' best of the year lists. And understandably so. The band's sound marries synthpop to synthpunk, alternately bleak, melodic, punk and electronic. If you saw the band this winter, then you know how incredible they are live...and this time around, they return with NEW tracks from their next LP!!
SOFT METALS bring their dreamy femme-fronted analog synth sounds back to the Echo stage, armed with amazing new collection of songs from their forthcoming new LP on Captured Tracks. Think of the more minimal/melodic moments of Throbbing Gristle & the Chris And Cosey that came after & you’ll be getting close to these now not so distant dreams...
VOWS are dense danse. Comprised of members of //TENSE// and JEWELS OF THE NILE. Swirling synths, sweating tapes and minimal electronics. Punish or be damned.
- 07.28 WEEKEND [Slumberland Records] + TENNIS SYSTEM + SURF CLUB
WEEKEND are, without a doubt, one of Slumberland Records’ finest-ever signings. Their debut LP, Sports, with its buzzsaw mix of MBV/Mary Chain overdrive and Joy Division/Killing Joke darkness, topped most critics' Best Of lists for 2010 (including the likes of Pitchfork, Spin and Rolling Stone) and their Red EP did the same in 2011. This marks the band's first performance since the PTP Shoegaze Fest last summer, and will be the first live unveiling of tracks from their eagerly anticipated 2nd LP (due out the weekend before on Slumberland Records)...!
Sharing their namesake with a song by predecessor noise pop group The Lilys, TENNIS SYSTEM are keeping the legacies of Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and the Jesus and Mary Chain alive with their expansive, catchy-as-hell pop songs. Matty Taylor and Misha Bullock are masters of loud and dirty anthems, but rising above the noise that blankets them are Taylor's beautifully sung, dreamy lyrics inspired by both love and art, from the drawings of Egon Schiele to the writing of Aldous Huxley.Teenagers, the group's second LP, was released by Kill/Hurt in December of 2011.
SURF CLUB return to Lost Angeles celebrating the release of their new split 7" with Slumberland Records' Manatee. Their new sounds fuse the shoegaze dreamscape of MBV and Slowdive with Sarah Records' sounds like The Field Mice and Another Sunny Day. The band features former members of Craft Spells, and the very best in contemporary dreamgaze bands like Beach Fossils, Wild Nothing and Catwalk should also be invoked here!
- 08.11 MEDICINE [Creation Records/Captured Tracks] + TROPIC OF CANCER
MEDICINE was formed in Los Angeles in 1990 by guitarist/producer Brad Laner? as a means for marrying raw experimental textures with classic psychedelic?pop song craft. Considered by many to be the foremost American purveyors of ?what some called Shoegaze or Dreampop, Medicine were one of the few U.S.?bands on Creation Records and highly unlikely residents of Rick Rubin’s ?American Recordings where they released three LPs and many EPs between 1992?and 1995. At the time, these records elicited confused head scratching from? most and ecstatic devotion from some. Despite Medicine’s willful obscurity,?they subversively reached mainstream consciousness via their appearance in ?the 1994 film (and its #1 soundtrack album), “The Crow”. Medicine imploded? in 1995 and Brad Laner has gone on to release an ongoing series of solo LPs?and guest appearances on albums such as the current M83 album , “Hurry Up,?We’re Dreaming”, Brian Eno’s “Another Day On Earth” and Caribou’s “The Milk? of Human Kindness” . Following Captured Tracks' reissues of the band's entire catalogue last year, Medicine release their first LP in nearly two deades. And this will be their first gig in 18 years. Do NOT miss this bitta history!
Los Angeles synthgazers TROPIC OF CANCER have released three 10” singles through the much revered Downwards label, as well as a recent EP on Blackest Ever Black, The Sorrow Of Two Blooms. Following a lengthy European tour with HTRK last fall, UK press described Tropic Of Cancer’s sound as “melting gothic ambiance with shoegaze grit, resulting in a blissed-out drone,” and their latest EP on Mannequin finds the band expanding and enriching their sound. The band’s sparse, synthgaze soundscapes invoke Factory Records’ producer, Martin Hannett’s coldest, crispest productions, while singer Camella Lobo’s ensnare and unfold in shades of Nico, Cocteau Twins and My Bloody Valentine. These are the songs for the loveless.
