Ryan Patrick Hooper | ChinaShop

page 3 of 4 ←first ←previous 1 2 3 4 next→ last→

Music Ghostly International’s 10th Anni-insani-versary!

by Dustin Downing, Ryan Patrick Hooper, and Joe Gall

June 5, 2009 - 3:20 pm

Words by Ryan Patrick Hooper, photos by Dustin Downing, Additional photos by Joe Gall

For the past ten years, Detroit’s Movement festival has been notoriously fond of after parties. Whether they be of the renegade rave, abandoned factory sort or the most official, posh push-pop you can come by, the entire city becomes blanketed in non-stop nightlife until the sun comes up and the festival grounds once again reopen. Saturday was no exception as the Magic Stick (regularly voted in the top ten best venues in the country by Rolling Stone and Paste, home to the oldest bowling alley in the country) in Midtown Detroit welcomed nationally renowned electronic label Ghostly International’s 10-Year Anniversary to a packed house after tearing apart the Red Bull Music Academy stage earlier that day with the likes of The Sight Below, Lusine, Kate Simko and Ryan Elliott.

“It has been ten years of the festival, and it’s our ten-year anniversary,” points Sam Valenti, owner and founder of Ghostly International, hours before the showcase at the Stick backstage in the green room. “It’s fun to run into friends that Ghostly has had for six, seven years all day at Movement.” And with Ghostly International Tycho by his side, it’s easy to see just what Valenti is getting at. “It’s exciting to be back where it all started over ten years ago,” adds Tycho. “To be right in the middle of it all…”
Read the full story →

Music Landstrumm Lands

by Joe Gall and Ryan Patrick Hooper

June 5, 2009 - 3:20 pm

It’s not like we love Neil Landstrumm — it’s like the man lives inside of our ear drums, pounding out his innovative, hybrid cocktail of dub and grime powered auditory awesomeness. His Sunday set at Movement ’09 was certainly no exception. Although the poor dude was set up to the side of the stage, he made up for his lack of strategic positioning that lives in the world kick snare, kick snare — but stands tall in an ocean of imitators who chase his sound but continually fall flat. When you’ve been it for as long as Landstrumm has, you’ll run it into that … but you’ll also learn how to run directly over it, reverse and repeat a few times until you stand adjacent to only your own legacy and a long line of DJ road kill. For what seemed like an eternity (but was probably closer to an hour if we settle down and face the facts), Landstrumm transformed his daytime set into a time bending performance that turned the audience into midnight marauders of the sexist sort, Landstrumm’s often space age slugtone beats unleashing some of the weirdest, most sensual dance moves we’ve seen in quite sometime.

Words by Ryan Patrick Hooper, photos by Joe Gall

Read the full story →

Event Music Sweet and Sticky: Bassnectar Delivers the Juice

by Ryan Patrick Hooper and Joe Gall

June 5, 2009 - 3:08 pm

Whether you were grinding along with the heaps of patrons in the audience, sacrificing your drinks to the Gods above in the VIP lounge or planted on boxes of gear backstage, everyone was smothered in a sticky, relentless coating of thundering bass as Bassnectar closed the Red Bull Music Academy stage on Monday night. Unleashing his Whip-It brand bass lines (imagine those adolescent wah-wahs magnified by a million) and eclectic dub step to new wave mash up style and you’ve got a good reason why the majority of the independent vendors were shut down as the sun set and the more hair than flare DJ took to the stage — who would want to miss it? But Bassnectar’s set wasn’t without complication as Lorin Ashton, the California-based multi-instrumentalist behind the name, is quick to point out.

Read the full story →

Music The Rhythm & Wisdom of Afrika Bambaataa

by Ryan Patrick Hooper and Joe Gall

June 5, 2009 - 3:08 pm

A wise man once said, “The biggest crime when [Afrika] Bambaataa plays is not to dance.” Actually, King Kurmanji, the international spokesperson for the Zulu Nation and Bambaataa’s right hand man, said that a few hours before Bambaataa’s set on the Red Bull Music Academy stage on Monday afternoon in a hotel lobby when he was actually on the right hand side of Bambaataa, firmly planted in a rather comfy chair. “When you dance, you lose your stresses and your worries,” continues Kurmanji. “You wash that negativity away when you release it, breathe it and move that behind.” Heavy words that are certainly not to be taken lightly — just like the political persona that Bambaataa encompasses in his large frame, and just like the cameo-packed performance he brought to the stage. “We just don’t want any wallflowers,” coolly adds Bambaataa.

