Is Diskokina VR Theater? A Rave? Fine Art? Team Rolfes Says All of the Above.

The art world got a dose of hyper-digital club theater from the minds behind Team Rolfes and Club Cringe.


text by Karly Quadros
images by Janice Chung


There’s no getting around it: there’s a lot going on in Diskokina.

Drawing from the ‘more is more’ digital aesthetics that have mostly closely come to be associated with hyperpop – cyberpunk slickness, glitchy heaven-or-hell graphics, a sweet chirpy virtual companion named Kina – the show is one part club night, one part live theater, and one part mo-cap freak out. The brainchild of Team Rolfes and Club Cringe, the show – which features a rotating cast of musical guests and has previously included GFOTY, Frost Children, and umru – found its home in late night clubs and experimental music festivals across Europe, but last Wednesday at 8 pm the collective found themselves not in an industrial nightclub or a warehouse rave but the glittering glass atrium of WSA at 180 Maiden Lane in the heart of New York’s Financial District.

On June 4 and 5, Diskokina performed two nights of their immersive club theater for a mix of club kids and fine art lovers as the closing programming of a showcase for talent nurtured by the New Museum’s art and technology incubator NEW INC. The night was hosted by upbeat “AI” avatar Kina (voiced and performed by Maya Filmeridis whose facial expressions were captured in real time) and comedian Lauren Servideo. The show was a triptych of shorter narratives performed by 321 Rule featuring Team Rolfes and rapper Lil Mariko; Passage Live A/V by Kevin Parker He and DJ Bobby Beethoven; and Club Cringe featuring godmother of 2010s electroclash Uffie, Mother Cell, DJ Wallh4x, DJ Trick, and 502 Bad Gateway Studio.

“We had historically always been doing our work outside the art world, working in music or fashion, doing what we could because the art world in the US is fraught,” said Sam Rolfes, co-founder of Team Rolfes. “The stuff we wanted to do, working with musicians and combining all these different things, there wasn’t a support network for that. I think that this New Museum showcase is an important inflection point where that is starting to change.”

Rolfes, along with his brother and creative partner Andy, has been active in the music and fashion world for years, designing the album packaging for Lady Gaga’s Dawn of Chromatica and directing music videos for Gaga, PC Music OG Danny L Harle, cyborg pop producer Arca, and new wave innovator Danny Elfman. They’ve collaborated with brands like Nike, Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Kenzo, but their style is unmistakable. There’s an element of the digital uncanny and distortion, nods to early PlayStation graphics and gauche social media overdrive, but also a carnivalesque playfulness that hints at the queer potentiality of digital spaces.

Diskokina’s onstage vibe falls somewhere between a sweaty Gen Z club night and a competitive gaming tournament. The stage is flanked by computers and wires, exposing the hardware that goes into the cutting edge projections onscreen, which are generated in real-time from musical performers that are strapped into motion capture suits. Ultimately, the audience is seeing performers twice: once onstage and again in the world of the screen where coders manipulate their avatars in an act of VR puppetry. The onscreen narratives are, of course, dystopian: a far flung future where memories are the most valuable currency sought after by ruthless bounty hunters or maybe a suspiciously contemporary moment where AI aesthetics are everywhere and corporations are tracking your every move.

“Theater, narrative, music –the tech unites it. It’s very front and center because it’s experimental and wild, but what we’re really aiming for is the story, the sound, or the emotion,” said Rolfes.

Mixed reality performances shot into the public consciousness during Covid when lockdown orders threw the live music and theater worlds into a tailspin. Travis Scott held a record breaking mixed reality performance in Fortnight with over 27 million views, while Billie Eilish mounted similar largely digital performances. At the time, Meta was going all-in on virtual reality, but it was smaller artists like Panther Modern (aka Brady Keehn of Sextile) and Reggie Watts who were experimenting with the artistic potential of virtual club spaces. Even after in-person concerts and dancing resumed and the public’s interest turned elsewhere, the idea of AR and live performance has lingered whether it’s Rosalía’s heavily mediated Motomami stage show or Magdalena Bay’s live show promoting Mercurial World in which they and the audience teach an AI named Chaeri how to be human.

