music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Lilacs & Champagne Band Interview: Midnight Features w/ Emil Amos & Alex Hall

Perhaps better known as the founding members of the Portland, OR, instrumental rock band Grails, who seem to release a new album every year which pushes the expectations for their already wide and varied sound, Alex Hall and Emil Amos are similarly prolific lately with their side project, Lilacs & Champagne.

In 2008 alone, Grails released two strikingly different records: the fiery and chaotic Doomsdayer's Holiday and the heavy stoner rock of Take Refuge in Clean Living. Their 2011 album, Deep Politics, almost defies definition, though songs like "Corridors of Power" lean in the direction of a Lilacs & Champagne track. Likewise, Hall and Amos' alter ego in Lilacs boasts a similarly broad diversity. Grainy hip-hop beats are one sediment layer in their undulating composite, a consistent base layer that holds the music together. Beyond that, what goes on top is an eclectic array of forgotten genre LPs, soundtrack oddities, and random pulls from other forgotten corners of the record bin. Trying to play spot-the-sample might be a hopeless game, but wading into the unknown is one of the things that make Lilac & Champagne's latest, Midnight Features, Vol. 2: Made Flesh, both inviting and challenging. In step with the rate of their output, Lilac and Champagne's search for source material never stops.

On a Quest for Discovery

Reports of the death of the record store have been greatly exaggerated. Still standing are the Amoeba giants, the tenacious local indies, and the many random shops and market stalls scattered far and wide, full of accumulated stashes of old vinyl and out-of-print CDs coated in the dust of previous owners' attics and closets. These are the playgrounds of collectors like Hall and Amos.

"[Record hunting is] priority number one whenever we go anywhere..." Hall explains. "Honestly, it's what we look forward to the most... It's a way to directly experience the culture, sift their detritus. You connect with the city as you move from place to place. Record digging, for me, is the ultimate way to travel and experience a place."

Whenever rare free hours present themselves on tour, the guys jump in a cab and embark on record-scouting adventures, sometimes taking random chances, other times more prepared, with addresses of their favorite shops at the ready. On a recent European tour, Hall had his sights set on a few particular shops in the UK, Paris, and a particularly great one in Leipzig.

"If you're really into European art rock from the '70s, you know the best place to shop for it is Europe," Hall confirms. "At the end of the tour, I have a few days in Prague this time, kind of like a post-tour wind-down. I planned it just for that. I've got it all mapped out..."

Hall and Amos have been music obsessives as far back as they can recall; they've been enthusiastic crate diggers as far back as the early 2000s, when they started playing together in Grails. They were joined by a few different musicians in the early stages of the group; after a more stable line-up came into shape, they released their debut album, The Burden of Hope, in 2003. Hall recounts that this coincided with a time on the musical landscape where the reissue machine was really starting to turn. Shining a light on potentially forgotten records from the '60s and '70s had been a part of the business for a long time, be it through legitimate re-releases, or, as was often the case, bootlegging. The ascendance of the Internet, however, enabled a blooming of reissue labels. The exponential increase in access to obscurities and rarified artifacts became something of a never-ending field day for the two of them.

"Back around that time," recalls Hall, "we flipped out on Turkish music from the '70s, all the German music, French... it was all just there. You couldn't get enough. We drank it up. It hasn't really stopped."

"The greatest thing... is that you never actually have enough time to get through everything," he continues. "When you say you reach the end of the road with records, there's always another corner to turn. It's incredibly exciting. It's very reassuring. It's a journey that you'll never have enough time in your life to actually get through it all. It's this feeling that is kind of discouraging when you realize that you'll never have enough time to get through everything, but also at the same time deeply reassuring."

All of their record-collecting allows for a broad foundational base that the duo uses in DJing as well as incorporates their various musical projects.

"Sampling is just a game of re-contextualization and juxtaposition. It's kind of re-contextualization for its own sake. Putting two together to make a new statement, and in a context that feels new and modern. In a lot of these songs, there are probably samples from twenty or thirty different songs. It has this mosaic quality that creates an atmosphere that's somehow reflective of all these different kinds of music. It kinds of stands on its own," Hall comments.

