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UID:a7fc2166-36a1-45be-ba68-65cebee38bec@360exp.net
SEQUENCE:29843051
DTSTAMP:20260928T202646Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260928T081110Z
DTSTART:20261017T180000Z
DTEND:20261017T214500Z
SUMMARY:MYKKI BLANCO
LOCATION:Hafenklang
DESCRIPTION:“If there is one thing I know how to do\, it’s how to get t
 he most out of life. Yeah\, sure\, not everything is perfect. You fuck up.
  You make mistakes. But hopefully\, you’re achieving more than you’re 
 fucking up. Overall\, I would say I do well\, milking life for all it’s 
 got.” — Mykki Blanco\n\nOn Café Paradiso\, Mykki Blanco is completely
  reborn\, trading the persona-driven theatrics of his previous releases fo
 r something more interior and exacting. The record draws from the diverse
 \, banal and yet idiosyncratic contexts of the artist’s life in transit:
  “...shitty Wall Street lunch counters and an endless stream of dive bar
 s in the East Village” in New York\; “...drinking beer and playing poo
 l in Belleville\; the drink that lasts forever at Les Chope des Artists an
 d Chez Jeanette” in Paris\; and “languishing for hours at the tea hous
 es or Café Hafa” in Tangier. From these fragments\, Café Paradiso asse
 mbles a soundtrack for the contemporary\, queer flâneur\, moving through 
 spaces where being alone does not necessarily mean being lonely. “Café 
 Paradiso is a record for artsy kids\,” Blanco explains\, “for my cosmo
 politan aesthetes to sit alone in a café and work on crafting the life of
  their dreams\, or just make sense of it!” When asked which earlier vers
 ions of himself appear here\, Blanco is unequivocal: “None.”\n\nIf Bla
 nco’s discography exists less as a linear evolution and more as a series
  of deliberate mutations — each project shifting in terms of tone\, genr
 e\, and even the function of the voice — then Café Paradiso represents 
 his post-rumspringa clarity. “I love creating music but I’ve never lik
 ed the idea of being a one-trick pony\,” Blanco explains\, “I need to 
 check some things off my ‘Life List.’” After his 2022 album Stay Clo
 se to Music and the Postcards from Italia (2023) EP\, Blanco spent two yea
 rs at art school in Switzerland\, getting his MFA and deepening his studio
  practice as a visual artist. “I’ve got a lot of ideas for interdiscip
 linary projects\,” Blanco says\, “and I felt the experience helped me 
 level up in other areas of my career and expand my database of knowledge w
 hich just ends up making everything I produce even cooler. In September of
  2024\, Blanco submitted his thesis "The Black Presence In Early Soviet Un
 ion Russia" and graduated\, then returned to his “first love” — song
 writing.\n\nThe lead single “Little Feet” (featuring Ian Isiah and Bre
 akaway) sets the tone for the record as a score for the “wayward metropo
 litan\,” to use the artist's own words. Blanco and his collaborators pur
 r about hanging out\, hooking up\, and dancing the night away under the st
 reet lights over a sultry\, nostalgic groove that feels both familiar and 
 slightly unreal.\n\nOn the second single\, the provocative party anthem 
 “Butt Sex\,” Blanco calls all his “baddies to the floor” while ban
 ishing the “uglies\,” turning the album’s sensuality outward — mor
 e direct\, more mischievous\, and openly communal. On the third single —
  the more restless “NYC DOGS” — Blanco commands listeners to “stic
 k out \\[their\\] tongues” like the “bad dogs” they are\, and repeat
 edly invokes the city which inspired and helped actualise this project: 
 “I chose to record Café Paradiso in New York because I wanted to come h
 ome for a bit\,” Blanco explained\, “New York is where I ran away to w
 hen I was 16 … where I first began writing music after dropping out of P
 arsons School of Design\, where I published my first book of poetry\, and 
 where I launched my career on the underground scene 13 years ago.” He co
 ntinues: “Café Paradiso is a record for city kids. It’s heavily inspi
 red by New York\, but the New York of now\, which isn’t parochial but tr
 ansatlantic. Café Paradiso is also global. It’s a series of vignettes t
 hat speak to the lives lived inside the concrete jungle.”\n\nTogether\, 
 “Butt Sex\,” “NYC DOGS\,” and the fourth single\, the genre-bendin
 g Easy Does It (featuring Evanora Unlimited and Simone Alysia)\, show off 
 the range of Blanco’s collaborative approach\, shaped through an interna
 tional network of artists working across scenes and sensibilities. At the 
 eye of this storm is his longstanding\, near psychic creative partnership 
 with producer and composer Drew “FaltyDL” Lustman. “I will probably 
 create music with FaltyDL forever\, or as long as he’ll have me\,” Bla
 nco says. “Drew really helped me cultivate what I consider to be my ‘t
 rue sound\,’ the sound that characterises my identity as an artist now t
 hat I’ve come to maturity musically.” The “true sound” Blanco refe
 rs to resists easy categorisation. Once described as a “magpie-like appr
 oach to sound with a casual disregard for genre conventions” (MusicTech
 \, 2023)\, Blanco’s music operates less as a style than a method — an 
 aural frottage\, or the sonic memoir of an urbane artist assembled from fr
 agments\, encounters and drift. As noted by Pitchfork in 2016\, it is “a
  swerve from the brusque heterosexualization of nearly all mainstream rap.
