[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] Protest Songs

Text by Adam Lehrer

The widest margin of income inequality in the history of the United States. Rampant police brutality. The most overcrowded prisons in the western hemisphere. No guarantees of education or health care. Corporate greed. The mainstream media wants to tell me that I'm a sexist for not voting for Hilary Clinton. They say Bernie Sanders is too radical to be president, that people can't accept all that change at once? Fuck that. That is the military industrial complex keeping us complacent, telling us to make the sensible choice so that they can maintain the "natural order of things." If the sensible economic policies of Sen. Sanders are radical, then let's revolt away. President Obama was great for liberals and this country, but now is the time to take those epic policy changes and institute a full blown system overhaul. Protest away, my fellow Americans. It is our motherfucking right!

Music has always been a powerful tool of protest, bringing together disparate groups of people behind one message and one sound. The statement of protest can be clear, whether it be Rage Against the Machine encouraging us to bring down the system, or Ice Cube detailing the horrors of police brutality, or Killer Mike telling us that he's "Glad Reagan dead," or Beyoncé using her immortality to ally herself with feminism. Or it can be subtle, as in Miles Davis soundtracking the cold life of 1970s New York, Peaches celebrating her body and sexuality, or the very existence of Anarchist musical collectives like Test Dept, Can, or Crass (not available on Spotify, sadly).

Music brings us together, and together they will fall. The conservative right still seems to believe they hold all the power, but 86 percent of this country is made up of young people, minorities, and women. The rich white man is a dead monkey in the United States. It's time they realize it, and either stand with us or move out of the way. We all have the right to flourish in this beautiful country of ours. We all have the right to be healthy and to improve our minds. We all have the right to feel protected by law enforcement, and not vilified by it. We all have the right to see the corruption, and to declare it so. We have the right. And if that right is continuously denied to us, we will fight for it. 

[FASHION REVIEW] Greg Lauren's Fall Winter 2016 Collection

Text by Adam Lehrer

Fashion Week gets old fast. When you start doing this whole thing, you get this false sense of importance centered around the fact that you are getting invited to shows by designers you admire (or don’t admire, but nice gesture either way). But then you realize that you have to run around, often in the rain, from show to show, stand in lines way to long while the show gets pushed back, find terrible vantage points to shoot mediocre photos, and spend way too much money on Starbucks to charge up and upload and email your work. After a couple days, it sucks. Not even the partying makes it better (it’s fucking New York, we don’t need fashion week to party).

But then, you just have one of those magical fashion moments, when a presentation reminds you of why you became interested in the concept of fashion beyond the shit you wear. For New York Fashion Week: Men’s, that presentation was Greg Lauren.

No one knew what was coming when they walked into the Chelsea warehouse to find the 1920s-themed magical playhouse that was the Greg Lauren FW 2016 presentation. There was a boxing ring where models shadowboxed wearing beautifully distressed hoodies and sweats. There were the urban dandies, wearing thrashed suits. There were Baja East references. The whole thing was soundtracked to Jimi Hendrix’s Who Knows blasting through the speakers. It was exhilarating.

Greg Lauren (yes nephew of Ralph), a Princeton trained fine artist, began working in fashion after presenting an exhibition with garments. He approaches fashion much in the same way he approached art: concept first. “All my work starts with ideas and questions that I want to ask, I think about it no differently than I did when I was a painter,” said Lauren while being swarmed by media, friends, and family. “I’m then trying to answer those ideas with clothing.”

Lauren was looking towards the various archetypes of the male outsider, and placing the outsider in an antiquated setting: boxers, artists, Baja East, dandies and more. But the clothes were utterly fantastic. While exorbitantly expensive, Lauren’s garments look and feel like they are warranting the price tags. Everything, from suit to hoodie, from tweed to terrybone, is magnificently thrashed, blown out, and treated beyond recognition. The footwear, from destroyed work boots to adidas snowboarding boots, looked perfect in the setting. The shapes were fascinating, with tweed suits dropping crotches and letting shoulders hang. Silhouette was on Lauren’s mind above all else with this collection: “I really wanted to incorporate the shapes with the Californian lifestyle that I’ve been living, a laidback artsy lifestyle, and reinterpret that in silhouettes.”

One could certainly argue that, as an heir to the largest clothing corporation in New York, Lauren has the freedom to experiment with concept and garments more than most designers trying to start brands here. But so what? New York needs art in its fashion, and never in my life have I experienced what was ostensibly a clothing presentation a visceral experience so alive. 

Click here to see more from this collection. 

[FASHION REVIEW] Carlos Campos’s FW 2016 Collection And Other Highlights From New York Fashion Week Mens

text by Adam Lehrer

I was just starting to get that, “I hate fashion feeling,” while standing in line for the presentation of Honduran-born New York-based menswear designer Carlos Campos’s FW 2016 collection, I was starting to have a “I really fucking hate fashion,” moment. I mean, it’s nice to be included in this clusterfuck in one form or another, but there certainly aren’t a slew of my favorite menswear designers showing here. And some of the ones I do, like Robert Geller, Simon Miller, and to a lesser extent the somewhat overhyped Public School, must have forgot to send Autre an invitation (or not). Meanwhile, I’m sitting in line for 35 minutes for Carlos Campos. Not like this was a Comme des Garcons show or anything.

But nevertheless, the show went on. Campos’s ideal male customer, “a clean rock star,” sounds utterly boring. We already have John Varvatos, and really who can actually say that John Varvatos is their favorite designer? Maybe some frat guy with a little doh to spend at Nordstrom rack. But Campos’s FW 2016 collection was nice, with earthy palette of camel, white, and navy suiting, coats, and trousers. I quite liked the white overcoats that were a little boxy. The soundtrack, that started with traditional salsa music and moved into a David Bowie-propelled finale that brought some life to the collection overall.

So, some other highlights that I haven’t been able to see in-person but who needs to see anything in person to formulate an opinion, really? Patrik Ervell released images of his FW 2016 collection and I really think he’s still the best menswear designer in New York. He takes conceptual ideas and forms them into a palatable brand identity: excellent shirting, elegant bombers made of beautiful materials, and the best and most wearable jeans this side of Acne or Levi’s. It’s sort of a retro-futurist (ergh, that term) take on the Brooklyn artiste or poet or something, as evidenced here by a peacoat in green mohair, bombers with mohair collars, and a white alpaca jacket. There wasn’t one thing I wouldn’t wear. According to Vogue there are whispers of Patrik Ervell taking over menswear for an established house, and that would be pretty righteous if he found the right place. Daiki Suzuki’s Engineered Garments FW 2016 collection was what you would expect: mindblowing use of rich materials, sometimes in the same look. Excellent clothes for a Brooklyn bartender who makes more money than all other Brooklyn bartenders. Robert Geller’s predictably sick collection for FW offered an incredibly rich selection of dark Yohji-referencing poetic work and leisure wear in sheer, night black, while moving into earth greens and tans. The standout look to me was a green leather workwear suit under a mackintosh coat in black with tan trim, When the hell is Geller going to be considered the monumental designer that he is? The work he does now is far more desirable than anything he did with Alexandre Plokhov at his side with Cloak. 

Click here to see the full runway presentation. 

[Fashion Review] The Best From Day One Of New York Fashion Week Mens

Text by Adam Lehrer

So, New York Fashion Week: Men’s has begun for the FW 2016 season. The story with New York will always be that the designers that show in New York are far too market-driven in comparison with the brands that come out of London and Paris. It does often seem that brands here are far too worried about ending up on the racks of Nordstrom to really make anything close to being considered art, but then again you’d also not really be looking hard enough. The menswear scene in New York is huge: we love clothes here! Dudes here are as focused on style and willing to take risks on new styles perhaps more than any city in the world. From Supreme to high fashion to the best vintage stores in the world, guys in New York use all manner of garments to express that thing that they are trying to express.

The designer schedule for FW 2016, while slim in comparison with those in Milan, London, and Paris, is looking fairly strong. Italo Zuchelli, perhaps the greatest minimalist menswear designer in the world, will host a Calvin Klein presentation here. Few menswear designs on Earth are as conceptually strange, artisinally gifted, and rarified as those by Greg Lauren (whose show we will be attending). Plus, there are a range of new designers defining a new high fashion scene in Los Angeles, including Rochambeau and Second/Layer, that are calling New York their home.

The concepts are there, it’s just you have to sift through a lot of overly commercial monotonous mediocrities to find the good stuff. NYFW:M started today with New York Men’s Day, platform presentations of eight new brands. So much of what makes fashion amazing is seeing the clothes move with human bodies (Craig Green exemplifies this), and it can be difficult to hold a cohesive concept without the splash of a catwalk. But the designers at NYMD did their damndest to try. Some of the clothes were dull. Some were actually quite amazing. Here were some of the best.

Best:

Edmund Ooi FW 2016

In our review of his SS 2016 runway show, we discussed Malaysian designer Ooi’s refreshing emphasis on concept but lamented his inability to render them into wearable clothing. He heard our cries with FW2016; a striking balance between futuristic high fashion and utilitarian workwear. The coats, which ranged from belted trench coats to quilted bomber jackets, came layered with high treated t-shirts, neck jewelry, and awesome blue leather gloves. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the presentation were the spectacular cropped skinny denim; Ooi using denim is sort of like Ralph Lauren using latex. The collection felt very Raf, perhaps too much so. It’s probably on the fault of the viewer to relate anything youthful and confrontational to Raf, but the influence felt very evident here. And I’d still rather wear Raf. But nevertheless, very nice clothes.

Plac FW 2016

While certainly not approaching anything resembling high fashion, New York-based PLAC has found some footing under Korean creative director Sang-Hyun Lee. The knits and scarves were massive and draped over the models, creating an easy evocative look.
 

David Hart FW 2016

I actually was thinking the other night, why is it that when designers reference music is it always punk (Raf), rave culture (Liam Hodges), or hip-hop (Astrid Anderson). Why not one one of the most stylish of all musical genres, Jazz? While New York designer David Hart, who has worked for Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph, might not be the most conceptually brilliant designer out there, his FW 2016 presentation at NYMD answered my call. His presentation room, set to a soundtrack of A Tribe Called Quest, recreated the atmosphere of Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem, if in a slightly too obvious manner. Nevertheless, the all black cast and understated high luxury made for a groovy atmosphere and some very desirably tailored clothing.

Robert James FW 2016


“As a New York designer, I’m very conscious of not making anything related to Americana or workwear. I want to make real, luxury designer clothing,” said designer Robert James to me at his FW 2016 collection. The aim is admirable. James isn’t overly concerned with concepts, he pretty much always works in the sphere of refernces to rock n’ roll (this time the opulent dressing of 1970s rock bands), but he is an exquisitely skilled tailor and the clothes here were perfectly fitted and befitting of high price tags.

CWST FW 2016

I’ve never been one to think of dope smoking (and growing) tree huggers as the most stylish people around, but Californian brand CWST had me re-thinking that sentiment with their campfire celebrating FW 2016 presentation. For the presentation, the brand created a field of marijuana and had a campfire acoustic guitar player wheeling through the soundtrack. On top of that, the clothes were pretty amazing, turning hippie staples like drugrugs and knitted pants look like the most desirable products on Earth. There is something refreshingly unique about this brand, taking inspiration from their home state and then letting that inspiration ripple through the snooty fashion world. Never change, CWST.
 

Chapter FW 2016

I actually quite like Chapter and own some of their knits and pants (they actually make some really cool looking trousers), but they do seem to offer a more accessibly price but still well-made versions of the types of designers that sell their clothes at Totokaelo. But their FW 2016 presentation was fantastic, seeming to imagine the bad boy vampires of The Lost Boys at a John Coltrane concert (there was a live jazz band for the soundtrack). The designers of Chapter have a real knack for shape, taking things like minimal bomber jackets and trench coats and then just flaring it at the arm or the seems and making it look really cool. Chapter also offered the brand’s first pairs of denim, which we cropped, slashed, and drop-crotched, giving that girlfriend jean vibe to dudes, which didn’t look bad even if won’t get me to ditch my Levi’s anytime soon. Chapter really is a great brand though, especially if you are a guy who wants to wear things like Margiela and Lanvin but can’t come close to affording it. 

See more fashion coverage here. 

Your Must See Art Guide During Zona Maco México Arte Contemporaneo 2016

This week, Mexico City will be awash with patrons of the art, artists, galleryists, gawkers, wannabes and creative adventure seekers. Opening on Wednesday, February 3rd, Zona Maco México Arte Contemporaneo will be ground zero for one of the world’s most important art fairs and by far the biggest in South America. Founded by Zélika García 2002, Zona Maco as built a bridge between Mexico’s capital and the world’s leading artistic institutions. Surrounding the fair, though, will be a number of exhibitions, events and satellite fairs, including the Material Art Fair and the Idex Book Fair at Museo Jumex. You can also catch highlight exhibitions by the likes of Yoko Ono, Adam Green, and Los Angeles based artist on the rise Ariana Papademetropoulos. Here is your #mustsee art guide during Zona Maco 2016. 

1. A Brilliant Activation of Allen Ginsburg's Poem Howl At Museo Jumex

Within the exhibition space Ruppersberg Allen: What is A Picture, Allen Ginsburg's poem Howl will be activated by voice, thus emphasizing the presence of the language in the exhibition and specifically in the work The Singing Poster, which illuminates the poem into prismatic colors and block text. The reading will occur on February 6th, 2016 at Museo Jumex between 5 and 8pm. 

2. Gary Baseman Teams Up With 1800 Tequila For A Second Time To Create A Customized Decanter 

Artist Gary Baseman is currently in Mexico City for a private event that will be held for the unveiling of the collaboration on February 4th. You can stay up to date with his travels in Mexico City by following his Instagram. 

