When did young people get so damn motivated, huh? What happened to paper routes and menial things like that. Why everyone gotta be so creative and connected and driven. I’m talking of course about 15 year old Chicago wunderkind Tavi Gevinson, who’s been doing her fashion blogging thing since 12 and is now in charge of tween-thought-catalog cultural superhighway Rookie. She’s got a new project coming out that involves Mishka friend Scott Cramer, who you may know from the CULT party.
Cadaver is a short animation starring Tavi, Christopher “Doc Brown” Lloyd, and Kathy Bates. That right there is a motley crew if I do say so myself. Looks like a fun short, and apparently it’s one of the few things that Neil Young has authorized to use his song “Heart Of Gold”, which instantly increases the quality of any project by several orders of magnitude. Kewl.
More dubstep you say? Sure, why the heck not. I know you like Mishka sponsored parties (especially since you’re gonna be at the Bad Rabbits/Party Supplies show at Santos tonight, right?) and we’ve got another one coming up next Tuesday at the Highline Ballroom.
This time it’s heavy bass quartet Helicopter Showdown, coming over from the Left Coast to drop a subwoofin’ bomb on the big apple.
If you’re gonna bring your grandparents, make sure to outfit them with earplugs ya hear?! Accompanying Helicopter Showdown will be New Jersey’s Snake Child, Alex Plus, and the cities own Max Mischief. Time to get wobbly.
Tuesday February 9th, 9PM-4am Highline Ballroom
431 W. 16th Street
New York, NY $15/All Ages
Remember Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark? Remember being truly terrified for the first time in your life? Remember trying to sleep but being unable to get the image of the girl with the spider sac on her face cleaned from the back of your eyelids? I do! And I imagine a lot of you folks out there in internet-ville do too. I treasure those quivering, night-lited memories. You know who doesn’t? The fucking establishment man. Big brother HarperCollins is here to shit on all your terrified childhood wonderment.
For the 30th Anniversary Edition of Alvin Schwartz’ widely read story collection (which has probably single handedly payed for many therapist’s new cars), the publisher is replacing Stephen Gammell’s art. WHAT?! Bastards! Those drawings were the absolute best part about that book. The stories were fine, but those drawings were brilliantly twisted. That weird human balloon, the aforementioned spider girl, the rat dog, Harold the bloody scarecrow: all gone now, replaced by some bland bullcrap. The next generation of kids are gonna be real pussies. Is George Lucas somehow involved in this?
I want to love Trailer Trash Tracys more than I actually do. The easy pop of “You Wish You Were Red” is so dreamy and powerful — the perfect combination of Velvet Underground and, like, Opal — that it’s a little hard to accept where Ester wanders from there. It’s not a horrible record or an unlistenable record or even a boringrecord — but it is a confused record, and I’m not sure which is more frustrating.
First, the good stuff: This London foursome has a serious ear for moody, effortless dream-pop. From the aforementioned “You Wish You Were Red” to the tumbling lurch of “Candy Girl” and previously released “Strangling Good Guys”, Ester’s high points are soaked with a sexy, brooding swagger. This is where TTT shines, in the severely edited, perfectly stripped ease of these songs. It’s like Lou Reed and all the Paisley Underground and even Nina Pearson: You want to hear them again and again. You want to curl up inside that hazy, lush world.
But then you have moments like the jam-bandy psychedelia of “Rolling (Kiss The Universe)” or the melody-saturated, electro/schizo “Dies In 55″ and the nut gets suddenly tough to crack. It’s as if TTT want to espouse some sort of unpredictable quirk but haven’t quite worked out an action plan beyond throwing a trillion parts at the wall to see what sticks. Sometimes it’s successful — the unending guitar arpeggios of “Engelhardt’s Arizona” may be wanky, but at least they mesh nicely with that Kate Bush/Peter Gabriel bass — but more often than not, those tracks are so mired in parts and muddy production, it’s tough to tell what’s even happening, let alone if you like it. I’m not discounting TTT’s ability to do something great in the future — I just hope they find their way back to the addictive brood of tracks like “You Wish You Were Red” and check all the effort and calculation at the door.
Quelle Chris remains busy! This dude is quietly grindin the year to dust already. The above video is nothing short of genius, and I think it gives you a hint at Quelle’s sense of humor. We kicked it a few weeks ago and dude was all about laguhs and good time. Pretty clear from that video. That being said head over to dude’s Bandcamp and pick up Bones For Girls, or one of his many other releases.