 ”\n\nThis approach is epitomised by “FOXES” (featuring Tama Gucci). 
 “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so free\,” Blanco says of the making
  of this song\, which begins with the artist introducing himself — midwa
 y through his third studio album\, mind you — thanking his “amazing ba
 nd\,” expressing his gratitude for the “amazing tour so far\,” and s
 houting out his collaborators before launching into an incantation like nu
 rsery rhyme-like refrain with fable-like lyrics. Arguably the emotional an
 d conceptual climax of this album\, Blanco cites this track as “the reas
 on I am a musician is to achieve this kind of freedom that elevates my sou
 l into higher art and performance.’”\n\nWhile “FOXES” captures the
  album at its most expansive\, other tracks locate that same sensibility w
 ithin more defined\, genre-specific forms. A song like “Spread 4 Me\,”
  for example\, could easily exist in the same lineage as heartland rock cl
 assics that ooze a certain kind of slick\, nonchalant pop Americana. The s
 ong is upfront and wholesome — as pop-adjacent as Blanco has ever been 
 — but it hints at something carnal and epicurean hiding under the surfac
 e with its rallying cry: “Make like butter and spread for me.”\n\nAs h
 igh energy as parts of this album might seem\, Café Paradiso is\, at its 
 core\, a record about stillness. Blanco insists “is not a point A-to-B r
 ecord\, or a pre-game record. It’s an album about enjoying your own comp
 any.” Resisting the logic of escalation or destination\, Café Paradiso 
 lingers in transitional spaces — the solitary meal\, the late-night bar
 \, the airport terminal — where time stretches and the self becomes mome
 ntarily unmoored. What emerges is music attuned to the quiet intensity of 
 being alone in public\, where observation becomes its own form of particip
 ation.\n\nThis dual position – being both observer and participant — h
 arks back to Blanco’s formative experiences on the early Internet. “I 
 literally am who I am today because of how much music I was exposed to via
  Napster and Limewire\, and those thrilling early days of downloading musi
 c and genre-splicing\,” he explains. “It’s the same with selecting s
 ongs on a jukebox. I love fragments. I love sketches. I’ve always been o
 bsessed with worlds within worlds\, and how subplots create a whole.” He
  continues\, comparing Café Paradiso to a “three-act play\,” or a scr
 ipt for a “feature film\,” and citing references such as Saint Etienne
 \, The Silver Apples\, Towa Tei. “I mean this album is pretty bandy\,”
  Blanco says\, “it’s a festival album.”\n\nCafé Paradiso does not m
 ark a rupture so much as a refinement in the career of Mykki Blanco. Drawi
 ng together years of experimentation across music\, performance\, and visu
 al art\, this album arrives at a point of transient clarity — it is a co
 nfident statement of intent\, positioning Blanco not simply as a shape-shi
 fter\, but as an artist in full command of his present form.\n\nBoletos: h
 ttps://dice.fm/event/avreqx-mykki-blanco-17th-oct-hafenklang-hamburg-ticke
 ts
URL;VALUE=URI:https://360exp.net/events/a7fc2166-36a1-45be-ba68-65cebee38be
 c
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