Michael Nyman - An Eye for Optical Theory (Live at Studio Halle, 2010)

"... These testimonials—set to 'An Eye for Optical Theory', a mainstay of the band’s set that baritone saxophonist Andy Findon says is difficult to even imagine playing live—could make Nyman seem like a joyless taskmaster. Though he does appear to want maximum control over performances of his compositions, he is good natured and complimentary of the band and their skills. His music also provides them with the unique opportunity to really 'play out'. Barr comments that the Michael Nyman Band is the only place a brass player can play so loud and not be told to quiet down. The picture of Nyman that emerges in these interviews is that of a man who has figured out the precise sound he wants to hear and assembled the right people for the job. On his own, however, he’s more adventurous. ... -Thomas Britt, PopMatters, December 2010"
Naxos
YouTube: An Eye for Optical Theory (Live at Studio Halle, 2010)

2008 April: Michael Nyman, 2010 August: Decay Music, 2010 December: After Extra Time, 2011 March: Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond, 2011 August: Michael Nyman Band, 2011 December: The Draughtsman's Contract - Peter Greenaway, 2012 March: Time Lapse, 2013 July: Composer in Progress, In Concert (2010).

Ciguë: Materialised Instincts

"Playing the architect and the builder: this dynamic duality best describes the work of French design studio Ciguë. A DIY practice sought after by luxury brands including Isabelle Marant and Kris van Assche, Ciguë was born out of a collaboration between four aspiring craftsmen – then students at Paris’s La Villette School of Architecture. Now the practice encompasses a growing team of 19 members, straddling architecture, interior design and shape-shifting installations. While intuitive collaboration remains at the forefront of Ciguë's vision, it is their experimental use of materials, namely wood and steel, that has made them design-world stars. For the concluding part of The Cultural, director Matt Black catches up with the designers in and around their workshop in the Paris suburb of Montreuil – where you won't find a computer-generated design in sight. ..."
NOWESS (Video)

Nicolas Jaar - Work It (Bluewave edit)

"OK, Nicolas Jaar, we all know you’re a fantastic producer with talent to burn, and we’re all deservedly hanging on your every musical movement, waiting for what happens after your debut album ‘Space Is Only Noise’ in January. Turns out, an EP entitled ‘Nico’s Bluewave Edits’ is what happens, a set of three pop songs given the Jaar treatment. ... The floor shaking, Timbaland-produced, club boom of the the original stretched, stripped, and folded into a slick sensual swing. Light drums fluttering, loose claps, pitched vocal, sparse but precise arrangement. Despite the under-stated tone it’s also catchy as can be. Jaar’s still not missed a beat then. ..."
DUMMY (Video)
Soundcloud (Video)
YouTube: Work it(Nico's Bluewave edits), "What My Last Girl Put Me Through", Materials (Nico's Bluewave Edit), Jamie xx & Nicolas Jaar - Girl vs Work It (Nico's Bluewave Edit), Nicolas Jaar Work it + Girl Unit I.R.L.

2013 September: Nicolas Jaar, 2014 January: Other People, 2015 May: Nicolas Jaar Soundtracks Short Film About Police Brutality and #BlackLivesMatter, 2015 July: Space Is Only Noise (2010), 2015 August: Boiler Room NYC DJ Set at Clown & Sunset Takeove

Resident Visitor: Laurie Spiegel's Machine Music

"Probably the most remarkable thing about Laurie Spiegel is that a piece of music she made could be the first sound of human origin to be heard by extraterrestrial lifeforms. If aliens exist, of course. And assuming they have ears. Spiegel's computer realization of a composition conceived back in the early 17th Century by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler is the opening cut on the Golden Record, a disc that accompanied both Voyager probes on their journey across the solar system and out into the great interstellar beyond in 1977. Also known as The Sounds of Earth, this gold-plated copper record (the assumption seems to have been that any civilization advanced enough to pluck a passing probe out of space would also be able to build a turntable to play it on) includes 90 minutes of music, greetings in many languages, animal sounds, and the EEG brainwaves of a young woman in love. ..."
Pitchfork (Video)

2011 May: Laurie Spiegel, 2012 November: Laurie Spiegel - The Expanding Universe, 2014 February: The Interstellar Contract.

Traveling in Europe’s River of Migrants

Refugees, mostly from Syria and Afghanistan, crowded a platform as they waited for a train at Keleti station in Budapest on Thursday.
"Tens of thousands of migrants and refugees, mostly fleeing unrest in the Middle East and Afghanistan, are pushing their way through the Balkans to Hungary. From there, many are continuing their desperate trip to Germany and other countries in northern Europe. A team of New York Times journalists is documenting their journey."
NY Times


A group of Syrian migrants charged their cellphones using a television station's satellite truck outside the Keleti train station last week in Budapest.

