Courtesy of Backwoodz Studioz
All Hours: Detours
Late-night dispatches from recent performances by billy woods and Autechre, as well as opening night at Refuge
“Detours” is a column within our “All Hours” column, collecting the recent rants of BKMAG nightlife reporter Arielle Lana LeJarde from dance floors, green rooms, and shows all over the city.
As a self-proclaimed nightlife veteran, my weekend gets pretty packed with events in all corners of New York (though, more acutely, Brooklyn, since I rarely leave the neighborhood anyway). But I don’t just go to raves or parties—I’m committed to sniffing out what’s new, interesting, and thriving around town, regardless of the format or borough. So, we’re launching Detours, a column within a column, if you will, as a little companion to All Hours, which was beginning to feel like it could use a little more room to accommodate all of the improv and discovery a night out might entail.
In the first installment, I hit billy woods‘ biggest performance in the city to date, (almost sleeplessly) attend the opening of a brand new club, and try to figure out just how “intelligent” I need to be to understand one of IDM’s most essential acts.
Courtesy of Backwoodz Studioz
Finding the bitches at the billy woods show
The set list (Photo by Arielle Lana Lajarde)
I’ve had an inside joke with myself for the past three years that I’m usually one of five girls (if even that) at an underground rap concert. I didn’t expect anything different for billy woods’ biggest hometown show to date—the GOLLIWOG tour at Knockdown Center this past September. Was I going to be wrong this time? With names like Cleo Reed and DJ Haram blessing the bill, surely there would be more women in the crowd… right?
It’s a cool Wednesday night when I walk through the sea of people inside the venue and outside in the smoking area to investigate. Could I find some women who weren’t with a man to speak to? At one point, my ex-boyfriend points out a woman walking swiftly across the smoking pit, but it turns out to literally be Kelly Moonstone. I stop her anyway, and we talk for a bit before my quest continues. I managed to find just two in total.
Elina walks up to me first, recognizing me from my work with HEADS KNOW. She tells me she had heard about woods from her boyfriend, who lived in Philadelphia. That’s why she was alone tonight. Typical. She also says she’s been a fan for years, dating back to the rapper’s Hiding Places era.
It almost felt like cheating, since Elina already knows who I am, so I scour the smoking area for more femmes. I timidly approach two Argentine baddies—one who can’t speak English that well, so I divert my attention to the other. Maria discovered billy woods around the same time. The rapper performed at AKAI SOLO’s Black Sand listening party, and she was hooked ever since. “I’m just into music,” she tells me, listing off other underground rappers she likes.
Once billy woods comes on, I’m locked in, but still vigilant to find more women to talk to after. There were none I could see, but the two I did find, I followed on Instagram. So at least I made new friends. I also got the setlist from woods and his DJ for the night, Mo Niklz, so that was cool.
Photo by Javier E. Piñero
Pulling an all-nighter for the Refuge opening
I managed to get on the guest list for Refuge‘s opening night with one caveat from the venue’s booker: I have to see Paranoid London with Josh Caffé. It wouldn’t be daunting if they weren’t performing at 5 a.m, and if I hadn’t also promised to see the New York stop of a friend’s party launch the night before and go to Nowadays the morning after.
But going to three parties in 12 hours? Nobody does it like me.
10 p.m.: I get to Carpark at 154 Scott to see Nikki Nair open up for salute’s Infinite Passion stop in New York City. He’s building up the momentum with his weird blend of electro and techno in the small basement of the venue, which Nikki later says reminds him of Twin Peaks. After his set ends, we talk for a while before he leaves to find a bathroom.
11 p.m.: I meet up with salute in the green room and indulge in free drinks. It’s going to be a long night, so I try to save money where I can. Someone brings freshly-baked lemon bars. Don’t mind if I do.
12:30 a.m.: salute takes the stage, and I can barely get to the middle to see them. The room is packed wall-to-wall with fans who are excited to hear them take their sexy spin on NUKG, but I want to DANCE.
