DOING POPPERS AT BRUTALISMUS 3000

Short, stupid, and rancid—just how we like it

Decided to fuck around and try something new for today’s post: recording an audio voiceover of the article for your listening pleasure—enjoy!

Picture this: it’s 8:30 pm and you’re whipping down Sunset Boulevard in a Tesla with a hyperpop Barbie and her 88-year-old sugar daddy. The destination: the Hollywood Palladium to see BRUTALISMUS 3000—a dance music duo from Berlin with a name somewhere between an energy drink and a sneaker company. As the car glides up to the parking lot, you pass a line snaking down Hollywood’s piss-covered streets, catching glimpses of girlies in Miu Miu-esque miniskirts shivering in their furry boots. You pull on Barbie’s elbow and hiss, “let’s cut in through the guestlist…”

So sugar daddy slips the valet $50 and the three of you snake around the barricades, security waving you towards a waiting area that resembles a pig pen illuminated by grim spotlights. The guards usher you through metal detectors, rifle through your bags, run their hands over every potential drug-stashing crevice of your body, and finally, confiscate a pack of gum from your pocket, plus a box of cigs from Barbie’s. It’s giving prison yard pussy pat-down.

It strikes you that this level of surveillance is the darkly comedic result of rave culture subsumed to corporate insurance policies. In 2010, a 15-year-old girl died after doing ecstasy at America’s largest EDM bonanza, Electric Daisy Carnival. Ever since, the festival’s promoter Insomniac—who is also behind tonight’s concert—began to performatively distance itself from ecstasy culture while also being symbiotically intertwined with it. The cognitive dissonance is so crazy that according to a Byzantine door policy, items like tampons and gum are considered “contraband” if the packaging is unsealed, because—god forbid!—there might be a naughty pill or baggie stashed inside. Should we ban socks next?

The BRUTALISMUS 3000 show is extremely sold out, and, miss thing, sugar daddy is not on the guestlist, tonight. Bored on a Friday night and curious about what the children are up to, he’d decided to join you and Barbie at the last minute. You’d assumed that when there’s a wad of cash, there’d be a way, but looking around now at the people pressing towards the entrance with sparkly-eyed excitement, there’s not a scalper in sight. You spot a friend working the event, give him a kiss on the cheek, and ask if there’s a way to slip sugar daddy through the door—but even he is unable to pull strings. “I’m not sure how we’re going to get you in, babe,” murmurs hyperpop Barbie to daddy, who is starting to pout.

You leave the lovers at the door to sort out their fate. Through the entrance, the room opens up to a standing-room-only dancefloor thronging with a 4,000-strong crowd. Many of the attendees jostling for space next to you look like they just graduated from college, went to Hard Festival, then discovered techno during the pandemic on Boiler Room. There is a sort of mimetic, play-by-numbers quality to their looks: wraparound sunglasses: check. All-black athletic wear: check. You could call it the Balenciaga effect on techno.