OBSERVATION ROOM
w/ MangoDog, Stare Away
8/7/25 – Bowery Electric Basement – NYC
©Alice Teeple
Half a block from CBGB’s ghost, in the Bowery Electric’s charged basement, August’s edition of New Goth New York unfolded like one of those fever dreams you half-remember on the subway, the ones that carry the scent of hairspray, stale beer, and the urgent pulse of possibility. The showcase, curated by DJ Ivy Oh and Patrick Bobolin of Midnight Choir, was less a gig and more an argument…wordless, sweaty…that the city’s underground is still a place where disparate histories and bodies fold together into a single, throbbing forever.
Observation Room opened, Marina F and Chloe Olson stepping into the light with a kind of quiet precision, the kind that’s sharper than noise. Synth-pop for people who’ve lived through the noise and know the beauty of holding a note just a fraction longer than comfort allows. Theirs is the measured heartbeat of Maine’s woods sped up to meet the city’s insomnia; bass lines pressed against crystalline harmonies, tension disguised as tenderness.
Then came MangoDog, an animal entirely different. With co-conspirators Clearjaw and Xerish drifting in and out of the frame, MangoDog played ringleader, instigator, street-corner poet in borrowed disguises…Andy Warhol wig, Where’s Waldo glasses. The set was less linear performance than open-ended happening: bodies pulled into the act, rhythms ricocheting through the floor, a reminder that sometimes the best art is just an unguarded moment stretched until it nearly snaps.
Stare Away closed with a stubborn refusal to be pinned down. New Jersey in birth certificate only, the sound jumped decades: Joy Division’s brooding, The Teardrop Explodes’ oddball charm, Jonathan Bree’s masked mischief…spun faster, harder, as though someone accidentally played the record at 45. The lo-fi electronics murmured, the melodies smirked, and the whole thing leaned into a kind of romantic futurism, nostalgia with its collar up against the wind.
Around it all: a room dense with dancers and conspirators, strangers making friends in the queue for the bar, drinks sloshed in shared laughter. The diversity on display wasn’t a checkbox or quota, it was the point: proof that in New York, music is still a borderless language. Other luminaries in the NYC synth scene graced the club’s strobe-speckled floor, including RareDM, Behor, DJ Rob Barriales, and None Shall Remain‘s Peter Michell. Outside, the Bowery glimmered with its usual late-night grit. Inside, it was 3 a.m. forever, and the city’s heart was very much still beating.
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