1:30 a.m.: I find Nikki again, who has yet to find a bathroom. I take them upstairs to the green room, and we end up talking about his PhD in physics, his journey to and through the purgatory between underground and mainstream, and all of the projects he’s working on.
Photo by Arielle Lana LaJarde
3:00 a.m.: Nikki has a flight at 7 a.m., but wants to make a pit stop in Flushing to eat Korean food. He extends an invitation, so I go along with him.
4:00 a.m.: We’re all eating soondubu in Flushing. I can’t believe I’m having dinner with one of my favorite artists.
5:00 a.m.: I barely make it to Paranoid London and Josh Caffé’s set. Their blend of rock ‘n roll, acid house, and techno is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The booker was right.
6:00 a.m.: The crowd is weird and pushy, probably because it’s 6 in the morning and everyone’s too fucked up to care. I notice it’s a weird mix of people—I see Manhattan imports in heels, techno snobs in all Black hoodies, and Bushwick regulars just looking to have a good time in the new space. I decide to leave to avoid someone else bumping into me. It’s been a long night.
6:30 a.m.: Nap time.
9:00 a.m.: I awake from my slumber and walk a few blocks to go to Nowadays (technically Queens, I know) to see Mia Koden. She plays everything from bass and breaks to reggae and jazz. My body is giving out, but I don’t stop dancing. I feel at home.
took some great pics at the autechre show last night pic.twitter.com/Khrfrdr0h4
— Christopher R. Weingarten (@1000TimesYes) October 11, 2025
Trying to get my stupid little brain to understand IDM
“Do I like this? Do I love this? Do I hate this?” My friend Clayton reminisces, walking me through his various states of processing Autechre’s late-night, no light New York City show at Brooklyn Steel last month. He takes the words right out of my mouth, because it was a lot, that performance—an intense, 80-minute cacophony of blasting breaks and scorching synths that didn’t follow any particular pattern. As someone attuned to the familiar and formulaic repetition of recognizable samples used in club music, Autechre felt out of my wheelhouse. But, as a self-proclaimed electronic music specialist, missing the IDM legends on their first tour in a long while didn’t feel like an option.
The crowd is what I expect, too: Middle-aged white men dressed in all black. They seem serious, solemn even, waiting for the duo to come on, so I felt a little uncomfortable weaseling my way to the front of the stage to meet my friends when there were clearly hardcore fans in attendance, likely far more excited than I am to experience this show.
The room is categorically pitch black during the set, a choice that seems designed to discourage people from moving around too much or filming the whole show. It’s a way to force full presence, but I felt like I was dissociating the whole time.
I try to stay cognizant during the show, attempting to take in the discordant, unpredictable blasts of drum machines and electronics in my ears. All I can do is think about how I’m going to write about a genre I know nearly nothing about and not do it justice. My mind wanders to other topics and memories, like attending my grandma’s funeral recently, my volatile love life, and what “IDM” even means when nobody is dancing. Even “braindance,” Aphex Twin’s alternate genre tag for the genre, seemed ill-fit.
“All these things about us being ‘intelligent’ and the term ‘IDM’ are just silly. I’m not a particularly intelligent person, me. I’m diligent, I’m pretty hardworking, but I’m not that clever. I ain’t got any qualifications, I just pick up stuff that I think is interesting at the time,” Autechre’s Sean Booth told Resident Advisor in a 2016 interview. “There was also the ‘Artificial Intelligence’ tag that Warp coined, but to me, as a listener, that never seemed to be saying ‘This is more intelligent.’ It was just a signifier of it being sci-fi music… Thing is, almost all the artists on that first AI compilation are just like us, they were regular kids, they’re not intelligent people particularly.”
Now, IDM is widely recognized as a fitting term for the genre. But if Intelligent Dance Music is missing the “Dance,” it was also for sure missing the “Intelligent” with me in the crowd.
