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bmzmaryann4759-blog · 5 years

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AV MIDI Converter

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electricdazemag · 7 years

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Hello, I’m Sorry: Interview

by Tasha Bielaga

The sadboy party rock genre you’ve been missing is finally found, thank god. Seattle based indie pop/trash band Hello, I’m Sorry has been stirring up the Washington DIY scene for a little over 2 years. Songs like Good’s Not Great feature that panning of guitar lines between speakers, you know, the one’s that make your brain feel like it’s spinning when you listen to it with headphones. Vocalist Seth Little, drummer Paul Rhoads, and bassist Cam Richardson all live in Bellingham, WA, where their daily antics are filled with schoolwork and pestering their guitarist Alexander Henness, who lives south of Seattle, to come work on music. The band’s fuzz pop feels reminiscent of warm summer nights full of friends and basement gigs. It’s the embodiment of what goes on in most youth’s heads, set to a tune you can dance, or mosh, to. We talk about saying goodbye to Seth’s beloved 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee, the best cassettes printed to date, and their janky mic set ups, the epitome of DIY.

Electric Daze: How do you balance making music, working, and going to school?

Paul: School is the only reason I live in Bellingham actually, I’m from California. As much as I would love to just do music 100%, I’m paying a lot of money in tuition and I know what I’m studying, so a lot of my life is based around school. I always make time for music on the weekends though.

Seth: Music is the funnest thing for me, it’s what I enjoy doing the most. But, I am paying a lot of money to be here and should probably be putting more work into school. Whenever I have down time I always try to write something or be productive with my music.

Alex: I think it’s definitely worth it to find a good balance between everything. Since I drive up here all the time to play shows and hang with these guys, music is the most important thing that I want to spend my time doing when I’m not working.

ED: What was the first DIY house show you played that really pushed you to get into this scene?

Seth: We played the Karate Church in Bellingham with Roar Shack back in February of last year! It’s this church that, I don’t want to say renovated because it just looks like half of it got torn down on one side, but you know. There’s this basement part that has a dirt floor. That was definitely the first show where I was like “this is tight, this is such a cool DIY scene”

ED: You guys have obviously played a lot of different shows, from bars to house to dirt floor basements. What makes you want to keep pursuing the house show scene vs. a different approach?

It’s sweatier, they’re more fun! I’m a huge fan of the DIY scene. All the music we’ve recorded has been on laptops, and the DIY part just seems like people are always there more for the music. It’s a lot more intimate.

Are there any songs you particularly like to play live?

Bodies, Sleep by the Phone, Little Plan. People go wild to those. We played a house show with the band Cruise, and it got really crazy really fast. Somebody spilled FOUR LOKO on Alexander’s pedal board, SO sticky man. And then I was worried for the foundation of the house, I felt like I had to be a dad about it you know like “Yo! Let’s be safe out there!” and then give a thumbs up and play the next song.

You do so much releasing on cassettes, which is super tight! I saw there was a mini zine that came with one of them, what was the inspiration for that?

Our good friend Mimi Jaffe actually did those! She also did the cover art for Consolation Party, she’s one of my favorite artists in Bellingham. She did a page for each song and I printed them for the cassettes.

How was working on the Z-Tapes cassette compilation? How’d you get in on that and why’d you pick that song to cover?

Filip from Z-Tapes hit me up and originally wanted to put out some of our tapes, but he had a lot back ordered. I ended up putting ours out ourselves. Anyway, he asked if we wanted to cover a theme song to be included on this cover compilation, and I thought that was tight so we did. I originally wanted to do (Theme from) The Monkees, but it was taken. So I really dug deep and found this mini 70’s tv series that used a Sex Pistol’s cover of Eddie Cochran’s Somethin’ Else, and I thought ehh that technically works, so we covered it!

What’s your favorite cassette that you own?

Alex: There’s this rapper on Stone Throw Records named Koreatown Oddity, and he made a mixtape that’s him rapping from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air's perspective with these really late 90’s beats on it. It’s a 1/100 copy.

Seth: I’m really into The Replacements, but I’m not huge on the album “Don’t Tell A Soul”, but that album has a song titled “Asking Me Lies” that is Paul Westerberg’s attempt at a pop song and it’s SO awful and amazing at the same time, especially on cassette, so that’s my favorite right now.

Paul: When I was a little kid I had a cassette of The Lovin’ Spoonful that I used to listen to in the car, that’s probably my favorite.

ED: You guys did a west coast tour back in August. How do you feel the cities music scenes vary?

Well LA was hands down the best city we played it. They were very receptive to new music that they probably hadn’t heard before. We ended up meeting with mutual friends in most cities, which made the whole tour very cohesive, and not vary a lot surprisingly.

ED: Do you have a wild story from your tour?

OH! We bought a new car! This tour was very very DIY, we didn’t even rent a van. We had Paul’s 2009 Scion xB Box Car, that he just loves, and Seth’s 2002 Jeep Grand Cherokee. On the way back up it was so cramped in the jeep, the engine light was flashing, and the gauges would go all the way up and then all the way back down, and we’re just thinking something’s wrong, something is terribly wrong. So we pulled over on the side off the road in Weed, California, and Seth found a dealership that would trade straight across. We get a 1999 Volvo cross country, and that car, was the worst car, in the entire world. It had a coolant leak, so we pulled over every 45 min from northern CA to Seattle, WA, to pour coolant in. At one point one of the covers for the headlights just flew straight off while we driving, and there was a huge semi truck that had exploded, so the drive just took forever. We got into bed at 7am the next day.

ED: You guys have accomplished so many cool things in 2016, like playing with Together Pangea, playing EMP Sound Off, and more recently you played with TV Girl. What goals do you hope to accomplish this year?

Playing with bands that we really like is always a goal of ours. We also really want to play a festival this year. We’d love to do, you know, like, Coachella, hahaha. Touring again and more shows! We have to figure out how our summer’s going to look individually and then work around that.

ED: Good’s Not Great has 20,000 views on YouTube, and 107.7 has been spinning it lately, which is so cool. Were you expecting that song to kinda be your single and the one people listed to the most?

Seth: Honestly, no. When I recorded it, I recorded all the instrumentals and I was super hyped on it. Then I recorded the vocals and it just sounded fucking awful, I was like this song is the worst thing I’ve ever made in my entire life. I remember going “holy fuck, these vocals suck, I forgot that I can’t sing” and I was super depressed for like two days. And then I went in and redid the vocals and went “alright these are better, this song is passable now”.

