∆AIMON come from elsewhere. Ripped straight from the burning underworld or metallic dystopia, some nightmarish un-place where hell lurks around every corner. The Amen EP, their first for California’s Tundra Dubs, reads like a brooding, nervous tick; guns cocking, dissonance raging, orchestral drone underscoring the glitchy clatter of percussion. It’s paranoid house, you know, if there could be such a thing. Music made by a damaged muse.
But Amen attacks as often as it flinches. Opener “Pure” tears into being like a feral animal, all that foggy ambience erupting into teeth and claws and flesh, only to slink back into the shadows, eyes glowing, with the simmering “Amen” or stuttered “Exu Rei”. And nowhere is that unleash/retreat dichotomy more apparent than on “Maasym”, the most structurally catchy of the record; think Current 93 remixed by Oni Ayhun remixed by Salem. Lofty female vocals soothe the burn of the growling baritone beneath them, the industrial throb of bass moving from scary to scared with one flick of a staccato synth. This is cinematic stuff; tracks that not only soundtrack ∆AIMON’s dystopian landscape but also suggest the dynamic, war-torn characters that populate it. Amen’s world may be an unforgiving place—a terrible elsewhere of fire, blood, trauma—but ∆AIMON make it so absolutely romantic and consuming, so tangible, you won’t be able to tear yourself away. And trust me, damaged or not, you really don’t want to.
I don’t know about you, New York, but I HAD IT with this weather. March is the month for March Madness, getting psyched for Spring even though it’s still a million degrees below outside and most importantly, getting the hell out of the East Coast and off to some top notch festivals in warm places. For those headed to Ultra Music Festival this week, we have a massive party to end all massives. Women and people, I present to you the Trouble & Bass x Overthrow Black Magick Castle Party!
All your favorite Trouble Makers from every damn part of the globe will be there, at one of the best venues to party at in Miami. With a party name like Black Magick Castle, you can rest assure a river of fire and bass will await you as you cross the glass moat of decadence. In the main room we have NYC heavy hitters Drop The Lime, AC Slater, Udachi, Star Eyes, Deathface and The Captain with Little Jinder. Want more? Big bass immediate family Zombies For Money, Flinch, Caliguila with Heroes & Villains, and B.Rich will continue the onslaught. To top it all off, French joksters and partystarters Teki Latex and Orgasmic, aka the Sound Pellegrino Thermal Team, will be smashing the decks with their own brand of bleeps, bloops, bass and bounce.
What? That’s not enough for you? You insatiable bastards! Well fortunately we have even more heat for the hard to please, with an additional room featuring more international spot rockers. UK Funky badman Roska will be spinning, along with Supra1, Samo Sound Boy, Brenmar, Club Cheval leaders Canblaster and Panteros666, French Fries with Manare, Mikix The Cat and…hold on…let me catch my breath…Troy Kurtz & Tamara Sky.
This by far is the best party of Ultra Week, so if you’re anywhere near Miami March 26th, ride your demon alligator all the way on over to Overthrow for heavy bass from dusk til dawn.
Saturday March 26th, 10pm – ??? The Overthrow Castle
51 NW 20th St.
Miami, Florida
My buddy Torey from Wrahw went down to Florida to film for Loose Nuts, a bike shop in Atlanta and while he was there, he had a quick session at this popular spot under a highway. This is what fixed freestyle is all about for me: nuanced street riding. Sure, everything’s been done on a BMX before but when you look at pedal timing and how you have to work around the fixed drivetrain (and big wheels), you can appreciate it for something entirely different. The feeble tire slides are killer!
Check out Torey’s weird and low-fi taste at his blog Wrahw.
Oh shit! I feel like this right now! You happen to pick up The New York Times today, you print media reading mofos? Well flip on over to the style section and check our swag out. The Times chose us as part of their streetwear profile, which looks to encapsulate exactly where the scene is going in New York. It focuses on our beloved 350 Broadway Store and The Hundreds recently opened NY store. I’m glad they mentioned our free-to-play Street Fighter II machine, I love the store to begin with, but that thing puts it over the top. Real talk.