Chuck Close: Red Yellow Blue

"Pace announces Chuck Close: Red Yellow Blue an exhibition of new oil paintings on view at 534 West 25th Street from September 11 to October 17, 2015. ... In his most recent work, Close continues his investigation of the grid as an organizational device, exploring minimal information processing in portraiture. Close abandons the expressionistic brushstrokes that have characterized his paintings since the 1990s. Rather, he applies multiple thin washes of paint in each cell of the grid, layering red, yellow and blue until they accumulate into extravagant full-color images. The earliest works in the exhibition—portraits of Cecily Brown and Cindy Sherman—reveal the beginnings of this process, leaving the painting’s development visible. Although the works represent a new direction for Close, they are also a revival and reconsideration of processes he first used in the 1970s when he first restricted his palette to three colors, coaxing different saturations of paint and hue into photorealist portraits. ..."
Art Daily
Pace Gallery
FINDING THE COLOR WORLD: An interview with Chuck Close
Beyond the Portrait: The Many Categories of Chuck Close

2008 August: Chuck Close

An Inglorious Slop-pail of a Play

"When the French playwright Alfred Jarry—born on this day in 1873—was fifteen, he enjoyed lampooning his physics teacher, a plump, inept man who so amused his students that he became the subject of Jarry’s first attempt at drama, Les Polonais, staged with marionettes when he was still in short pants. Père Heb, as the physics teacher was called in it, had a prominent gut, a retractable ear, and three teeth (stone, iron, and wood). These features by themselves make him a distinctive figure in the history of French drama. But years later, Jarry revived Heb—as all responsible playwrights do with their juvenilia—making him somehow even more ridiculous, even more obese, and putting him at the center of Ubu Roi, a play so contentious that its premiere, in December 1896, was also its closing night. It lives in the annals of drama because it offended almost everyone who saw it. In this, it prefigured modernism, surrealism, Dadaism, and the theater of the absurd. ..."
The Paris Review
W - Alfred Jarry
TLS - Merrrrdrrrre!: Alfred Jarry and Père Ubu
Guardian - Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life by Alastair Brotchie - review
amazon: Alfred Jarry
Ubu's Almanac: Alfred Jarry and the Graphic Arts
Alfred Jarry: a Cyclist on the Wild Side

2011 April: The Insolent Eye: Jarry in Art, 2013 August: The Banquet Years of Apollinaire, Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, and Erik Satie - Roger Shattuck

Dembow: A Loop History

"In the world of sample-based music, few recordings have enjoyed so active an afterlife as the Dembow. A two-bar loop with unmistakably familiar kicks and snares, it underpins the vast majority of reggaeton tracks as an almost required sonic signpost. Thanks to crossover jams like Lorna’s 'Papi Chulo' and Daddy Yankee’s 'Gasolina,' the Dembow has spread its distinctive boom-ch-boom-chick to glossy Latin pop, raw electro-chaabi in Egypt, transnational moombahton and Indonesian dangdut seksi, to name a few. With such remarkable resonance and staggering frequency of appearance, the Dembow would seem to deserve a place alongside such well-worn loops as the Amen, the Triggerman and the Tamborzao. ..."
Red Bull Music Academy Daily (Video)
Digital Rhythm: The loopy origins of dembow and the knotty dancehall roots of reggaeton (Video)

Welcome To The Dirt – The Beginning of Trench Warfare I THE GREAT WAR - Week 8

"After the advances and retreats during the early weeks of war, the front is coming to a grinding hold after the Battle of the Aisne. The German Army is digging itself in on one side of the river and a new, horrible chapter of World War One begins: trench warfare. To be prepared for this new kind of war, the British Army is recruiting over 400.000 soldiers still believing that the war will be over by Christmas."
YouTube: Welcome To The Dirt – The Beginning of Trench Warfare I - Week 8

2014 December: The Great War: WWI Starts - How Europe Spiraled Into the Great War - Week 1, Europe Prior to WWI: Allies and Enemies I PRELUDE TO WW1 - Part 1/3, Tinderbox Europe - From Balkan Troubles to WWI I PRELUDE TO WW1 - Part 2/3, A Shot that Changed the World - The Assassination of Franz Ferdinand I PRELUDE TO WW1 - Part 3/3, 2015 January: Germany in Two-Front War and the Schlieffen-Plan I - Week 2, 2015 March: To Arms! Deployment of Troops - Week 3, 2015 March:A New War With Old Generals – Carnage on the Western Front - Week 4, 2015 April: The Rape of Belgium – War Crimes in the Summer of 1914 - Week 5, 2015 May: Plans Are Doomed to Fail - The Battle of Galicia - Week 6, 2015 August: Taxi To The Front – The First Battle of the Marne - Week 7.

