It’s early, at least by club standards, on a Thursday night in mid-May, but the dance floor at El Cid is poppin’. On stage, Ora the Molecule flits between the synthesizer that sits on a table cloaked in glittery fabric and a theremin off to the side of her. When she looks down at the synthesizer, beams of light shoot from her disco ball helmet towards the crowd. Dressed in a red jumpsuit with matching gloves and boots, Ora the Molecule looks like a space disco diva who has just arrived on Earth. Few, if any, people in the crowd can resist her intergalactic groove.
When Nora Schjelderup, the singer and producer behind Ora the Molecule, and I connect for a video call a couple weeks later, I tell her that the show reminded me of sci-fi disco performances from 1970s European variety shows that I’ve seen floating around online.
“Yes!” she responds through laughter. “That’s exactly what I’m aiming for.”
Swimming Bell plays Permanent Records Roadhouse on Thursday, June 5
I’ll be in Phoenix on Friday night with Klub Nocturno to play new wave and darkwave at Crescent Ballroom. Last time I played Phoenix with Nocturno was a blast and I’m excited to be heading back. If you’re in the area, get yourself tickets and join us on the dance floor.
Here in Los Angeles, there are a handful of events that I want to put on your radar. Swimming Bell, who were featured on Beatique just last week, opens for Sebastian Schub at Permanent Records Roadhouse on Thursday, June 5. Tickets are available on Eventbrite for this 21+ show.
Do you ever get the feeling that your friends can read your mind?
The other day, out of nowhere, I thought of Anoraak, the French musician/producer, whose tunes have turned up a bunch in my sets over the years. (Most frequently, “Gang,” a Disco Not Disco-style jam that I played often at The Lash coming out of lockdown.) I wondered if he had anything new out, but I was also in the middle of doing something else, so I didn’t look it up. An hour later, I get a text from my friend with a Spotify link, which just happens to be a song from Anoraak, “Magnifique (Italo Edit),” that was released a few months ago. It’s fire. His new album, Golden Hour, is a fun mix of disco, funk and synthpop, but my friend’s pick is the keeper. You’ll probably be hearing it in my sets soon.
Mike Myers in So I Married an Axe Murderer ordering a ’90s coffee house cappuccino
For a good while, Beatique was just a personal blog where I would post my playlists, updates on gigs and the occasional story. In January, I figured I should turn it into a regularly updated music and culture blog that’s still very personal. Now that we’re near the middle of the year, I’m happy to say that the project is going well. There are new posts most weekdays. Interviews are a regular feature, with at least one running every week. There are also album and live reviews, event recaps, record store spotlights and the occasional rant.
Not to brag, but even I’m a little shocked that I’ve been able to post that much in between working two jobs, one of which involves a lot of writing, without using AI. It’s actually because journalism is my day job that I started putting some actual effort into the blog. Music, arts and culture journalism— which has been my beat for my entire career— is in a dismal place. It’s not just that I missed getting the music and alt culture assignments that never really came back after lockdown, but I missed reading stories that aren’t about the World’s Most Boring pop star and TikTok hits. Basically, I’m writing what I want to read, so thanks for joining me on the ride. If you want to stay up-to-date, sign up for the new mailing list. Newsletters will go out on Thursdays beginning this week and it’s free. The only thing I’m adamant about with this project is that there will be no subscriptions or paywalls.
Please share what you like, whether it’s on socials or just directly with your friends. I’m not interested in the quantity of readers so much as the quality of them, so if you know someone who is all like, “I’m really tired of paywalls on stories about social media posts,” then send them this way.
I debated whether or not I should post the Top 5 stories of the past six months because I don’t want to judge a story by how much traffic it gets, but I think these five stories are also reflective of what you’ll find here and what I have in store for the future.
In 2023, Sally Shapiro released a gorgeous cover of the Pet Shop Boys song “Rent.” I came across the song a few months after its release and it quickly became a favorite. It turned up in a lot of my DJ sets beginning in early ’24 and people would often ask, “Who does this cover?” I’m mentioning this now because Sally Shapiro just released their fifth full-length album, Ready to Live a Lie. Yes, “Rent” is on it, but so are ten equally compelling songs.