ED: Do you have a specific writing process? I know you do a lot of half done demos, what’s the process for that like?

Seth: Yeah! I don’t know how to say this without sounding like a total tool, but recording for me is part of my writing process. I normally have a half baked idea and I go in, record it and work with it. I send a lot of small ideas to the rest of the guys and they’ll give me feedback on whether I should continue it or not, and that’s what drives my song writing.

ED: Do you do most of the song writing yourself then?

Seth: Yeah, I do almost all of the writing and recording. We always rework the song live though, and sometimes they end up having a completely different energy which I’m a huge fan of. What I’m trying to new with the new album is make demos and then play them and work through them as a band, and then re-record them to match what we do as a band.

ED: What’s your mic set up like? I know small bands always have the coolest (shittiest) mics.

Seth: The jankiest for sure! I have two mics that I use for recording, one’s a Sennheiser condenser mic, and I think the other is an Audio Technica that I use for vocals and drums, sometimes everything. Sometimes when we practice, I take a 1950’s ribbon mic and run it through a solid state 80’s fender amp with chorus on it for a while, because I didn’t have an amp that could take the xlr input. That was probably the jankiest situation.

Paul: Sometimes when I’d use a vocal mic, we’d string it over the rafters in the basement because we didn’t have another mic stand. So it would just kinda dangle in front of my face.

ED: How do you guys feel about music videos? Any plans to do some soon?

We’re doing a live recording of our set today with Bellingham Sound Check actually! That’ll be nice to have a video of how our songs sound live vs. what Seth records. As far as our own music videos, we’d like to do one for Good’s Not Great. We like to sit around and talk about what would be a cool video for each song.

ED: Is anyone a different kind of artist? Obviously you’re all musicians but is anyone acquainted with other forms of art?

Seth: I am definitely NOT.

Alex: I play soccer, and I think Soccer’s an art.

Paul: Well I’m in a jazz band! Which is still music, but a different kind.

Cam: I have a friend who lives in Texas who asks me for beats that he can rap over. So I send him some terrible beats to rap over.

ED: Would you ever make beats for Hello, I’m Sorry, maybe less lofi more terrible rap? If you had to cover a rap song, what would it be?

I feel like we could rap. We could cover Gangsta Gangsta, or definitely Rap Snitch Knishes. Maybe Mathematics by Mos Def but it would be hard. We could take a stab at it though! We’ll make a bad demo and follow up.

photo by Emma Hatwell

Connect with Hello, I’m Sorry on Instagram at @hello.imsorry and on Facebook here.

You can listen to their music on bandcamp at helloimsorry.bancamp.com and on Spotify here.

The cassette with the mini zine can be found here, and the ZTapes compilation here!

This is the first installment of features on Seattle based bands. Check back here soon to read the rest!

Check out Tasha’s work for the magazine here.

#tashabielaga #interviews #washingtondiy #hello im sorry #helloimsorry

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mattmarlinwrites · 7 years

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Album Review: Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound

Hi there, readers! I wrote this extended analysis/writeup of Blood Orange’s Freetown Sound for a collection of online essays about notable indie albums in 2016, but never shared it here! Hope you enjoy it!

Background

Blood Orange is the current solo project of Devonte “Dev” Hynes, whose music primarily falls into contemporary/alternative R&B, but also incorporates elements of indie rock, pop, jazz, funk, and soul. Hynes was previously a member of the dance-punk band Test Icicles and recorded other solo albums under the name Lightspeed Champion before beginning to perform and record as Blood Orange in 2009. His previous album, Cupid Deluxe, was released in 2013 with a large number of guest musicians ranging from Clams Casino to David Longstreth (of Dirty Projectors) and received mostly positive reviews, including accolades on Pitchfork’s year-end list as well as their list for best albums of the decade so far.

In November 2015, Hynes sold a cassette recording of the previously-unreleased Nelly Furtado-featuring song “Hadron Collider” at his shows, sparking speculation about a new album. He announced Freetown Sound – named after the capital city in Sierra Leone where his father was born – in April 2016 and later revealed the album’s artwork in June, hinting at some of the release’s guest features in a promotional video that accompanied the album art reveal. (On an interesting side note, Hynes’s album announcement did not contain any track names, just the fact that the album would have 17 songs.) Hynes’s press release that accompanied this announcement detailed that the album would be about “my life, my upbringing, being black in England, being black in America...my movement to this country at the age of 21.” On June 28, Hynes made the album available to hear three days earlier than his previously announced release date of July 1, simultaneously sharing a video for the lead single “Augustine” (which features cameo appearances from Julian Casablancas and Porches’ Aaron Maine).

Review

2016 was a garbage year. There’s no way of ignoring that. On top of the dumpster fire of US politics and the seemingly nonstop high profile deaths, racial tensions and murders of people of color continued just frequently as they had in the past few years. Even worse, the strides the LGBT movement made just last year with the Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality hit a lot of pushback between North Carolina’s HB2 and the Pulse shooting. Not to mention all the ways these struggles were amplified for those who had intersecting marginalized identities, such as of women of color.

For me, no album this year encompassed all the experiences of these various identities in 2016 quite as extensively and vividly as Freetown Sound. In retrospect, this strikes me as odd considering this album only came out midway through the year. And yet, it seems even more relevant now than it did upon its release, almost as if it presaged that the year would only grow worse. But what kept bringing me back to Freetown Sound was its role as a conscious source of relief, a release I knew I could always turn back towards to assure myself that there’s some hope in spite of all the negativity. Hynes certainly made these songs with this aim in mind, publishing an Instagram post upon album’s release that said, “This album is for everyone told they’re not black enough, too black, too queer, not queer the right way, the underappreciated. It’s a clapback.”

