Last Thursday night, crowds gathered on the checkered dancefloor of Paragon in Bushwick for Pitchfork’s Year in Music party. With DJ sets from Pitchfork’s Mano Sundaresan and Alphonse Pierre, New York multi-hyphenate Anysia Kym, Chicago footwork pioneer RP Boo, Houston remixer DJ Ess, and junglists Dazegxd and Intimacy Simulator, the night captured the eclectic, genre-bending nature of dance music in 2024.

Plus, pop duo NEW YORK gave a captivating live performance on the dancefloor. Special thanks to Pitchfork for helping curate the event.

Special shout-out goes to photographer Sam Wachs who was there to capture the night.

Last night, Pitchfork readers, writers, and folks from across the music industry crammed into a AdHoc’s office loft space in Chinatown for Pitchfork’s first-ever Year in Music Mixtape, a series of conversations and games about all that went down in 2024. 

Deputy Director Jeremy D. Larson hosted, and Pitchfork’s head of editorial content, Mano Sundaresan, interviewed Alphonse Pierre about the year in rap, Arielle Gordon about the year in Brat, and Jael Holzman talked about her band Ekko Astral and their lauded debut album, Pink Balloons. 

The panelists also played games with the audience, such as “Is It Brat?” and “Is This a Real Mixtape Title?” Alphonse awarded the winners prizes from his personal stash of rap ephemera—the best might have been a DVD of Mr. 305: The Pitbull Story. And, to close things out, Jeremy gathered all of the panelists on stage for a game inspired by “101 Things That Happened in 2024, Ranked on the Pitchfork Scale.”

Special thanks to our sponsors Monopolio, Topo Chico, Visitor, and Good Spirits, and of course to our photographer Sam Wachs who was there to capture the magic.

Later this month, Pitchfork & AdHoc will host two events in New York to ring in the end of an eventful 2024.

First up is Pitchfork Year in Music, a mixtape of conversations, interviews, games, and the sounds of the year. Presented by your friends here at Thought Enthusiast, hosted by Pitchfork Deputy Director Jeremy D. Larson, and moderated by Head of Editorial Content Mano Sundaresan, the event takes place on Wednesday, December 18, and will feature conversations with critics Alphonse Pierre and Arielle Gordon, as well as special guests to be announced.

This event is free and open to the public (featuring drinks from our generous sponsors Monopolio, Topo Chico, Visitor, and Good Spirits) with limited RSVP available. Location to be announced.

The party continues on Thursday, December 19, with a Club Night featuring sets from RP Boo, Dazegxd b2b Intimacy Simulator, Anysia Kym, DJ Ess, Alphonse Pierre, and Mano.

Tickets for Club Night are available for sale here, and the show will take place at a secret location to be announced via email prior to the event (presented by AdHoc.)

Doors for Club Night event open at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and the show starts at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Full set times below:

Doors, Pitchfork DJs – 9pm
Anysia Kym – 10pm
DJ Ess – 11pm
RP Boo – 12am
Dazegxd – 1am
Curfew – 2am

Can’t wait to see you there.

Last Friday, LSDXOXO brought a captivating performance to the National Sawdust stage. Synonymous with the new wave of techno artists reclaiming Black queer spaces and injecting some much-needed fun and camp into the genre, LSDXOXO left the packed audience eager for more. Opening the show, Bobby Beethoven FKA Total Freedom brought a stellar support set as well.

Many thanks to William Ruben Helms for capturing the magic of the night. Check out the full set of photos below.

LSDXOXO at National Sawdust – 10/18/24:

Bobby Beethoven at National Sawdust – 10/18/24:

This past weekend on June 28-29, 2024, we had the honor of curating the Emerging Music Festival at Manhattan’s Bryant Park for the third year in a row.

We kicked off Day 1 of Emerging Music Festival on Friday with quite a bang. The annual celebration of new emerging talent saw performances from cumbia-psych band Los Esplifs, jazz-tinged singer songwriter Mei Semones, as well as the abstract downtown pop of Chanel Beads.

Day 2 of the festival on Saturday saw incredible outdoor performances in the park from folk-pop duo @, soft indie folk project Blooomsday, Philadelphia songwriter Greg Mendez, bedroom pop musician Hannah Jadagu, and indie rock band Horsegirl. 

Check out this excellent photo recap from Joseph Buscarello.

Emerging Music Festival at Bryant Park – 6/28/24 – Day 1:

Los Esplifs, Mei Semones, and Chanel Beads.

