Some new releases that have caught my eye, in the midst of finishing up my own music:
Baroness – Yellow & Green
As a fan of this band’s previous work, I had a feeling where Yellow & Green was headed. Even parts of Blue, the band’s last album (2009), speak in a more ambient or reflective light than with a tear-your-face-off approach. That is both amplified and extended throughout this album. In many instances it is downright beautiful: waves of sound that tap into a kinds of genres, mixed beautifully, presented to your ears with care and grace. That isn’t to say that Yellow & Green gets heavy at times, it does. The downtunes are still there — however open-tunings are perhaps more prevalent — to rattle your speakers and ear drums. Impressively so, this is done without loads and loads of overdrive or a subtraction of mids… or any other of the tricks metal bands/producers use to forge a heavier sound. In fact, the producer John Congleton should get a decent amount of credit here. For keeping his presence only shaded in the background, yet still flexing his production muscles enough to channel such an expansive, genre-less sound. This is album that deserves trying, no matter who you are.
A Place To Bury Strangers – Worship
Worship is, by comparison, a much darker and desperate sounding album. And, unlike Yellow & Green, the band is narrowing down their sound rather than expanding it. In A Place To Bury Strangers case this works. Very well. Previously they had been known as a wall-of-sound, throw everything you got into the pot three-piece, who’s brand of noise was cathartic if not a little bit overwhelming. It is a breath of fresh air to hear them strip down their sound. I could be exaggerating a bit however, because of the band’s history: the noises and feedback and ultra-stereo ticks did make their way onto this record. It’s just that now they’re being used as instruments themselves, rather than layers behind the “real” instruments. And they cut in and out, they aren’t a constant. The result is the band’s best sound studio work in their short career, a new path in the direction they were already heading. Refined and subtle (if that word exists in Noise-Rock), with the power and hunger of their previous records.
Ravi Coltrane – Spirit Fiction
This is Ravi Coltrane’s first record to be released on the famous “Blue Note” label. It happens to be one of those cases where the history, the elegance, of the record company seemed to inform the work itself. In a good way. Spirit Fiction is — as AllMusic put it — Ravi’s most cerebral and avant-garde record of his career. In the Jazz world, typically those two things counteract one another… let me explain. The thought that seemed to be poured into every song is immense. This is smart, sophisticated Jazz that strikes with precision. Carefully planned and always thinking five steps ahead. Now, sometimes that sort of thing can lead to an emotion-less, stale type of academic music without soul. Somehow this doesn’t happen on this album. The experimentation, the improvisation, the raw emotion through notation, it remains. Even with all it’s brains, it remains. Also, kudos to the recording technique. Ravi recorded each track with two separate backing bands and they mixed them together. Brilliant.
It’s an exhibition that shows artists cleaving a new space for artwork, that’s less about pure concept, aesthetic or object, and more to do with pragmatism, education and storytelling. Many of the works are interactive, and feel like they’re caught somewhere between the White Cube and the Science Museum. The art snob in me was harrumphing from time to time; could this really be called art? Is art that invites play not ’serious’? Or is it the art market that demands art be static and handed down from an elevated plain of vision and skill? There’s no doubt that singular, non-interactive art objects will continue to be made (and coveted), but the data art world is a refreshingly open-minded, often big-hearted new sideshow in the art world.
During the late 1930s and early 1940s, the entire focus of the atomic program was to create the weapon to end any war, even one as all-consuming as World War II. After the war, the makers of the bomb saw its power, and their own uneasy public, and tried to think of ways to both soothe the American people, and put the bombs to good use. Some of their minds drifted to the Bible verse in Isiah 2:4, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
What is certain is that some sort of impact from another body freed material from the young Earth and the resulting debris coalesced into today’s Moon. But the exact details of the impactor’s size and speed have remained debatable. In a report online to be published in Icarus, researchers suggest that the crash happened with a much larger, faster body than previously thought. Such theories need to line up with what we know about the Moon, about the violent processes that set off the creation of moons, and what computer simulations show about the more sedate gravitational “gathering-up” that finishes the job.
There seemed to be a twofold acknowledgement amongst the speakers.
