"As Moscow steps up its offensive in eastern Ukraine, weeks of failed attacks on a Ukrainian stronghold have left two Russian brigades in tatters, raised questions about Russia’s military tactics and renewed doubts about its ability to maintain sustained, large-scale ground assaults. The battle for the city of Vuhledar, which has been viewed as an opening move in an expected Russian spring offensive, has been playing out since the last week of January, but the scale of Moscow’s losses there is only now beginning to come into focus. Accounts from Ukrainian and Western officials, Ukrainian soldiers, captured Russian soldiers and Russian military bloggers, as well as video and satellite images, paint a picture of a faltering Russian campaign that continues to be plagued by battlefield dysfunction. ...”
Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties - Mike Davis and Jon Wiener (2020)
"Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties is a book by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener about Los Angeles in the 1960s. The authors combine archival research and personal interviews with their own experiences in the civil rights and anti-war movements to tell the social history or, as the authors term it, ‘movement history’ of this transformative decade. The book’s purpose is not to present a comprehensive history of 1960s Los Angeles but to dispel the mythology surrounding this era and replace it with the neglected history of the populist social and cultural movements that shifted power away from an entrenched elite and opened up opportunities for radical egalitarian change. ...”
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The Ascent - Larisa Shepitko (1977)
"The Ascent (Voskhozhdeniye, Larisa Shepitko, 1977) is a Second World War drama set in an unidentified area of German-occupied Belarus during the bitterly cold winter of 1942. Not a film for the faint hearted, The Ascent is a harrowing, gut-wrenching portrayal of the suffering experienced by two members of a Soviet partisan group: a stolid, grizzled, battle-hardened veteran, Rybak (Viadmir Gostyukhin), and a former schoolteacher turned soldier, the pale, slight and sickly Sotnikov (Boris Plotnikov, making his film debut). ... When The Ascent was released in 1977, it garnered Ukrainian-born director Larisa Shepitko much-deserved international recognition, winning the prestigious Golden Bear Award at the 27th Berlin International Film Festival that year. ...”
Guided Missile Killed U.S. Aid Worker in Ukraine, Video Shows
"Roughly a minute after an American paramedic, Pete Reed, and a team of aid workers began tending to a wounded civilian in the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on Feb. 2, they were attacked. Mr. Reed, a former U.S. Marine volunteering on the war’s front lines, was killed, and several of his colleagues were wounded. Volunteers at the scene initially attributed the strike to indiscriminate Russian shelling. But a frame-by-frame analysis of a video taken at the location — and shared with The New York Times — shows that Mr. Reed, who was unarmed, died in a targeted strike by a guided missile almost certainly fired by Russian troops. ...”
The mosaic in the Africa Institute in Moscow
Stand By for Failure: A Negativland Documentary
"Above is the opening of my review of the new Negativland documentary, Stand By for Failure, directed by Ryan Worsley, which is in the new issue of The Wire (the one with the Necks on the cover). I’ll post the full text in a month, once the subsequent issue is out. In the interim, some thoughts I had while writing the review that didn’t make the assigned length. ... I wanted to talk a bit more about the group in the context of American pop surreality, notably the Firesign Theater and the Church of the SubGenius (J. R. ‘Bob’ Dobbs), neither of which are mentioned in the documentary, or industrial music like Consolidated and Ministry. ... In the review I mention how some of the material will be confusing to unfamiliar viewers. I didn’t have space to include the moments of American Top 40 host Casey Kasem cursing. ...”