Emerging Music Festival at Bryant Park – 6/29/24 – Day 2:

Horsegirl, Hannah Jadagu, Bloomsday, Greg Mendez, and @.

Earlier this week on Wednesday, June 19th, harpist and composer Nailah Hunter played a captivating show at the Stone Circle Theatre (a church-turned-music-venue), drawing audience members into her enchanting cosmology, combining mystical folk and ambient-inspired music.

Nailah Hunter released her magical debut album, Lovegaze, via Fat Possum back in January, and this show was the first NYC show supporting that new release. Listen to Lovegaze here.

Opening the show, we had NYC-local and AdHoc-fave June McDoom share her blend of dreamy folk music.

Many thanks to Ryan Muir who was there to capture the night. Check out the full photo gallery below.

Nailah Hunter at Stone Circle Theatre – 6/19/24:

June McDoom at Stone Circle Theatre – 6/19/24:

Last Friday, Margaux Sauvé, a French-Canadian singer-songwriter who performs as Ghostly Kisses, performed a sold-out show at National Sawdust in Brooklyn. Sauvé brougth her signature ethereal vocals alongside dreamy, minimalist instrumentals.

Opening the show was Montreal-based synth-pop artist Camille Poliquin, who performs as Kroy, ensuring the audience was properly warmed up.

Many thanks to Qbertplaya for capturing the magic of the night. Check out the full photo gallery below.

Ghostly Kisses at National Sawdust – 5/31/24:

Kroy at National Sawdust – 5/31/24:

Last Friday night, Sophie Allison – better known as Soccer Mommy – kicked off “The Lost Shows” tour at Stone Circle Theatre in Ridgewood, Queens. The church-turned-music venue was the perfect setting for Allison’s scaled down set-up for this tour: center stage with just her guitar and voice. The stage, complete with mythical forest decor of moss, leaves, and branches (production design by Abby Portner), added to the intimate feeling of the performance to a sold-out crowd. Playing a number of brand new songs, this show was certainly one of for the books for both Soccer Mommy and her fans.

Opening the night was Lightning Bug, a local NYC indie rock outfit led by vocalist/guitars Audrey Kang. Similar to Allison, Kang also performed solo. Often telling anecdotes between songs, Kang mesmerized the very excited crowd.

Lucky for us, Joseph Buscarello was there to capture the night – check out the full photo gallery below.

Soccer Mommy at Stone Circle Theatre – 5/31/24:

Lightning Bug at Stone Circle Theatre – 5/31/24:

Soccer Mommy “Evergreen” at Stone Circle Theatre – Video by Howard Shiau:

Acclaimed musician and former National Youth Poet Laureate Kara Jackson brought her blend of poetry and musical performance to Brooklyn’s Public Records this past week for two very excellent and sold out shows.

Jackson’s love of folk music is compellingly palpable on the well-received debut album she released last year, Why Does the Earth Give Us People to Love? (out now via September Recordings.)

Throughout both nights, Jackson’s performances – featuring just her and her guitar – were both vulnerable and magnetic. Drawing each audience member in, she allowed the crowd to catch a deeper glimpse of the world she’s created.

Night one saw a mesmerizing opening set from Brooklyn jazz tinged indie-pop artist Mei Semones, with night two kicking off with a hauntingly beautiful synth and acoustic guitar performance from Anastasia Coope.

Special thanks to Joseph Buscarello for capturing photos of both shows. Check out the full gallery below.

Kara Jackson at Public Records – 5/15/24:

Mei Semones at Public Records – 5/15/24:

Kara Jackson at Public Records – 5/16/24:

Anastasia Coope at Public Records – 5/16/24:

Manhattan’s Bryant Park hosts its annual outdoor event series of free Picnic Performances this summer, from May 31 through September 13. They’ve just revealed the lineup for the Emerging Music Festival, happening June 28 & June 29, which happens to be curated by us fine folk here at AdHoc. :~)

All shows are free to the public and designed to be enjoyed casually – no tickets required – with more than 700 picnic blankets for audience members to borrow and ample chairs available.

Performing this year are Chanel Beads, Mei Semones, and Los Esplifs on Friday, 6/28 and Horsegirl, Hannah Jadagu, Greg Mendez, Bloomsday, and @ on Saturday, 6/29. Learn a little bit about each artist below and see you at the park in June.

