#2: Bygones
After Zach and Nick finished up their respective albums this year, they decided to embark on their first mini-tour together to bring improvised noise to unexpecting fans. For further studies: Sargent House // Myspace

#3: Free The Robots
After releasing Ctrl Alt Delete on Alpha Pup in March, Chris is touring the nation with the Glitch Mob to bring LA’s beats to the hungry masses.  For further studies: Alpha Pup // Myspace

Join me in welcoming the newest member to Flying Lotus‘ imprint Brainfeeder:  JEREMIAH JAE.

Hailing from Chicago’s own Young Black Preachers, you can be expecting Jae’s first album to drop on Brainfeeder by the end of the year.  Hear a snippet below and peep a hallucinatory journey through chromatic etchings drowning in static in the video for “Police Ball State Disco” above.

Stone Passage on BBC Radio 1:  

J.

Imagine Bruce Springsteen’s “Youngstown” expanded into a career. Now imagine that, instead of the Boss and his New Jersey origins, the auteur in question comes from a blue-collar background in Kent County, Michigan – a good long-term vantage point for the deterioration of American industry. With those images in mind, you probably have an approximate vision of Drew Nelson and his third and most recent album Dusty Road to Beulah Land. Though the album is steeped in personal reactions to the recession, what may seem especially germane for the rest of the country right now has been relevant in Michigan for far longer. Drew Nelson, for all his roots credentials and influences, is an ambient artist; he tries to sound out the tone of dilapidation. And, for the most part, he succeeds.

Nelson’s instrumentals ranges from the finger picked bounciness of “Grandmother Moon” to the more driving and purposeful lament of “Stranger”. In either case, what may surprise you most may not be just his compelling guitar play, but the gorgeous brush work on the drums. To the album’s great credit, Terra Nova studios in Austin, TX, gently but assertively mixed all the instruments.

According to Nelson’s website, producer and mixer Jerry Tubb related the following regarding his work on the album: “I’ve worked on a lot of music. Sometimes I get a salvage project; this is a record.” Regardless of how consistent Nelson’s narrative-styled songs were to begin with, Tubb clearly had a great deal of influence on the tenor of the guitars and low attack on the drums. These two characteristics go a long way toward cultivating the ambiance with which Nelson works.

Despite the moonshine warmth of the vocals, it bears mentioning that Nelson’s lyric stories leave something to be desired occasionally. At times I get the sense that he’s trying to imitate Mark Knopfler’s unbelievable track record in writing tunes from a specific person’s point of view. The problem might simply be that Knopfler picks more interesting narratives and narrators. Recall the Dire Straits’ song “Iron Hand” which cynically covers the Battle of Orgreave during the UK miner’s strike in 1984, or even “Money for Nothing”, sung as a snide commentary on MTV by an appliance store employee with whom Knoplfer once had a conversation. Nelson, on the other hand, gives a quiet dignity to all of his subjects – for instance, an old Native American woman in “Grandmother Moon” and a farmer watching the erosion of his land in “Farmer’s Lament” – but stumbles in reaching for the same momentum that define Knopfler and Springsteen’s stories.

The stranger’s claim that he feels “like a stranger in [his] own life” can be taken as an operating thesis of this album. Even so, the album never comes across as unfamiliar or unwelcome, and Nelson has generously prevented us from feeling like strangers to his songs. In that spirit, the incidental hiccups throughout the record never derail the project and in some ways largely contributes to the affects of the album. This is a record, indeed.

words by Miles King

Cosign Presents is back with Chicago’s most lovable DJ, Kid Color.  Kyle Woods came out to Chicago from Cali with nothing but a keen taste for 70s disco and a dream of making the kids dance.  And dance they did as Kyle painted the town with his high energy sets everywhere from Wicker Park’s sweaty lofts to the biggest clubs and venues.  Watch as Kid Color tells his story with pal Dan Coop (of Does it Offend You, Yeah?) and Abbey Pub’s resident bad ass Adam.

Film by Justin Staple.

Have an idea that you want to see realized but need that extra collaboration or motivation?  Sign up and post your invention, business or art on the new innovative social network Original Projects.  Project centers around helping young thinkers find others of the same ambition to help bring their dreams to reality, find a home for it, and even make that green from it.  There’s no project too small or lame either because it’s free, so sign up and find some people to help you out or surf around current projects to get the inspiration you need from others.

