Lo-fi god, Ty Segall, after his show at Strange Matter in Richmond, VA. Segall describes his new album, Melted, out on Goner Records, as sounding like “cherry cola, Sno-Cones and taffy.” Ty Segall is currently on a US tour – view winter tour dates here.
Photo and text by Anna Wittel for Pas Un Autre
Starring Devendra Banhart and Rebecca Schwartz, the premise of the Oliver Peoples 2011 campaign is an exploration of authentic intimacy and sexuality. The love affair is explored in the one-of-a-kind masterpiece by architect John Lautner: Rainbow House. Produced with acclaimed photographer and aspiring director Lisa Eisner.
A joint release by L.A.’s Hippos In Tanks and Montreal’s Arbutus Records, the Darkbloom EP is the title of an amazing new collaboration by d’Eon and Grimes. Both rising stars in Montreal’s independent music scene, they produced their respective sides independently, though the project was conceptualized together. Here is a few track from d’Eon’s side. www.hipposintanks.net
mp3: d’Eon – Kill A Man With a Joystick in Your Hand
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mp3: d’Eon – What We Want
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Adarsha just sent over this mind-blowing video for Adanowsky’s song You Are The One directed by the Skinny Director team. The video was shot while Adanowsky recorded his album in Los Angeles at the old house of Ke$ha and Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes. In order to give authenticity to the Love-In, the cast and crew were put into a sexual trance thanks to a white magic breathing exercise the directors learned from Electricity Aquarian, a surviving member of Los Angeles spiritual cult The Source Family. Over forty people then channeled their erotic energy to help give birth to Adanowsky’s new alter-ego, El Amador: “The Lover.”
In six tumultuous years, Orange Juice, led by Edwyn Collins, blazed a trail of self-reliance with the legendary Postcard label, ran in conjunction with then-manager Alan Horne, and greatly expanded the palette of independent music at the start of the ‘80s with their brand of literate pop songwriting that both pre-saged the coming of The Smiths and kickstarted a renaissance in Scottish pop music that continues to this day. After an embryonic start as the punk-influenced Nu-Sonics, Orange Juice came into being in 1979 as unfashionable pre-Year Zero punk influences such as The Byrds, Chic, Motown and The Velvet Underground began to make their presence known in the band’s developing sound. Over the next year, the group recorded four landmark 7” singles on Postcard (as well as putting out early releases from Aztec Camera, The Go-Betweens and Josef K). Though each single proved more successful than its predecessor, greater commercial aspirations led the band to sign to Polydor in the midst of making their first album in a prescient deal in which the band retained ownership of their material. The original lineup abruptly fell apart shortly after the release of the debut album, You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever, and, as quickly, the band’s future was decidedly unassured. However, with the addition of Malcolm Ross, formerly of Postcard labelmates Josef K, and Zimbabwe-by-way-of-Glasgow drummer Zeke Manyika, the group proceeded to make their commercial mark with the timeless funk and soul-inflected Rip It Up, whose title track was to be the group’s biggest UK hit, peaking at #8 in February of 1983. During the recording of a follow-up, the group had decided to head in a more rock direction, but creative tensions arose again and the group fell apart during the recording sessions from which theTexas Fever mini-LP was culled. With Polydor’s support of the group withdrawing, Collins, joined in the studio by Manyika, persevered to make the bittersweet swan song album, The Orange Juice, a collection that telegraphed the group’s impending demise amidst some of their finest recordings. Collins made it official in March of 1985 announcing mid-performance at a miner’s benefit at the Brixton Academy that it would be Orange Juice’s last performance. Last November Domino Records released an incredible seven disc anthology entitled Coals to Castles. www.dominorecords.co.us
Imagine being holed up, alone in your friend’s house in the West German country side….it’s 1979….you are heartbroken after a recent break up with a girlfriend….your friend happens to have a home studio with a Revox reel-to-reel 8-track recorder and a primitive, temperamental Minimoog…..its Summer and you have a lot of time on your hands….inventing new, strange sounds. When Harald Grosskopf emerged from his heartbroken solitude he had inadvertently produced one of the first examples of synth-pop. Harald Grosskopf’s album ‘Synthesist,’ originally released on Sky Records in 1980, RVNG Intl. celebrates the 30th year anniversary with this a mastered and packaged reissue. www.igetrvng.com
Harald Grosskopf – Synthesist
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That “summer feeling” will haunt you for the rest of your life. Jonathan Richman is an underrated genius and one of the many mad scientists of proto-punk – punk before punk – nevermind. Anyways, Richman’s music has a timeless aura – one that crackles with the magnificent dust of celluloid and crooners of yore, as well as the crisp post modernism of today’s new digital era – and beyond too. The song below could fit in anywhere, it could have been left accidentally on the live reels of Ritchie Vallens or experimental solo demo of a deranged, lonesome hipster in his basement in Rhode Island. But, alas, the below gem comes from Jonathan Ritchman’s 1992 album ‘I, Richmond.” If you are lucky enough to be in Boston, run over to catch Jonathan Richman live at the Somerville Theater.
Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre
Jonathan Richmond – “That Summer Feeling”
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Alexander Ebert photographed by Adarsha Benjamin © 2010
Alexander Ebert can’t stop reinventing himself. This time Ebert has reinvented himself….as himself. Thank god. Ebert’s new album has some incredible songs. I’ve always loved Ebert’s songwriting and musical delivery; akin to the virtuosity of David Byrne, with the work ethic of Arthur Russel. After a stint as the lead singer and founder of the hippie-big-band-orchestra Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes, who enjoyed a seemingly flash point meteoric rise, Alexander Ebert has gotten back together with himself. His album, titled Alexander, is more self exploratory, somewhat somber, and purely honest.
Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre
Alexander Ebert – Bad Bad Love
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Alexander Ebert – Glimpses
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She was junkie, a groupie, a legend, and she wound up in a body bag at the tender age of 20. Nancy Spungen, who would have been 53 today, was famous for being the blond waistoid girlfriend of waistoid punk Sid Vicious. Vicious, as if living up to his name, was accused of killing Spungen with a single knife wound to her abdomen on a barbiturate induced night at the Chelsea Hotel in 1978. No body knows who killed her and Vicious died of an overdose before trial. Happy birthday Nancy Spungen.
Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre
Nobody can really tell you if this is some kind of brilliant performance art or just plain wholesome American Satan worship. Tyler the Creator is the 19 year old co-founder of “hip-hop collective” OFWGKTA, which stands for Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All, or for short, Odd Future, based in Los Angeles. Tyler’s sound is surprisingly and refreshingly unique despite the intense gravel in his voice, and his performance is a revolutionary visceral experience not witnessed in hip-hop since the early 90s. It seems as though Tyler and Odd Future have pumped the murder, violence, and degradation back into the medium – which made it so appealing in the beginning – if not for the sake of being shocking, but for the sake of the art form as catharsis. Odd Future will perform at this April’s Cochella Music Festival and release a full length album, Goblin, in same month.
Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper for Pas Un Autre
