It’s Saturday night 3am, tomorrow’s my only day off, and I’m here writing my latest blog entry – something’s gone wrong somewhere, surely. It’s been a heavy week. Wednesday was Vikter Duplaix at Mercado – on a school night too, Thursday was Jorge’s Birthday, so by Friday evening, I was ready for a quiet night in. My Slovenian housemates had other plans. They’d planned a ‘Bad Czech’ party. But what’s a ‘Bad Czech’ party I here you ask? Well I guess it’s kinda the equivalent of a ‘Bad Taste’ party only with slightly more emphasis on combining the worst fashion crimes of the 80’s and 90’s – a rich source admittedly! Only I hadn’t planned for it, so had to improvise. My pastel ensemble, B-boy 'fly for a white guy' kinda look was pretty effective to be fair (peruse the photos if you’re unconvinced). Although I found people’s reaction to my blue shoes a little harsh, particularly the ‘where on earth did you get those things?’ type queries. “Well actually they’re my favourite pair, I wear them all the time.” bounced around my head, but never quite made it out of my lips. The music was also a fitting array of badness, with some pop nastiness from the last few decades, sprinkled with some dirty obscure electro (I even became acquainted with the wonders of Slovenian ‘Magnifico’, despite their Bosnian influence, which is painfully obvious to your average listener, no?). This heady cocktail, along with a few Caiprinhas to wash the beer down, fuelled a bit of improvised living room/ dancefloor tomfoolery. The liberating effect of knowing you look like a complete tosser is intriguing. You’ve just got to let the inner-geek free and by surveying the scene it would appear there were quite a few in attendence. It was like I'd suddenly been teleported to the sweaty last dance of their annual conference, decked in ill-fitting tennis shorts, cardi and sporty head-band to keep the ginger afro in check, with Napoleon D on the decks and dancing in a way only he (and Erland Oye) . By 3am the geeks had generated enough collective self-confidence to venture out into enemy territory, and were aiming for the Bairro. But it seems the true geek in me was stronger than I’d bargained for, so I decided to decline and head to bed, the inner geek needed to sleep.

The only other notable event to recall would be my night at the Numera Projecta, to see Akufen play. He was on last after 3 other performances. First up, some guy playing bizarre instruments – very fourtet – nice, then came a couple of VJ’s from London, playing dance tracks set to film and Tv scenes. Very watchable, if not a little predictable with the choice of clips, but a little odd to sit watching them play when you’re sat in a cinema.

I’m not sure that any venue, would have helped me understand the next set – I wanted to understand it, but the seemingly random sequences of noise, blips and distortion, remained a mystery - the sonic equivalent of a magic eye picture that never reveals itself no matter how hard you stare at it. If you wanna try, the guy’s name is Kim Cascone, think he’s worked with David Lynch before if that makes things clearer. Akufen to the rescue, and on he came, thankfully playing in the foyer area of the old cinema – a bit surreal but it worked. Maybe all the sitting around had taken it out of the crowd, but they seemed reluctant to move. A few resistant pockets of head nodders and groovers held firm and eventually it spread to the rest – then it went off. I don’t mean that in any kinda cool, happening lingo – I mean the electricity, lights, music, the works, followed by a 10 minute gap of silence and darkness before it returned. Finally power was restored and things had just about got going again, to be halted by another power cut. A further two power cuts later, and the crowd’s patience was almost spent. It was still good but so frustrating and Akufen cut the figure of a man unamused by proceedings, by the end of the night.