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8 PM – Doors
9 PM – Show
BLOOD CULTURES
Art should speak for itself. This has been a guiding principle for Blood Cultures, who have always operated without ego and preamble for the music, allowing space for interpretation from the listener. This intentionality is the through line between each project that the anonymous New York experimental pop outfit has released: the genre-blurring sound of their acclaimed 2017 debut album Happy Birthday and the group’s practice of obscuring their identities (often performing in black hoods) immediately distinguished them as a singular presence in the music landscape. Their follow-up album, Oh Uncertainty! A Universe Despairs (2019), solidified their cult status with a public manifesto, affirming their commitment to anonymity as a way to “keep the relationship between the listener and the music as pure as possible.” By this time, Blood Cultures had evolved from a one-person bedroom project into a full live collective, all while maintaining a strictly enigmatic presence. In 2021, they returned with a third album, LUNO, introducing an industrial edge to their sound while simultaneously solidifying their indie pop sensibilities on breakthrough single “Set It On Fire” (14M+ Steams), and followed that up by collaborating with Goth Babe for “Driving South” (40M+ Streams) in 2022. Recent months have also seen Blood Cultures co-create and curate The Olive Tape, a fundraising compilation album for Palestinian relief.
Rather than offering explanations or definitive reference points for their music, Blood Cultures’ projects are structured around worldbuilding and sonic exploration, making each album a purely conceptual universe that invites personal meaning-making. This philosophy has remained consistent across their releases, drawing on the concept that anonymity is not an aesthetic, but a framework – and a means to deliver art in its purest form. It’s something that’s reflected in their visual identity: the 2025 video for new single “EMPTYLANDS” features saturated red lighting, imposing a glow of danger that is reflected in the harshness of the song, while intercutting zombie and Frankenstein clips from b-horror films, a possible metaphor for the group’s reemergence after a period of silence — and a conceptual rebirth. While each project stands alone, a thread of intentional ambiguity ties them together, offering a new world with each release.
