The Bunker Pride with Eris Drew, Carlos Souffront, Mike Servito, Lauren Flax at Market Hotel
1140 Myrtle Avenue
all ages, 10p-6a
$15-25 advance
Eris Drew is a DJ, musician and trans mystic. She has been a longtime resident at Chicago's Smart Bar and co-founded Hugo Ball, the club's long-running polysexual Dada-inspired dance party.
Eris is known for her ecstatic and intensely rhythmic sets which channel the Motherbeat. This transcendent primordial healing energy and mathematics speaks through music and all things, from bird songs and locomotives to U.K. hardcore and krautrock. At the time the Motherbeat was revealed to her—23 years ago—Eris was a closeted teenager. In the decades that followed, her engagement with this ecstatic Gaian pulse was secreted as a private source of comfort and reprieve from dysphoria. During this time, Eris formed a highly personal and alchemical relationship with her rave records and synthesisers while unwittingly incorporating ideas described by Surrealism, shamanism, chaos magic and Dischordianism into her rituals. Over the past year, her path to transition has released all of her stored energy onto dance floors, leading to mythic sets at Club Toilet, Hot Mass, Honcho’s Campout, the Bunker NY and, most recently, at Tuf ‘till Dawn in Seattle. Eris has also performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Art Institute in Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland. She gives lectures on electronic music history with a focus on marginalized voices for Daphne and mentors aspiring vinyl DJ’s for Walking and Falling.
Carlos Souffront is a music gourmet, a true DJ's DJ. His taste is rich and vast and he has the unique ability to create deeply rhythmic narratives that offer unexpected and exotic spices. He mastered his deep mixing skills with a cassette deck and a belt drive turntable in his father's den in Troy, home of contemporaries such as Mike Servito, Tadd Mullinex and Matt Dear. Equally entrenched in indie rock, post punk, experimental music, ambient, rock, house, and techno, Carlos was always a man of many worlds - with an ability to traverse though them with an unique imagination. There is a mood to his search within sound, something that is heavy, deep yet gritty. Like many Caribbean transplants that ends up in northern colder climates, he wonders where our rhythmic complexity is. For him it is effortless and endlessly surprising to the listener.
Carlos is an important component of the Interdimensional Transmissions parties, bringing a loose yet tight moody deepness and an ever unexpected edge. At the original No Way Back party, he demanded truth in advertising, pushing us to and then past the 12 hour mark. He has participated in the studio with Ectomorph, and also performed alongside some of their live performances.
It is all too rare to find someone within the electronic music spectrum that can be called an original, that you can only really explain to someone who experienced them on the dance floor, usually just by saying "that's so" and saying their name. Carlos is one of those rarities. (bio by BMG)
Mike Servito is from a very special yet temporary and partially lost fertile crescent of techno / house / party DJing. It was a time when raves were still a fresh idea, almost felt like a revolution, and DJs like Claude Young, D Wynn, Derrick Carter and Mike Huckaby were informing an upcoming generation. If you look directly to that inspired generation you will find the lost threads of Detroit Techno, House and beyond, you will find a group of DJs with insanely deep mixing skills, the ability to rock almost any kind of party with an improvisational approach that is so skilled it makes everything seem so well thought out that even they don't know where their set will go. But, it will take you there! In the future, this special generation of deep midwest mixers will be remembered and revered as the wizards they are, long after the trendy players have lost their luster.
Detroit never forgot about Mike Servito, his upfront dirty deep and bitchy taste has had an impact on Detroit nightlife for over a decade. From debuting in 1995 at Dat's Poorboy parties, to being a resident at blackbx and Ghostly's Untitled (along with Derek Plaslaiko, Tadd Mullinix, Matthew Dear, and Ryan Elliott), contributing to the bizarrely popular, wild and free Dorkwave, to blowing minds at Interdimensional Transmissions' No Way Back parties, Servito has made his impression. Moving to Brooklyn, Detroit's loss has been their gain, as he has found a proper home with a residency at The Bunker, and representation by Beyond Booking in North America and Odd Fantastic in Europe.
Lauren Flax is a Detroit native and long time Brooklyn resident who has been performing internationally for many years in a variety of projects and genres. She is known as a versatile and unique artist, an in-demand DJ and a producer with an extensive discography of original tracks, collaborations and remixes, including work with a long list of world class talent such as Grammy nominated artist Sia, Little Boots and Tricky. She has toured worldwide as a member of the successful trip-hop project CREEP and can currently be found giving life to hedonistic dance floors at her many DJ gigs, most recently at Nowadays, House of Yes and Elsewhere in Brooklyn and Panorama Bar and Whole United Queer Festival in Germany.
The past several months have seen Lauren busy in her home studio, refining her analog hardware live set and working on her solo productions. In the last year, she released Dance Trax Vol. 16, a 5 track EP of acid-tinged jack tracks on DJ Haus’ Unknown To The Unknown label and contributed standout tracks to a number of dance music compilations, including a collaboration with Tigga Calore on Allergy Season’s Physically Sick 2. Lauren shows no sign of slowing down in 2019, with EPs due out on The Bunker NY and 2MR records and upcoming collaborations with The Juan Maclean, Chambray, Craig Williams and Gettoblaster.
We're excited to announce our sixth annual Pride celebration, being held this year for the first time at Market Hotel. As is a Bunker Pride tradition, our lineup is completely made up of American artists to acknowledge that without the LGBTQIA+ community in the USA, dance music would not be what it is today. This year we will also be celebrating World Pride and Stonewall 50 which honors those who led the way in the fight for queer liberation. Bringing together a unique line-up that celebrates the diversity of our dance floor, we invite all sexual orientations, gender identities, and races to join together in the name of love, respect, music and pride to celebrate all of those who've danced before us.
A portion of proceeds will be donated to the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. Their mission statement: "We seek to increase the political voice and visibility of low-income people and people of color who are transgender, intersex, or gender non-conforming. SRLP works to improve access to respectful and affirming social, health, and legal services for our communities. We believe that in order to create meaningful political participation and leadership, we must have access to basic means of survival and safety from violence." More info at https://srlp.org/