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BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:c0c3eb8e-9885-4ae5-8d28-b2faf7e52532@360exp.net
SEQUENCE:29842475
DTSTAMP:20260928T010220Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260927T223553Z
DTSTART:20261017T190000Z
DTEND:20261017T215500Z
SUMMARY:MYKKI BLANCO + support: Perera Elsewhere ***Off The Radar Club***LI
 VE
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\n On Café Paradiso\, Mykki Blanco is completel
 y reborn\, trading the persona-driven theatrics of his previous releases f
 or 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\n If Bl
 anco’s discography exists less as a linear evolution and more as a serie
 s of deliberate mutations — each project shifting in terms of tone\, gen
 re\, and even the function of the voice — then Café Paradiso represents
  his post-rumspringa clarity. “I love creating music but I’ve never li
 ked 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 Cl
 ose to Music and the Postcards from Italia (2023) EP\, Blanco spent two ye
 ars at art school in Switzerland\, getting his MFA and deepening his studi
 o practice as a visual artist. “I’ve got a lot of ideas for interdisci
 plinary projects\,” Blanco says\, “and I felt the experience helped me
  level up in other areas of my career and expand my database of knowledge 
 which just ends up making everything I produce even cooler. In September o
 f 2024\, Blanco submitted his thesis "The Black Presence In Early Soviet U
 nion Russia" and graduated\, then returned to his “first love” — son
 gwriting.\n\n The lead single “Little Feet” (featuring Ian Isiah and B
 reakaway) sets the tone for the record as a score for the “wayward metro
 politan\,” to use the artist's own words. Blanco and his collaborators p
 urr about hanging out\, hooking up\, and dancing the night away under the 
 street lights over a sultry\, nostalgic groove that feels both familiar an
 d slightly unreal.\n\n On the second single\, the provocative party anthem
  “Butt Sex\,” Blanco calls all his “baddies to the floor” while ba
 nishing the “uglies\,” turning the album’s sensuality outward — mo
 re direct\, more mischievous\, and openly communal. On the third single 
 — the more restless “NYC DOGS” — Blanco commands listeners to “s
 tick out [their] tongues” like the “bad dogs” they are\, and repeate
 dly invokes the city which inspired and helped actualise this project: “
 I chose to record Café Paradiso in New York because I wanted to come home
  for a bit\,” Blanco explained\, “New York is where I ran away to when
  I was 16 … where I first began writing music after dropping out of Pars
 ons School of Design\, where I published my first book of poetry\, and whe
 re I launched my career on the underground scene 13 years ago.” He conti
 nues: “Café Paradiso is a record for city kids. It’s heavily inspired
  by New York\, but the New York of now\, which isn’t parochial but trans
 atlantic. Café Paradiso is also global. It’s a series of vignettes that
  speak to the lives lived inside the concrete jungle.”\n\n Together\, 
 “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\n This approach is epitomised by “FOXES” (featuring Tama Gucci).
  “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so free\,” Blanco says of the makin
 g of this song\, which begins with the artist introducing himself — midw
 ay through his third studio album\, mind you — thanking his “amazing b
 and\,” expressing his gratitude for the “amazing tour so far\,” and 
 shouting out his collaborators before launching into an incantation like n
 ursery rhyme-like refrain with fable-like lyrics. Arguably the emotional a
 nd conceptual climax of this album\, Blanco cites this track as “the rea
 son I am a musician is to achieve this kind of freedom that elevates my so
 ul into higher art and performance.’”\n\n While “FOXES” captures t
 he album at its most expansive\, other tracks locate that same sensibility
  within more defined\, genre-specific forms. A song like “Spread 4 Me\,
 ” for example\, could easily exist in the same lineage as heartland rock
  classics that ooze a certain kind of slick\, nonchalant pop Americana. Th
 e song is upfront and wholesome — as pop-adjacent as Blanco has ever bee
 n — but it hints at something carnal and epicurean hiding under the surf
 ace with its rallying cry: “Make like butter and spread for me.”\n\n A
 s high energy as parts of this album might seem\, Café Paradiso is\, at i
 ts core\, a record about stillness. Blanco insists “is not a point A-to-
 B record\, or a pre-game record. It’s an album about enjoying your own c
 ompany.” Resisting the logic of escalation or destination\, Café Paradi
 so lingers in transitional spaces — the solitary meal\, the late-night b
 ar\, the airport terminal — where time stretches and the self becomes mo
 mentarily unmoored. What emerges is music attuned to the quiet intensity o
 f being alone in public\, where observation becomes its own form of partic
 ipation.\n\n This dual position – being both observer and participant 
 — harks 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 t
 o via Napster and Limewire\, and those thrilling early days of downloading
  music and genre-splicing\,” he explains. “It’s the same with select
 ing songs on a jukebox. I love fragments. I love sketches. I’ve always b
 een obsessed with worlds within worlds\, and how subplots create a whole.
 ” He continues\, comparing Café Paradiso to a “three-act play\,” or
  a script for a “feature film\,” and citing references such as Saint E
 tienne\, The Silver Apples\, Towa Tei. “I mean this album is pretty band
 y\,” Blanco says\, “it’s a festival album.”\n\n Café Paradiso doe
 s not mark a rupture so much as a refinement in the career of Mykki Blanco
 . Drawing together years of experimentation across music\, performance\, a
 nd visual art\, this album arrives at a point of transient clarity — it 
 is a confident statement of intent\, positioning Blanco not simply as a sh
 ape-shifter\, but as an artist in full command of his present form.\n\nBol
 etos: https://www.tixforgigs.com/Event/75416/mykki-blanco-support-perera-e
 lsewhere-hafenklang-hamburg
URL;VALUE=URI:https://360exp.net/events/c0c3eb8e-9885-4ae5-8d28-b2faf7e5253
 2
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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