27 September 2010

BS I LUV!

THIS ANGELENO KICKS ASS:
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in spite of how little i enjoy MIA's latest album, i respect her for everything else she's done... now, i believe that more can be said by not saying anything at all, yet she's pinned current pop phenomenons more accurately than anyone else, such as her remarks on Lady Gaga's music:


"People say we're similar, that we both mix all these things in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same... she's not progressive... none of her music's reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza disco." (SPIN Magazine)

that's not really nice, but i second that. who knows, maybe the Gaga will turn her music around now that she has more status & pull... her music should become as interesting & thought provoking as the costumes her talented team puts together for her... meanwhile, here's a remix/redo of one of MIA's latest songs, which goes to show that less is more:

M.I.A. ☆ XXXO MP3 ☆ Oli Chang
more on Oli Chang at the bottom of this page

back to the here & now! the highlight of my weekend was a mind blowing rendition of "In The Solitude Of Cotton Fields" at the redcat by 2 incredible actors & a band from Poland. here's a pic i took on the sly:
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between the actors & the band, the show went from pumping beats similar to those of LCD Soundsystem & !!! to the much quieter ones of Jose Gonzalez... the LA leg of their tour is over, but keep them on your radar; they might be back next year...


LISSIE
will come down from her bohemian digs in Topanga Canyon to perform @ the troubadour on the 7th of october. mark your calendars & go. it's a step up from her more intimate show @ the bootleg last year. her warm stage presence is unreal... here's a fun remix:


...check out her duet with Ellie Goulding:


lat but not least, here's something noteworthy that just happened in NY - British director Chris Cunningham premiered New York is Killing Me, at the Museum of Modern Art. An “audio-visual remix” of the song by the amazing Gil Scott-Heron from his new album, the piece was projected on three screens and was both darkly beautiful as well as unexpectedly simple... read more about it here & enjoy the single channel version right HERE:

24 September 2010

THE COSMOS

painted breasts, breasts with sparkles, breasts with guns, foot sucking...

this video for El Guincho's steel drummed, psyche-tropical trip into the human cosmos is actually a trailer for director Nicolás Mendez' upcoming film. starting out as a parody of a Carl Sagan documentary, this trailer/music video quickly takes a turn to inexplicable mayhem in the fashion of Alejandro Jodorowsky... WIN WIN!!!
Nicolás Méndez is one of the 3 co-founding members of Barcelona-based
CANADA (with Luis Cerveró y Lope Serrano). the trio produce various projects from advertising to fashion, cultural events and music videos...


♡♡♡ El Guincho ☆ BOMBAY MP3 ♡♡♡

EL GUINCHO, aka Pablo Díaz-Reixa is one strangely amazing dude who, growing up on the Canary Isles was starved for 80's pop culture. he was just "a homeboy, who didn't know about much except the beach and the sea." but he found a talent for music, and nurtured it in Paris and Barcelona. Young Turks / XL just released his 2nd album "Pop Negro," which he mixed with Jon Gass (Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston)... check him out:

10.06 - live show @ La Cita's Mucho Wednesdays
10.07 - dj set @ the Standard with Sébastien Tellier
10.08 - live show @ Filter magazine's Culture Collide
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22 September 2010

GEOMIC


click on gold titles for zip folders & gold stars to preview songs already posted individually... enjoy & share the wealth:

PART ONE 01. Fujiya & Miyagi Sixteen Shades of Black & Blue 02. Steven Mason Am I Just A Man (Studio Rmx) 03. Diana Ross My World Is Empty Without You (Drop Out Orchestra Rmx) 04. Aaliyah Everything's Gonna Be Alright 05. The Bird & The Bee ☆ Preparedness 06. João Brasil ☆ Basic Amante (The xx) 07. YG ☆ Toot It and Boot It 08. Aaliyah Rock The Boat (DJ Still Life Reggaeton In Helsinki Mix) 09. Clare Maguire Ain't Nobody (Memory Tapes Rmx) 10. The xx Shelter (Tiga Rmx) 11. Neon Indian Psychic Chasms (The Phenomenal Handclap Band Rmx) 12. The Chordettes ☆ Mr Sandman (Mr No Hands Wobbly Rmx) 13. Michael Jackson Off The Wall (Only Children Club Edit) 14. Empire Of The Sun Walking On A Dream (Go Go Bizkitts Summer Falcon Jam!) 15. Jean Tonique Dynomite...

