August | 2009 | ChinaShop

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Music Santigold at Lollapalooza

August 11, 2009 - 10:04 am

Santi White a.k.a. Santigold is all smiles on stage. This Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter has enough charisma to hold a crowd for hours. Watching her on stage, there’s no mistaking her love of making and ultimately sharing music. The chorus of Santi’s massively popular grime-meets-dancehall single “Creator” sums it up well: “Me, I’m a creator / thrill is to make it up.”

With Santi’s performance at Lollapalooza’s PlayStation stage she gave us plenty to look at, from her and her band’s golden gear to her and her back-up vocalists’ occasional throwback dance moves. The visual stimulation though worked hand-in-hand with her vivid, genre-hopping sonics, which feature a consistent bass-beavy foundation.

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Music What’s Up Troublemaker?

by Nicole Pajer

August 11, 2009 - 10:00 am

He may be known as “Troublemaker,” but Josh Kouzomis has done some pretty amazing things with his music such as teaching DJ workshops in the slums and ghettos of Africa during his participation in the HOPE Campaign. Josh was also a performer at the Manifest Hope Inauguration Party in Washington D.C. and previously held a past residency at Wasted Spaces in the Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. With an extensive background in the industry, dating back to his college DJ and music director days at Ohio University’s ACRN, Josh has continued to push the boundaries and enter new realms along his musical voyage. On July 28, 2009, Josh released his first official solo project, The Maestro. The album is a true reflection of Josh as an artist and shows his ability to steer the momentum of producing and remixing popular tracks such as Lincoln Park’s Runaway into creating his own masterpiece. China Shop was able to catch up with Troublemaker as he was taking a break from working on his latest project, involving Benji Madden.

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Music Chairlift Going Up

by Dustin Downing and Ryan Patrick Hooper

August 11, 2009 - 9:59 am

Just north of Wicker Park, at the vibrant nightlife trisect of Milwaukee, North and Damen Avenues, Friday night was just beginning. TV On The Radio’s bearded guitar guru Kyp Malone coolly strolls by with a generous posse of publicists and friends, greeting fans as he passed (dually noted — Malone still carried his own bags). Electro-pop front man Michael Angelakos of Passion Pit was wide-eyed and taking in the sights with lovely lady in tow as the late night Mexican eatery Flash Taco turns drunken grubbing into a visceral performance piece. And inside Debonair Social Club, whose décor borders between raw basement hangout and sophisticated dance club, Chairlift’s Aaron Pfenning is manning the decks (read: shredding the dance floor) fresh from the multi-instrumentalist’s band’s opening set for TV On The Radio’s “healthcare benefit show” for Malone’s sister, Colleen, across the street at legendary Double Door. Lollapalooza truly knows no limits … and Pfenning is amazed it happened at all.

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Fashion Sex And The City 2: Open Call

by Gala Darling

August 11, 2009 - 9:53 am

Yesterday’s open casting call for Sex & The City 2 was an incredible sight. Despite the sweltering heat & lack of shade, thousands of well-garbed budding thespians thronged to the Metropolitan Pavilion for their chance to be immortalized on the silver screen, alongside the likes of Carrie Bradshaw, Charlotte York, Miranda Hobbs & Samantha Jones.

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Music Depeche Mode: Chicago Style

by Dustin Downing

August 11, 2009 - 9:53 am

New wave/synth pop pioneers and innovators Depeche Mode lured an impressive crowd as one of the headliners at the first day of Lollapalooza. And standing amongst so many loyal fans was no doubt a great experience. After a long day of nagging rain, the baseball diamonds on the festival grounds were a muddy mess, but that didn’t stop DM’s multi-cultural fan-base from sinking their feet into any spot they could find and I’m glad I joined them.

Having walked around the outskirts of the crowd towards the end of the set, I can say that it was a lot more enjoyable to be standing next to the couples, groups of friends, and loners alike who were eagerly awaiting their favorite Depeche Mode material. Lead vocalist Dave Gahan along with multi-instrumentalists Martin Gore and Andrew Fletcher gave the people what they wanted, but they did so gradually, saving hits like “Personal Jesus” and “Enjoy The Silence” for the second half of the set.

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Music La Roux at APW: Ravers, Rollickers and Doobies

by Geo Hagan and Kwaku Kufour

August 6, 2009 - 10:23 am

La Roux’s Elly Jackson has a hairdo to kill for. It’s a striking red coif that’s a mix between Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust Era and that famous Poindexter cut David Johansen used to rock. It’s quite magnificent actually, and on this day, she tamed it a little bit by donning a fitted Fedora hat. Vocally, she’s kind of like a modern day Cyndi Lauper, and she’s backed by an arsenal of speaker-rattling, floor-shaking, ‘80s electro-pop beats.

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Music The Black Keys at All Points West: Swampy Akron Blues

by Geo Hagan and Kwaku Kufour

August 6, 2009 - 10:23 am

A Black Keys show brings out a different kind of concert goer. Try on this (true) gem of a story for size: Whilst jockeying to get a good vantage spot to take in the set by the Ohio duo, I ran into a friendly hippie-type lady in her early 50s and we struck up a cool conversation. She talked about how she was a Social Services professor from Baltimore, and how she’d been able to sneak in and out of different V.I.P. sections the entire day because the security staff let her go wherever she wanted. “I don’t know why they do that,” she said, “maybe it’s one of the advantages of being a little older.” But her best quote was this: “Last year at Bonnaroo, some guy died in his tent and no one really noticed because there was so much going on,” – then she paused and continued – “I guess he was going to die anyway.”

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Music Silversun Pickups at All Points West: Absolute Dedication

by Geo Hagan and Kwaku Kufour

August 6, 2009 - 10:22 am

The Silversun Pickups have been called many things: the next Smashing Pumpkins, LA garage rockers, the leaders of a neo-grunge rock movement, etc – whatever tag you give them, know this: these Silver Lake dwellers rock really, really hard. Matt Pinfield, the famous rock savant, came out and introduced them as one of his favorite new bands, and when the group finally came out, they didn’t waste any time in getting down to business.

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Music Black Gold: Sharply Dressed at All Points West

by Geo Hagan

August 6, 2009 - 10:22 am

Eric & Than of Black Gold were handed a pretty rough time slot for their All Points West performance. Their set time on Saturday was 12:45pm, and the majority of festival goers were still making their way on to the Liberty State park grounds. But that didn’t stop the Brooklyn duo from throwing down a heluva show. The Brooklyn duo (signed to Red Bull Records) came through with a complete supporting band – including a back-up singer section and more. They even had a group of about 5 bikini-clad girls painted in gold from head to toe throwing black and gold beach balls into the crowd.

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Music Born in the Underworld

by Neil Feineman

August 5, 2009 - 1:58 pm

UNDERWORLD: Coming Soon to an iPhone Near You

Talk about times changing. In the mid-1990s, when Underworld’s track “Born Slippy” jumped off the screen in Trainspotting, it took weeks to track down the name of the band and the song. Now, less than 15 years later, you can get that information with the wave of a hand. But that’s not all. Come this Friday night, you can watch Underworld in concert from the best seat in your house, for free, on your iPhone.

The concert, the first of its kind, is one of three prongs in a concerted Underworld assault on the technological literati. In addition to the performance, they are releasing their rich 21-year catalogue on iTunes. And, in this “there’s an app for that” world, they’re throwing in an iPhone iDrum app that lets you remix 12 of Underworld’s most popular songs, including “Born Slippy” and “Cowgirl.”

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