The opening moments of the album set this tone immediately, providing the framework for what’s to come. “By Ourselves” begins somewhat theatrically in its approach, almost like the overture to the themes and sound of the album in the 16 songs that follow. A warped piano recording – the grainy quality to the audio’s texture reflective of the less-than-pristine conditions those in Hynes’s songs face – leads into a group vocal reminiscent of Greek chorus, before the song gives the spotlight to poet Ashlee Haze reciting her piece “For Colored Girls” over a fiery saxophone solo, ending with the foundation-laying words about the album’s aims for representation:

I will tell you that, right now There are a million black girls just waiting To see someone who looks like them

The album then immediately propels itself into its other main mode: downright groovy R&B tunes. “Augustine” walks a delicate balancing act with Hynes providing three different vocal modes – a whispered low-register that details the parallels between his life and his parents, a falsetto reflection on the murders of black youth like Trayvon Martin, and the closest he comes to belting it out on the album during the chorus – all while a punchy drum machine keeps the song to a steady beat. This track, too, is an overture of sorts, compiling the themes of connectivity, race, and sexuality – the chorus providing a queer reinterpretation of the titular African saint as Hynes’s means of grappling with the hypocrisy of Christian homophobia – that are at the heart of the album. It all culminates in a passionate address to Nontetha Nkwenkwe, a major South African figure known for being imprisoned (and eventually killed) trying to bring peace and unity to her divided nation.

From here, the album moves into something of a more free-flowing state, with tracks like “Chance” and “With Him” veering from typical song formats in pseudo-interludes meant to connect to the next substantial centerpiece of a song. These moments also introduce hooks and melodies that seem incomplete on a first appearance, only to be expanded upon in later tracks, making the record sound more like a film soundtrack to city life and all the recurring leitmotifs that come with it.

In fact, much of what would be dead space in other albums feels bustling and alive here instead. The gaps between songs are occasionally filled in with ambient noise from city streets – the shuffling of feet, protest chants from activists, interview clips from the likes of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Vince Staples encapsulating the lyrics that preceded them. Hynes implemented this specific production choice to allow listeners to hear the album how he hears it: as “music… to listen to on headphones to soundtrack… walking around.”Hynes even referred to the album as “like my version of Paul’s Boutique... kinda like a long mixtape.” Each of these interludes and soundbites, then, is vital to the album’s overall flow, transitioning from one mood to the next to simulate what Hynes experiences emotionally just walking around New York City.

But whenever the album reaches a centerpiece song, they always feel cathartic, their explosions of passion earned by the buildup of themes and reflections Hynes has been accumulating in previous tracks. “Best to You” is probably the clearest example of this, the liveliest song on the album with its multiple overlapping percussion tracks and Empress Of’s evocative vocals. Yet, this all comes even as its lyrics center around someone desperately pleading to be loved by another who clearly doesn’t love them back. “E.V.P.” falls into this category as well with Debbie Harry of Blondie joining Hynes on vocals among a memorably distorted synth line and a bombastic chorus. Later in the album, Carly Rae Jepsen fills a similar role on “Better Than Me,” a personal favorite track of mine that adds a winding keyboard melody and a pulsating percussion track into the fray. Each of these tracks brings the personal angle that Hynes mentioned in his press release, dealing with everything from finding self-worth to relationship troubles.

But, for me, the strongest moments of the album come when Hynes intertwines the personal with the bigger concepts. “Better Than Me” resounds exceedingly well in this field, implying that the song’s romantic prospect rejects Hynes because his blackness and/or queerness makes him inadequate by comparison. “But You” and “Hands Up” are perhaps the most powerful songs on the album in this regard, both of them direct addresses to the listener as forms of personal reassurance in the face of larger social pressures. The former fuses a commandingly patient bass line with stirring piano in the chorus, building to a simple statement about one’s personal value, but earns such a moment with the lines that come directly before it:

If you don’t know what that means Don’t tell me that it’s true Teach yourself about your brother ‘Cause there’s no one else but you

This track in particular evokes one of Hynes’s interviews about his intent in making the album, in which he said, “I think of this record as [being] fully aware of, ‘Yeah, my life is in danger on a daily basis,’ but using that as strength to rise up and stand tall and be proud of who you are and accept who you are.” On “Hands Up,” Hynes takes a similar approach through a devastating chorus where he fears about a friend’s safety in the wake of the country’s many racist murders, tying a variation on the titular protest chant into the refrain. Likewise, “Desiree” tells a narrative about Hynes’s transgender friend that he calls “an ode to her strength,” especially uplifting with the widespread hate the transgender community faces, accompanied with audio from the drag ball documentary Paris is Burning and a skittering drum beat.

But all of this would fall flat if the album didn’t deliver emotionally and back up its message with palatable sincerity, which Freetown Sound deftly manages to pull off. “Hands Up” is especially poignant in the context of the overwhelming amount of news about black murders, Hynes’s falsetto on the chorus aching with the pain of how close these losses hit. Towards the end of the album, “Juicy 1-4” wrings its emotion through one of the record’s most memorable bass lines and Hynes building up to a musing on how crucial sources of comfort are, but how difficult they can be to find when society views you as othered. “Hadron Collider” is an exceptional track in this regard too, with the song’s comparatively slower tempo spotlighting Nelly Furtado’s vocals. The bridge on this track offers a powerfully melancholic hypothetical that sums up one of the album’s core sentiments: “Oh, to be brave” when so much of the world is pitted against you.

When it comes to albums that I find vital and want to revisit most each year, I consider a few things. I consider how much the album reflects the world and its major enduring struggles. I consider how effectively an album makes its statements as a unified collection of music. And, perhaps most importantly, I consider how much the album resonates with me and my personal struggles. As a queer person trying to navigate one of the most devastating years of my life and wondering, fearfully, how my friends and I will endure in the face of the imminent danger we know is coming our way, I found myself returning to this album more and more frequently as the year went on. And each time, Freetown Sound proved to be uniquely therapeutic for me, providing the same comfort and reconciliation that I found in talking with friends about the issues that envelop the album, grateful just to know that I had people on my side, ready to stick by me. Even though Freetown Sound doesn’t provide any concrete answers to the issues it covers (and, if 2016 is any indication, any potential answers are easier said than done), Dev’s album helps in at least one way: opening up a dialogue. As he noted in an interview with Pitchfork earlier in the year, “Well, there really isn’t a takeaway, especially on this album. You’re just kind of listening to me thinking for 58 minutes. There’s no real solution or answer.” Reading back those words, listening to the album once more, hearing the soft, slightly warped guitar of “Better Numb” trickle through my headphones as Dev cries out the refrain, a reprisal of the one on “E.V.P.,” the one that never fails to incite chills or start tears welling, I feel like I am finding that comfort, that support, in the music.

