Multiplayer, the inaugural art show at Gallery 1988 in Venice, took poster submissions from some 30 artists inspired by the video games of now and yore. Aided by curators OMG Posters! 1988 turned their new home base into a gamers Louvre. The talent within spanned from seasoned artists like Eric Tan, a PIXAR collaborator and Mike Mitchell, who designed the “I’m with Coco” poster, to freelancers Adam Hanson and Markku Metso.
15-plus years into his career and internationally known producer/selector DJ Vadim is still finding new sounds to tap into while keeping his true school hip-hop foundation in tact. A large part of the multi-hued Vadim experience derives from the vast selection of artists he winds up working with—those who aren’t always the most known but who undeniably click with Vadim sonically. While touring his last solo album, U Can’t Lurn Imaginashun, in 2009, Vadim brought along two then up-and-coming artists who were featured on that very project: UK singer Sabira Jade and Chicago MC Pugs Atomz.
Fashion can’t be avoided. We can’t leave our house without clothes on. Based on your geographic location, possibly multiple layers of clothes on. But there is a distinction between “fashion”, “clothes” and “style”. Let’s see what the interweb has to say about it:
“Though often used interchangeably, there are distinct and important differences between clothing, fashion, and style. The term clothing first appeared in the thirteenth century and refers to garments in general. Fashion and style are fourteenth-century words. Style describes the form of something, while fashion refers to prevailing styles during a particular time. All clothing can be described in terms of the style of specific features, such as a mandarin collar or a gathered sleeve, and if the style is currently popular, it is considered fashionable. Garment styles periodically recur, though usually in slightly different forms. Coco Chanel, the famous French designer, once said that anyone who claimed originality had no knowledge of history.” – Answers.com
Giant Robot’s physical space in Santa Monica GR2 hosted “Post It Show 6” recently in conjunction with artists Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson at the helm as curators and I forgot to tell you about it… I did. I had even gone down there and shot nice images of some of the almost 2,000 pieces you could pick up starting at only $20.
In an insanely heavy week of releases, never has cutting and pasting been such a pain..haha…lessee…a contender for greatest band/album name of the year, Banjo or Freakout releases their self-titled debut…perhaps that honor goes to Six Organs of Admittance’s Asleep on the Floodplain, a delectable mixture of folky/electronica/power chord action…G. Love’s solo act outside Special Sauce gets rave reviews…and Malachai’s new one cleverly mixes Goodbye Yellow Brick Road-era Elton John and The Shins’ latest. New bands open new doors..explore and enjoy…
Lauren Pritchard - Wasted In Jackson
Tahiti 80 - The Past, The Present & The Possible
Adele - 21
John Waite - Rough & Tumble
Banjo Or Freakout - Banjo Or Freakout
Julianna Barwick - The Magic Place
Six Organs Of Admittance - Asleep On The Floodplain
Jonny Burke - Distance And Fortune
Celtic Thunder – Heritage
Bayside - Killing Time
Toro Y Moi - Underneath The Pine
The Cave Singers – No Witch
Civet - Love & War
G. Love – Fixin’ To Die
DevilDriver - Beast
The Low Anthem - Smart Flesh
Earth Angels Of Darkness - Demons Of Light 1
Malachai - Return To The Ugly Side
Quarterfly - Do You Believe
Sean Rowe - Magic
Gil Scott -Heron & Jamie xx We’re New Here
Reebok announces collaboration with Grammy award winning music producer/rapper/painter/collector/CEO/entrepreneur/new father/United Nation’s Music Ambassador for World Peace Swizz Beatz. Try fitting that on a business card?
Reebok took a look around and realized that they stepped out of cool. The trend setters and shoe collectors weren’t considering Reebok in the pantheon of desired footwear. As a shoe maker, that’s a situation you don’t want to find yourself in. In an effort to redefine the brand as revolutionary, they enlisted the guidance of one of the hottest, most forward thinking personalities on the scene, Swizz Beatz.
My Pops was kind of a big deal around the, “Loyal Order of Moose #1361-Bingo Hall,” when I was a kid. You see, Pops was the “Caller.” Not a position one would ordinarily expect to garner praise, but the #1361 wasn’t full of your ordinary gamblers and my Pops didn’t just mumble off #’s. This place would be packed full of 250 whiskey drinking-public child spanking-son’s a bitches, out to win that $500 “Speed Bingo” purse come 10 p.m. Thur./Fri./Sat. That’s when Pops, standing behind his Plexiglass pulpit filled with muti-colored ping pong balls, would spit them digits like Busta Rymes snorting strychnine. It was fascinating and I thought not to be beaten in the pantheon of Bingo lore. Until this statement…
While most people consider natural disasters to be dangerous and devastating, Lori Nix regards them as her personal muses. Growing up in rural Kansas, Lori’s childhood was filled with its share of tornados, snowstorms, floods, droughts, and insect infestations. She is also fascinated, or maybe a bit obsessed, as she’ll admit, by the idea of the apocalypse. These forms of nontraditional sources of inspiration have transpired into photographic masterpieces in Lori’s collections like “Accidental Kansas” and “The City.”
The most interesting aspect of Lori’s work is how she goes about creating it. Before she whips out her camera, she spends months constructing incredibly detailed dioramas. Once everything is in place, she’ll photograph her scenes, blow them up, and alas her picture perfect vision of a decaying landscape is born.
Lori took a break from dreaming of destruction and creating ruin in order to give ChinaShop a glimpse into her creative process, tell us about her newest series “The City,” and discuss her kinship with Mother Nature.
It was ironic that news of Radiohead’s latest album came like a flash while early morning risers were still scanning Facebook for lingering commentary of the previous night’s Grammy Awards. Indeed, the undisputed sovereigns of post-rock had slipped quietly through the night, undetected even by those who considered Esperanza Spalding a shoo-in for Best New Artist. But here we are in the wake of Radiohead’s latest foray into the great unknown—The King Of Limbs—a “newspaper album” named as such for the large collection of artwork that accompanies the physical version, or because it reports on the current state of its creators, or maybe it’s a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the “hear today, gone tomorrow” nature of today’s recorded music product. With Radiohead, there’s rarely one definitive answer. No doubt you’ve already heard bits and pieces of it, so let’s get on with the show.
Driving to the warehouse district of downtown Los Angeles on Saturday night, I, along with half of the motorcyclists in Southern California, drove up a ramp and ended up on top of a parking garage. Walking past trashcan bonfires, taco trucks, and what appeared to at one time be someone’s living room furniture, I had arrived at Cretin’s Motorcycle Club, a sort of secret society biker’s club which happened to be the perfect setting for the Lords of Altamont CD Release/Anti-Valentine’s Day party.
Only the Lords would be capable of pulling off an evening full of stoning Valentine’s Day combined with celebrating the release of their newest album, “Midnight To 666.” The band has undergone several member changes but is confident to have its most solid line up yet, with Jake “The Preacher” Cavaliere on lead vocals and organ, John “Big Drag” Saletra on guitar, Shawn “Sonic” Medina on bass, and Harry Drumdini aka “Full Tilt” on drums. Any venue brave enough to host these rockers would have to have some serious balls.
After a photo shoot that required balancing on rooftop while grasping burning sparklers, The Lords of Altamont and their entourage of saucy go-go dancers divulged wacky tales from the road. From being electrocuted to running from the cops due to a certain ChinaShop photographer’s quest to snap the perfect photo, the Lords of Altamont know how to keep things interesting. They do, after all, have a reputation to uphold.