New Order - True Faith (1987)

Wikipedia - "'True Faith' is a song by New Order, produced by Stephen Hague. It was the first New Order single since their debut Ceremony to be issued in the UK as two separate 12" singles. The second 12" single features two remixes of "True Faith" by Shep Pettibone. ... The release of 'True Faith' was accompanied by a surreal music video directed and choreographed by Philippe Decouflé and produced by Michael H. Shamberg. In it, bizarrely costumed dancers leap about, fight and slap each other in time to the music; while a girl in dark green makeup emerges from an upside-down boxer's speed bag and signs the lyrics. The video has often been voted amongst the best music videos of its year. ..."
Wikipedia
W - 1963
YouTube: True Faith, 1963

2009 February: New Order, 2011 May: Movement, 2011 October: Low-Life, 2011 December: Brotherhood, 2012 May: Unknown Pleasures - Joy Division, 2012 September: Power, Corruption & Lies (1983), 2015 June: Believe In A Land Of Love: New Order's Low-Life 30 Years On.

The Crack-Up - F. Scott Fitzgerald (1945)

Wikipedia - "The Crack-Up (1945) is a collection of essays by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. It consists of previously unpublished letters, notes and also three essays originally written for and published first in the Esquire magazine during 1936. It was compiled and edited by Edmund Wilson shortly after Fitzgerald's death in 1940. ... As an example of this 'truth,' he cites the ability to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. However, in modern decision theory, this quote has been used by some to explain the bias shown in many experiments where subjects gather information to justify a preconceived notion. These experiments suggest that the mental ability described by Fitzgerald (being able to see both sides of an argument) is more uncommon than many assume."
Wikipedia
'The Crack-Up' by F. Scott Fitzgerald
New Yorker: As Big as the Ritz
PBS - Essay: The Crack-Up
YouTube: Spoken Essay | "The Crack-Up" F. Scott Fitzgerald 1/3, 2/3, 3/3

Lucinda Williams - NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

"She came to the Tiny Desk a little unsure, and left singing 'West Memphis' with intensity and passion. Lucinda Williams has a voice like no other, and it shines in these intimate moments. Williams is on a roll with a new double album, Down Where The Spirit Meets The Bone, which is filled with fresh and beautiful songs — all this from a songwriter known for working at a deliberate pace. Hearing her perform these new songs with her brilliant band was a rare and exciting treat. -- BOB BOILEN"
YouTube: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert Something Wicked This Way Comes - Cold Day In Hell - Protection - West Memphis

2008 January: Lucinda Williams, 2010 May: Lucinda Williams - 1, 2011 March: Blessed, 2011 November: Austin, Texas, 1989, 2012 May: World Without Tears, 2012 October: Honky Tonk Women: The Changing Role of Women, 2013 January: "Can`t Let Go", "Pineola", "Changed the Locks", 2013 June: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, 2013 August: Essence (2001).

Inventory of digitized magazines

"Supplementing the flowing content that characterizes the Jacket2 interface, Reissues offers a stable archive of digitized journals and magazines primarily focused on poetry and poetics. This landing page will feature updated links to the full Reissues inventory as it continues to grow. Reissues is inspired by archival platforms ranging from Eclipse and UbuWeb to The Modernist Journals Project and The International Dada Archive. Just as Jacket2 is built upon the preservation of forty issues of John Tranter’s Jacket magazine, Reissues seeks to re-present periodicals in conversation with contemporary issues in poetics. We publish fully searchable facsimile PDF editions, scanned in high resolution and organized with bookmarked content for easy navigation to individual works within each magazine. ..."
Jacket2

Janis Joplin at Woodstock festival, 16 August 1969

"Joplin’s Shooting Star 1966-1970 - In the rock ‘n roll firmament of the 1960s, Janis Joplin was a shooting star who burned white hot for five short years. She died of a heroin overdose at age 27. Joplin sang her own brand of the blues in an incendiary style. Yet in her short time — between 1966 and 1970 — she carved out a piece of music history that was distinctly her own. During these years, she traveled from the conservative community of Port Arthur, Texas to the expansive and unpredictable world that was the drug/hippie/music scene of 1960s San Francisco — and mostly in the glare of national stardom. ..."
Pop History (Video)
YouTube: Try (just a little bit harder), Can turn you loose, Work me lord, Ball and chain

