For the first five decades of its existence or so, heavy metal was perceived as one of the most primitive musical forms, second perhaps only to punk. It was the soundtrack of tall boys, tight pants, raised trucks, and torn denim – the exact opposite of cultured. Metal has gotten downright cerebral in the 21st […]
Arca’s Mutant is less of an album than a journey through a strange country. Or of an alien biology. Electronic music has always been particularly adept at illustrating where our heads are at, as a culture. There was the urban dissolution of Burial in the first years of the new millennium, as we sought […]
For the last 8 years, Daniel Lopatin’s work as Oneohtrix Point Never has mirrored the way we feel about our digital lives – with all of the requisite passion, excitement, anxiety, disgust, and grotesquerie. And while OPN’s earliest works may have been content in idle detournements, with Lopatin flipping through the tasteless detritus of ’90s […]
Claire Boucher, aka Grimes, is the spokesperson for a certain type of sad girl/boy. They probably have a Tumblr and/or Instagram. They may or may not have non-organic colored hair. They are creative, and don’t feel like they fit in anywhere. Except, at this point, there are a lot of us. Grimes’ shot-heard-round-the-world, 2012’s Visions, […]
Stoufville, Ontario’s Nicole Dollanganger delivers a dark, sweet mumblecore folk record for Grimes’ new imprint, Eerie Organization. It’s hard not to draw comparisons between Nicole Dollanganger’s atmospheric folk-tinted bedroom rock and Harmony Korine’s filmography. On Natural Born Losers, there’s “A Marvelous Persona”, a nod to Gummo’s larger-than-life bad boy Tummler, he of the marvelous persona. […]
Cultivating Creativity: A Deep Dive into America’s Premier Animation Schools and Their Influential Alumni In the ever-evolving realm of animation, where innovation meets storytelling, the quest for excellence often commences with a robust education. Aspiring animators traverse the landscape of prestigious institutions across the United States, seeking to refine their craft, acquire essential skills, and […]
On Semper Femina, Laura Marling explores the lives of the exceptional women in her orbit as protagonists of their own stories, separate from the Male Gaze. It is tempting – perhaps even unavoidable – to decipher works of art based on title tracks. After all, why would the artist name their work after a single […]
Chance The Rapper – Coloring Book – Album Review Considering hip-hop’s roots in the pavement and asphalt of the urban environment, there is a certain crossover with the “hard living school of hard knocks”, as a lot of rappers, producers, and DJs are forced to live outside of the law to get by. Groups like […]
Brian Eno‘s The Ship (Warp Records) is like a libretti for Snowpiercer, or J. G. Ballard/Ben Wheatley’s High Rise – imagining society as a vessel lost at sea, forever drifting through endless, featureless landscapes. Trying to conceptualize or visualize society is a tricky business, especially in these uncertain mercurial times. Society changes in a nanosecond, […]
At this particular nexus of spacetime, with several thousand years of accumulated art and trends behind our backs, it can be perplexing to know which way to turn. It’s hard enough to wrap our minds around the present, let alone foretell what the future will hold. Fashion, however, perhaps more so than any other artform […]
“Lo-fi” homemade & handcrafted objects offer an immediate glimpse of the heart & soul of a place. Whether it’s a handstitched quilt, decked out with regional colors and designs, or a disintegrating flyer for a punk show that happened a decade ago, handmade, locally-sourced objets d’art offer an essential insight into the hopes, dreams, styles, […]
Food Writer Regan Hoffmann posted a tweet in February, as part of the “music writing exercise” #mwe hashtag campaign, speaking on The Carpenter’s “A Song For You”: “I’m finally able to look past the offputting sugary arrangements to understand how dark Karen Carpenter was. #mwe”Much of the most timeless Pop music flirts with darkness. From the […]