Fran Lebowitz

Wikipedia - "Frances Ann 'Fran' Lebowitz (born October 27, 1950) is an American author and public speaker. Lebowitz is known for her sardonic social commentary on American life as filtered through her New York City sensibilities. Some reviewers have called her a modern-day Dorothy Parker. Lebowitz was born and raised in Morristown, New Jersey. After being expelled from high school and receiving a GED, Lebowitz worked in many odd jobs before being hired by Andy Warhol as a columnist for Interview. This was followed by a stint at Mademoiselle. Her first book was a collection of essays titled Metropolitan Life, released in 1978, followed by Social Studies in 1981, both of which are collected in The Fran Lebowitz Reader. ..."
Wikipedia
The Paris Review: Interviews
Elle: 'Yoga Pants are Ruining Women' and Other Style Advice From Fran Lebowitz
A Chat With Fran Lebowitz
Vanity Fair: Is Everything Sacred? by Fran Lebowitz
amazom: Fran Lebowitz
YouTube: Public Speaking, Fran Lebowitz gives her view of modern NYC, A Cynic Looks at Childhood, Five Questions for Fran Lebowitz

Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos - The Prosthetic Cubans (1998)

"The mastery and vision of the enduring Marc Ribot shine through on this release. Although there have been many attempts to produce authentic indigenous music of various cultures, most have fallen short; this album succeeds in the wake of failure. Ribot delves deep into Cuban rhythms, and indeed the album is a tribute to the Cuban master Arsenio Rodriguez. Here Ribot finds an authentic Cuban sound employing traditional instrumentation: upright bass, wood blocks, cherke, and other percussion sounds. The performance is inspired, and the band consistently tears through Rodriguez's material, as well as some of their own. Ribot's guitar work nears perfection, and he proves himself to be the most soulful white alive. Songs like 'Aqui Como Alla' and 'Postizo' confirm these assertions. Although this album does not present the iconoclastic Ribot of The Book of Heads fame, it is an excellent album."
allmusic
Wikipedia
YouTube: Marc Ribot y Los Cubanos Postizos - The Prosthetic Cubans (1998) [Full Album] 

2011 February: Selling Water By the Side of the River - Evan Lurie, 2012 September: Marc Ribot, 2013 February: Silent Movies, 2013 November: The Nearness Of You, 2014 January: Full Concert Jazz in Marciac (2010), 2014 May: Gig Alert: Marc Ribot Trio, 2014 September: Marc Ribot Trio with Mary Halvorson at The Stone.

Earl King

Wikipedia - "Earl King (February 7, 1934 – April 17, 2003) was an American singer, guitarist, and songwriter, most active in blues music. A composer of blues standards such as 'I Hear You Knocking' (recorded by Smiley Lewis, Gale Storm, Dave Edmunds and others), 'One Night' (recorded by Smiley Lewis and Elvis Presley), "Come On" (covered by Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan) and Professor Longhair's 'Big Chief', he is an important figure in New Orleans R&B music. King was born Earl Silas Johnson IV in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States. His father, a local piano player, died when King was still a baby, and he was brought up by his mother. With his mother, he started going to church at an early age. In his youth he sang gospel music, but took the advice of a friend to switch to blues to make a better living. ..."
Wikipedia
Discogs
BluesArt-Studio-Journal
YouTube: Street Parade, It Hurts To Love Someone, Mama & Papa, I'M YOUR BEST BET, BABY, Baby You Can Get Your Gun, You Can Fly High, Come On Parts 1 and 2 (Also known as "Let The Good Times Roll"), Trick Bag, Is Everything All Right, Always a First Time, The Things That I Used To Do

TAXI: A History of the New York Taxi Cab

"In this episode, we recount almost 175 years of getting around New York in a private ride. The hansom, the romantic rendition of the horse and carriage, took New Yorkers around during the Gilded Age. But unregulated conduct by ‘nighthawks’ and the messy conditions of streets due to horses demanded a solution. At first it seemed the electric car would save the day but the technology proved inadequate. In 1907 came the first gas-propelled automobile cabs to New York, officially ‘taxis’ due to a French invention installed in the front seat. By the 1930s the streets were filled with thousands of taxicabs. During the Great Depression, cab drivers fought against plunging fare and even waged a strike in Times Square. In 1937, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia debuted the medallion system as a way to keep the streets regulated. By the 1970s many cabdrivers faced an upswing of crime that made picking up passengers even more dangerous than bad traffic. Drivers began ignoring certain fares – mainly from African-Americans – which gave rise to the neighborhood livery cab system. ..."
The Bowery Boys: New York City History

