Being a recovering indie kid is weird. These days, I primarily listen to electronic music and go to electronic shows, where the beat is king and dancing is the norm. In general, the electronic music scene is, by nature, not very self-conscious. It's as much about throwing a party as it is about the music in many cases, and everyone likes to see everyone else having fun. It's not like that on the indie scene; in that scene, a much larger portion of the crowd stands still, a much larger portion of the crowd seems concerned with looking cool. There are exceptions in both cases, of course, but this would appear to be the rule.
Pictureplane is an odd artist (albeit one I love) because he seems to straddle the boundary between these two scenes. His music is sample-based and has what I would describe as an irresistible beat — I don't know how you could show up at one of his shows and not dance your tail off — but it's also got indie cred and some of his tracks have a more indie than electro or trance feel to them. He's not really classifiable. At his Halloween show at Great Scott in Boston, New England proved yet again that the east coast is terrified of fun. They pulled this off in two ways: one, by having an embarrassing showing in terms of Halloween costumes, and two, by barely dancing at all. I'd say that 75% of the people dancing were the people I came with. Guuuuys. I implore you to go to a couple raves, drop those inhibitions, and you'll never be able to stand still and barely bob your head at a show again.
Regardless of the sort of sad crowd, Pictureplane put on the great show I've come to expect from him (even if he did call out my costume based on The Weeknd's Thursday album cover: "Someone has balloons. What the fuck is this, a two-year old's birthday party?" And I do realize I just ousted my identity to anyone from the show who happens to read this. Yeah, I was dancing like an asshole, move along or join me next time!). He played almost entirely tracks off his most recent album, Thee Physical, so everything was delightfully danceable but there was still a spooky undertone befitting the holiday. To be honest I'm a bit sad Pictureplane's gaining popularity; how long will he be able to continue playing teensy venues like Great Scott?
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