Maria Minerva
Bless EP
100% Silk (2013)

On her website, Maria Minerva (née Juur) tells us that once she left home, it was easy to do it again. Indeed, for her, home is wherever she lays her head and finds a wifi password. This impermanence and transience hovers above her music like a ghost, belied by the Euro disco and dance pop stylings that she deploys. It is this combination, of the fugitive and the substantial, of the common and the uncommon, that gives her music both its reach and dynamism.

Born in Estonia, the tiny northeastern European state hemmed in by the cold waters of the Baltic and Russia, in 1988, Juur’s creativity is clearly shaped, in part, by her early experiences in the dying days of the Soviet Union. Growing up on a “model” Soviet-era concrete suburb, her web biography recalls heavy Russian influences, hated trolley buses, shitty TV, lycra, and, crucially, badly-produced 1990s Euro disco.

Juur’s music harnesses the melodic imagery of Euro disco, with its relentlessly vacuous tunes and dry upbeat rhythms, and subtly distorts and disconnects it before combining the result with sly vocal dissonance. In this way, her music deliberately inhabits a hinterland that is between destinations, using this to powerful artistic effect.

The stand out track on the EP, “Black Magick”, with its deadpan and detuned vocals delivered atop the aforementioned awkward melodic imagery, typifies the knowingly innocent, alienated and strangely plaintive attitude of the female protagonist present in all these songs. As this track evolves, the lyrics cleverly mutate, from an opening few lines that could be found in any mainstream pop song, via subtle shifts of stance and ground, to a scenario and meaning that is darker and more complex in nature.

MARIA MINERVA – BLESS EP ALBUM REVIEW CONTINUES BELOW

Allied to her relationship with the land of her past, there is also an undoubted arts and academic context to Maria Minerva’s music, with her background at Goldsmiths College in London. In her earlier album, Cabaret Cixous, her reference to Hélène Cixous, the feminist philosopher and author of “The Laugh of the Medusa”, sheds a light on her interest in feminist philosophy and literary criticism. This framework is perhaps also reflected in her decision to adopt the nomme de guerre Minerva (but that’s a whole other can of worms). (Editor’s note: See extended info panel below for expansion on the content in this paragraph.)

Juur is constantly moving forwards. Her career in music only began in 2011 when she signed to the renowned L.A.-based label Not Not Fun. Since then, there have been a string of releases and an extensive itinerary of tours across Europe, the USA, and Australia, including an appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Now based permanently in America and in pursuit of a green card, she is involved with the esteemed UCB Theatre, whose stellar alumni includes Robin Williams and Tina Fey.

Strangely though, for an artist who has embraced the USA, it is within the European literary and philosophical traditions that Juur’s work seems to find its home. It is perhaps at odds with the philosophical outlook of her music, but I find echoes in her output of that other great émigré of forgetting, whose work in literature relied on displacement, exile and connection, Milan Kundera.

This is a great EP full of that strange but effective hybridized music the New York Times called “dance pop made sallow and creepy”. It is dark and dirty and laced with a sleepy sexiness that is made all the more disturbing because of the sweetness and innocence that also pervades. Maria Minerva is destined for greatness.

Exploring Maria Minerva’s Artistic Framework
Via The Feminist Philosophy Of Hélène Cixous
& The Greek Mythology Of Minerva And Medusa

 

There is undoubtedly an artistic and indeed literary framework to the music of Maria Minerva/Juur, and this is to be found in many aspects of her oeuvre. As a graduate of Goldsmiths College in London, her output reflects an interest in the work of Hélène Cixous, the French feminist writer, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. The feminist context is clear, but perhaps Minerva/Juur sees a kinship with Cixous, not only as a woman struggling against a world where, as Cixous says, an apartheid exists and women are the dark heart, but also as an émigré. The “belonging constituted of exclusion and nonbelonging” that Cixous and Derrida — both French Jews in Algeria — experienced, is perhaps also experienced by Juur. Juur, who grew up in an area of her country that was affected by a heavy Russian influence, may have been alienated by the impact of this ruling foreign occupier who sought to change both the landscape and the culture of her homeland. It is possible that the Russification of Estonia is where the dislocation that led Juur to moving from place to place, finding a home wherever her head could lay, began.

Hélène Cixous

Read “The Laugh of the Medusa”

Purchase “The Laugh of the Medusa” on Amazon

Minerva

In her major essay, “The Laugh of the Medusa”, Cixous offers a kind of manifesto to disempowered womanhood, calling them to create a new paradigm of writing, an “écriture féminine” — a paradigm that could equally apply to other forms of creativity. Cixous celebrates the differences and “infinite richness” of the individual female constitutions and the unclassifiable nature of female sexuality. For Cixous “women’s imaginary is inexhaustible”, however, she states, this great font of unbounded creativity is suppressed, carried out furtively and in small measure, guiltily, like masturbation, subject to the obsequious relayers of imperative laid down by an economy that works against womanhood. In the work of Juur we find, perhaps, a knowing take on that furtive and guilty secret in the innocent voice that is shot through with sleazy and suggestive sleepiness. Juur has, after all, responded to the call but in a manner only possibly in the early Twenty First Century, some thirty eight years after Laugh of the Medusa was written.

Juur’s choice of name, Minerva, and the interplay between the characters of the myths of Medusa and Minerva is significant. Medusa was a beautiful and much-desired young woman with magnificent long hair. The youngest of the three daughters of those titans of the sea, Phorcys and Ceto, she was the most beautiful but also the only one to be mortal. These three sisters, Medusa, Stheno and Euryale, were said to have great wisdom and served as priestesses to the virgin goddess of wisdom, Athena.