Favorite Lyrics

Choosing what you live for It's never what you make your life How could you know If you're squandering your passion for another?

“E.V.P.”

It's real as gold Chains and all All the things that make us bold Make us bold Black is gold Rightly so

”Juicy 1-4”

Oh, they took and skinned my name Try to raise the feeling I saw right through, tried to love them They threw it in your face Tell you what you're feeling How could they know?

“By Ourselves”

Looking at the girl with the thick, blonde braids And you're tryin' to make out what her t-shirt says No one really ever cares what 'thug life' means They wanna be surrounded but they hate to breathe The air is thick as I plan my escape

“Chance”

The door was open I could've stepped inside Oh to be brave, want to be brave To be brave In this battle of the ages

“Hadron Collider”

Talking Points

What do you see as the primary overarching themes of the album? What resonated with you?

How do you think this album compares to similar continuously flowing and/or socially conscious 2016 releases like A Seat at the Table and Blonde?

What are your thoughts on the various soundbites and interviews spliced into the album? Thoughts on the guest features?

Dev Hynes’s voice: fitting for the type of music he’s making or undercooked? If you find his voice lacking, what kind of vocal style would work for you on an album that sounds like this?

I know Dev only toured the album at a few festivals and cities, but did you get the chance to see him perform the album live? What did you think? Did it improve or weaken your thoughts of the album?

#blood orange #freetown sound #dev hynes #devonte hynes #music

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howaminotinthestrokesyet · 3 years

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Just Like You Imagined: A Selected Nine Inch Nails Videography

Music Videos

Head Like a Hole

This video introduced the world to the chaotic visuals that would come to embody Nine Inch Nails. For many early fans, this became the video that they always remember when thinking of the band. There were images of a native dancer, film negatives, a bobbing model of a head, and the band performing in a futuristic studio. At one point, Trent Reznor is suspended in the air as he sings or rather screams the chorus.

Wish

In this clip, the band is fully dressed in leather performing the song in a steel cage. Furious men from all sides are climbing into the cage In order to get at the band. The entire video is aggressive and violent representing everything that fans had associated with the group in the mid-1990’s.

Only

In this promo, David Fincher steps in to direct, which eventually led to a collaboration between Reznor and the director for films such as The Social Network. The video utilizes pin art to illustrate the singer performing this track in an office. The Apple Power Book appearing in the video actually belonged to Fincher. Every aspect of the video was created using CGI, except for a human hand and the cars in the office background.

The Perfect Drug

Inspired by the artwork of artist Edward Gorey, this video shows the band fully decked out in Edwardian costume. Trent Reznor represents a man, who is mourning the death of his child by altering his reality through the use of absinthe. Other band members appear in the video as well, most notably playing stringed instruments at the very beginning.

Starfuckers Inc.

Co-directed by Marilyn Manson, this video maintained a central theme of very dark humor towards the content of the song. Reznor and a blonde companion take a limousine to a carnival, where she tapes the singer throwing baseballs at musicians such as Michael Stipe, Billy Corgan, Fred Durst, and even Reznor himself. Other musicians can be seen throughout the clip including David Lee Roth. At the end of it, the blonde removes her wig to reveal her true identity to be Marilyn Manson. This became important because fans took it as a sign that Reznor and Manson were friends again. Manson would even join Nine Inch Nails on stage to sing the song in Madison Square Garden. More recently, due to allegations from several women, Reznor has ended any association with Manson.

The Hand That Feeds

Co-directed by Reznor, this video showed band members performing this song in very tight spaces. The clip utilized something called the pan and scan technique, which created visual distortion and blurry pixels on the screen. Towards the conclusion of the video, each member becomes even more blurry on the screen as other techniques were used to distort them.

Closer

This clip quickly became the band’s most popular and most divisive ever. MTV would show it in heavy rotation, but they had edited the original substantially. The storyline of the video was an illustration of a laboratory dealing with religion, sex, animal cruelty, and terrorism. Some of the controversial images included a bald woman wearing a crucifix mask, a monkey tied to a cross, a diagram of the vulva, a rotating pig’s head, and Reznor with a ball gag in his mouth.

Into The Void

This video would utilize a macro photography approach that focused on Trent Reznor to the very extreme, so you could see every molecule from his face. The end of the video shows the full band destroying their instruments and the set itself. The clip would be nominated for Breakthrough Music Video at the 2000 MTV Music Video Awards, but they would lose out to Björk.

March of the Pigs

The band actually filmed two versions of this video for the track from The Downward Spiral. Reznor decided to completely abandon the first version before filming had even completed. The finished video takes a very minimal approach showing the group in front of a white backdrop aggressively doing the song. For his part, the Nine Inch Nails frontman repeatedly dropped his microphone as he bumped into the other band members. One can see stage hands repeatedly setting equipment back up after Reznor had knocked it down. The entire clip looks to be shot in one long take that utilized the actual audio recorded that day instead of the official album version. Most music videos did not do such a thing back then. The audio recorded for the promo would be included as a B-side on the Closer cassette.

We’re In This Together

The best word to describe this music video would be ambiguous. The clip shows Trent Reznor and a large group of people clothed in black running for the entire length of the song. They run through various empty streets, get on a train, then it ends with them in a field. Many fans wondered at the time what exactly the singer was running towards in the promo? The video would be entirely shot in black-and-white to add to the general sense of vagueness.

Films

Broken

This short film represented the four music videos released for the 1993 EP, but it was never officially released on VHS. The story within a story narrative structure for it became that of a snuff film. One of the big reasons it was never released came in the fact that the film would have had major censorship issues due to its graphic nature. Trent Reznor would later say in an interview that the entire film makes the video for “Happiness in Slavery” look like a Disney movie. The film also included two hidden tracks and a music video for the song “Gave Up” that was never officially released. The film did leak, eventually allowing fans to see some version of it through bootlegs. Today, one can view the uncensored version of the film via a hidden link on the discography page of the Nine Inch Nails site.

Closure

This two VHS tape collection includes all the music videos for The Downward Spiral and a live concert. The tape also provides behind the scenes footage of the Self-Destruct tour and Further Down the Spiral tour. The backstage footage shows the interaction of the band with Marilyn Manson, Jim Rose’s Circus, and David Bowie. One part shows how Trent Reznor loved to destroy keyboards while on tour. The second tape with the music videos inter spliced footage from educational movies and other original video between each official clip via Director Peter Christopherson. For example, you can watch an educational film from the Edison manufacturing company entitled Electrocuting An Elephant before “The March of The Pigs.” The director also included unreleased footage from the earlier Broken film that was never released. Due to overwhelming fan demand for a DVD version, the band did release one in 2001.

