Android love, humans vs. computers, artificial intelligence, uploading the subconscious: If Ra Ra Riot was reading up on these hyper-specific topics while writing the songs for their next record, and if these themes worked their way into the fabric of their lyrics, does that make the resulting effort a concept album? According to bassist Mathieu Santos, no: science fiction novels and Ray Kurzweil's theoretical writings have been on the band's reading list since they were touring behind 2010's The Orchard, and the subject matter comes up pretty frequently in practice these days.

See Also:
-The Ten Best Concerts in New York This Week, 1/21/13
-This Weekend! tUnE-YaRdS, Ra Ra Riot, Hot Chip, "Donuts Are Forever," And So Much More

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Maks Suski

The old Silent Barn space during its final party in 2011.

The collective behind the DIY venue Silent Barn is closer than ever to having a new home; it's in talks to sign a 10-year lease on a building and has released for the first time its floor plan. The DiY venue closed the doors at its Ridgewood location following a 2011 break-in, then raised $40,000 on Kickstarter to find a new space. It has spent the last year looking for a new home, and according to Silent Barn spokesperson Lani Combier-Kapel a new space could be open for shows as soon as mid-September.

"Some people say two weeks, some people say two months," Combier-Kapel said this weekend, following a panel discussion on the idea of all-ages shows held in a former Masonic temple in Ridgewood. The lease has yet to be signed, but as soon as it is, or very shortly thereafter, Silent Barn will begin throwing shows again, she said—in a legal, more permanent home.

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Maks Suski

The old Silent Barn space during its final party in 2011.

After a year of wandering the wilderness, DIY venue-cum-collective Silent Barn has found a new home. Although details on its specific whereabouts are scant, a website launched yesterday by the itinerant group announces that they have a four-month period to renovate a 10,000-square-foot loft "in the heart of Bushwick, Brooklyn." It will have three floors; one will be commercial, the other two residential.

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Reedist Ilhan Ersahin seems reluctant to make too big a deal out of the fact that nublu, his multi-culti Avenue C nightspot, was shuttered for much of last year. On a recent evening, as he moved casually about the room in preparation for a blistering late-night appearance by the Sun Ra Arkestra, Ersahin was clearly much more interested in what the club's distant past augured for its future.

Nublu reopened in January after securing a new liquor license from the city, but it's almost as if the spot—known as the kind of musician's hang that attracts an internationalist breed of fashion-forward cosmopolitans—was conserving its energy for the various reunions and events in its month-long 10th-anniversary celebration, currently under way. The scene was customarily head-twisting: The Arkestra's 88-year old leader Marshall Allen was onstage setting up in full costumed regalia as a youthful crowd grooved to electro-beats spun by Turntable on the Hudson's DJ Nickodemus. On the way to a better vantage point near the stage, avant-bassist Henry Grimes and his wife could be spotted pausing briefly in front of the wall painting of legendary record man Ahmet Ertegun. Amadeo Pace of Blonde Redhead was chatting at the bar. Things seemed to have picked up right where they left off.

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Karen Plemons

Silent Barn's Nat Roe; Alison Sirico; Mustard Beak's Nicolai Kurt and Niina Pollari; Parallel Art Space's Rob de Oude; Ashcan Orchestra's colorful hand bells

Like a lot of panel discussions about art, Saturday's Silent Barn Public Meeting #2—a talk and concert sponsored by the currently on-hold DIY space in the carpeted and wood-paneled upper room at Ridgewood's Gottscheer Hall—had a lot of talk about community engagement. Unlike a lot of arts panel discussions, however, the community was actually there to talk back. In a way, it's a mark of success: here are a dozen young arts entrepreneurs basically spinning theoretical yarns about how, eventually, they'd love to involve people from the community in what they do. As it turned out, the community was already there. And they didn't always appreciate being talked about like some foreign body, loosely orbiting the artistic world.

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Rough Trade in Notting Hill, London.

This fall, a new record store will open in Williamsburg, and it'll come bearing a brand name that's pretty impressive: The store will be called Rough Trade NYC, as in "the legendary string of British record shops Rough Trade." Billing itself as a "place to discover, browse, debate and purchase the finest recorded music," the store will also double as a venue, with Bowery Presents adding its live offerings to its already-robust list of halls it books around the city. No word on where exactly in Williamsburg the shop will be located, although given its aim to be a gathering place the space will probably be on the large side. Press release with rapturous quotes from all involved parties below.