Minerva was the Roman goddess of wisdom, magic and the arts and defense. The connection between Minerva and Medusa is one of mutating history and co-option, with the Roman’s equating Minerva with Athena. According to the late version of the myth by Ovid, Athena is the goddess who, on witnessing the rape of Medusa by Poseidon, punished Medusa by transforming her beautiful hair into snakes and making her face so ugly it would turn those who looked at it to stone. In this version of the myth, the victim is the transgressor and, in the eyes of Perseus, is rightly punished by Minerva (Athena). Perseus then beheads the mortal Medusa.

Juur appears to be inverting the narrative imagery evoked by Cixous, deliberately and ironically placing herself on the side of the goddess who judged and then harshly punished the innocent victim of rape, the mortal woman that was Medusa. In doing this, she throws the dialogue into sharper relief, defining, perhaps even more clearly, through her clever and imaginative use of the the idiom, the current and ongoing plight of womanhood. For Cixous “woman’s imaginary is inexhaustible” (sic), “their stream of phantasms is incredible”. Through her persona Minerva, Juur has not only absorbed and acknowledged this tradition, but reinterpreted it for the difficult and dangerously ambiguous times in which we live.

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Maria Minerva – Bless EP Album Review & Exploring Her Artistic Framework Via Mythology And Feminist Philosophy

Converge

Few bands have remained as relevant and impossible to duplicate as the Massachusetts based metalcore kings Converge. Ignoring the insane impact that each member of the band has had in all aspects of the music industry — from record label owning and producing to cover designing and playing in every band possible — it isn’t a very far stretch to call Converge one of the more important heavy bands to exist in the past 20 years. All We Love We Leave is the perfect example of Converge’s ability to develop something new while still maintaining the familiarity of the whole assault of sound.

See full post for tour dates.

CONVERGE TOUR DATES
10/15: Columbus, OH @ Skully’s w/ Torche, Kvelertak, and more
10/16: Detroit, MI @ Majestic Theatre w/ Torche, Kvelertak, and more
10/18: Chicago, IL @ Metro w/ Torche, Kvelertak, and more
10/19: Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock Social Club w/ Torche, Kvelertak, and more
10/20: Lawrence, KS @ Granada Theatre w/ Torche, Kvelertak, Coalesce, and more
10/21: Denver, CO @ Marquis Theatre w/ Torche, Kvelertak, and more
10/22: Salt Lake City, UT @ Club Sound w/ Torche, Kvelertak, and more
10/24: Seattle, WA @ El Corazon w/ Torche, Kvelertak, Nails, and more
10/25: Portland, OR @ Branx w/ Torche, Kvelertak, Nails, and more
10/26: San Francisco, CA @ Slim’s w/ Torche, Kvelertak, Nails, and more
10/27: Pomona, CA @ Glasshouse w/ Torche, Kvelertak, Nails, and more
10/28: Los Angeles, CA @ EchoPlex w/ Torche, Kvelertak, Nails, and more
10/30: Mesa, AZ @ The Nile w/ Torche, Kvelertak, Nails, and more
11/01: Dallas, TX @ Club Dada w/ Torche, Kvelertak, and more
11/02: Austin, TX @ Fun Fun Fun Festival w/ Torche, Kvelertak, and more
11/03: Houston, TX @ Fitzgerald’s w/ Torche, Kvelertak, and more
11/04: Little Rock, AR @ Downtown Music w/ Torche, Kvelertak, and more
11/05: Birmingham, AL @ Zydece w/ Torche, Kvelertak, and more
11/06: Nashville, TN @ Exit/In w/ Torche, Kvelertak, Whips/Chains, and more
11/07: Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade w/ Torche, Kvelertak, Whips/Chains, and more
11/08: Durham, NC @ Motoroco Music Hall w/ Torche, Kvelertak, Whips/Chains, and more
11/09: Philly, PA @ Union Transfer w/ Torche, Kvelertak, Whips/Chains, and more
11/10: Asbury Park, NJ @ Stone Pony w/ Torche, Kvelertak, & Whips/Chains
11/11: NYC, NY @ Highline Ballroom w/ Torche, Kvelertak, Whips/Chains, and more
11/12: Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair w/ Torche, Kvelertak, Whips/Chains, and more

Pig Destroyer

Sometimes music has no place in politics. But when politicians threaten to cut funding to public broadcasting, why then we just need to rebel. Because without NPR, we wouldn’t have a full stream of Pig Destroyer’s fantastic new album Book Burner due out on Oct.ober 23.

Courtesy of NPR’s First Listen, you can go listen to the delightfully violent tales the grindcore band creates.

With 19 tracks clocking in at 32 minutes, Pig Destroyer’s latest effort in five years has something for everyone — if everyone loves grindcore. NPR sums up the themes of the album with the following quote:

In some editions, Book Burner comes with a short story by Hayes called The Atheist. To sum up it briefly, in a not-too-distant Fahrenheit 451/Mad Max future, a heavy-handed Christian theocracy burns libraries to the ground and crucifies heretics. The story is gruesome, but also darkly comic — much like Hayes’ lyrics. While the “book burners” provide the album and song title, Hayes says the themes don’t cross over, but it’s hard not to draw more politically charged lines between the two. Sure, the stark, dangerous narratives still paint more in a minute than most do in an entire album or novel. (The closing line to “Baltimore Strangler” is particularly chilling: “I just wanted to hold her like an anaconda.”) But Book Burner seems like an internal struggle for Hayes: an attempt to make sense of the ugly chaos that inspires unsound logic.