3. Check Out Gagosian's Booth At the Index Art Book Fair

Gagosian's bookish side of their art empire is always sure to delight and the Index Art Book Fair is a must stop on your art tour of Mexico City this week. The Index Art Book Fair opens on February 4th and closes on February 7th at Museo Jumex. 

4. Check Out The Smoke Room Booth At The Index Art Book Fair

Launched in 2013 and based in Toronto Smoke Room aims at publishing the work of young photographers and artists. This week during the Index Art Book Fair, you can check out not so young, but young at heart Brad Elterman's new zine/book No Dog's On The Beach. 

5. Ai Weiwei Takes On Surveillance and the Police State

As part of London based gallery Lisson's booth, Chinese artist and "dissident" will be have his piece Surveillance Camera with Stand Marble - a testament to freedom of expression. Lisson's booth will be on display for the duration of Zona Maco from February 3 to February 7, Centro Banamex, Hall D, Mexico City, Stand #e200
 

6. Yoko Ono "Earth Hopes" At the  Museum of Memory and Tolerance Museum

The conceptual artist Yoko Ono will come to Mexico City on February 2, to inaugurate the exhibition on Earth Hope at the Memory and Tolerance Museum. The exhibition will explore her work and her dedication to giving women a more empowered voice. The Memory and Tolerance Museum is located at Plaza Juarez, Centro Historico | Frente al Hemiciclo a Juárez de la Alameda central, Mexico City

7. Artist and Filmmaker Adam Green Is Part of A Group Exhibition At One Reed

On view starting February 6, 2016 One Reed Gallery will present Mutatis Mutandis: ICON Symbol with artists Adam Green, Aurora Pellizzi, and Cisco Jimenez. The exhibition will explore symbols, mythologies and other tripped out modes of thought and thinking. One Reed is located at Building Humboldt - Article 123, No.116 Centro, Cuauhtemoc, Mexico.

8. The Material Art Fair Is Going To Be Off The Chain

The Material Art Fair is a little bit like Zona Maco's badass little brother or sister, featuring up and coming galleries that are down to get weird and dangerous. Indeed, MAF exists a little bit outside the status quo and its a great balance to the sometimes stodginess of mainstream art fairs. The Material Art Fair will open with a private vernissage on February 4 and will run until February 7, 2016, Melchor Ocampo 154-A Col. San Rafael, Del. Cuauhtemoc México

9. Sade Gallery Will Present Los Angeles Based Artist Ariana Papademetropoulos

Sade gallery will be presenting Los Angeles based up-and-coming artist Ariana Papademetropoulos' work at a booth at the Material Art Fair. Look out for this amazing showing of work by this incredibly exciting painter. 

10. Rirkrit Tirivanija: Universal Fantastic Occupation at the Jumex Foundation 

Thai artist Rirkrit Tirivanija has installed ping pong tables in the courtyard of the Museo Jumex and invites you to play. See this exhibition while you are in Mexico City at Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 303, Ampliacion Granada, Miguel Hidalgo, 11529

A Young Feminist’s Perspective on Twenty Years of American Apparel Ads

Text by KEELY SHINNERS

American Apparel advertisements have been branded with that ambiguous scarlet letter “controversial” since the early 2000s. Are they edgy or exploitative? Are they misogynist or empowering? How have the ads evolved since Dov Charney got fired in 2014? Is “evolved” even the right word?

Former American Apparel CEO Dov Charney has a history of power abuse—one (actually, 5) too many sexual harassment lawsuits, degrading comments to employees, rumors of Charney holding an employee against her will as a “sex slave.” In the feminist circle, Dov Charney is spoken of as our “resident skeezy uncle.” Namely, calling hypersexualized images of young (often white) girls “edgy” to further Charney’s capitalist agenda is a feminist’s worst nightmare. Since Charney was fired from the company in 2014, the ads are supposedly “tamer.” Meaning, instead of skinny young girls in tiny underwear, we get skinny young girls in denim jackets and knit sweaters.

Charney’s mid-2000s ads—many of them shot by Charney himself—were unapologetically exploitative. Early photographs of mostly-naked models in bed are amateur porn-esque. They are perhaps intentionally slimy, like a nude circulated around a clique of teenage boys. The male gaze does not hide itself here: you get fragmented, dehumanized close-ups of tits, ass, and pussy. You get grainy, intimate shots, presenting the model in compromised, hypersexualized spaces. You get Dov Charney posing proudly in bed with an anonymous, barely-clothed young girl. All in the name of “clothing you love to wear.”

Have the post-Charney ads evolved to being less exploitative? Perhaps “evolved” isn’t the right word. AA’s got a brand new CEO, but the male gaze is still all over their images. Though more clothed, we still see very young, thin, predominantly white women posed to highlight cleavage and curves. Has AA’s exploitative practices withdrawn since Charney, or have they merely changed façades? Are the ads evolving with the feminist movement, or is the face of capitalist patriarchy simply putting on a new, more subdued mask? Has the cat caller on the sidewalk retreated to the bushes, so to speak? American Apparel ads since 2014 seem to be less of an evolution of political consciousness and more of a metamorphosis of the patriarchy’s sexual eye. Does one type of perversity rank over another?

Perhaps a more interesting question: if American Apparel feels the need to transform their image, are they sensing the fragility of sexually exploitative images in our current cultural climate? If (and perhaps when) Dov Charney returns to AA, will his choice aesthetic come too late, now that the 21st century is sweet sixteen and won’t take daddy’s shit anymore?

What exactly is a young radical feminist supposed to do with American Apparel ads? We’re not going to put women in cardboard boxes and tell them to hide their tits. There is a slippery line between desexualization and censorship, and to act conservatively in the exposure of the female form isn’t going to aid anyone’s liberation. On that same vein, casting American Apparel off to the side - labeling it chauvinistic and irredeemable - doesn’t seem like a productive conversation either. Perhaps American Apparel ads can be a generative tool to look at how we imagine women, sexuality, capital, and mass marketing in the 21st century. The ads offer room for questions—does it matter who is behind the camera, and why? Is the unapologetic display of a woman’s body empowering, or does it become something else when selling product gets involved? Perhaps the ads – with all their flaws attached – will allow us to refine our positions and perceptions, making us better, more nuanced feminists. So, without further adieu, for better or for worse, here are 20 American Apparel ads from the past twenty years:  

1995: 'Fresh Funk For Girls' - The Blossoming

1996: 'Who Is American Apparel' – A More Innocent Time

1997: 'January Classic' - The Girl Next Door Fantasy

1999: 'Dov's Panties' - The Creep Creeps

2000: 'T-shirt Cool" - Dov Makes An Appearance

2001: "Classic Girl" The First Black Model

2002: "Fuck The Brands That Are Fucking The People" Oh, The Irony

2003: "Carefree, Comfortable, Cotton" Take It All Off or Jerk Me Off Over The Phone

2004: "Aprés ski." Sex After An Afternoon on the Slopes

2005: 'Meet Lauren Phoenix' 160 pounds of magic. Actress. Director. Look Her Up On Google

2006: 'Hiking!' Down To Fuck On The Trail

2007: "Léa, a young comedienne...." Blue Is The Warmest Color

2008: Retail Locations "Licking Dov's Crotch" 

2009: "Flex Fleece" Advert Banned In The UK For Suggesting Underage Sexuality

2010: "Human Pyramid" Literally, Women Stacked on Top of Women

2011: "Happy Winter" American Apparel Enters A New Age

2012: 'Made In the USA' American Apparel Introduces A Model In Her 60s

2013: "Happy Holidays" Meet Samantha, American Apparel Saves Face

2014: "Operated By Dov Charney" In June of This Year, Dov is Sacked For Sexual Harassment and Fiscal Irregularities

2015: "Classic Girl" The School Girl's Tumescent Nipples, The Coquettish Smile, The Fantasy Continues

Recent news is that a judge has blocked Dov Charney's most recent attempts to gain control of the company he built with his own two hands a little over twenty years ago. Paula Schneider, a woman no less, has held on to the reins of the company and is planning an overhaul. Charney is currently brainstorming a way to start a new clothing company, which should be interesting to watch unfold. 

[Fashion] Paris Fashion Week Men's 2016

photograph by Thibault Camus

Text by Adam Lehrer

It feels like every season I find myself almost wanting the Paris round of menswear shows to suck, just to change it up. I can make claims like, “London is ground zero for cutting edge young menswear designers,” or “Italian luxury is forever,” or “New York is on the up and up,” but when it comes down to it, everything still pales in comparison to the lineup of designers that show their new duds in Paris. And until Raf Simons, Rick Owens, Kim Jones, Dries Van Noten, Yohji Yammamoto, Junya Watanabe, and so forth decide to show elsewhere, that appears to be how it will stay.

The FW 2016 Paris menswear shows seemed to emphasize time, nostalgia, and at times a rejection of nostalgia. Raf Simons, free of the punishing time constraints placed upon him as creative director of Dior, unleashed his most furiously cultural referent collection since his work with Sterling Ruby. Yohji Yammamoto looked nowhere but the future for his new Y-3 collection, preparing fashions for the final frontier. Kris Van Assche at Dior Homme elevated two fondly remembered sub-cultures, early New Wave and ‘90s skate culture, to Dior-ian qualities (with mixed results). Fashion is all about looking towards the future or remembering the past in efforts to co-opt those thoughts for the here and now. That sentiment was evident all throughout Paris this past week.

Raf Simons

Raf Simons has always managed to be a designer that sparks interest in people that may not be overwhelmingly interested in fashion, but who adore music and visual art. Joy Division and Factory Records fans delighted in his FW 2003 “Closer” collection that referenced Peter Saville graphics. His FW 2014 collection with Sterling Ruby may have been the most intriguing artist/designer collab of all time. Raf’s FW 2016 collection found Raf delighting in all the various works of art that inspire him now. Free of Dior, he has time to smartly cultivate a network of ideas and tie them together in a manner that feels effortless even if painstaking. The most talked about reference here was David Lynch (it also happened to be David’s birthday). The show was soundtracked to a recording of composer Angelo Badalmenti discussing his work scoring Twin Peaks, and the clothes had that macabre sense of banal Americana, or dare I say “Lynchian” qualities; the oversized letterman sweaters brought to mind the sultry princess of The Great Northern Audrey Horne, and the slashing of them the threat of imminent danger. And though grotesque Americana was the main theme here, with Raf also mentioning the Boy Scouts, The Breakfast Club, and slasher films as primary influences, he also took time to reference two more of his favorite artists. Raf cited Cindy Sherman as an influence on the collection, and the reference makes sense: Sherman’s portraiture of classically “American” figures (whatever that means) always hinted at something sinister beneath the surface. These clothes, while objectively normal or “American” (high school puffer jackets, oxfort shirts) were presented in such a manner to subvert their own expectations. Raf also claimed to be thinking more of aruguably his greatest influence, Martin Margiela, during the designing of this collection. The way the coats were so big to hang off the frames of the models, the smart tattering of sleeves, and the emphasis on the garments as objects all blatantly but brilliantly paid ode to Margiela and his legacy. This was a magnificent collection, perhaps the best Raf has presented since his work with Ruby. It was conceptually brilliant and aesthetically beautiful, and most importantly I want all of this stuff. Even better? Raf finally started diversifying his models, perhaps realizing that his justification of his use of white models is due to the street casting he does in Antwerp, probably won’t work anymore.

Dries Van Noten

Dries van Noten had been trying to secure the location of his FW 2016 show for 15 years. The Palais Garnier, an opulent shrine to French glory, was a fitting testament to the impact of this show. FW ’16 felt like the most quintessentially “Dries” show that Van Noten has shown in quite some time, finding the traditional and statuesque beauty in the imagery of the subversive and radical. The first coat, a black trench with a mock-neck collar and a waist flap, came emblazoned with a coiling snake graphic perfectly placed. While jackets fit rather slim, pants and shorts came oversized, emphasizing Dries’s tendency to go off-trend and come up with silhouettes you didn’t even realize that you wanted right now. All things told, the Dries collection had my favorite coats of the season, and there were so many options. Floral patterns, plaids, and psychedelic graphics designed by Wes Wilson, he of the era of psychedelic record covers and concert posters (Grateful Dead, Cream, etc..). The Belgians are coming out hard this season.

Louis Vuitton

Kim Jones, a man who undoubtedly clocks over 50 hours a week designing menswear for the world’s biggest fashion house, still finds seemingly tons of time to see the world, and his travels often influence his collections. But this time around for FW 2016 Louis Vuitton menswear collection, Jones looked around him at home. What does Paris mean to the world now? How does its heritage affect the world and how is that heritage viewed by those outside it? And most importantly, how do we push Paris and all its inherent ideas into the future? Jones answered swiftly, taking the most iconic of Parisian references, from Jean Cocteau to Art Deco, and employing them into garments imagined for an optimistically bright future. After the attacks in November, the show takes on a defiantly political tone: Paris thrives. The clothes here were utterly sleek, perfectly cut, and shimmering with promise. The belted trench coat at the beginning made its wearer look like an assassin after just completing a highly lucrative and expertly executed kill. A blue velvet double breasted coat was one of the best pieces Jones has ever designed. The clothes here were almost too spectacular to name one by one, so let’s just say that Louis Vuitton is still the historical fashion house making wealthy old men shell out credit and also making young urban guys want to grow up and get their shit together, trade in their Schott Perfectos and 501s for an immaculately coiffed double breasted suit.