Rolfes points to even older inspirations though. Max Headroom, the “digital” news anchor from a British sci-fi TV film who satirized the commercialization of everyday life, seems to be an obvious inspiration. The fact that the character leapt out of the world of fiction and into commercials as an official spokesman for Coke only added to the reality warp (as did the first successful TV hack in late 1987 in which a full minute of a Chicago Dr. Who broadcast was interrupted by someone sporting a Max Headroom mask.) Rolfes said he hopes to bring the same kind of mischievously satirical energy to the NEW INC showcase.

After all, tech is a tool, neither positive nor negative, although it’s often caught up in the same whirlwinds of speculative capital that Diskokina so sharply satirizes. For Rolfes, it’s all about finding new ways to use it.

“It’s not just tech demos. There’s a real need to hack it, to do something beyond what Microsoft or whatever company designed the tool might’ve intended,” Rolfes said. For now, he and the rest of the Diskokina team will be jamming the signal, one show at a time.

High Fashion Goes Hi-Fi With L'Atelier Sonore by Valentino and Terraforma In New York

Lea Bertucci at L’Atelier Sonore at Valentino’s Midtown Manhattan location

text by Karly Quadros

In his 2012 book How Music Works, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne argues that over time, music and its technologies evolve to suit the spaces where people do their listening: the church organ’s bellows fill the cavernous chapel, the finely tuned bedroom pop of the 2010s nestles comfortably in one’s headphones. 

Lately, the fashion world has been dabbling in its own new experiments with music, style, and space, enlisting the help of sonic curators that inspire their own fervent devotion across the globe, like Terraforma and NTS Radio. 

Fashion and music have always been tightly bonded from the songs that soundtrack runway shows to the musicians sporting the latest collections. Early hints to the trend came when pioneering LA radio station Dublab released a capsule collection with Carhartt for their twenty-five year anniversary last year. Similarly, Crocs and the ominously lit Hör Berlin released a collaborative shoe in 2022; Adidas announced a collaboration with the collective the year after, featuring a broadcast from Adidas’ flagship store in Berlin with DJs Soyklo, Carmen Electro, Baugruppe90, and DJ Soulseek. Krakow’s own avant music festival Unsound has designed shirts in collaboration with Polish streetwear brand MISBHV and hosted a party with them in an abandoned railway station last year.

As the ways audiences discover music together continues to evolve in the digital age, so does the fashion world’s flirtation with musical communities and experiences that are more specific, intimate, and curated. 

On May 15, Valentino unveiled an intimate listening room at their Madison Avenue location in Midtown Manhattan, dubbed L’Atelier Sonore. The heavily curtained room lit with oranges and pinks was outfitted with sloping couches and an impressive sound system in the front, constructed by Francesco Lupia in collaboration with Terraforma, a collective that runs the cult classive Milanese experimental music festival of the same name. Lupia worked with impiallacciatura, a wood technique historically associated with Renaissance-era interiors. The result was something that felt opulent but modern.

“The idea was to build a sonic living room — intimate, soft, intentionally domestic. We were inspired by the Parisian salons of the early 20th century, spaces where literature, art, music, and conversation naturally converged,” said Ruggero Pietromarchi, one of Terraforma’s founders.

Over the course of the day, a small but impressive lineup of selectors took to the decks, spinning records The Loft-style, unmixed, from start to finish. There was downtown icon and New Age pioneer Laraaji, DJ and archival tape label Minimal Wave founder Veronica Vasicka, and Queens-based Nowadays resident Physical Therapy. Vibes were lush and meditative while not taking itself too seriously. Case and point? At one point, a “Careless Whisper” cover from unsung jazz hero Nancy Wilson was trotted out.

“Given the constant acceleration in our society, there’s a growing need for contemplative spaces and shared rituals. Listening requires stillness — it’s a focused, reflective act. The space was designed with that in mind: small, intimate, and free of distraction, to support attention and presence,” said Lupia.

Meanwhile in London, another fashion world plunge into hi-fi sounds was unfolding. Golden Sounds, a joint effort from Ugg and beloved Internet radio station NTS, filled two full days with programming. Panels, led by Saffron Records on Friday May 16 and NTS Radio on Saturday May 17, focused on everything from the basics of how to DJ to building your own sound system. Deep listening sets were curated, largely around South London’s jazz, R&B, and electronic scenes and featured artists like Goya Gumbani, dexter in the newsagent, Errol, and Alex Rita. There was a particular focus on sounds from London’s African and Caribbean diaspora communities: baile funk, hip hop, and soul.