2012 June: Taxicabs of New York City, 2015 March: In New Exam for Cabbies, Knowledge of Streets Takes a Back Seat

The 10 biggest reggae basslines, according to Trojan Sound System

"London's Trojan Sound System, formed just over a decade ago now, are one of the UK's finest examples of the power of the sound system culture. Inspired by the legendary reggae label of the same name, the Trojan crew have been spreading their message of love and unity through ska, roots, dub, and dancehall since 2004, headlinging club shows, captivating festival crowds and supporting legendary Jamaican acts such as The Wailers, Luciano, Sly and Robby and the late great Gregory Isaacs amongst others. The bassline aficionados return next month with their new track Time Is The Answer a response to the curreny state of political unrest and troubles sweeping the globe. ..."
DUMMY (Video)
CLASH: Trojan Sound System Mix (Video)
W - Trojan Records
YouTube: TROJAN SOUND SYSTEM // The 10 biggest reggae basslines

Building Radical America

"In 1967, Paul Buhle founded Radical America. The journal published sophisticated investigations of the struggles of the day, from black liberation to feminism; introduced American readers to a wide range of political currents, such as Italian autonomism; and explored American radical history, particularly the 1930s, for inspiration. In this interview, which originally appeared in Viewpoint Magazine, Salar Mohandesi discusses with Buhle the historical conjuncture that gave rise to the project, the journal’s aims, and the American radical tradition. ... Radical America may have been among the last left-wing journals printed on a single-sheet press, the pages collated by comrades, then stapled copy by copy, and mailed out, very cheaply, to the SDS chapters and individual subscribers. At first, it was typed on a green plastic surface that allowed easy correction for errors."
Jacobin
Brown University Library
The Search for a Useable Past: An Interview with Paul Buhle on Radical America
W - Radical America

Fela Kuti & Egypt 80 - Arsenal TV3 Catalonian (1987)

Wikipedia -"... The musical style of Felá is called afrobeat, a style he largely created, which is a complex fusion of Jazz, Funk, Ghanaian/Nigerian High-life, psychedelic rock, and traditional West African chants and rhythms. Afrobeat also borrows heavily from the native 'tinker pan' African-style percussion that Kuti acquired while studying in Ghana with Hugh Masekela, under the uncanny Hedzoleh Soundz. The importance of the input of Tony Allen (Fela's drummer of twenty years) in the creation of Afrobeat cannot be overstated. Fela once famously stated that 'without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat'. Afrobeat is characterized by a fairly large band with many instruments, vocals, and a musical structure featuring jazzy, funky horn sections. A riff-based "endless groove" is used, in which a base rhythm of drums, shekere, muted West African-style guitar, and melodic bass guitar riffs are repeated throughout the song. Commonly, interlocking melodic riffs and rhythms are introduced one by one, building the groove bit-by-bit and layer-by-layer. The horn section then becomes prominent, introducing other riffs and main melodic themes. Fela's band was notable for featuring two baritone saxophones, whereas most groups were using only one of this instrument. ..."
W - Fela Kuti
allmusic
YouTube: Arsenal TV3 Catalonian TV 36mins. approx.

Nuart Day 3 : Picking Up Pace and Sandra Chevrier’s Dramatic Eyes

Sandra Chevrier. Aftenblad Wall. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway.
"A fever pitch is possibly overstating the tempo but not by much as Day 3 at Nuart continued to be wet and gray and at times a little windy (not typically good for stencil work by the way). A couple of people have gotten a cold – possibly due to painting in the rain for hours on end, possible due to drinking back at the hotel late into the evening, one cannot be quick to surmise. Regardless, the artists are full of industry and the results are appearing right here before your dramatic and alluring eyes. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art

Take a Labor Day Tour of Blue-Collar Art

America Today: City Building, 1930–31, Thomas Hart Benton
"'Poor art for poor people.' In the 1930s, the painter Arshile Gorky wielded that phrase like a weapon, disparaging what he saw as propagandist figurative art, art that often depicted and ennobled the American worker. And Gorky was far from alone in his scorn, as painting raced toward the purities of Abstract Expressionism. ... But the arrows of history and taste bend in mysterious ways. And with Labor Day at hand, New York finds itself — partly by happenstance, partly by design — in the middle of what might be described, with apologies to Gorky, as a rich moment for art about the working class, whose embattled existence is once again an issue in a presidential campaign. ..."
NY Times
Metropolitan Museum of Art: America Today: City Building, 1930–31, Thomas Hart Benton
Whitney: John Chamberlain, Velvet White, 1962
Reimagining Modernism—Expanding the Dialogue of Modern Art

