No Age No Mosh

No Age @ Apolo, Barcelona from Maria Elisa Gomez on Vimeo.

Barcelona crowds are no easy feat. Unless you're a band in the major leagues, you're playing at a festival where everyone's wasted (or English) or you play metal, chances are if you play here your crowd will just nod appreciatively and every now and then a slight attempt at moshing will be done by a brave few, only to die down quietly or be killed quietly by a big bouncer.

Thank god for teenagers then. Without the small group of keen 17 year-olds that barged their way in and started pushing people around, the boring onlookers at the front of the No Age gig wouldn't have moved from their spot, despite earnest attempts by the band to make the crowd dance. In the end, it was how it should be - guitar player atop of the amps and diving into the moshpit, a crazied audience trying to jump on stage and a concerned bouncer trying to kill it all down (not so quietly).

GIRLCORE article in Neo2

An article I wrote about Girlcore was published in the October issue of Neo2 Magazine. Here's the text in English:

A lot has been said about GIRLCORE. That boys are not allowed in. That we’re all dykes. That we featured in that Hustler video. That we’re like a hen-night on acid. That we’re feminists. Well, this is not the place for denials, they all have a bit of truth and a bit of lie. What’s actually true is that what started as a simple joke to exclude boys from our after-party has become – in this humble and subjective scribe’s opinion – in one of the best and most fun excuses, no, obligations, to go out on a Thursday night. And one of Shoreditch’s club hits to boot.

Chaotic, decadent and DIY, at the GIRLCORE parties, apart from an en exclusively female line-up (except in our annual Dragcore night), there’s a place for everything. Pansexual weddings, beauty pageants, drag queens, hula-hula shows, Oscar evenings, breakdance, rehab, freakshows, homages to Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopez... We’re 10 girls – from countries such as Colombia, Argentina, France, US, Holland and England – that dedicate ourselves to make for a different party each month and to ensure that anyone who comes to GIRLCORE has an amazing time, leaves their cool pose at the door and ends up covered head-to-toe in glitter.

Apart from our monthly nights, we’ve started expanding the GIRLCORE empire with collaborations and external events, including a short filmed in situ for the female film festival Bird’s Eye View at the Whitechapel Gallery, a radio show at Bestival, the dance tent at the Offset Festival, the Girlcore Olympic Games at Bar Music Hall and parties all around the globe in cities Duch as NY, Moscow, Berlin, Milan and Paris.

What about Girlcore Spain? Plans are in motion. So get prepared, because the next time you hear anything about GIRLCORE it will probably be true.

Club Cobra Launch

published in Urban Junkies:

The hip young things (us included, of course) gathered at Apolo on Thursday night to attend the launch of Club Cobra, the newest party to settle home at La [2].

A joint effort by the creators of the Boombox and Globo nights, it didn't disappoint: lots of fashionistas, dirty ghettotech and electro-pop hits and lots of hands up in the air. Highlight of the night though: an all-out battle between the diva-like promoter (a little worse for wear) and the crowd who ended up booing her offstage.