For those used to going to the club for a specific producer for a particular energy, the historic importance of sound systems might not be readily apparent. Sound systems were a central feature of early dance music culture in Jamaica and the UK – often, the sound system itself was more of a draw than any one DJ or emcee. In ‘90s rave culture too, collectives and promotions would advertise on flyers the truly awesome power of their custom sound systems, often with flashy technobabble that had little to do with the actual mechanics of audio technology itself. For those that know and care about the cultural lineage of people dancing together in space, a sound system is the mothership, a monument to hedonistic release but also to the care, intention, and work that goes into bringing people together.

“It’s not just about what you hear, but how you inhabit the space while listening,” said Pietromarchi.

Golden Sounds’ events, held in an open air stone courtyard, were less cloistered than L’Atelier Sonore at Valentino but sought to capture a similar audience and atmosphere. After all, what else inspires the same devotion, obsession, and sense of exclusivity than underground music? DJs guard their rare white labels with a fervence verging on feverishness. In-the-know music fans are happy that artist broke into the mainstream but also know they used to be better (but really, how i’m feeling now will always be superior to brat.) The status, the symbols, the devotion to the archive – it’s attractive for fashion brands like Valentino and Ugg to seek out the kinds of audiences cultivated by Terraforma and NTS Radio particularly for their discerning taste and dedication.

Hi-fi spaces like these split the difference between deep listening on one’s headphones and a dance night out on the town. The question is, is having the time and access to such spaces becoming a luxury in and of itself? Like the historic sound systems from decades past, communities centered around music will persevere sometimes in resistance to and sometimes in tandem with larger cultural forces like fashion. In the meantime, it’s clear that, in a time like ours, the need for spaces that encourage deep, active listening are greater than ever before.

When asked if time and space to pause and listen had become a luxury, Pietromarchi answered honestly: “Yes — unfortunately, it often is. But I don’t believe it should be. Listening is a basic, vital act. That’s what spaces like L’Atelier Sonore try to offer: a kind of pause that isn’t passive, but active. A moment to re-centre.”

L'Atelier Sonore, an immersive listening room, is open daily through August at Valentino Madison Avenue.

The turntable at Valentino’s L’Atelier Sonore

Marie vs. The Machine: Read Our Interview of Marie Davidson →

Photo credit: Nadine Fraczkowski

In Foucault’s landmark 1975 book Discipline and Punish, he introduced the metaphor of the ‘panopticon,’ a hypothetical prison in which the prisoners are being surveilled at all times while the guards remain unseen in a central tower. Foucault writes, “The panopticon exemplifies the power dynamics present in modern institutions, where individuals are subjected to surveillance and discipline, leading to self-regulation and conformity.” With the advent of smart phones, social media, the sale of personal data, and large language models, the panopticon has endured as a metaphor for our times when it feels as though nothing is ever truly private.

Marie Davidson is throwing a rave in the panopticon’s tower.

With her new record City of Clowns, out today on Soulwax’s Deewee imprint, Davidson shifts her sardonic satire away from the club and towards Big Tech. Inspired by Shoshana Zuboff’s 2019 book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Davidson brings her signature hypnotic deadpan to ten songs skewering tech’s encroachment into our daily lives. 

There’s “Demolition” where she appropriates the voice of tech companies that extract personal data for profit. She sounds like a hungry vampire when she sings, “I’ve got to know you / inside and out” and, more directly, “I don’t want your cash anymore / all I want is you / I want your data, baby.” In “Statistical Modeling,” a robotic drone intones calmly over a cold electro beat. Then there’s “Y.A.A.M.” (that’s short for “your asses are mine” for all those following at home.) Inspired by a condescending email Davidson received regarding the business side of the music industry, she penned the propulsive club track to get it through our thick skulls and stiff bodies that it’s not about a brand or a sponsored post – it’s about the music. “Entrepreneurs and producers and freelancers to managers / the whole wide world of bravados, upset liars, and insiders / Give me passion, give me more, I want your asses on the floor,” she sings.

