[Coming Soon] Dukes of Chutney on Vinyl

Photograph of Dustin Lynn in Milan by Iris Humm.

Big ups to Dustin Lynn whose new brazilian dubplate, which is a collaboration with John Paul Jones (Tom Croose, Worst Friends), who together create brilliant musical masterpieces under the musical moniker Dukes of Chutney, is being pressed by Resista Records, a new imprint "dedicated to highly limited vinyl-only pressings of interesting edits & remixes from across the genre spectrum." Listen to Tom Croose - Cho Chua (Dukes Dub) here.

Sidi Touré First Ever U.S. Tour

Sidi Touré made his first guitar as a child, constructing it from his wooden writing slate in the ancient town of Gao, Mali. Once the heart of the Songhaï empire and burial place of its Askia kings, the town rests between the Niger and the encroaching ocean of sand known as the Sahara Desert. The Songhai empire was the last of the great empires of the Sahel, reaching its zenith under Soni Alibert (Sunni Ali) in the mid 400’s. Sidi Touré was born here in 1959, but to be born a Touré, a noble family who trace their lineage directly from the Askia kings, carried a significance and onus of a past that reaches directly into the present. Like another Malian noble turned singer, Salif Keita, Sidi Touré faced a conflict between the inexorable pull of music and the expectations of family and society. Touré’s family had been sung about, and sung to, by traditional griots for centuries, but until a small boy challenged the rules, the Touré’s did not sing! Sidi Touré is currently on his first ever US tour in support of his 2011 release, Sahel Folk, via Thrill Jockey Records.

God Bless Yoko Ono

In 1974 John & Yoko briefly separated, John moving to L.A., Yoko staying in New York. During this period, John released two LPs, 'Walls & Bridges' and 'Rock and Roll'. Though it appeared at the time that Yoko was not doing anything, in reality she was touring her native Japan and recording this album, entitled Story. Pictured on the cover is an adorable photograph of a young Yoko. The album was shelved after her reconciliation with Lennon.


PATTI SMITH: Babelogue + Outside Society

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PATTI SMITH: BABELOGUE: The Hunter College Art Galleries present Patti Smith: 9.11 Babelogue –  on view from September 8-December 3, 2011 –  twenty-six works on paper by the esteemed poet, performer, and visual artist Patti Smith as a response to the destruction of the World Trade Center in 2001. The artist’s elegiac homage does not align the Twin Towers with one nation, religion, or race, but instead offers them as symbols of the universal resiliency of the human spirit. Smith’s “9.11” series was created between 2001 and 2002 and will be shown in its entirety for the first time in New York, in the Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Art Gallery, to coincide with the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

PATTI SMITH: OUTSIDE SOCIETY: Patti Smith raises the curtain on Outside Society, a new collection of her signature songs on the Arista and Columbia labels. The landmark 18-song release marks the first single-CD collection to span Patti's entire body of recorded work. The chronologically arranged tracks move from 1975 (her debut album, Horses, with "Gloria" and "Free Money") through 2007 (Twelve, with her cover of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit").

Kurt Vile Releases New EP "So Outta Reach"

On November 8, Kurt Vile will releases a brand-new 6-song EP on the 12″ vinyl and digital formats, entitled So Outta Reach. The EP contains 5 original songs initially recorded during the sessions for Smoke Ring For My Halo but not used for the album, which were reworked with producer John Agnello this summer. In addition, the EP contains a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Downbound Train.” Listen to "The Creature" below...

[ON THE RISE] Selebrities

Selebrities' slightly overlooked album Delusions, which was released last May on the incredible 'Scandicalifornian' record label Cascine, is a brilliant panorama of alternate musical genres. Their influences blurb on facebook sums it all up: "Long legs, red lipstick, the mystic haze before the TriStar Horse appears, the TriStar horse, the 1980s to the mid 1990s in its entirety. John Hughes. movies, movie montages." Vague, but perfect.  Selebrities, a trio that hails from Brooklyn, has just released a free download of a b-side they couldn't fit on their debut full length album, entitled Surrounded By You. Keep an eye on these kids.

 

 

Art Meets Rock

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RICHARD KERN, Nirvana, Courtney Love
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left: WILLIAM ENGLISH, Vivienne Westwood in Sex, 1975, courtesy of Maggs Brothers, London right: URS LÜTHI, Un'isola dell'aria, 1975, particolare, 28 fotografie, cm60x50 cad, Collezione Fabio e Virginia Gori
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IAIN FORSYTH & JANE POLLARD, A Rock'N'Roll Suicide, 1998, Live performance, Photo: David Cowlard courtesy Kate MacGarry, London

Museo Pecci di Prato in Florence, Italy presents an exhibition entiled LIVE! Art Meets Rock. The exhibition, curated by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini, adopts a suggestive perspective to show how the history of contemporary art and of rock music have followed parallel paths to contribute to the construction of the cultural universe of the last forty years. Music and the visual arts have crossed and overlapped, over time, engendering a unified and consistent landscape; what draws them together is the performative dimension, articulated according to the specific occasion within an exhibition or a concert. LIVE!offers a parallel and original reading of historic events by exhibiting paintings, sculptures, installations, video clips, artworks, LPs, graphic works, photographs, magazines and films. Artists include Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, William English, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, David LaChapelle and more. The exhibition will be accompanied by Live!, a book published by Rizzoli with contributions by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini. LIVE! Art Meets Rock view at the Museo Pecci di Prato until September 16.  

[IN THEATERS] The Man Who Fell To Earth

David Bowie in Nicolas Roeg's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976). Courtesy BFI.
David Bowie in Nicolas Roeg's THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (1976). Courtesy BFI.

“Are you Lithuanian?” After a space craft seemingly crashes to Earth, David Bowie walks off to sell a ring for twenty bucks in a dusty Southwestern town, then almost immediately hires high-priced, thick-spectacled patent attorney (Graduate screenwriter Buck Henry) to register ten world-changing patents. Orange-haired, pale-faced, minimally expressioned Bowie (the pop legend obviously well-cast as an alien in his first starring role) desperately yearns to return himself and water to his parched planet — but will the authorities let him? — with coed-shtupping professor Rip Torn providing technical help, and chambermaid Candy Clark providing distractions via overdoses of very terrestrial booze, church, sex, and television (“Get out of my mind, all of you!”). Roeg’s science fiction cult classic/cautionary moral tale is an assault of fragmented, non-linear narrative style, typically striking visuals, echt 70s soundtrack by John Phillips of The Mamas and Papas (along with period “needle drops”), with a pathbreaking no-comment depiction of a gay couple and multiple eye-brow-raising sexual romps — including one punctuated by gunshots. All too often seen in washed-out copies, this new 35mm print of the uncut director’s version allows Roeg’s dazzling visuals (Pauline Kael called him “the most visually seductive of directors”) to be seen as they were meant to be. [site]