Firstly, it was recognised that today ‘books’ are competing for attention in a flattened entertainment market, in which competition arises from literally any digital media available via the Internet, not just other book titles or genre rivals.
Secondly, it was recognised that to thrive in this flattened market, in which competition is multiplied and therefore ferocious, book publishers must think less about the specific format and dogmas of the ‘book’ as an object of tradition, and think more about the intrinsic qualities that separate book reading from other leisure pursuits.
The decades since the ’30s and ’40s have witnessed considerable broadening of the superhero’s narrative and thematic ambition, an evolution (some would say cynical decline) that accelerated with the mid-’80s arrival of the glibly monikered Dark Age. Inspired by pop-culture touchstones like Alan Moore’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, the new strain of superhero comics attempted to incorporate greater psychological depth, artistic experimentation and gritty atmospherics, launching a bevy of condescending “Biff, Pow: Comics Have Grown Up!” headlines that continue to this day.
These aspirations were regularly confused by over-zealous creators with an open license to escalate violence and sexual content, but often enough, the writers and artists succeeded in taking the genre to new places. These were not happy destinations, rife as they were with anti-heroes and psychopaths feeding off each other’s pathologies. The defining quality of the deconstructive new tales was a readiness to say uncomfortable things about the sort of person who might actually be inclined to put on an outlandish costume and run around attacking sociopaths. In short, it was no longer possible to generalize about the basically hopeful nature of superheroes.
Art grabs people by their eyeballs, it seduces them. Especially if the picture is very beautiful or very sexy or just really weird, if it has some surreal element in it. It makes people do a double take and then, if they’re looking at the picture, maybe they’ll read the text under it that says, “Come to Union Square, For Anti-War Meeting Friday.” I’ve been operating that way ever since—that art is a means to an end rather than simply an end in itself. In art school we’re always taught that art is an end in itself—art for art’s sake, expressing yourself, and that that’s enough.
- There’s more to the recent scientific finding that music has become less original and louder over the years. In terms of volume, we’re using significantly better tech to both create and consume music. It’s hard to drive a V-10 at only 40 MPH when you know that’s only a quarter of its power. Know what I’m saying? Then there’s a cultural aspect to everything being louder (literally and figuratively) now: to block out the world with headphones nowadays requires more volume in a city than it probably did in 1952. And in terms of notation… well that is easily debunked. Or questioned, at the very least. Obviously as time goes on and on more and more musicians have to use the same chord progressions and melodies and structures. There is only so many keys to use. And within that limited number of keys there’s only so many ways to rearrange chords. And within those structures there’s only a percentage of them that are consonant (a fancy musical term for “feels good on the ears”). Clearly scientists, not musicians, did this research.
- Check out this Photostream on Flickr; guy calls himself/herself OM2 Urbx. Specializes in urban photography for the 21st Century. This one is called “Clane Crimber” (and no, I believe that is not a typo):
- These Verve Remixed albums are brilliant. Damn. The idea is to take old songs from the history of the label, and have modern Electronic and/or Hip-Hop produces remix them. So they’re both for fans of the history of the label and the artists associated, AND modern music fans to serve as an introduction to said artists. Awesome idea, and something more labels with 25+ years of history should do. And big ups to The Current for playing something I wasn’t familiar with and piqued my interest more than “oh, this is pretty decent indie rock”.
BitTorrent has a new plan for getting money into the hands of content producers — and it’s putting its method to the test with a handful of new tracks from turntable maestro DJ Shadow.
The file-sharing hub released a “bundle” of three tracks on 24 July from Shadow’s upcoming Total Breakdown: Hidden Transmissions From the MPC Era, 1992-1996. The torrent, which also includes photos and archival footage from Shadow’s early years, will come with free software from BitTorrent’s advertising partners — like, for example, RealPlayer. If downloaders install the software, the DJ will get a share of the revenue.
The DJ Shadow bundle is the first of many new content experiments BitTorrent has in the works, the company said. Finding ways for artists to make money from file sharing could be a significant shift in the perception of the practice among artists and music labels. It seems to have brought around Shadow (aka Josh Davis), who in an interview with Wired last year lamented that peer-to-peer file sharing had “removed music sales from the equation.”
