Hey there you with the internet.  Hope you’re doing well.  I’ve got fun and joyous web junk for you, but let’s slow down here and give you a little background, before we skip through the flowers.  This is a deep-down personal conflict, so strap on your empathy caps.

The year was 1964.  John F. Kennedy had just landed on the moon, and the fam was taking the old Model T down to the Dairy King for celebratory fudge-dips.  We went through the drive-thru, and after we’d paid for our treats, we went to the pick-up window.  This is where it all took a turn for the south.  The window slid open and we were handed our 9 iced creams, when, with no warning whatsoever, the man in the window looked down at my father’s britches, and said, “Nice plaid pants… where’d you get them?”  When my pep-pep opened his mouth to respond, the man interrupted with, “I WAS KIDDING I THINK YOUR PANTS ARE STUPID.”

My father didn’t speak for 20 years after that day.  And I knew, someday, someone would get that band of horrible food-hander-outers back, though I didn’t have the strength.  That day has come, in the guise of one Alki Stevens, who has invented (on my behalf I assume) the practice of Cone-ing.  How does one Cone?  Easy.  Just order an ice cream cone at a drive-thru, and, when they hand it to you at the window, take brave hold of the ice cream directly instead of the cone.  And blow minds.  Or take it even farther for flair points… Tip it into your open palm, use a spatula, use your IMAGINATION.  And know you’re avenging my father’s voicebox.

It’s an inventive prank, and even better, it’s funny.  I’m a little offended that Alki chooses to cone in Zoo York and UNDFTD but didn’t involve a Bear Mop or Keep Watch in his adventures, but I’ll struggle through.  But enough… Mopsters, hit the streets and show THE MAN you can handle a little bit of the ol’ cold and creamy.

Calling out to all members of the tumbrlverse! I’ve just been handed over the pleasure of announcing that we’ve launched a new Мишка Tumblr page entitled The Мишка Design Dungeon. For the benefit of your lookin’ balls (eyes), we’ll be uncorking our massive vault of past graphics, and posting them up for your nostalgic viewing pleasure. The Dungeon is already up and running, and currently features a few entries.

The blog will also feature small bits of the back story that came along with creation some of  our past designs. These small blurbs may entail information pertaining to the inspiration behind a certain graphic, or even perhaps highlight the ways in which a computer was thumped en route to completing an image.

Be sure to keep tabs on this ever-evolving Tumblr page, as it charts the rise of our company from mild-mannered tee producers, to the full-blown taste-making behemoth into which we’ve blossomed. While I could gush about the Orioles graphic for hours, the images on the blog are going to be updated regularly, so you punks better try to keep up… Considering this announcement is now floating about the ether, I expect that we should be approaching roughly a gajillion followers by the time the day is out. Let’s make this happen folks. Clog up those Tumblr information tubes, and show them where your allegiances lie!

YACHT – Shangri-La (2011) [DFA] // Grade: C

An album like Yacht’s Shangri-La forces one to question their own experience. As a teenager in the 1980s, this reviewer was equally as fond of the sounds of Burt Bacharach as he was Captain Beefheart. With the added element of age, the schmaltzy syrup of Burt seemed an inviting diametric to the free jazzaesthetics of Van Vilet. Somehow, it never even mattered that Bacharach’s music represented just about everything that Beefheart was railing against.

Yachts seems like a  take the 1980’s with a similar lack of scene politics. Their sound seems to mix a no wave dissonance with the sounds of polished, MTV-ready art rock a la post Speaking in Tongues Talking Heads. Geeky and dancey, this duo from Portland are more reminiscent of They Might Be Giants than Chris and Cosey, which is an oddity in today’s uber-hip conscious climate. The question is, is this refreshing? There is a reason that a band like Chris and Cosey is hipster savvy and TMBG really isn’t. To put it blunt, nerd rock often seems fun at first, but it is a novelty that ultimately wears thin.

Shangri-La is no exception. As kitschy as it is catchy, it lacks any type of staying power. There is bound to be a magazine cover in the near future for the couple; who’s stylist has worked overtime to cast them in the roles of “Cool Places” Wiedlin/Mael, but there just isn’t enough hear to make the history books. There are the word games of “One Step” which reads like an Ogden Nash poem set to B-52’s Karaoke and the off electro country of “Dystopia,” which could pass for something out of the indie Athens scene circa ’86. Unfortunately, there’s the almost cruelly unhip title track, that could pass for a Sheryl Crow outtake. Therein lies the problem, DFA’s foray into the world of shallow pop ultimately lacks any depth to make it matter.

