Darkside EP - Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington (2011)

"Nicolas Jaar creates slow, strange, cloistered songs with keyboards and field recordings, breath, and drums. He makes synthesizers feel like natural elements, mingled with running waters, murmuring voices, and sighing winds. Jaar called his breakthrough record Space Is Only Noise, expanded on a key track to 'Space Is Only Noise if You Can See'. Titles are often red herrings, but this is the rare case where we might pause and come to understand something essential about Jaar's perspective. No one has found a good box for him yet, likely because he doesn't make a kind of music, but a way of music. ... Jaar's new EP as Darkside, a collaboration with guitarist and bassist Dave Harrington, clarifies things further, but we've got to unpack a little before we come to it. ..."
Pitchfork
W - Darkside
Darkside interview: “What are you gonna argue about if you make good music together?”
Soundcloud: A1 (Ft. Dave Harrington), Golden Arrow, Paper Trails
YouTube: A1, A2, A3

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, 2015 September: Work It (Bluewave edit)

Samuel Palmer

The Gleaning Field, c.1833
Wikipedia - "Samuel Palmer (27 January 1805 – 24 May 1881) was a British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker. He was also a prolific writer. Palmer was a key figure in Romanticism in Britain and produced visionary pastoral paintings. ... He sketched in Devonshire and Wales around this time. His peaceful vision of rural England had been disillusioned by the violent rural discontent of the early 1830s. His small financial legacy was running out and he decided to produce work more in line with public taste if he was to earn an income for himself and his wife. He was following the advice of his father-in-law. Linnell, who had earlier shown remarkable understanding of the uniqueness of William Blake's genius, was not as generous with his son-in-law, towards whom his attitude was authoritarian and often harsh. Palmer turned more to watercolour which was gaining popularity in England. ..."
Wikipedia
Tate
BBC
Guardian - Mysterious Wisdom: The Life and Work of Samuel Palmer by Rachel Campbell-Johnston

Tom Clark

"Thomas Willard Clark was born on March 1, 1941, in Chicago, Illinois. While growing up in Chicago as a young man, he served as an usher at Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park, where he saw such renowned figures of the era as Joe DiMaggio, Bobby Hull, Sugar Ray Robinson, and Harry S. Truman. His experiences among these figures are reflected in his poems, which frequently feature these and other prominent figures from the 1950s and ’60s. ... During this time, Clark began writing and publishing poetry in earnest; he cites Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams as influences. While in England, he also hitchhiked across the country with Beat poet Allen Ginsberg."
Poets
Poetry Foundation
W - Tom Clark
Tom Clark: Beyond the Pale
Jacket#9
Jacket#35
The Great One by Tom Clark
amazon: Tom Clark

Leap Before You Look - Black Mountain College 1933 - 1957

Jacob Lawrence, Watchmaker, 1946
"In 1933, John Rice founded Black Mountain College in North Carolina as an experiment in making artistic experience central to learning. Though it operated for only 24 years, this pioneering school played a significant role in fostering avant-garde art, music, dance, and poetry, and an astonishing number of important artists taught or studied there. Among the instructors were Josef and Anni Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Karen Karnes, M. C. Richards, and Willem de Kooning, and students included Ruth Asawa, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly. Leap Before You Look is a singular exploration of this legendary school and of the work of the artists who spent time there."
Yale
Sneak peek: Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933-1957
WSJ: Return to Black Mountain College
ICA Boston to Survey Black Mountain College
YouTube: Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College 1933–1957 | ICA/Boston

2010 June: Black Mountain poets, 2010 April: Letters from Camp

In a Brooklyn Chinatown, One Chance to get the Shot

"Yunghi Kim often pretended she wasn’t taking photographs when she started documenting Sunset Park’s Chinatown. She got in the habit of shooting from the hip rather than raising the camera to her eye in the bustling, if camera-shy, Brooklyn neighborhood. 'I’ve been all over the world,' said Ms. Kim, who herself lives in Brooklyn. 'I’ve traveled to 40 countries, and of all the places I’ve gone into, this one was one of the hardest.' The Chinatown in Sunset Park is in fact just one of many Chinatowns in Brooklyn. It has the distinction of being the first, with a direct connection to Manhattan’s Chinatown via the N and D express trains. ..."
New York Times