- Paul Pope did a drawing of Luke at the gate’s of Jabba’s Palace for shits and giggles:
Been working like a dog lately. And I’m going in today for a bit too, so here goes nothin:
- The rebels in Syria have had a hard time — one might say impossible — capturing Damascus. So now they’re focusing what they can muster on the country’s other city: Aleppo. They must be gaining lots of ground too, the government is moving their troops on the border with Turkey to the second-city. Fast. They’ve also deployed, and are deploying, fighter jets and helicopters. “In other developments”:
Russia’s foreign ministry says it has received “firm assurances” that regime’s chemical weapons stockpile is “fully safeguarded”
The new commander for the UN observer force, Lieutenant General Babacar Gaye, arrived in Damascus, saying he hoped his team would be able to help “alleviate the suffering”
Activists say two more diplomats have defected to Qatar: Cyprus envoy Lamia al-Hariri and her husband Abdelatif al-Dabbagh, ambassador to the United Arab Emirates; one report says Mr Dabbagh was prevented from leaving Damascus
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lambasts the US for failing to condemn the killings of top regime figures last week, saying the US position “is directly justifying terrorism”
- New BitTorrent software will apparently be sponsored, not pirated, in an attempt to get some amount of compensation for artists. The debate rages on, and I won’t pretend to know or say anything about it that is worldview shattering. I will say, though, that this seems like a bit of a copout from the “music should not be free” side.
- Johnny Sampson makes concert/gig posters. Here’s one he did for the Pitchfork Music Festival:
At the heart of the seven-tonne, $2bn machine is a giant, specially designed magnet which bends the paths of extraordinarily high-energy charged particles called cosmic rays onto a series of detectors, giving hints of what the particles are.
A series of ever-larger particle accelerators built here on Earth aim to drive particles to ever-higher energies, smashing them into one another to simulate the same processes that create them elsewhere in the cosmos.
But no Earth-bound experiment can match nature’s power as a particle accelerator – and Earth’s atmosphere absorbs incoming cosmic rays – so the AMS will catch some of these high-energy particles “from the source”, as a kind of complement to the likes of the Large Hadron Collider.
- Even more The Master revelations. This time in the form of the first full-length trailer:
- Though it is an interesting read, from a good writer who is clearly educated on the topic(s)at hand, I’m not sure I completely agree with the “choose one and only one” theme of John Patterson’s article at the Guardian’s film tab right now. The article delves into the greatness of legendary Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, but does so at the expense of Ingmar Bergman. Thoroughly. Not only is it subjective to call Bergman’s films “boring”, it’s a little bit unfounded. Slow, oh absolutely. But there’s nothing “boring” about a story of two women turning into one another at a remote cabin on the sea. Something that strange and obtuse can’t be “boring”, can it? Still, the article is a breath of fresh air when perusing the film sites. As is digging back into Antonioni’s movies, which were also far from boring. He is probably most known for his trilogy starting with L’avventura and ending with Eclipse. I have only seen one of his films, the second in that trilogy titled La Notte. Not that it’s my fault, finding his movies — especially in a world of “red boxes” (I fucking hate those things) — is nearly impossible.
Don’t let Patterson talk you out of seeing a Bergman film though… he was good too.
“The US reels from another horrific killing spree: at least 12 people shot dead and many more injured at a showing of the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. Sickeningly, some in the audience reportedly failed to make their escape because they assumed at first that the disturbance was simply a special effect. And according to multiple reports, the gunman had his hair painted red and described himself to police as “The Joker”. So are we to see a revival of the debate about copycat crimes and the cinema?”
- Two good pieces on two albums that made their stamp on the musical world at Stereogum today.
The first is about the 1992 Sonic Youth album “Dirty”. One of — of not the — best Sonic Youth albums. I had been done before, certainly with the Pixies and back in the day with Velvet Underground and any number of bands in between and prior, but for me this album really helped to dispose of the notion that one needed notation of some kind to play an instrument. Traditionally, there are three subjects one to playing an instrument: notation, rhythm, and inflection. I’m talking at it’s most bare-bones. When you hear “Dirty”, you think, “holy shit I can play guitar with ALL INFLECTION?!?” Again, not that it hadn’t been done before… but this album really cemented inflection-based guitar playing as viable and artistically relevant ways to play. This does a few things. Perhaps it’s most important (and most overlooked) function is to encourage beginners to not quit. If you just got a guitar and turn on your amp for the first time and all you’re getting is noise in a world devoid of albums like “Dirty”, you probably think you’re doing something wrong and give up.