2008 May: Janis Joplin, 2010 October: Janis Joplin: 1962-1965, 2012 December: "Little Girl Blue"

George Bellows, narrated by Ethan Hawke (2012)

Shipyard Society, 1916
"Narrated by Ethan Hawke, this film was made in conjunction with the exhibition George Bellows. Bellows arrived in New York City in 1904 and depicted an America on the move. In a twenty-year career cut short by his death at age 42, he painted the rapidly growing modern city—its bustling crowds, skyscrapers, and awe-inspiring construction projects, as well as its bruising boxers, street urchins, and New Yorkers both hard at work and enjoying their leisure. He also captured the rugged beauty of New York's rivers and the grandeur of costal Maine. This documentary includes original footage shot in New York City and Maine; examples of Bellows' paintings, drawings, and prints; and archival footage and photographs."
NGA Part 1 (Video), Part 2 (Video)
amazon

Love Of Life Orchestra ‎– Extended Niceties EP (1980)

Wikipedia - "Love of Life Orchestra was created by Peter Gordon (sax, keyboards, composition) and David Van Tieghem, a talented, smart-aleck avant-garde percussionist with ties to new music composer Steve Reich. Both have gone on to greater fame as elder statesmen of the downtown music scene in New York, but these early works stand as an important developmental chapter. — Mark Fleischmann. Collaborators on their recording Extended Niceties have included Arto Lindsay and David Byrne. Early members of the band included Laurie Anderson (electric violin), Blue Gene Tyranny (keyboards), Ken Deifik (harmonica), Scott Johnson (guitar), Rhys Chatham (flute), Peter Zummo (trombone), Arthur Russell (cello), Kathy Acker (vocals), and Jill Kroesen (vocals)."
Wikipedia
Discogs
YouTube: Extended Niceties, Beginning Of The Heartbreak / Don't Don't

Moonrise Kingdom - Wes Anderson (2012)

Wikipedia - "Moonrise Kingdom is a 2012 American film directed by Wes Anderson, written by Anderson and Roman Coppola. Described as an 'eccentric, pubescent love story', it features newcomers Jared Gilman and Kara Hayward in the film's main roles and an ensemble cast. ... In September 1965, on a New England island called New Penzance, 12-year-old orphan Sam Shakusky is attending Camp Ivanhoe, a Khaki Scout summer camp led by Scoutmaster Randy Ward. Suzy Bishop, also 12, lives on the island with her parents, Walt and Laura, both attorneys, and her three younger brothers in a house called Summer's End. Sam and Suzy, both introverted, intelligent and mature for their age, met in the summer of 1964 during a church performance of Noye's Fludde and have been pen pals since then. Having fallen in love over the course of their correspondence, they have made a secret pact to reunite and run away together. Sam brings camping equipment, and Suzy brings her binoculars, six books, her kitten, and her brother's battery-powered record player. ..."
Wikipedia
Moonrise Kingdom
NY Times: Scouting Out a Paradise: Books, Music and No Adults (Video)
Moving Storyboards And Drumming: Wes Anderson Maps Out The Peculiar Genius Of "Moonrise Kingdom" (Video)
YouTube: Moonrise Kingdom Official Trailer #1 - Wes Anderson Movie (2012)

2013 November: Wes Anderson Honors Fellini in a Delightful New Short Film, 2013 November: Rushmore (1998), 2013 Decemher: Hotel Chevalier (2007), 2014 March: Wes Anderson Collection, 2014 April: The Perfect Symmetry of Wes Anderson’s Movies, 2014 July: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), 2014 August: Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), 2014 December: Welcome to Union Glacier (2013), 2015 January: Inhabiting Wes Anderson’s Universe, 2015 July: Books in the Films of Wes Anderson: A Supercut for Bibliophiles.