Gosha Rubchinskiy

When Rei Kawakubo shows up, you know something is going on. As was the case with Gosha Rubchinskiy’s FW 2016 collection. Though it is smart business for Rei to support her suportees (Gosha’s brand is manufactured by Comme facilities, but is not a “Comme brand” as in Junya or Sacai), you hardly ever see her in-person anymore. But Rei, as with many of the more forward thinking in this industry, sees something in Gosha. When he debuted his first collection, he didn’t have much more to offer other than sweats and hoodies with eye-grabbing prints on them. But there was something in the perspective; here was someone that had to work hard to learn culture, and is working just as hard to show the world his culture. He’s one of the true original voices in the industry. Now to progress his brand, the Gosha FW 2016 collection took on a harder edge, employing more types of fashions as well as more capital “F” fashion. The high-waisted jeans and suspenders brought to mind the sinister underbellies of the hardened skinhead while also celebrating a goofiness in self-presentation. Near see-through jet-black turtlenecks with Russian prints will fly off the racks of Dover Street Market. The cargo trousers had the perfect silhouette for such a pant, loose but not baggy and cropped but never tight. The outerwear, which Gosha is proving he has a knack for, was excellent. The oversized shearling coats were the type of coat you just want to live in all winter.

Haider Ackermann

Haider Ackermann’s brand has always had this interesting aesthetic that seems like it’s designed for the wild child son or daughter of some aristocratic one percenter. The child who shuns the family business, goes to art school, takes tons of drugs and spends daddy’s money on records and expensive clothes, and still inherits his/her parents’ worth and stumbles into a board meeting one day ready to take total control. While wearing Haider of course. That is always what has made the brand cool to me, and perhaps why the brand is favored by so many of our most inherently punk rock pop culture icons. Tilda Swinton loves the brand, and Kanye has employed various Haider products (oversized velvet sweatshirts, velvet bombers, gigantic hoodies) and made them the new look of the fashion conscious hip-hop industry (Jerry Lorenzo’s Fear of God line is basically Haider silhouettes of skateboarding garb). Perhaps with that newfound relevance, Haider embraced his most abrasive inner wild child with the FW 2016 collection. While nothing new for Haider, it’s still totally unique in the culture of brands. The male models in the show, wearing Bauhaus Mohawks, wore mis-matched jacquard suits and magnificently garish velvet coats. The women, with shaved heads, snugged themselves into lovely leathers. The blue velvet pieces were out of this world, and immediately brought to mind the fetishizing of the material in its namesake David Lynch film. I want to wear some of Haider’s stuff badly, perhaps he could do the next H&M collection?

Kolor

Fresh off a very successful collection with adidas (his Ultra Boost colorway was fire, I got a paid, woohoo) Junichi Abe has never appeared so confident in his design chops. The Kolor FW 2016 collection, though lacking in the color that you might expect, employed all the aesthetic choices that make Abe so compelling. Everything is slightly mismatched, a little off, and yet so right all the same. A multi-layered look with trousers, bomber jacket, and shirt, was actually one solitary piece. I’m not sure anyone wants to buy a pre-made outfit, but that is the level of skill you are dealing with when it comes to Abe. The most conventional looks, such as a droopy double-breasted khaki blazer, and the oddest looks, such as a blue plastic labcoat, all felt part of a cohesive narrative world. That is I suppose what is so interesting about Abe. Perception of him as a whole is of an artistic rebel in the world of fashion, but his clothes are quite normal and easy on the eyes. In person however, you find design flourishes that are more difficult, and even more compelling.

Rick Owens

Few designers do post-apocalyptic fashion better than Rick Owens, afterall, he was the designer who kept Mad Max in vogue long before Fury Road collectively blew our fucking minds last year. But with 2015 the world’s hottest year ever recorded, Owens is legitimately worried that the world is ending. But he’s a tough guy. It’s easy to see Rick Owens as the Rick Grimes of his own goth fashion tribe, and he’s not going down without a fight. His apocalypse army will survive looking sick, of course. The looks oscillated between Owens touchstones, like his perfect minimalist bomber jackets and his brutalist man dresses, between works of great architectural care that nevertheless presented themselves as part of some eternal unknown. Perhaps the biggest shockers were the standard black blazers. But nevertheless, Rick is ready to take on the end, and he will have his acolytes going out looking tough and stylish as fuck.

Lemaire

While people swooned over the garish H&M X Balmain collaborative collection, I was happily picking up every piece by from the understated, comfortable, and elegant collection from Christopher Lemaire’s collaboration with Uniqlo. Lemaire, a former designer of Hermes, understands that luxury is not always (or for everyone) about standing out. It’s about feeling good and comfortable so you can stand out on you own, and let your personality do the talking for you. He is a true minimalist designer, finding perfection in blank slates and unique structures. His FW 2016 collection was full of chalky and dark colored structured jackets and blazers, oversized trousers, tunics, and more. These are the types of clothes that I would most often like to wear, and their easiness is their inherent appeal.

Yohji Yammamoto

Admittedly, I’m a bit of a Yojhi nut, but I don’t feel biased in declaring this one of Yammamoto’s best seasons in recent memories (though the last one was pretty good). The Japanese revolution of designers has been insanely long-lasting in the ever-evolving fashion sphere. Rei Kawakubo’s Comme des Garcons is the largest avant fashion label in the world and she is the champion of so many of the leftfield designers of the future. Issey Miyake, though less involved in the design of his garments, continues diversifying in his brand. And Yohji, at age 72, continues to push the envelop. His Y-3 show was as interesting as ever, especially considering that Y-3 has been tapped by NASA to design the first ever fashion for space. But Yammamoto’s namesake brand has always been his ideal man, a cigarette smoking frolicking dark dandy with a permanent sourpuss. The FW 2016 collection featured Yammamoto at his most precious, with tiny t-shirts covering heavy outerwear displaying a squeezed effect inspired by when kids go out in the snow and their parents make them put on all their clothes. Everything was nicely draped. The scarves were sick. And as always, Yohji’s underrated footwear designs were some of the nicest on any catwalk.

Honorable Mentions

Sacai’s FW 2016 collection, apparently about peace and love or something, displayed a stunning color palettes of greys and burgundies as well as black stripe pattern. Takahiro Miyashita the Soloist’s new collection, always inspired by rock n’ roll, offered some sly but wearable design flourishes, like a pullover MA-1. Ann Demeulemeester, now designed by ever-intense Sebastian Meunier, offered a romantic and gothic take on contemporary male beauty. And Thom Browne threw luxury in your face and then tattered it to pieces before turning it into luxury again.

[Friday Playlist] Fat White Family Special Edition

Today, we look at the music that influenced the militaristic combative psych-punk of Fat White Family. Starting off with lead single Whitest Boy on the Beach from Fat White Family's new album Songs for Our Mothers, we then included the earliest influences on the band: the anarcho-punk of Crass, the street poetry and urban rambling of Mark E. Smith and the Fall, the nihilist psych of Butthole Surfers, the hate country of Country Teasers, and the garage spew of the Gun Club. But Fat White Family has diversified on Songs for Our Mothers, with a heavier emphasis on melody and songcraft. There is the psychedelic shimmies of the 13th Floor Elevators. Lias admitted to me a fondness for Donna Summer. Much of the album explores the volatility that created the beautiful songs of Ike and Tina Turner. A motorik rhythm propels the record, much like krautrock of bands like Neu. And I also detected a heavy Devo influence on this band, in the oft-kilter anthemic passages. Like their mates in Sleaford Mods, Fat White Family is a thoroughly independent act that has the potential for massive success. 

Playlist by Adam Lehrer

[FASHION] Best of Milan Menswear Fall/Winter 2016

Text by Adam Lehrer

I’m firmly backing Milan again. Of course, we are all familiar with Alessandro Michele’s came changing work at Gucci, but it feels like Italian luxury heritage is more important than it ever has been. With the mega-packed fashion schedule demanding designers create at paces that consumers simply can’t keep up with, there’s more in-demand for luxury products that you can count on to last a lifetime. It seems exceedingly silly to fork over $2,500 for some cutting edge coat by some hot shot designer when it could be looking stupid on me in six months, especially when I can buy a perfect coat from an Italian house like Brioni for the same amount of doh. And Brioni ain’t ever going out of style.

FW 2016 was a strong season in Milan. With staples like Prada and Bottega Veneta both offering sharp new creative directions, luxury kings Zegna and Canali offering just odd enough takes on mega-sharp style, and injections of youth from Damir Doma and a re-invigorated Iceberg.

No. 21

Designer Alessandro Dell’Acqua, who was an Italian fashion staple in the ‘90s, came back on the scene with new line No. 21 in 2010. Though perhaps best known for his womenswear and footwear, the No. 21 FW 2016 menswear collection was the best assortment of male products the designer has ever put out. From the very first and highly desirable piece seen, an oversized silhouette military hoodie jacket, Dell’Acqua presents a highly wearable form of conceptual luxury. Dell’Acqua seems to be seeking a decidedly Italian take on Haider Ackermann’s punk rocker gone bourgeoisie. There are leopard print coats, billowing tight cargo trousers, and a whole range of muted but eye-grabbing colors. I had never before even though much of Dell’Acqua as a menswear designer, but there were more pieces in this show that I wanted than any other show of the season.

Brioni

Lead by creative director Brendan Mullane, a former menswear designer at Givenchy, Brioni has become one of the most intriguing high luxury menswear brands in the game. The clothes, for lack of a better term, look perfect. Mullane has done some really awesome things with the house, noting it as a label of interest for aristocratic creative men. Last year Autre favorite artists John Armleder and Seth Price were part of a Brioni campaign. Mullane’s FW 2016 collection, set to a rousing Bjork soundtrack, captured the DNA of the brand, few surprises but nothing less than utterly desirable. The sandblasted plaid suits and coats made me want to grow up. The wool mockneck sweatshirts were pieces that I wanted to wear everyday; with jeans or with trousers. Brioni is about the clothes, and doesn’t impose its brand ethos on the customer. Anyone would look amazing in these pieces.

Bottega Veneta

Now that Tomas Maier has helped usher in sportswear into luxury, it’s time to abandon sportswear in luxury. Maier is a futurist at heart, and what is the future if not a luxury? Instead, jet black and austerely architectural suiting took over the runway for Maier’s FW ’16 collection. The coats were some of the best Maier has ever put out. Black trench coats with flowing locks of fabrics and attached sweater like structures were only bested by the baggy elongated shearling jackets. Leather in fantastical colors of reds and blues solidified Maier’s reputation as a master designer of leather silhouettes. If I ever struck it rich, I’d wear this everyday.

Thom Browne

Even at his most accessible, Thom Browne remains willfully and exuberantly conceptual. Projects like his Brooks Brothers label saw him honing in on a specific point; a story that he wanted to tell. He doesn’t mince ideas or his labor. His work with outdoor wear behemoth Moncler Gamma Bleu has been mutually beneficial for the designer and the brand. The brand, knowing it’ll sell well regardless, allows Browne to really throw a wild show and bring some experimental flair to it. Browne, interested in brands like Valentino’s attempts at using camo to stand out instead of blend in, took that idea to its umpteenth conclusion. The Moncler FW ’16 collection featured models in riot helmets covered in garish camo prints like some sort of out and proud death squad. Vogue admonished the show, calling it “garish stage dressing.” But I think that’s more or less the point. With his own label, Browne has redefined how professional men dress. With Moncler, he’s able to bring his name to the brand and inject some vitality into it. For his efforts, Moncler allows Browne to poke some fun at the idea of a fashion show (and pay him fuckloads of money to be sure).

Calvin Klein

When you think about the designers that have had the most influence over contemporary menswear, there are a few no-brainers: Raf Simons, Rick Owens, Thom Browne, Junya Watanabe. Then there are those who you might not think of right away, but agree with as soon as they come up: Acne Studios’ Johnny Johannsen, A.P.C.’s Jean Touitou, and the like. Whatever the case, at some point Calvin Klein’s Italo Zuchelli will take his rightful place on this list. Most style conscious guys, those that live in the real world and not in street style blogs, dress fairly minimal but nevertheless care about the quality of their clothes. No one does minimal or quality quite as uniquely as Zuchelli. His FW ’16 collection played with all sorts of menswear and Calvin Klein house codes. Perfectly tailored suits were clung to the taut bodies of some of the world’s most beautiful female models: Iselin Steiro, Jessica Miller, and Gemma Ward among them. His experimentations with denim this time around were especially striking, turning the fabled Canadian tuxedo into a white jacquard jump suit. Not since Helmut Lang has denim seemed so much like high fashion as high fashion, and not high fashion aping streetwear.

Damir Doma

Though he might still be viewed as something of a cult designer, Damir Doma’s brand is growing strongly (I bought some pants of his at a Century 21). The sculptural designer wants to tell more stories, staging his FW ’16 collection next to a high-speed train. His vision has really matured since taking it from Paris to Italy last year, moving away from Rick Owens-lite into a structured and high luxury Italian version of austere and gothic garment manufacturing. There was something of the setting for this show too. Developed under the rule of Mussolini, it has since become one of the most efficient train stations in the world. Perhaps a metaphor for Doma’s breaking free of the shackles of Paris’s high competition schedule, he’s allowed to really tap into something that he does uniquely: shape. Doma is able to take garments such as bomber jackets and kimonos and cut them into shapes that make the perfect amount of sense. They look familiar, somehow. The palette was decidedly Kubric, off-white and black and khaki. Great show for Mr. Doma.

Gucci

Though Alessandro Michele’s FW ’16 collection didn’t update anything he had done the first two seasons, he further cemented the new Gucci world. Though I highly doubt this new Gucci is targeting its new “Gucci man,” the business is climbing because people are thoroughly fascinated at this world that sales are climbing. People want to buy into this: a jacket here or trousers there. Whether or not you could ever see yourself wearing this stuff (I wouldn’t, to be sure) it’s amazing to see how Michele has not only brought Gucci back to life, but also brought attention back to Milan altogether.

Honorable Mentions

Though it wasn’t technically part of the Milan schedule, Korean label Juun J’s FW ’16 collection was the best the label has ever offered. Prada’s FW ’16 collection offered all sorts of textures, layers, and the ever-noticeable Prada look. So good on that. And Stefano Pilati, one of the most underrated designers in menswear, flexed his suiting muscles hard with the Zegna FW ’16 collection, making the most black of black suits look like pieces or architectural wonder.