Neil Young - Zuma (1975)

Wikipedia - "'Cortez the Killer' is a song by Neil Young from his 1975 album, Zuma. ... The song is about Hernán Cortés (Cortés' name has an alternate Anglicized spelling in the song title), a conquistador who conquered Mexico for Spain in the 16th century. 'Cortez the Killer' also makes reference to the Aztec ruler Moctezuma II and other events that occurred in the Spanish conquest of the New World. Instead of describing the battles of Cortés with the Aztecs, the lyric in the last verse suddenly jumps from third person narrative to first person, and possibly over a time span of centuries as well, with a reference to an unnamed woman: 'And I know she's living there / And she loves me to this day. / I still can't remember when / or how I lost my way.' The lyric suggests a lost love affair and brings a personal aspect to what was otherwise an historical narrative, suggesting a connection between broken relationships and the imperial invasion by someone else. ..."
Wikipedia
W - Zuma
Zuma by Neil Young
Neil Young's Use of North American History
YouTube: Cortez the Killer (Live), Cortez the Killer, Cortez the Killer (acoustic 1999)
YouTube: Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Zuma (1975) [full album]

2008 February: Neil Young, 2010 April: Neil Young - 1, 2010 April: Neil Young - 2, 2010 May: Neil Young - 3, 2010 October: Neil Young's Sound, 2012 January: Long May You Run: The Illustrated History, 2012 June: Like A Hurricane, 2012 July: Greendale, 2013 April: Thoughts On An Artist / Three Compilations, 2013 August: Heart of Gold, 2014 March: Dead Man (1995), 2014 August: Ragged Glory - Neil Young + Crazy Horse (1990), 2014 November: Broken Arrow (1996), 2015 January: Rust Never Sleeps (1979), 2015 January: Neil Young the Ultimate Guide, 2015 March: Old Black.

Hip Hop Family Tree 1975-1983 Gift Box Set

"To celebrate the resounding critical and commercial success of the first two volumes of Ed Piskor’s unprecedented history of Hip Hop, we are offering the two books in a mind-blowingly colorful slipcase, drawn and designed by the artist. As if that’s not enough, in addition to the two books and the slipcase itself, Piskor has drawn a 24-page comic book ― Hip Hop Family Tree #300 ― specifically for this boxed set that elegantly reflects the confluence of hip hop and comics, which was never more apparent in the early 1990s than with the famous Spike Lee-directed Levi Jeans commercial starring Rob Liefeld, who went on to create Youngblood and co-found Image Comics, not to mention ending up on the radar of gangster rapper Eazy E. Piskor tells this story as a perfect parody/pastiche/homage to ’90s Image comics. Full color."
amazon: Hip Hop Family Tree 1975-1983 Gift Box Set
Ed Piskor Is Making Hip-Hop History, One Panel at a Time
5 Questions with Ed Piskor

2012 January: The Hip-Hop Family Tree: A Look Into the Viral Propagation of a Culture, 2012 August: ‘Hip Hop Family Tree’ Comics Explain Genesis of the Genre, 2013 October: The Hip Hop Family Tree.

Tom Waits On The Tube Live UK TV 1985

"Tom Waits：Vocal, Victor Feldman：Bass marimba, Larry Taylor：Acoustic bass, Randy Aldcroft：Baritone horn, Stephen Taylor Arvizu Hodges：Drums, Fred Tackett: Electric guitar.
Rattle Big Black Bones
in the Danger zone
there's a rumblin' groan
down below
there's a big dark town
it's a place I've found
there's a world going on
UNDERGROUND"
YouTube: Tom Waits On The Tube Live UK TV 1985

2012 July: Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, 2013 March: Burma Shave, 2013 May: "Ol' '55", 2013 July: The Heart of Saturday Night (1974), 2014 January: Blood Money, 2014 March: Telephone call from Istanbul (1987), 2014 November: Rain Dogs (1985), 2015 February: Mule Variations (1999), 2015 April: Swordfishtrombones (1983), 2015 July: Alice (2002).