Tomorrow June 26th is going to be the Hipsters Heart Hip Hop 1 year anniversary show at The Echo venue here in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. The lineup is quite thick and features Free The Robots, some extended fam from NYC, Ninjasonik, LA OG Ras G, the one-and-only Nocando, Darkhorsemen (Dibiase & Jonwayne), Labwaste (Subtitle & Thavius Beck), Machina Muerte’s Zackey Force Funk, and finally Ages.

There will be live screenprinting by the Hit+Run crew. Presale tickets are available while supplies last. Also available is a FREE downloadable mixtape by DJ Stereotype featuring tracks from all of the participating talent for the evening. Our Мишка LA crew will be providing some FREE exclusive LA tee’s & discount coupons to our flagship store down the street from the venue here in Echo Park.

Friday June 23rd, 8pm
The Echo
1822 W. Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA
$10 Advance | $15 at the Door

If there’s ever a Hip Hop release that’s being criminally slept on it’s Western Tink’s Hard to Keel Vol. 1. Zachg gave it a very loving review last week and i’ve been burning a hole in my iTunes playlist with this album for about a month now. Gotta love a bay area by way of Austin dude getting laced up with oOoOO beats.

Tink just dropped this video “Still Hard to Keel”  which is produced by B.Y.E. productions. I’ve got to imagine this is a precursor to Hard to Keel Vol. 2. Get familiar with dude. Get his album now and check out the grip of videos he’s got up on YouTube.

Get ready DC bass heads for a night of epic proportions! The T&B crew, minus one Drop The Lime, will be hitting U Street Music Hall on Thursday 24th with special guest Untold! If you’ve had the pleasure of witnessing past T&B DC nights, you’re probably aware that heavy bass brings a sound to be reckoned with, as fearless leader Tittsworth continues to strap down the best of international bass at his premier night club.

Untold is known for creating a modern tribal dance sound that transcends genre, yet encompasses many of them all the same. His first, and undoubtedly most reknowned, track is the haunting Anaconda, which came as a fresh and weird breath of air when it first dropped a couple years back. The tune had everyone rinsing it out from Nightslugs and Crookers to superstar Beyonce collaborator Diplo. Untold’s remarkable production style there rarely features one single discernible synth line, but often opts to feature many aggregated sounds that create the effect of a beat.

“Stop What You’re Doing” follows the same rules, or lack thereof, and was accompanied on wax by perhaps James Blake‘s greatest creation (or at least one of his best remixes to date). You can expect a more linear DJ set on the 23rd, which spans house music and darker dance vibes all the way to the unknown, or better yet, Untold. DC are you prepared for a little dance floor justice?

Thursday June 23rd, 10pm – 3am
U Street Music Hall
1115 U St NW
Washington DC
$10 Advance tickets
+18 to Enter

Junkies will stuff their veins with absolutely anything in order to garner any sort of nerve-deadening high. Homemade synthesizations and chemical cutting have, since who knows how long, been prevalent in the drug game and brought the danger factor of dependency to new heights. At the turn of the 20th century, a doper used to be able to stick a needle in his/her arm and know that what was about to course through one’s bloodstream was mostly, if not all, morphine. The rise of the more affordable designer drug has changed the art of using in a big way, causing instantaneous overdoses and irreparable brain damage.

This is not to say that ecstacy and cocaine won’t put you six feet under if you do enough of it but what these drugs do have going for them is time. They are tried, tested, and true yet offering no guarantee on a bad batch or a pesticide infused shipment. Russia is now facing the backlash of a disgustingly harmful synthetic opium substitute named Krokodil, the Russian word for crocodile. Living up to it’s treacherous title, the formula is reduced from gasoline, hydrochloric acid, paint thinner, and red phosphorous, has the ability to turn you into a green, bloated, reptilian-looking shadow of your former self.

The uprising of this killer concoction has probably bumped Moscow down a couple notches on the list of most desirable travel/vacation spots. Krokodil usage has become such an epidemic in the Motherland that rehab locations, work camps, have opened specializing in breaking the lethal habit. Cooked up in dirty apartment laboratories, the crowd-pleaser causes human flesh to die and fall right off the bone with rot causing infection and gangrene. All the posers are better off sticking to their measly bowls of K2 and Spice cuz Krokodil is for the big boys, some real-deal amputee type shit.

Dream Affair – Endless Days [Avant!] // Grade: B+

Back in 2009, from the “industrial outskirts” of Brooklyn, came Dream Affair with All I Want, a debut EP worth of material that, for those swimming around to the burgeoning ‘Grave Wave’ spread, marked a strident yet confident step toward a promising document of romantic isolation in an age where 24/7 connectivity has left many of us unaware of a time where simply sitting and thinking was the best way to procure meaning about something. Comment fields be damned, it was the sort of dark and precious thing that existed under its own contemporary invention. At its core was the fantastic “Silent Story” a precise and trouncing confession of love and loss and how it does in-fact never end, this range of breakup emotions we deal with.