2009 March: Negativland, 2012 January: Negativland (sound collage), 2012 December: No Other Possibility (1989), 2013 November: No Business (2005), 2021 November: Negativland Is Still Culture Jamming and Taking on Our Masters
Love Songs: “Water Sign”
"Parliament’s ‘(You’re a Fish and I’m a) Water Sign’ is an unabashed ode to passion, to the base and the sensual, to the possibilities of love in the juiciest ways it can exist between people. The song moans into being, a beseeching follows, then there’s a bass so low you can’t possibly get under it, and finally the central question is posed: ‘Can we get down?’ In true Parliament fashion, the tune doesn’t follow a traditional verse-chorus-bridge structure; it consists of an ever-evolving chorus that departs from the lines ‘I want to be / on the seaside of love with you / let’s go swimming / the water’s fine.’ The arrangement is magnificent and the execution velvety, and the soulful, overlapping ad-libs of George Clinton, Walter ‘Junie”’Morrison, and Ron Ford are just romantic lagniappe. ...”
Mosaic in Maltezana
Ukrainian Refugees and Host Families: What Is Life Like After Being Uprooted?
"Millions of Ukrainians have left their country since Russia invaded in February 2022. In the first few weeks of the war, people in other countries rushed to offer help to those who were fleeing. Poland, which shares a border with Ukraine, has taken in the largest number of Ukrainians in Europe: Nearly 1.5 million had registered as refugees there by November. In western Europe, programs like Homes for Ukraine in Britain, #UnterkunftUkraine in Germany and Pour l’Ukraine in France were created to enable citizens to share their homes. Displaced Ukrainians are now living in countries all over Europe, as well as further afield. Many have spent months outside of their home country.As the war enters its second year, we’d like to hear from Ukrainians whose lives have been uprooted and who are now living with relatives or host families outside of Ukraine. ...”
Jurgen Klopp turned doubters into believers once already at Liverpool. Now he must do it again
"… Barely a year after reaching the Champions League final, Dortmund went on a run that saw them lose 11 of their first 19 games of the Bundesliga season. In early February they were bottom of the table, an astonishing fall from grace for Klopp and his team. Eventually, they rallied to win five and draw two of their next seven games, moving away from the relegation zone and ending up in seventh position. But after seven years, two Bundesliga titles, a German Cup, two German Super Cups, one Champions League final and more magical moments than their fans could ever have dreamed when he arrived from Mainz in 2008, Klopp told the Dortmund hierarchy in early April 2015 that he, his players and the club needed a change. …”
Can: Live in Stuttgart 1975
"... The band’s line up for this legendary 1975 performance features all four original members—Irmin Schmidt on keys, Jaki Leibezeit on drums, Michel Karoli on guitar, and Holger Czukay on bass. Can Live in Stuttgart 1975 is the first in a series of Can live concerts available in full for the first time on vinyl, CD and digital formats. Originally recorded on tape, these carefully restored live albums will comprise the entirety of each show in the format of a story with a beginning, middle and end, with Can’s performances taking on a life of their own. ...”
2011 September: Can, 2011 February: Plight & Premonition, 2011 June: Persian Love, 2013 October: Flux + Mutability - David Sylvian and Holger Czukay (1989) , 2014 June: Holger Czukay - Der Osten Ist Rot, Rome Remains Rome (1984/7), 2012 June: The Lost Tapes, 2016 March: Invaders Of The Heart - Jah Wobble (1982), 2017 April: Jah Wobble, The Edge, Holger Czukay - Snake Charmer (1983), 2017 June: The Legend Lives On… Jah Wobble In Betrayal (1980), 2017 July: Can - The Singles (2017), 2017 September: Holger Czukay (1938-2017), 2019 September: Holger Czukay - Cinema (2018), 2020 December: Future Days (Remastered) - Can (2014)
The War’s Violent Next Stage
"For much of the winter, the war in Ukraine settled into a slow-moving but exceedingly violent fight along a jagged 600-mile-long frontline in the southeast. Now, both Ukraine and Russia are poised to go on the offensive. Russia, wary of the growing Ukrainian arsenal of Western-supplied weapons, is moving first. Using tens of thousands of new conscripts in the hope of overwhelming Ukraine, its forces are attacking heavily fortified positions across bomb-scarred fields and through scorched forests in the East. They are looking for vulnerabilities, hoping to exploit gaps, and setting the stage for what Ukraine warns could be Moscow’s most ambitious campaign since the start of the war. Ukraine must now defend against the Russian assault without exhausting the resources it needs to mount an offensive of its own. Kyiv is training thousands of its own soldiers outside the country and scrambling to amass heavy weapons and ammunition, in advance of an assault meant to 'break the bones' of Russia’s army, said Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former director of Ukraine’s national security council. ...”
