The prolific musician sheds light on his new album Beams and his days in Detroit
The life of Matthew Dear is anything but black and white. Originally from Texas, the multi-faceted artist cut his teeth in the music world while studying at the University of Michigan—where he also co-founded record label Ghostly International with his pal Sam Valenti—and today calls a barn in upstate…
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Our century’s creative identity crisis explored in a book and accompanying LP
The collaborative brainchild of three individuals, “Collage Culture” is a multi-faceted appraisal of the 21st century as an artistic era built on references to the past. In accordance with its composite-driven theme, the project is available both as a nonfiction book—featuring two essays and unique artwork—as well as an LP that pairs the book’s texts with an original score.
Rather than praising the millennium as one rife with originality (art “sui genesis”), authors Mandy Kahn and Aaron Rose take today’s artists, designers, writers and musicians to task, offering thought-provoking arguments that the artistic foundation of the past decade has been built by collagists, comprising projects enabled by mining and stitching references and pieces from previous decades.
In her essay “Living With the Mess”, Kahn describes a kind of nausea induced by the overwhelming inundation of references: from fashion designers who repeatedly take inspiration from earlier times—and the reviews that often champion them—to the familiarity of recycled pop music and the comfort of describing an artist with regards to the sounds of something that already exists. In his own essay, “The Death of Subculture”, Aaron Rose, an artist and the director behind the documentary film “Beautiful Losers”, challenges the next wave of artists to adopt stronger philosophies to be unique creatives.
To add a jarring dose of visuals to the book, as well as the LP’s packaging, graphic designer Brian Roettinger of Hand Held Heart co-created a computer application to generate collages based on Kahn’s and Rose’s text. Furthering the notion of an all-sensory collage of sorts, the LP features the voices of 20-plus individuals reading Kahn’s and Rose’s essays (one on each side), interwoven with an instrumental score by the LA-based band, No Age. By using a stereo’s balance knob a listener can choose to hear just the text, just the score or both together.
Collage Culture is available in book format on Amazon, and the LP is available as a limited-edition purchase at the PPM website.
Music recorded from EEG waves helps to heal tsunami victims
In the wake of last year’s devastating tsunami, artist Masaki Batoh sought to address the emotional wreckage caused by the Great East Japan Earthquake. The multi-talented Batoh has combined two decades of acupuncture work with his career as head of the musical group Ghost to create an album dedicated to those affected by the event. Dropping tomorrow, Brain Pulse Music (BPM) sets traditional spiritual tracks alongside music recorded from the brain waves of patients.
“Music and acupuncture treatment are really one and the same to me, an extension of my spiritual expression,” explains Batoh. “It’s a very natural thing.” The musician wanted to produce an album that would help the healing process in the same way that acupuncture relieves stress. “The Japanese were hurt and beaten down by the great quake, very frequent aftershocks, no fuel at gas stations, no safe food and the explosions of nuclear reactors hit by the quake and tsunami,” he recounts. “This is the requiem for dead and alive victims.”
Two of the tracks on the album were created by recording signals from a modified EEG machine. The songs are purely improvisational, created by non-musicians in therapy-session settings. This method comes from Ghost’s history of using improvisation, during which band members would be kept in separate compartments to minimize communication. Batoh specializes in treating developmentally disabled patients, and the machine is designed to help them normalize brain levels. By providing an audible response to cognitive changes, they are able to learn to gain some control over their mental activity.
The machine itself involves a headgear sensor that communicates with a motherboard. EEG waves are sent via radio to the motherboard, which outputs the signal as a sound image. Eventually, the “performer” learns to control the signal and can actually create music from their mind. The goal is to quiet the mind to a meditative state and allow the sensors to interpret the slight pulsations from the brain. Created by an electric pedalboard company, the custom-built machine is modeled off of medical EEG recording equipment.
The other tracks on the album come from the Kumano manuscript, Batoh’s name for his replications of religious melodies heard in his youth near the sacred Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route. Hoping to effect positive change in the recovery of his countrymen, Batoh is donating profits from BPM towards a fund for orphaned children. Additionally, the Brain Pulse Machine has been reproduced and is available for purchase.
Check out the video of Batoh’s BPM Machine at work, along with the two brain wave tracks from the album.
Our interview with the album cover designer behind some of the most memorable images in music
Storm Thorgerson is undoubtedly the man who made album covers a veritable artistic force. Working with bands like Pink Floyd (who gave him his start), Biffy Clyro, The Mars Volta, Muse and so many more, Thorgerson himself is as legendary as the musicians whose work he visually interprets—and for good reason. A master of his craft, he continues to leave both bands’ and fans’ mouths aghast with his visually arresting pictorials, which creatively toe the line between fantasy and reality.