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Aural Devastation: Converge, Pig Destroyer

SEE FULL PERFORMANCE REVIEW

Individual auditory aspects of our environment rise to the fore as his voice ushers each one in; the breathes and coughs, the electric hum of the room, the turning of pages, the zipping of bags. His rhythm and cadence render the ambient noise an orchestrated whole. He prompts us to observe the people around us, the texts before us, the blood in our fingers, the skin of our hands. We follow instructions to touch particular words. He takes us through miscellaneous paragraphs at varying speeds. We engage in conceptual literary battle; pressing on a page until our hands shake and fighting with voices that read against us in our ears. We hold the book upside down and try to make sense of it, remembering the overwhelming difficulty of learning how to read.

I lose my way, my mind fatigued from focusing. I get disoriented in the blur of sound happening around me mixed with the audio coming through the headphones. Are all of those pages really being turned right now or is that recorded?

I do my best to follow everything because I am accountable to my partner, responsible for his experience. We move together through the intertwining choreography of complementary instructions playing through our respective headphones. I am told to point to a word and hold my finger frozen on the page. He appears to be instructed to switch out the the book that lies below my hand. We build the experience together, each a performer and audience for the other, wavering in and out of presence and awareness, like normal life but more.

In retrospect, it is the moment after we pretended to read upside down that I keep coming back to — the part when we turned the books right-side up again and attempted to see the letters in an abstract way, not as symbols that convey meaning. It’s mysterious just how impossible it would be to divorce ourselves from the ability to understand text. Quiet Volume makes you consider how deeply ingrained the visual marks of letters are in our minds.

Multnomah County Central Library
801 SW 10th Avenue, Portland, OR 97205
$8 Members / $10 General / All Ages

Wednesday, September 12th, 11:20-7:40pm (Starts every 20 minutes.)
Thursday, September 13th, 11:20-3:40pm (Starts every 20 minutes.)
Friday, September 14th, 11:20-3:40pm (Starts every 20 minutes.)
Saturday, September 15th, 11:20-3:40pm (Starts every 20 minutes.)
Sunday, September 16th, 12:20-3:40pm (Starts every 20 minutes.)

Ω

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TBA Festival 2012: Ant Hampton & Tim Etchells – The Quiet Volume Performance Review

Vote for Mysticism & Spirituality in Modern Music: REDEFINE magazine’s SXSW 2013 Panel Download Hi-Res Infographic

Vote for Mysticism & Spirituality in Modern Music: REDEFINE magazine’s SXSW 2013 Panel Download Hi-Res Infographic Explore all articles related to influential thinkers

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Alexis Arnold Interview

What first inspired you to work with Borax crystals?

While I have had a fascination with crystals and minerals since I was little, their inclusion in my work happened somewhat by chance. About three years ago, I was force-rusting a metal sculpture using vinegar, salt, and soda ash when I noticed crystals growing on the concrete floor of my studio. Since I was working with concrete at the time, I decided to try and replicate the crystal growth with intention on the concrete and other objects. In addition to my aesthetic fascination with them, the crystals related conceptually to the project I was creating at that moment.

The conceptual and aesthetic functions of the crystals have morphed with each project since. Time (and its physical/visual presence) is an ever-present concept in my work, as well as a large factor in crystal growth. Crystals found in nature generally form over thousands of years. In my studio, I get to play with nature and adjust its time frame.

I mainly use Borax and Epsom salt crystals. This is because of their relatively cheap availability and non-toxicity.
The Crystallized Book Series was prompted by continuously finding boxes of discarded books/magazines, the onset of e-books, and by the recent disappearance of bookstores. Furthermore, I had been growing crystals on hard objects and was interested in seeing the effect of the crystal growth on malleable objects.

Was there a method or goal behind your choice of literature or the ways in they were presented that goes beyond the aesthetics? If so, what is it?

I try to incorporate mostly found books over buying specific titles, but select amongst them for the most conceptually and/or aesthetically appropriate. If I desire a specific title, I will buy it used. For example, the Bible and The Crystal World were purchased for particular conceptual reasons. I take titles from my own library collection as well. I choose certain books, such as The Catcher in the Rye, for the nostalgia people have for them. I have used a number of children’s books for this reason as well. One of my favorite found books for its conceptual tie to the project is a copy of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea published through the Classics to Grow On series. Dictionaries, encycolpedias, and phonebooks are some of the more commonly discarded books these days, hence they find their way into my work.

The series addresses the materiality of the book vs the text/content of the book. The crystals remove the text and transform the books into aesthetic, non-functional objects. The books, now frozen with heavy crystal growth, have become artifacts or geologic specimens laden with the history of time, use, and nostalgia. The stories included in books often exist in our memories while the book remains a spine on a shelf. I love how just seeing a book can conjure the story contained within. With the addition of the crystal growth, the story within the book remains in memory, but new stories can be created by viewers as well. The series also illustrates one of the things I love about books or magazines, which is the lingering presence of the reader through the bent and folded pages longer after the book has been read.

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY‘S CRIME AND PUNISHMENT (Фёдор Миха́йлович Достое́вский – Преступлéние и наказáние)

Was there anything you learned about the structures of the materials you used that seemed particularly noteworthy or fascinating?