Growth Through Intuition

Dizzying as the range of their references may be, Lilacs & Champagne are drawn to certain atmospheres -- specifically headier, moodier vibes, usually in a minor key. As evinced in its title, Midnight Features Vol. 2: Made Flesh, there's also an overtly sensual tinge to their new album – yet the vibe, while apparent, was not necessary something they purposefully set out to achieve.

"All we can do is sit down to work and do what feels intuitive and organic at the time," Hall states, concluding that once one starts to accumulate so many sounds and materials, what emerges almost contextualizes itself naturally.

After Lilacs & Champagne's 2012 self-titled debut and the band's 2013 follow-up, Danish & Blue, the Midnight Features Vol. 1: Shower Scene EP heralded a series that had already been preconceived as a series of "fantasy records" wherein the duo would insert themselves into different musical eras from recent history. According to the Mexican Summer website, "Shower Scene was inspired by the background music from 1970s TV shows, and this kind of prefab framework is one Hall is fond of. Grails took up a similar conceit for a trio of Black Tar Prophecies volumes in 2006, and have since added three more volumes. Lilacs & Champagne may not know exactly what the next edition of Midnight Features is going to be, but they are already talking about future ones.

"It's kind of fun to have this open-ended series... It's really just the psychological triggers that you do with yourself," explains Hall. "No one is actually imposing restrictions or boundaries on you, but at times, you feel like you have a place, a repository to fit these other ideas, that doesn't lose your format. On this tour, we'll probably end up with a handful of little things for the next Midnight Features thing. We're all heading over [to Europe] with laptops loaded down with samples and stuff, and we're just going to sitting there in the van with our headphones, shooting ideas back and forth. It's a really fun way to work."

Conceiving a creative division between the first Lilacs & Champagne releases and the path they are currently on was a fairly quick decision. The early records had come together with just Amos and Hall in a home studio. Yet when it came time to rope in other people to bring their songs to a live setting, the new personnel stuck around, and they ended up re-writing much of the material from those first two albums. After re-recording "these sort of crazy, prog-y, psych-y, funky interpretations of the early Lilacs songs", the duo didn't know exactly how to put it all out. Lilacs & Champagne had become something of a "half-live-band, half lower, sample-based stuff" hybrid.

The inclusion of live guitars was a noticeable move on Shower Scene, and it is even more pronounced on the second Midnight Features volume, Made Flesh. Those familiar with Grails' monolithic guitars will recognize them at once on "Case Closed!" and "Burning Sensation", though they are comparatively muffled to match the softer environs. Other similarities are less obvious, but even Hall feels that "Drawn Curtains", from Grails' 2007 album, Burning Off Impurities, wouldn't sound out of place on a Lilacs & Champagne record. He notes that shifting the project into a live band has meant filling it out "with all kinds of instruments, and we don't know that many different ways to play them, so they're going to sound sort of like Grails for that reason."

"There's a lot of similarities. I don't know how many people who really like Grails will make the switch, because [Lilacs & Champagne has] got even more of a sense of humor, and it's more, for lack of a better word, hip-hop influenced," he explains. "I think that might lose some people along the way, but once we move to Temporary Residence [Limited, Grails' record label and longtime friends], we'll find out. They're great, and we're really lucky to have them to work with."

Along with the multitude of musical sources they cull from, other backwards-glancing influences have had an effect on how Lilacs & Champagne approach their music as well. One such influence has been the Marvel's What If comic series. Initially running between 1977 and 1984, the series picked up again in the late '80s through the '90s, and then again in the mid '00s. Its basic premise was to explore what might have resulted in the world of Marvel comics if certain events had played out differently.

"The reference to What If originally came from a conversation about the benefits of abandoning genres, and placing yourself into somewhat impossible contexts that you have to fight your way out of," Amos states, shedding light on this curious kind of source material. "I was obsessed with the comic Master of Kung Fu as a little kid... and they did a What If issue where the good guy goes to the dark side and becomes evil. There's a lot of power in flipping conventions and re-imagining classic music history references beyond just mere hybridization if you put enough elbow grease into it."

Considering how the notion of alternate realities applies to their music, Amos notes that Grails have always thrived on changing settings from album to album. With Lilacs & Champagne, the idea is to take that approach to "an even more hyper-colorized zone, where albums can take even sharper break-neck curves." The group might not be major comic buffs in general, but the impact that they once made on their nascent sense of creativity is something that has stuck with Amos.