Upon the recent release of A Foot In The Door—a best-of Pink Floyd album featuring remastered recordings of the original songs—we sat down with the iconic British artist to learn more about his own greatest hits, and how he views his own body of work to date.
It’s a real floor that we made, and that’s a real man walking across it and the shadow is real. We made the floor specially for this. The tiles are made with what’s called tongue and groove, over a civilized piece of wood, to indicate the gap between the tiles. The pictures are stuck as photographs and then sealed with a varnish, and then it’s all distressed to make it look a bit older. It was very heavy and after we finished it we destroyed it, because there was nowhere to put it.
No. The things we do are real, not surreal. All the things we do, we don’t do on the computer. We build sculptures, we do stunts, we hold events—it’s all done for real, about 95% of it anyway is all very real. They may be a bit odd, sometimes they’re a bit contrary, but I don’t feel like a surrealist myself.
I’m not particularly interested in dreams or things that couldn’t go together naturally a bit. It’s difficult to comment on my own work. I mean mostly I think my work is crap, but that’s probably an over paranoid view. I just tend to like it or dislike it, but I don’t think I’m a surrealist. I like the real, but with a twist, but not much of a twist. I don’t like anything too blatant really, I like humor a lot. We like to make funny pictures if we can.
I think that our work is sometimes elegant, sometimes funny, sometimes contrary, juxtaposed. I would hope that it’s optimistic because that’s how I feel.
Yeah I suppose I probably would. This is an expression they use to denote when they’re feeling very much in the music zone. They’re becoming at one with the music, playing the best they can, and they’re very in tune with the tune. I think this is a word that they use to denote being immersed in the music. So I wouldn’t use the same words, but there are times when I feel that.
Like with Wish You Were Here, we spent a long time with what theme, what undercurrent there was to the album, which took about five weeks because they didn’t know what the album was about, and I know I certainly didn’t. I think we slowly uncovered—not a concept—but an undercurrent. Something thrown underneath the music but is informing it. Once I found that, or once they told me what it was (I guess we found it together), the rest of it visually, came into place very easily. But it took a long time to get there.
So the “in the groove thing” does happen with me, but it just doesn’t happen very quickly. Sometimes I might have an immediate thought but rarely, mostly it takes a lot of time for the music to kind of sync into me. And when it starts to gel, at that point I would say I was in the groove, but I wouldn’t use that term. I don’t know what I would say, but I think it would be a similar sense: I had a really good idea of what to do and I felt immersed in it. I work pretty closely with musicians because I’m only interested in trying to represent the music visually. The music is the starting point, not always, but nearly always.
I think I always care about it. I mean, do I like it? If you think about it, it would be impossible for me to like all the music that I’m ever given. But what I do, is I certainly respect it. I don’t think that it has much bearing really because I don’t think it’s my job to like it. I mean if you were a Pink Floyd fan or a Muse fan or a Mars Volta fan, I don’t think you’d care whether the designer liked the music or not because you know you do. If you’re a fan, you don’t care who likes it or dislikes it if you like it. I don’t think they’re interested in my view of the music. What they’re interested, hopefully, is in my interpretation of music to visual, or my translation from one medium to another.
Oh don’t ask me that. That’s like asking me how old I am, not a fair question. Probably about 300, I don’t really keep count. I’m privileged to work with music, so I’m happy to work, and we work with all kind of different sorts of music. We work with bands from different countries, different ages, different genres, and mostly it’s just really stimulating. I like my job. So, in that sense, as long as I can keep working, and paying the rent as they call it over in England, then I’m relatively happy.
Yes. I think there’s quite a filmic influence on my work, but I’m not particularly conscious of it. In a way, I think all artists have all sorts of unconscious drives, admittedly they don’t know what they are. Or interests, or preoccupations. I think if you were to go through my work, over the years you’d find that I was probably very interested in things like birds, or water or trees. I’m not sure what it means, and I don’t really care very much what it might mean. They’re things that I like, they’re things that I come back to every now and then. I think that’s just very typical of all artists whatever their medium. Artists are sort of, preoccupied, and often those sorts of things reappear in their work.