Both sides are preparing to attack after months of slow-moving fighting. Russia is moving first. Here’s how each side is trying to shape the critical next stage in Ukraine.
Queens Jazz Trail Map
"While New Orleans may boast that it is the ‘birthplace of jazz,’ New York City's borough of Queens has its own proud claim: it has been the ‘home of jazz,’ the residence of choice for hundreds of the music's leading players. The award-winning Queens Jazz Trail map (originally commissioned by Flushing Town Hall) shows the different neighborhoods and sites that are part of this hidden jazz history. Featuring portraits of jazz greats and drawings of their houses, this pictorial map makes a beautiful poster. The back of the map contains a short history of jazz in Queens; the addresses of homes once occupied by jazz musicians; and sites of current interest to jazz fans. ...”
Legendary NYC Graffiti Artist James Top Book Signing and Solo Exhibition at Sister’s Uptown Bookstore & Cultural Center
"Tomorrow evening, Saturday, February 4, Sister’s Uptown Bookstore & Cultural Center and James Top Productions will host a book signing of James Top‘s autobiography, My Life, along with an opening reception to ‘Life Is Sweet on Sugar Hill,’ a solo exhibition of his artwork. If you don’t already own a copy of James Top‘s memoir, this is the ideal setting to pick up a personally autographed one. James Top, My Life not only celebrates the life of one particularly passionate graffiti artist, curator, educator and activist, but it illuminates elements of the hip-hop culture that NYC birthed. Growing up in the projects in East New York, a neighborhood plagued by poverty and violence, it was all too easy to succumb to the fiercely brutal life of the streets. But James Top was determined from early on to somehow escape the ‘war zone’ that was his everyday reality and ‘make it to the top.’ ...”
Ukraine war: Borrowed time for Bakhmut as Russians close in
"The soil of Bakhmut is dusted with snow and soaked with blood. This small city in Eastern Ukraine is at the centre of an epic battle. For more than six months Russian forces have tried to claim it. Ukrainian troops have resisted, giving rise to the popular slogan here ‘Bakhmut holds.’ Now the Russians are attacking from three sides, with regular troops and fighters from the notorious Wagner mercenary group. The Russians have reached one of the main highways into the city, and are closing in on the outskirts. There is house-to-house fighting in some areas on the outskirts, with ‘hard battles for every home’ according to the Ukrainian military. It feels like Bakhmut is on borrowed time. If so, Ilya and Oleksii intend to use every second of it. ...”
Ukrainian forces are now defending the small city of Bakhmut on three fronts
Watch Conservationists Moving & Restoring an Exquisite Ancient Greek Mosaic
"Raise a glass to the city of Dion on the Eastern slopes of Mount Olympus, considered by the ancient Greeks a divine location, where Zeus held sway.And while we’re at it, raise a glass to Zeus’ son, Dionysus the god of fertility and theater, and most famously, wine: …hail to you, Dionysus, god of abundant clusters! Grant that we may come again rejoicing to this season, and from that season onwards for many a year. – The Homeric hymn to Dionysus. In the summer of 1987, archaeologists working at an excavation site near the modern village of Dion unearthed a mosaic of thousands of stone tessarae depictng ‘ivy-crowned Dionysus, the loud-crying god, splendid son of Zeus and glorious Semele,’ raising a drinking horn as he rides nude in a chariot pulled by sea panthers. ...”