Read the full story →

Music Busy P & the Art of Electro-Boutique

by Ryan Patrick Hooper

June 4, 2009 - 10:11 am

Musicians carry a fraction of diva within their core. It is one of those unwritten laws that no matter how down to earth (or buried within) they may seem, there resides a chunk of entitlement in their bones that screams “gimme this” or “double wrap that.” As long as we don’t have to endure it constantly (read: be Kanye West’s personal assistant), it’s easy to push on the back burner and let it cook — considering it slightly, but never holding such pretenses against the artist. Busy P broke these rules on Monday evening when he slammed his designer headphones (and then his microphone) at the beginning of his set when something went wrong with the sound, and proceeded to scream in a mixture of French and English at the crowd and also at that poor, unfortunate sound guy (who seemed relatively unaffected by the whole ordeal).

Read the full story →

Music VJ Culture Mixes the Movies in My Mind

by Ryan Patrick Hooper, Dustin Downing, and Joe Gall

June 3, 2009 - 11:33 am

As the sun shined through the massive square windows of a downtown Detroit hotel on Memorial Day, Grant Davis, aka VJ Culture, is picking his way through a “delicious” vegetarian meatloaf. In the true nature of his role as one of the most sought after video jockeys in the game, he is quick to use nutritional visuals to describe (somewhat abstractly) how his job works. “The broccoli connects the wires to the meatloaf, which is the screen,” laughs Davis, “and here is me” — pointing to the mashed potatoes with his fork — “feeling a little mashed after last night.”

Read the full story →

Music The Human Nature of RJD2

by Ryan Patrick Hooper and Joe Gall

June 2, 2009 - 10:20 am

Everyone and their furry boots were ready for RJD2 on Sunday afternoon as the sun began to set on the second day of Movement ’09. With a stack of records cleanly categorized behind the turntable traditionalist, RJD2 quickly shuffled through his funk, soul and lightly rock ‘n’ rollified collection of tracks — pulling heavily from fan favorite albums Deadringer and Since We Last Spoke — smoothly worked up the crowd with his charismatic microphone moxy. “So, what do you guys want to do now?” jokingly inquired RJD2 halfway through his set. “Should we just go home?” And, like sweaty clockwork, the droves of funk frenzied fans declared, “No!” in what seemed like perfect unison. “Let’s get to work then,” quipped the man with the plan before mashing up The Cars’ classic Let The Good Times Roll with his own hip-hop influenced creation of distorted guitars and bouncing beats.

Read the full story →

Contributors Ryan Patrick Hooper From the Inside Out

by Ryan Patrick Hooper

May 29, 2009 - 11:41 am

Here we have a fine young gentleman — Ryan Patrick Hooper, to be exact — showing off his bones like some sort of fashion statement. Cocky, isn’t it? Throwing himself out there for a whole world wide web of audiences to witness and observe from the inside out. It kind of disgusts us, but at the same time, this Detroit kid has got some swagger. While we can’t really define it and you certainly wouldn’t want to invite it over for dinner, it is certainly there in some shape or form, lurking in the shadows and never paying rent on time…

Welcome to the ChinaShop young man! Even though we can see right through you, we know you got Detroit covered!

Event Gallery I’m on a Boat!

by Neil Feineman, Ryan Patrick Hooper, Dustin Downing, and Joe Gall

May 28, 2009 - 9:15 am

Before the festival, there were the parties. And while there are great party towns, few can match Detroit’s. So when the official Paxahau “I’m on the Boat” party, held Sunday night, was announced shortly before the festival, it quickly became the “buzz” afterparty of the weekend.

Read the full story →

Music Exchange Bureau: All Agents on Deck

by Joe Gall and Ryan Patrick Hooper

May 27, 2009 - 5:27 pm

I’m down for breaking records. Not smashing my record collection (although it is quite smashing), but absolutely tearing about the expectations of the past with fresh goals, new levels of standard and freakishly potent ambition. One time, I won three consecutive races in what my friends and I like to call the Suburban Shopping Cart Downhill Finals. I am legally obligated to tell you that the police were eventually called and we returned every single tooth that we could find to the man of whom they once belonged (or so he claimed). But there are also those glorious aspirations that we can all appreciate (not just a gaggle of neighbors and your local police force), like when a young label-turned-collective by the name of Exchange Bureau decides to slam 18 of their musicians and artists into an hour and perform it all live on the Red Bull Music Academy stage.
Read the full story →

page 3 of 4 ←first ←previous 1 2 3 4 next→ last→