I think we use a Pulsar back on a Hasselblad body. I’m concerned with the technology, whether it was 35mm, whether it was digital or film, I’m concerned with it in a sense. The thing that I do, it’s a performance in some strange place that nobody can get to. So if I didn’t take a picture of it, you would never see it and the band would never see it. And if the band never saw it they may wonder where their cover is, you see. So I have to take the picture. The technology is very important but I hire a good friend to do it. He’s called Rupert, he’s been working with me now for about 15 years. He’s probably sick to death of me actually but he’s still there. It’s his responsibility and if he makes a mistake we kill him. It’s very straightforward.
Well I suspect the album cover has a rather short life in some way, although I hear vinyl is making a comeback. I think that music and visual will always invite togetherness. Whether it’s a t-shirt, whether it’s a poster, whether it’s something on the computer, whether it’s a CD or vinyl. Whether it’s an advert on TV or a billboard. Somehow it feels quite natural to do it. All things come to pass, I suspect. In England it’s very popular to do the box set and visually speaking I’m ok with that. I think there’s always a place for visual and music, for the two art forms to coexist. Album covers or CDs may be a dying breed yes, but les choses changent. Things change.
Matthew Herbert’s latest creation tracks the sonic life of a pig from birth to butcher
You can always count on Matthew Herbert. The counter-cultural electronic music icon has done a lot with his talent, uncompromising ear, and dedication to using found sounds in his music. Composed entirely of sounds sourced from the life and death of a British pig, One Pig is the artist’s most recent (and most controversial) album. Most of the buzz surrounding the release came from outraged animal rights activists who saw the album as an affront to their cause, but considering Herbert’s no-nonsense approach to social responsibility the criticism may be unwarranted. Rather than exploiting the gruesome process with the album Herbert’s music gives voice to something we don’t hear enough from: Our food.
The album starts in August 2009 with the birth of the pig and follows its life until slaughter 24 weeks later. One Pig doesn’t feature sounds from the slaughter—a stipulation in the country’s food laws prevented Herbert from recording the event—but it does include noises from the butchering and the subsequent meal. Unique to the album is a host of instruments made from pig parts, including a drum made of the flesh, bones used as percussion instruments, and a one-of-a-kind creation that makes notes by forcing pig’s blood through tuned reeds.
Concept art like One Pig is often misguided, sacrificing art for shock and intrigue. One Pig doesn’t. It’s a great album, and Herbert’s vision is able to morph isolated grunts into blissful swine song. It may not be fit for the club scene—particularly August 2010—a track that includes digestive sounds of the final feast, but it’s true art and the kind you should sit down to listen to. To learn more about the artist’s uncompromising approach, check out his manifesto and listen to the album at the Guardian. The above video shows Herbert talking about the project, with footage from the recording, and in case you missed it, here is our video of Herbert from 2007.
Nightmare and the Cat celebrate their EP release with a raucous NYC show
“Drink your shots, pick up your beer and come watch us perform,” Django Stewart commanded the crowd at Mercury Lounge last week. “We’re Nightmare and the Cat,” punctuated his brother and fellow frontman Sam Stewart, kicking off the show to launch their debut EP. Eight songs later, sweating and dazed, the packed house saw the band off the stage with rapturous applause. The music that came between varied from lofty, thoughtful rock to soulful, layered folk. Dramatic, story-driven, catchy and with swoon-inspiring potency that envelops the band itself (as well as their performance and the new album), Nightmare and the Cat exude nothing shy of magic.
The two frontmen, despite their youthful appearances, both were members of since dispersed, but seasoned musical acts before forming the band a little over a year ago in Los Angeles. Sam spent seven years with London band Blondelle, while Django helmed The Midnight Squires.
Together, with multi-instrumentalist and singer Claire Acey, drummer Spike Phillips and bassist Julie Mitchell, the five-piece has performed both coasts, a SXSW showcase with artist Gary Baseman and the United Kingdom. Circumnavigating the Edward Sharp and Local Natives aesthetic, the band’s harmonies, taut instrumentals and atmosphere build, first and foremost, an environment where their stories exist.
The self-titled EP, lush and melodic, feels more than anything like a thrilling teaser for things to come. A melodic through line weaves among the tracks “Sarah Beth,” “The Missing Year” and “Little Poet.” Orchestration and backing vocals play off Django’s dynamic voice—often in dialogue, sometimes in alignment.
Just when you feel the band settling in with a sound, the closing song, “Anybody’s Bride,” punctures it with punkish ferociousness. The whimsicality might feel extravagant, but never disposable, glazing the music with a limitless sense of wonder. There is sentimentality and delicacy to even the more raucous portions of the tracks, knitting everything together as sound storytelling should.
