Ty Segall
Lo-fi god, Ty Segall, after his show at Strange Matter in Richmond, VA. Segall describes his new album, Melted, out on Goner Records, as sounding like "cherry cola, Sno-Cones and taffy." Ty Segall is currently on a US tour - view winter tour dates here. photograph by Anna Wittel
Starring Devendra Banhart and Rebecca Schwartz, the premise of the Oliver Peoples 2011 campaign is an exploration of authentic intimacy and sexuality. The love affair is explored in the one-of-a-kind masterpiece by architect John Lautner: Rainbow House. Produced with acclaimed photographer and aspiring director Lisa Eisner.
A joint release by L.A.’s Hippos In Tanks and Montreal’s Arbutus Records, the Darkbloom EP is the title of an amazing new collaboration by d’Eon and Grimes. Both rising stars in Montreal’s independent music scene, they produced their respective sides independently, though the project was conceptualized together. Here is a track from d'Eon's side.
Adarsha just sent over this mind-blowing video for Adanowsky's song You Are The One directed by the Skinny Director team. The video was shot while Adanowsky recorded his album in Los Angeles at the old house of Ke$ha and Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. In order to give authenticity to the Love-In, the cast and crew were put into a sexual trance thanks to a white magic breathing exercise the directors learned from Electricity Aquarian, a surviving member of Los Angeles spiritual cult The Source Family. Over forty people then channeled their erotic energy to help give birth to Adanowsky's new alter-ego, El Amador: "The Lover."
In six tumultuous years, Orange Juice, led by Edwyn Collins, blazed a trail of self-reliance with the legendary Postcard label, ran in conjunction with then-manager Alan Horne, and greatly expanded the palette of independent music at the start of the ‘80s with their brand of literate pop songwriting that both pre-saged the coming of The Smiths and kickstarted a renaissance in Scottish pop music that continues to this day. After an embryonic start as the punk-influenced Nu-Sonics, Orange Juice came into being in 1979 as unfashionable pre-Year Zero punk influences such as The Byrds, Chic, Motown and The Velvet Underground began to make their presence known in the band’s developing sound. Over the next year, the group recorded four landmark 7” singles on Postcard (as well as putting out early releases from Aztec Camera, The Go-Betweens and Josef K). Though each single proved more successful than its predecessor, greater commercial aspirations led the band to sign to Polydor in the midst of making their first album in a prescient deal in which the band retained ownership of their material. The original lineup abruptly fell apart shortly after the release of the debut album, You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever, and, as quickly, the band’s future was decidedly unassured. However, with the addition of Malcolm Ross, formerly of Postcard labelmates Josef K, and Zimbabwe-by-way-of-Glasgow drummer Zeke Manyika, the group proceeded to make their commercial mark with the timeless funk and soul-inflected Rip It Up, whose title track was to be the group’s biggest UK hit, peaking at #8 in February of 1983. During the recording of a follow-up, the group had decided to head in a more rock direction, but creative tensions arose again and the group fell apart during the recording sessions from which theTexas Fever mini-LP was culled. With Polydor’s support of the group withdrawing, Collins, joined in the studio by Manyika, persevered to make the bittersweet swan song album, The Orange Juice, a collection that telegraphed the group’s impending demise amidst some of their finest recordings. Collins made it official in March of 1985 announcing mid-performance at a miner’s benefit at the Brixton Academy that it would be Orange Juice’s last performance. Last November Domino Records released an incredible seven disc anthology entitled Coals to Castles. www.dominorecords.co.us
Imagine being holed up, alone in your friend's house in the West German country side....it's 1979....you are heartbroken after a recent break up with a girlfriend....your friend happens to have a home studio with a Revox reel-to-reel 8-track recorder and a primitive, temperamental Minimoog.....its Summer and you have a lot of time on your hands....inventing new, strange sounds. When Harald Grosskopf emerged from his heartbroken solitude he had inadvertently produced one of the first examples of synth-pop. Harald Grosskopf's album 'Synthesist,' originally released on Sky Records in 1980, RVNG Intl. celebrates the 30th year anniversary with this a mastered and packaged reissue. www.igetrvng.com
She was junkie, a groupie, a legend, and she wound up in a body bag at the tender age of 20. Nancy Spungen, who would have been 53 today, was famous for being the blond waistoid girlfriend of waistoid punk Sid Vicious. Vicious, as if living up to his name, was accused of killing Spungen with a single knife wound to her abdomen on a barbiturate induced night at the Chelsea Hotel in 1978. No body knows who killed her and Vicious died of an overdose before trial. Happy birthday Nancy Spungen.
Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre
Nobody can really tell you if this is some kind of brilliant performance art or just plain wholesome American Satan worship. Tyler the Creator is the 19 year old co-founder of "hip-hop collective" OFWGKTA, which stands for Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, or for short, Odd Future, based in Los Angeles. Tyler's sound is surprisingly and refreshingly unique despite the intense gravel in his voice, and his performance is a revolutionary visceral experience not witnessed in hip-hop since the early 90s. It seems as though Tyler and Odd Future have pumped the murder, violence, and degradation back into the medium - which made it so appealing in the beginning - if not for the sake of being shocking, but for the sake of the art form as catharsis. Odd Future will perform at this April's Cochella Music Festival and release a full length album, Goblin, in same month.
Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre
Thom Yorke interpretive dances straight to my goddamn heart with this amazing video for Lotus Flower on Radio new album "King of Limbs". Produced and Directed by Garth Jennings and choreographed by absolutely brilliant Wayne McGregor, the renown British Choreographer.
The rain would not stop and the air was thick with winter's mercurial chill. Last Friday evening I made my way to Davies Hall for the San Francisco Symphony. I took my seat. A breath of orchestra air filled my lungs; only then was I able to relax. The music began. Wicked and wild, the mellifluous sound filled the room with a contagious sense of nostalgia. I wanted to hold something in my arms and my eyes wanted to close and dream of waves crashing with each chaotic whirl of strings. This....was Mozart. I imagined: what if I locked myself in a room with absolutely no distractions? I could write wickedly erotic, rampageous odes of love on instruments that I would make with my own two hands simply out of the sheer survival of my immaculate creativity - and nothing else! Mozart had the keys and Mozart had visions. Visions that led him to write perfectly well rounded, prodigious compositions. Two of the pieces performed, Piano Concertos Nos. 5 and 8, were written by Mozart when he was only between the age of 18 and 20 years old. Mozart's Symphony No. 25 opened the program and commenced with Symphony No. 33. To fully perform these pieces, let alone understand them, one must have a mind that borders on both insanity and genius, and at the same time desperately longs for both romance and solitude. David Geilsammer, who took center stage at the grand piano for the solo performance of Piano Concerto Nos. 5 and 8, embodies this longing perfectly. The moment Geilsammer walked onto the stage it was as if the air around him changed colors - behind him was left a trail of golden dust, the kind that intoxicates. Probably not something anyone else was seeing in the Symphony Hall, but surely something everyone felt. Geilsammer was like a delicate fawn who's fingers violently but ever so gracefully played each note as if his life depended on it. Because this, of course....is Mozart.