Emerging Music Festival 2024

Curated by AdHoc

Friday, June 28 at 7PM: Chanel Beads, Mei Semones, Los Esplifs

Chanel Beads — the project of New York-based musician Shane Lavers — recently released its debut album, Your Day Will Come, which marks Lavers’ arrival as a new force in experimental music. Throughout the album, Lavers captures the many contradictions of modern existence and the strange infiniteness of the digital world. Though he incorporates the scrappy sonics of post-punk, the gripping sentimentality of pop tunes, and the spectral artifice of electronic music, he blurs lines through unconventional song structures that build into transcendental climaxes. As he intentionally prints his songs down to embed fried artifacts and ghostly remains, the resulting songs have a time-collapsing quality, both transitory and timeless.

Mei Semones’ sweetly evocative blend of jazz, bossa nova and math-y indie rock is not only a way for her to find solace in her favorite genres, but is an intuitive means of catharsis. Semones chronicles infatuation, devotion, and vulnerability in her songs, complete with sweeping strings, virtuosic guitar-playing and heartfelt lyrics sung in both English and Japanese, that have all become part of her sonic trademark: ornately catchy, genre-fusing compositions serving as the backdrop to tender lyrics touching on the universalities of human emotion.

Influenced by Fania, fashion, and psychedelia, Los Esplifs blends nostalgic rhythms and sounds with progressive youth culture. Led by Bandleaders Saul Millan and Caleb Michel, this genre-bending, psychedelic “conjunto” is an instant explosive performance. With an EP and two full-length album releases in their arsenal, this six-piece Latin-Psych group is not slowing down.

Saturday, June 29 at 5PM: Horsegirl, Hannah Jadagu, Bloomsday, Greg Mendez, @

Horsegirl is a noisy rock trio from Chicago composed of Penelope Lowenstein (she/her), Nora Cheng (she/her), and Gigi Reece (they/them). Horsegirl draws inspiration from shoegaze and post-punk, in the realm of ‘90’s American and UK indie underground.

Hannah Jadagu released her debut EP, What Is Going On?, a collection of intimate bedroom pop tracks recorded entirely on an iPhone 7, which was, at the time, Jadagu’s most accessible mode of production. An off-the-cuff approach to music making and instinctive ability to write unforgettable hooks belied the intensity of Jadagu’s subject matter. In 2023, Jadagu released her ambitious debut album, Aperture, which The New York Times applauded for “Jadagu’s easy aptitude with lilting melodies and her love of deliciously crunchy texture.”

Bloomsday is the tender, cerebral project of the New York-based Iris James Garrison. Their debut 2022 album Place to Land, was largely about transitioning and finding a home in their identity, body, and in other people. Since the project’s inception in 2019, Bloomsday has toured the US extensively, including supporting Becca Mancari and Joe Vann, sets at Hopscotch Music Festival and SXSW, and playing with Courtney Barnett and Bonny Doon. Their music has been featured on NPR New Music Friday, Nylon, and Paste, among other publications. Bloomsday’s new album, Heart of the Artichoke, is out this June via Bayonet Records.

On Greg Mendez‘s most recent release, Greg Mendez, the Philadelphia-based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist investigates the shaky camera of memory, striving to carve out a collage that points to a truth. But there isn’t a regimented actuality here; instead, Mendez highlights the merit in many truths, and many lives, and how even the hardest truths can still contain some humor. While this is technically Mendez’s third full-length album, his back catalog boasts an extensive range of EPs and live recordings. He’s a prolific and thoughtful songwriter, understanding the joy in impulse, and shying away from the clinical sheen of overproduction. 2017’s ¯_(ツ)_/¯ and 2020’s Cherry Hell garnered acclaim for their quiet, lo-fi urgency, exploring themes of addiction and heartbreak with an intentional, authentic haze, and it’s this approach that has solidified Mendez as a staple in the DIY community for years.

@ (pronounced “At”) is the folk-pop project of vocalist/guitarist Victoria Rose and multi-instrumentalist Stone Filipczak. Their debut 2021 album Mind Palace Music was released to rave reviews; Pitchfork said, “Mind Palace Music is an example of what happens when you take a poignant songwriter who’s careful about her chord progressions and introduce a fellow songwriter who knows the magic of no-frills arrangements.” In 2024, @ released their new EP “Are You There God? It’s Me, @.” Diverting from their usual acoustic instrumentation, @ go soul-searching on a sonic side quest into more electronic music.