I enjoy how malleable books become when submerged in hot water, even hard covers. This allows me to transform the books into new shapes that reference geologic specimens or artifacts.

I find the structure of crystals fascinating. Each type of crystal shares the same molecular formula that repeats in a three-dimensional pattern, yet they present themselves in a myriad of shapes and sizes depending upon impurities, rates of formation, and environment.

Are there by chance any quotes or passages during your creation of these borax-crystallized books that seemed appropriate to the project itself?

While no particular passages or quote come to mind, I came across the book, The Crystal World, by J.G. Ballard while creating this series. The book is about a mysterious disease that crystallizes everything in its path from plant to animal to man, and certainly holds some inspiration for me.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

This may sound odd, but I wanted to let you know I am a woman. I recently had an article written for a Brazilian newspaper (O Globo) where I was referred to as a man, so I have learned it’s best to clarify this.

For the remainder of 2012, Alexis Arnold has work showing in various San Francisco galleries. See it at Alter Space through August 19th and Gallery Hijinks through July 28th. She will be showing collages and Salon Dehon for the month of August, as well as large crystallized book sculptures at Root Division Biblio Babel show in November.

ALEXIS ARNOLD’S PAST OF OUR FUTURES SERIES
“The Past of Our Futures was an installation at Fort Mason as part of the San Francisco Art Institute’s 2010 MFA exhibition, Vernissage. The installation takes imagery from the domestic sphere, such as a set dinner table, to explore the human and natural process convergences and divergences through a narrative impetus tied to family, evolution, time, absence, and memory. In addition to referencing past memories, the work invokes a sense of a future post-human fall to environmental entropy.”

www.alexisarnold.com

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July 12th, 2012 – Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile

‘Philosophy have I digested,
The whole of Law and Medicine,
From each of its secrets I have wrested,
Theology, alas, thrown in.
Poor fool, with all this sweated lore,
I stand no wiser than I was before.’
– Faust, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

BUY: FAUST

Agalloch have just released the longest song they have ever recorded — the 21-minute “Faustian Echoes” based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s literary masterpiece Faust — and on this tour, they’ve promised to do something equally special. In each city, Agalloch have hand-selected local acts to help open their show — and in the times when no fitting band was found, the band decided to play an even longer set. In Seattle, Eight Bells and Taurus opened; Eight Bells with their ambient and black metal-driven sounds, and Taurus with a frightful drone-sludge ambiance about them. But the show was all about Agalloch the whole time.

There are few bands that have received as much consistently critical acclaim as Agalloch does. The band’s last full-length, Marrow of the Spirit, landed all over top albums of 2010 lists. With a solid two-hour chunk set aside for Agalloch’s interesting take on folk and black metal, the band played an exhaustive set list from all over their catalog. As a general rule of thumb, metal bands are tight live, and Agalloch is no different. But the gentlemen were consummate professionals as they played right through constant monitor issues without skipping a beat — a tough bout considering there are a lot of beats in every one of their eight-minute songs.

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MUSIC VIDEO AND INTERVIEW CONTINUED BELOW

Directed by Gabriele Ottino and produced by Superbudda Studio

How did the collaboration form and how closely did you guys work together on it?
Come è nata la vostra collaborazione e quanto strettamente avete lavorato al progetto?

Gabriele Ottino (Director):
La collaborazione è nata per il semplice fatto che io e Davide siamo prima di tutto compagni musicali in diverse band e di studio quasi da una decina d anni. Questo è però il primo effettivo lavoro nel quale i ruoli si sono definiti maggiormente. Davide mi ha chiesto di realizzarli il videoclip di un brano del suo primo disco solista dal titolo “1984″. Partendo dal concept, che vuole ogni traccia abbinata ad un evento storico verificatosi tra il 1° e il 6° giugno nel corso della storia umana, ho iniziato a selezionare una serie di eventi relativi all’anno 1984. In seguito ho trovato tutte le immagini di riferimento e mi sono confrontato per l ultima volta con Davide prima di passare alla parte di editing. Non avevo un’idea ben precisa su come sarebbe apparso il video finito. L’unica cosa che sapevo è che volevo che le immagini si scomponessero e ricomponessero come il “gioco dei 15″ (Fifteen puzzle) e che delle animazioni con i pixel dessero colore e movimento a questa specie di slideshow fotografica alterata. Il risultato ottenuto assomigliava più ad un visual acido che ad un videoclip vero e proprio. Abbiamo deciso allora io e Davide di girare ancora qualche scena “reale” principalmente per rendere tutto il piu fruibile possibile.Questa scelta ha portato il video verso una conclusione sia pratica che concettuale. L’estetica della realtà all interno della quale Davide accoglie informazioni digitali relative al passato viene invasa da glitch visivi, errori e pixel quasi a suggerire un passaggio tra la realtà vissuta e la banca dati di una memoria ausiliaria.

Davide Tomat (Director):
Gabriele Ottino è il mio socio di studio e di progetti musicali da oltre cinque anni. Lavoriamo insieme musicalmente, per il teatro, per il sound design e passiamo molto tempo a stretto contatto. Abbiamo anche vissuto insieme nel nostro studio per più di un anno e mezzo e quindi tutto ciò che facciamo, anche progetti solisti in qualche modo coinvolgono l’un l’altro. Gabriele è un ottimo musicista, ma prima di tutto un vero artista, un video maker molto intelligente e sensibile, ha realizzato parecchi video d’arte autonomamente e video, visuals e teaser per le band e progetti che condividiamo insieme (NAMB / NIAGARA / GEMINI EXCERPT). E’ stato quindi naturale chiedere a Gabriele di realizzare il mio primo video anche perchè stavamo ragionando insieme ai visuals da utilizzare per il mio live.

