Washed and Found: A Musical Journey at Brother’s Wash and Dry
Jackie Ward ‘27
Image courtesy of Theo Mays ‘27.
It is a November night on the border of Brooklyn and Queens, and I am walking into Brothers Wash and Dry, the “laundromat” with no laundry. Instead, this DIY institution, built from the shell of a long since defunct laundromat, serves as a combination artist space, production studio, some guy’s apartment and occasional music venue.
The warmly lit space is furnished floor to ceiling with salvaged ephemera, ranging from an uncanny, dioramic dollhouse made from a hollowed-out CRT TV to a giant six-foot plastic hand suspended from the ceiling by rope. It feels less like a venue ( even less like a laundromat) and more like the eccentric antique store of an exceedingly strange hoarder of Old New York. The waiting music, consisting of old funk and disco 12-inches, slowly fades. Out walk three shirtless men in rubber fish masks.
This bewildering trio is Porcelain Vivisection, and they set off the night’s music with blazing free jazz. Over the top of scuzzy guitar noise and pounding drum fills, the saxophonist and lead vocalist screams a semi-improvised furious and spit-flecked rant on topics ranging from doing laundry to taking a much-needed nap. I am in the front row, and less than three feet from the faces of these fishy firebrands, and am filled with a combination of glee, abject terror and a suspicion that at any moment I could be drawn into their schemes. I am right.
The jazz suddenly ceases and is replaced by a looped easy listening recording over which our protagonist (the leading fish-man) croons, “It’s tea time.”
Two of the fish men put down their instruments and sit down on the floor, dipping their fingers in a cup of water and rubbing it on each other’s (fish mask) heads, as the bondage-harness-clad drummer salutes the audience. The fish men get up and begin performing tea baptisms on the front row of the audience, entrancing me as a Brit with an already religious relationship with tea. Lukewarm water is sprinkled on my head by a man dressed only in Lakers basketball shorts and a fish mask, like some historically dubious nightmare incarnation of the Boston Tea Party. After this ritual is performed, the band raises their hands to the sky in praise and forms the letter “T” with their arms. As the loop subsides, it finally seems as if the madness is complete. I am wrong.
The lead singer produces from his pocket a blue liquid of unknown origin and asks in a low growl, “Does anybody recognise this blue ooze? Ohh do I have ooze. OHH do I have ooze. I sure as hell have some ooze. Is anyone familiar with this ooze?”
Some poor soul is offered as sacrifice by his friend, possessing knowledge of the ooze and as the snare slowly rises and the guitar begins to shriek, he is invited to the stage, beckoned to his knees and is fed the mysterious libation. Four more minutes of Frank Zappa’s delinquent grandchildren and they file off backstage (the bedroom), and calm is restored, accompanied by an exclamation that the ooze tastes like blue raspberry.
A tough act to follow! Kaho Matsui and More Eaze (aka Mari) come next. Kaho Matsui has been at the cutting edge of breakcore since her lush and gorgeous self titled album that came out last year, and More Eaze is a staple of the new wave of electroacoustic and ambient music on Bandcamp. Together they didn’t disappoint, conjuring crystalline, towering soundscapes that ebbed between discordant sound collage and ethereal ambient harmony. Their set is rooted in a modular synth setup; a tangle of patch cables and technicolor eurorack modules create immense walls of sound, accompanied by Mari’s vocals and electric violin. After starting with pummelling walls of noise, they come to a beautiful and subdued conclusion almost resembling a lullaby.
The last band on is a Texan art post-punk indie prog smorgasbord by the name of Starfruit. They had released their debut album the day before the show, and while the full record was one of the most original indie albums of the year, it is clear that it can’t hold a candle to the energy and punch of their live performance. With the cramped space of the laundromat, the five-piece take up half of the room, and the keyboardist performs in the crowd, a mistake for reasons that will later become apparent. By the second to last song, there had only been mild, space-appropriate moshing.
In comes this geezer, a British bloke of 50, who immediately starts smashing into people like billiard balls. The crowd heaves back and forth in this tiny 30-square-foot space until, like dominoes, the geezer falls into a drunk girl, who flails into my friend, who fumbles into yet another friend, who tumbles into the keyboard. The stand collapses. The lead singer is rolling around on the floor and jumping off the drum kick (which had to be reconstructed halfway through the set), and the madness ebbs on till the last note.
In my first two months in New York, I had been to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, but still searched for the strange, fabled glory of New York’s DIY scene, to find it alive and well in the basements and laundromats of the outer boroughs. Running out of the Baskin-Robbins/Dunkin Donuts back to the very last L train, and jamming it open with my foot, I am washed (but not dried) with contentment. I stagger back to Bronxville with ringing ears and a bewildered smile.