Places, Strange and Quiet - Wim Wenders

"It was while shooting his breakthrough 1984 film Paris, Texas that landmark German director Wim Wenders first felt compelled to take up photography; 27 years later, a penchant for documenting his films’ environs has fostered a canon of sparse panoramic landscapes captured on location at such far-flung locales as Brazil, Italy, Japan, Australia and Germany. Next month’s exhibition at London's Haunch of Venison Gallery, Places, Strange and Quiet, presents 40 of Wenders’s large-scale images spanning from 1983 to 2011, which we preview in the slideshow above. The product of an artistic method the filmmaker sums up as 'turning left at junctions where others turn right,' the collection features everything from a set of polka-dotted sun loungers in Palermo to a washed out seascape in Japanese island town Naoshima––all happened upon by chance, and each imbued with a feeling of profound solitude."
NOWNESS
Guardian: Wim Wenders: Places, Strange And Quiet – in pictures
amazon
YouTube: Places, Strange and Quiet

2009 November: Wings of Desire (1987), 2010 April: New German Cinema, 2010 November: The American Friend (1977), 2012 March: Paris, Texas (1984)

Nas - Illmatic (1994)

"Two decades since it hit the Earth like a comet (invasion), what more can possibly be left to say about Illmatic? Nas's debut was widely and correctly acclaimed at the time as one of the finest albums ever made, in any genre; and its lustre has only been burnished since. Boasting a concise 39-minute track listing bursting with ideas, the album arrived just as every other rapper seemed convinced the 74-minute upper limit on a CD's duration was a 'fill to here' mark that had to be reached, rather than a capacity they didn't need to get near if they had insufficient material ready to include. It has gone way beyond the impact its relatively modest sales might seem to imply: it wasn't certified platinum in the United States until a shade under eight years after its release, yet Illmatic has always been seen as something rather more than a classic rap LP. The perform-the-whole-album tour (2012), the 10th anniversary 'platinum' edition with extra tracks (2004), and this month's 20th anniversary double-disc release, finally uniting the original LP with the remixed singles, are just the tip of an iceberg of the kind of deep and broad acclaim that fills a good swathe of the distance between 'sublime' and 'ridiculous'. ..."
The Quietus - Back Down Memory Lane: Illmatic By Nas Revisited (Video)
W - Illmatic
How Filmmaker Erik Parker Is Reigniting Nas's Illmatic On Its 20th Anniversary (Video)
allmusic: Illmatic [10th Anniversary Platinum Edition]
amazon: Illmatic 10th Anniversary Platinum Edition, Illmatic XX
YouTube: Illmatic (Full Album), Illmatic XX (Full Album, Remastered) Disc: 1 [HD], Illmatic XX (Full Album, Demos, Remixes & Live Radio) Disc: 2 [HD]

Gasoline - Snap Your Neck Back (2005)

"Abstract hip hop. That’s the realm of France’s Yoann Letard b.k.a. Gasoline. Drawn into hip hop in the late 80s with the hardcaroe groups of the day such as Public Enemy and LL Cool J, Gasoline actually became inspired by the British hardcore rap scene. He may have been more in line to be the French answer to the Bomb Squad if it had not been for a meeting with Alain, owner of Pamplemousse Productions, a label known to cater more to techno and house DJs. But Alain introduced abstract hip hop to Gasoline and he took off from there. Often comapred to Japan’s DJ Krush, Gasoline emphasizes atmospheric instrumentals and crazy turntable performances."
World Hip Hop Market
amazon
facebook
BATTLE WEAPONS
YouTube: Snap Your Neck Back [FULL ALBUM]

2015 August: Gasoline - A Journey Into Abstract Hip-Hop (1998)

Mother Jones

Wikipedia - "Mother Jones (abbreviated MoJo) is an American magazine featuring investigative and breaking news reporting on politics, the environment, human rights, and culture. ... The magazine caters to the left side of politics. The magazine was named after Mary Harris Jones, known as Mother Jones, an Irish-American trade union activist and ardent opponent of child labor. The stated mission of Mother Jones is to produce revelatory journalism that in its power and reach informs and inspires a more just and democratic world. ..."
Wikipedia
Mother Jones
W - Mary Harris Jones
amazon, facebook