Picking up where her sweat-it-out anthem and previous Soulwax collaboration “Work It” left off, Davidson’s music is never overwrought or heavy handed. Her writing is terse, the beats tensely coiled. She’s cool headed and funny. The artist, she says, is a “sexy clown,” at once meant to entertain and critique. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that she is ambivalent to technology (Davidson didn’t own a laptop until 2016.) She’s part harbinger, part siren, here to remind us of that most important rule of online life: if you’re getting it for free, you are the product. Read more.

The Long Journey Home: Read Our Interview of Composer Sbusiso Shozi and Fondation Cartier Artistic Director Isabelle Gaudefroy →

Picture © Zivanai Matangi

Before judging someone, walk a mile in their shoes.

It’s an age-old adage. Our shoes carry the weight of our daily lives, our stories, our hardships. They represent the wear and tear of our history but also the tenacity and possibilities of new paths forward. 

For writer, composer, and musical director Sbusiso Shozi, shoes are a way to explore the many pathways of the African diaspora. Blending traditional South African musicality, oral tradition, and contemporary instrumentation, he’s mounting a new performance, African Exodus, for the Centre for the Less Good Idea, in collaboration with Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. 

Founded in 2016 in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Centre for the Less Good Idea is an incubator for experimental and cross-disciplinary art. The “less good idea” is the one that is more marginal, more daring and more ripe for invention and discovery. It also has to do with resourcefulness; a Sechuana proverb advises that ‘when a good doctor won’t cure you, find the less good doctor.’ The Centre for the Less Good Idea is the first organization to be hosted in residence by the Fondation Cartier, beginning with a week-long takeover of Fondation Cartier’s performance spaces in Paris in May 2024. African Exodus continues that partnership at the Perelman Performance Center in New York City, running from February 27 to March 2.

Autre editor-in-chief Oliver Kupper sat down with Sbusiso Shozi and Fondation Cartier artistic director Isabelle Gaudefroy to discuss performance and the two organizations’ ongoing partnership. Read more.

Moonlit Mourning and Radiant Hope in TRAИƧA

 
 

review by Chimera Mohammadi

TRAИƧA’s first song, “I. Midnight Moon Pool (Womb of the Soul),” is a sonic dream of birth, an ode to the raw creative power that defines the act of gender transition. This first glittering wave pulls us deep into the celestial sea of grief, spirituality, and hope that constitutes TRAИƧA. The album unites a dazzling array of newer Queer talent, cultural titans, and indie darlings, including Sade, André 3000, ANOHNI, Adrianne Lenker, Devendra Banhart, Perfume Genius, Sam Smith, Clairo, and many more, resulting in a stylistically diverse yet cohesive body of work. It’s divided into eight sections, each thematized by its first track. It is at once a tribute to trans musical pioneer SOPHIE, whose passing galvanized the creation of the album, a guide through grief, and an exploration of trans identity and resistance. The music spans ethereal meditations, dirges, disco-infused celebrations, rebel cries, and more, an eclectic blend that manages conversation rather than dissonance. Songs like Niecy Blues’ “It Is Over Now?” dive into open wounds that are subsequently sewn up in tracks such as Laura Jane Grace’s “Surrender Your Gender,” which demands self-actualization without concession. Songs like the cover of Low’s “Point of Disgust” by Alan Sparhawk and Perfume Genius linger in quiet moments of pain which evaporate in the sunshine of tracks like “I Feel Free” by SPARKLE DIVISION and Pepper Mashay. Throughout TRAИƧA, dual rivers of mourning and creativity converge to create a healing current of liberation that listeners can ride all the way from the Womb of the Soul to Reinvention while they dream of safer worlds. 

Dig into the album at transa.world.

