After seeing every type of costume imaginable at Taxlo on Friday, I realized there were essentially three variations on the Halloween costume: girls dressed as guys, guys dressed as girls and girls I mistakenly thought were guys dressed as girls.
For those who don't know, Taxlo is a dance party hosted every week at Sonar. The DJs spin electronic and indie rock music, and the crowd is a total Baltimore hipster fest, which is either a horrifying night of posturing or a welcome relief from Hopkins, depending on which end of the spectrum that you fall on. This week was Halloween, so whether you wanted to be horrified by the culture or to get insanely drunk and party the night away, Taxlo was a great way to spend an evening away from the legions of costumed drunk girls trekking from frat party to frat party at Hopkins.
This is not to say that the crowd at Taxlo was not costumed or inebriated beyond belief. My friends and I arrived around midnight to catch the last few DJ sets and we quickly realized two things: We were neither drunk enough nor dressed ridiculously enough to blend in for Halloween night at Taxlo. This was an extremely pleasant surprise, as it had been pouring rain since eight in the morning and the city was basically flooded. I had expected a fairly empty Sonar, predicting that few in Baltimore would brave the ugly weather for a weekly dance party, but it was obviously not just any weekly dance party. It was a Halloween party, and people had spent too much money on their costumes to forgo a precious Halloween night.
And they dressed up in full force. Beyond the standard legions of Playboy Bunnies, sexy kittens and men in drag were a wide variety of creative costumes getting progressively destroyed as the night went on. I saw a girl in a full cop uniform handcuffing every guy she saw, a terrifying grim reaper dressed in a black cloak with blood spurting out of his mask and, my favorite of all, a giant black girl dressed in a full Victorian dress whose giant white wig grew so cumbersome that she had taken it off and was waving it like crazy.
Taxlo always brings special guest DJs to supplement the talented regular crew, and this Halloween was no exception. The first was Muscles, a DJ and vocalist from Australia who specializes in ambient dance tracks to get the crowd jumping. The second was DJ Blaqstarr. Blaqstarr is a staple in the Baltimore club scene and was recently signed to Diplo's label Mad Decent, releasing the Supastarr EP and producing a few tracks on the new M.I.A. album.
I entered the club in the middle of Muscles's set, and it was a sight to behold. The small brown-haired Aussie was in the middle of the stage in front of a microphone and keyboard screaming "Peace, Love, Ecstasy" to a floor full of dancers singing along to songs they had obviously never heard of before. The music was reminiscent of a European techno club, giving sonic blasts of energy to get the crowd raving. Muscles seemed to be enjoying himself, feeding off the crowd's energy to deliver pumped up and over-the-top electronica that did not disappoint
The DJs were making swift changes that night and Muscles slipped quickly offstage and relinquished the reigns to an interim DJ while the screen was set up for Blaqstarr. Nobody noticed and the dancing continued as if a headliner was still playing. These kids weren't about to stop for anything. It was just that kind of night.
Suddenly the familiar Baltimore club sound of screams and gunshots filled the air as the giant screen on stage turned on to illuminate the entrance of DJ Blaqstarr. He wasted no time getting into it, immediately playing club favorites "Tote It" and "Superstarr." He even brought friend MC Rye Rye onstage in the middle of his set to deliver an insane live rendition of "Shake It to the Ground." I am always impressed when listening to club tracks at home that people can rhyme at hypersonic speed, and to watch an MC do it outside the safety of a studio to a full floor was a sight to behold.
