Desolation Center Film Review
Desolation Center's genealogy of anti-commercial sound takes us to West Berlin, where Einstürzende Neubauten (translation: Collapsing New Buildings) create a new musical lexicon around the use of heavy machinery. It also gives us a glimpse of the New York No Wave scene, where groups like Sonic Youth and Swans are among the first to combine...
Chronic Means Forever: Kadazia Allen-Perry Artist Interview
Despite Kadazia Allen-Perry’s youth, her cystic fibrosis has forced her to confront her own mortality. In her autobiographical documentary, Chronic Means Forever, the African-American first-time filmmaker provides an intimate exploration into the feelings of alienation and frustration which accompany her life-long diagnosis. Allen-Perry is faced daily with the perpetual struggle to balance her creativity while...Read...
A United Cultural Front, Part 1: Models of Space Preservation & Creation from Oakland & Seattle
Since the Dot-Com Boom of the 1990s, San Francisco, California, has left its hippie and counterculture roots behind to become the poster child for the affordability crisis. With that has come the slow exodus of its creative class, who, priced out, have been forced to seek cheaper alternatives. At one time called the “Detroit of...Read...
F.U.B.U. & Dani Tirrell’s Black Bois: A Live Performance Review Framed by Solange and A Seat at the Table
Photography by Naomi Ishisaka “But those are the most narrow parameters!” balks my well-meaning white friend. We are on our way to On The Boards to see dancer and choreographer Dani Tirrell’s latest ensemble piece, Black Bois, and unrelatedly, I have just been articulating my latest dating quandary. As a first-generation Chinese-American who equally straddles...Read...
Coming This Spring.
With a limited, curated collection of long-form articles. Stay tuned for details!
Farewell, REDEFINE. It’s Been Real. (2004-2016)
In the same way that my 13-year-old self once fretted over who might eventually receive my postcard collection when I passed away (morbid, I know), a younger adult me used to wonder what it might look like when this day came, and how I would be certain that it had come. But today — on...Read...
Beyond Beyond is Beyond Record Label Feature: Openings to Epiphany
Beyond Beyond Is Beyond is a record label that has become adept at curating artists for a very specific roster. These artists tend to not have the typical “Brooklyn” sound; what critics usually associate with Brooklyn tends be a trendy “indie” sound, BBiB eschews for a deeper dive into all things psychedelic rock. Born from...Read...
Eric Beltz Artist Interview: Frozen in Transcendence
Some artists are prolific, churning out project after project at a speed that leaves onlookers wondering about their superhuman pace. Some have a much slower process — painstaking in intricate detail — and Eric Beltz is one of the latter. A drawing teacher at University of Santa Barbara, Beltz is a master renderer, and his...Read...
Under The Sun Documentary Film Review (North Korea)
Oh, North Korea. The mechanics of filmmaking are lost upon you, are they not? You may have read about it — which is why you probably attempted to control the script of Under The Sun and escorted the filmmakers to a number of pre-determined filming locations — but what you probably failed to recognize is...Read...
Christopher Tignor Artist Interview: Living in Modern Tension
“I had a big manifesto of ‘no’s’ at the beginning, [of things] that I didn’t want to do.” As a composer, violinist, and multi-instrumentalist, Christopher Tignor has, since the early ’00s, led the New York City-based instrumental groups Slow Six and Wires.Under.Tension. Up until recently, however, he’d had little interest in playing solo, and figuring...Read...