Nem270 be gettin their speakers MAD! MAD AS FUCK B! AND THAT IS BECAUSE NEM AINT EVER CAME WACK! AND THIS TIME HE CAME TO BRING THE MOTHAFUCKKKKKKINNN PAAAAAAAAAAIIIINNNN! Hardcore to the brain, well the motherboard. Nem just dropped Desktop Pain with UUU Tapes. You should probably expect more and more of this type of stuff as the Wave begins to spill over into more and more outlets. And expect more and more Nem, as we’ve got an interview coming with him sooner than later.
Ryan Hemsworth recently dropped his Kitsch Genius EP. If you remember the review for his last release A Way, then you remember that Ryan is nothing short of utterly amazing on the beats. And the cover is lookin oh so very Krautrock. I think Ryan’s take on making beats is really brilliant, and the way he folds together recognizable influences with prodigious technique is enough to make the most highly-regarded beat wizards feel insecure. Gandalf flow.
Last but not least, producer extraordinaire Marlee B just dropped this Off The Hip instrumental tape. And did you know dude raps too? And not just “he raps too,” but he raps really really well. Get familiar yo.
Other than remixing sixteen Ke$ha songs last year, André 3000 hasn’t been releasing much music. This saddens me. This saddens me because I really like André 3000 and Outkast. It’s like he’s just been doing nothing!..Or has he?
Gillette Fusion ProGlide Styler. Boom. Here he is. My boy Three Stacks, though seemingly up to not much, has really been spending time honing his craft, which now includes sponsoring razors. Or should I say, a 3-in-1 grooming tool. No, I think I’ll just say razors.
Who needs hip hop? Not me. Not André. We’ve got Gillette.
P.S. Adrien Brody is nicely transitioning his career from Oscar to “you know, that guy in that commercial.”
Do want. Mishka friend and artist Skinner (did you see that crazy amazing mural he did with Lamour and Alex Pardee?!?) has a new art book that just dropped today, and it definitely looks like a must have. Every Man Is My Enemy is out on Zerofriends, and features 250 illustrations and photos of Skinner’s badass artwork. It’s full of the hallucinatory and violent over the top awesome that defines Skinner.
Plus, if you happen to be one of the first 300 people to order the book online, you get a free signed print. Extras swag. But wait, there’s more! Well, if you live in Oakland that is. This Saturday, February 4th, Skinner will be at the Zerofriends store in Oak-town signing copies of Every Man Is My Enemy, along with free prints and a Butcher Kings Zine.
The more Raider Klan the better, that’s what I’m saying. In the time since we published our profile of this krazy krew a few weeks ago we’ve already gotten a new tape from Denzel Curry, and now there’s a full mixtape from ringleader SpaceGhostPurrp featuring all kinds of Raider Klan appearances. Although I guess now he’s SPVCXGHXZTPVRRP, in the continuing travails of their nomenclature. The X’s are taking over.
The mixtape is called God Of Black, but you coulda fooled me with the cover emblazoned with GXX XX BXXXK. Then there’s track titles like “MXXXXXXX MXXX”. Confusing? Sure. Awesome? I’ll go ahead and say yes. Do what you want young ones, we’ll follow. God of Black features Lil Ugly Mane, Metro Zu, and Amber London, plus a new iteration of “Suck a Dick.” Yes!
Particle Language is like an exercise in controlled chaos. Matt Carlson’s solo work isn’t meant for a club or a party or even laid-back listening; it’s ripped from the physics of outer space, all fractal beats and theorems. Laser-pointed noises skitter and fragment, melodies blast off then promptly disappear, the center of the album clashes against itself like trillions of particles colliding. If you like what Carlson’s done with Golden Retriever and Parenthetical Girls, well…you might like this. But it’s a harsh remove from either project.
And that remove has everything to do with intention. Like the Stereo Face and Gecko Dream Levels cassettes before it, Particle Language feels concentrated primarily on the properties of sound, rather than the emotional response those sounds elicit. Think of it as an unending what would happen if; traces of the late, great Conrad Schnitzler bubble to the surface here, combined with the modern freneticism of early Oneohtrix Point Never and modular drive of Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram, all of it crashing around like a series of volatile experiments. The bone-ratting pod of noise rankles the senses in the best possible way: Even if emotional response isn’t at the fore — in the normal sense of the concept, I guess, like “this makes me want to get laid” or “now I feel like dancing” — the album still manages to touch every nerve. It feels psychotic and cerebral, processed and synthesized, this weird scientific vibe that shoots you beyond the atmosphere, to some otherworld outside our notions of space or time. It’s not so ideal for a casual listen, but give it the time it requires and Particle Language reveals itself as a fantastic pile of chaos, culled into submission the way only Matt Carlson can do.