"Comics mostly only represented a moment for me around age 10 when, as a kid, you really had nothing but your imagination and own internal fantasy world to entertain yourself. Illustrations serve as a direct reflection of analogies that you want to paint, or extremely pulpy atmospheres that can help place the music in the right setting," says Amos. "I don't get too much out of one-dimensional or literal-minded craftsmanship in most art forms. Lilacs & Champagne is supposed to be a place where we can paint semi-impossible musical situations -- hence What If -- and satisfy that urge to reignite the more mystical part of our brain chemistry that we were more in touch with as kids."

That kind of open-mindedness is central to how Lilacs & Champagne approach their music. They are constantly engaged with their sense of curiosity. Their tastes may be refined, but they are also omnivorous. Midnight Features Vol. 2: Made Flesh alights the synapses and dusts off the forgotten corners of the brain where possibilities are without limit.

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Lilacs & Champagne Band Interview: Midnight Features w/ Emil Amos & Alex Hall

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

felte Records Label Feature: A Balance of Give & Take

"At the time, I'd been going to lots of shows around the Brooklyn area, seeing band after band that simply did not know how to perform or barely knew how to play their instruments... or sounded like every other band. I was frustrated with this," explains Owens, who was tired of bands that learned how to play songs live long after the recording process. "That seems backwards to me -- uninteresting and the antithesis of what I'm musically interested in. Too much focus on parts versus the whole..."

"ERAAS instantly stood out to me that night," he continues. "I knew then that this was a project that made sense for what I've wanted to do with a label. They really set the tone for what I wanted to represent sonically and visually with the label, and all the bands that have affected me in a way that I desire from music as a whole."

Now, three years later, ERAAS is still happily part of the felte family, and Austin Stawiarz of ERAAS corroborates with Owens' authenticity.

"There was no sleazeball, suit-and-tie, 'Yeah baby, you're the next big thing' vibes," he explains. "felte has grown into a community of bands and people who strive to create something different, rather than what's currently hip."

Indeed, an element of trust is shared collectively amongst the felte roster. The bands trust Owens, and Owens trusts that they want to be part of what he is building. Nite Fields, one of the newest bands on the felte roster, noticed this right away.

"felte trust us with the music, and we trust them with the business. Terms like 'goals' [are] something we hope we never have to speak about," they explain.

Ritual Howls, who were signed after Owens saw them live in the now-defunct Brooklyn venue Glasslands, had a similar feeling about felte, explaining that, "Discussions about releases have always been very open. Jeff has always respected the aesthetic we want and the attachment we have to involvement. He's also very good at conveying a realistic outlook on decisions. We respect his knowledge and experience, but he also shows respect for ideas that we have."

"It's so important to have a mutual understanding or a connection for it to work. It's all about communication and transparency," explains Owens. "Last time I checked, those tend to be the best relationships in everyday life, so I'm gonna stick with that. I'm doing this not only because I love what music has done for my life, but also to collaborate."

Inspired by such classic indie labels as Factory Records, Touch & Go, Quarterstick, 4AD, Sub Pop, and numerous other contemporaries like Thrill Jockey, Kranky, Kill Rock Stars, Rough Trade, and the like, Owens admits that he takes bits and pieces from all of these key players in order to create a record label in this modern age. felte, as a result, can easily be described as dynamic and challenging -- a positive description for avid and explorative music lovers -- much of that is rooted in the label's strong aesthetic and desire to further a mood rather than simply a roster comprised of similar-sounding bands.

"I think the mood generally consists of tension -- a touch of gloom and a sort of weight musically or lyrically depending on the project," Owens explains. "Whether it's the cinematic post-everything nature of ERAAS, the cyborg psych-rock of Mysteries, the post-punk immediacy of Soviet Soviet, the push-pull art rock from Lushes, or the atmospheric shoegaze of The Tower of Light, they all seem to have a common thread that binds them"

To maintain such a strong roster, Owens is extremely meticulous about the selection process, and has high expectations for both the band and his own involvement.

"There's a lot of noise out there -- more bands than ever, newer forms of 'entertainment' or distractions for our time. This will be the first decade where history will talk more about the technology surrounding music than the artists. While it's a challenge," notes Owens, "I feel like the past few years have been the best time to start a label if you gravitate more towards DIY creativity, patience, perseverance and appreciate the small victories."