And All That Could Have Been

This DVD showed footage from the Fragility 2.0 tour, which accompanied the live album of the same name. The Nine Inch Nails crew used DV cameras to capture live footage, then Reznor and others utilized Apple software to edit the footage for a DVD release. The singer would later say that the decision to film it themselves came about due to cost and his vision for a more realistic perspective. The negative aspect of the DVD is represented by very shaky cameras and dark footage at times. The two disc set also included a number of Easter eggs that can be accessed by hitting certain buttons on your DVD player remote at certain times. For example, if you press the number six or seven on your DVD remote at 11:19 on disc two, the entire menu of all the hidden features will pop up.

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psychi-artist · 6 years

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Jean-Michel Basquiat: Boom For Real

Barbican Art Gallery 21st September - 28th January, 2018

‘Boom For Real’ at the Barbican is an absolutely incredible exhibition showcasing the works and life of the neo-expressionist art legend, Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Basquiat was an American artist who first acquired fame as part of SAMO, a graffiti duo who wrote enigmatic messages and epigrams in the Lower East Side of Manhattan during the late 1970’s, where the hip-hop, punk, and street art movements coalesced. During the early 1980’s Basquiat was exhibiting his neo-expressionist paintings in galleries and museums all over the globe.

Basquiat was born in Brooklyn, New York and from a very early age his mother, Matilde, installed a love of art into him. She would take him to art museums in Manhattan, and enrolled him as a junior member at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Basquiat was an incredibly gifted child who learned to read and write by the young age of four, and had was fully fluent in French, Spanish and English by age eleven. Basquiat’s incredible artistic talent was noticed at a young age, especially by his teacher, artist Jose Machado, and his mother, who highly encouraged her son’s artistic talent.

At the age of seven Basquiat was hit by a car while playing in the street. His arm was broken and he suffered severe internal injuries and eventually he underwent a splenectomy. While he was recovering from his injuries his mother bought him the Gray’s Anatomy book to keep him occupied. The book would be a huge inspiration to Basquiat’s future artistic outlook.

That year however Basquiat’s parents split and Basquiat and his went to live with his father, when he was thirteen his mother was committed to a mental institution and spent time in and out of institutes. This spurred Basquiat’s decision to run away from home at fifteen. He slept on park benches and was eventually arrested and returned to his father within a week. He later dropped out of high school and his father banished him from house for this; Basquiat stayed with friends in Brooklyn and began selling t-shirts and homemade post cards to support himself.

It was during his time selling his homemade post cards that Basquiat met Andy Warhol. Warhol was a huge idol of Basquiat’s and he approached him outside a café to sell him a post card. Warhol’s friend whom he was with dismissed Basquiat’s work claiming he was ‘too young’, however Warhol immediately took an interest in Basquiat and bought a postcard for a dollar, he then invited him to visit him one day at his studio, in hopes to collaborate and view more of this promising young artist. The next time they met Warhol invited Basquiat to his studio, requesting a painting from him, Basquiat painted a self portrait of himself and Warhol side by side, he delivered it to Warhol, the paint still dripping, who loved it and so their incredible friendship began. Also featured is a letter from Anna Wintour writing to Basquiat explaining that she loves the work by Basquiat and Warhol, and that she apologises for not being able to feature them in the 1984 January issue, but will hold their works for another cover.

Basquiat went from being homeless and unemployed, to selling a single painting for up to $25,000 in a matter of years. In 1976 Basquiat and friend Al Diaz began spray painting graffiti on buildings in Lower Manhattan, working under the pseudonym SAMO. SAMO stood for, ‘Same Old Shit’ and the pair would scribe enigmatic messages such as, “Plush safe he think… SAMO” and, “SAMO…For Those Of Us, Who Merely Tolerate Civilization…” Unique’s founder Harvey Russack discovered Basquiat painting a building one night, they became friends and he offered him a job. Eventually Basquiat and Diaz ended their friendship, the SAMO project ended with the epitaph “SAMO IS DEAD”, inscribed on the walls of SoHo buildings in 1979.

The exhibition takes viewers around different sections of Basquiat’s life and works. This includes a cinematic area playing ‘Downtown 81(New York Beat)’. A film written by Glenn O’Brien, a friend of Basquiat’s, who was well known for his music column for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, as well as his show TV party. O’Brien was writing a script for a feature film about the downtown scene and decided Basquiat should play the lead role. The one hour and thirteen minute long film shows a day in the life of a down-and-out artist, enriched by a musical soundtrack from Mudd Club favourites, with a few whimsical touches, including a spectacular cameo from Blondie’s Debbie Harry as a fairytale princess. The film was released after some financial struggles in 2000, however, because the original dialogue audio was lost, actor Saul Williams dubbed Basquiat’s voice. The film immediately captivates viewers with its intense soundtrack, its simplicity and unique back-alley charm, it serves as a remarkable document of the run-down city that gave rise to the vibrancy of downtown culture.

In the middle of the exhibition hall stands a gigantic pillar with quotes of Basquiat’s printed onto it. On one side viewers can see the quote, “I never went to art school… I just looked… that’s where I think I learned about art, by looking at it”. On another side of the pillar a video is projected of Basquiat dancing in his studio in 1985. This video is incredibly powerful as it shows Basquiat as he was, a normal fun loving person who enjoyed music and enjoying himself, it shows him as more than just a name.