The old-school soda sign of a Brooklyn grocery

"As mom and pop delis and luncheonettes disappear from the five boroughs, so do the wonderful 'privilege' signs affixed to them. But one continues to hang on in Brooklyn at the leafy, brownstone-beautiful corner of Lafayette Avenue and Cumberland Street. 'Lafayete' Grocery & Dairy is a bodega that maintains a vintage Coca-Cola sign. There’s no word on exactly how old the sign is, but oddly, it was spelled correctly back in 2009 before the place underwent a renovation. Much older signage can be seen on facade of the building, which likely went up in the 1870s (and once served as home base of the New Diamond Point Pen Company): the names Lafayette and what looks like Cumberland carved in the corner. These corner-cut street signs can be seen all over New York’s oldest neighborhoods."
Ephemeral New York

The Clash of Italian Neorealism and Classical Hollywood

"'What is neorealism?' asks the filmmaker kogonada in this excellent video essay, created for the May 2013 issue of Sight & Sound magazine. He examines two 1952 films that resulted from the collaboration of Vittorio De Sica, a master of Italian neorealism, and David O. Selznick, the Hollywood producer behind Gone With The Wind. It's the same movie material, created in two different styles. He explores De Sica's lingering shots that are archetypal of neorealism and juxtaposes them with Selznick's cuts of the same scenes, where the in-between moments are seen as gratuitous or distracting. 'A cut reveals what matters and what doesn’t. To examine the cuts of a filmmaker is to uncover an approach to cinema,' kogonada says. ..."
The Atlantic (Video)
W - Vittorio De Sica
W - Terminal Station
Italian Neorealism
NY Times: Indiscretion of an American Wife (1953)
YouTube: Indiscretion of an American Wife (trailer) - Montgomery Clift - Vittorio De Sica

2009 February: Italian Neorealism

FiveThirtyEight’s 2015-16 NBA Forecast

"Here at FiveThirtyEight HQ, we’ve been pretty excited about the upcoming 2015-16 NBA season. OK, that’s a bit of an understatement. For starters, we rolled out CARMELO,¹ our system for predicting the career of every NBA player, and we’ve been encouraging all who will listen to check out their favorite player’s projection. (Yes, our friends and families have asked us to stop.) We also used CARMELO to preview all 30 NBA teams. ..."
FiveThirtyEight
FiveThirtyEight: 2015-16 NBA Previews

Mars - The Complete Studio Recordings NYC 1977-1978

"There’s a section in Marc Masters’ excellent No Wave book that lists the bellicose reactions to Mars from the late-'70s music press. New York Rocker’s Andy Schwartz rallies against the 'total absence of any human feeling save a kind of neurotic violence,' while an anonymous critic declares them 'empty and arty.' But the vacuous barbarity of the Mars sound is exactly what made them tick. They were a band perfectly capturing the essence of downtown New York while living in the belly of a bankrupted city. This album collects all 11 studio recordings the band made during its two-year lifespan. Mars resolutely practiced a brand of nonmusic that was atonal, out of standard tune, and leaned heavily on unconventional song structure. For a band that started from a deliberately limited palate, it’s fascinating to hear how they slowly chipped away at their influences. The key to Mars was to devolve, not evolve. ..."
Prefix
Pitchfork
W - Mars
YouTube: The Complete Studio Recordings NYC 1977-1978Z, Live At Irving Plaza, Live, Live At Artists Space, 78+

Magnus Plessen – nineteen hundred fourteen

Untitled (16), 2014
"Magnus Plessen (*1967 in Hamburg, lives and works in Berlin) has recently engaged with the topic of what was then known as the 'great' war 1914 – 1918, with devastation and its victims – a topic that has, until now, and quite probably for the foreseeable future, unfortunately been relegated to the realms of anthropology. Starting in 2014, and continuing until 2018, Plessen has placed his focus on creating images that draw visual attention to facial and bodily disfiguration. In his paintings, he transposes and translates through the medium of art in a way that renders the humanity behind them visible once more, directing the gaze to the circumstances and thus allowing room for critique. He eschews all attempts at sarcasm or grotesquerie. Mai36 gallery has been hosting the work of Magnus Plessen in solo and group exhibitions since 2003."
Artsy
Galleries Now
White Cube
Brooklyn Rail
artnet
ARTFORUM
White Cube: Riding the Image
YouTube: At BARBARA GLADSTONE GALLERY

Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia

"This Walker-organized exhibition, assembled with the assistance of the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, examines the intersections of art, architecture, and design with the counterculture of the 1960s and early 1970s. A time of great upheaval, this period witnessed a variety of radical experiments that challenged societal and professional expectations, overturned traditional hierarchies, explored new media and materials, and formed alternative communities and new ways of living and working together. During this key moment, many artists, architects, and designers individually and collectively began a search for a new kind of utopia, whether technological, ecological, or political, and with it offered a critique of the existing society. ..."
Walker Art (Video)
What Killed the 1960s Struggle For Utopia?
amazon

Eric Dolphy His Life and Art

"'Eric Dolphy His Life and Art is a dream project for the artist Keith Henry Brown, an illustrator, writer and Art Director who served from 2001 to 2004 as the design director at Jazz at Lincoln Center working under Wynton Marsalis. My aesthetic at that time was the wonderful old art of jazz record covers, which I wanted all of JALC'S branding to reflect. I think Wynton felt the same.' Even after leaving Lincoln Center, Brown still continues to use the look of the old Blue Note covers and the wonderful drawings used on the Norman Granz Jazz at The Philharmonic records as an inspiration when designing record covers for many well-known jazz artists. 'I was really thinking about those records when I did Christian McBride's cover for his album Kind Of Brown, for example.' This 'labor of love' is a graphic novel about the influential multi-instrumentalist Dolphy, who's known for his work with John Coltrane, Charles Mingus as well as his own brilliant recording efforts as a leader. Through colorful drawings, narrative and dialogue, Brown tells the story of his favorite musical artist. ..."
Eric Dolphy His Life and Art (Video)
Keith Henry Brown

2013 August: Out to Lunch! (1964), 2014 October: Outward Bound (1960)

Joaquín Torres-García: The Arcadian Modern

Chapel of the Palau de la Generalitat in Barcelona.
"This major retrospective of Joaquín Torres-García (Uruguayan, 1874–1949) features works ranging from the late 19th century to the 1940s, including drawings, paintings, objects, sculptures, and original artist notebooks and rare publications. The exhibition combines a chronological display with a thematic approach, structured in a series of major chapters in the artist’s career, with emphasis on two key moments: the period from 1923 to 1933, when Torres-García participated in various European early modern avant-garde movements while establishing his own signature pictographic/Constructivist style; and 1935 to 1943, when, having returned to Uruguay, he produced one of the most striking repertoires of synthetic abstraction. Torres-García is one of the most complex and important artists of the first half of the 20th century, and his work opened up transformational paths for modern art on both sides of the Atlantic. ..."
MoMA (Video)
NY Times: An Avant-Gardist Who Bridged the Archaic and the New

America a Prophecy - William Blake (1793)

Wikipedia - "America a Prophecy is a 1793 prophetic book by the English poet and illustrator William Blake. It is engraved on eighteen plates, and survives in fourteen known copies. It is the first of Blake's Continental prophecies. Only a few of Blake's works were fully coloured, and America was one of the few works that Blake describes as 'illuminated printing', those of which were either hand coloured or colour printed with the ink being placed on the copperplate before printed. There were 17 copies of America created with 4 of them coloured. The work contained 18 plates, and were 23 x 17 cm in size. The lines of poetry included in the work were organized into septenaries. Henry Crabb Robinson contacted William Upcott on 19 April 1810 inquiring about copies of Blake's works that were in his possession. On that day, Robinson was allowed access to Europe and America and created a transcription of the works. ..."
Wikipedia
[PDF]AMERICA: A PROPHECY
amazon
YouTube: America a Prophesy

2008 April: The Notebook of William Blake, 2009 April: William Blake, 2010 December: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 2011 June: The Ghost of a Flea, 2012 August: Isaac Newton (1795).