There is also an element of ultimate acceptance with felte, beyond what even the most experimental labels would consider routine. Mysteries, another new felte signee, are exactly as their name would imply; they're shrouded in mystery, with little to no reveal on its band members. Even their signing to the label was mysterious: felte received an anonymous tape, Owens liked what he heard, and he signed them.

"We gave them no information about the band or hard sell as such, and they had the guts to back the record based only on liking what they heard. Our initial impression was that they seemed the sort of label that would be excited by what we do, and are willing to play the long game for things they love. This is still our impression now," notes Mysteries.

This loyalty and respect -- the qualities which keep Mysteries with felte -- is something echoed time and time again by the label's bands, as Owens very clearly holds its bands' creative practices and goals in utmost regard.

"felte were really open to what we wanted to achieve: the possibility to try something different with how the music was presented," says Mysteries. "The fact that they have the confidence in what they know and hear, and are willing to let the music to speak for itself, is somewhat a rarity in today's music industry, it seems."

www.felte.net

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

felte Records Label Feature: A Balance of Give & Take

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Swahili Band Interview: Journeys of AMOVREVX

The Lovers card in the tarot is often seen to represent a romantic love pairing, but this would is in fact a simplistic interpretation of its complex symbolism. As with every tarot card, The Lovers contains a variety of related but multifaceted meanings and interpretations; related to the astrological sign Gemini, The Lovers encompasses themes of duality, a balance of energies within oneself, and the ways in which those energies tether the physical body to spiritual planes of existence.

These themes are omnipresent on Swahili's latest record, AMOVREVX -- which takes its name from the Tarot de Marseilles, a restored version of one of the oldest decks in the Western World, the Marseilles. Updated by filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky and Philippe Camoin, a descendant of the publishers of the original, the Tarot de Marseilles supplements Jodorowsky's book, The Way of Tarot, which is just one of many literary and spiritual influences that informed the band.

"We were looking through the Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology [by Rossell Hope Robbins], and we saw that Gemini was represented by the Lovers tarot card, and that the duality was sort of fused by the third -- the third sort of being the hand of the celestial reaching down and creating some sort of duality," explains the band's synth player, XUA.

Duality and the number two are subtly present throughout AMOVREVX, which is the sophomore record of a band that transitioned out of meditative and experimental jams to embrace full-blown pop songwriting. In the five years between AMOVREVX and their previous self-titled LP, Swahili moved from Reno to Portland, scrapped an entire record's worth of material, and shifted from the vocal chants of synth player XUA to embrace the divine feminine in now-frontwoman Van Pham, who herself is a Gemini.

The Mental, The Physical

Swahili's self-titled first record, first released in 2012 on Translinguistic Other, possesses a darker, more pensive tone. Instead of the danceable pop songs found on AMOVREVX, it is a minimal and introspective representation of finding and testing the limits of one's own mind through psychedelia. While psychedelic references are still plentiful on AMOVREVX, Swahili painstakingly reinvented their sound for the release, testing their own patience along the way. The pop-centric direction that emerged was one they never could have predicted. If Swahili told the tale of personal spiritual explorations, AMOVREVX gives physical body, and articulate language, to those explorations.

"We knew the theme of the record was love early on... the first record was about exploration, and usually, at the end of those explorations, you come to this universal sort of truth that unconditional love is a binding power -- at least on this plane of existence," explains XUA. "And so, when we came across that word [amoreux], which is a beautiful looking word and a beautiful sounding word, in my opinion, then it was just esoteric enough to kind of make the whole thing make sense."

"A lot of [AMOVREVX] is about relationships of all sorts, and playing... on duality, it conclusively could be said that love -- amour / amovr is about expecting nothing and giving everything," adds Pham.

It is not uncommon for long-time fans to become confused or disillusioned when the band strays from its original sound. In some ways, Swahili's shift towards pop music set them back at ground zero, since there was little crossover between the two records. Yet many of Swahili's decisions were a long-time in the making, a maturation in terms of musicianship as well as an honest reflection of where they were at that point in their lives.

"We spent a lot of time exploring both minimalism and dynamics within that in the first record, and this time around, we've had more time to kind of really get in touch with our instruments and how we relate to both them and our band's space within that," explains drummer Ryan Schofield. "And as we've come up with more tightly-knit songs that still kind of a do a lot of exploration within them -- but have a bit more of a classic, if you will, song or pop structure to them."