PART TWO 16. Kimbra ☆ Settle Down (Penguin Prison Rmx) 17. Clare Maguire ☆ Strangest Thing (Bloodshy & Avant Re-Work) 18. Mary J Blige Love No Limit (Bad Boy Mix) 19. The Doobie Brothers ☆ What a Fool Believes (Mad Mats Rework) 20. Blonde Redhead Not Getting There 21. Jamie George ☆ The Flying Saucer 22. Yeasayer ☆ One (Poka Bigbeat Rmx) 23. John Legend & The Roots Wake Up Everybody (ft. Common & Melanie Fiona) 24. Crayon Fields ☆ How Loved You Are 25. Marina & The Diamonds Shampain (Pictureplane Rmx) 26. Plan B ☆ The Recluse (Nero Rmx) 27. Clothilde ☆ Qualcosa Che Non Va 28. Junip Always 29. The Peppers ☆ Adios 30. The Knocks ☆ When You've Got Music...

music aside, i love HunterGatherer's latest. the video is a 2-minute stop-motion animation explaining what REDU is all about. it was created almost entirely in-camera, and hand-made from literally thousands of individually cut blocks. narration by Davis Guggenheim... check it out:


back to the music!
latest videos below for two incredible voices featured here;
the only sad part of my break in D.C. is i missed
Marina's LA show...
25


09


...this is not in the playlist but i can't resist a video with dogs:

19 September 2010

☆☆☆☆☆

...best song to wake up to:
here's an amazing short directimated by Malcolm Sutherland, with beautiful music by Ben Grossman & Alison Melville... this moving film is about an explorer's adventures into the unknown, yet it seems that he has been there before. everything is transient & interconnected - life in a nutshell:

ok, back to old & new tunes i'm digging at the moment with my super lo-fi mobile pics taken on the fly around Washington DC - mostly between Georgetown, Dupont Circle & breezy Annapolis... here we go:

18 September 2010

BE AMAZING!


Photobucket...an up and overit idea produced by puck

district of coke


as a former user & abuser who still enjoys the nightlife minus the chemical enhancements, i'm always curious about what goes on wherever i spend time away from LA - which is DC at the moment... it's always safer to know what i'm getting myself into! anyhew, i found this fairly recent BBC article on researchers at the University of Massachusetts–Dartmouth who found that 95% of dollar bills in Washington DC bear traces of the illegal drug cocaine. such a study would suggest that many denizens of the District of Columbia have the world’s reserve currency up their noses!

this startlingly high percentage represents an increase of only 20 percent from the previous two years. when in any given year you can count on at least seven of every ten Federal Reserve Notes being laced with blow, you know your town’s fukkin rokkin!

i just have to wonder how bad things really are if folks can still find money for an eight-ball. at any rate, cocaine is not necessarily a drug associated with economic downturns. smack, certainly. crack, definitely! but blow retains too much of an uptown aura really to be associated with hard times. remember the 80s cocaine glam: Delorean car tires, shitters in some Manhattan or Miami nightclub, the backseat of a BMW 500 series — all mis en scènes for a drug that defined a decade. if crystal meth is the poor man’s cocaine, then cocaine remains the rich man’s cocaine...

fortunately, the study also revealed many reaches of the globe whose currency bears few traces of such indulgence:

Other countries where notes were tested were Canada, Brazil, China and Japan. China had the lowest rates, with only 12% of its bills contaminated. In the US the cleanest bills were collected from Salt Lake City, home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, better known as the Mormons.

that Canada’s money was found relatively clean is not surprising; it’s probably hard to tell your stash there from all the snow. Brazil’s relatively spotless currency is a bit more surprising, given that country’s proximity to cocaine-producing powerhouses Bolivia & Colombia... as a still industrializing nation, China lacks enough effete financier-class yuppies to serve as a consumer base for such a substance. and Japan? well, i guess coke faces stiff competition from cosplay, hentai and machine-vended worn panties... equally unsurprising is Salt Lake City, Utah. i mean, if Mormons can’t drink Coke, they’re unlikely to do coke.

so, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to do a few rails off my copy of The Osmonds’ Crazy Horses & go dance the night away in the district of coke's gayborhood of Dupont Circle which conveniently happens to be where embassy row lies... gays & diplomatic immunity mix rather well! WIN WIN!!!

meanwhile, here's Blonde Redhead's latest:

17 September 2010

washington d.c.