The ‘Beat Bop’ section of the exhibition shows viewers the musical side of Basquiat. Hip-hop was a huge new force in the 1980s that pushed it’s movement forward. Basquiat was introduced to this in the late 1970s when Fab 5 Freddy played basquiat cassette recordings of live rap performances from parties in the South Bronx and Harlem. He also introduced him to emerging figures from the scene, including experimental artist-musician Rammellzee and graffiti artist Toxic. In November 1982 Basquiat made a trip to Los Angeles, he was joined on the West Coast by Rammellzee and Toxic who jokingly referred to themselves as the ‘Hollywood Africans’ in reference to the inescapable racism in the film industry. Basquiat then made this the satirical title of his painting, which was a powerful portrait of the trio. The painting featured references and the words, ‘Beat Bop’ ‘Sugar Cane’ and ‘Satire’, it also includes the phrase “Hollywood Africans From The Nineteen Forties” in reference to the famous American actress, Hattie McDaniel’s. McDaniel’s is best known for her role as “Mammy” in Gone with the Wind (1939), for which she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the first Academy Award to be won by an African American entertainer. McDaniel was also the first black woman to sing on radio in the United States. McDaniel has two stars on the Hollywood walk of Fame: one for her contribution to radio and one for her acting in motion pictures. In 1975 she was introduced into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Famed in 2006 became the first black Oscar winner honoured with a US postage stamp. McDaniel’s lifetime achievements make her an incredible icon in African-American history, of which Basquiat could not ignore featuring her in his work.

Featured here is the record ‘Beat Bop’ (1983) which was a single produced by Basquiat and Rammellzee. Basquiat also produced the album cover art for the sleeve, featuring anatomical drawings and his iconic crown. The music is an experimental and abstract sound, perfect for a time that was all about breaking down barriers.

Viewers are welcomed to see the fantastic and surreal self portraits of Basquiat at this exhibition. Basquiat was inspired by the creative possibilities of identity. The name Aaron is written on a number of early worls, which could possibly relate to the black baseball player Hank Aaron (who beat Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1974). But Basquiat may also have been referencing the black antihero of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus and the brother of Moses in the Old Testament, who frees the Israelites from slavery. Basquiat has been very clear about his painting that ‘a lot of them are self portraits’, though in a number of different guises. Basquiat’s self portraits are full of life and colour, but they also feature many heavy, dark lines and mysterious quotes, symbols, and dates, relating to his lifer his inspirations. Basquiat often mocked the art world and it’s tendency to reduce artists t their biography, but he was also self-conscious of his youth and the stereotyping of black artists. Featured in the ‘Self Portrait’ section is “Untitled (Football Helmet)” (1981-1984). It is a customised football helmet by basquiat, which he painted over using blue and white paint. Human hair is also involved in the personalisation, which could very possibly be Basquiat’s own. Black sporting heroes were an important theme for Basquiat and he celebrated their achievements in many of his works.

One of Basquiat’s most stunning paintings featured is ‘King Zulu’ (1986), which features a saxophone player against a bright blue backdrop. The colours used are very clean and bright colours, such as blue and gold. The painting is in reference to jazz musicians and features a portrait of Louis Armstrong, who was crowned ‘King Zulu’ at the Mardi Gras parade in 1949, Armstrong was one of the most influential figures in jazz. In the middle of the painting there is a white face featured, however it has been painting black, stopping around the eyes and mouth. This face is a satirical reference to the racism african-american entertainers received, where rather than hire black entertainers they would have people coat their faces in black paint, known as ‘black-facing’.

‘Plastic Sax’ (1984) also heavily features blue and gold colours, showing many faces and musical references. The heavy use of blue paint could be in reference to the musical genre Blues. In Basquiat’s self portrait of himself and Andy Warhol he has even painted himself on a blue background, again this is possibly a reference to Blues music, whereas Warhol is on a white/cream background. We already know that Basquiat was a huge music lover and was heavily inspired by music, often he would listen to music or have TV on while he worked, so it is most probable that his consistent use and apparent love of blue paint could be a connection to Blues music. The painting also features Japanese script and symbols relating to Basquiat’s trip to Japan.

One of Basquiat’s self portraits viewers should be sure to take note of is ‘Self Portrait’ (1981) which features two sides of Basquiat, both seen through his own eyes. One side of Basquiat seems to be a calmer, friendlier version of himself, whereas the other version of himself features a malicious grin with the eyes and mouth lines in red, while the bust rests on top of a red smear that almost resembles blood. The portraits are alongside the names Ben Webster and Theolonious Monk, which are repeated over the work. This shows Basquiat placing himself between and alongside two heroes - representing the achievements and obstacles overcome by back artists.

Basquiat is quoted saying, “I get my facts from books, stuff on atomizers, the blues, ethyl alcohol, geese in Egyptian glyphs […] I don’t take credit for my facts. The facts exist without me.”

The exhibition contains a collection of books that were owned by Basquiat, including Basquiat’s original copies of, ‘Leonardo da Vinci, 1452–1519, 1966’, ‘Ross Russell, Bird Lives! The High Life and Hard Times of Charlie ‘Yardbird’ Parker, 1973’, ‘Frank Driggs and Harris Lewine, Black Beauty White Heat: A Pictorial History of Classic Jazz, 1920–1950, 1982’. The exhibition features an incredible collection of books that inspired Basquiat’s work that viewers should definitely add to their reading lists. Basquiat took inspiration from a dizzying array of source material. Often in his studio books were spread open all over his studio floor, records were playing and the television always on.

‘Untitled (Alice in Wonderland)’ (1983) features familiar characters from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, including the Mad Hatter, complete with his signature teacups from his famous tea party and his ’10/6’ note in his well-known top hat. Also visible are Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, the Caterpillar, and of course the Cheshire Cat makes an appearance in one corner, beaming from ear to ear. The cartoon style Basquiat has used shows that the Disney film adaption from 1951 was the inspiration for this piece. The collage of characters is held together by masking tape which further creates a complex and unique design. Basquiat used this as the basis for ‘Wine of Babylon’ (1984) in which he gave the Mad Hatter a black face. This transformation challenged the overwhelming dominance of white characters within popular culture.

Cartoons were a huge inspiration to Basquiat’s work, often seen are references to Alfred Hitchcock’s works, Disney, cartoons such as Popeye, Felix the Cat, and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. It makes sense for television and movies to be in Basquiat’s mind while creating his art as he almost always had television on in the background while he worked. This love and enjoyment of cartoons and insistence on using them in his work comes from his early aspirations to be a cartoonist.

‘A Panel of Experts’ (1982), again shows Basquiat’s huge interest in cartoons as it features popular Looney Toons characters, alongside the words, ‘Beep Beep’, in reference to the Roadrunner. The painting also contains the word ‘sugar’ over and over; ’Sugar’ and ‘Sugar Canes’ are seen a significant amount in Basquiat’s works. ‘Untitled’ (1984), shows the words ‘sugar’ and ‘sugar cane’ alongside breadfruit, which was a cheap source of food for slaves, while delivering the message of Britain’s past involving slavery. In the background of many of his paintings Basquiat makes sure the treatment and lives of people of black origin is never forgotten, consistently and beautifully delivering his message.