Pixel and glitch art sometimes loses quality in smaller video formats. Was the decision to go with larger glitch “pixels” in order to combat this technical problem, or was it purely for aesthetic reasons?
Pixel e glitch spesso perdono di definizione nella conversione dei video in bassa qualità .La decisione di usare pixel più grandi è stata dettata dall’esigenza di combattere questo problema tecnico o è stata una pura scelta estetica?

Gabriele Ottino (Director):
È stata una scelta sia concettuale che estetica. È una specie di mix tra l estetica sonora e visiva del disco ed il mio amore innato per l’errore digitale il quale ricerco da quando ho iniziato a lavorare con il video. Tutto il resto è caos organizzato che a distanza di mesi dalla sua realizzazione continua ad autogenerare significati.

Davide Tomat (Musician):
E’ stata la coerenza con l’artwork dell’ album a suggerirci di utilizzare la tecnica dei pixel grossolani nel video. L’artwork di 01-09JUNE è basato su un trattamento di pixel di immagini che rappresentano la diffrazione ordinata di raggi X aventi tutti la stessa energia per orpera di un campione cristallino di DNA. L’idea di utilizzare questo tipo di immagini è partita da un libro che ho scoperto per la prima volta a 10 anni e che si chiama “Potenze di Dieci”e fornisce un interessante e plausibile visione dell’universo cambiando dimensioni progressivamente per potenze di dieci fino a dimostrare che “Siamo nati con l’intero universo dentro di noi.” Tale concetto si sposa perfettamente con il mio album, sia concettualmente che tecnicamente perchè 01-06JUNE è stato realizzato con lo strumento più naturale, la voce umana, passata attraverso effetti digitali che hanno sezionato il segnale continuo in un segnale discreto con la tecnica del campionamento digitale . Lo stesso concetto dei pixel sulle immagini digitali e lo stesso concetto del viaggio astrale del libro che mi ha ispirato. Recentemente gli scienziati stanno cercando per dimostrare che lo spazio non è continuo, come abbiamo sempre pensato, ma che lo spazio è discreto, digitale, e non analogico quindi come i pixel sulle immagini e la tecnica di campionamento digitale nella musica.

INTERVIEW CONTINUED BELOW
TOMAT – “1984″ Music Video

What is the underlying message of the 1984, Space Invaders, war imagery, etc. in the song and in the video?
Qual è il messaggio nascosto dietro space invaders, 1984, immagini di guerra, ecc nella canzone e nel video?

Gabriele Ottino (Director):
Per quanto riguarda il video, penso che non sia centrale il messaggio di ogni singolo evento quanto la suggestione creata da una serie di eventi così diversi tra loro pur essendo accaduti nello stesso anno. Più si infittisce il numero di eventi al secondo, più ci si distacca dai fatti in se, acquistando oggettività ma perdendo umanità. Ecco cosa succede a Davide nel video. Non si vede dalle facce che fa?! Credo che sia la stessa cosa che accade all’astronauta quando inizia a percepire con gli occhi la sfericita della terra.

Davide Tomat (Musician):
Come per la scelta dei pixel grossolani, per il senso del video Gabriele ha cercato di essere coerente con il concetto dell’ album. 01-06JUNE è stato registrato in una sessione d’ improvvisazione solitaria tra il 1 ° e il 6 giugno 2010. Alla fine della sessione di registrazione ho cercato di estrarre dei brani dal lungo materiale audio che avevo registrato e abbinare i brani individuati ad eventi accaduti nella storia umana tra il 1 ° e il 6 giugno cercando una coesione emozionale. Così per il video, dopo tante idee, abbiamo deciso di applicare la stessa tecnica e cercare tutti gli eventi accaduti durante l’anno 84 e ed editarli per il video. Personalmente, il messaggio nascosto del video è quello di fare attenzione a ciò che è successo nella storia umana e a ciò che accadrà, sapendo che ciò che stiamo costruendo o distruggendo adesso farà parte del futuro, che siamo tutti responsabili per ciò che sarà la storia futura, ciò che verrà dipende da tutti noi, senza esclusione. Come scrisse Orwell: “Chi controlla il passato controlla il futuro. Chi controlla il presente controlla il passato.” Alla fine del video anche io sono disperso e prigioniero nel grande archivio digitale cercando, seguendo i pixel, una via di fuga. Quel mondo, il mondo di internet, in questo momento, sembra essere molto più interessante di ciò che realmente ci circonda.

What are some sources for the archival film and photos?
Quali sono le fonti d’archivio delle immagini utilizzate nel video?

Gabriele Ottino (Director):
Provengono tutte da ricerche su internet, la mia (la nostra) memoria ausiliaria.

As Italian artists, how do you feel about the future of Italy and the European Union right now?
Come artisti italiani, come vedete il futuro dell’Italia e dell’Unione europea in questo momento?