[FASHION REVIEW] Our Favorites From London Collections: Men

photograph by Jason Lloyd-Evans

text by Adam Lehrer

It's been a full week since LCM, which is an eternity in the world of fashion, but we like to take our time to really analyze the collections for their sartorial craftiness, relevance in culture and wearableness. Anyway, another season another killer London Collections: Men.. Bless Central Saint Martins and London College of Fashion, because as we’ve said before, London is far and away smoking the menswear game in terms of new and subversive talent. So, yes, cool creative guys are wearing lots of clothes by British designers, but what is most amazing about the London talent is that these guys have really been stunning at creating their own customer bases and as a result have created substantial businesses without having to sacrifice creativity for commercial appeal. Nasir Mazhar has identified his adventurous grime rapper looking for something with heavier design than the standard Adidas or Nike tracksuit (nothing wrong with said tracksuit, however I’m wearing an adidas track jacket while writing this, cozy as fuck). Craig Geeen has found a gender-neutral customer looking to make poetic statements with flowing fabrics. Casely-Hayford has tapped into an older wearer, a man that used to play in a punk band and now spends his time painting and taking trips to the country for camping and hiking. It’s astounding the amount of brands in London that have so seamlessly (well, actually, with gruesome work ethic) developed a definable but ever-growing story surrounding the brands.

The Fall-Winter 2016 shows saw these stories mutating and developing, with designers like Liam Hodges and Cottweiler establishing firmer directions for their well-defined aesthetic ideas. Nevertheless, London titans Alexander McQueen and conventional brethren Burberry set forth their strongest shows in seasons. So, hard to narrow down these collections to favorites, to say the least. But there can only be seven.



Craig Green

Still abstract and poetic in its assembly, Craig Green’s FW 2016 collection nevertheless presented a vision that might more immediately appeal to men (and as much so to women, as women have eaten up Craig Green possibly more then dudes). What I find most impressive about Craig is that in show, his collections look as abstract and architectural and plain fucking weird as anything Rei Kawakubo has ever done. But unlike Rei, when I see the clothes in retail I see a great utilitarian jacket. The design is in the possibilities for styling within that jacket, which seem limitless. This aesthetic works even better in  FW 2016 with its earthy muted colors. The collection had some of Green’s most far out pieces, with the sort of bondage pieces barely concealing models’ bodies, but also some of his more accessible pieces. The oversized tan crewneck in silk looks like something I could wear all winter. With Craig, there doesn’t seem to be immediate touchstones, like say, “Hedi Slimane tapped into surfer punks.” It’s vague and poetic, defined by an abstract architecture. The story is defined purely by image, and not by a defined context.


Cottweiler

Fetishization is near always interesting, and the fetishization of athletic wear by men is a singular trademark of the urban millennial. Cottweiler has developed a rabid cult following conceptualizing this trend, and with every season the design duo, Brits Ben Cottrell and Matthew Dainty, has sharpened this aesthetic. The duo seems highly aware of contemporary art, architecture, and performance, eschewing a conventional runway show for grandiose displays of design. For FW ’16, Cottweiler explored the relationship between modern technology and how nature reacts to it. That idea came through strong in this collection, with a lineup of models dressed in Cottweiler staple track jackets but also knitwear made of new-to-the-brand materials like Sheepskin, elevated by platform and surrounded by bamboo and vegetation. Is tech enhancing our relationship to nature, hindering it, or a little bit of both? Option C, Cottweiler suggests.


Katie Eary

Remember how the album by nu-metal band System of a Down came out the week of 9/11 and, due to its politically charged themes, it was heralded as a work of great artistic achievements? Well, probably not, but they were decent enough either way. The point is, sometimes a work of creativity comes out at precisely the right time, warranting it more attention and discussion than perhaps it deserves. Case in point, Katie Eary’s FW 2016 collection. While the clothes alook good enough, it’s the fact that they celebrate David Bowie’s great contributions to menswear that make them stand out, especially during this week when we sadly lost the man to cancer. Inspired by documentary Sacred Triangle that documented the creativity camaraderie of Bowie, Iggy, and Lou Reed, the collection featured lots of menswear staples presented in a gender fluid manner; such as, a traditional western jacket over a silver leather workwear suit. Would Bowie have worn this stuff two weeks ago? Nope. 30 years ago? Everyday.


Nasir Mazhar

With his SS 2016 collection, Nasir Mazhar opted for dark monochrome over his better known colorful palette, re-evaluating his stance after losing his father. From my viewpoint, it was his best collection yet, fully targeting the grime community that worships him as deity. His FW 2016 collection continued in this tradition, employing his perfect tracksuits with more abstract looks. The garment draped riot helmets were some of the most striking looks Nasir has ever sent down a runway, and the bondage leathered female models looked absolutely smoking. Unlike other conceptual designers, Nasir designs for an active body, making it easier for me to imagine myself wearing even the more difficult pieces. I’ll be honest, I want a lot of this stuff. I’m sick of denim jackets for one thing, and Nasir’s rumpled track jackets look like the just interesting enough antidote to finding a new layer to throw under a trench coat. Cool shoes, too.


Casely-Hayford

Father and son design duo Charlie and Joe Casely-Hayford define the contemporary state of London menswear as well as any brand on the circuit: few designers are able to translate the luxury craft of Savile Row with the street friendly cultural references paramount to London culture so easily. In a recent article in The New Order magazine, father Joe described his interest in fashion being piqued through early shopping experiences at Vivian Westwood’s shop Let it Rock, where none other than one time Sex Pistols member Glen Matlock would help him try on looks. And of course, Joe would also get seriously luxury trained as creative director at Savile Row behemoth Gieves and Hawkes. Joe has amazing cultural taste and crazy tailoring skills, while son Charlie brings the Casely-Hayford label a Central Saint Martins-educated design skill and a youthful exuberance. Charlie has stated that all their collections begin with a discussion about music and youth culture. The duo really goes wild with a concept. For FW 2016, Casely-Hayford taps into imperial military outfits as re-imagined by Sgt. Peppers’ Lonely Hearts Club band. The psychedelic patterns on the dinner jackets and trousers were tastefully decadent. Bomber nylon was added to down jackets. Speaking of bombers, nearly ever designer does one seemingly ever season, and why not? They are always top sellers because they look, well, sick. But Casely-Haford constantly finds new ways to reinvent the staple, seen here as an elongated silhouette with fringe touching the floor and scraps of denim patchworked into the Nylon. I can see myself blowing some credit to get my hands on one of those.



Alexander McQueen

As successful as Sarah Burton has been at continuing Alexander McQueen’s legacy with womenswear is as wishy-washy she has been at solidifying that success with menswear. Seldom do I ever see a piece that I would blow the obscene amounts of money indicated by the price tags to get my hands on anything logo’d with Alexander McQueen. FW 2016 was a vast improvement though, capturing the gothic romanticism of McQueen’s fascinations as well as the razor sharp tailoring that he made his bones with. Superior suiting glued to near-starving looking dudes was revved up by employments of moth graphics, adding a macabre flair to traditional menswear garb. A few dudes walked around with faux-facial jewelry matching brutal silver accessories hanging over tuxedo jackets. This would be a smart direction for the brand to go in: cocktail attire for wealthy male artists and musicians, etc.. I would love to see post-punk bands employing this look.


Astrid Anderson

A more subdued Astrid Anderson is not at all a boring Astrid Anderson, as evidenced by the wool-heavy FW 2016 collection. With co-signs from A$AP Rocky and Ferg, Astrid has arguably become contemporary hip-hop’s new favorite designer. Despite that, Astrid never designs her clothes to the tastes of her rapper friends; instead those rappers redefine their tastes to wear Astrid Anderson. Starting the show with a sleek wool tracksuit, the ostentatious flair was dialed down in favor of clean and desirable design. The gold floral patterned gym shorts was more in-line with what we’ve seen with Astrid in the past, though a bit more dare I say classic? Of the things I’d most like to wear, must point out the knitwear. The loose silhouettes looked absolutely perfect, calling to mind a more club-minded Haider Ackermann with interesting shades of lime and solitary stripes. This sweater looked even cleaner when cut in half by the stripe, lime on the top and baby blue on the bottom. The plaid hoodie and sweats under a sweet black trench will be all over the street style blogs. With the show soundtracked by legendary Parisian DJ Brodinski, Astrid seems aware enough of the underground to both take cues from and influence it.



Honorable mentions

The Man Show was particularly strong this year, with Grace Wales Bonner re-imaginings of the contemporary black man as a man of taste and luxury looking particularly poised to make serious cultural and financial impact. One of my personal favorites, Liam Hodges, offered his most realized collection yet. With his well-defined tribe behind him, it doesn’t seem to be reaching to think that Liam Hodges could achieve Rick Owens-esque success. Matthew Miller, who has a tendency to over explain his ideas, is best understood as a man who deigns sick fucking coats, with FW ’16 no exception. Agi & Sam, displaying men’s and women’s looks, offered a minimalist collection with useless but stunning details, such as sleeves hanging below inches below hands. E. Tauz appears to be taking cues from Christopher Lemaire: simple simple simple, with amazingly structured and flowing silhouette.

[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] Autre Magazine's Favorite David Bowie Songs

Text by Adam Lehrer

What can I say about the late David Bowie that hasn’t already been eulogized at length by the great artists and writers of the world? Something personal, I suppose. I feel like every Bowie fan has that moment when the man’s music became something more to him/her than something they would passively hear on classic rock radio. My parents were big on Bowie, so naturally I had a natural instinct towards rejecting him. But I was big into skateboarding, and skateboarding videos introduced me to a whole world of art and even more so music (I got into Coltrane through the Mark Gonzalez part in Blind’s Video Days, Fugazi was introduced to me by Ed Templeton’s avowed love of the band, etc..). Perhaps some of you might remember a skateboarding video by a board company called Flip and its first big video, Sorry. Pro skater Arto Saari had the last part, and he used a one-two whammy of Bowie’s 1984 and Rock n’ Roll Suicide for the soundtrack. That was it. Bowie’s melodies provided an emotional resonance to the skateboarding that normally wouldn’t be there. Bowie’s music provides an emotional resonance to anything. The man seemed to just feel things more, and those hard-hitting and powerful feelings filtered from his mind through his music and into the world. Rock n’ roll would never be the same.

It might be an awful thing to write, but it doesn’t seem surprising that in the twilight of his life, that Bowie was able to record two of his greatest musical achievements. When I heard Blackstar for the first time, I was stunned at how experimentally powerful it sounded; it sounded like the beginning or something but in fact it was the end. Bowie’s best work always teetered on the edge of life, death, and re-birth. It was through death defyingly rampant cocaine use that Ziggy Stardust was birthed to the world, and the re-birth of his newly sober soul in Berlin gave us ‘Low.’ That vague flicker between life and the unknown was one of Bowie’s greatest creative sparks. It gave him purpose and resolution to leave lasting documents of his talent. In my opinion, The Next Day and Blackstar are the best pieces of music that Bowie put out since the ‘70s.

Growing up in a small and oppressively conservative town as an extroverted but geeky readerly type more concerned with finishing Infinite Jest than winning a basketball championship, Bowie was god. He taught us all how to be fiercely and commitedly ourselves. Seeing Bowie, dressed garish and flamboyant, with beautiful women on his arm gave me hope. I knew I could one day be a fairly weird and offbeat fella and still get laid one day once freed from the grips of the suburbs. That might sound callous and rude, but one must sympathize with the fact of how freeing that actually is. Bowie helped give me hope for a bright and excellent future.

There will never ever be a rock star so adept at the art of self-invention. Like Warhol, he made the state of famousness itself a sort of self-expression. He was the bridge that held together the art rock of Lou Reed and Iggy with the mainstream world. A masterful producer, a genius songwriter, and a multi-media genius, he was truly the best of us. 

My Favorite Bowie Album: Eleven Creative People Choose Their Favorite David Bowie Album

If you ask any one what their favorite David Bowie album is, they'll have an almost immediate response. Even people that don't have a favorite color, favorite artist, movie or dish - they have a number one favorite Bowie album. Of course, there will be a second favorite, a third favorite, a fourth favorite and beyond, but there is only one Bowie album in someone's life that means the most to them. Sure, each and every one of Bowie's albums changed music forever (and that is not an understatement) – even his last and final album Blackstar will live in the time vortex of some of the greatest music ever made. But, again, there is usually only one that rings the truest, like a personal message from Bowie himself. And it may take a while for Blackstar to be a favorite album, but wait until the new generation grows up, wait until the album ages and gets finer and finer with future musical epochs. There was literally no one like David Bowie. You can imagine his arrival on earth like a meteor's arrival, with the soil rippling and the air in waves from the shockwaves. When he left, it was like a crucial element, like oxygen, was missing from the atmosphere. Below, we asked a number of creative people what their favorite Bowie album is and here are their answers. 

1. Rosanna Arquette (Actress) / Favorite: Ziggy Stardust

2. Lucia Santina Ribisi (Artist) / Favorite: Hunky Dory

3. Sasha Frere-Jones (Writer and Music Critic) / Favorite: Station To Station

4. Clementine Creevy (Musician) / Favorite: Hunky Dory 

5. Jim Smith (Founder of The Smell In Los Angeles) / Favorite: Ziggy Stardust

6. Enoc Perez (Artist) / Favorite: Young Americans

7. Oliver Maxwell Kupper (Editor-in-Chief of Autre Magazine)  / Favorite: Scary Monsters

8. Andre Saraiva (Graffiti Artist and Hotelier) / Favorite: Heroes 

9. Brad Elterman (Photographer) / Favorite: Hunky Dory

10. Avalon Lurks (Musician) / Favorite: Bowie At The Beeb 

11. Devendra Banhart (Musian and Artist) / Favorite: Hunky Dory 

When A Hero Dies: Lorde Recalls Her Encounter With The Late David Bowie

text by Lorde

When a hero dies, everyone wants a quote. I woke up this morning with a tender head from tears and that big red cup of Japanese whiskey, gulped last night just after the news came. People were already asking me what I thought. It feels kind of garish to talk about oneself at a time like this, when the thing that has happened is so distinctly world-sized. But everything I’ve read or seen since the news has been deeply intrinsic in tone, almost selfish, like therapy. That’s who he was to all of us. He was a piece of bright pleated silk we could stretch out or fold up small inside ourselves when we needed to. 