Deep In The Woods (Pastoral Psychedelia & Funky Folk 1968-1975)
"... Triple CD set collecting rare cuts and cult favourites from the worlds of psychedelic, pastoral and funky folk, 1968-1975. Focusing on the outpouring of psychedelic folk flavours that emerged swiftly after the first psychedelic era. Featuring some wonderful selections from long collectable acts such as Sunforest, Mellow Candle, Trees, Heron, Trader Horne, Christine Harwood and many more. Compiled by Richard Norris (Beyond The Wizards Sleeve/The Grid), the compilation is themed around UK and Irish music from that hallowed period, and comes with a 7000 word essay and sleeve notes from the musician/producer. Celebrating the collision of traditional folk with new psychedelic studio techniques, new and exotic textures, and a developing groove. ...”
Kharkiv Got Some Breathing Space, but Still Doesn’t Breathe Easily
"KHARKIV, Ukraine — The trenchworks along the northern edge of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, have begun to erode and fill with refuse, and the soldiers who used them to defend the city from the Russian onslaught have now departed to other fronts. Today, the fortifications are manned only by mannequins in military uniforms, including one, perhaps too optimistically, wearing a blue United Nations peacekeeping helmet. All around, the blackened and pockmarked high-rise apartment buildings testify to the ferocity of the fighting that occurred here in Ukraine’s northeast in the early months of the war. But there is a stillness now, and residents are not quite sure how to interpret it.Ukrainian forces expelled the Russian military from almost the whole region in a blitz offensive in September that took much of the world by surprise. Not only did it inject new vigor into the Ukrainian war effort, but it also gave Kharkiv some breathing space. ...”
A resident towing water from a school back to his apartment this month in the battered neighborhood of Saltivka, in Kharkiv, Ukraine.
The Recommended Sampler (1982)
"Typically, record label samplers are promotional tools created for crassly commercial purposes. So the promotion of a sampler as a collector's item would seem to be something of a stretch. However, this sampler was a notable exception when it was first released in a double-LP format in 1982, and it is equally welcome 26 years later as a two-disc CD set. Recommended Records was founded in 1978 by Chris Cutler, a percussionist, composer, and founding member of avant-garde British bands Henry Cow and Art Bears. Cutler's label was a natural outgrowth of the Rock in Opposition movement, which sponsored a number of festivals in the late '70s. ...”
Top 18 Secrets of Alphabet City, Manhattan
"Alphabet City is the eclectic home of legendary jazz musicians, a candy store owned by a 90-year-old immigrant, buildings featured in Rent, and a tree where a religious movement began. Alphabet City is a neighborhood within the East Village typically defined as the blocks between Avenues A through D and East Houston Street through East 14th Street. The neighborhood was a haven for Irish immigrants in the mid-1800s, German immigrants in the latter half of the 19th century, and Puerto Ricans since the mid-1900s, with large and historic Jewish and Black populations. The neighborhood is a true mix of old and new, with some buildings dating back well over a century (including one from 1827) next to more modern developments. ...”
Ukraine Corruption Scandal Stokes Longstanding Aid Concerns in U.S.
"WASHINGTON — Since the start of the war in Ukraine, U.S. officials have watched with some anxiety as billions of American dollars flowed into the country, well aware of Kyiv’s history of political corruption and fearing that aid might be siphoned off for personal gain. The ouster of several top officials from Ukraine’s government on Tuesday following accusations of government corruption has lent those concerns a fresh urgency. Although U.S. and European officials say there is no evidence that aid to Ukraine was stolen, even the perception of fraud would threaten political support for continued wartime assistance and for the postwar reconstruction effort that Western officials envision. The allegations included reports that Ukraine’s military had agreed to pay inflated prices for food meant for its troops. ...”
Charles Simonds: Artists Space and 112 Greene Street
"Charles Simonds occupies the sweet and ethical position of giving his art away. For years now he has built tiny clay brick dwellings in the predominantly Puerto Rican neighborhood of New York’s Lower East Side to accommodate a migratory race of little people. Simonds’s mythopoesis is immediately accessible. ... But Simonds’s efforts are also a small-scale mimic of the earth workers’s moves out of the studio to build in the vast deserts out west. Simonds’s dwellings, built with a museological precision, are based on Indian pueblo architecture, particularly the centuries-abandoned cliff dwellings in Mesa Verde, Colorado. ...”