‘Jawbone of an ass’ (1982) is covered in scrawlings by Basquiat of Bible quotes and heroes and characters of myth and legend. The title comes from the Bible quote, ‘Then Samson said, “With a donkey’s jawbone I have made donkey’s of them. With a donkey’s jawbone I have killed a thousand men.”’ Names featured include Alexander and Cleopatra. Alexander is in reference to Alexander the Great, who is often known as one of the most influential people in history. One of the greatest generals and military strategists of all time, Roman General, Scipio also has his name featured. Although regarded as one of the greatest generals of all time, Scipio was reviled by other patricians of his day and was tried for bribery and treason, charges that were meant to discredit him before the public. Disillusioned by the ingratitude of his peers, Scipio left Rome and withdrew from public life, but he is still known today as an incredible general and leader. He is best known for his defeat of Hannibal at the final battle of Zama in 202 BC. ‘Hannibal’ is also featured, with connections to both Hannibal whom Scipio defeated, but mostly in connection to the rhyme ‘Hannibal Lector — Hector’, from the Trojan War. Hector was a Trojan prince and the greatest fighter for Troy in the Trojan War. Hector was known for his courage and nobility. Homer describes hector as being peace-loving, thoughtful as well as bold, a good son, husband and father, and without darker motives. Basquiat often used many religious references in his work, along with heroes from myths and philosophy.

The final room of the exhibition is playing a short 21 minute video interview with Basquiat, titled, ‘A Conversation with Basquiat’(1985). Interviewers Becky Johnston and Tamra Davis were incredibly lucky to interview basquiat in June 1985 as he rarely did interviews and felt uncomfortable doing so. It so happened that the three were friends and had gone clubbing the night before and discussed the possibility of doing an interview as part of a film Davis was shooting on Basquiat. Davis and Basquiat first met in the early 1980s at an opening at Ulrike Kantor Gallery, where Davis worked. Basquiat said to her, “Hey, let’s put some music on” and he transformed the back room into an exclusive dance space. Basquiat did very few formal interviews, which makes this interview a rare and beautiful opportunity to enjoy an intimate conversation between friends.

Despite being one of the most successful artists of his time Basquiat struggled with a heroin addiction, which began to interfere with his personal relationships. Horrifically, Basquiat died at an upsetting young age of 27, of a heroin overdose.

However, only Basquiat’s physical form died that day. Basquiat was such an inspiration in the art world that his soul lived on through not only his own art, but through other’s in film, literature, and mostly through music. Basquiat is referenced in Jay Z and Frank Ocean’s song “Oceans”: “I Hope my black skin don’t dirt this white tuxedo before the Basquiat show” in the 2013 album Magna Carta Holy Grail. Jay and Kanye West also made references to Basquiat on their 2011 collaborative album Watch the Throne, with the lyric, “Basquiats, Warhols serving as my muses”

‘Boom for Real’ is a breathtaking and beyond incredible show. It is an incredibly beautiful tribute to the life and the art of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Basquiat was an incredible soul and had an even more incredible mind to match. He was part of a huge artistic family, with members including Andy Warhol, Madonna, and David Bowie. Basquiat was an astonishingly colourful and intelligent being, with a simple attitude towards life, which he displayed in his paintings and the way he interacted with people less fortunate than himself, having been in their shoes. Basquiat’s paintings and his messages that he construed painted him as something almost like an oracle, with his perceptions of the world that he stripped down to their bare essence, then spun them and turned them out in his own creative way.

#Basquiat #Jean-michel basquiat #boom for real #1980s #80s #art #love #barbican #london #expressionism #expressionist #surreal #abstract #stunning #amazing #culture #pop #myth #mypicks #pastart

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tinymixtapes · 7 years

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Feature: In Memoriam: Matt Shoemaker