Also nice to get some recognition for the music side of our business, ’cause we ain’t just clothes yo. Shout outs to our friends Das Racist (“art-rap auteurs,” eh?) and Hussle Club are well deserved. Finally, I do appreciate that they made note of our cut & sew. Because that shit is pretty damn real (especially the Barracuda Jacket). So Manhattanites, don’t be afraid, come on out to Brooklyn and let us put a bloody eyeball on ya. Because the Times said so.
One of the underappreciated parts of the hood/stoner classic Friday is the weed smoking montage about thirty minutes in. The montage scored to Rick James “Mary Jane”, features Craig and Smokey sitting on Craig’s porch smoking weed, impersonating Michael Jackson, talking over their problems and basically chillin’ out as hard as possible. Smokey later describes the scene as “….We was talking over all our problems, right? And you know how we do it… We started getting high, we got fucked upppp!”
The scene obviously speaks to anyone who has ever experienced the time dilating effects of smoking weed – especially while hanging out at a friends house with nothing to do. But, this scene also has a universality to it that goes beyond the stoner crowd. This montage is really about the way time warps, expands and contracts while you’re fully engaged, chilling with your friends. Whether it’s the days of stationary boredom born from oppressive mid summer heat when you’re an adolescent on Summer vacation or it’s a Sunday of watching football and telling your boy about “this motherfucker I work with…” as an adult, the open ended and undefined time you spend with friends is where shit gets real.
It’s where you talk about shit that’s bothering you, hopes, dreams and all the other things that are important in life. You’re anchored safely by the comfort of your home, your homeboys pad or even just your block, but still chillin’ super hard. Your mind is free to wander and get into all sorts of lofty scenarios or dark places that you normally wouldn’t go. It’s the kind of scenario psychologist would love to get you in – mentally bare and open – but that rarely happens because a psychologist’s office is not a home and that dude has never met your mom, so he’s definitely not your friend.
Watching DIY videos from Oakland’s Main Attrakionz, you notice that more than a couple of them take place around their house, on the porch, in the backyard or (presumably) on their block. It’d easy be easy to site practical reasons as to why these locations appear, but after listening to Main Attrakionz music you get the feeling that their videos are set there because that’s where they come from thematically.
Squadda B and MondreM.A.N.’s rap as if they’re perpetually in that montage from Friday, where time doesn’t behave as it does in our world and where dudes can just shoot the shit. That’s not to say they sound perpetually high, instead it feels as though you’re a third party silently listening to them talk to each other on the porch between smoking sessions. Their raps cover the usual topics of personal struggles, aspirations of recognition, girls and occasionally a little bit of pure shit talking – so, it’s basically the same shit you talk about with your friends.
What really helps sell the “lost in time” loosely confessional feel of Main Attrakionz music, are the actual beats they rhyme over. Most of their beats feature chopped up vocal samples drifting and clipping around thick synth lines and sparsely constructed bass and snare hits. There’s a thick haze of hypnotizing vowels and consonants swirling around their beats.
The entire thing ends up sounding like a particularly sad woman trying to sing you a lullaby in a language she’s simultaneously forgetting how to speak. While that proves to be very psychedelic, ethereal and affecting, the steady cadence and monotone of Squadda and Mondre’s voices serve as a lifeline back to reality. It’s a stark contrast that works to great affect not entirely sounding like anything else out right now.
Pimp C always described UGK’s sound as “country rap”, essentially saying that they were creating the same tales of everyday struggle, love and strife as (early) country musicians. In a way, Main Attrakionz gives off a similar vibe, be clear they don’t sound like UGK, but they do give off a similar feel of dudes from a very specific region unabashedly telling you about their life over some beats that are constructed to make you as empathetic as possible.
This isn’t music that’s aims to make you feel 50ft tall because it’s so grandiose and it’s not music that’s made to break you down because it’s so tragic and morose. It’s simply music that ask you to take a seat, relax for a second and listen to two dudes tell you whats going on with them, and hopefully if the music hits you right, you start thinking about what’s going on with yourself.