Gabriele Ottino (Director):
Bella domanda.E da una decina d’anni che progetto una fuga dall’Italia. Nostro è un paese ricco di bellezza ma ormai privato di quasi qualsiasi tipo di significato.Accogliamo tutto ciò che di nuovo ci viene proposto da paesi ” più grandi” di noi. Allo stesso tempo non abbiamo le basi culturali per poter filtrare quello che ci arriva e ci investe privandoci di iniziativa e creatività. Dei bambini senza immaginazione che vestono abiti stranieri senza saper parlare nemmeno la propria lingua. Una vera merda! Ogni tanto si trovano però dei punti di connessione con alcune persone ed ammetto che è adrenalinico ed estremamente stimolante. Come trovare alleati in un campo di battaglia. Un po troppo guerrafondaio a meno che non decidi di chiuderti in eremitaggio con i tuoi cari o di difendere il tuo castello se ne possiedi uno. L’unione europea non la sento se non per il fatto che sento meno il peso dei confini. Infatti sto iniziando a entrare nell’ottica di vivermela un po’ di più come casa.

Davide Tomat (Musician):
E’ un momento molto strano qui in Italia. Sembra che tutto sia completamente fuori di senso. Tutto sta andando nella direzione sbagliata. Sono generalmente una persona positiva riguardo al futuro e allo sviluppo della coscienza umana. Sono sempre stato pieno di speranze per il futuro, quindi in qualche modo penso che questo abisso che stiamo vivendo forse sarà il punto di partenza e la motivazione per ri iniziare a salire e cercare di tornare in superficie. In un minimo storico come questo solo la verità, le cose vere e importanti sopravvivono, come dopo uno tzunami, ciò che rimane in piedi è destinato a durare nel tempo. Quello che è realmente importante per tutti noi adesso è cercare di guardare con onestà dentro noi stessi e fare solo le cose che veramente sentiamo e in cui veramente crediamo cercando di entrare realmente in contatto con noi stessi, pensando a noi stessi come una parte del tutto, lo stesso tutto che si trova all’interno noi, dentro tutti, cercando di andare oltre le apparenze.

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2. David Daniell & Douglas McCombs – “30265″ Music Video (Interview w/ Director Timothy Leeds)
3. AU – OJ + Ida Walked Away Music Videos (Interview w/ Luke Wyland & Director Takafumi Tsuhiya)

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TOMAT – “1984″ Music Video (w/ Director Gabriele Ottino & Musician Davide Tomat Interview)

See all articles related to Non-profit and Charity work

Why did La Dispute choose to work with 826Michigan?

I’ve known about 826 nationally and 826 San Francisco for some years now, kind of the obvious route, through reading Dave Eggers when I was in high school, and I’ve always been pretty attracted to the organization itself because I think it’s unique, in that it has a really creative approach to what it does — a very youth-oriented approach. It’s not like it’s just a program for creative youth; it is a program that is creative and youthful, I guess, kind of bizarrely and redundantly. So that was appealing to us, and trying to work with organizations that promote literacy has always been another important thing for us, so it kind of encapsulated multiple things we hold close to our hearts, and we also wanted to do something that was local, so we would see a more immediate impact. So rather than going through the national organization, we decided to work specifically with the one in Michigan.

Was there one particular point in La Dispute’s career that you guys decided you were doing well enough or you were influential enough as a band that you wanted to start supporting organizations you cared about? Was it something you thought about from the beginning or something that just kind of popped up?

It’s always been important to us to utilize the resources that we have as best we can. The first thing we did that was charity[-oriented] was we put Here, Hear III up for download by donation a few years ago for Christmas. That was really our first foray into charity, and it was really rewarding to be able to… we didn’t raise a ton of money, but to put it out there and give people the opportunity to help and raise awareness, no matter how much you’re raising fiscally, is a really satisfying thing. Everything goes a long way. Every little thing counts, I guess, so it’s been kind of how we operate as a band, as we just now have more resources to utilize. It’s expanded the ways in which we help out. We did stuff on our last European tour; we gave [a portion of] the merch we sold to an organization there, and when we were in Australia, we did the same thing, and the 826 thing has kind of been a work-in-progress for a long time. It’s kind of invariably woven into us right now, I think…

The other thing that’s important with us is to work with organizations that seem to have a lot of transparency and have people we can actually meet and talk to, rather than helping faceless multi-million-dollar non-profits. To be on ground-level, I guess… it’s been pretty cool.

Do you guys get any kind of a feedback loop, other than the profits you raise, regarding listeners who are encouraged to get involved because of your demonstrations?

Here and there. We did the thing a Well House a couple years ago; we played a show in Grand Rapids, our hometown, over Christmas, and we invited a representative from the Board of Directors and also one of the people who was living in one of the houses to come to the show and hand out information. We actually had a couple people volunteer, or offer to volunteer – I don’t know what ever came of it – but they were interested enough that they want and talked and collected information and applied to volunteer. Here and there, you’ll get it, I think, but it’s interesting this time around [with the 826Michigan project]; it really depends where we are. Sometimes we’ll sell a lot of packets and get a lot of feedback, and other times, I don’t think people know they’re there. It does happen, which is cool.