Swimming Bell’s new EP, Somnia, is out now. (Photo: Lisa Bolden)
Swimming Bell squeezes onto a makeshift stage inside Oblivion, a Highland Park shop with a rack of surfboards propped up against a wall painted beach shack white and a cascade of houseplants falling over the front entrance. It’s a tiny space, where the crowd is gathered between racks of clothing and tables of accessories, while the sound board is set up behind a changing room curtain. Still, Katie Schottland has assembled six other musicians to join her for this Friday night gig, where they play shoehorned between drums, congas, keyboard, pedal steel and a bounty of pedals and cables.
“Of course, after making the EP, I was like, I need someone to play percussion. I need keyboard. I need pedal steel. Harmony. I need it all,” Schottland says on a video call the day before the show. It was a tight fit, but the band played well, reflecting the breezy, oceanic sound of Swimming Bell’s latest EP, Somnia, in songs like “Found at the Bottom of the Ocean” and “I’m Always Down.”
I’m not DJing this week, but there are a few special events happening that I think you should know about.
Leather Strip is playing Los Angeles on Saturday night *and* it’s a vintage Zoth Ommog set. I Speak Machine and Damascus Knives are opening, plus there will be DJ sets from Joe Virus (The Church, Dallas) and Industrial Nova (Oakland/SF). This is an L.A. Industrial show that’s happening at Slipper Clutch, which is pretty small, so, don’t snooze on getting tickets. There’s a good discount for advance tickets, while they’re available, over at Resident Advisor. This is a 21+ show.
Sunday is the beginning of Bleak Week: Cinema of Despair, the American Cinematheque festival of movies that will make you feel really bad. Screenings are happening between June 1 and June 7 at the Egyptian, Los Feliz 3 and The Aero. I highlighted some of the movies in next week’s Discover Los Angeles listings, but there are more worthy films in this year’s lineup. I regret to inform you, though, that the screening of Christiane F. At Los Feliz 3 on Tuesday, June 3, is already sold out. (If you’ve never seen Christiane F., you must and I know for sure that you can rent it at Videotheque because that’s where I found it.) But, there are still tickets to see Dogtooth at the Aero in Santa Monica on June 1, Melancholia at the Egyptian on Wednesday, June 4and so much more. What a lineup of movies! The film fest comes to a close the following weekend with screenings of Watership Down and Grave of the Fireflies. Check American Cinematheque’s website for the full, depressing schedule.
Ora the Molecule live at El Cid in Silver Lake on May 15, 2025 was an inspiration for the first half of this set. (Pic: Liz O.)
Earlier this month, I caught Ora the Molecule play at El Cid in Silver Lake. It was such a fun show. The crowd grooved throughout the duration of her set and, by the end, had formed a conga line that snaked around the small dance floor. Ora the Molecule is Norwegian DJ Nora Schielderup’s Italo disco alter, a theremin-playing intergalactic Raffaella Carrà whose songs are simultaneously cheeky and sincere. My favorite off her latest album, Dance Therapy, is “Nobody Cares,” a sentiment I find more liberating than depressing.
Maria Somerville concluded her five-week tour, which included the singer’s first U.S. jaunt, on Saturday, May 24 at Zebulon in L.A. (Pic: Liz O.)
On Saturday, May 24, Maria Somerville closed out a five week tour, which included her first U.S. jaunt, at Zebulon in Los Angeles. Playing with a full band, the Irish musician transformed the sublime, often atmospheric, sound of her two albums into a shoegaze blowout. It was loud and cathartic and I’m really glad that Zebulon keeps a bowl of earplugs near its entrance.
I grabbed a spot right in front of the bassist’s zone on stage, next to some dudes who were investigating the pedals. (I told you this was a shoegaze show!) A hodgepodge of tunes played as the small, Frogtown venue filled with people. Hearing “French Disko,” the Stereolab song, was an appropriate way to prepare for the show that was about to start. I noticed a My Bloody Valentine t-shirt in the crowd too, which was both completely expected and probably a bit of foreshadowing.
Bird songs open Luster, the sophomore album from Maria Somerville and her debut full-length with venerable indie label 4AD. Their chirps, taken from a field recording at the singer/producer’s home in Connemara, Ireland, slowly give away to a kind of ethereal ambience with Róisín Berkeley on harp and Henry Earnest on guitar.
Somerville, who also hosts “The Early Bird Show” on NTS, self-released her debut album, All My People. In between the two albums, she moved from Dublin back to her hometown. “It’s grounding and expansive there, and gives me spaciousness, which maybe subconsciously shapes how I make music,” she says of the move in an email interview.