Abraham Cruzvillegas

The Simulteneous Promise, 2011
"The evolving and social nature of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall, which has been the stage for protest, art and recently dancing, can be compared with many of the interests of Abraham Cruzvillegas (b1968), who on 13 October 2015 will unveil the first Hyundai Commission. He predominantly creates sculptures in a process of improvisation out of an eclectic variety of materials (previous works have included wood, plastics, human hair, glass, screws, plants, ceramic, bone, cement, feathers) that result in forms that appear to be caught in a moment of suspended transformation. The pieces are interwoven with references from across the history of art, but also from social and communal creative practices. ..."
TATE: An interview with Abraham Cruzvillegas
W - Abraham Cruzvillegas
BOMB Magazine
Open Systems: Q+A with Abraham Cruzvillegas
YouTube: TateShots, The Autoconstrucción Suites
Blouin: Mexico's Abraham Cruzvillegas at The Walker

Boijeot + Renauld Update : Rain, Wind, & Inquisitive Upper West Side

"The French duo Boijeot & Renauld have logged one full week and three days of crossing Manhattan via Broadway. As you know they are embarking on an ambitious project where they intend to cross Manhattan with their living room, breakfast room and bedroom in tow. They started in Harlem on 125th Street and the last time we caught up with them they were moving down the Upper West Side and running into the inquisition of friendly and sometimes oddly parochial locals. The first few days they enjoyed typical NYC Autumn weather with crisp air and sunny days. Then things turned for the worse with the prickly hurricane season wrecking havoc somewhere offshore in The Atlantic bringing heavy winds and downpours. ..."
Brooklyn Street Art

Big League Poets - Mikhail Horowitz (1978), Baseball, I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life - Richard Grossinger, Lisa Conrad (1992)

Big League Poets - Mikhail Horowitz
"Baseball, I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life - This book includes Donald Hall, Jack Kerouac, Robert Kelly, Bill Lee, Paul Metcalf, Anne Waldman, Tom Clark, and Bernadette Mayer. The quality of the work in this anthology varies widely, but the sheer unlikeliness of a volume of neo-beat baseball poetry and new-age-inflected essays cannot help but inspire generosity. The photography is remarkable, and the photo essays of baseball stars of the 1950s and 1960s have this awe-inspiring sense of the mundane about them."
amazon
Google: Baseball, I Gave You All the Best Years of My Life
W - Mikhail Horowitz
amazon: Big League Poets - Mikhail Horowitz (1978 - City Lights Books)

The Palestinian Museum

Wikipedia - "The Palestinian Museum is a flagship project of the Welfare Association, a non-profit organization for developing humanitarian projects in Palestine. The Museum is currently under construction in Birzeit (25 km north of Jerusalem) and will be opened in Spring 2016. ... The Palestinian Museum was conceived as an institution capable of transcending political and geographical borders, and as such it aims to resist the restrictions to mobility imposed by the Israeli occupation and overcome the divisions currently threatening its body politic. Through local, regional and international partnerships and affiliate centers, the Museum will connect Palestinians from all over the world, and thus bring together a people that has been fragmented for decades. An extensive network of partnerships within historic Palestine will also allow it to act as a hub for cultural activity there. In this sense, it is one among a number of cultural projects aiming to resist the ghettoization and fragmentation of the Palestinian people."
Wikipedia
The Palestinian Museum (Video)
Organizers Prepare Palestinian Museum For 2015 Opening
“Museum without borders” to open in Palestine
YouTube: The Palestinian Museum

The Golden Palominos - The Golden Palominos (1983)

Wikipedia - "The Golden Palominos is an American musical group headed by drummer and composer Anton Fier, first formed in 1981. Aside from Fier, the Palominos membership has been wildly elastic, with only bassist Bill Laswell and guitarist Nicky Skopelitis appearing on every album. ... The group first featured Fier, singer-guitarist Arto Lindsay, saxophonist John Zorn, bass guitarist Bill Laswell and violinist/guitarist Fred Frith. Their self-titled debut album was released on New York's Celluloid Records in 1983, and featured guest appearances by bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, percussionist David Moss, turntablist M.E. Miller and others. The album has some of the first recorded turntable scratching outside of rap music, courtesy of Laswell and M.E. Miller. ..."
Wikipedia
W - The Golden Palominos (album)
YouTube: The Golden Palominos (1983) full album 43:04

William Kentridge - “More Sweetly Play the Dance” (2015)

