“Unlike Leland, Minutes of Sleep, is less a requiem, and more a conceptual look at the difficulties addressing grief within a closed system of representation, and moreover, the further difficulty of the push and pull between private and public displays of mourning.” - Francis Harris

Talk about perfection in voyeurism! This music video for Shy Girls “Voyeur’s Gaze”, directed by Tony Lowe and featuring Chez Deep drag collective’s Bailey Stiles, is a one-take that’s all about the setting. Drawing inspiration from Russian webcam rooms, its aesthetic combines those cyber antics with the lives and times of many a boy-crazy teenage girl, to create a hazy wonderland full of stuffed animals and soft pastels. Read on, as Tony Lowe and Bailey Stiles give some words about self-love and empowerment.

Spectral Hypnosis is a recurring series, featuring mesmerizing songs for one to lose sense of time and space, mind and body. This post features the music video for Factory Floor’s “How Do You Say” as well as new tracks from The Notwist, David Douglas, and Throwing Snow, featuring Adda Kaleh.

Negative space, primary colors, and subtly pixelated forms immediately catch viewers in the early scenes of “No Excuse”. As time progresses, the video increases in complexity and speed, and as it zooms out to show the complete scene, one recognizes human beings, twirling and contorting before a blue screen backdrop. With slow-motion as their most powerful ally, they seem like artifacts floating in infinite space, and director Melissa Matos and TRUSST manage to utilize stereotypical music video tropes without it ever becoming tired. Jacques Greene’s Phantom Vibrate EP comes out April 28th on LuckyMe.

Lucky me; I’ve managed to see the French electro-surf-punk band La Femme twice in the past month! Touring the States following the release of their insane new 15-track deluxe album, Psycho Tropical Berlin, La Femme are a Parisian six-piece that encompass the city’s stereotypes in a most playful manner, while riffing equally off other cultural stereotypes. One finds this most apparent in their fashion sense, which sometimes includes the donning of cowboy hats and American flags right alongside dainty neck scarves and tourist t-shirts of Paris. When I caught them in Austin during SXSW 2014, La Femme were exceptionally stylish and fresh-faced, rocking a 1:00am slot at The Iron Bear, a gay bar for bears. That particular set was almost…

There has always been a divide between the daytime and the night — a war between Saturday night and the Sunday morning penitents. Since the beginning of time, people have gathered in caves and juke joints and space stations to dance and dream and make believe in dim light. It makes it hard to wake up in the morning, and do what we’re told, but it’s important. We can’t ALL fall in line — what a boring, beige reality! On this Sunday night, near the bowels of industrial SE Portland, four very different and special noisemakers gathered to lead a black-clad audience into four very different worlds. From tropical fantasy, to a tent in Marco Polo’s desert, to a freeway…