off the grid

2010 Off The Grid Sustainable Music Festival celebrates Earth Day’s 40th Birthday tomorrow. Hosted by NYU Earth Matters, eco-friendly art will be on view (from NYU and non-NYU artists) during performances from Cold Cave, Oberhofer and North Highlands and a “Special Secret Guest” headliner recently revealed as cacophonous LA band HEALTH, whose oft-remixed hyper songs will serve as an abrasive counterpart to Cold Cave’s fun-filled, dark electronic pop. The party-guy in white himself Andrew W K will play MC for the night to make sure you 'party hard.'

Saturday April 24, 2010
3 - 8 pm
Solar One
23rd Street and the East River
NYC
FREE ADMISSION



health: we are water [lovepump united; 2010]



cold cave: life magazine [matador; 2010]



image via Cold Cave's myspace

golden triangle

Free-spirited garage/art-rock band Golden Triangle have been local fixtures in New York for a while now, banging their tambourines and chanting to minimalist punk beats at gallery parties and bars around Brooklyn and Manhattan. Originally from Memphis, Austin, and Atlanta, Golden Triangle contains former members of Angry Angles with Jay Reatard and Viva L’American Death Ray Music. Swaying wildly and chanting together like a hippie commune while somehow still playing instruments, their performances look straight out of an orgy at Warhol’s Factory—or out of Euripides’ Bacchae, since the loud, female group vocals could easily be mistaken as the cries of maenad priestesses in a frenzied, Dionysian ceremony.

Their new album Double Jointer is out March 2, 2010 on Hardly Art, and according to their blog, a split 7-Inch with the Fresh & Only’s has been in the works, too.


Golden Triangle: Neon Noose



Golden Triangle: Prize Fighter

pictures and words

Paste Up
Barbara Kruger

“An artist who works with pictures and words”



Untitled (We decorate your life), Collage, 7 x 7 inches



Last chance to check out collage artist Barbara Kruger’s early work at Sprüth Magers London, closing January 23. After holding graphic designer and art director positions at publications like Mademoiselle and Aperture, Kruger siezed the simple imagery and texts of advertising for her own paste ups. Ironic slogans, invented or clipped directly from the media, in Futura font stand out boldly and turn close shots of faces and objects into incisive critiques of authority, capitalism, consumerism and social identity. Kruger’s paste ups seem part of our daily imagery: DIY flyers, notebooks, book and DVD covers, post cards all resemble Kruger’s art, but her paste ups use the communicability of this style to its fullest potential. Her early small-scale, monochrome pieces, infused with poignant and political messages are on view now.


http://spruethmagers.net/home/




Untitled (You are a very special person), Collage (color), 5.4 x 7.5 inches




Untitled (Are we having fun yet?), Collage (color), 8.3 x 5.7 inches

girl gaze

vintage photo via the Best Coast myspace page

In the past we've featured a number of emerging bands whose myspaces would list any combination of "garage, lo-fi, surf, tropical, punk," or "shoegaze" as their genre trifecta, from Vivian Girls and Real Estate (east coast!) to the Intelligence and Abe Vigoda (west coast!). Within this scene and its amalgamation of genres, however, there is undoubtedly a difference to the sound when accompanied by the female voice--enter a slew of female-fronted or all-girl bands from California (Best Coast, Grass Widow, Brilliant Colors, the Light Rays, Pearl Harbor, Dum Dum Girls), New York (the V-Girls, Weed Hounds, Talk Normal), the UK (Pens, Wetdog) and even Sweden (Liechtenstein). On November 5th, Vivian Girls asked on Twitter, "Should we call our scene girl gaze or shit girls?" Though we don't recommend googling the term (nsfw), the first one seems likelier to catch on.

Of these 'girl groups' Best Coast has made a pretty big, melodic splash. Comprising one Bethany Cosentino (ex-Pocahaunted singer-strummer) and her former babysitter and guitarist Bobb Bruno, Best Coast has released some catchy 7-inches in 2009 for jams like "Sun Was High (So Was I)," "Something in the Way" and recently "When I'm with You" (on Black Iris) that ring truer to the sass and adventure in 60s Girl Group pop songs than the band's more shoe-gazy counterparts. That Bethany's drawn-out croons of longing can muster such melodic prowess is no accident--coming from a musical family, as a teen she sang back-up on the Ellen DeGeneres show and turned down a career in major-label pop.

Check out "When I'm With You" mashed up with a scene from Les Demoiselles de Rochefort below:





With a little less Beach Boys harmonics, and a little more Sleater-Kinney call-and-answer layers comes San Francisco's Grass Widow. The trio's syncopated vocals and music fit together with so much punch and precision. With awesome 12-Inches out on indie labels Make A Mess and Captured Tracks, look forward to more from these girls in the future or catch them on tour on the west coast this winter.

http://www.myspace.com/grasswidowmusic

camille vivier

Jenny Hanivers look like devils, angels and dragons and may have started the legends of Mermaids.





Fashion photographer Camille Vivier’s work lays out a curious narrative of different women in stark scenes like the editorial sets she’s shot for Purple and Dazed and Confused. Set to heady rock music, it almost reminds us of the Virgin Suicides. The girls encounter the abrasions of Mother Nature and in the end are defined in sailor terminology.

See more work from Vivier at her website, and look out for her upcoming commercial for Maison Martin Margiela’s 2010 fragrance.

little dragon

Little Dragon’s songs are not what comes to mind when you think of Swedish electronic music—the Gothenburg quartet’s bass and percussion sound more like smooth jazz at times than say, The Knife, but record scratches and samples remind us we are dealing with some modern electronic masters, soaked in low-key cool. (They have collaborated with fellow Swedes and electro-jazz duo Koop, after all).

These high school friends turned electro-band are touring North America this month before heading back to Europe in early December. Catch them in NYC at Le Poisson Rouge tomorrow night, Saturday November 21, 2009.

http://www.myspace.com/yourlittledragon

czech it

Don't miss Czech films currently playing at the Film Society of the Lincoln Center, as part of the film festival titled The Ironic Curtain: Czech Cinema since the Velvet Revolution. Classics like Ecstasy (1933) and new films from fresh directors like Petr Zelenka will be screened, with discussion with the filmmakers themselves, actors and other guests including the Czech Ambassador to the UN.

See the Schedule


Ecstasy, Gustav Machatý, 1933


Daisies, Vĕra Chytilová, 1966


The Karamazovs, Petr Zelenka, 2008

vitalic

Vitalic, aka Dijonaise electronica artist Pascal Arbez responsible for underground club anthems like “La Rock 01,” is touring through the UK and Western Europe this fall, spreading the blips and beats of his just-dropped sophomore album Flashmob, available today in the US via 101 Distribution.

Upbeat and dark, Vitalic’s music is everything that is a good night out. He dabbles in afrobeat without relying on the trend too much, guaranteeing sultry, sweeping club music that stays true to classic techno and electronica, as in “Poison Lips.” Some songs on the new album are lifted with vocal melodies that sound like digitized Donna Summer tracks, adding disco to the mix, always supported by dark synths and a fluctuating catalogue of percussive beeps. It’s refreshing, vitalizing if you will, and seems to re-animate the electronic genre.

Vitalic's MySpace