I don’t think anybody was ever surprised by the impact that the Jesus and Mary Chain had on music. When “Never Understand” dropped and was shortly followed by “Just Like Honey,” critics and fans seemed to know that this blown out version of Roy Orbison paired with Beach Boys swag was going to be more than the next big thing. It was bound to be a huge building block in the future of rock and roll. Since then the psych movement has gone through various stages and trends. From the delicate and dark strains of shoegaze to the almost incomprehensible white noise of the new French movement, fuzz and pop melodies have always been in the forefront.
San Francisco’s Young Prisms seem to bring it all back to the beginning. This is Psychocandy phan music at its phinest. Jim Reid vocals and William Reid leads. The only problem lies in the fact that it seems almost too safe a gamble. Everyone loves the J&MC, don’t they? By bringing absolutely nothing new to the table, Young Prisms hedges the safest of bets. It’s good pop music, covered in reverb and pedal effects, but it just doesn’t hit hard like some of the newer experiments in psych noise terror. Friends for Now ultimately fall flat, perhaps by being too good at what it does.
We’ve been fans of Chicago’s Black Math for a while now. We featured them on last year’s The Guide to Grave Wave compilation and have been loving their most recent album, Phantom Power. “Nightshade” is the band’s first ever video and off that same album. It’s available now via Permanent Records, go get it, it’s great dark little record if you’re into moping around and stuff.
So I guess you folks like magic eh? we sold out of spaces for this pretty quick and have decided to add a second performance from 10-11pm. If the first show was any indication spaces will go quick so RSVP right now if you want to come.
New York once had a thriving magic scene but it’s mostly gone now. There was Mostly Magic and the Magic Townhouse but now they’re all faded memories for people who are mostly faded magicians. I remember there was this married couple who went by the names Dick and Dorothy who ran one of the magic clubs who would come out and visit my home when I was little. They were constantly moving and changing names to avoid creditors. I’m th…inking back and remembering that all of my parents friends who knew my parents in their nightclub days were kind of odd. There was Danny who my father later suspected might have been an Israeli terrorist. There was Margot who built an elaborate model ship in our basement and told me that the McDonalds “Golden Arches” logo was a symbol intended to ward off evil spirits.
Magic was once huge. In LA there were tons of magic stores and kids going home with cheap plastic tricks and books on sleight of hand. The LA magic stores are all gone. New York still has Tannen’s I think. Where have all the weirdos gone? Is anyone really weird anymore? Мишка is. We celebrate weirdos and we believe in magic.
Мишка is proud to present our own little magic show on March 25th. Matthew Holtzclaw and Prakash Puru will be performing acts that explore the bizarre worlds of magic, mind-reading and mutilation. The name of this obscene spectacle is Strange Things and it’s not for the faint of heart or decent people.
Friday, March 25th 8-9pm Sold Out! Friday, March 25th 10-11pm Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725
$5 Admission You must RSVP as space is limited
RSVP to rsvp@mishkanyc.com
I like being scared by movies. I like being unsettled by them. But that experience is contingent on my knowledge that what I am watching is inherently false. There’s a world of difference between being afraid watching The Exorcist and the fear you get from, say, a car speeding towards you. One is fun. One is not. Countdown To Zero is the latter. Informative? Certainly. Well constructed? Definitely. Utterly terrible to watch? You betcha.
This 2010 documentary about the world’s apparently tenuous hold on nuclear stability is tough to watch, to say the least. Especially for someone who lives in New York, the various doomsday scenarios that are presented from the alarmist (I hope) stance of “not if, but when” will send your stomach a tumbling. Though I would have no trouble saying that Countdown To Zero is well made, I can only recommend it on a conditional basis.
I’m not trying to say that a documentary should be avoided just because it’s “scary”. If it’s presenting new information that people need to hear, even if it’s difficult to take, hell that’s something that a lot of docs should strive to do. But Countdown To Zero is more like apocalyptic fetishism. What made it seem unnecessary for me is that I already know that nuclear weapons are insanely powerful and dangerously accessible.
I think that, as a world, that’s an uncomfortable truth that everybody lives with. Especially as Americans living in a big city (many of whom lived through the Cold War) a nuclear threat is nothing new. And I’m not sure that it’s something that I want to confront head on for 90 minutes. The film, on the other hand, revels in it’s ability to scare the shit out of you.