Mr. Bowie, I guess right now we have to hang this thing up for a minute.

The night I met him I played at an expensive Vogue benefit with a lot of fresh flowers, honouring Tilda. I was not quite seventeen, America was very new to me, and I was distinctly uneasy and distrustful toward everything happening in my life that was putting me in these flat-voiced, narrow-eyed, champagneish rooms. I played my three songs, thrashing and twitching in platform boots. Afterward, Anna clasped my hand and said “David wants to meet you,” and led me through people and round tables with candles and glasses and louder and louder talk, and he was there.

"We'll always be crashing in that same car..."

I've never met a hero of mine and liked it. It just sucks, the pressure is too huge, you can't enjoy it. David was different. I'll never forget the caressing of our hands as we spoke, or the light in his eyes. That night something changed in me - i felt a calmness grow, a sureness. I think in those brief moments, he heralded me into my next new life, an old rock and roll alien angel in a perfect grey suit. I realized everything I’d ever done, or would do from then on, would be done like maybe he was watching. I realized I was proud of my spiky strangeness because he had been proud of his. And I know I'm never going to stop learning dances, brand new dances.

It's not going to change, how we feel about him. For the rest of our lives, we'll always be crashing in that same car.

Lorde is a musician and recording artist. Text taken from a public Facebook eulogy. Click here to follow Lorde on Facebook. Text by Gavin Doyle. Follow Autre magazine on Instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

Sex In A Vacuum: When Good Sex Goes Bad

I somehow found myself in a polyamorous situation and I wasn’t sure if I liked it. In fact, after writing that sentence, I had to laugh, put my face in my hands—predictable. I am self-admittedly the least committed person, and I really do not like any sort of limitations placed on my sexual freedom, whatsoever, no questions. Since I know I am this way, I let my partners know straight up what they are in for: hot NSA one-off fucking. Heart not necessary. But then, some dude strolls along and it spins, I get weak in the knees, heart drops, legs quiver and I’m all systems go. So begins my first foray in polyamory.

Trey Songz “Cake” was making more and more sense as my secondary relationship bloomed and I began to have feelings for the antithesis of my slight and stoic primary partner: a blue-collar guy, busted up truck and all—tall and gentle, a real natural—who puts on D’Angelo without me requesting. The guy who has long gone hopeful exes call him up after years of being broken up, only to request he impregnate them. He’s just that kind of cool. He was great in bed, loved fucking me, worshipped my ass, and bonus: loved me fucking him. Jackpot. He had an uncanny ability to be both effortlessly dominant, and then turn into a slutty bottom in a matter of minutes.

Ah, yes, I was happy. Happily fucking away the month of November with a damn near stranger whom I had taken a very quick liking to, without a care in the world. Admittedly, this was indeed my first rodeo, having no experience with polyamory, but figured this was a the opportunity to give it a go. We kept an open line of communication while having our cake and I was convinced that this was bliss in its truest form, bent over and up against a wall, in the throes with a partner that does you right. But all good things must come to an end. I saw my rude awakening clearly, starkly, in the harsh daylight, in the absence of a good and regular shag.

"My sexual freedom had turned into burgeoning co-dependency and like a shark sniffing out blood in the water, my eyes went white and I could no longer see the world as I once had. I fiended for that good stuff and locked myself away gnawing at the fence of sexual satisfaction."

There’s a reason why most prolific writers and artists of the past are rumored to be celibate. Sex seems to get in the way of work (aside from those who fuck for a living), and for us recreational partakers in intercourse, an oftentimes rare and welcome distraction in large unconventional doses can sully the water and make for resentment and anguish. Where have I gone?

I found myself in a similar situation, fucking myself away it seemed, and suddenly realizing that I was blind. My sexual freedom had turned into burgeoning co-dependency and like a shark sniffing out blood in the water, my eyes went white and I could no longer see the world as I once had. I fiended for that good stuff and locked myself away gnawing at the fence of sexual satisfaction. I started getting attached, paranoid, neurotic. This was a real problem for me. I am interested in sex, I write about sex, I think about sex, I like sex very much. I don’t even have to question it—I’m just there, fucking. And therein lied the problem: reckless, automatic over-investment. By diving head first into something that was supposed to be on particular terms, did I lose the ability to create the framework in the first place?

In an interview, Foucault references The History of Sexuality saying he “very nearly died of boredom writing those books.” Is sex ultimately a bore, something we do to pass the time while we roam and graze upon the earth? I’m curious. Is it only interesting when some element of luck or chance is involved? What is the cost of spontaneity? Even more interesting, do I need to be having sex in order to write about sex?

When the eyes glaze over repeatedly, consistently, continuously, you lose yourself, your mind, your thoughts, the present moment and that person you’re with. I am a proponent of fucking and sexual fantasy to feel good, to reduce stress, to lighten the load, to celebrate bodies—but sex in a vacuum, phony saccharine, unconscious of its specialness breeds possessiveness and ill feelings. We sometimes cling to false ideas about people because it’s safe - it feels good to be together, but really is that togetherness rooted in anything besides fear and carelessness? Lust can negate autonomy. Maggie Nelson says it best when speaking to the highs and lows of Trocchi’s Cain’s Book in The Art of Cruelty: “snapping us back to that nasty animal need—to score, to fuck, to flee, to forget—which is always standing by to nullify mind and heart.” The beast bites back eventually.

Good dick imprisons me this way. I can only be held captive by my own accord for so long until I recoil, aghast at the time spent in a deep double-penetrative delirium. Whoosh! So quick to be enveloped by the fantasy that the pornographic provides me, my eyes rolling back in my head quivering into the next cum, and I forget the thinking part - the honesty part! - that is so dear. Only upon reflection now, out of the opium haze, do I see my own dimly lit descent into temporary loveliness. My advice? Read a book before you endeavor to add another dick into your life.

Audra Wist is an artist, writer, social commentator and provocateur - she is also an avid collector of erotica and erotic ephemera. She is also a professional dominatrix based in Los Angeles specializing in all sorts of punishment and humiliation. As Autre's sex editor at-large she will be covering all sorts of naughty content in the realm of sex and sexuality – from masturbatorial musings to photographic editorials. Follow Autre on instagram: @AUTREMAGAZINE

The 5 Best Quotes of 2015

Wow, what a year. In 2015, we were fortunate to sit down with some of the world's most important artists, musicians, photographers, trouble-makers, truth-seekers, and cultural warriors. Here are choice quotes from some of our best interviews of the year, featuring Alan Vega, Genesis Breyer P'Orridge, Roger Ballen, Albert Hammond Jr., and Jack Walls.

 

1. Alan Vega, Ghost Rider Motorcycle Hero and founding member of electronic music duo SUICIDE

"SUICIDE sort of summed up the world we lived in: Nixon, the bombings, and the war, and what the hell!  People thought we were describing our own suicide, but it was the only appropriate name."

 

2. Genesis Breyer P'Orridge, English singer-songwriter, performance artist, poet, occultist, and healer of civilization

"[Counter-culture is] the think tank—always has been, always will be. In any culture, at any point in the history of our species, there are those who feel dissatisfied with the power structures, the dynamics of who has control over what resources, and who decides what the moral taboos are and are not."

 

3. Roger Ballen, photographer & filmmaker of unimaginable worlds

"A lot of people in this business grew up in the newer generation and they tend to try to find new angles and edges that are basically technological, that are focused on just the idea rather than the substance of the idea.

The substance of the idea, to me, is crucial to good art. You don’t hear about that too much. You don’t hear about metaphor, depth, indescribably parts of the psyche. It’s gimmick of the gimmick."

 

4. Albert Hammond Jr., guitarist for the Strokes

"As he [Carl Sagan] pulls away from the planet, you see how tiny and meaningless everything is. We create meaning. To me, that allows for change, allows for the human element, for mistake. It lets us learn...

People are fighting for a fraction of a dot to become momentary masters. Nothing is permanent. Even when it feels so permanent, it isn’t."

 

5. Jack Walls, writer, artist, cultural survivalist, former partner of Robert Mapplethorpe, mentor to Dash Snow, Ryan McGinley, & Dan Colen

"GRIEF AND ROMANTICISM ARE THE SAME THING. IF YOU CAN ROMANTICIZE GRIEF - I DON’T WANT TO SAY YOU HIT THE JACKPOT - BUT YOU REALLY HAVE SOMETHING. WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO, WALLOW IN IT?"

FOLLOW @AUTREMAGAZINE ON INSTAGRAM, AND GET READY FOR ANOTHER GREAT YEAR...

Music Videos You May Have Missed in 2015

Bubblegum goddesses. Wannabe Debbie Harrys. Dystopian mental illnesses. Solo rock shows in a mystical desert landscape...These are the videos that stood out in 2015 for their strangeness, abstraction, and beauty. And good tunes, of course. 

1. Petite Noir - Chess

The Cape Town artist Petite Noir (Yannick Ilunga) sings cool, dramatic, hypnotic pop in what feels like a late-80s instructional VHS tape. The slowly bubbling (literally, bubbles) breakup song was the first single off Petite Noir’s first album, La Vie Est Belle / Life Is Beautiful. 

2. Son Lux - You Don't Know Me

God, don’t you hate it when your boyfriend doesn’t understand you’re a terrifying bubblegum goddess? “You Don’t Know Me,” starring Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany, is creepy, but somehow relatable. Ultimately, says director Nathan Johnson says the video wants to explore the “empty rituals” of relationships, and to a larger degree, religion. “You Don’t Know Me” comes off Son Lux’s (Ryan Lott’s) fourth studio album Bones. 

3. HONNE - Coastal Love

“Coastal Love” feels part fashion film, part white-collar crime, and part psychedelic deep-ocean love story. The words “I’ll be waiting for you, my love, on this New York City coast” play over images of a dark & dreamy Montauk motel. This is one of the few times I think, “If I’m going to pass out on the beach with a stranger, going in a lustful haze with a weird sea creature on my face might be the best way to do it.” “Coastal Love” comes off HONNE’s newest EP by the same name. 

4. ABRA - U Know

Abra’s woozy R & B is paired with a ghost/love story between the Awful Records’ it-girl and skater Lil Phillips. The DIY-feely music video is a collaboration with UNIF clothing, and comes off Abra’s first album Roses. 

5. Lower Dens - To Die in L.A.

Magic 8 balls, wannabe movie stars, Debbie Harry obsessions, and a dead buck floating in a swimming pool—such is the crazy world of “To Die in L.A.” by Lower Dens. The first single off Lower Dens’ second record Escape from Evil is a synth-rock dream of a vulnerable Los Angeles. 

6. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Can't Keep Checking My Phone

We start with the subtitle, “It’s one of those rare, unexplainable things,” which suits the video well, in the best way. The video—directed by Dimitri Basil—features a semi-sci-fi catalogue of mental illnesses and unexplained phenomena, including “Meteorite Sickness” and “Virtual Gender Disphoria.” The song, which is full of catchy beats and seemingly-simple lyrics, becomes complicated against the “trading deck” of the abstract, the dystopian, and the strange. Can’t Keep Checking My Phone can be found on Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s newest album Multi-Love.

7. Hurts - Lights

“Lights” is the age-old tale of being too fucked up and too alone in a half-populated bar. This time, instead of the classic random hook-up we get a graceful dance between matador and bull. This bar’s patrons also include a woman wrapped in a giant plastic bag and a zombie baseball player. “Lights” was the first single off the Manchester duo Hurts’s third album Surrender. 

8. The Soft Moon - Far

Is there anything more angsty than dark alleyways, disfigured men, and speeding down the 101 in a blue-and-red psychedelic daze? Dark and nostalgic, the video doesn’t lose its depth. “‘Far’ is the realm where unconscious desires reign, and the darkest tendencies take root and flourish. There, the ‘hIDeous’ clone assaults the ego, the shadow self stalks the night, and a third Shroud embodies the two hemispheres locked in perpetual battle,” director duo Y2K explains. “Far” comes off Soft Moon’s album Deeper, which was released this February.

9. Alex G - Brite Boy

A soft tune called “Brite Boy” off Alex G’s newest album entitled Beach Music might suggest happy, carefree vibes. Instead, we get a dark cartoon by Elliot Bech, featuring cemetery rituals, desert funerals, and a watertower that welcomes you to a ghost town called “Fuck.” Beach Music marks Alex Ginnascoli’s seventh full-length album, and he gets weirder and darker every time. “Brite Boy” zines made by Bech himself will be sold along Alex G’s next tour.

10. LA Priest - Oino

It’s a strange desert landscape where curious beasts lurk in the canyons, and Sam Eastgate (aka Samuel Dust) plays high-pitched riffs in the desolate dirt. Directed by his brother Isaac Eastgate, the video was apparently inspired by their granddad’s story of “a man imprisoned in the desert who escapes by singing to a wizard.” I feel the mystic vibes. “Oino” was LA Priest’s debut single for a solo album eight years in the making. His album Inji is out now. 

11. Silicon - God Emoji

A papier maché robot drives out to the middle of the forest to lay down catchy beats on the keyboard and the drums. Meanwhile, a weird dismembered pixelated head floats about an apartment building while a soft voice sings, “Don’t wanna go out on a Saturday night.” “God Emoji” is weird, but sticks with you through its abstractions and grooves. New Zealand multi-instrumentalist Kody Nielson’s debut album Personal Computer is out now.