Notes Towards a Model Opera, 2014–2015, three-channel video installation, 11 minutes 14 seconds
"Dance has always been aware of death: it lingers just off to the side of the stage, waiting for the performance to end. William Dunbar’s 1508 poem 'Lament for the Makers' describes two 'state[s] of man': 'Now dansand mirry, now like to die.' In other words, you’re either dancing or dead. Death in the poem is personified as a sort of efficient businessman, doing his best to knock people out of the dance. The more familiar character of Death—the cloaked, scythe-bearing skeleton who fulfills his duties like an overworked godly employee—was around even before Dunbar, an invention of the medieval period, which remains the most productive time in human history for imagining deathly personifications. People then seemed less resistant to death than they are now, perhaps because the threat was omnipresent: one could die from the plague, childbirth, decapitation, infection, or even of indigestion, as Martin of Aragon did at a feast in 1410. The danse macabre, or death dance, another medieval invention, was an allegorical way of resisting as well as respecting the force of death. ..."
The Paris Review: More Sweetly Play the Dance
Elephant
artforum
Marian Goodman Gallery
YouTube: More Sweetly Play the Dance (2015), If We Ever Get to Heaven (EYE 25/4/2015 - 30/8/2015)

2009 November: William Kentridge, 2011 April: The Insolent Eye: Jarry in Art, 2013 August: Stereoscope (1999)

Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York, 1897-1917

"Between 1897 and 1917, six painters, none native to the city they so provocatively and energetically portrayed, challenged the standards for suitable artistic subject matter when they took to the streets of New York and seized on images full of motion and life. Their 'prophet' was Walt Whitman, and their achievements create a vibrant record of urban growth and artistic evolution. George Bellows, William Glackens, Robert Henri, George Luks, Everett Shinn, and John Sloan were friends and collaborators, each developing their own distinct style, each capturing different slices of New York life. There are scenes of poverty and wealth, work and play, sensuality and despair. Zurier and her coauthors, Robert Snyder and Virginia Mecklenburg, bring expertise in art, social, and cultural history to this lively volume. They profile each artist and analyze his works, establishing a visual context with photographs and graphic arts of the time. Most of the paintings, which are beautifully reproduced, are rarely seen in books, and some, especially Shinn's exceptional pastels and watercolors, are a revelation. - Booklist"
amazon: Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York, 1897-1917
Google

The Map of Literature combines centuries of books and poems in one gorgeous illustration

"Romanticism serves as the bridge between realism, enlightenment, and fantasy in 17-year-old Martin Vargic's meticulously comprehensive Map of Literature. Vargic is a self-appointed illustrator of brilliant worlds made out of our own ideas. The Map of Literature, which reviews writers of drama, poetry, nonfiction, and prose works, is one of 64 and infographics featured in his new book Vargic’s Miscellany of Curious Maps: Mapping Out the Modern World (Available in US/UK). ..."
Vox

The Blue Mask - Lou Reed (1982)

"In 1982, 12 years after he left the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed released The Blue Mask, the first album where he lived up to the potential he displayed in the most groundbreaking of all American rock bands. The Blue Mask was Reed's first album after he overcame a long-standing addiction to alcohol and drugs, and it reveals a renewed focus and dedication to craft -- for the first time in years, Reed had written an entire album's worth of moving, compelling songs, and was performing them with keen skill and genuine emotional commitment. Reed was also playing electric guitar again, and with the edgy genius he summoned up on White Light/White Heat. Just as importantly, he brought Robert Quine on board as his second guitarist, giving Reed a worthy foil who at once brought great musical ideas to the table, and encouraged the bandleader to make the most of his own guitar work. ..."
allmusic
Wikipedia
Graded on a Curve:
Lou Reed, The Blue Mask
Spotify
YouTube: The Blue Mask (Live), Average Guy, The day John Kennedy died, Women, Underneath The Bottle, Waves of Fear
YouTube: The Blue Mask (Full Album)

2010 August: Heroin, 2011 June: All Tomorrow's Parties - The Velvet Underground, 2011 June: The Velvet Underground, 2012 November: Songs for Drella - Lou Reed and John Cale, 2013 October: Lou Reed (1942 - 2013), 2014 June: The Bells (1979), 2014 August: New York (1989), 2015 June: Capitol Theatre Passaic, NJ 9/25/1984.

Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1981 - Riad Sattouf

"In October, Metropolitan Books will publish the English translation of the acclaimed French graphic memoir, Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1981. The grim but funny three-volume work by Riad Sattouf, about growing up under bleak political regimes in Syria and Libya, will also, Metropolitan hopes, be the kind of breakout hit in the States that it has turned into in Europe. Sattouf is a bestselling cartoonist in France and an award-winning filmmaker. Arab of the Future, named best book of the year at the Angouleme Festival, is also delivering sales—the first volume has moved more than 200,000 copies since its release in France last May. (Volume two in will be released shortly in France.) ..."
Breakout Graphic Memoir ‘Arab of the Future’ Coming to U.S.
The Middle East Monitor
W - Riad Sattouf
amazon
Google: Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1981 - Riad Sattouf

Bob Williams - My Goose Is Cooked / Talk To Me (1958)

"Two contrasting R&B killers from this fantastic but little known vocalist! Recorded for RCA in the early '50s as the rock 'n roll era was about to dawn, 'Talk to Me' is a wicked, driving Jump Blues with cool horn riffs and even cooler jangling guitar accompaniment. The flipside 'My Goose Is Cooked' is a greasy piece of twisting Black Rock & Roll which surfaced on two obscure independents near the end of the same decade. Both are sure-fire dance floor sure-shots and very hard to source on their original issues."
Discogs
Spotify
YouTube: My Goose Is Cooked, Talk To Me

Kongo: Power and Majesty

"A landmark presentation that will radically redefine our understanding of Africa’s relationship with the West, Kongo: Power and Majesty, opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art this September, will focus on one of the continent’s most influential artistic traditions, from the earliest moment of direct engagement between African and European leaders at the end of the 15th century through the early 20th century. The creative output of Kongo artists of Central Africa will be represented by 146 works drawn from more than 50 institutional and private collections across Europe and the United States, reflecting five hundred years of encounters and shifting relations between European and Kongo leaders. From a dynamic assembly of 15 monumental power figures to elegantly carved ivories and finely woven textiles, the exhibition will explore how the talents of Central Africa’s most gifted artists were directed toward articulating a culturally distinct vernacular of power. ..."
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
NY Times: A Lost African Civilization, and a Sculpture That Tells Its Story
NY Times - Review: ‘Kongo: Power and Majesty’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Guardian - Kongo: Power and Majesty review – African treasures inspire awe at the Met
Yale Press: Kongo
YouTube: Kongo "Power and Majesty" exhibition at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Unforgotten New York: Legendary Spaces of the Twentieth Century Avant-Garde

"It’s the people that make the character of a city, but people need a place to get together if magic is going to happen. New York City is perhaps only rivalled by Paris for world-famous centres of creative expression — whether they be artist studios, hedonistic nightclubs or coffee shops that served as a magnet for intellectuals. These places, as much as the people themselves, helped to shape New York’s reputation as a leading centre of artistic and social development in the latter half of the 20th Century. Reel off the names. Studio 54. Andy Warhol’s Factory. The Gaslight Café. CBGB’s. How many of these important venues have survived the passing of time, and how many burned brightly and died, leaving only memories? Unforgotten New York: Legendary Spaces of the Twentieth Century Avant-Garde investigates the legacy of legendary New York haunts that are no more, recalling their glory days and the influential figures of the creative world who were once regular visitors. ..."
Unforgotten New York looks at the ghosts that haunt the city's most influential venues of the 20th Century...
John Short: Unforgotten NY
John Short rediscovers New York's lost creative spaces
amazon

HMS Surprise - Patrick O'Brian (1973)

Wikipedia - "HMS Surprise is the third historical novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1973. The series follows the partnership of Captain Jack Aubrey and the naval surgeon Stephen Maturin during the wars against Napoleon's France. Maturin is tortured gathering intelligence. On HMS Surprise, Aubrey and Maturin make a long voyage to bring an ambassador to Southeast Asia, rounding the southern tip of Africa. ... A convoy including Aubrey seized the ships carrying the gold deemed necessary by Spain to agree to join the war on the side of France. On the quibble that Spain had not yet entered the war, the new First Lord of the Admiralty decides the vast sum is a droit of the Crown so thus not shared out with the captors. Smaller amounts will be distributed to the captains, quite opposite to the expectations of the successful convoy. The First Lord blunders into mentioning the name of intelligence agent Stephen Maturin during the proceedings, very risky for Maturin. ..."
Wikipedia
The Patrick O'Brian Mapping Project
Aubrey-Maturin in Brief 3: H.M.S. Surprise
amazon