"When we did those jammy things," adds guitarist Troy Micheau, "we would hit these moments, and occasionally they would be these really beautiful moments where everything would coalesce in this really awesome way. You would play that song at one show, and it would just work super well, but you would play it at the next show, and for whatever reason, that moment just wouldn't come together in that same way. So, in writing songs, it was more -- at least on my end -- more like coming up with a way to hone in on those moments and really shape them into everything that they could be..."

"There's definitely a certain beauty that comes with improvised music and hitting those moments in improvisation ... but with five people and the amount of gear we were starting to amass and all the different ideas and ways we wanted to make things happen, it started to become apparent after a while that if we were really going to hit those spots and make everything what it could be, then it needed to be a little more planned out, essentially, than what we had done before," Micheau concludes.

(SWAHILI BAND INTERVIEW CONTINUED BELOW THE ALBUM STREAM)

The Journey, The Destination

According to XUA, Swahili previously created their music using the rules of "game theory", but on AMOVREVX, utilize a combination of lessons learned from that and more deliberate studio songwriting.

"If you're writing a song, it's more like civilization... there's streets, signs, stop signs, fours, eighths, sixteenths; this key plays off of that key... it's well-tread territory. It's a thing that can be read and learned very easily. When you move into improvisation and ambient music and minimalism, sort of post-John Cage sort of thinking, it's more driving a car in the middle of the desert," he explains. "You can see the cactus over there, and all five of us start veering towards the cactus -- but then on the way to the cactus, we see an oasis over there, and we all start sort of veering towards that. And sometimes we hit the oasis together, and sometimes somebody gets there a little bit later, a little bit sooner, and it doesn't work as well –"

"-- and sometimes somebody's car just breaks down... and you have to go save them..." adds bassist John Griffin.

"So that's sort of this idea of playing the instruments that we know are capable of classic songwriting, song structure, but sort of giving way to the game at hand... giving way to the possibilities of throwing away roads and road signs and working cars and just sort of trying to get there on our own accord. And that's a very lost feeling, sometimes, and it's also a very joyous feeling sometimes... during our best times during those five years exploring that sort of theory, there were ecstatic moments that were rather spiritual and rather interesting, so by the time the first record came out, that's where we were. We could make sense out of process through spirituality and through connection on a more ethereal plane," continues XUA.

"But what we ended up doing with this record was sort of rediscovering that the songs and the things that we listen to over and over again -- the good records that we like over and over again -- they have a consistent sort of adventurousness to them, but there's also recognizable structure so that you aren't distracted by the experiment at hand. So the trick with AMOVREVX was to perform the experiments, but to make it listenable."

The creative process for AMOVREVX was unusual for Swahili. Pham admits, "I think we spent a lot more time alone on this record than we have previously, and in composing our songs" -- and much of this was because of the steep learning curve. The band took what they knew of improvisation and began their songs in the jam room but crafted the final product through countless hours of basement-dwelling and mouse-clicking, which included a great deal of time spent by Micheau, learning the ins-and-outs of DIY audio production. Hence the three years of actually writing and recording the record.

"It was a tough departure for us to realize that what we were doing was going back into songwriting. I think that was a philosophical crisis that we kind of had to go through with this record, which is why we threw out quite a bit of material," explains XUA. "But now that we've landed back in -- and are very comfortable with -- the idea of songwriting, we're kind of hitting the gas as far as the process is concerned."

Listening to AMOVREVX is like embarking on a journey. "I think of this album as a dimensional sling-shot," Pham once said. "It begins at a crossroads, and then we time travel around a mysterious inner world, visiting many different sonic landscapes around the way."

Every spin-through reveals new discoveries, buried amongst references to ancient wisdom and field recordings, funky riffs and wild synth freakouts. And it marks a bold new beginning for the band. After so much time spent changing and perfecting their songwriting process through the past three years, Swahili are now truly ready to synthesize the energies of The Lovers card -- to take in the contrasting dualities of free improvisation and structured songwriting onwards, into their third release. With the firm resolve that the time-intensive process of AMOVREVX "is not to be repeated", it can be guaranteed that there will not be a five-year duration between AMOVREVX and Swahili's next record -- though where the winding road will take them is anyone's guess.

www.swahilinoise.com // records.translinguisticother.com

Swahili - "Vestal" Music Video

Swahili - "Bardo" Music Video

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Swahili Band Interview: Journeys of AMOVREVX

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Ariel Kalma Musician Interview: We Know Each Other Somehow (RVNG INTL Collaboration w/ Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe)

Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe & Ariel Kalma - "Strange Dreams" Official Video

The compositions on We Know Each Other Somehow flow like highly considered improvisations.