12. Hot Chip - Need You Now

Hot Chip’s newest album, Why Make Sense? fits well with the music video for “Need You Now.” It’s strange, abstract, cyclical, and convoluted. A man runs after his double (or is his double chasing him?). He disappears, reappears, runs away, and is chased by a third double. Ultimately, however, the complex and the metaphysical fade into a simple story of refusing to let love go, as the words, “Need you now,” repeat themselves in the background. “Need You Know” is off the British electronic music band’s sixth album. 

13. Julia Holter - Silhouette

Julia Holter’s “Silhouette” is jumpy, grainy, and indulgent in its shadows. It is also sentimental, nostalgic, and a melancholy kind of sweet. Holter sings, “He can hear me sing, though he is far, I'll never lose sight of him, a silhouette.” The song and the video remind me how love can make you crazy--sprawled out across your desk with nothing to do but turn the lights on and off, close and open the blinds, and write clichés about him in your diary. Holter’s latest record Have You in my Wilderness was released this September.

Text by Keely Shinners

[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] Best Pop Records of 2015

Text by Adam Lehrer

Earlier this year, I interviewed fashion designer Siki Im, and we discussed the ramifications of the term “elevated sportswear,” and his response was rather elegant: “Everything is elevated these days,” said Im. He was right. 10 years ago, when the phrase “pop music” conjured associations of Backstreet Boys and Britney, I would have never even thought to make a pop music list. But we are well into the Internet age at this point (it feels like just yesterday when I was on the Shoutweb message boards, discussing the excellence of KoRn and Slipknot with other pimply faced malcontents, but in reality it was 15 years ago), and the artists that grew up watching TRL and then reading Pitchfork on their desktops have come of age. Pop music has mutated into a variety of forms, only connected through an accessible, danceable, and sing-along quality. You can have the retro-psych R&B of Miguel, the post-modern alterna-pop of Bjork, or the British dancefloor celebration of Jamie XX, and it is all pop. Sub-culture has thoroughly been erased, and that isn’t a bad thing. It just means that individual taste has come to the forefront. You will have a much harder time finding someone who is only into black metal these days, but you might find a girl who has Grimes playing on her headphones sitting at the coffee shop wearing a Darkthrone t-shirt.

The point is, the artists making pop these days are very much artists, and not corporate drones. They by and large love music and are acquainted with at least some form of music history. In the words of Future and Drake, “What a time, TO BE ALIVE!”

D'Angelo - Black Messiah - Track: Betray My Heart

R&B has arguably become contemporary popular music’s most important genre: 808z, Frank Ocean, Miguel, Jeremih, the Weeknd, Kelela, Nao, How to Dress Well and the list goes on and on. But D’Angelo, as part of the neo-Soul movement in the mid-‘90s, was already demonstrating the inherent possibilities in groove-driven soul melodies matched with amazing vocals over 15 years ago. Black Messiah came out at the tail end of 2014, so it missed its chance for most year-end lists. I simply must pay respects to it here, because it is the best record that has come out since its release. People waited for 14 years for this thing, ever since the majestic Voodoo was unleashed upon the world in 2000, and Black Messiah immediately established D’Angelo once again at the forefront of the world’s most riveting entertainers. It took Voodoo’s abstract and far out grooves ever farther into the abyss, and the record sounds minimal but dense all the same. It re-established soul music as a powerful form of protest, possibly the first record of its kind to do so this well since Sly Stone put out There’s a Riot Goin’ On in the early ‘70s. D’Angelo has an amazing ability to pay homage to his forefathers while sounding utterly contemporary. D’Angelo spent a decade caught up in drug, legal, and financial problems, finally releasing that tension in this beautifully written record. “I been a witness to this game for ages, And if I stare death in face, no time to waste,” he sings on 1000 Deaths. D’Angelo pours his personal life into his sounds and uses it to indict a racist and unjust system. He is one of the last revolutionaries we have. And his voice hasn’t lost a step.

Björk - Vulnicura - Track: Black Lake

Bjork winds up labeled as experimental music just as much as she does pop, and that is testament to how utterly alien her fairly straight forward songwriting style sounds. Vulnicura is Bjork’s best album since her masterpiece, Homogenic. Consider the 18 years of Bjork musical domination that have transpired since 1997, and it’s staggering to think of another artist that has remained that relevant for that long. Of course we all know the story behind the record, that Matthew Barney jilted Bjork after a decade of domestic bliss leaving her utterly heartbroken. But Bjork is not the type to lie down, and instead belted out that frustration in this transcendent body of songs. Vulnicura finds Bjork at her most lyrically straight-forward, trading obtuse haiku for succinct declarations of strife: “ I did it for love, I honored my feelings, You betrayed your own heart, corrupted that organ.” Bjork, displaying eternally excellent taste, lets hot shot producers bring the weird, with Arca and the Haxan Cloak both bringing their abstract production techniques to an otherwise string oriented album. Bjork is simply Bjork, transcending any notion of popular music or trend, and she will always resonate.

The Weeknd - Beauty Behind the Madness - Track: As You Are

Toronto’s The Weeknd’s career exploded this year. But as he established himself as one of the world’s most popular artists, he also found himself as probably the least critically acclaimed of the contemporary R&B stars. Of course, Abel Testaye doesn’t make it easy for himself, with his occasional outright over-the-top misogyny, but I’ll be damned if Beauty Behind the Madness isn’t an absolutely perfect R&B record. Many of my friends said they have preferred The Weeknd’s earlier, weirder work. But you ask me, this is the type of music that Abel was meant to make: big, arena ready, anthemic pop music. It’s like a Phil Collins-led group playing R&B, and that is a compliment. The Hills, Can’t Feel my Face, and more were some of the tracks that had me putting a clinic on the dance floor all year. There also has to be something said of The Weeknd’s voice: there is nothing like it. It doesn’t even sound very trained, as if Abel just opens his mouth and that is what comes out of him.

Nao - February 15 - Track: Inhale, Exhale

With only an EP and a single to her name, the East London-born Nao has re-defined danceable R&B. Often compared to other transformative R&B artists FKA Twigs and Kelela, there is something undeniably less austere and far more youthful about Nao’s sound. From the opening glorious bassline of February 15’s first track Inhale, Exhale, Nao conjures up images of neighborhood block parties and dance-offs. Her voice is high-pitched and adolescent-sounding, Nao’s sound is completely all her own. Much less self-consciously arty than her peers, Nao’s sound almost comes off like an elevation of the bubblegum soul of Deniece Williams. It is more street-wise, to be sure, but this is music to dance to. I listened to these five songs dozens of times throughout the year, and never did I get sick of it. Nao is fully in control of her product (she even released her music on her own label, Little Tokyo).

Miguel - Wildheart - Track: Hollywood Dreams

Miguel’s deep love of music has always been apparent; he has equal adoration for artists as disparate as Prince and Led Zeppelin. As good as his 2012 release Kaleidoscope Dream was, Miguel needed to grow as a musician to fully embrace the retro-tinged neo-psychedelica soul that he has achieved on the excellent Wildheart. Miguel always felt like he might be the millennial answer to Prince, but with this sound he has gotten there. The album is dripping with sex, but like with Prince it comes off as more a celebration of sex than a misogynist fantasy. Miguel is as focused on the woman’s pleasure as he is his own, and somehow that comes through sonically. The album is fairly maximal, similar in production to big ‘70s rock albums, and Miguel has emerged as a guitar player to be reckoned with. Miguel is a big Lenny Kravitz fan, and Lenny appears on the excellent album closer face the sun. But Miguel’s sound feels like what Lenny’s music could be if Kravitz weren’t so concerned with making songs that can accompany car commercials (people often forget that Lenny’s first record was actually pretty fucking good though).

Jamie xx - In Colour - Track: Stranger in a Room (feat. Oliver Sim)

Perhaps some would feel more comfortable placing Jamie XX’s solo masterpiece In Colour on a list of electronic albums, but the record is far too joyously accessible to be taken as anything other than pop. Unlike bro DJs like Diplo and Steve Aoki that try and make dance music more pop, Jamie XX’s music feels both essentially pop and essentially dance. In Colour is a celebration of the UK’s deep history in dance music re-purposed for a magical conceptual pop record: Good Times channels grime, Stranger in a Room taps into Madchester dance pop, SeeSaw goes for trip-hop, and Sleep Sound re-ignites the acid house. So many styles filtered through such an unmistakable musical voice. Jamie XX is an obsessive fan of British music and has created a record that feels at once beautiful as much as it does culturally relevant. Though he got help from his cohorts from the XX on this album, Jamie XX seems to find much more joy behind a stack of records and a labtop than he does a guitar an a mic. There is more exuberance to this music than anything the man has ever been a part of. This is the future of dance music AND pop music.

Grimes - Art Angels - Track: Venus Fly (feat. Janelle Monae)

Remember that scene in Twin Peaks when they are all at the Roadhouse? Donna and James are making up. Ed and Norma are confirming their love. And Coop, just before the Giant tells him that is happening again, is tending to a beer while admiring the synth-y ‘80s goth pop group with a bleach blonde singer on the stage. Grimes to me is that fictional band made non-fiction. When profiled by Dazed earlier this year Grimes got a little defensive when pressed if she is reaching for a more accessible sound. But I think she was getting defensive because her music has always been quintessentially pop, but undeniably alien all the same. Venus Fly with Janelle Monae is ready for college kid catering night clubs, while California makes a grand case for the virtues of Bedroom Bubblegum, or some critic cliché to describe the sound of that song. The record is tight and well-sequenced, edited with the precision of a Hype Williams music video.

Jeremih - Late Night: The Album - Track: Planez (feat. J. Cole)

I had kind of given up hope on hearing anything new from Jeremih in 2015. The single for Don’t Tell ‘Em came out way back in summer of 2014 for chrissakes. But, the internet does it again and Jeremih’s excellent new collection of ‘90s R&B revitalizing tracks, Late Night: The Album, made it into our iTunes feeds a couple of weeks back. There are some beautiful melodies on this record. Opening track Planez finds a slow burning bass line under sequenced synths and utterly muscular vocal lines from the man himself. Actin Up takes a minimal beat with a sparse string section and lets Jeremih’s voice do all the talking. Jeremih, the man of a thousand hip-hop features, proves himself a capable album maker all on his own with Late Night: The Album.

Kelela - Hallucinogen - Track: Gomenasai

For whatever reason, Kelela’s brand of late period Aaaliyah-referencing dark and sexy R&B works really well in short bursts. The Hallucinogen EP, six tracks in all, feels fully fleshed out. Warp Records, legendary for their its with experimental electronic icons like Aphex Twin (a personal hero of mine) and Autechre, released this album. That alone provides some indication of the punk mentality Kelela exhibits. At this point in her career, she could start to shoot for RIhanna, or at least Janelle Monae-like, success. But that isn’t where she is at musically. Arca, the Venezuelan genius who basically popularized experimental music in 2015, produced the record and brings some delightful grit to the listening experience. That being said, Arca is a malleable producer, and the beats on this record feel more polished than anything he’s ever done before; almost sounding like Timbaland’s B-side deep cuts. Kelela regular Kingdom brings some dancier cuts to the mix, too. The record leaves you simultaneously satisfied and begging for more.

FKA Twigs - M3LL155X - Track: Figure 8

FKA twigs, the London-born former dancer, is a multi-media genius. She is a dancer for one thing, employing mesmerizing chereography into her performances. She knows her fashion, employing the looks of futuristic London-based designers Craig Green, Nasir Mazhar, Cottweiler and many more. Her 2015 EP, M3LL155X, came complete with a video spanning the record’s entirety utilizing bizarre images and close-ups of Rick Owens’ wife Michelle Lamy’s face. The film was directed by Twigs herself. All that versatile talent has potentital to distract from how utterly unique her music is. Twigs grew up listening to soul like Marvin Gaye and Ella Fitzgerald and punk and glam like Siouxsie and the Banshees and Adam Ant. Her music sounds nothing like that. She is the rare artist that is in no way bound by her influences. M3LL155X, though perhaps not as incendiary as 2014’s LP1, is another landmark record for the 27-year old artist. Abstract electronics collide with smoky R&B rhythms. The industrial tinge gives the sound a cold detachment, but the swirling soul grounds it in humanity.

Tame Impala - Currents - Track: The Moment

On any other record, I would have classified Tame Impala under rock n’ roll. Currents, Tame Impala’s 2015 release, is a pop record through and through. And if you ask me, they are all the better for it. I enjoyed Kevin Parker’s first couple of records, and especially admired his jaw dropping guitar playing, but Tame Impala always came off as a little too Arcade Fire-y to me. Not sonically, just in the sense that it was the type of rock guaranteed to be adored by Pitchfork and loved by a certain type of indie rock fan (the kind who has no clue what SST records is). Currents is Parker’s most accessible album, and it also feels like it’s his sweet spot. The record, while still featuring some stunning guitar work, emphasizes club-ready synths and beats. Parker has admitted that he was eager to hear Tame Impala in a dance setting, and it works. The album was recorded entirely at Parker’s home studio in Fremantle, Australia, but sounds like it could have been recorded at a Jay-Z studio. Polished, would be the best word for it. But Parker infuses big grand emotion into his music, and Currents is most confident and exuberant work yet.

Janet Jackson - Unbreakable - Track: BURNITUP! (feat. Missy Elliot)

Two years ago, when Beyoncé surprise released that stunning self-titled record, she was praised for blurring the boundaries of genre in efforts of pushing pop music into a more musically dense future. And she deserved it, that record is a masterpiece. Unfortunately, people seem to forget that Janet had already done that with her albums Rhythm Nation, and especially The Velvet Rope. Both those records are stunning masterpieces of auteur-driven pop music. Janet hadn’t put out anything close to hitting those records’ majestic heights since. 2015’s Unbreakable, though no Velvet Rope, is a thorough return to form for the icon. Janet has always reflected the music of the time into her music, as much as she has social issues. On this record she takes on EDM, that most maligned of popular music, but manages to not embarrass herself one iota (I wish we could say the same for Madonna). People often forget how tremendous a singer Janet is, and she reminds them of that undeniable range on After you Fall, a track that must be dedicated to her late brother, Michael. This is a woman going on her fourth decade of super stardom, not even her brother was making good music that long.

