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Music

Breaking in 2015 With Teklife, Jacques Greene, Machinedrum... and His Mom

Footwork was the sound of the night.
Machinedrum (Photo courtesy of Daniel Leinweber / Razberry Photography for Planet Cognac)

"Light it up, motherfucker, light it up!" chanted the ring of DJs and friends crowding the stage at Brooklyn Night Bazaar. The velvety scent of blunt smoke spread like incense through the air. On regular evenings, the multi-purpose music venue in Williamsburg also serves as a market peddling overpriced sunglasses and gourmet burgers. But tonight was no ordinary night. It was the annual glorification of champagned-fueled poor decisions known as New Year's Eve. To that end, the vendors had been cleared out of the warehouse, making room for a proper dancefloor.

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Some of the bolder revelers clambered up on stage to dance next to DJ Spinn as he played "Pass That Shit," a slinky homage to the joys of toking by the late DJ Rashad. Spinn, Rashad, and the rest of his crew that night—Taso and Earl—are key members of a DJ collective called Teklife. Together, they've been instrumental in propelling the dance-oriented genre known as footwork beyond the borders of Chicago to international acclaim.

A couple years ago, it would've been nearly impossible for the Teklife crew to serve as the headliners for a New Year's Eve bash in New York City. But in a true sign of footwork's arrival, the sound seemed to dominate the evening; even the peak-time set by headliner Machinedrum was chock-full of its stuttering, rapid-fire beats. The Ninja Tunes affiliated artist deftly jumped between footwork, juke, and ghetto house, pausing only at midnight to grab the mic and lead his tribe in a frenzied countdown.

No one was more psyched to be there than Machinedrum's own mom and pops, who danced along with the vigor of kids half their age.

Further back beyond the dancefloor, a large-scale installation titled "Crystal Fragments" by the multi-media artist Julia Sinelnikova glittered underneath three projectors. Looking like something out of a Danish fairytale, the glowing webs draped from the ceiling to the ground, the majority of them painstakingly hand-cut from reflective mylar and vinyl.

Julia Sinelnikova's "Crystal Fragments" installation (Photo courtesy of Julia Sinelnikova) 

Sinelnikova herself flitted between the plexiglass crystals, alternating between kissing her friends on the cheeks and admonishing strangers for placing their drinks on the artwork. (Pro tip: mistaking rave art for can holders is never a cute look.)

The party stretched into the early hours of dawn, as special guests like Jacques Greene turned up to play a special back-to-back set with Dan Wender and Blacky II of local party unit RINSED. After the New Year's bash organized by promoter Unicorn Meat was cancelled at the last minute, Simon Posford of the British psychedelic duo Shpongle joined in the festivities too—proving that on New Year's Eve, as in life, you can never really plan for the unexpected. But ultimately, all that really matters is that you're making the most of whatever fate throws you, barrelling towards the unknown with the people you care about most.

@MichelleLhooq