Further studies: Original Projects

Who decides what’s relevant in hip hop now?  Why ask… hip hop hasn’t always been the artistic force that it once was in the golden age.  But its a new game now, with a new aesthetic and new drive to stay relevant, innovative and still make a little money all at the same time.  Enter hip hop photographer and newfound videographer Zach Wolfe.  Hailing from Atlanta and in the game for years, Wolfe’s client list spans generations and genres of music shooting everyone from Larry the Cable Guy to Soulja and everything in between.  Now, with the purchase of the Cannon 5D Mark II, Wolfe has spanned mediums with the addition of Zach Wolfe Live to his signature franchise.  Live brings quick, beautifully shot memorable snippets of the artists Wolfe works with or tracks down to open them up to a level of intimacy that fans crave but can’t fulfill through rapid-fire Twitter visits.  What makes Wolfe’s eye memorable both in still and video is the clean and idyllic style that helps cement the current players he works with as true musical legends, to be captured and distributed to the masses through online and print media.  Not an easy task when any caliber artist can easily garner semi-professional press shots at the click of a button in an attempt to gain legitimacy.

The stockade of photos and videos that Wolfe has accumulated through the years are realized with a consciousness of the journey the artists have gone through to make it to the top, a journey Wolfe shares himself.  In a recent interview with XTM Online, Wolfe explains that despite the saturation of amateur hip hop photographers that the internet and consumer cameras affords, there is still a distinct craft and process to becoming a professional; “…if there was any beef in photography, than it would have to be with some of these young kids who want to be where I’m at and have no I idea what it took to get here. I don’t respect these kids that get their digital rebels and don’t want to assist other photographers. Photography is a craft. You work under someone and then you become a photographer. I get at least 5 emails a day from young kids wanting to get all your secrets and think in a matter of weeks they can become a photographer. I beef with that.”  Creating a recognizable distributable style is a tough and rarely achieved art, especially when the stakes are high and hard to come by in the commercial rap game.  Fortunately for the fans, Wolfe seems like he’ll be bringing new heat for years to come.

For further studies:  Zach Wolfe and Zach Wolfe Live // XTM Interview

Exclusive production shots from “Miral”, the new film by Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Basquiat) staring Willem Dafoe and Freida Pinte shot on location in Jerusalem. Here, we see 1st AD Sebastián Silva (Babel, Titanic) directing the extras on a controlled set in the heart of Jerusalem as Willem Dafoe (playing Eddie) walks up to an old building and distinguished DP Eric Gautier (Taking Woodstock, Intro The Wild) shoots a long crane shot.

Miral tells the story of Hind Husseini’s (Hiam Abbass) effort to establish an orphanage in Jerusalem after the 1948 partition of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. It is set for release in 2010 by Pathé Films (pathe.co.uk/)

Wah Do Dem, means “what they do” in the Kingston, Jamrock vernacular.  Its the name of a new feature from young Brooklyn filmmakers Ben Chace and Sam Fleischner who decided to pack up a Panasonic HVX200 and some great actors when Ben won a raffle to take a luxury cruise over the beautiful island of Jamaica.  The film, shot and imagined on a slim DIY budget, features a handful of musical Brooklynites including Ira Tuton from Yeasayer, Ben Goldwasser from MGMT and most epicly, Norah Jones in her first film appearance since her wild role in Wong Kar-Wai’s “My Blueberry Nights“.  The film attempts to capture the unique and vivid Jamaican culture through the eyes of an out of place and out of mind young American faced with a crossroads in his life after Jones’ character dumps him.  But it brings much more to the table.

During his journeys (as standard by anyone crossing from Montego Bay to Kingston…) irie Max comes upon the island’s early roots reggae legends The Congos adding a unique cultural bridge between the two dynamically different yet musically bonded characters.  As director Flesher states,

“The nyabinghi drumming sessions – like the scene we portrayed in our movie – are not about authorship or who is steering the rhythm one way or another. Its more like a group attempt to tap into a timeless cultural thing or a feeling that is deeper than any one drummer…I feel a  similar dynamic exists with filmmaking, and especially the kind of filmmaking we  undertook with Wah Do Dem. Sam and I had ideas about where the story would go  and how it would get there, but the real feel and energy of the movie came out of  the people and places with whom we worked and as the directors of the film we  were less the ‘auteurs’ in the classical sense, and more like the bass drummer and  the falsetto singer at the binghi session, keeping the pulse moving and steering the  swell and fall of music to a certain extent, but only as much as two pieces can in a  group of many parts”

Their journey just won the Los Angeles Film Festival narrative award this summer, an amazing feat for any low budget digital film so look for a possible small release soon!  For further studies check their site.

Two front runners of digital production, Akai and Abelton have colabed to bring the first dedicated midi controller for Ableton Live, the unmatched production software for live performance.  Designed by the same engineering team responsible for Akai’s iconic MPCs, the APC40 features a slew of fancy lit buttons (109) nobs (16) and faders (9) that synch with Live’s interface to bring real-time mixing and an innovative easy compact surface for bedroom production.  In a nice move, the controller is set up to practically mirror Abletons interface… and its only 400 shells.  Step your game up.

Pioneering street artist Dash Snow has died on July 13 from a heroin overdose at Lafayette House, a hotel in lower Manhattan.  Read the New York Times’ obiturary here and  photographer Ryan McGinley’s amazing account of life with Snow here.