Jem Cohen - Evening’s Civil Twilight In Empires of Tin (2007)

"The Vienna International Film Festival (Viennale) takes place in October of each year. For the 2007 edition, New York filmmaker Jem Cohen was commissioned to close the festival, which he did with his program entitled Evening’s Civil Twilight In Empires Of Tin. This piece, inspired by Joseph Roth’s novel The Radetsky March, is a meditation on the decline of empires, juxtaposing images from the twilight stages of the Hapsburg empire and WWI with footage from present-day Vienna and Cohen’s hometown of Brooklyn, NY, where he traces his own visual meditations on the twilight of American empire. ... The result is a sort of agit-prop hallucination, a string of film vignettes bound by the poetry of Roth’s writing and by the sounds and songs of the live musicians."
Constellation
Filmmaker Magazine
amazon
YouTube: Empires of Tin

2014 January: Jem Cohen, 2014 June: Museum Hours (2012), 2014 November: Interview with Jem Cohen, 2014 December: This Is a History of New York (1987).

"Paintings in Proust" - View of the Piazza del Popolo, Giovanni Battista Piranes

The Piazza del Popolo (Veduta della Piazza del Popolo)
"Even in Paris, in one of the ugliest parts of the town, I know a window from which one can see across a first, a second, and even a third layer of jumbled roofs, street beyond street, a violet bell, sometimes ruddy, sometimes too, in the finest ‘prints’ which the atmosphere makes of it, of an ashy solution of black; which is, in fact, nothing else than the dome of Saint-Augustin, and which imparts to this view of Paris the character of some of the Piranesi views of Rome. (Swann's Way)
Paintings in Proust, Eric Karpeles
W - Piazza_del_Popolo

2008 June: Marcel Proust, 2011 October: How Proust Can Change Your Life, 2012 April: Marcel Proust - À la recherche du temps perdu, 2013 February: Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary, 2013 May: A Century of Proust, 2013 August: Paintings in Proust - Eric Karpeles, 2013 October: On Reading Proust

Memphis Blues - Important Postwar Blues 4 CD

"This 4-disc set collects over 100 post-war blues sides recorded in Memphis, just about all for Sam Phillips' Sun label (in fact, quite a number of tracks are duplicated on the multi-disc Sun blues box issued a number of years ago). Early sides by such major blues artists as Howlin' Wolf, Little Milton, James Cotton, and Roscoe Gordon are here, but it's usually the lesser known artists that provide the surprises and highlights: Woodrow Adams, Hot Shot Love, Raymond Hill, Pat Hare, and L.B. Lawson all knocked my socks off with their recordings. A number of inclusions are alternate takes. The blues from Memphis offer a wide variety of styles, from boogie-woogie to the deepest down-home heartbreakers. JSP specializes in 4-disc boxes revolving around particular themes, and all of them are superb: lots of music, great selections, the best sound available - all at a bargain price. This set is no exception. Post-war blues fans will find this set a total knockout; I call it a must-have set. Grab it while you can. - Bomojaz"
amazon
YouTube: Honeyboy Edwards- Sweet Home Chicago, Woodrow Adams - The Last Time, Rosco Gordon - Roscoe's Boogie, Little Junior's Blue Flames - Feelin' good, Midnight Showers Of Rain - Willie Nix, Don't Dog Me Around - Eddie Snow, Tiger Man - Rufus Thomas Jr, Bobby Bland - Dry Up Baby

Contact sheets: where the magic and chaos of photographs comes alive

Stuart Franklin’s contact sheet from Tiananmen Square, 1989, containing the famous “tank man shot”.
"Henri Cartier-Bresson, co-founder of the famed Magnum agency, once likened the contact sheet to the analyst’s couch. 'It’s all there: what surprises us is what we catch, what we miss, what disappears.' Today, the contact sheet has all but disappeared as digital technology has rendered the analogue camera a thing of the past, beloved only of purists and a coterie of young obsessives who fetishise film and the alchemy of the darkroom. In 2011, the publication of the photobook Magnum Contact Sheets seemed like an epitaph on the whole elaborate, hands-on process of pre-digital photography. Four years on, a new exhibition, which opens at FOAM Amsterdam on 11 September, is framed as 'a tribute to analogue technique' – further evidence that what was once taken for granted is now seen as almost absurdly old-fashioned. ..."
Guardian