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...i'm back in DC with the folks for a few days... i love it here, and yet:


i have to admit, walking around so many men in suits & uniforms is a total turn on. they're on the streets, on the metros, even in the art galleries! i haven't seen a single hipster & i find it so refreshing to be surrounded by sharp dressed men... and yet, truth be told, my world is empty without the love of my LA bohemian bunch! enjoy this cool Drop Out Orchestra remix of the one & only Diva Diana & her supremes, and have a fantastic weekend!
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14 September 2010

ALWAYS

after a 5 year hiatus, JUNIP i.e. the band of José González with Elias Araya and Tobias Winterkorn, finally released their new album today - Fields... Andreas Nilsson directed the first video of the album... WIN WIN!!!

Junip ☆ ALWAYS MP3

ACT DA FOOL

...i'm diggin' Harmony Korine's short for Proenza Schouler:

it's all worth it!



as summer draws to a close, i'm listening to a lot of Afro-Colombian tunes... lately, i'm especially fond of the songs of Petrona Martínez. this 70+ year old folk singer is from San Basilio de Palenque, a town founded centuries ago by runaway slaves in coastal Colombia where the language still contains strong influences from the Kikongo language of Congo and Angola. Petrona Martínez inherited a strong singer’s tradition from Bullerengue, an Afro-Colombian dance rhythm born during the African fight for freedom from slavery and originally sung solely by pregnant women confined to their homes and thus unable to attend village dances. she learned them from her grandmother and great-grandmother as they sang while doing daily tasks & at her town's festivals. In 2002, at age 63, she was nominated for a Latin Grammy & continues today to pass on the tradition, singing while dancing or just sitting in a rocking chair... this one's my fave:

10 September 2010

vincit omnia veritas

...being a dickhead is cool:


...more importantly - protect and save the arts:

07 September 2010

crush with the law ➣ model

Dior Homme just reignited my ancient crush on Jude! set to the music of Muse, here's Guy Ritchie's short film with Jude Law & Michaela Kocianová, about their rendez-vous in one of the world's most romantic capitals...

speaking of fashion & models, if you want some insight on what it was like and how much of it still stands true today, watch MODEL... this amazing documentary is Frederick Wiseman's Warholian look at the modeling industry --Warhol himself makes a cameo appearance-- revealing the tremendous expense, aspiration, and fuss that goes into selling sleek cars and couture collections. The film, structured around a television commercial for panty hose and an Oscar de la Renta runway show, is a riveting meditation on imagemaking and fantasy (one photographer demands of a confused and impressionable young model, ''A little more innocent! A little more sexual!"). Model was made in 1980 during a seemingly pivotal moment in the industry, poised between the ethereally glamorous and seductive portraits of the fashion world in Stanley Donen’s Funny Face (1957), Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up (1966), and William Klein’s Who Are You, Polly Maggoo? (1966), and today’s more populist, and somehow more tawdry, reality shows like America’s Next Top Model... here's a short excerpt:

03 September 2010

LUV U MEAN IT (playlist)

i haven't posted a playlist in ages & have several i'll upload once i have enough time... time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana (groucho marx)... meanwhile, here's a fun sweet sexteen for the holiday weekend:


01. Cee-Lo Fuck You 02. Miami Horror Holidays 03. Ike Strong ☆ Boogie Land 04. Infusion ☆ Try It On 05. Grosvenor ☆ Turn Your Radio Up (Def Starr Version) 06. Jaydee ☆ Plastic Dreams (Laidback Luke Bootleg) 07. Ray & His Court ☆ Soul Freedom 08. Miami Horror ft. Kimbra I Look To You 09. Michael Jackson Remember The Time (Ossie 2010 Rmx) 10. Holy Ghost! Static On The Wire (RAC Rmx) 11. Peoples Choice Do It Anyway You Wanna 12. Flight Facilities ft. Giselle ☆ Crave You (Cassian Rmx) 13. LexiconDon ☆ Student Body (Bit Funk Rmx) 14. Kasper Bjørke ☆ Heaven (Muzzle Flash Rmx) 15. Brigitte Bardot ☆ La fille de paille 16. Meroz ☆ Summertime Shandy ☐☐☐