2009 September: Patrick O'Brian, 2013 July: Harbors and High Seas - Dean King and John B. Hattendorf

Rubble Kings – The Mixtape

"In case you missed it, Rubble Kings is a recently released documentary about the war torn gang era of NY from 1968 to 1975 that was fueled by failing race relations and an overall 'unfocused rage'. The movie focused on the events during this time period that broke down these walls and ultimately gave birth to hip-hop culture. Just this week saw the release of Rubble Kings – The Mixtape which effortlessly showcases the amazingly powerful music of this time period from all walks of life. Director Shan Nicholson enlisted the help of additional Rub homies Sammy Needlz, Rok One and DJ Tahleim to put this amazing project together and give this documentary a proper soundtrack. Listen to and download this fantastic mix below."
The Rub (Video)
NY Times: ‘Rubble Kings’ Recounts a Death That Led to a Gang Truce and Changed the Bronx (Video)
Roger Ebert
Rubble Kings
facebook (Video), twitter (Video)
YouTube: RUBBLE KINGS Official Trailer (2015) New York Gangs Documentary

Social Media Takes Television Back in Time

Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro; photograph by Steve Bonini
"... Every Thursday since the show’s premiere, most of the 'Scandal' cast and crew have used Twitter to add live commentary that runs during the broadcast. The cast’s social media presence — which, according to the ratings firm Nielsen, inspires hundreds of thousands of tweets from viewers during every broadcast — has been credited with deepening the program’s relationship with its audience. Television used to be a supremely solitary experience, for its creators and for its viewers. The writer David Foster Wallace called it 'an absolute godsend for a human subspecies that loves to watch people but hates to be watched itself.' For a time, digital technology seemed to be deepening the rift. TV has always been spatially isolating, with each of us cut off from everyone else who was watching. Then DVDs and DVRs and, later, on-demand services like Netflix added a temporal disconnection, too, making it increasingly unlikely that everyone else everywhere else was watching the same schlock at the same time. ..."
NY Times (Video)
NY Times: Social Media Takes Television Back in Time - Platforms like Twitter and Vine are helping make TV more communal, increasing the likelihood that programs are watched when they are broadcast. (Video)

Spool's Out: September's Tapes Reviewed By Tristan Bath

"... African Ghost Valley - ARA (Hylé Tapes).  This Switzerland-based, ‘Canada-European duo’ utilise samplers to craft their soundscapes, which cover a pretty wide range of tones across their debut tape ARA. ‘Cordillera’ blends pads and field recordings into a lush bed over which wonky synth lines tinkle, while opening track ‘Dunesl Ceremonies’ is a different kind of beast entirely, pulsating like an earthquake for an extended crescendo that delves deep into darkness. The title track and ten minute ‘Always Eat What You Kill’ (which takes up the entire flipside) aren’t as gripping as the opening pair of tracks, but the duo’s methodology, and the organic ways in which this music unfolds still make for a great listen. All manner of noise erupts from their samplers, and ultimately this is an impressive - albeit somewhat familiar - approach to freeform patchwork sound composition. ..."
The Quietus (Video)

The Quietus: Spool's Out (Video)

Laurent Kronental

Les Tours Aillaud, Cité Pablo Picasso, Nanterre, 2014.
"The colossal grands ensembles, or high-rise public housing projects, in Paris and its surrounding banlieues, or suburbs, were built after World War II to accommodate an increasing population of rural migrants and immigrants. Today, the deteriorating buildings are largely considered failed experiments — catalysts for the alienation of their populations and a slew of accompanying social issues. Some are being renovated and reimagined but more still are slated for demolition. In Laurent Kronental’s series, 'Souvenir d’un Futur' (Memory of a Future), the product of four years of visits to nearly a dozen of these places, the modernist concrete landscapes are made to seem impossibly huge and virtually abandoned, like something out of a dystopian fantasy. ..."
Washington Post: A poetic vision of Paris’s crumbling suburban high-rises
Laurent Kronental
W - Brutalist architecture

Richard & Linda Thompson - Rafferty's Folly (1980)