The other is about Appetite For Destruction, which turned 25 recently. Love it or hate it (the band or the album), AFD turned the music industry on its head upon its 1987 release. All throughout the 80′s people were told what was happening, with detail, on the Sunset Strip in L.A. through the lyrics of Rock bands (and their videos). But something about it was… off. It wasn’t perhaps that these guys weren’t living what they were singing about – we all know Vince Niel wasn’t full of shit when he wrote and sang Motley Crue lyrics. At least. But there was still something artificial, something plastic about everything prior to AFD. Not only that, but you didn’t even realize it until AFD came out, and you heard the “It’s So Easy” to “Nightrain” one-two punch. It sort of made everything prior to it — that was suppose to sound “dangerous” — feel like child’s play by comparison. This shit was L.A. rock & roll for REAL, for good or bad.
- ARTIST OF THE DAY: Roxie Vizcarra. That will take you to her official site, she also has a blog (though she hasn’t updated since April; probably because she’s incredibly busy for being a BOSS artist). Roxie’s art is mildly surrealistic, but her figures always seem to be anatomically spot-on. Just check out some of her NSFW pieces. Her use of color is great, it hearkens back to pop art a little, though her designs and compositions are much more sophisticated than that would lead on. One word I would use for her stuff is energy. All her art has this wicked sense of energy flowing through it. Here’s one from her site called “Adulthood”:
- New poster for Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master”:
- The story about the comments sections getting closed on Rotten Tomatoes “Dark Knight Rises” page has more to it than it seems. Initially I had read that ardent fans of Nolan’s Bat-films had been so disgustingly brutal — some going so far as to offer death threats — to ANYONE who didn’t like the film, that the Admins shut down commenting. That is true. But there was/is a twist: film critic Eric Snider (who’s had his share of controversy before), put up a review saying this…
“The Dark Knight Rises is easily the most disappointing Batman film so far – and I’m including Schumacher’s Batman & Robin in that statement.”
Not a big deal, right? Snider, with the power he had been granted by RT, uploaded this mini-review and when clicked, it would bring viewers directly to his site. To up his traffic count. Also — what’s worse — he hadn’t even seen the film yet when he posted that. He was trolling. For hits on his site. Ugh.
Why does everyone get so fucking weird about these movies? I don’t get it. I wrote extensively about the hubub surrounding The Dark Knight upon release back in July of 2008, I may have to do that again soonish. There are lots of cultural ticks at play with things like this. If you’re a fan, why the hell do you care if people don’t like the movie? I would love it if everyone didn’t like this movie… the theaters would be way less crowded. And annoying.
- To cope with the genocide and war and terror of the Congo, some citizens are turning to art. Specifically, making socially conscious hip-hop music. It makes sense, it requires the least money to manufacture. It has always been a voice and/or outlet for the oppressed.
“Rap music provided escape and inspiration. The young men listened to it on the local radio and when the Institute’s internet connection was working, they watched videos on YouTube of American and French rap groups. Many of the youth she met were in rap groups themselves. They had organized a concert with cash prizes for winners, around $100; a large sum in a country where the average monthly salary for a teacher is around $50. The two-day event took place at the Kaoze Community Center in the village of Rutshuru, Nord Kivu.
The shows, which took place during the day due to security concerns, were full of the euphoria of youth anywhere. Using pre-recorded tracks, they sang and danced until sunset, when the Community Center was cleared.”
- New Com Truise is streaming at Stereogum. Beautiful, ambient, dancey stuff. The album came out yesterday, it is called “In Decay”.
- Exhibit A of why Image Comics can compete with the “big 2″ year-in/year-out: people who don’t normally read comics don’t give a shit about the big new “event” crossover comic, but they are interested in things like Saga and Fatale. Things that are familiar in a way, and relatable, yet wholly foreign and bizarre at the same time.
