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interview Q and A With Manchester’s Delphic 

June 24, 2010 - 10:42 am

Thursday night, Manchester’s own Delphic took the outdoor stage at Dangerbird Records to bestow the crowd below with the urge to dance. After a set perfectly infused with a wreath of synth, guitar, vocals, and drums, the boys headed backstage to relax, while coyly avoiding the crowd gathered around the television that was showing the last quarter of the Lakers game. It’s OK guys, we all know that “football” is the thing in the UK and doing an interview for China Shop over watching Kobe Bryant was a good enough excuse for me.

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Featured Gallery interview Inside a Burlesque Queen’s Closet

by Molly Crabapple

June 16, 2010 - 12:13 pm

Amber Ray is one of the world’s top burlesque performers. She jets from Australia to Vienna’s Life Ball, leaving a trail of glitter in her wake. Amber’s a chameleon, known for her exquisitely surreal costumes. She’s been a lotus blossom and a danger-tape wrapped dominatrix, a peacock and the showgirl whose tassel twirling set off a raid of one of New York’s most infamous speakeasies.

For the first time ever, Amber lets fans peak inside her bulging closet. We dish on her art, her costumes, and her Swarovski crystal addiction.

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interview Nerd Alert: Nar Williams… Too Tall To Fit in Your Local High School Locker

by Kinsey Schofield

June 15, 2010 - 3:27 pm

Voted one of Wired.com’s “Top 150 Geeky Media People to Follow on Twitter,” Nar Williams has made quite the name for himself in the sci-fi and technology world. Although sci-fi and technology have a stigma of being… well… excruciatingly nerdy (insert pocket protectors here) – Nar’s new online series with Crave Online, Fanboy Funhouse, takes geek-chic to a whole new level. …Their set includes a giant blue playground SLIDE.
Described as “Pee-wee Herman meets Mystery Science Theater 3000,” Funhouse gives their audience the inside scoop on movies, games, comics, and all things that would make Patrick John Luc Picard do a cartwheel. Between waxing his blue playground slide for Funhouse guests to come flying down and sculpting his celebrated indie rock hair-do, Nar answered these questions for us…

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interview General Elektriks Steps Out of the Background to Spread That Soul

by Max Herman and Dustin Downing

March 24, 2010 - 12:23 am

Hervé “RV” Salters, the mastermind behind left-field soul project General Elektriks, never thought he would be more than a keyboardist and songwriter while living in his native Paris. All that changed when he made it to the States in 1999 and soon after began recording solo material (vocals included) under the GE alias on the renowned Quannum Projects. But while catching up with the humble Salters in Austin during the festival week, he recalls that the first time he grabbed the microphone to sing, it wasn’t pretty. “Brutal” are his exact words.

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interview Music Dilla Director Discusses New Stussy Doc

by admin

March 3, 2010 - 11:26 am

In 2004, James Yancy (aka J Dilla) moved from Detroit, the city of his birth, to Los Angeles, the place he would call home until his death in 2006. Already a famed producer of chart topping hip-hop acts such as Common, Busta Rhymes, A Tribe Called Quest, and The Pharcyde, Jay Dee reinvented himself and his sound in Los Angeles, striving for a rawer style that departed from his neo-soul roots.

Four years after his untimely passing, Dilla reputation has only grown. Last month, to commemorate what would have been his 36^th birthday, legendary Los Angeles street wear company Stüssy held Dilla Day events across North America, celebrating the release of their limited edition tee shirt produced in collaboration with Stones Throw and the Dilla estate. The company also produced a mini-documentary focused on Dilla’s “second act” that took place in Los Angeles, and the connections he made with the city. Chinashop spoke with the creator of the three-part web series Adam Jay Weissman to learn more about this reverent project. Read the full story →

Gallery interview Tempo No Tempo : Redefining Noise Pop

by Jeff Nau

March 2, 2010 - 11:52 am

Despite being unable to see every single band that played the Noise Pop Festival (which was pretty impossible), from what I witnessed, Tempo No Tempo seemed the best candidate for what Noise Pop represents: the perfect blend between the two words (and worlds). As a companion piece to the Dizzy Balloon interview — a band which represented a very different sound, more towards the pop end of the spectrum — I interviewed TNT outside Slim’s our first night there, just to get some insight to the songwriting of the band and the brains behind it.

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Gallery interview Dizzy Balloon Makes Girls Go Wild

by Jeff Nau

March 2, 2010 - 11:49 am

You’d think the guys in Dizzy Balloon were the latest incarnation of Paul, George, John and Ringo the way the girls were carrying on tonight! There was no fainting or ripping hair out of the head, though, which was kind of disappointing — just homemade sign-touting, hypnotized teenyboppers who stood as close as they could to oogle the band and sing along to every word. The perfect foil for Noise Pop’s Tempo No Tempo (see other interview), DB’s musicians looked to the classic rock bands of the 60s and 70s for inspiration, and whose proto-punk-pop sound had the crowd in a craze after a few short riffs.

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Featured interview Music Kid Static: All Over the Place

by Max Herman

February 11, 2010 - 11:11 am

Driving around Chicago with hip-hop eccentric Kid Static in his ‘95 Toyota Tercel (with a suped-up engine), there’s no mistaking how connected this adventurous MC/producer is to the people of his city. Going from a meeting at the headquarters of the new artist development resource site Veoba near Wicker Park to downtown and eventually back to his home studio in Humboldt Park, this towering dynamo doesn’t slack off. Admittedly, today is busier than average, but on this overcast afternoon he appreciates the opportunity to move his music forward and just talk with some of the many folks on the scene he has met over the past five years. During a brief stop at Kinko’s, Kid Static reveals that a trip he’s taking the following day to L.A. is actually a precursor for his move out West to expand his recording career. While surprising news, it also makes this day around his city all the more significant.

Yea Big and Kid Static – The Nameless

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interview Music Peter Hook at The Metro

by Shop Keeper

January 4, 2010 - 1:32 pm

The infamous Peter Hook flew into the Windy City this past weekend to talk with Chicago music aficionado and owner of the Metro and Smart Bar, Joe Shanahan. Approximately 50 people attended the invitation only gathering to meet and ask questions with Peter during the session hosted by the Red Bull Music Academy. Former presenters at the Academy and long time friends, Joe and Peter discussed their musical interactions through the years including several precarious hunts down the dark alleys of New York and Detroit in search of new underground, emerging sounds.

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interview Music Mike Posner: Out the Door and Down the Rabbit Hole

by Jeff Nau

November 17, 2009 - 1:35 pm

If you’d told Mike Posner he was destined to become a hip-hop sensation before he became a college graduate, he might have reacted the way many of us would–a blank stare and a “What the hell are you on?” look as he made his way to his next class lecture. Yet in less than a year, Posner has already been snatched from a somewhat predictable life as All-American College Student, and plunged into a wonderland where his recordings are already taking the ‘net by storm– and he’s only begun his senior year at Duke. Posner spent the better part of his 2008 school year walled up in his dorm room and working on what he calls a “mix tape” (read: CD), churning out the best beats and rhythms he could come up with. In January 2009, he released the music as an LP, A Matter of Time, and became one of the genre’s newest hot topics. Within a couple of months, the CD was out, the bidding war had begun, and Posner had become an overnight sensation (albeit through a great deal of hard work and long hours).

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