Famed photographer Mick Rock, a supporter of the band and attendee at the Mercury Lounge show, once snapped an iconic photograph of David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, arms draped across one another. There was startling breadth and depth to those three musicians’ work. As If schooled in the language of rock, Nightmare and the Cat draw on these influences, blend their lessons and strengths and craft something all their own.
Top image by Sterling Taylor, performance images by Eli Russell Linnetz.
Brooklyn hip hop trio release their latest album on a pixelated feather
Besides eliminating clutter, one of our favorite upshots of the post-CD era is the micro-movement of creative USB stick design. We’ve seen Doc Martens, surfboards and Red Stripe bottles among other adorable forms for the little devices, so it’s somewhat surprising that more bands haven’t paired sound and vision like Junk Science and Scott Thorough recently did by releasing their new album Phoenix Down on a mini-hard drive.
Loaded with the tracks, as well as instrumentals, a cappella versions and a bonus folder of remixes and more, the limited-edition flash drive is a soft-rubber pixelated feather—a fitting mix of nature and digital for their 8-bit-heavy sound and lyrics like “the future’s pixelated.” Preview songs You Could Have That (feat. Homeboy Sandman), Pixelated and Steel Will (feat. Cavalier) (Pre Remix) to get a sense of the offerings.
Pre-order Phoenix Down from Modern Shark, and if you’re in NYC on 27 May 2011, catch them live at Mercury Lounge.
Ghostly celebrates four years of album art by renowned WeWorkForThem graphic designer
Like many graphic designers, the line between Michael Cina’s commercial work and fine art practice is generally pretty clear. His experience in the biz goes back nearly 20 years, and though internationally recognized for his more experimental work at WeWorkForThem—the powerhouse studio he co-founded with designer Michael Young—more recent projects with record label Ghostly International have given the artist the rare opportunity to exercise his more painterly impulses as album cover art for numerous bands. Now, Ghostly is making available a back catalog of his artwork to recognize four years of solid contribution to the acclaimed record label and art house.
The story of Cina’s current renaissance started after leaving Young (who heads up what’s now known as YouWorkForThem) to start his own design studio, Cina Associates, simultaneously rediscovering his passion for painting after years of focusing primarily on graphic design. By drawing and painting in his spare time, Cina was able to truly enjoy the process once again. With “no direction, no goals, no pressure,” he began creating purely for the sake of creating, giving him freedom to experiment extensively with various materials, which really shows in his recent work.
To learn more about Cina and his creative process, check out Ghostly’s recent interview with the artist himself, and while you’re there head to the store to get your hands on some of Cina’s original artwork.
An overhauled primer on the history of jazz in an expansive six-disc compilation
Seven years in the making, Smithsonian Folkways‘ new edition, Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology represents the new standard, a long-overdue update to Martin Williams’ out-of-print compilation The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz. While some of the 111 selections on the six-disc set remain the same as the original, Jazz broadens its scope to include Latin jazz and fusion, as well as South African and Vietnamese musicians.
With seasoned producer and musician Richard James Burgess at the helm, the changes not only include new insight into the history of jazz (the original set didn’t include anything recorded after 1966), but it also plays to short attention spans and today’s penchant for rare tracks. For example, Jazz keeps Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag” as it’s opener, but switches out the 1916 recording of Joplin performing for a Dick Hyman’s 1975 rendition. Burgess and his team also chose to leave out excerpts from longer pieces unless they were released as singles initially. One such case, a 2:49 version of Miles Davis’ 14-minute-long “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” is featured just before a Cool Hunting favorite, Mahavishnu Orchestra’s “Celestial Terrestrial Commuters.”
Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology sells online from Amazon and Smithsonian Folkways and comes with a 200-page book of liner notes.
via Time Magazine
Artists reinvent favorite album art in a group show
Skindeep approximations, deceitful marketing ploys, masterpieces of graphic design—cover art’s slippery role gets a tribute in Cover Version (LP), curator and artist Timothy Hull’s second show to take up the theme. The first, held at Los Angeles’ Taylor De Cordoba gallery, had artists dreaming up alternate covers for books in 2008, but in this show Hull tasked the over two dozen artists with re-imagining record covers that made an impact on them.
Predictably, the resulting exhibit currently at the Brooklyn Academy of Music runs the range, from the iconic (Grace Jones’ Night Clubbing by Colby Bird) to sardonic (
Mathew Cerletty’s stock photograph version of Harvest) and silly (a topless girl astride a dinosaur as envisioned by Dave McDermott).
The show is open through 20 March 2011, check out more images in the slideshow below.
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