Bill Bernstein's Disco Utopia

Paradise Garage DJ Larry Levan, 1979
"At its zenith, disco had evolved beyond a music genre to become a glitzy, sweaty, frenzied subculture whose adherents congregated in a wholly new breed of club. There was Studio 54, of course, but also Xenon, Paradise Garage, Hurrah. Anything or anyone strange was welcome, and so was everyone else. The disco scene was dark in its underground nature, diverse in its devotees, and an endless, manic party. And photographer Bill Bernstein was its dutiful visual biographer. ..."
Paddle8
Bill Bernstein
Bill Bernstein Photography
vimeo: Bill Bernstein Photography/Video
YouTube: DISCO: The Bill Bernstein Photographs

2013 November: Studio 54

Reggae Revival: Meet the Millennial Musicians Behind Jamaica’s New Movement

"It’s 4:00 in the morning on a Sunday in Jamaica and I am standing on the edge of Plantation Cove, an open field in St. Ann, the parish along the northern coast where you can find the shore where Columbus landed, and where Marcus Garvey and Bob Marley were born. I am six hours into my second night at a reggae festival called Rebel Salute. Though dancehall has dominated Jamaican radio for going on three decades, reggae festivals are still held year-round, and Rebel Salute is considered the most legit. Jamaicans speak of it the way they might describe a tincture or an extract, as though it contained a higher concentration of some magical, ineffable ingredient than other festivals do. 'Rebel Salute?' the hotel manager back in Kingston had told me, eyebrows raised. 'There you will see real reggae. I mean, real, real reggae.' He scrunched up his nose as if he were a Frenchman describing a pungent cheese. 'I mean real, real, real, roots, roots music.' ..."
Vogue (Video)
YouTube: On Tour With Jamaica’s Reggae Revival

The Case for Bad Coffee

"Standing at my kitchen counter, I measure out two teaspoons of Maxwell House instant coffee into my favorite mug, pour in 12 ounces of hot water from a tea kettle, and stir for a moment. I look toward the automatic drip maker to my left and feel a pang of sympathy for its cold carafe that once gurgled and steamed each morning with the best coffee money could buy. On top of the refrigerator, my old friend the French press has gathered dust. When I notice a dead housefly decomposing inside it, I wonder what the hell has happened to me. I wasn't always like this. ..."
Serious Eats

2010 September: Espresso, April: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World, 2013 May: Coffeehouse, 2015 June: Barista, 2015 August: Coffee Connections at Peddler in SoHo.

A Cultural Dictionary of Punk: 1974-1982

"Why did punk implode so rapidly? Why did its bands flare up and fade out? And how did this movement resist yet revamp the hippies they rushed to replace? In A Cultural Dictionary of Punk: 1974-1982 Nicholas Rombes, a professor of English, assembles a collage in the spirit of Walter Benjamin, a 'montage and passageway of quotes' alphabetically arranged. He integrates primary sources, illustrations, his own fictional and factual stories. He constructs an alternative history: 'In your dream, punk stayed a secret forever.' He emphasizes punk’s ephemeral arc, which failed to sustain its own outbursts of anger, shards of melody, and frustration with the malaise of the 'post-Watergate, pre-Reagan' years when its earliest audience grew up. ..."
A Punk Collage in the Spirit of Walter Benjamin
Google: A Cultural Dictionary of Punk: 1974-1982
LA Times - Punk's not dead, and this is your guide: Q&A with author Nicholas Rombes
amazon

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts - Brian Eno / David Byrne (1981)

Wikipedia - "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is a 1981 album by Brian Eno and David Byrne, titled after Amos Tutuola's 1954 novel of the same name. ... The 'found objects' credited to Eno and Byrne were common objects used mostly as percussion. In the notes for the 2006 expanded edition of the album, Byrne writes that they would often use a normal drum kit, but with a cardboard box replacing the bass drum, or a frying pan replacing the snare drum; this would blend the familiar drum sound with unusual percussive noises. Rather than conventional pop or rock singing, most of the vocals are sampled from other sources, such as commercial recordings of Arabic singers, radio disc jockeys, and an exorcist. Musicians had previously used similar sampling techniques, but critic Dave Simpson declares it had never before been used 'to such cataclysmic effect' as on My Life. ..."
Wikipedia
allmusic
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Amos Tutuola
Spotify
YouTube - America is waiting (Live), Home, Strange Overtones, Very Very Hungry (bootleg), Les Hombres Ne Le Sauront Jamals, The Jezebel Spirit (bootleg)
YouTube: My Life in the Bush of Ghosts 59:55

2008 September: Talking Heads, 2011 June: Talking Heads: 77, 2011 August: More Songs About Buildings and Food, 2011 October: Fear of Music, 2012 January: Remain in Light, 2012 April: Speaking in Tongues, 2012 June: Live in Rome 1980, 2014 December: "Road To Nowhere" (1985), 2015 May: And She Was (1985), 2011 August: David Byrne: How Architecture Helped Music Evolve, 2012 January: The Knee Plays.