Both Robert and I: we work with organized chaos, as we call it. We both came up with the same idea of organization and [living] of parts, which is the organizational part. Completely open. So yes, we had defined some structures, especially because I come from a lyrical [background] -- [with] instruments like saxophones, and also I play with keyboards, which means also that there is some scales which I am interested in which explore moods coming from Indian music and coming from Western music, also. We express each other in moods and in tonalities -- scales which are evoking some different feelings. One of them, for example, is the blues, which is in itself a tonality. [Kalma plays the flute and sings a melody.]

When we reach that note, which is very typically Western, it evokes a feeling. So choosing the scales was more my domain, and choosing the tonality and expressiveness of this. And then Robert added his precious modular synthesizer loops and sounds and different types of expression with electronic -- that came hand in glove with one another, my contribution and his contribution. And that's why you call it considered, because yes, we consider, what are we going to do? What do we want to express?

But there was still the improvisation part, which is like... for example, when we had that piece with the birds, we were practicing a piece and I heard the birds outside, and I said, "This is incredible; they are talking in the same key."

So what provoked what, we don't know, but we went for a walk, and I left the portable recorder on a tree trunk, and when we came back, we had birds recorded in the silence of the environment. We decided to tune that piece into the birds... after that, I played the saxophone, kind of improvising with the birds -- going around the birds. So yes, it's considered improvisation, maybe. It's a good term, "considered improvisation."

What was the writing and recording process for the album?

Well, we had one week, and we would come in the morning and say, "So, what do we do?"

I had some sketches of ideas which I thought would be a good... and Robert had some ideas about what he wanted to do with me, so that was easy. We covered several of my sketches.

Did you have any intention for it before you got started?

The intention was to make good music, and to explore what we could do together to the deepest... The rest we left to the muse.

How did you decide upon a sonic palette for the record?

It kind of grew by itself. Actually, by the limit of our limit, the palette developed its flavor by itself. It's like, Robert is very good for voice, with his synthesizer, and I'm also good for voices in my way. Then he plays this modular synthesizer which makes samples and loops and all kinds of sounds, so that gives it a palette already. And me, with my limited keyboard-playing and my unlimited saxophone-playing -- can I say that? –I feel very free on the saxophone, so I can go in many places... on the keyboard, I am restricted by my fingers, I think. But anyway, once I am in the trance, I don't feel restricted anymore. So it's just my mind who says I'm restricted.

Yesterday, I was recording a test with my new equipment and realized that, at one point, I had no idea what I was doing, but something was doing something very interesting. I think this is the trance that I wanted, and to create that with Robert in the studio was a challenge, and at the same time, it was easy, because we both come from improvisation...

Both of you produce music with distinctive meditative qualities. Do you have rituals for preparing yourselves to enter these kinds of zones? If so, did you share these procedures with each other or create any new rites?

It's an interesting question. We did not have rituals. The rituals that came to us was to just do work and go into that zone of working. And out of this came the meditative feel that you capture in our recordings. I think both Robert and I have this inherent meditative state which we reach by doing our music. Music is the closest to silence. I really vibe with that. It's like once we enter -- [Kalma then pauses to speak to his cat and tell his cat to tell the interviewer hello through "meow"s.] -- the meditative qualities in our music came by playing our music. It's quieting. Just by doing those sounds, I go into a very quiet trance, and I can sometimes play strong -- strong saxophone or keyboard phrases or sounds that break the silence... but it comes from inside. That's all I can say.

So, no, we didn't share procedures of any kind; we would just sit here looking for sounds or for ideas. It was kind of very natural. What we shared were some experiences of past meditations -- like Robert was interested in my stay at Arica Institute in New York, and in France, also. We shared a lot of stories, actually, during that week.

Your music which is extremely visually evocative for me. Does the process of creating or listening to music stimulate other senses for you?