2018 October: Dwelling
Dwelling Niagra Gorge, ArtPark, Lewiston, NY 1974
This Is Darkness - Vol.1 Dark Ambient, Vol.2 Nothingness
"This Is Darkness is very proud to present to you the first of our compilations. This one has been in the works for about 8 months and has been a lengthy but exciting process. We are presenting you with 66 exclusive tracks, coming in at 7+ hours of music. This is a combination of some well known artists and some that are up & coming.”
One year in, both Ukraine and Russia still think they can win
"After weeks of very public debate, the United States and Germany are committing advanced tanks to Ukraine — something Kyiv has long wanted, and which it sees as vital as Ukrainian forces continue to try to reclaim territory from Russia. A United States senior administration official confirmed Wednesday that the US will send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, on top of the infantry fighting and armored combat vehicles it committed earlier this month. Germany, too, finally pledged to provide tanks, an initial company of 14 Leopard 2s, and Berlin will allow other countries to send their stocks of Leopards. ... And at the nearly one-year mark, the Ukraine war is in something of a holding pattern: a grinding, attritional battle that is expending ammunition and human effort for both sides, and re-entrenchment in the areas Ukraine and Russia currently hold. ...”
Soldiers prepare to head out near the Bakhmut front lines with Russia on January 22, 2023 in Chasov Yar, Ukraine.
Andrei Tarkovsky - Stalker (1979)
"Andrei Tarkovsky’s final Soviet feature is a metaphysical journey through an enigmatic postapocalyptic landscape, and a rarefied cinematic experience like no other. A hired guide—the Stalker—leads a writer and a professor into the heart of the Zone, the restricted site of a long-ago disaster, where the three men eventually zero in on the Room, a place rumored to fulfill one’s most deeply held desires. Adapting a science-fiction novel by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Tarkovsky created an immersive world with a wealth of material detail and a sense of organic atmosphere. A religious allegory, a reflection of contemporaneous political anxieties, a meditation on film itself—Stalker envelops the viewer by opening up a multitude of possible meanings. ...”
A Unique Perspective on the Making of ‘Stalker’: The Testimony of a Mechanic Toiling Away under Tarkovsky’s Guidance (Video)
2012 May: Solaris, 2018 October: Andrei Rublev (1966), 2020 December: Bruegel as Cinema, 2022 December: Mirror (1975)
Hania Rani – Esja (2019)
"... The book contains specially selected compositions, art photography, as well as a digital pass to download audio copies of the titles coming from her debut album Esja. It has been manufactured out of high-quality paper and cardboard, sewn together in a way that ensures its stable placement on a piano sheet music stand of any music lover that chooses to read it. The scores include the 10 tracks from the album, as well as 5 other, yet unpublished, compositions. This time, Hania envisioned the book as more than a mere set of sheets: she wanted it to be an album that tells a wider story of places, events and emotions that have accompanied her creative process. ...”
2021 April: Live from Studio S2 (2021), 2022 January: Hania Rani, 2022 March: Music for Film and Theatre (2021)
In Moscow, a Quiet Antiwar Protest With Flowers and Plush Toys
"Police buses seem ubiquitous in Moscow since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February, watching over much of the city center, including a statue of one of Ukraine’s most famous poets that has become a popular spot for a silent but emotional outpouring of antiwar sentiment. Since a Russian missile struck a residential building in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro nine days ago, killing 46 and injuring 80 others, Muscovites have been coming to lay flowers — along with plush toys and photographs of the destroyed building — at the feet of the statue of Lesya Ukrainka, a Ukrainian poet and playwright who lived during the last decades of the Russian Empire. ...”
Laying flowers at the statue of the Ukrainian poet and writer Lesya Ukrainka in Moscow, in memoriam to those killed by a Russian missile strike in Dnipro, Ukraine. this month.