Matthew Thomas Shoemaker, the Seattle-based experimental musician, died in August of this year. Unfortunately, Shoemaker’s time on this earth was cut short, but he leaves behind an impressive body of work by which he will be survived by friends and fans. Shoemaker split his artistic time between music and painting, where over the course of nearly 20 years he created hundreds of visual pieces and released eleven albums and two EPs. Shoemaker’s Instagram page is something to behold, showcasing an array of grotesque and beautiful artworks; the most exquisite of corpses at the mercy of a singular surrealist vision. And he was only getting better! A personal favourite of mine is not even a painting but an experiment in macro photography. Using only olive oil, water, food coloring, and salt on glass, Shoemaker captured a remarkable image that looks like a scene from some deep recess of the universe (It’s untitled, but I’ve come to think of it as “the fish head nebula”). Untitled macro photography experiment From an email interview I did with him back in March of 2010, and from online statements his friends have made about him since his passing, it’s become clear just how diverse and deep seeded Shoemaker’s passions were. Film was one of his main interests, and for a while he worked at Video Isle, a humble video store in Fremont, Seattle. In multiple statements, friends reminisced over hanging out with him there, and of “Matt’s Picks” being the ones to really watch for. One of my interview questions was about his love for avant-garde cinema, to which he was proud to say he had both a low and high brow, following up with a list of “a few favorites” that must have been something like 50 titles. I imagine him picking these off the top of his head, but years later here I am still referencing that list when movie night rolls around. Beyond film, Shoemaker was a seasoned traveler, spending significant time in Indonesia. It was here that his love of Gamelan and traditional Southeast Asian music blossomed. He had a knack for curation, investing his time in documenting selections of music from places like Java, Bali, and Thailand on his blog, Brain Goreng. As a contributing member of Gamelan Pacifica — an American ensemble that have been active since 1980 — Shoemaker continued to keep his love for music alive wherever he went. Shoemaker had a lot of passions, but they all informed one another. This is perhaps most evident in the music he produced, which was greatly shaped by his time abroad, his love of cinema, and his visual mind. Describing Shoemaker’s music has always been difficult, as anyone who is familiar with it will attest to its deep complexity and mystifying provenance — review any of his albums and you’ll quickly be at a loss for qualifiers. One thing that can be said for certain is that his work perhaps best exemplifies the no-pussyfooting tactic. His uncompromising vision left no wiggle room for casual tourism. Approach a Shoemaker work half-heartedly and you will be subsumed by it; its shear mass will swallow you whole. --- Initially, Shoemaker was interested in releasing music on Anomalous Records after befriending label head Eric Lanzillotta, but he ended up finding a home for his first two albums, Groundless (2000) and Warung Elusion (2002), on Trente Oiseaux. This early work still sounds like Shoemaker in his element, both providing a microcosmic window into what would later become his bread and butter: a minimalist’s fusing of analogue synthesis with field recording. On these initial albums, however, silence played just as important a role. Progressively his music became more to the point, but in terms of what best typified Shoemaker’s understanding of balance and patience, one needn’t look past this early era. 2005 saw the release of the Cd-r, Forking Path Navigator (Oblast), and the very limited cassette, Mambang Kuning (Stentorian). This was an integral time for Shoemaker’s career, a transitional period that bridged his early era to his most productive years. On Forking Path … one can hear Shoemaker feeling his way through, as though we’re meant to conclude that navigator and artist are one in the same. In retrospect the album was not a huge diversion from the Trente Oiseaux material, but the inclusion of bowed string drones, and an overall grimier fidelity, certainly added a grace note to his song. Pulling back the frame over Matt Shoemaker’s canon one quickly gathers a deeper appreciation for his grasp of the bigger picture, his preternatural inclination for continuity. However, zoom in again and you might find that no Shoemaker work is ever quite complete without the listener. Mambang Kuning was the closest Shoemaker dipped into his Gamelan influence. It’s still basically a noise album, but his usual festering dronescape is mixed around other bizarre ephemera, like children’s voices and the occasional pang of a heavy bell. It was rare to hear something this short from the man — the whole thing is under 15 minutes — but even in small doses his music can snake its way into the strata of human consciousness and linger there for hours. Though he was most prolific as a solo artist, Shoemaker was no stranger to collaboration. His most notable band was Omake & Johnson, teaming up with fellow musical malefactor David Knott (the two were actually roommates for a time). The duo played their first show in 2002, but their first official release, the Cd- r Headiferous Unctibulum, didn’t surface until 2008. The group would produce only one more album, Every Room Has a Grotto (2010). Both were released through Shoemaker’s own Human Faculties imprint. If anything, Omake & Johnson allowed for Shoemaker to loosen the stringency in his music, working alongside Knott in sonic territory that ranged from guttural electroacoustic to deconstructed folk. In the aforementioned interview, Shoemaker revealed that Omake & Johnson had hours and hours of recorded material stashed away. Here’s to hoping those will see the light of day sometime in the future. --- Shoemaker worked with the California label The Helen Scarsdale Agency (managed by the musical alchemist Jim Haynes, a prolific artist in his own right), who published the albums Spots in the Sun (2007) and Erosion of the Analogous Eye (2009). Timm Mason, who knew Shoemaker, shared a statement on his friend’s passing that included an interesting peek into his process: “It was not unusual for him to combine 30-40+ layers of audio — keeping all that sound from turning into formless nonsense is a feat and one of his unique talents.” Spots in the Sun is one of the supreme examples of this talent. Throughout the album, no matter how dense the audio, Shoemaker always maintained buoyancy, often toeing a fine line between form and chaos before elegantly steering a track into a quieter valley. Erosion of the Analogous Eye took things even further, as David Knott has pointed to Shoemaker’s use of “inscrutable signal paths that fragmented and recombined through electronics and quasi-stable homemade spring reverbs.” To the average person, that might sound like a whole lot of nonsense — even I only get half of it — but I do know that the album utilized stretched out slinkies as natural conduits for reverb. So, you have to admit, the man was not lacking in creativity. spots in the sun by matt shoemaker erosion of the analogous eye by matt shoemaker From here came the albums The Sunken Plethora Consumes All (Mystery Sea, 2009), Tropical Amnesia One (Ferns, 2010), and the EP Mutable Depths (Ferns, 2008). All were more focused on the field recording aspects of Shoemaker’s practice. His dronescapes were never without a psychedelic air, and it’s the recordings he incorporated from the tropical rain forest and Pacific Northwest mountains that helped elevate his music to that realm. In 2007 Shoemaker participated in a residency lead by Francisco López that took him to the heart of Amazonia. He spent morning, day and night recording the vast array of wildlife there, predominantly birds, dolphins, insects and frogs. Tropical Amnesia One is composed entirely of these recordings. Tropical Amnesia One by Matt Shoemaker From this point until the time of his death, Shoemaker came to release four more albums, The Late Day Spectrum (Master Chemical Society, 2013), and three for Dallas, Texas, based Elevator Bath. Colin Andrew Sheffield — the man behind Elevator Bath — was a friend of Shoemaker’s and holds a very high opinion of his art, describing it as “some of the most singular, dense, carefully arranged, and hauntingly beautiful work one is likely to find in this realm […] Matt was a born artist if I’ve ever met one.” A closer examination of Shoemaker’s Elevator Bath releases provides clout to Sheffield’s claim. The Isolated Agent / Stranding Behaviour (2010) LP saw a back-to-basics approach, stripping away all but cold tonality and an ever-present churn from home-assembled signal patches. Soundtrack for Dislocation (2010) was perhaps the most stoic of his works that utilized his full range of sound, while Flight | Chromatic Splitting Injunction (2015) broke new ground with experiments in tape splicing and a form of techno residing somewhere in the vein of retrocosmic. isolated agent | stranding behavior by matt shoemaker soundtrack for dislocation by matt shoemaker Pulling back the frame over Shoemaker’s canon one quickly gathers a deeper appreciation for his grasp of the bigger picture, his preternatural inclination for continuity. However, zoom in again and you might find that no Shoemaker work is ever quite complete without the listener. He once wrote, “I fully intend there to be an aspect to each release that’s really open to the listeners so that they can kind of complete the picture or give it their own meaning. It’s important to me that my music doesn’t say anything definite.” The music’s meaning was never the focus, but the music itself can be traced back to a man whose level of creative veracity was matched only by the lasting power of that which he created. At the very least, the talents, contributions, and spirit of Shoemaker won’t soon be forgotten. In honor of his life and art, Elevator Bath and The Helen Scarsdale Agency are offering all of Shoemaker’s releases free to download on Bandcamp. http://j.mp/2xkTVH8

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