George Bellows, "Pennsylvania Station Excavation," 1907-1909

Pennsylvania Station Excavation, 1907
"I wanted to make sure to see the George Bellows exhibition at the Metropolitan before it closes February 18, in order to see a few paintings that had been recommended to me by Susan Bee, in particular three paintings done between 1907 and 1909 of the excavation of the site for Pennsylvania Station. The paintings are easel sized and painted in a loose expressionistic style that is a eerie and awkward combination of Goya, Velasquez, Courbet, with a Brueghel quote in the bottom right corner of a dark worker against a snow white background but, despite these historical allusions, they are  imbued with a regionalist, Americanist feel. And yet, as one viewer I overheard say, these paintings are ferocious. In the first, Pennsylvania Excavation, the organized city is a far off dream against the blackened rock, earth, and gravel pit covered by snow and white mist from the steam engine of a work train dwarfed by the scale of site. ..."
a year of positive thinking
Boston Globe
Brooklyn Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Arthur Russell

Wikipedia - "Arthur Russell (born Charles Arthur Russell, Jr.; May 21, 1951 – April 4, 1992) was an American cellist, composer, singer and musician whose work spanned the genres of classical, disco, experimental, folk and rock. Notable artists who collaborated with Russell include Steve Reich, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Talking Heads, Jennifer Warnes, Bootsy Collins, and Nicky Siano. During his lifetime, Russell found the most commercial success in New York's underground dance and disco scene throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s. Although he recorded a considerable number of songs, the musician's near-chronic inability to finish projects resulted in an extremely limited amount of released output during his life. ..."
Wikipedia
The making of Is It All Over My Face?
allmusic
Dummy (Video)
Arthur Russell and Steve D’Acquisto’s Loose Joints classics reissued by West End Records (Video)
amazon: Arthur Russell
amazon: Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992
YouTube: Dinosaur L ‎(Arthur Russell) – 24→24 Music (Full Album), Loose Joints - Is It All Over My Face, Loose Joints "Is It All Over My Face" (Original Male Version), Loose Joints - Tell You (Today) (Original 12" Vocal), Dinosaur - Kiss Me Again 12" (Side A, 1978), Arthur Russell - Some Imaginary Far Away Type Things A.K.A. Lost In The Meshes, Arthur Russell - Ocean Movie, Arthur Russell - World Of Echo

Nicholas Nixon: Forty Years of The Brown Sisters

The Brown Sisters. 2010
"In August 1974, Nick Nixon made a photograph of his wife, Bebe, and her three sisters. He wasn’t pleased with the result and discarded the negative. In July 1975 he made one that seemed promising enough to keep. At the time, the Brown sisters were 15 (Mimi), 21 (Laurie), 23 (Heather), and 25 (Bebe). The following June, Laurie Brown graduated from college, and Nick made another picture of the four sisters. It was after this second successful picture that the group agreed to gather annually for a portrait, and settled on the series’ two constants: the sisters would always appear in the same order—from left to right, Heather, Mimi, Bebe, and Laurie—and they would jointly agree on a single image to represent a given year. Also significant, and unchanging, is the fact that each portrait is made with an 8 x 10" view camera on a tripod and is captured on a black-and-white film negative. ..."
MoMA
MoMa - Nicholas Nixon: 40 Years of the Brown Sisters
NY Times: Forty Portraits in Forty Years
amazon
vimeo: ICP Photobook Flip: The Brown Sisters

8 Unconvential Ways to Make Music (and Buck Capitalism)

"There are thousands of guides that purport to set you on the road to satisfying artistic expression. But all those millions of articles and forum posts are variations on the same theme: you need to buy this and that and gain technical proficiency in x and y. The inescapable visibility and consistency of these step-by-step plans create the perception that they are the only way of getting into music, so impressionable and soft-skinned newcomers end up on the same creative path using similar tools. Following this 'correct' method often leads to music that’s proscribed by technological interfaces and exclusionary ideologies. Basically you’re setting yourself up to suck capitalist dick if you follow to those guides, so here’s some strategies for making music that resists the clawing hands of the status quo with minimum expenditure and maximum freedom."
Electronic Beats (Video)

99 Objects

Juliana Force at the Whitney Studio Club, 1921 - Guy Pène du Bois (1884–1958)
"99 Objects is a series of in-gallery programs each focused on a single work of art from the Whitney’s collection. Speakers include artists, writers, Whitney curators and educators, and an interdisciplinary group of scholars. The collective result will be a constellation of unique perspectives on singular works of art. Programs take place daily."
Whitney - 99 Objects