Read our interview with La Dispute’s Jordan Dreyer about Wildlife Read our live show review of La Dispute

A Timeline Of La Dispute’s Charitable History

826michigan

www.826michigan.org
April 2012 — USA Tour + December 2011

Included in the limited edition packet for Conversations (pictured above), as described by a post made by La Dispute drummer Brad Vander Lugt:

- “Conversations” – an audio interview with Jordan about the stories and themes presented in Wildlife. The interview is also coupled with movements from Chad’s “Mixtapes” (which were ideas recorded on a dictaphone that would later shape some of the songs on Wildlife). Everything is open for interpretation by the listener, of course, but it does give a little more insight into the concept of the record.
- “Snapshots” — a zine of polaroids I’ve taken on various tours and studio sessions surrounding Wildlife.
- Screen printed poster designed by Mr. Adam Vass.
- 4 postcards: a Departure, a Letter, a Poem, a Broken Jar.
- The 826michigan OMNIBUS Vol. 2 — A fantastic and very unique collection of short stories and poems written collaboratively by 826michigan students. (Seriously, it’s awesome. There’s a story called A Shark Named Pistachio.)
- a select few will also include our “First Drafts + Sketches” zine.

There are only 150 of these packets, and when they’re gone, that’s it. $20 each. All proceeds go to 826michigan.

Headspace

www.headspace.org.au
February 2012 — Australia

Teenage Cancer Trust

www.teenagecancertrust.org
January 2012 — United Kingdom

Well House Community Living Of Grand Rapids

www.wellhousegr.org
December 2009 — Grand Rapids, MI

Read our interview with La Dispute’s Jordan Dreyer about Wildlife Read our live show review of La Dispute

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Related posts:

1. La Dispute Band Interview : It’s Like Medicine. It’s Self-Discovery. (w/ Full Album Stream & Lyrical Analysis)
2. Charitable Musicians: Wetlands Support Guatemala’s Xela AID (w/ Interview)
3. Charitable Musicians: Mae Choose To Self-Release And Aid Charity (w/ Band Interview)

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Charitable Musicians: La Dispute Collect For Youth And Poverty, Locally And Abroad (w/ Interview)

If your name is Jeff Diteman, you might be a Portland artist that has spent two years secretly crafting a series of oil paintings, waiting patiently until the opportune time and place to debut the complete collection of works. Now ready to be unveiled is Diteman’s The Fabbri Series; it will soon find displayed and celebrated with — not one, but four — events at GalleryHOMELAND.

The Fabbri Series references T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, The Waste Land. Diteman describes the idea behind its title:

The Fabbri Series takes its name from the dedication appended to the beginning of Eliot’s The Waste Land: “To Ezra Pound: il miglior fabbro.” The most literal translation is “the better smith,” but when Pound had translated the phrase in the poem Eliot was quoting, he had rendered it as “the better craftsman”. Thus, the title of this series, pluralizing fabbro to fabbri, is intended to convey my respect for the skills of the craftspeople herein depicted.

The Fabbri Series squeezes well-known faces around Portland into scenarios and situations that are just a little bit unexpected, uncomfortable, and unusual. Included in the mix are musicians (Adam Baz and Patrick Phillips of BRAINSTORM; Kathy Foster of The Thermals; John Niekrasz and Seth Brown of Why I Must Be Careful; Brian Mumford of Dragging An Ox Through Water; Daniel Menche), dancers (Lucy Yim and Jim Camou; Linda Austin), and a lone poet (James Yeary).

With such a star-studded list — star-studded by Portland standards, in any case — the four events related to the Series are curatorial experiments which seem to make perfect sense. Below the next image, you’ll find a loose schedule of the events that have been planned so far (keep in mind they’re bound to change).

Events Related To The Fabbri Series

Friday, February 3rd: Opening reception curated by James Victor Yeary, and featuring Leo Daedalus, Anna Daedalus, Mack McFarland, David Weinberg and Mark Owens. A night of theatrical poetry in the Fluxus tradition, culminating in the ambient disaster Everything Must Go.

Friday, February 17th: Dance and music performance curated by Jin Camou, featuring Lucy Yim, Thicket, and Linda Austin.

Friday, March 2nd: Video dance performance featuring Jeff Diteman and Grace Nowakoski, other performers TBD.

Friday, March 23rd: Blowout closing party, performers TBD.

Related posts:

1. Onuinu – Ice Palace Music Video (w/ Director Andrew Sloan & Choreographer Jin Camou Interview)
2. Countdown to Zero (2010) Documentary Film Review
3. Portland Events: Six+Robert Henke, Nils Frahm, IASOS

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Jeff Diteman Paints Popular Portland Faces In The Fabbri Series.

The Alps – Easy Action

Record Label
Mexican Summer

The Artists
Design – Tauba Auerbach

Breathe Owl Breathe – The Listeners

Record Label
Self-Released

Mediums & Materials
Illustration, Woodcut, Printing

QUOTES FROM:
NICK STEINHARDT, TOUCHE AMORE GUITARIST AND ALBUM ART DESIGNER

THEMES & CONCEPTS
“The artwork is based around the lyrical themes present on the record — the consequences of being gone as much as a touring band’s nomadic lifestyle requires. Having your idea of home not actually being one concrete place. The idea of the road as a physical and emotional barrier. I wanted the photography to feel familiar but absent and partially removed, and the typography referenced roadside signage — as you’d see from the window of a car.”

CREATIVE PROCESS
“My initial visual research was conducted pretty widely, collecting various reference over a long period of time to familiarize myself and the photographer as somewhat of a mood board. From there, I’d say the photography was done much more spontaneously, but from a thematically-informed perspective. On the design end, I work very loosely at first, get a lot of ideas out on paper (or computer), assess and clarify concepts, then refine and structure.

“When I met with our photographer to go over the shoot, I instantly connected to the mountain image used on the cover… It had a perfect sort of stark quality and deadpan perspective, and just felt like driving through nowhere. I think the creation of the ‘asterisk’ road/sun icon really ended up anchoring the whole piece and giving it some further weight. It’s also when I had the idea for the minimal graphic / typographic interventions to bring additional meaning when overlaid and paired with the rich and grainy photographic textures.”

