In case you were still scratching your head after all the ridiculously obvious hints we dropped, or you didn’t notice when Brooklyn Vegan itself let the cat out of the bag, Real Estate was the not-secret-headliner at the SXSW pump-up party Micro-Pixel-Rites hosted at the PIXELHORSE HQ in Bushwick last Saturday night. (Come on guys, the Facebook invite said “featuring members of Ducktails, Alex Bleeker and the Freaks, and Predator Vision”).
Visitation Rites, Microphone Memory Emotion, and PIXELHORSE are TERRIBLY sorry for the all the cigarette butts, PBR cans, and falafel balls that were left behind in the stairwell of said loft building, but also TERRIBLY touched to have hosted some of New Jersey’s finest in a context they have all but outgrown. After watching them become an international success story, I got to see these vocational boys-next door in exactly the way they should be seen: at a house party, surrounded by friends and ear-to-ear grins on all sides, watching Seinfeld Season 3 on the overhead projector, and hearing the cops roll up just in time for the closing chord.
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When I emailed Jan Rew Midelfort and Etienne Pierre Duguay asking for an interview about the weekly Yoga party they started this summer on the roof of the Market Hotel in Bushwick, I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t going to get away with just sending over a list of questions. Duguay–one of the venue’s resident promoters, as well as the drummer for Real Estate and Predator Vision–responded demanding that I arrive at 7:00 pm sharp the following Wednesday to participate in the Yoga class myself. Midelfort–also a musician, and one of the most talented psychedelic music DJ’s I know–added that I should bring my violin along, because it would be “awesome” if I could perform a continuous drone during the New Age music component of the event, which happens after the sun goes down. I did not have the chance to get in touch with Aurora Halal, the event’s third core organizer, but I’m pretty sure she would have responded with yet another suggestion encouraging me nix the habit of passive spectatorship that journalists tend to fall back on.![orangeyouglad452[1]](http://www.visitation-rites.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/orangeyouglad4521.jpg "orangeyouglad452[1]")
Is there something in the water in Ridgewood, New Jersey, or does the Garden State just happen to be coughing up a lot of blissed-out psychedelia these days? Like childhood neighbor and long-time collaborator Matt Mondanile (Ducktails, Predator Vision, Real Estate), Julian Lynch has been churning out more quality homegrown recordings than we have time to digest. His sound, a one-man patchwork of vocals, wah wah guitar, bass, drums, and kitschy synth effects, carries the happy-go-lucky quality synonymous with recent Ridgewood output into the territory of the singer-songwriter. 
