CMJ: What CMJ?

Chad Batka for The New York Times Kacey Musgraves at the Highline Ballroom.

If you let it, CMJ will eat your world. Day parties and panels and night parties and just the sheer effort to shuffle among all those events are enough to exhaust all the air for a whole week. It's not gratifying, especially this year, in which the lineup has been less urgent than in years past. Without a narrative worth chasing, the festivities bore quickly.

Given all that, on Thursday night, the most plausible response was to escape altogether, into the parallel slipstream that encompasses parasitic unofficial events as well as shows that just happen to overlap with the festival, attracting fans who practically don't know CMJ is even happening.

At the Highline Ballroom, the newly-nice gossipmonger Perez Hilton was hosting his annual One Night In… New York City concert, a benefit in support of the VH1 Save the Music Foundation. Early in the night, the promising young country singer Kacey Musgraves played a short, tough set that fell largely on deaf ears. Even though her songs plumb difficult depths, she was never anything less than composed, a blissful doomsayer.

Back into the night. After a pit stop for some Cheerwine, the next stop was Saint Vitus, the heavy metal-friendly bar in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, where Pendu Sound Recordings had organized a showcase of gothwave and dark, dark pop. You could count on one hand the number of people who weren't wearing all black.

Von Haze was on stage, playing woozy, droning rock spreading like lava. On the right was Katherine Kin, playing keys and brooding savagely. On the left was Travis Caine, playing guitar and brooding l ess savagely. There was almost a Gallic sensuality to the music, elemental and unambiguous about its purpose.

Chad Batka for The New York Times Black Marble at Saint Vitus.

Black Marble - Chris Stewart and Ty Kube - was next, and moved quickly, as if testily grabbing and sprinting with the baton that Von Haze had been leisurely jogging with. The music was dark new wave revivalism, with pungent, stabbing bass and a sense of theater that didn't extend to the stage show, which was casual.

Starred closed out the night, with frontwoman Liza Thorn bringing things to a narcotic lull. She looked wounded, and sounded even more so, in songs that sounded like funereal folk. I t was unnerving, almost worrying. “Can I have some more monitor?” her bandmate Matthew Koshak asked early in the set. “Can I have some more alcohol?” said Ms. Thorn.

Chad Batka for The New York Times Starred at Saint Vitus.

The back room of Saint Vitus is almost preposterously dark, and emerging even into the dim light of the bar area felt like a violent change. A real pick-me-up was in order, and it came in the form of an unusual and promising booking: the onetime Miami bass stars 69 Boyz, known for the hit “Tootsee Roll” and its accompanying gyrating dance.

The group â€" or at least, its main rapper, Thrill Da Playa, along with a sidekick - was booked to play at the tiny Loft at Publ ic Assembly, in nearby Williamsburg, as part of a party thrown by Mixpak Records.

The stairs leading to the room were vertiginous. The hallway was filled with smoke. And the show was a raucous success, a snapshot of the abandon and good cheer of bass music. “Tootsee Roll” inspired attempts of various quality among the few dozen in attendance. At one point, the group led the crowd in a version of the Electric Slide, including one woman in overalls and heart-shaped hoop earrings who looked like a transplant from LL Cool J's 1990 “Around the Way Girl” video.

Chad Batka for The New York Times 69 Boyz at the Loft at Public Assembly.

Once 69 Boyz had finished its quick, Red Bull-ru sh performance, a different show beckoned - Zomby and Arca, D.J.ing back in Greenpoint at Autumn Bowl, a rope factory turned skate park turned performance venue - but Jubilee took to the turntables at the Loft and kept the tempo at breakneck pace. The only answer was to keep dancing.