Adele - 25 - Track: Other Side

The criticism of Adele’s music (for example: Damon Albarn of Blur and Noel Gallagher of Oasis have both called her granny music, to paraphrase) I mostly agree with. Compared to where most of pop is at these days, her music feels conventional and safe. 25, like its predecessor, has some truly epic songs, like smash single Other Side. But it also has some skip overs. But all the criticism is undone when you consider that voice, which she has added even more range to with this new record. She hits some notes that leave you with goosebumps; a physical reaction that overrides critical conceptualization. And she also sold 4 million records in two weeks, so she is pretty much single-handedly keeping the record industry afloat (I exaggerate, but fuck that’s a lot of CDs).

Lana Del Rey - Honeymoon - Track: High by the Beach

I really have tried to avoid Lana del Rey’s whole thing. In no way do I think her deserving of the “Lynchian pop” description that critics have often tagged her with. Her music is more or less soul-driven pop with a smokier and sultrier voice than most of are used to. That being said, I really loved Ultraviolence; tracks like West Coast and Shades of Cool were full of darkly evocative mood and swagger. Honeymoon feels a bit rushed in comparison with its predecessor, but its first half is fairly flawless, with High by the Beach sounding like Lana at her most irreverently Lana-ness. Does Lana have many more records in her? It does sound like she is floundering a bit.

Carly Rae Jepsen - Emotion - Track: I Really Like You

I avoided this record until last week. I was perfectly content to have Carly be that one girl with that one seductively annoying great pop song, Call Me Maybe. Then, at a party I heard that chorus, “I really really really really really really really like you,” and while initially offended, found myself singing along before I caught myself. Carly’s music gets IN YOUR HEAD. But while it’s there, you realize you don’t want it to go away, like a Britney Spears song infecting your brain like a tumor. You want those offensively catchy melodies to stay in there, like a safety blanket. I hate this record as much as I love it, and that’s what makes it so fun.

Transient Underbellies or Learning to Let Go

text by Sarah Louise

For years I was too self-conscious to let a man go down on me.  Perhaps it was about control. In between my legs he was gone. I couldn’t kiss, touch or guide any part of him. I couldn’t see or smell what was happening. I knew I was supposed to lay back and close my eyes but instead I imagined swirling, gym-class odors repulsing him. Perhaps it was that I was sleeping with 20 year-olds with directionless tongues. It wasn’t until I was sweaty in a strange bed that I learned to let go.

Two summers ago I went to Havana semi-legally, before Obama and Castro learned to share their toys. In Cuba romanticism and pragmatism collide in a quaint but sad way. There are more grey Toyotas from the 90’s than baby-blue T-birds now. The food is bland, mealtimes become like listening to a James Taylor CD on loop. There are lazy fans and tropical fruits and cigar smoke, that’s the communism in the air.  But the elevators and hospital equipment pre-date the embargo and you question the pervasive happiness. Still it was sticky and romantic in a mosquito-bitten way.

I stayed at the nicest hotel in Havana. I forget the name. As a teenager I watched the ill-advised remake of Dirty Dancing, Dirty Dancing Havana Nights. This implanted a certain sultry and tropical image of Cuba. Since then I imagined a trip to Cuba meant beachside rendezvous with a Diego Luna type and soft groping in warm seawater. Maybe we’d go salsa dancing at night.

Towards the end of my trip I was by the pool when a tall, curly-haired man approached. His suit was wrinkled and his glasses smudged. He’d noticed my Clyde’s Chemists bag, a shop in New York City where they give you a bag if you buy over $50 worth of cosmetics. He was a discombobulated, 30-something, Jewish filmmaker from New York there on assignment. After a candle-lit dinner the second night we knew, though we took our time getting there. We smoked cigarette after cigarette and drank scotch mixed with a cloyingly sweet local soda. We walked to the beach and he kissed me. I wasn’t even attracted to him until then but suddenly I didn’t want anything else.

Ever since 8th grade when Sam Cash fingered me backstage and everyone called me a slut I feign modesty. I told him I didn’t want to have sex that night. His answer, like our beach, was perfect. He asked if I’d roll around and kiss him underneath the mosquito net in his room. If ever a man knew what to say it was that. I said yes.

He kissed my neck and breasts. I’ve always been enamored with large, wooden fans and the one overhead was perfect, splashing us with nipple-hardening wisps from time to time. He kissed the depression between my stomach and hips. He asked if he could go down on me. I told him I didn’t like that that it made me self-conscious. He persisted. Maybe it was the Scotch or the fan or his touch but I said yes.

It was slow at first, circular, like a rabbit chasing a fox on a cul-de-sac in the suburbs. I watched the fan. He told me I tasted amazing. I liked that. My fears dissolved, so did his tongue. It felt warm, the way the metal underbelly of a truck heats up on a highway in Nevada. He kissed my thighs and slipped a finger inside me. I reached for his shoulders not because I wanted him inside me, not yet. This was sensuality with no endpoint. I needed to kiss him. His lips were glazed and slippery. I’d never tasted myself. It was sweet and I let go. Malcolm Gladwell calls vibrant focus ‘flow.’ I propose those moments of focused, free lovemaking be called ‘overflow’. At 4am we fell asleep in a tangle of satisfaction. He left the next day and I went to Santiago.

We met up back in New York City. He bought me dinner in Harlem and went down on me in Brooklyn. We went away one weekend while it was still warm. I came looking up at a fan in a wood-paneled room on Block Island. But it wasn’t Cuba. It wasn’t the foam waves leave behind after crashing it was just an imprint in the sand. Slowly the tide filled it in. I stopped calling or perhaps he did. 

Now, when a man asks if he can go down on me I say yes. I invite it. It’s not always good or arousing but I know what it can be, and that’s enough. It took being somewhere else with someone who knew nothing about me to let go. Or perhaps it was just the Mojitos and bug-spray. Either way I’m free now, able to surrender to the feeling of butter melting between your legs.

[FRIDAY PLAYLIST] The Best Electronic-Experimental Noise Records of 2015

text by Adam Lehrer

The most interesting development of the last few years of avant-garde and outer limits music (the kind of tunes that Wire Magazine writes about monthly) has been the convergence of noise and electronic music. Noise musicians like Dom Fernow (Prurient) and Ron Schofield (Container) have been making danceable tunes for some years, and record labels like Ron Morelli’s L.I.E.S. make their bread and butter by peddling this aesthetic. At some point the noise dudes got bored nodding their heads in a room full of sweaty dudes and very few women, but at the same time would rather kill themselves than be caught alive at EDC. Luckily, all you have to do is add beat and texture to the abrasive soundwalls of noise and you have some of the most seductive music being made in 2015. EDM didn’t kill electronic music, it just killed the mainstream public’s perception of it. But just as punk rock arose in protest of the bloated arena rock of the ‘70s, a more sonically varied and artfully crafted electronic music has risen in the face of Skrillex and Diplo.

But that’s certainly not all that experimental music has to offer these days. The deep underground is stronger than ever. With the trusty internet, this stuff has never been easier to find, either. There are no excuses. If you don’t like what you’re reading about in Spin and Pitchfork, then you need to search engine that shit, harder.


1. Arca, Mutant, Track: Snakes

Arca, now age 25, is one of the most important artists in the world. Consider the facts. This guy has made major contributions to four of the most important and forward thinking pop records of the last 15 years in Kanye’s Yeezus (the most influential album of this era, don’t front), FKA twigs’ LP1, Bjork’s Vulnicura, and most recently Kelela’s Hallucinogen. He’s the most interesting producer in the world right now. Then you take his actual solo records. Last year’s Xen was a visionary masterpiece, and this year’s Mutant was a step up in every sense. Still rooted in the bizarre hip-hop sound that he helped develop, his music has grown in scope and cacophony. Industrial buzzing and synth sirens coalesce and mutate into a sound so thick and dense you don’t know what else to do other than move.



2. Prurient, Frozen Niagra Falls, Track: Greenpoint


Dom Fernow, once a king of the No Fun scene of harsh noise revivalists, has greatly expanded his palette over the last few years. As Vatican Shadow, he dove head first into the rave with a harsh techno sound. With Vegas Matrys, he embraced his love of Nowregian black metal (his since closed East Village record shop, Hospital Productions, had one of the best extreme metal selections in the world). He even performed as a member of Cold Cave, thickening the band’s coldwave chills. Once again recording as Prurient, Fernow drew on all these styles and more to create his masterpiece, Frozen Niagra Falls. Recorded upon Fernow’s move back to New York after years in LA, Frozen Niagra Falls is about harsh and uncomfortable change. Drawing on Fernow touchstones like harsh noise, dark ambient, and screwed beats, it is an expansive and lonely record. Tracks like Greenpoint explore Fernow’s new found love of acoustic guitar, but you won’t exactly recognize it the way he uses it.


3. Jenny Hval, Apocalypse, girl, track: Freaky Eyes


Inspired by darker ‘80s pop and Kate Bush, Jenny Hval has taken the melodies of her forebears and made them more obtuse. On Apocalypse, girl, Hval is able to sound ominous and oddly hopeful all the same. Hval, once a member of experimental metal band Shellyz Raven, hasn’t foregone her connection to extreme music and avant-garde; noise legend Lasse Marhaug, Jaga Jazzist pianist Oystein Moen, and Swans percussionist Thor Harris all make cameos. Her collaborations with such towering figures are testaments to Hval’s confidence; though she embraces the sounds provided by these musicians never does this record sound like anything other than her. Though it’s perhaps the most art-pop record that she has recorded, it’s also perhaps her strangest. It’s a towering statement by an artist that only seems to be getting better.



4. Oneohtrix Point Never, Garden of Delete, track: Freaky Eyes


Daniel Lopatin’s Onehotrix Point Never project has not yet released a bad record, but Garden of Delete’s concept speaks directly towards me. Most boring white guys into art and music got heavily into music at around 12 to 14, and most times that music isn’t exactly critically lauded. Personally, I could have been one of those pimply faced kiddos in the Papa Roach video for Last Resort. Nu-metal was my bag: Tool was my favorite band and I also loved Korn, Slipknot, Deftones, System of a Down, etc.. Eventually, those bands would make way for concept-driven stuff like Dillinger Escape Plan and Meshuggah, and then you re-discover Nirvana and Sonic Youth and whatever. At around 18, you get too pretentious for the nu-metal or stuff you liked as a teen, but when I turned 25, I chilled out and realized that Tool is actually an amazing and unique rock band. Garden of Delete, a concept record centered around a fictional alienated (and part alien) teen character named Ezra and his love of a fictional band called Kaoss Edge, seeks to elevate the art that obsessed our less taste-driven and more angst-ridden teenage minds. Lopatin has found taste in the tasteless, and no record this year better described the synthesis of artistic obsessions that have arisen in the information age. Listening to grunge on weekdays and going to raves on weekends is no longer a rarity. There is no sub-culture, just the individual taste. This is what the lush and dizzying sounds of Garden of Delete explains.


5. JLin, Dark Energy, track: Guantanamo

Rick Owens’ FW 2014 runway show was the most seminal fashion moment of the last 10 years. Having black sorority girls line dancing in sequence while wearing Owens’ garments saw an industry celebrating a culture more or less never even marketed towards in the high fashion world. Fitting then that JLin soundtracked that show, as her unique brand of pulsating footwork, as found on her full-length Dark Matter, celebrates the mind-set of going harder and faster than anyone on the dance floor. There is tremendous musicality on this record, and it begs the listener to consider oft-ignored sub-cutures in the realm of high art. Culture and its notions of high and low are rapidly changing and deteriorating, and Dark Matter proves that sweating it out in a packed basement of a dingy club is no less substantial than making beats in an art gallery. JLin’s blazing performance this year at MOMA PS1 showed that the art world and the fashion world need to open themselves up to new cultures or be rendered mote in due time. Thank Christ.


6. Lotic, Agitations, track: Carried

Agitations finds “beat”maker Lotic at his most exuberantly jarring. In an interview, Lotic said that the record was born out of a disillusionment with club culture, and as such these are very club-unfriendly tracks. There are still beats here, but they are chopped and sliced apart, connected only through stirring blasts of discordant noise. Lotic refuses to be trapped by the culture that he is a part of, and as a result pushes the sometimes limiting culture into its darkest depths.


7. Blanck Mass, Dumb Flesh, track: Dead Format


Fuck Buttons has always been a good gateway for indie rock kids to start fucking around in the world of noise. With the Blanck Mass project, Fuck Buttons’ Benjamin John Power has created a sound that might be a waypoint for EDM kids to start charting the outskirts of electronic music. It is loud and aggressive but always danceable. The beats pulsate on this record like few that have come out this year. And despite its relative accessibility, there is absolutely nothing watered down about it. Instead, Power has found his niche in towing the line between the dance floor and the avant-garde. It’s a delicate balancing act that many have flirted with, but only Blanck Mass has executed with such a swaggering confidence.



8. Circuit des Yeux, In Plain Speech, track: Fantasize the Scene

Circuit des Yeux has been labeled an experimental-folk project since its inception, but Haley Fohr’s sound was often so belabored in glorious hiss that it was hard to hear anything resembling folk music. On In Plain Speech, Fohr brings her operatic voice to the front of the mix and better pronounces her melodies creating a fuller and clearer sound that in no way hinders the darkness that she has always emanated. Her music has gotten better with each production. By incorporating strings and pianos into her psychedelic swirl, she has hinted at the long and incendiary career that is to come.



