“My photographs serve as modern dioramas of our new natural history. Within these scenes I explore our paradoxical relationship with the “wild” and how our conflicting impulses continue to evolve and alter the behavior of both humans and animals. We at once seek connection with the mystery and freedom of the natural world, yet we continually strive to tame the wild around us and compulsively control the wild within our own nature. Within my work I examine the primal issues of comfort and fear, dependence and determination, submission and dominance that play out in the physical and psychological encounters between man and the natural world. Increasingly, these encounters take place within the artificial ecotones we have constructed that act as both passage and barrier between domestic space and the wild.”
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“The improvisations were done on the last recording day, with no overdubs. “Completely free” was the essential concept. For one of them, they were joined by Batoh’s fellow Ghosts Takuyuki Moriya (contra bass), Kazuo Ogino (piano,celtic harp) and the santur player Mayumi Nagayoshi. The same morning Helena had received notice that her grandmother suddenly had died, and that a dear friend had chosen to end his life. Two death letters in one day…there is great emotion reflected in the improvisations. And great depth and beauty throughout the whole Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh album.”
[download] “Uti Var Hage” from Helena Espvall & Masaki Batoh, out July 22nd on Drag City
Timothy Leary, who I don’t think needs much of an introduction here, has been in the news recently for a William S. Burroughs shotgun painting that his estate is putting up for auction. And by “in the news,” I mean I stumbled across it while looking for how to make home-made ayuhasca. Tomato, tomahto.
In my journey I also found a treasure trove of Timothy Leary mp3′s available for download and enjoyment. Everything from interviews to lectures to music is included here, and it’s all great stuff.
The 1960’s came and went quickly. During that period, a lot of great music was performed, a lot of great films were made. Strange new drugs were ingested, strange new conclusions drawn. It seemed, at times, to be an enlightened era: a time when pop culture and intellectual exploration were one and the same. But in the wake of this decade came the children of hippies. Unlike their parents, these “flower grandchildren” were raised with complete and utter freedom to live as they pleased, with very little discipline. But if the hippie ideology was a reaction to the conservative attitudes of their parents, what did the children of hippies have to rebel against?
This is the question that spurred Caleb Clark’s NYU graduate thesis, “Born Dropped Out: The Hippie Kid Project.”
“Born Dropped Out is a Web site with unedited interviews of children of hippies displayed as short video clips that you choose how to view. Participants answered the same 20 questions with no interviewer prompting them as they looked at the camera. Hippie kids, now in their 30s and 40s, were chosen as an example of how an interesting subject could be explored in a way that encouraged viewers to explore media and come to their own conclusions.”
Check out the new promo video for the first single from Brightblack Morning Light’s new album “Motion to Rejoin”, coming September 9th on Matador Records:
The last few weeks I’ve really been craving some new Brightblack Morning Light material and this song definitely delivers. Is it just me or is there something extremely sexy and sultry about the Brightblack’s slanky organ grooves and hushed soulful gospel vocals?
Fresh off the presses from Greg Weeks’ Language of Stone imprint, Silver Summit’s self-titled debut LP drips with funereal prog/metal atmospherics. Hazy, smoky, and macabre, the record’s mellifluous vocal harmonies and meandering multi-ethnic instrumentation paint mental portraits of foggy Victorian streets, gypsy caravans, and Baghdad bazaars with effortless execution. Silver Summit’s songwriting sometimes falls victim to its own sonic ambition, but Greg Weeks’ masterful production proves a hypnotic panacea to SS’s shortcomings.
Fire on Fire played an amazing show at the Space Gallery in Portland, ME this past June 20th. I truly do think that this is one of the most talented and adventurous bands I’ve heard in a long time. From what Chriss told me in our interview, they’re sitting on a fully written and recorded album. Don’t deprive us! We need more Fire in our lives.
I didn’t agree with the Divine Right of Kings, but Pete Seeger is pretty much infallible. In a Lower Manhattan apartment, one of the greatest living musicians and activists sat down with one of the country’s newest great leaders. Pete Seeger, with a list of awards and honors longer than the neck on his famed banjo, still works tirelessly at 89 years of age. He spoke with Majora Carter, the young and indefatigable founder of Sustainable South Bronx, an organization that is re-shaping the neighborhood of her youth through pioneering green-collar economic development projects, about the environmental work he has worked at for more than forty years. And while he’s at it, he also finds time to sing a couple songs, demanding the film crew sing along, because it’s not nearly as much fun singing to someone as it is singing with someone.
I didn’t agree with the 