“Part of what we do is make good comics, and we want to be the best version of Image Comics. But part of what we do is create a sustainable market. It has to be a part of what we do. Things like Saga and Walking Dead and Fatale, these are things that people want to return to. People can recommend these things to their friends, even people that don’t read comics. As opposed to tailchasing events, these yearly spike makers, but who’s going to be talking about AvX ten years from now.”
- NewFlying Lotushas been announced. The album is called “Until The Quiet Comes” and will be out via Warp Records October 2nd. Damn, this is a good year for me in terms of music releases. This is the cover:
Track listing:
1. All In
2. Getting There feat. Niki Randa
3. Until the Colours Come
4. Heave(n)
5. Tiny Tortures
6. All the Secrets
7. Sultan’s Request
8. Putty Boy Strut
9. See Thru to U feat. Erykah Badu
10. Until the Quiet Comes
11. DMT Song feat. Thundercat
12. The Nightcaller
13. Only if You Wanna
14. Electric Candyman feat. Thom Yorke
15. Hunger feat. Niki Randa
16. Phantasm feat. Laura Darlington
17. me Yesterday//Corded
18. Dream to Me
There was a time — not all that long ago, either — when the people who went to Comicon read comics. Not only did they read comics, they went to Comicon to buy comics. To get their favorite covers signed by their favorite artists. To meet their favorite writers. To find that special issue of Fantastic Four #12 they have been searching for their entire lives. Now… this contingent of the Comicon crowd probably makes up, what, 15-20%? Maybe? The Glorification of the Geek has not created more “geeks”, as it were. It has created a generation of posers (yup, I just used that term)… who at this very moment are ordering Brubaker’s Captain America: Winter Soldier trade paperback just to ruin the upcoming movie for themselves. They are not interested in the rest of his run, nor the context in which the character is presented in a series of flashback scenes previous to the 5th volume. My LCS guy recently told me that all the comic-book movie hype, the TV adaptations, the Glorification of the Geek, has not resulted in higher sales and income for his store. It has changed absolutely nothing in his business, the business of selling comic books and graphic novels. I was surprised by this, but I guess I understand now. The Glorification of the Geek exists as part of the larger cultural whole. It is CEO’s of media conglomerates figuring out how to make the most money off ancillary super-hero characters, fast food chains making multi-millions to send out tiny plastic Thor’s with each burger. Comic book culture — take away all the adaptations and blockbusters and video games — still exists in its own cultural microcosm.
A few nights ago in bed I made the mistake of flipping to G4′s coverage of Comicon. In roughly 45 minutes (it took for me to fall asleep) they talked about comics for about 5. A nice piece sure, but a 5 minute piece. But this isn’t what made me mad. What made me mad was when some massive douche (the kind of guy who you know was a heart-throb in high school, a frat boy in college, and has an odd fascination with Deadpool though he doesn’t read Deadpool comics; I’ll refer to him as MD from here on out) on the G4 payroll — I’m assuming failed/failing actor? — “interviewed” A Song Of Ice And Fire/Game of Thrones writer/creator George R. R. Martin. I immediately took to liking George personally because he said, “I remember when Comicon was a bunch of guys selling single issues of comics out of cardboard boxes.” Little known to MD, apparently, George is one of the best Fantasy writers of all-time. The languages, cultures, histories, geographies, styles he creates for his novels rival that of J. R. R. Tolkien in density and care. In fact, in the time MD spent with Mr. Martin, not one time did he himself mention or ask anything about Martin’s writing process, the next book of the saga, which writers inspired him, etc. MD ONLY wanted to talk about the HBO Game of Thrones. Which, don’t get me wrong, I fucking love. I also don’t read the Song of Fire and Ice novels. But if I were given a chance to interview a brain like George R. R. Martin, you better believe I would grill him about his craft, which he has so clearly perfected. MD acted as if their existence was futile. He even went so far as to ask, “Do you have any spoilers or anything you can tell us about the third season [of Game of Thrones]?”. To which Martin replied very sincerely and politely, “Well… there is a whole book full of spoilers in the form of the series’ third novel. Each season is based on a single book and the third is based on A Storm of Swords.” He wasn’t cynical about it, he gracefully took the opening MD gave him to mention: “I’M A WRITER. AND THIS THING YOU’VE BEEN BUGGING ME ABOUT, I WROTE THAT ORIGINALLY”. This was the only time Martin’s novels, or his craft/art, were mentioned at anytime during the interview. It took Martin himself to mention it. Of course, MD concluded his spectacular interview with, “Well George, from one geek to another, I thank you.”