9. Mumdance and Logos, Proto, album: Border Dance


Grime producers Mumdance and Logos have never been hindered by their adherences to grime music. On both of their solo outings, they have incorporated the entirety of UK club culture into their music. On their first record as a duo, they incorporate that enthusiasm into one of the headiest dance releases of the year. The music is minimal but utterly effective. On standout track Border Dance, for example, the duo builds a steady acid house beat over a beat-less atmospheric hiss, building towards a climax that never really arrives. Orgasm is always the most boring part of sex, right? It’s all over after that. Border Dance is one long lead up to release that is an infinite space away.


10. Holly Herndon, Platform, track: Morning Sun


Despite its decidedly hi-brow aesthetic, Platform has ended up on numerous year-end lists: Noisey, Pitchfork, and even NPR have counted it among the best of 2015. What is immediately clear about Holly Herndon’s 2015 release is its unbridled ambition. On her blog, Herndon discusses method as an academic would (she is currently working towards a doctorate at Stanford’s Computer Research in Music and Accoustics), and espouses her theory that in the near future emotion and idea will be shared digitally. That is what makes her unique blend of electronic dance music and sound art so stirring and magnetic. At the center of all the academic and high-art collaborators is a profoundly emotional voice. That voice is often the one of Herndon herself.



11. Jam City, Dream a Garden, track: Black Friday


Dream a Garden is a major step away from Jack Latham’s first record as Jam City, Classical Curves. Where as that album found Latham digging into the jackhammer beats of grime and UK house, Dream a Garden is immediately discerned by vocals and washes of guitar. Latham is Night City’s most important and political artist, and this record shows him wanting to dig deeper into his influences, namely ‘80s goth and early ‘70s funk. The shimmery keys hint at Coteau twins, while the washed out funky guitars play like Kevin Shields doing Curtis Mayfied. This is a fuller celebration of UK music history. It is also a protest record, and while most protest records demonstrate in-you-face aggression, Dream a Garden asks to give peace a chance.


12. Chrononautz, Made in Time, track: Acid Empathy

Chrononautz members Dom Clare and Leon Carey have played in noise and free improv bands together since 2000. But it was in their Chops, an acidic dirge of a band veering between lo-fi electronics and the most outer limits of free jazz, that the duo really developed an interest in electronic sounds. In Chrononautz, and especially on the 2015 release Made in Time, Clare and Carey approach blazing techno sans abandoning the improvisational skills they have developed over the last 15 years of music composing. There appears to be interest in some of the headier aspects of the Detroit techno lineage on the record, but instead of the beats remaining tight and precise, they veer towards utter chaos. This is the sound of techno coming apart, and it’s glorious.



13. John Wiese, Deviate from Balance, track: Segmenting Process for Language

John Wiese has been something of the overlord of Los Angeles’ avant-garde music scene for some two decades now. With solo Project Sissy Spacek, he tests the improvisational limits of grindcore. Along with Troniks records head honcho and Cinemfamily curator Phil Blankenship, Wiese performs harsh noise as duo LMH. He’s also been a member of noise metal unit Bastard Noise and Sunn 0))). The guy has hundreds of titles bearing the fruits of his labor. But under his Christian name, Wiese has released more conceptually driven full-length records. Case in point: Deviate from Balance. Wiese, commonly associated with noise punkers, has emerged as a serious avant-garde composer on this record. Working with a long list of collaborators (members of Smegma, Los Angeles Free Music Society, Ikue Mori, Evan Parker, Spencer Yeh, and more), Deviate from Balance is far from easy-listening, but the sounds exert far more control than is commonly associated with free-wheeling outer limits music. Compositions can surely be scary.


14. Lakker, Tundra, track: Mountain Divide


Dublin duo Lakker employs big and bold production on their noise and techno hybrid of a record Mountain Divide. There is something tribal about the music: as if there is one steady beat that holds together the disparate soundscapes throughout. They are veering more towards electronic dance music more than anything experimental, but there are uncomfortable sounds that separate Lakker apart. The duo seems to have fully realized their sound on Tundra, letting tight beats build towards violent episodic explosions. The future holds much in store for Dara Smith and Ian McDonnell.



15. Sightings, Amusers and Puzzlers, track: Counterfeited


Of all the harsh noise bands of the ‘00s, Sightings Mark Morgan’s NYC trio was always the most ecstatically rock n’ roll. Taking cues from forebears like Harry Pussy and even Teenage and the Jerks, Sightings applied an angular and possibly math-y post-hardcore approach to noise. Actually recorded during the sessions of 2013’s also excellent Terribly Well, Amusers and Puzzlers finds Sightings cutting up between blasts of fractal guitar, dub-inspired rhythms, and large doses of psychedelic hypnosis. If this band is truly done for goods, Amusers and Puzzlers is an epic end for a band that truly never sounded like any other.


The Best Gallery Exhibits Of 2015

text by Adam Lehrer

Counting down your favorite gallery exhibits is much harder than putting together any other list. It’s not like your favorite music that you can hear again and again, or your favorite films and shows that in most cases you can go back to when you need to or want to, and it’s not even like a play where you most likely will have the opportunity to experience it again. A gallery show is a singular experience, and seldom do people go more than to passively glance at the work, schmooze with other high society types (note: I am not a high society type, I am a poor person that often rubs elbows with these people hoping they never get around to asking what a critic makes these days), and grab a drink. That means for the gallery exhibition to stick with you, it has to manifest as a transcendent experience. The best exhibits give you a feeling, and whether or not that feeling is the one proposed by the artist is beside the point. The art is your experience, and it belongs to you. 2015 has been, admittedly, a great year for art across almost all mediums. Bear in mind, I’m only including exhibits I’ve actually seen; thus, there will be a lot of New York-centric stuff.



1. Mark Bradford, Be Strong Boquan, Hauser & Wirth

Mark Bradford was recently featured in a T Magazine piece along with fellow artists Theaster Gates and Rick Lowe. The article celebrates the artists and their adherences to using art to a higher social calling. Bradford is not afraid to imbue his work with big concepts, as evidenced by his fall exhibition at Hauser & Wirth. In a collection of paintings and a video project, Bradford explores the early AIDS crisis and our government’s response to it, juxtaposing the horror to the jubilation of 1980s club culture. The exhibit’s most talked-about piece, Spiderman (2015), is a response to Eddie Murphy’s homophobia and misogyny in his 1980s stand-up classic Delirious. In the piece, an unseen black comedian makes jokes about Eazy-E’s battle with HIV and the black community’s encounter with AIDS, while a laugh track plays underneath. The piece implicates the viewers and their complicit laughter. Be Strong Boquan is not an easily forgotten body of work. Click here to see our full coverage.

 


2. Wolfgang Tillmans, Polymerase Chain Reaction, David Zwirner

Operating as a photographer since the early ‘90s, Wolfgang Tillmans has never felt as relevant as he does now. And that is saying something, considering he has been rightfully respected as one of the world’s foremost fine art photographers for over a decade. Tillmans is heavily featured in a stunning new issue of Arena Homme + with two full interviews and a slew of images culled from his amazing 2015 David Zwirner exhibit, PCR. Featuring 100 of Tillmans’ recent images, the installation is emblematic of Tillmans’ unique relationship to space. The exhibit itself was a considered artwork, with Tillmans using each image to create one solitary piece. It was an utterly expansive work, covering the entirety of Zwirner’s New York location’s first floor. Tillmans’ imagery of life: partying, suffering, joys, and pain; is juxtaposed by his references to time. All of this happens in a unique realm of the infinite. Click here to see our full coverage.


3. Agathe Snow, Continuum, The Journal Gallery

Agathe Snow has too often been relegated to the descriptor, “Dash Snow’s ex-wife.” The legacy that her late ex-husband left behind is one that surely shadows the fascinating body of work that Agathe has created. In Continuum, Agathe made great use of the Journal Gallery’s unique space with its 30 ft-high walls being met to the ceiling by her gigantic papier mâché sculptures. The sculptures themselves can best be described as totems, portals to a world beyond our own mortal lives. A startlingly personal show for an artist who has faced much loss in her life, Agathe was able to create an exhibition that was tactilely brilliant and emotionally resonant.


4. Mike Kelley, Kandors, Hauser & Wirth

Hauser & Wirth is my personal commercial gallery of the year, and the late Mike Kelley (my personal number one all time artist) had some of his later life work shown, specifically the Kandors. Some artists think sporadically, stacking multiple ideas into a single show. Kelley is more in-line with the obsessive artists that generate a quantity of ideas after the one. The one in this case, is Kelley’s take on Superman mythology, specifically Superman’s home city of Kandor that was shrunk to globe size by the villain Brainiac. The exhibition begins with a set of illuminated sculptures glowing in neon that all depict the various ways that Superman’s home planet was illustrated in various different series of the comics. The show culminates with Fortress of Solitude, a life-sized rendition of Superman’s secret cave with the retrieved Kandor globe where he would go to ruminate on his relationship to the Earth and his condition of being a part and apart from it all the same. It jibes with the narrative of being an artist in the contemporary world, as evidenced by the short film shown at the end of the exhibition, which uses Fortress of Solitude as a set. There will never be an artist like Mike Kelley again. Click here to see our full coverage.


5. Elmgreen and Dragset, Past Tomorrow, Galerie Perrotin

“Norman Swann’s Family Fortune is Long Gone,’ reads the opening line of a book written by Danish artists, Elmgreen and Dragset, accompanying the duo’s exhibition of the same name at Galerie Perrotin earlier this year. The labor that goes into Elmgreen and Dragset’s work is astounding enough, but the duo must be credited for creating a whole new form of storytelling. The exhibition is literally an interpretation of the home of unseen character Norman Swann, and as you walk through it, it becomes a mystery that can be solved. It is an engaging form of art, but what is at the root of Elmgreen and Dragset’s exhibition is a rumination on inconsoloable loneliness and regret. Though Norman isn’t real, we feel for him, or for whomever he actually is. The exhibition engulfed me in a profound state of empathy.


6. Jeffrey Gibson, Jeffrey Gibson, Marc Straus Gallery

As Jeffrey Gibson has come to embrace his Native American ancestry more in his work, the other elements of his work have become more effective: politics, music, subculture, queer theory, art history, and more are all given a unique perspective. Though it shouldn’t be surprising to have a Native American take on these subjects, it is simply due to the fact that I have not ever been exposed to it. If that is my fault or the educational system’s fault I am not here to say. I can say that I am a massive fan of Gibson’s work. His use of fabrics and beads are always given a contemporary feel, and his series of punching bags that are all applied the titles of various outsider sub-cultures (Goths, punks, etc..) look like nothing else available on the art market.


7. Isa Genzken, David Zwirner

I have been fascinated by German artist, Isa Genzken’s interest in clothing and how it relates to the sculpture of the human body. On May 1, in Berlin at Galerie Bucholz, Genzken had a honest-to-goodness fashion show with models of both genders wearing clothes she created in 1998. The paint splattered and mightily distressed garments stretch the boundaries of good taste while making us ponder the fact that if perhaps some mighty atelier sewed these, we might consider them to be the highest of fashion. At her recent exhibit at Zwirner, Genzken draped life-sized mannequins in similarly distressed garments as well as other human-shaped sculptures. Along with the fashion show, it seems Genzken is now more than ever looking to address how we sculpt our own bodies in image. Some of the mannequins wear Genzken’s personal clothing, denoting a kind of self-portrait or a need to understand her own shape. Not to mention, I met Kim Gordon at the opening, so it’s hard not to look back on the exhibit with a smile. Click here to see our full coverage.


8. Justin Adian, Strangers, Skarstedt Gallery

What I love about Justin Adian’s work is its juxtaposition. He has this very design-oriented and art deco-inspired clean aesthetic derived from his unique process of stretching canvases over shaped foam that at the same time captures his youthful love of what the pretentious art world would consider “low culture:” punk rock, horror films, Black Flag. Adian said at a seminar for his recent exhibition, Strangers, that he has never moved on from something he loves or finds interesting. From hardcore to Frank Stella, he just keeps adding references to his œuvre. Much has been said of the Texan artist’s thematic similarities to Texan minimalism. They aren’t untrue either, as Adian infuses a healthy amount of humor into his singular style. What separates Adian most from Texan minimalism is that narrative has a powerful place in his work. Adian does have stories in mind when he creates, and went as far as to include a booklet of short stories to accompany this exhibition. Click here to read our coverage.


9. Scooter LaForge, How to Create a Monsterpiece, Howl! Happening

Scooter LaForge had the biggest year of his career. First, Walter Van Bierendonck elected to use LaForge’s prints for his SS 2015 collection that saw LaForge working on an installation at the London Dover Street Market location. Then, after creating one off wearable art garments for Patricia Field for some years, high fashion and streetwear retailer VFiles brought LaForge in to do the same for their clientele. Finally, he just collaborated again with Pat Field on another installation at DSM’s New York location that offers a Pat Field-curated vision of fashion. All the work in fashion has exponentially increased interest in LaForge’s art resulting in four solo exhibitions this year. His show at Howl! Happening felt like the tip of the iceberg, using the gallery’s impressive space to show off all the work that he has accomplished in creating these past few years. His paintings, sculptures, and garments were all shown as a single body of work with identifiable imagery and characters. It also marked LaForge as the first contemporary artist to show at the gallery, putting him in the lineage of important downtown New York artists. Howl! Happening had a very first impressive year, with major shows by Lydia Lunch, Arturo Vega, Clayton Patterson, and Tim Clifford. The spirit of New York lives in this organization.


10. Jose Parla, Surface Body/Action Space, Mary Boone Gallery and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery

Jose Parla’s paintings are marked by decay, history, and emotion. The massive body of work that is Surface Body/Action Space that needed two galleries to host the large body of canvases tells a story that is both personal to Parla and to the viewer. It can be any story, and you can attribute what you need to it for your own purposes. Parla is able to make rust and decay look beautiful, or perhaps make you realize that deterioration is beautiful. He has exponentially matured artistically, but the essence of freedom within the work remains the same.