"The Thompsons were without a record contract in 1980, when Gerry Rafferty offered to finance an album for them with his 'Baker Street' producer Hugh Murphy. The sessions yielded 10 tracks – and Richard rejected them all. Eighteen months later, though, he and Linda re-recorded six of the 10 songs with producer Joe Boyd as Shoot Out The Lights. Rafferty’s Folly, then, offers an alternative version of what became the couple’s final album. It’s more polished, with more instrumentation – keyboards, Moogs, accordion, simulated strings – compared to the stark Shoot Out The Lights. Other surprises include 'Wall Of Death' and 'Don’t Renege On Our Love' with Linda on vocals, as well as a beautiful version of Sandy Denny’s 'I’m A Dreamer' (later included on Linda’s 1986 comp, Dreams Fly Away). Both Thompsons have since relaxed their attitude to the Rafferty sessions – Linda has admitted she prefers some of her vocals here. But it wasn’t bundled in with last year’s deluxe edition of Shoot Out…, and for now, it exists only in boot form, including this and Before Joe Could Pull The Trigger, which throws in demos from ’80-’82."
Uncut
Willards Wormholes (Video)
YouTube: For Shame of Doing Wrong (Rafferty's Folly)

2011 July: Shoot Out the Lights - Richard and Linda Thompson, 2012 February: I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, 2014 March: Videowest 81, 2008 January: Linda Thompson, 2011 November: Linda Thompson - Fashionably Late, 2012 December: "Paddy's Lamentation" - Linda Thompson

Post-Scarcity Anarchism - Murray Bookchin (1971)

Wikipedia - "Post-Scarcity Anarchism is a collection of essays by Murray Bookchin, first published in 1971 by Ramparts Press. Bookchin outlines the possible form anarchism might take under conditions of post-scarcity. One of Bookchin's major works, its author's radical thesis provoked controversy for being utopian in its faith in the liberatory potential of technology. Bookchin's 'post-scarcity anarchism' is an economic system based on social ecology, libertarian municipalism, and an abundance of fundamental resources. Bookchin argues that post-industrial societies have the potential to be developed into post-scarcity societies, and can thus imagine 'the fulfillment of the social and cultural potentialities latent in a technology of abundance'. ..."
Wikipedia
From Post Scarcity Anarchism, 1971: Listen, Marxist! by Murray Bookchin
[PDF] Post-Scarcity Anarchism
Murray Bookchin: social anarchism, ecology and education
Institute for Social Ecology: The Communalist Project by Murray Bookchin | September 1st, 2002

2014 September: Anarchism in America (1983), 2015 August: The Prophet Farmed: Murray Bookchin on Bernie Sanders

Citizenfour (2014)

Wikipedia - "Citizenfour is a 2014 documentary film directed by Laura Poitras, concerning Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal. ... In January 2013, Laura Poitras, an American documentary film director/producer who had been working for several years on a film about monitoring programs in the US that were the result of the September 11 attacks, receives an encrypted e-mail from a stranger who called himself, 'Citizen Four'. In it, he offers her inside information about illegal wiretapping practices of the US National Security Agency (NSA) and other intelligence agencies. In June 2013, accompanied by investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian intelligence reporter Ewen MacAskill, she travels to Hong Kong with her camera for the first meeting with the stranger, who reveals himself as Edward Snowden. After four days of interviews, on June 9, Snowden's identity is made public at his request. ..."
Wikipedia (Video)
NY Times: Intent on Defying an All-Seeing Eye (Video)
Slate: The NSA Debate We Should Be Having (Video)
New Yorker: Why “Citizenfour” Deserved Its Oscar

Disco Not Disco (2000)

"Is it disco? Well, not completely. Just look at the title -- it sounds confused. And the title was inspired by one of the groups featured here, and that group, Was (Not Was), was not disco. Most of these songs came from the post-punk era, and like the material by a lot of the bands that easily fit in that category, they blur the line between punk (in attitude) and dance (in rhythm). But only one or two of the artists here could honestly be classified as post-punk. Furthermore, how could anyone say with a straight face that a compilation with the Steve Miller Band's 17-minute long 'Macho City' is a post-punk one? So what is it then? It's Disco Not Disco, a compilation of songs suitable for the dancefloor. Less ambiguously, what binds these strange bedfellows together is the fact that they were popular on the dancefloors of New York City clubs in the late '70s and early '80s. ..."
allmusic
W - Disco Not Disco, W - Disco Not Disco 2, W - Disco Not Disco 3
Disco Not Disco: Post Punk, Electro and Leftfield Disco Classics 1974-1986
Spotify
YouTube: Yoko Ono - Walking On Thin Ice (1981 Re-Edit), Was (Not Was) - Wheel Me Out, The Bank - Tinga Lin Tingo, Eddy Grant- Time Warp (12'' VERSION), Maximum Joy - Silent Street/Silent Dub