A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul (1979)
"Much like its eponymous waterway, V.S. Naipaul’s A Bend in the River meanders steadily through the dark reality of postcolonial Africa, alternately depicting minimalist beauty and frightening tension. Like Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, subtle prose reveals the timelessness of the continent’s remote corners alongside human corruptibility. Yet, Naipaul moves his narrative closer in time to contemporary Africa, demonstrating that the horrifying legacies of colonialism did not end with Europe’s retreat. In A Bend in the River, the struggle to establish national identities in the wake of Western imperialism takes center stage, with ‘black men assuming the lies of white men’ in order to govern. ...”
What the figures on the doors of a Third Avenue Gap store tell us about the building
"The front doors caught my eye first. Heavy and bronze, these two doors at the entrance of the Gap store at Third Avenue and 85th Street feature intricate carvings and curious allegorical figures reminiscent of ancient Greece. On one door, a woman balances a locomotive engine in her left hand and grips a caduceus in the right. Behind her is a sailing ship, and beside her head are the words ‘commerce and industry.’ The man on the opposite door holds a staff with a beehive at the top. In his other hand is a key, and at his feet a cornucopia. ‘Finance and savings’ is inscribed at his shoulder. ...”
A Brutal New Phase of Putin’s Terrible War in Ukraine
"The war in Ukraine has entered a new, more deadly and fateful phase, and the one man who can stop it, Vladimir Putin, has shown no signs that he will do so. After 11 months during which Ukraine has won repeated and decisive victories against Russian forces, clawed back some of its lands and cities and withstood lethal assaults on its infrastructure, the war is at a stalemate. Still, the fighting rages on, including a ferocious battle for the city of Bakhmut in the eastern Donetsk region. Cruel, seemingly random Russian missile strikes at civilian targets have become a regular horror: On Jan. 14, a Russian missile struck an apartment building in Dnipro, in central Ukraine. Among the at least 40 dead were small children, a pregnant woman and a 15-year-old dancer. ...”
POLITICO - ‘We need action’: Time runs out for Ukraine as allied countries debate sending tanks (Video)
“The Wizard of the Kremlin,” on display in a Paris bookstore on Monday, has sold more than 400,000 copies.
Spain and the Hispanic World
"Discover the rich story of Spanish and Hispanic art and culture from the ancient world to the early 20th century through over 150 fascinating works: from masterpieces by El Greco, Zurbarán, Velázquez and Goya to sculptures, paintings, silk textiles, ceramics, lustreware, silverwork, precious jewellery, maps, drawings, illuminated manuscripts and stunning decorative lacquerware from Latin America. ...”
JoaquÃn Sorolla, Vision of Spain, 1912-13.
The fantastic history of fuji music
"Tracing the history of fuji music is going headfirst into the history and music culture of Nigeria itself. It has its origins in the Yoruba-Muslim communities of Nigeria’s South-West, evolving from ‘were’ played during the seasonal Ramadan festivals, and made its break with some clever slight of hand by the legend Ayinde Barrister, dubbing his sound ‘fuji’ after seeing an airport ad for Japan’s famous mountain. Over the years, between oil booms and military regimes, as the genre slowly introduced the harmonica, flute, keyboard and saxophone, many schools of fuji emerged, often with someone at the helm proclaiming themselves the next king, boss and overall fuji superstar. ...”
Moscow Details Plan to Boost Military as Ukraine Warns of Fresh Russian Offensive
"KYIV, Ukraine—Russia detailed its plans to boost the size of its military as Ukraine warned that Moscow may be preparing an offensive and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called on Western allies to accelerate the provision of arms to the country. On Tuesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu provided a timetable for the troop increase the Kremlin outlined in December following a string of setbacks on the battlefield and criticism from Russian nationalists. The country’s army will increase to 1.5 million military personnel between 2023 and 2026—compared with its current level of 1.15 million and one million at the start of 2022, Mr. Shoigu said, according to state newswire TASS. ...”
Ukrainian soldiers fired at Russian positions in eastern Ukraine.