Read Our Interview of Musician Babymorocco

 
 


interview by Abe Chabon
photography by Iris Luz and Erika Kamano

Babymorocco loves beautiful women, cheap purple vodka, Gwen Stefani, and bodybuilding. He hates irony, uninspired people, and boring nights. The London-based recording artist has burst drunk, buff, and confidently into the music scene in the past two years with a distinct sound and an entirely original look. He sings about sex, partying, girls, and his ego over bubbling synths, Drum and Bass hi-hats, pounding 808s, and floating basslines. His subject matter is cheap, trashy, and vain, but it has an authenticity and humor that balance his narcissism with charm. ‘Rocco’ doesn't want you to take him too seriously; his aesthetic reflects that. Babymorocco looks like he belongs just as much on stage in a London warehouse as he does in a strongman porno mag. He makes it hard to tell the two apart. If you've seen Babymorocco live, you've probably seen him with his pants off. Sex appeal has always been important to male musicians, Jim Morrison had his long hair and bursting leather pants, Elvis wore unzipped bedazzled jumpsuits, Babymorocco has short shorts, tight T-shirts, and bulging biceps. He’s like a pitbull on a bender. He took a break from recording his upcoming project in the studio to talk. Read more.

Source: https://autre.love/interviewsmain/2024/6/7...

Wolfgang Voigt Births Rich Yet Minimalist Psychedelia with the Loop Principle @ Galerie Nagel Draxler in Berlin

In both his musical and pictorial work, Wolfgang Voigt predominantly adheres to strict conceptual principles, which he refines and diversifies consistently. Alongside his mostly sample-based, rather free-abstract to gestural musical and figurative language, it is primarily the “loop principle” that has always fascinated Voigt. The static or varied repetition of minimalistic structures creates certain patterns, grooves, and shapes. This way of thinking is shaped not least by the structure of computer-based music programs, permeating Voigt’s work in various ways.

Whether navigating the tension between 4/4th bass drum-based groove patterns and condensed visual sequences/loops, or reopening the loops and engaging in free-abstract deconstruction (re-enchantment/de-interpretation) – for Wolfgang Voigt, sampling and “the loop” represents a way of perceiving the world. Even when adhering to certain rules and concepts in selecting and processing his source material, he intentionally allows deviations to emerge, often locating what he is “looking for” not in the intended location but in its vicinity. In the virtuoso interplay between “man and machine” he is consistently focused on the simultaneity of strict conceptual minimalism and the hypnotic-psychedelic effect of beginninglessness and endlessness. This encompassed the conceptual-rational observation of surfaces through digital pop art lenses and the creation of intoxicating, shimmering surfaces. And it involves the negation of predictability.

Mit Maschinen Sprechen is on view through April 13th at Galerie Nagel Draxler, Weydingerstraße 2/4, 10178 Berlin.

Balenciaga Music, Curated by Artistic Director Demna, Provides A Unique Sartorial and Auditory Experience

On November 20th, 2023, Balenciaga announced the next phase of Balenciaga Music, curated by artistic director Demna. The initiative aims to provide a comprehensive music experience through innovative formats. The project features Archive, an English group with a 28-year history in electronic, trip-hop, post- and progressive rock. Archive created an exclusive 8.5-minute track, "Patterns," and a 7-hour playlist for Balenciaga.

The unique aspect of "Patterns" is its exclusive availability through an NFC chip embedded in limited-edition Balenciaga Music | Archive merchandise. Buyers can unlock an original listening event by scanning the chip with a smartphone. The interactive garments, including T-shirts and hoodies displaying Archive's discography, will be sold in selected Balenciaga stores worldwide and online.

This collaboration represents a first for both Archive and Balenciaga, as Archive has never worked with a fashion brand, and Balenciaga has never premiered music through a product. Alongside the exclusive track, Archive curated a 7-hour playlist available on a new Balenciaga Music hub on balenciaga.com, linking to various streaming services.

Darius Keeler, a founding member of Archive, emphasized the alignment of values between Balenciaga and Archive, emphasizing individuality and innovation. The project expands Balenciaga Music by introducing entirely new music tailored to Balenciaga's audience, coupled with a technically advanced merch series for accessing the music.

Listen To Our New Playlist: Punk Is Undead

Elton Motello

From proto, to post, an abridged ride on the periphery of punk.