It’s ultimate message of nuclear disarmament should be a “duh” moment for 90% of it’s viewers, and one that doesn’t need a bevy of horrifying images and statistics to support it. The film has some curiously unnecessary “star power” attachment to it, featuring interviews with Tony Blair, Jimmy Carter, Mikhail Gorbachev, and, bizarrely, Valerie Plame. Though initially “exciting” those appearances quickly devolve into obvious platitudes.
The more interesting segments, unsurprisingly, are those with nuclear scientists and other, y’know, experts on the topic. The reason being that in these sections the film takes a merciful, and unfortunately brief break from what mostly amounts to repeatedly punching you in the face while yelling “you’re going to die!” Worst of all, the film presents little to no chance of solution. I myself am a cynic, and have certainly been called a pessimist many times, but even I found the movie to be disheartening and defeatist.
Can the situation really be this decided? If so, then the purpose of the film is nil other than to keep you up at night. I’m not saying don’t see it. But I am saying that you might be better off seeing Rango and remaining in willfully imposed ignorance. Because as far as Countdown To Zero is concerned, the end of the world is coming, it involves Smilin’ Joe Fission, and there ain’t diddly squat you can do about it. So much for fun times at the movies, huh?
Anyway if you’re looking to get paranoid about our existence Countdown To Zero is streaming now via Netflix’s Watch Instantly.
Where do I begin with Monkeypriest? The last I heard from them was their first EP entitled Defending The Tree and I was not into it at all. The main reason I like doom metal, well good doom metal, is the power that’s inherent in the genre. I want fierce drums, heavy riffs and some damn strong vocals. Maybe my disdain for Defending The Tree was accentuated after hearing their newest release The Psalm. After sitting through this heavy-as-fuck rain of power, Defending The Tree seems like it may have just been a bit of musical foreplay.
“Hanuman’s Dance” becons to the gods. The elder ones who created the Earth. This precession of percussions and muddy riffage opens up the book that is The Psalm. It’s all instrumental, with simple drum rolls and head-dropping breaks. “The Word Of The Priest” begins with a war drum. Slow and steady riffs overlay and finally the doom and gloom sets in. Quickly the pace picks up and we’re introduced to Monkeypriest#1 and Monkeypriest#2′s vocals. How killer is that? They’ve reduced themselves to numbers. This track is Sabbath worship if I’ve ever heard it but the vocals and production are fucking killer.
With quite a few tracks hovering around the 7-minute mark, it allows for them to pack a lot in each cut. “The Psalm” begins like the others with a slow and heavy intro before opening into a doom ceremony. Here come the chugging beats and breaks. At this point, Monkeypriest is dabbling in hardcore of the 90′s but even slower. The Monkeypriest’s vocals are back and meaner than ever. Here’s where the track gets trippy. What exactly are they playing? Thrash? Hardcore? Doom? I have no fucking idea but I love it all. Towards the end, they go off the Neurosis end of the pool and some blast beats enter. What the fuck is this shit?
Back to the spacey, Nordic-influenced area of doom metal. “Involution” slows things down after the barrage of blast beats and this gives the listener a time to relax a bit. But just as expected, the riffs and symbols clash, giving The Psalm an almost predictable formula, which is my only critique with the album. It’s very formulaic and predictable not in the sound, or mixes of sounds but in the execution (slow intro : experimentation – heavy lyrics: picked-up pace : end). Now I know that’s a picky critique but it’s a valid point. What threw me a much-needed curveball was “Feast Of The Fools”. It’s a Cerebral Fix cover. Welcome dark lord! Welcome the sinister vocals and pure fucking evil sound!
With two tracks to go, “Capharnaum” follows the same suit as other tracks. It’s still a fucking killer tune. To pick up where “Involution” left off is the 10-minute juggernaut, “Our Kingdom”. I think this track and its predecessor are my favorites on the album. In the end, Spanish doom-metallers Monkeypriest deliver a highly-addictive album with The Psalm. It’s worth the rotation and I’d buy their album if I were a vinyl junkie. Their production screams the need for vinyl. Pick this one up for sure.