Again, here the novels Martin writes exist in their own microcosm from the rest of popular culture. It’s as if, at least to MD and people like him, they don’t even exist at all. Or they’re not worth talking about. Which… ya know, it’s been that way with Fantasy novels for an eternity. Same with comic books and D&D and manga and fighting games and all the rest. The difference was that prior to the Glorification of the Geek these things were not lending themselves — or parts of themselves — to the mainstream for corporate interests and people like MD’s false sense of individualism. And the geeks, the real geeks, liked that. But why the fuck did I wake up this morning with all this on my brain? Well… if one traces the Glorification of the Geek backwards and attempts to find the source, or maybe just the springboard of the phenomena, one will find three things: the video-game industry surpassing the film industry in billions of dollars, the decline of new ideas, and Bryan Singer’s X-Men/ Sam Raimi’s Spiderman/ Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins. 2000, 2002, and 2005 respectively. There had been comic book movies before this, but these are what set the industry on a decade long run (we’re looking at maybe a 2-decade run) towards reboots, adaptations, and fresh starts. And the best of them all? Batman Begins. By far. X-Men originated it, Spiderman brought it to the widest possible audience, and Batman Begins made it… well, good.
So maybe, just maybe, all this shit is in my brain this morning because I’ve loved Batman since I was like 3 years old and I know that when I go to see The Dark Knight Rises this weekend I have to share the theater with people who enjoy things like American Idol, Kenny Chesney, and Dan Brown novels. Not that they don’t have a right to see it, or that I’m better than them. It’s just… there was a time when those three things were more important to them than Batman movies. And I’m counting the years as the pendulum swings back again.
[The Glorification of the Geek is eerily similar to what happened to "Grunge", which I should compare sometime.]
- After Daniel Tosh’s recent remarks to a female heckler, the internet has become ablaze with all kinds of knee-jerk reactions to him. From defending him at all costs to wanting to crucify him and get his show cancelled. MN poet/rapper Guante wrote a piece on his blog about the whole thing that makes a lot of sense. This point needs to be understood especially:
“1. We’re not picking sides between “pro-censorship” and “anti-censorship.” We’re picking sides between “pro-rape jokes” and “anti-rape jokes.”
This is not a free speech issue. As a comic (or poet, or rapper, or singer or whatever), you have the right to say whatever the hell you want to say on stage. But your audience has that same right. If you say something hurtful or offensive, they can heckle you, call you out, start internet campaigns to ban you from clubs, whatever. And you have to deal with that.
No one is trying to make it illegal for a comic to say offensive shit; we’re just trying to hold you accountable. That’s a huge difference, and people hiding behind the “free speech” argument are really missing the point. I want you to take chances on stage, to challenge people, even to deal with hecklers harshly—but there are a million ways to do that without joking about something that is extremely hurtful to so many people. Less offensive ways, sure, but funnier ways too.”
- One of the best things to come out of Comicon thus far this year is news that the second Captain America movie will be titled, Captain America: The WinterSoldier. I didn’t really like the first one, but I love the character of Winter Soldier. I’m sure it still won’t be my favorite movie in the world… but the other awesome part of this is that the character was created by a favorite comics writer of mine, Ed Brubaker. Ed is one of those guys who’s been writing excellent stuff for a really long time. Actually, he rarely writes anything that sucks. So he deserves whatever kind of paycheck he’ll be getting in the mail from Disney and Marvel. I just hope they have him consult on the movie a little. Oh and Brubaker recently started a title simply called “Winter Soldier” and it’s cool: post-Cold War intrigue thriller shit. Great artwork, great writing.