Formed in Philadelphia as the guitar-focused project from  Hayden Payne then of Void Vision, Dream Affair continue their progression and return with Endless Days a full-length still marked by the same sort of blunt seclusion and dragging existence of before. Available physically from Italy’s Avant! Records and released digitally by the band, the trio’s venture into LP land draws ample similarities to their revered EP, but the biggest change comes from tracks that are cleaner, clearer and now supported by a female- vocal/keyboardist Abby Echiverri. No longer dominated by Payne’s brooding croon, Dream Affair confess here that they’ve certainly let a bit of sunshine through their shades.

Marked by what a press release describes as the cold dichotomy “between bleak indifference and struggling emotions,” Endless Days details specific things like the meaninglessness of apologies and how to react when pushed to conflict. Crisper than “All I Want” and still more punk than any ___-wave tag you can lob, the album’s standouts are found in “Apology” and the Cure’s early-era craft; “Drifting’s” cacophony, chorus-backing guitar; the Payne/Echiverri folk ballad “Until the Fall” and of course, the fundamental “Silent Story” now re-recorded and included here. It very easy to mention how much Dream Affair relies on shelter from the post punk/goth rock umbrella where textbook mentions like Warsaw/Joy Division, The Sisters of Mercy, Magazine, The (early) Cure, Bauhaus, Wax Trax’s heyday or the insurmountably distant production of one Martin Hannett are increasingly bumping elbows for space. Where it differs is how much Dream Affair ceases to bend a knee at the synth-heavy, shiny “pop” mentality that’s ultimately been built out of the aforementioned scene and its, uh, “rebirth.” See how the likes of Interpol, Editors or She Wants Revenge can pull one shivering, angular guitar line out from under the umbrella, drench it in synths, arena rock choruses and well-financed production value and still get away with not being that lost under a generalized and modern “post punk” tag.

More a part of whatever rebirth it is that’s happening, I’d like to imagine that Dream Affair know that instead of waiting under the umbrella for the rain to stop, they are dragging the thing behind them, leaving a sense that the ghosts in the walls they’re referencing aren’t going anywhere, so why not create something with mood and space that elegantly cites their heroes while also creating something mysterious enough to surprise and please whoever it is that flips the disc around to find a date stamp not of 1984, but of 2011.

Caza Mortal T-Shirt ($32.00)

You ever look at those Mexican comics that some newsstands will have, usually in piles near the candy? They are fucking awesome! This tee graphic is based around a mish-mash of a bunch of those. My bitch just gave me one in which some naked people are humping and then the lady hacks off the dude’s arm, mid-hump. Sex, drugs and violence are good by themselves but together it’s like fireworks going off in your balls. For more information on these comics I highly recommend seeking out Dan Raeburn’s The Imp #4 ¡Historietas Perversas! Mexico’s Addictive Comics from 2002.

The Caza Mortal T-shirt comes in Black, White and Heather Grey. Get one or three.

Мишка
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Brooklyn, NY
718-388-1725
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Мишка LA
1547 Echo Park Ave
Los Angeles, CA
213-536-4234

Heather Benjamin is an artist who creates lewd depictions of her favorite subjects, cock and pussy, for use on show flyers, illustrations for her zines, Sad Sex and Sad People Sex, and other artworks. Never before has sex looked so unappealing – she should consider doing DVD covers for eFukt. She’s a skilled cartoonist, though, and her black-and-white works are often visually interesting enough to make up for their stomach-turning content.

The detail of Benjamin’s style, as well as the way she plays with the empty space of each drawing, make for ambitious works. This is most clearly seen in her ’70s-inflected outer space T & A pieces, which are the highlights of her catalog. Celestial bodies  nicely complement the copulating ones that regularly appear in most of her work. She also scatters a lot of new-agey crystals and pyramids among her illustrations, which is de rigeur for any young, alternative artist working today.

Benjamin’s stippling technique is conscientious, making her drawings into fully realized scenes as opposed to singled-out dirty figures. She seems to blanch at any sort of empty space, which must account for the proliferation of twinkles and blood spatters that fill each page to its edges. Her meticulous style transforms the drawings from gross-out cartoons into fascinating, personal work. The pieces also convey philosophical treatises on occasion, most frequently on her show flyers. Benjamin scrawls small narratives about the meaninglessness of human conceits, the messages of which are likely lost on the kids who are there to take in bands with names like Wurm Tongue.

However you may feel about her violent sexual imagery, lord knows you can’t go wrong with Darth Vader drinking a Steel Reserve. You can get her zine at Printed Matter, the definitive source for zines in New York City, if you’re the kind of sadist who gets pleasure from the most horrid possible depictions of sex, especially quite artful ones.