Made in Holland: The Chanel of Africa

"A small town factory in the Netherlands might not seem like the obvious birthplace for African haute couture. Helmond is a place most people (Dutch or African) wouldn’t be able to point out on a map and yet, this unassuming little town is where one of the most iconic fashion brands of West and Central Africa was created. As the main supplier of fashion prints to nearly half a continent, the textile company has continued to dominate that fashion scene there for almost 170 years. How’d that happen? Rooted in European colonialism and a testament to African ingenuity, creativity, and cultural pride; it’s a surprising story…"
Messynessychic
NY Times: Africa's Fabric Is Dutch
Vlisco
YouTube: Dutch Profiles: Vlisco

New York State of Mind

"Mugged, mugging. I remember hearing those words all the time growing up. Always aware that it could happen, that it would happen. When it did, getting mugged didn’t mean you’d be killed, just that someone would take your shit, probably beat you up, too. That is mind, here’s David Freeman’s 1970 New York magazine story, 'Mugging as a Way of Life'. ..."
The Stacks
"Mugging as a Way of Life" By David Freeman (1970 - New York Magazine)

Top 10 Gram Parsons Songs

"Gram Parsons didn’t grow up living the hardscrabble life of most country singers. The man originally named Cecil Ingram Connor III was born into a wealthy Florida citrus family and spent a semester at Harvard before dropping out to concentrate on his burgeoning interest in country music. After stints in the Shilos and the International Submarine Band, he joined the Byrds in 1968 for a five-month spell that resulted in the landmark ‘Sweetheart of the Rodeo‘ album. He then formed the Flying Burrito Brothers, recording two albums with them before being fired in 1970 due to his increasing drug habit. As a solo act, Parsons released ‘GP’ in 1973, which featured three members from Elvis Presley‘s TCB band and a beautiful young folk singer with a voice to match, Emmylou Harris. A second album, ‘Grievous Angel’ was released in 1974, four months after his death on Sept. 19, 1973, at age 26 at Joshua Tree National Monument from an overdose of morphine and alcohol. ..."
Top 10 Gram Parsons Songs (Video)

2008 March: Gram Parsons, 2011 March: Gram Parsons & Emmylou Harris. Liberty Hall, Texas, 1973, 2012 May: Sweetheart of the Rodeo, 2013 January: Gram Parsons: Fallen Angel, 2013 September: Flying Burrito Brothers - Live At The Avalon Ballroom 1969, 2014 February: The Gilded Palace of Sin - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1969), 2014 March: Burrito Deluxe - The Flying Burrito Brothers (1970), 2014 May: GP (1973), 2014 September: Grievous Angel (1974), 2015 April: The Byrds - Sweetheart Of The Rodeo (Gram Parsons Vocals).

The Morning of the Poem - James Schuyler (1980)

"When James Schuyler's extraordinary 60-page poem 'The Morning of the Poem' appeared in 1980, it marked the advent of his exceptionally long line: by the time the poem was halfway through, the lines had swelled to virtually two lines each. Although he clearly wasn't counting beats or syllables, there seemed to be a reason, however unstatable, for every break – not only the official breaks but, remarkably, the runovers as well. In other words, the lines were two lines each, as well as being single lines long enough to pass for prose. Within this roomy framework, which recalled Whitman, Schuyler established his own permissions to do pretty much as he pleased, traveling smoothly and confidently on the strength of his associations from one image or memory or aperçu to the next. ..."
EPC: Charles North - Schuyler's Mighty Line
Jacket2: Days and nights with James Schuyler
[PDF] The Morning of the Poem
amazon

2008 January: James Schuyler, 2009 October: James Schuyler: Six New Recordings Added, 2011 March: Broadway: A Poets and Painters Anthology, 2011 December: An Anthology of New York Poets, 2012 July: A Schuyler of urgent concern, 2013 July: In Fairfield Porter / James Schuyler country: Penobscot Bay, Maine, 2014 November: Just the Thing: Selected Letters of James Schuyler 1951-1991.

