Stepping into Flounce, a quaint vintage shop situated on a dog-and-pedestrian-heavy stretch of Echo Park Boulevard, is like ducking into an wondrous attic.
Fashion Featured Gallery Lose Yourself at Flounce Vintage
5.00 (4 votes)
Category Archives: Featured
5.00 (4 votes)
Featured Music Speech Debelle: Mercury In Retrograde
Take a look at this. It’s a cellphone video of Speech Debelle being announced as the winner of the 2009 Mercury Prize, shot by someone at her table. Their reaction says it all: elation, surprise, shock and awe, really. An underdog in the truest sense of the word, Speech Therapy took home the award for best album by beating out a field that included heavy favorites The Horrors, La Roux, Friendly Fires, and a then-little known artist named Florence and the Machine. It was a massive turning point in the South London rapper’s carer, but not just for the reasons you’d expect. Things got better, but then they got worse. The ensuing journey— documented, analyzed and cut to lacquer—unfolds over the neck-nodding beats and righteous melodies of Freedom Of Speech.
Confessionals, love songs, block party affirmations, sociopolitical rants. All subject matter is in bounds on this album, and each tune is supported with a spot-on blend of live band instrumentation and lab-tested synthesis, courtesy of producer Kwes. And her flow? Undeniable. Speech gels with hectic electric guitar (“The Problem”) as easily as she does with sparse acoustic (“Angel Wings”), and “Studio Back Pack Rap” proves that she’s got one of the most inventive cadences in the game right now.
With the Mercury in her rearview, a new album simmering on the hot plate, and an Olympic-sized accomplishment coming soon—a reinterpreted version of her Speech Therapy single, “Spinnin’,” will be the first official song in the 2012 torch relay—Speech Debelle checks back in with ChinaShop for a State of the Union.
5.00 (3 votes)
Featured Gallery Music Wu-Tang Is For The Children… and Everyone Else
Though Kanye West’s notorious bum rushing of the VMA stage in 2009 will go down in the pantheon of bizarre award show moments, it still plays second fiddle to the granddaddy of all podium-jackings. Next month marks the 14-year anniversary of O.D.B.’s proclamation to a stunned Shawn Colvin and an international Grammy contingent that, regardless of how you saw it, Wu-Tang was the best. Let me repeat that. Fourteen years ago this happened, and the full-length that lost the Best Rap Album award (to Puffy no less) was Wu-Tang Forever, far from their best work. But who’s laughing now? Who’s managed to singlehandedly keep the spirit of posse cut alive in an era of me-first rappers who myopically extol the virtues of popping bottles and not much else? The Wu. That’s who.
5.00 (4 votes)
Featured Music My Old School Hip-Hop, Part 6: Brook D’Leau
School is back in session. Today, ChinaShop features J*DaVeY‘s Brook D’Leau, the sixth and final artist in our series highlighting former students of LA’s Pilgrim High School who have become integral parts of West Coast hip-hop and DJ culture. Check the links for features on DJ StoneRokk, Busdriver, Project Blowed co-founder Abstract Rude, Brooklyn’s DJ Icewater, and international hip-hop star Roscoe Umali.
5.00 (3 votes)
Art Featured Gallery Broken Dreams and Fairy Wings
The Hive Gallery recently launched a joint art show featuring the renowned Renee Lawter and her talented husband Jeff Lawter. The show, “Broken Dreams and Fairy Wings,” focuses on living in a world of environmental imbalances and man-made destruction. In addition to the gallery being the first major collaboration between the husband and wife duo, it features the couple’s first collaborative painting, “Broken.” Individual works include Renee’s vintage framed watercolors, which incorporate her trademark cuddly monsters, while Jeff’s ink and dyes on wood portray powerful messages and call out injustices.
ChinaShop recently sat down with the artistic couple to discuss the challenge of combining their very different styles and plans for future art shows together.
4.67 (9 votes)
Fashion Featured Shop Talk: Bubbles & Frown
Since waking from a fateful dream in 2008, miss Slinky Orangina Montgomery Vaughn-Phuckake has been constructing fantasy hats, fascinators and headdresses. Bright, sparkly and whimsical, these unique adornments gained instant momentum – that’s how Bubbles and Frown Haberdashery Shoppe was born. Slinky Orangina has created a breathtaking body of work, decorating the heads of models, performers, fashionistas and celebrities worldwide. I visited the citrus-tressed designer in her downtown LA showroom to chat about hats and snap some photos of her latest creations.
5.00 (4 votes)
Featured Music The Sidekicks Unleash “Awkward Breeds”
It’s not often that people who are serious about making music stick with their “first band”, but that’s exactly what’s happened with Steve Ciolek (Vocals & Guitar) and Matt Climer (Drums), the long-time axis and backbone behind The Sidekicks. The two Cleveland natives were childhood buds that played high school sports together and shared an interest in spikey-haired punk rock bands that would probably make them cringe today. The first incarnation of The Sidekicks was a gruff punk rock quartet that bore the markings of bands like Against Me! and Hot Water Music; and their first proper full length, “So Long, Soggy Dog,” is what caught the attention of the punk scene as well as Chicago label, Red Scare. It may have been gritty, but it was a clear sign of things to come and even then these teenagers stood out from their peers. The band was dedicated to the DIY scene and toured with like-minded punk bands such as Teenage Bottlerocket, O Pioneers!!!, Cobra Skulls, etc.
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Art Featured Gallery Art in the Flesh: Dr Sketchy’s L.A.
A few years back, a Brooklyn artist who goes by the moniker Molly Crabapple, decided art school was not cool and dropped out. And lucky for us she did. Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this article and dammit I wouldn’t have had the chance to shoot Samion, le nude muse for this installment of the Los Angeles chapter’s Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School. Fittingly, this kickoff for a new year of the bi-monthly pop-up figure-drawing cabaret for artists and art lovers was held at the Titmouse Inc. animation compound in Hollywood, home to all things awesome and strange.
5.00 (8 votes)
Featured Music A Fireside Chat with the Legendary Jane Birkin
Lay back on your (fake!) polar bear fur and listen to a Fireside Chat with (the real!) Jane Birkin. 60s icon and muse to the genial Serge Gainsbourg, Jane witnessed swinging London, the beau monde of Paris and has remained a tasteful and opinionated recording artist to this day.
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Featured Gallery Music Lit Teams Up With Butch Walker: This is How Awesome is Made
If your car is in the front yard, and you’re sleeping with your clothes on, then you know what I’m talking about when I say its time to get LIT.
Although they may be known for being their own worst enemies, the guys from Lit have teamed up with the notorious Producer/Singer/Songwriter Butch Walker to complete their latest opus, as yet untitled. I dropped in on the boys at Walker’s studio in Santa Monica to have a listen and catch up.
4.43 (7 votes)