Sadly fashion week in Los Angeles has come to an end, for the time being at least. I couldn’t, however, have thought of a better way to wrap it all up then to attend Friday night’s Project Ethos event. Project Ethos is an annual affair that merges music, fashion, and art all into one venue for one creativity packed evening. According to the Project Ethos team, “The goal is to furnish opportunity for featured participants, as well as arrange a truly invigorating experience for an event goer.”
Set against the lush backdrop of New Orleans City Park, just two miles from the famed French Quarter, Voodoo MUSIC EXPERIENCE (vmx) has announced its return to Halloween weekend with this year’s dates set for Saturday, October 29th and Sunday, October 30th. ChinaShop will be in attendance covering this diverse music festival set amidst 11 miles of bayous and lagoons.
More Than 5,500 Gather for Brass Band Blowout Under Claiborne Bridge New Orleans, LA – October 23, 2010 – Four brass bands—Free Agents, The Stooges, To Be Continued (TBC) and Soul Rebels—marched through the historic Tremé neighborhood, followed by a traditional New Orleans second-line parade, to center stage at Red Bull Street Kings, a brass band blowout under the Claiborne Bridge. One-by-one, each band performed in front of more than 5,500 energized fans, spectators and music lovers, each vying for the crown of Red Bull Street Kings. In the end, it was The Stooges who prevailed over the grueling competition.
I type before you a changed man, ladies. For no longer may I sit idly in tufted velvet captains chairs covered in “Cinnamon”. I shall make no more nominal deposits into the gilded belt of “Chasity.” Yea, I will never feast again upon $2.99 steak (with beverage purchase and before 11a.m.) at the feet of my “Beloved”. I know we have had too many a good time to mention legally, but I have seen the lights of another stage and can no longer look up at you in the same way. I am sorry and know you will ask, “However am I supposed to pay for my PhD in the use of mathematical functions to describe everyday phenomena?” Ask,“Jessica.”
I have to make a confession. Despite living in New York for the majority of my life and my total love and appreciation for art, I (embarrassingly) had never heard of The Museum of Arts and Design up until a few weeks ago. Naturally, I was quite eager to check it out and attend the Mad Metal Ball Young Patrons Gala there on Monday night. (Sidenote: talk about a night of seriously good people watching. Everyone from Moby to Karen O to Joe Manganiello. Anyway, I digress.)
Another gem from croontastic crooner, Cee-Lo Green off his upcoming The Lady Killer (out November 3)! Pretty Much Amazing has it exactly right when they say “… ‘Old Fashion’ sounds like a classic, like a song you’ve known all your life.” Loving this track; makes me want to get dolled up 1960s / “Mad Men” steez, sip an Old Fashioned in some dark bar and dance with Don Draper (He’s so dreamy… Apparently this song also makes me use word’s like “dreamy”).
‘Green’ is all the rage right now. We are told that we should switch our cleaning products to be environmentally safe. We are supposed to recycle and use refillable water bottles. We should carpool to work whenever possible and must definitely conserve water. This we all know and hear on a daily basis, but what about clothing? Is there a way to be a friend to the Earth and be fully clothed? More importantly, does green clothing exist that is actually fashionable?
Here’s what may be the most chill of all chill, relaxing, laid-back pop-it-in-for-your-Sunday-drive-in-the-countryside, noontime tea-and-crumpets electronica acts. (They are Brits, so this may help you get in the mood.) While ITunes’ Genius feature tells you that if you dig Fujiya and Miyagi, you may like !!!, The Rapture, and other drum & bass E-rock acts, take such advice with a grain of salt : F&M goes past laid-back, almost into nod-off. Their minimalist synth melodies and bass-pedaled beat samples are more reminiscent of The Human League or Kajagoogoo, but they’ve got enough groove and hipness in them that they’ve already found a loyal audience in both the young, and the older, nostalgic-for-New Wave-past.
Lyrically, their self-effacing, tongue-in-cheekiness tendencies make for an extremely entertaining listen, and serve as a reminder that they absolutely refuse to take themselves seriously. I guess bands like this have to. If they didn’t tell you that their moniker has, yes, been partly spawned from Daniel-San’s teacher in the Karate Kid movies, or write songs like “Uh,” — the lyrical personification for a disaffected, ambivalent youth (“I guess I wasn’t feeling okay…I guess it knocked me sideways/oh/she made me go uh…/uh…/ah, ah“), you might end up just scratching your head and missing all the fun. F&M is a good time for the indifferent in all of us, and you can check them out now on Red Bull Music Academy Radio.
Next weekend, the Ninja Tune magical mystery tour rolls into the States to celebrate its 20th anniversary with shows in New York (10/28), San Francisco (10/29) and Los Angeles (10/30). To celebrate, ChinaShop is giving away a ridiculous prize package of Ninja Tune essentials, including Volumes 1 and 2 of their 20 Years of Beats & Pieces 2CD compilations (4 CDs in total), a copy of Stevie Chick’s paperback retrospective, Ninja Tune: 20 Years of Beats & Pieces, King Cannibal’s The Way Of The Ninja mix disc, and a limited edition Bogus Order t-shirt. Oh, and if the winner happens to be in spitting distance of Manhattan or Los Angeles, we’ve got a pair of tickets to the Ninja Tune 20th Anniversary show in your area. All you have to do to be eligible to win is “like” us on the old Facebook by Thursday Oct 28th at midnight PST.
Once you’ve professed your unending “like” for us, drop us a comment to the effect that you WANNA WIN! If you are savvy enough to like us already, well done you! All current friends are eligible as well but you too have to tell us you WANT to be a winner. I don’t want to gift these amazing goodies to the undeserving! We will announce the winner by Noon on Friday Oct 29th.
We also caught up with four of our favorite Ninja Tune artists—Kid Koala, Amon Tobin, Ghislain Piorier and Eskmo—to see what they’ve got going on these days, and what it’s like being a part of one of the coolest and most groundbreaking independent labels on the planet.
As ice cold winds whipped off the San Francisco bay, no one noticed as the throbbing techno sounds of Toronto’s Deadmau5 emanated from the Bridge Stage of the Bay Area’s Treasure Island Music Festival. The mostly hometown crowd went absolutely bonkers for the music phenomenon’s set.
Deadmau5 has had a whirlwind year any 28-year-old would die for, culminating in that memorable set at the 2010 MTV Awards last month – did you see that mouse-ears-on-crack light show. Nuff said.
This will be the last time we see Joel Thomas Zimmerman in this intimate of setting. The dude is massive. He possesses the ability to get every frat boy, indie chic and flower child immersed in his frantic world of progressive music stylings and high-end light streaming from his signature stage cube. Although Deadmau5’s amped up sets are not that hard to understand, he simply serves up what audiences truly crave – a desperate release.