American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915

William Merritt Chase, At the Seaside
"American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915 brings together the appealing works of two generations of American painters and presents them from a fresh point of view. The American Impressionists and Realists have been categorized as separate or even opposing groups, but, in fact, they shared significant experiences and goals—notably Parisian training, an enthusiasm for modern French painting, and a desire to translate these sources into a peculiarly American idiom. The continuities between these two groups are more impressive and the constrasts more subtle, a complexity that is highlighted by arranging the works not by artist or chronology, but by broad subject categories: the country, the city, and the home. ..."
Yale Press
amazon
LA Times - New Look at 'Modern Life' : LACMA Show Reveals Continuity of American Impressionist, Realist Painting

Tom Verlaine (1979)

"Tom Verlaine scores a solid winner on his first solo release. Not surprisingly, many of the songs here suggest the music of Television, his former band, especially in the use of vibrant and full guitar textures and frequent solo break sections in which to feature them. Verlaine's fey vocals surprisingly do not detract from the gutsiness of these numbers. Several of the songs here utilize hooky initial guitar riffs in the tradition of 1960s bands like the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, and the Beatles, most notably on 'Flash Lightning,' 'Kingdom Come,' and especially 'Grip of Love.' ... This is a top-notch solo debut that bears repeated listenings."
allmusic
W - Tom Verlaine
How Tom Verlaine is creating new waves
Spotify
YouTube: The Grip of Love, Souvenir from a dream, Kingdom come, Breakin' in My Heart, Last Night, Red Leaves, Mr.Bingo, Yonki Time

2007 November: Tom Verlaine, 2010 March: Tom Verlaine - 1, 2011 October: Warm and Cool, 2012 Nov: Little Johnny Jewel, 2012 December: Words from the Front, 2013 July: Flash Light, 2013 October: See No Evil, 2014 October: Dreamtime (1981), 2014 November: Marquee Moon (1977), January: Adventure (1978).

1001 Ways to Beat the Draft - Tuli Kupferberg and Robert Bashlow (1966)

Wikipedia - "1001 Ways to Beat the Draft is a satirical Vietnam War protest pamphlet written in 1966 by Robert Bashlow and Tuli Kupferberg. The text reels through dozens of ways that young men facing conscription during the Vietnam War could avoid service. Kupferberg leaves no societal more unscathed in this anti-war pamphlet, which is considered one of the most notable antiwar publications. Donald L. Simons, in his autobiography I Refuse: Memories of a Vietnam War Objector, wrote 'It is not possible to determine how many men successfully fooled the system, but stories of attempts, and how to do it, became part of the Sixties culture.' The most famous examples were Arlo Guthrie's classic folk song, 'Alice's Restaurant', and the book, 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft. The pamphlet was published originally by Oliver Layton Press, New York; Kupferberg also printed it under his publishing label, Birth Press, and an illustrated version from Grove Press came out in 1967."
Wikipedia
Jacket2: Tuli Kupferberg, '1001 Ways to Beat the Draft'
1001 Ways to Beat the Draft - Tuli Kupferberg and Robert Bashlow (1966)

Jimmy Reed - Big Boss Man (1960)

Wikipedia - "'Big Boss Man' is a blues song first recorded by Jimmy Reed in 1960. Unlike his most popular songs, the songwriting is credited to Luther Dixon and Al Smith. It was a hit for Reed and has been interpreted and recorded by a variety of artists, including Elvis Presley and B.B. King, who had record chart successes with the song. 'Big Boss Man' is an uptempo twelve-bar blues shuffle that features 'one of the most influential Reed grooves of all time'. It is credited to Jimmy Reed's manager, Al Smith, and Vee-Jay Records staff writer, Luther Dixon. The song is one of the few Reed hits that was written by someone other than Reed and his wife. Backing Reed, who sang and played harmonica and guitar, are Mamma Reed on vocal, Lee Baker and Lefty Bates on guitars, Willie Dixon on bass, and Earl Phillips on drums."
Wikipedia
YouTube: Big Boss Man