Wolfgang Tillmans "Concrete Column" @ Regen Projects In Los Angeles

Installation view of Wolfgang Tillmans Concrete Column at Regen Projects, Los Angeles November 6 – December 23, 2021. Photo: Evan Bedford, Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles

German artist Wolfgang Tillmans is arguably one of the most important photographers of the past thirty years. But what many people don’t know is that his musical ambitions are what led to his career as a fine art photographer who captured the ecstatic decadence of youth culture with a serious and discerning eye. On view now at Regen Projects in Los Angeles, an exhibition entitled Concrete Column focuses on some of Tillmans’ most recognized body of work, along with new photographs, and a dedicated listening room for his first full-length album Moon In Earth Light. The album, a collection of spoken word, field recordings, and pulsating electronic beats, is a culmination of a life long obsession with music and music making. Below is an excerpt from a conversation between writer and musician, Sasha Frere-Jones, and Wolfgang Tillmans on the occasion of his current exhibition in Los Angeles that will be published in full in an upcoming print issue of Autre. Concrete Column will be on view until December 23 at Regen Projects. 

SASHA FRERE-JONES How long did it take to make the new record? 

WOLFGANG TILLMANS Some of the first bits are four-years-old. The lockdown was kind of productive because the musician I work with, Tim Knapp, his studio is on the same street as mine. And we were able to use time very fruitfully. Otherwise it's been sort of a process over two, three years. But then in the last few months it came together within a couple of weeks—this composition of the eighteen elements that make up the album. It was a bit of a full circle moment from when I started to make music again around 2015. I had collected an archive of field recordings that I've been doing over the previous five years, which I had sort of just stocked up because I saw them as audio photographs, photographing sound. But I never really had time, or peace and quiet, to do something about it. And then I finally committed time to it, and put together these different sources, from spoken word to field recordings and jams and proper studio productions.

FRERE-JONES  Do you just open up a particular machine and start singing or how—what’s your way of composing? What's your way of putting this stuff down?

TILLMANS  It usually starts with a word or words, a line, and a melody that comes with it. For example, “Device Control,” the song that made it onto Frank ocean's Endless album, I recorded it in one take on an iPhone in one morning, slightly hungover. I had mused and thought about the new technology and sort of weird transfer—this shift from living life to broadcasting life for some time. But then one morning these words just came out and that happens sometimes with sentences that stayed with me over decades. For example, the line,  “We can't escape into space, we're in it." And the other line is, “He wants to change, but not be seen changing." That's something that sort of stayed with me all my life. It's about myself, but it's about seeing others as well. But I work with a sort of notes that in sessions become a particular melody. So it always usually starts with a melody, a vocal melody, and a line. I don’t always get the verse so often— more the hook only [laughs]. 

FRERE-JONES  You know, people don't have a lot of time now, the hook is all they want. I'm really curious about your whole journey. I’m somebody who does two things. I make music and I write. I’m not saying you only do two things, but I know you have a specific history of making music. You started pretty young if I'm not mistaken, is that correct?  

TILLMANS Yeah, there was a short year and a half, two years, when I was seventeen to nineteen, which is when I was very productive with some songs, which I actually then later put them out in 2016. But we never performed, we never did anything. And I stopped for 25 years. 

FRERE-JONES  What kind of stuff was it? 

TILLMANS  It was 1985, so various electronic, post punk, new wave, pre-house. This was right before house music hit. 

FRERE-JONES Was there somebody you wanted to emulate or you wanted to be, or you wanted to play like? Who were your heroes? 

TILLMANS  I mean, clearly, Soft Cell and New Order, and Pet Shop Boys and Psychedelic Furs.  I always had a strong affinity to two poles: the more serious electronic, industrial, stuff. And on the other hand, Italo Disco, which was a genre that is nowadays held in great esteem, and consider one of the coolest things, but not then.


FRERE-JONES I'm also curious about—where were you hearing this stuff? What was the mood where you grew up? Was that the popular music? Was it the unpopular music and all the kids were all listening to something else? 

TILLMANS  In the mid-80s, there was still a very large divide between serious guitar music made by hand and electronic music that was considered not so serious because it's easy to make. Currently, it's only pressing a few buttons. It seems ridiculous nowadays that there was such value value system applied. But I was from a medium, small industrial city in the larger area of the Ruhr in Germany, near Cologne and Düsseldorf, which is an area of rich culture and musical history. Kraftwerk are from Düsseldorf and Karlheinz Stockhausen is from  Cologne. And a lot of English bands would come through the area to play. So I feel really blessed by having grown up in, at that time in that neighborhood where Sigmar Polke, Joseph Beuys, and lots of great artists were just living and working. I was a little bit too young for that, but when I left the Rhineland and moved to Hamburg after school I found myself, for the first time, old enough and actually located near enough to a burgeoning scene, which was a house scene, acid house music. That was a tectonic shift, definitely in Europe music. To a lesser extent, all across America, but it also had a huge impact in the big cities.  