Catch Friday and Saturday night's performance at The San Francisco Symphony: Mozart's famed, apocalyptic Requiem; conducted by the illustrious Michael Tilson Thomas www.sfsymphony.org
Text by Adarsha Benjamin
"Without You" is a single from Los Angeles duo Rainbow Arabia's forthcoming full length album "Boys and Diamonds" to be released on February 28th - "Without You" single with an incredible b-side will be released on February 21, 2011. www.kompakt.fm
WATCH VHS VERSION HERE: http://vimeo.com/19863088 OFFICIAL REMIX BY CROSSOVER myspace.com/crossoveranticvlt VISIT mater-suspiria-vision.blogspot.com FOR MERCH, CDRs etc Non-Profit Tribute to LADY TERMINATOR (1988) Non Profit Promo Video Collage by Cosmotropia de Xam ( facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000418932107 or cosmotropia-de-xam.blogspot.com ) - Thanks for this great work. myspace.com/matersuspiriavision Join Mater Suspiria Vision on facebook for newest updates: facebook.com/#!/pages/Mater-Suspiria-Vision/10150124664305212?ref=ts
Mater Suspiria Vision's psychedelic mash-up music video for their song Crackbusting Angeles (2011). mater-suspiria-vision.blogspot.com
Video by Butzmann & Kiesel (1979) Music by HOLY OTHER
Ney Matogrosso was a leather artisan with a rare voice at the right place at the right time. Brazil, 1966, a polychromatic cultural revolution was taking place called tropicália. Even more psychedelic and revolutionary than the sexual revolution commencing in the thick white fog of San Francisco, tropicalia pervaded every corner of Brazilian culture: theater, poetry, dance, and especially music. You could call tropicália music an evolutionary divergence of psychedelia that amalgamated traditional America rock n' roll, Afro-Cuban rhythms, and funk. When the band Secos e Molhados wanted a male leader singer with a high pitched voice they got even more than they asked for. Enter Ney Matogrosso, and his sopranino voice with tonal ranges beyond a soprano, who helped Secos e Molhados reach explosive success. When the band dissolved Matogrosso went on with a solo career that has lasted through the present. According to Art Brazil, a documentary on Matogrosso's 40 year carreer is currently in post production. The documentary, entitled Naked Eye, will be premiered in August - most likely in Brazil - on Ney Matogrosso's 70th birthday. Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
mp3:::ney matogrosso - Pedra de Rio
[audio:http://www.pasunautre.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/04-Pedra-de-Rio.mp3|titles=04 Pedra de Rio]
mp3:::ney matogrosso - Barco Negro
[audio:http://www.pasunautre.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/07-Barco-Negro.mp3|titles=07 Barco Negro]
A friend and fellow Francophile recently sent me a link to the Jacques Dutronc music video for “Les gens sont fous, les temps sont flous” (which translates roughly as “The people are crazy, the times are vague”). Thus began an immediate obsession with the songwriter turned singer turned actor, who, in the 60s wrote hits for his then girlfriend, later wife, Françoise Hardy while at Vogue Records. He went on to become a star in his own right with his first chart-topper,“Et moi et moi et moi." Dressed to perfection in suit and tie at a time when most musicians were growing beards and donning bell-bottoms, Dutronc’s live performances were characterized by a wink and a nod to the audience, his sly, bemused expression transforming his particular brand of pop into a subtle parody of the genre itself.
It’s no surprise then, that Dutronc later went into acting, eventually starring in Jean-Luc Godard's 1980 meta-film Every Man For Himself, in which the pop star plays an filmmaker, also named Godard, who is grappling with the dissolution of his marriage. A brand new 35mm print of the film has recently been pressed and will be shown in Chicago later this week and in Vancouver at the beginning of next month. See links for dates and times: Chicago & Vancouver.
Text by Anna Wittel for Pas Un Autre
In 1802, with his hearing worsening to the point of deafness, Ludwig Van Beethoven was at a cross roads. The decision could have quite possibly cost Beethoven his life: go deaf and lose the gift of music or go on and beat against the tides of imminent silence. Going deaf must have been like losing his oars in the sea of Beethoven's genius. In 1802 he wrote a famous letter to his brothers announcing his plans to commit suicide - fate was certainly knocking at his gates - as the famous intro to his fifth symphony connotes, but as hard on his luck as he was,he decided to forgo his plans of suicide, and went on to live out some of his most productive years - his middle years - when most of Beethoven's most famous pieces were written. No one ever read that fateful letter until after his death close to 30 years later; and between 1802 and 1815, sans oars, Beethoven's genius was at it's apex. Last night I had the magical experience of witnessing the Polish conductor Marek Janowski conduct Beethoven's largely underrated Symphony No. 4, Piano Concerto No. 3 with the virtuosic Juho Phjohen at the piano, and finally the Leonore Oveture No. 3. All pieces were performed stunningly by the San Francisco Symphony with a vibrant, emotive exuberance rare in most orchestras. Hearing the San Francisco Symphony perform Beethoven's Leonore Overture No. 3 - which was intended as an opera set in a dungeon of all places - was truly soul awakening. This performance runs for two more nights, tonight Jan. 22 and Sunday Jan. 23 - find tickets here.