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Karen Piemons

"Scary Mirrors": A suggestion for the new Silent Barn space.

"Dog Farts," the official minutes of the committee working to find a new home for Silent Barn's February 20 meeting, outlined some of the concerns leading up to the first Silent Barn Public Meeting, a sort of combination student council meeting, shareholder information session, panel discussion on the nature of DiY, and concert. That session, which would focus on the future of the pleasantly bedraggled Ridgewood live-in show space that shut its doors for good last year, was scheduled for March 2—a little over a week away—and things weren't totally in place. Who would put the mics in the flower pots for the sound installation? Who could print the zines ("Jordan thinks maybe he can print them at work (what will they do, fire him?")? Who would convince the owners of Gottscheer Hall, the Queens bar with intimidatingly sized European beers and sedate German-expat regulars that had been booked for the event, that the Silent Barn crew wasn't some kind of "freaky devil cult"?

By Friday, though, Gottscheer Hall had been transformed: sculptures covered the heavily trodden burgundy carpet; a map of Brooklyn and Queens showing the over 100 spaces the Silent Barn crew has investigated as new homes was pinned to the wood-paneled walls; and a table laid out with dozens of handouts asking for help ("Can you help us with soldering irons?") also showed a few of the suggestions received through the online survey on the future on the space, the Barn Exam. (An entire poster was dedicated to one suggestion, "scary mirrors.")

This combination of well-meaning let's-put-on-a-show enthusiasm and open-source fretting is typical of the current state of affairs at Silent Barn—or "Silent Barn," as it was referred to, as if it was more concept than place. Indeed, as G. Lucas Crane—a wild-eyed and bushy-bearded lifelong Brooklynite who's emerged as something of an unofficial spokesman for the space—put it, since its move from 915 Wyckoff last year Silent Barn is as much "energy" as anything else.

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It's been about 36 hours since Beyoncé gave birth to Blue Ivy Carter, her first child with Jay-Z, so why shouldn't he release a song dedicated to his new offspring? And so, here's "Glory," credited to Jay-Z and "B.I.C.," who apparently is an up-and-coming young star responsible for the coos and gurgling that floats in and out of the song. (But what could the acronym mean???) It's happy and humbled just like all those shots of new dads in movies; you can almost smell the cigars being lit as Jay tosses off his first (but probably not last) dedication to his daughter, which has as its best line "You're the child of a child from Destiny's Child." Listen below.

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via Rubulad's Kickstarter

The announcement of this month's Rubulad bash, which takes place this Saturday near the Gowanus Canal, comes with the note "please forward wildly." There are plenty of good reasons for this, the least of which is that it will be awesome; the forthcoming installment of the 18-years-running DIY art party will have a Light Circus Extraordinaire, G. Scopitronic's Non-Stop Film Fest, and an array of dance rooms, live acts, and food.

But not long ago, a typical Rubulad invite warned recipients against posting the information to "any public lists"; even glimpsing the party's often dangerously packed dance environs, let alone knowing its name, was a word-of-mouth treat. That, though, was when the art-party collective had a home, one located a few BQE exits north from this Saturday's Santa-themed extravaganza.

For the past six years, Rubulad has occupied an unassuming two-story building in the Williamsburg/Bed-Stuy hinterland nestled between iron shops, glitzy Bar Mitzvah palaces, and the BQE. But that time is nearing an end. Rubulad's Kickstarter campaign to relocate ends on Thursday, and it's currently raised $21,375—somewhat far from its ambitious fundraising goal of $35,000.

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The Silent Barn's Kickstarter campaign has officially been deemed a success, with the formerly-in-Ridgewood venue/performance space/art space/etc. ready to use the $40,595 it raised through the peer-to-peer fundraising program (as well as money from benefit shows and other initiatives) to start casting about for a new space—and, as is customary with Kickstarter campaigns, to send out thank-you presents to people who were particularly generous. The people behind the space posted a message to their supporters on Facebook that has thank yous to important people, an update on their move to a new location, and, should you be so inclined, information on how to get involved in the next steps of the DIY space's development. There's even a test!

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