Cast of 'The Warriors' to Reunite in Coney Island One Last Time

"In 1979, The Warriors chronicled the pilgrimage of a gang of leather-clad street kids as they fought their way through the Wild West of the Bronx back to their home turf out on Coney Island. At the time, the film was slammed as 'stiff' and 'sterile' by Roger Ebert, but has over the years become the quintessential cult classic — a campy take on what was already one of the city’s most violent, gang-infested eras. Now, more than three decades after the film’s theatrical release, the Warriors are once again making their way back to Brooklyn. On September 13, for one day only, members of the original cast will reunite at the Surf Pavilion on Coney Island — perhaps, they say, for the last time ever. ..."
Voice
W - The Warriors
The Warriors “Last Subway Ride Reunion” (Video)
The Warriors Will Reunite At Coney Island’s Surf Pavilion (Video)
VOICE - Remember the Warriors: Behind the Chaotic, Drug-Fueled, and Often Terrifying Making of a Cult Classic
Movies We Love: The Warriors
YouTube: The Warriors part 1 of 9

Movement Ex: Golden Age Hip Hop's Great Lost Album

"As this series has wended its meandering path through an inevitably subjective selection of albums that made their mark on your correspondent during the dog days of the 20th century, the focus has usually fallen on acknowledged classics. From time to time I've looked at lesser-hailed records by generally highly regarded artists, and on one occasion I've attempted to recontextualise an album that I felt history had been unduly generous towards. There have been a couple of times where the albums I've written about were debuts by artists who didn't exactly go on to colonise the listening public's attentions, but even in those instances the records under discussion had had an extensive and generally positive contemporary critical reception and sold in reasonable quantities by the standards of the day. ..."
The Quietus (Video)
RedefineHipHop: Movement Ex & Born Allah (Artist Profile)!!

OP Magazine / Tape Op

Wikipedia - "OP Magazine, based in Olympia, Washington, was a music fanzine published by John Foster and the Lost Music Network (leading to the title, which extends the abbreviation LMN to LMNOP) from 1979 to 1984. It was known for its diverse scope and the role it played in providing publicity to DIY musicians in the midst of the cassette culture. The magazine was co-founded by Foster, Toni Holm, Dana Squires, and David Rauh. An emphasis of the magazine was "articles about music written by musicians", and regular contributors included Victoria Glavin (Victoria Barreca), Peter Garland, Eugene Chadbourne, and Larry Polansky. When Foster ended OP after only twenty-six issues, (labeled A-Z, with topics within beginning with that issue's letter), he held a conference, offering the magazine's resources to parties interested in carrying on; two magazines became the dual successors to OP's legacy: attendant journalist David Ciaffardini went on to start Sound Choice, which published until 1992, while Scott Becker, alongside Richie Unterberger, founded Option, lasting until 1998."
Wikipedia
Tape Op
NY Times: Streaming Music Has Left Me Adrift
W - Tape Op
The Handmade Tale: by Kathleen McConnell
facebook

Softer Targets - Jenny Holzer

Lustmord Table, 1994
"Hauser & Wirth Somerset is pleased to announce ‘Softer Targets’, a major solo exhibition by Jenny Holzer, featuring both new work and a selection of significant pieces drawn from over three decades of the artist’s career. The renowned American artist is best known for using language to make art, utilising a range of techniques to employ the power of words. Since 2004, Holzer has explored the use of text from declassified and other government documents. ... Crossing the threshold into the Pigsty gallery, the viewer is confronted with two wooden tables covered in carefully displayed human bones, some with inscribed silver bands. ‘Lustmord Table’ (1994) is a work conceived in response to conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, continuing Holzer’s themes of sex, war and death. The genesis of Holzer’s ‘Lustmord’ text series was an assignment for Munich newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. Published in 1993 as colour photographs of handwritten text on skin, and a special white card printed in blood ink, it represented the artist’s reaction to the war and reports that rape was used tactically. ..."
Hauser & Wirth
Telegraph
Elephant

2008 January: Jenny Holzer, 2011 June: Jenny Holzer Installation at the Guggenheim and Protect Protect

Patrick Van Caeckenbergh

Wikipedia - "Patrick Van Caeckenbergh (born 1960) is a Belgian artist. Born in Aalst, East Flanders, he now lives and works in Sint-Kornelis-Horebeke, Belgium. Patrick Van Caeckenbergh has secluded himself from the outside world and as a hermit critically studies the world and his own life. He creates illusive collages and bizarre sculptures of figures and phenomena within an imaginary and fabulous realm. He starts with ordinary, everyday things and creates some sort of magical assemblages by restructuring and reorganizing them. More than being an artist or a philosopher, Van Caeckenbergh is a tinkerer: he manipulates, mends and experiments with his material. Instead of being created in a mechanical and technical fashion, his work comes into being within a dynamic, natural process, characterized by coincidence and obscurity. ..."
Wikipedia
Lehmann Maupin
Elephant
patrick van caeckenbergh, les bicoques (Video)