EXTRAS
“The standard LP is just a single jacket with a printer inner sleeve. For the deluxe LP we went all out. It’s a 28 page LP sized, foil stamped hardbound/smyth-sewn photo book with a pocket for the 180 gram LP glued on the inside back cover. This edition was limited to 1000 and the pre-order crashed our record label’s website.”

Record Label
Deathwish Inc.

Mediums & Materials
Film Camera, Pen, Paper, Scanner, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign

White Lies – Ritual

Record Label
Fiction Records

The Artists
Design & Art Direction – Tom Hingston Studio
Photography – Jonathan de Villiers

White Wives – Happeners

QUOTES FROM:
JESSE LENZ, ARTIST AND DESIGNER
CHRIS “#2″ BARKER, WHITE WIVES’ GUITARIST AND VOCALIST

THEMES & CONCEPTS
“We decided to revision the Seven Deadly Sins as it would take place in suburban America. Unfortunatly we couldn’t print all Seven, but there might be a special release vinyl coming out… We wanted to twist the “plot” once the viewer got half way through the artwork, so we put the families in a huge lab where these Big Brother / Corporate America looking figures were watching them. They could be studying them or forcing them to sin.” – Jesse Lenz, on his website

“We wanted to create every aspect of the art, the CD, the vinyl itself, to our shirts, pins, whatever. They are all planned to compliment one another and achieve the goal of creating a reaction to the imagery.” – Chris “#2″ Barker (#2)

CREATIVE PROCESS
“We gave [Jesse Lenz] music, song titles, lyrics, all as quickly as we could. We were in the studio when the art was created. I remember viewing the cover after tracking some vocals and really believing our vision was coming together.

It was digital mostly, but I know that Jesse uses a vast catalog of vintage magazines and ads to create his collages. I believe the hand cut images get cut, pastes, manipulated, scanned, organized. It’s the definition of mixed media.” – #2

COLLABORATION
“My wife is a graphic designer and worked with Jesse Lenz on a project at her work. She recommended I call him for the White Wives artwork. She was way right! I loved the meeting we had at a chinese restaurant. It was so simple. We instantly clicked; he brought a portfolio that blew our minds. The food was terrible. I don’t think Jesse ate.” – #2

EXTRAS
“The art was created to have no singular cover. Each panel can be moved into that position. For the vinyl, we released 3 separate jackets. We also created silk-screened posters that went out with album pre-orders where we had a local friend re-draw and print his interpretation of the covers.” – #2

Record Label
Adeline Records

Mediums & Materials
Collage, Digital

YACHT – Shangri-La

QUOTES FROM:
YACHT

THEMES & CONCEPTS
“Because ‘YACHT’ is the name we use for everything we do — music, text, objects, video, and design — we don’t consider any part of our output to be peripheral. The design of the YACHT website is as important to the experience of YACHT as our live shows are. So it should go without saying that we go to great pains to make sure that the physical copies of our albums are things worth owning. Of course we are great advocates of the online, of the massive interconnected reality of ineffable connection, but we also believe that touch matters. Physical objects matter. As Hermann Hesse wrote, they give ‘life to the dead world around us, endowing it in a magical way with new instruments of love.’

“Shangri-La is definitely such an instrument of love. It pulls together a wide array of our favorite influences into one encyclopedic document that belongs on a bookshelf as much as it belongs in a record store bin. It was important for us make something that came from print design — not music or commercial design — which is why we enlisted the help of Scott Ponik, who largely makes books.”

“Shangri-La is a very rigidly designed object… As far as we know, no one has ever packaged an LP or CD quite like this. The LP and CD are both nested in four removable nesting dust jackets, each of which is a high-quality oversized print document that could stand on its own. The outer dust jackets are like inverted liner notes; the album borrows formal elements from books, stylizing and exaggerating them to illustrate that the album plays both with narrative and literary themes. The dust jackets display lyrics and colophon on their inner flaps, and large-scale images on their outer pages. The images we chose range from 18th century utopian architectural studies to science-fictional texts that speak to the larger aspirations of this band. Each image provides fans the opportunity to dive deeper into the raw materials of what makes YACHT what it is.”

EXTRAS
“It was extremely difficult to make this album look the way it does. To date, the European version of our album is a standard booklet-in-jewel-case thing; we couldn’t convince our label over there to invest in such an object. We believe, of course, that people don’t buy CDs not because they don’t want to participate in owning the music, but because CDs aren’t made to last, and aren’t made to add value or beauty to the world. We’re lucky to have a record label (DFA Records) that understands the importance of attention paid to design. They took a risk with this, and we hope it’s been a worthwhile experiment.”

“It was also important to us that people understand how this album is different from others–and how it actually works–so we made an “unboxing” video (borrowing from the trope of online “unboxing” videos, usually reserved for technology products) in the woods.”

Record Label
DFA Records

Mediums & Materials
Film Camera, Pen, Paper, Scanner, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign

Related posts:

1. 2011 Year-End Respect For Album Cover Art: Illustration, Painting & Drawing
2. 2011 Year-End Respect For Album Cover Art: Digital Illustration, Drawing, Design
3. 2011 Year-End Respect For Album Cover Art: Color Photography

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

2011 Year-End Respect For Album Cover Art: Deluxe Packaging