FRERE-JONES  Is that when you made those first recordings? 

TILLMANS  I did at them in my hometown, which was before Hamburg. 

FRERE-JONES  I think we all have our, we all have our ideal cities when we’re young. Wherever it is, it’s not where we are. 

TILLMANS  I once had an assistant in Berlin who was born on Tottenham Court in London, the street where I first saw Boy George and Culture Club play when I was 15. And I thought like, wow, it must have been so incredible to be born in the West End. Or I had an assistant who was born 200 meters from Alexanderplatz in Berlin. I mean, I find it glamorous in itself, but on the other hand, I don't, I don't envy them because they never had this sort of imaginary space, this place to project into, because they come from a place where other people project their dreams and ambitions to. 

FRERE-JONES  But you stopped for 20 years—why did you stop? 

TILLMANS  Because my musical partner, surprisingly, left literally overnight. There was some personal drama with his girlfriend and he literally just left. I didn't muster up the courage to find somebody else to work with. But then I was in Hamburg and wanted to capture the energy of this newfound solidarity and democracy on the dance floor. It had a very egalitarian spirit and that totally inspired me. I wanted to communicate that and communicating that meant preserving it in pictures. And that’s when I took my first editorial photographs. 

Autre Exclusive Premiere: Cat Power "From Fur City" An Elegy To Benjamin Smoke

Autre presents an exclusive premiere of a never-before-seen live video of Cat Power (Chan Marshall) performing "From Fur City" at Tonic in NYC in 2003, a powerful elegy to radical and legendary musician and songwriter, Benjamin Smoke who died on January 29, 1999. The song "From Fur City" has never been on a proper studio album. Filmed by Scott Crary (Kill Your Idols, 2004).

Read Our Interview With Papooz On The Occasion Of Their New Video Release

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The Parisian duo Papooz became well known in France thanks to their summer 2016 melody Ann Wants To Dance with its sensually whimsical music video directed by artist Soko. They released their second album, Night Sketches in 2019, which encapsulates the essence of France’s warm summer nights: sipping white wine after spending the whole day being sun-kissed on the beaches of Cap Ferret (where Papooz recorded their first album), or enjoying the freshness of an ice-cold drink on a terrace with friends after suffocating in the streets of Paris all day.

This year’s summer plan might not be as sandy and salty as we’d once imagined, but we can only hope for more sexy new tracks and clips like Papooz’s latest sumptuous release. Straight from the garden of Eden, this forbidden fruit was directed by Victoria Lafaurie & Hector Albouker “in the year of Covid-19” and features goddess-like Klara Kristin, who made her film debut in Gaspard Noe’s Love. Papooz’s Armand Penicaut and Ulysse Cottin quarantined with their musical crew at La Ferme Records to prepare the new album, yet to be announced. I sat down with Papooz a couple months ago, before their show at the Moroccan Lounge in Los Angeles, before the world went into quarantine.

Read the full interview and ‘The Garden’ here.

Watch Wattstax (1972) A Benefit Concert To Commemorate The Seventh Anniversary Of The Watts Riots

Wattstax was a benefit concert organized by Stax Records to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the 1965 riots in the African-American community of Watts, Los Angeles. The concert took place at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on August 20, 1972. The concert's performers included all of Stax's prominent artists at the time. The genres of the songs performed included soul, gospel, R&B, blues, funk, and jazz.

Ohslo Releases Their First Full-length Album Honeymoon

Late at night, Dave Sorry and Nanne Hil record slow songs in their bedroom. Sitting closely together on the floor and musing amidst their synthesizers allows them to step back from the mundanity of life. Their electronic jams take inspiration from all sorts of (other)worldly stories, melodies and rhythms and are instantly recorded to capture the vibrancy of the moment. Ohslo’s live performances invite you to join them in this hidden place, for a sit-down between white sheets and synths. The duo’s sounds - glacial beats and warm flutes - are put to surreal visuals, created in collaboration with their collective of friends in the North of the Netherlands. Click here to listen.