- Bleeding Cool actually talks about the best movies of all time? Wow… I figured all comic book websites do is speculate about the shit (umm… Captain America?). Kudos to Craig Skinner. This post from him discusses the quarter four releases for “Masters Of Cinema”, who put out old/classic films in modern formats. Their list of releases is impressive. Their quarter four sees the releases of Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, and Fritz Lang’s longest film Die Nibelungen (among others).
- Blueprint wrote a very humble and appreciative piece on his blog recently about his time being a full-time musician. Ten years ago last week he handed in his resignation as a software programmer to become a musician. It’s kind of impossible not to love that dude:
“I’m very appreciative of the fact that I’ve been doing this as a full-time job for ten years now. Shit, I’ve now held this job twice as long as any other job I’ve ever had. The irony is that unlike most jobs where people grow more jaded and bored as the years go by, I’ve found that my attitude has followed the opposite path where I become more appreciative and excited as the years pass. I don’t know if it’s a result of the extended amount of time I took to make Adventures in Counter-Culture, or a side effect of becoming more mature and realistic about what having a career as an artists really means, but either way I probably wouldn’t be writing this if my perspective were any less positive. For that I’m thankful.
That said, I feel extremely blessed that the people and the universe have blessed me with an opportunity to pursue music full-time for ten years now. It seems like the most common gift to give is one that satisfies someone for a day, but the rarest gift is one that satisfies someone for a lifetime. So I decided to ask the universe for the gift of artistic longevity and will try my best to spend every day cultivating that opportunity and gift.
For all of my people out there that are pursuing their passion, try to build something that brings you a lifetime of joy. Understand that in a world full of people who may have not been given the opportunity to pursue the things they love – you are an exception, and should therefore cherish that opportunity for as long (or as short) as it may last. Be inspired by all the things you don’t know about your craft, and celebrate the fact that get to try to learn them everyday.”
???, Art, Artist of the Day, Artists, Batman, Blogs, Comments, Congo, Critics, Culture, Dark Knight Rises, Dogs, Ethics, Film, Genocide, Hip-Hop, Internet, Links, Movies, P.T. Anderson, Posters, Rap, Reviews, Sites, Surreal
Glass Half Empty.
In Sonny's Journal on July 19, 2012 at 8:01 am- ARTIST OF THE DAY: Roxie Vizcarra. That will take you to her official site, she also has a blog (though she hasn’t updated since April; probably because she’s incredibly busy for being a BOSS artist). Roxie’s art is mildly surrealistic, but her figures always seem to be anatomically spot-on. Just check out some of her NSFW pieces. Her use of color is great, it hearkens back to pop art a little, though her designs and compositions are much more sophisticated than that would lead on. One word I would use for her stuff is energy. All her art has this wicked sense of energy flowing through it. Here’s one from her site called “Adulthood”:
- New poster for Paul Thomas Anderson’s “The Master”:
- The story about the comments sections getting closed on Rotten Tomatoes “Dark Knight Rises” page has more to it than it seems. Initially I had read that ardent fans of Nolan’s Bat-films had been so disgustingly brutal — some going so far as to offer death threats — to ANYONE who didn’t like the film, that the Admins shut down commenting. That is true. But there was/is a twist: film critic Eric Snider (who’s had his share of controversy before), put up a review saying this…
Not a big deal, right? Snider, with the power he had been granted by RT, uploaded this mini-review and when clicked, it would bring viewers directly to his site. To up his traffic count. Also — what’s worse — he hadn’t even seen the film yet when he posted that. He was trolling. For hits on his site. Ugh.
Why does everyone get so fucking weird about these movies? I don’t get it. I wrote extensively about the hubub surrounding The Dark Knight upon release back in July of 2008, I may have to do that again soonish. There are lots of cultural ticks at play with things like this. If you’re a fan, why the hell do you care if people don’t like the movie? I would love it if everyone didn’t like this movie… the theaters would be way less crowded. And annoying.
- To cope with the genocide and war and terror of the Congo, some citizens are turning to art. Specifically, making socially conscious hip-hop music. It makes sense, it requires the least money to manufacture. It has always been a voice and/or outlet for the oppressed.
-Sonny