May 11, Saturday Death Set, Abstract Artimus, and Team Robespierre played at Don Pedro’s, the new Todd P. hang-out in New York. Todd P. is THE off-rock online portal for New York onder which banner concerts are promoted in the off-rock underground and whose concerts I regularly visit. Those Todd P. concerts are often a hit-or-miss with a bohemian Brooklynite artsy following, which gives the shows a certain cachat of their own. The concerts shift from location to location, but lately often take place at Don Pedro’s.

Don Pedro’s looks mostly like a local Ecuadorian society that for the occasion functions as an off-rock hang-out with a decadent pretention to look like a low-budget nightclub, and the lack of design brings an authentic charm. The ceiling consists of triplex cassettes with in each corner the logo of a Spanish language soccer club, of which I only think to recognize the logo of Barcelona. Behind the bar three hot girls with sexy outfits poor drinks, a unique feat for a grungy concert hall, and they were likely selected personally by the Hispanic owner, who I guess is the fairly small, fitted in a green ‘gangsta’ shirt and cap Latino who cheerfully walks around and has a smile and a few words for everyone. The only real decoration of the bar are the two huge flat-screen televisions that are located behind the bar and the back of the hall, playing classic movies from the fifties.

The in origin Australian duo Death Set is based in Baltimore nowadays and plays a kind of electro-grunge: simple melodies with fast rhythm guitar and an electro sample on the background. But despite one of the simplest setups you can think of, they succeed to (lees verder…)