Ohslo released their Comfort EP and Healthy Animal EP through Purple Noise Record Club in 2015 and 2016. Their first full-length album Honeymoon is out today on Babyrace Records.

Listen To The Surreal and Dreamy First Track Off Ohslo's New Album "Honeymoon"

Late at night, Dave Sorry and Nanne Hil record slow songs in their bedroom. Sitting closely together on the floor and musing amidst their synthesizers allows them to step back from the seriousness of life. Their electronic jams take inspiration from all sorts of (other)worldly stories, melodies and rhythms and are instantly recorded to capture the vibrancy of the moment. Ohslo’s live performances invite you to join them in this hidden place, for a sit-down between white sheets and synthesizers. The duo’s sounds - glacial beats and warm flutes - are put to surreal visuals, created in collaboration with their collective of friends in the North of the Netherlands. Ohslo released their Comfort EP and Healthy Animal EP through Purple Noise Record Club in 2015 and 2016. Their first full-length album Honeymoon is set to be released in November 2019 through Babyrace Records. The first single taken from the album is Like You. Out October 30th. Click here to purchase on iTunes or Apple Music, and available on Spotify and streaming platforms.

Watch The Music Video For FAIRE's "Se La Pasa Bien" From Their Forthcoming EP "La Vie"

UFO, collective, international plot? FAIRE, the band that is about to shake the French musical landscape, is a bit of ail of the above. Great dispensers of visceral and "dantesque" live shows where everything can happen: naked crowd members, furious mosh-pits, collective trance ... FAIRE telescopes through genres and ages, sweeps away psych rock and 80's new wave with an unbridled know-how that expresses the quintessence of what they call their "Gaule Wave," a well shaken mixture of spontaneity and French delirium. Their first EP “La vie” will be out on October 4th. Catch them live on October 3rd at La Boule Noire, 120 Boulevard de Rochechouart, Paris

Watch The Music Video For Allah-Las's "In The Air" Off Their New Album "LAHS"

Local California band Allah Las announces their latest album LAHS out October 11 on Mexican Summer and their new video for first single " In The Air ," a tongue in cheek half baked version of Weekend at Bernie's .

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for” the saying goes. But suppose the proverbial harbor is Los Angeles — a place not particularly known for being the origin of adventures. From the Spanish Conquistadors to the countless starry-eyed nobodies hoping to make it big, LA is usually the destination.

So it’s no wonder the Allah Las became fascinated with both the carefree spirit and glitter-in-the-gutter lifestyle of their hometown. After three records mining its lore and lure (from the desert to the sea) they have become global ambassadors of not just a place but a location.

Having taken their compact California on the road across the world (making stops in North, Central, and South America, Europe, South Africa, Australia, Russia, East Asia and beyond), they couldn’t help but peek through the other end of the telescope.

On their fourth LP, drummer Matt Correia , bassist Spencer Dunham , and guitarists Miles Michaud and Pedrum Siadatian turn their collective gaze outward and toward the horizon. Simply titled LAHS (a reference to a common misspelling of the band’s name), their forthcoming release on Mexican Summer finds the band turning in their most cohesive and ambitious work yet. LAHS is available for pre-order here

Ever Present Series Features A.S.T.R.A.L.O.R.A.C.L.E.S @ The Getty Center in Los Angeles

Inspired by the exhibition The Wondrous Cosmos in Medieval Manuscripts, Ever Present brings together a group of artists who integrate the intergalactic into their varied work. Like their medieval forbearers, they quest for new artistic, analytic, and spiritual ways of understanding our connection to the cosmos. Performances include music by vocalist, multi-instrumentalist, and Vedic astrologer Deradoorian (known for her work with Dirty Projectors), choral scores translated from the constellations by experimental artist and composer Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs, an interdimensional ritual by A.S.T.R.A.L.O.R.A.C.L.E.S with live music accompaniment by ambient composer Ana Roxanne, a planetarium-style visual lecture on the multiverse by artists Jennifer Moon and laub, and site-wide energy work by multidimensional artist and Afrofuturist Jordi.

Ever Present occurs throughout the year at The Getty Center 1200 Getty Center Dr, Los Angeles, CA 90049. photographs by Lani Trock