Nas: Time is Illmatic (2014)

"American social ills get the expensive treatment in artist-turned-film-maker One9’s documentary about Illmatic, the classic 1994 album by rapper Nas. A chronicle of the effects of poverty and poor housing on a generation of New York’s black kids, Illmatic was a scouring exposé. One9’s film, shot on high-end kit, flirts with glamorising the rags-to-rap-to-riches story, but in doing so stays true to its subject. It’s a touch too laudatory. It’s at its best when the gloss falls away. After talking amiably about life in the hood from the comfort of recording studios and loft apartments, Nas takes a trip into the Queensbridge housing project where he grew up. The old neighbourhood welcomes him, but there’s a disconnect. The local boy made it out. He’s a beloved alien to the locals. The world is his. Theirs hasn’t changed much."
Guardian
W - Nas: Time is Illmatic
Why You Must See the ‘Nas: Time Is Illmatic’ Documentary (Video)
Soundcloud: Official Pete Rock - Time Is Illmatic
YouTube: Nas: Time Is Illmatic 2014 Official Trailer

2015 October: Illmatic (1994)

Decasia - Bill Morrison (2002)

"... Bill Morrison's Decasia is that rare thing: a movie with avant-garde and universal appeal, occasioning two separate features so far in The New York Times. Morrison is not the first artist to take decomposing film stock as his raw material, but he plunges into this dark nitrate of the soul with contagious abandon. Few movies are so much fun to describe. Heralded by a spinning dervish, Decasia's first movement seems culled from century-old actualités: Kimono-clad women emerge from a veil of spotty mold, a caravan of camels is silhouetted against the warped desert horizon, a Greek dancer disintegrates into a blotch barrage, the cars for an ancient Luna Park ride repeatedly materialize out of seething chaos. Decasia is founded on the tension between the hard fact of film's stained, eroded, unstable surface and the fragile nature of that which was once photographically represented. ..."
Voice: J. Hoberman
W - Decasia
NY Times: Symphony of Compositions From Decomposition
"Decasia" named to 2013 National Film Registry (Video)
MoMA: Bill Morrison: Old Films, Contemporary Music, Timeless Themes
YouTube: Decasia excerpt 1, Decasia excerpt 2, Decasia: Excerpt Three
vimeo: Bill Morrison: The film archaeologist

Holiday for Soul Dance - Sun Ra (1970)

"This collection is somewhat of an oddity in that there are no original compositions from Sun Ra. That said, cornet player Phil Corhan contributes 'Dorothy's Dance.' As the album initially surfaced in the early '70s, many presumed the recordings reflected Ra's concurrent combo and sound, which couldn't have been further from the truth. Scholars have since placed 1960 or 1961 as a closer estimation of when these sides were documented, using the rare inclusion of Ricky Murry (vocals) as sonic evidence, coupled with the fact that the effort was cut prior to the band's relocation to New York City from Chicago at the beginning of the decade. ..."
allmusic
W - Holiday for Soul Dance
New Yorker: The Sun Ra Centenary
Spotify
Discogs
YouTube: Holiday for Soul Dance

The Soviet Photobook 1920-1941

"The Soviet Union was unique in its formidable and dynamic use of the illustrated book as a means of propaganda. Through the book, the U.S.S.R. articulated its totalitarian ideologies and expressed its absolute power in an unprecedented way—through avant-garde writing and radical artistic design that was in full flower during the 1920s and ’30s. No other country, nation, government or political system promoted itself more by attracting and employing acclaimed members of the avant-garde. ... The Soviet Photobook 1920–1941 presents 160 of the most stunning and elaborately produced photobooks from this period and includes more than 400 additional reference illustrations. The book also provides short biographies of the photobook contributors, some of whom are presented here for the first time."
Steidl
artbook
amazon