When I play music, I go inside and I have all kinds of feelings and images, sensitivities, memories. It's so interesting to go. Yesterday, I was playing that piece, and practicing that piece and, suddenly I realize I was making these gestures, as if I touched something almost painful, almost. Because I touched a note which was really, aw it was there, not there -- sometimes I look outside and I'm inspired by the sky and the trees undulating in the wind. Does that answer your question?

There is something really disarming and beautiful about the promotional shots of you two hugging. How were these images captured?

Well, it was a really good hug. We didn't really care who was around; we just had this wonderful hug, where we just connected with each other. I love hugs. I think hugs are a very deep connection with another human, so I love it when you say disarming, because if we could hug more people, yes, there would not be arms. There would just be arm. -S. I take you in my arm, I want to do no harm, and we will not use any arms. [Laughs.]

You like that poetry? Instant poetry? But it makes sense. Disarm. It has both the meaning of disarmament and peace. So yes, that hug was peace. So yes, maybe it was beautiful because of that. It evokes that peace that we could create by just loving more, and showing it, and sharing it.

Gosh, I go in another subject like this -- that has something to do with the therapy groups that I've been doing for years. We see that so many times that, when there is tension, if we can go towards the other and just hold the other, there is disarmament, there is a let go. It takes a few moments which is why that hug, which is the promotional shot, is important -- because we stayed for a while. It was not just a hello, bye-bye. It was the meaning of a deep hug, not an A-frame hug, which is very common in so many places.

You have both covered a fairly large amount of sonic territory in your solo careers and collaborations, but We Know Each Other Somehow is a fairly seamless combination of certain aspects and eras of your individual works.

The sonic areas are a reflection of the collaborations that I have had with people -- or may I say, with myself, because sometimes I have a feeling that there is two sides of myself, which is... one is the guy who lives this daily life, and the other one is this guy who has the ability to tap into music and transforms emotions of the second guy into music. Of course, once I play music, the two guys are reconciled, and it is only one person. From the outside, it feels like, "Who is this guy who can compose music? Who is this guy who can live the life mundane? -- let's put it like that." So that's a collaboration. Collaborations with myself, or collaborations with somebody else.

The sonic palettes, which you were talking about before: they were different because of the different environments and the different spaces, maybe, inner space, where we were at that time. So yes. But there is a common thread. There is the continuum which is, for me, for example -- those scales, which I was talking about before –which evoke more sensitivities to certain scales. So maybe that's what defines me as a person.

Of course, there are many ways of looking at who we are in terms of persons and composers. Certain aspects and areas of our individual works. For me, my individual works are those emotions via the music. The exploring, the playing, and the transmission... I transmit what I perceive, and then somebody, the listener, receives that transmission. It feels a bit preposterous to say that, but still, it is. I capture. I'm an antenna. I'm an area. I receive, I capture, I translate, I play, I record -- then it's the listener.

So, did I transmit something interesting? Did I transmit something sensitive? Am I carrying my emotions with me? Am I transmitting those emotions? Am I moving? But I'm getting further away from your question.

How do you feel this album fits into or contribute to your discographies?

I don't consider my career as a discography. What I mean is that, I'm doing music one after another to express who I am right now and what I feel right now, and I'm not looking back at my life with a discography in mind. So yes, I have all those albums, but I also have many other albums which have never been born which cover different styles, different genres, which maybe will happen now that I have time in my life to do my archives.

At the same time, I've gotten new equipment, so I've got new potential possibilities which I'm exploring also. I feel my contribution with Robert is perfect for who we are right now. I hope I contribute something to Robert's life and he contributes something to my life, because he's of a different generation and he's interested in what I'm doing, what I've been doing, and what I'm doing now. So it's perfect.

In the last few years, I've had the opportunity to see classic New Age artists like Laraaji and IASOS play and give talks and guided meditations. In my limited experience, it seems that new generations of fans are more willing to embrace those artists' music than the cultural and spiritual practices that are generally associated with that scene in its heyday.

I'm so happy that Laraaji and IASOS have a voice. I think the new generation is more interested in the music itself without the so-called spiritual practices which were associated with this in the past. It is difficult to associate spiritual practice and music. The music talks by itself. It's easier for people to connect with music and feel good about music, like I feel relaxed, it took me someplace, I went on a journey. That is easy for people to let go and associate some music with different feelings inside.

Now, the spiritual practices and cultural practices: that's more difficult for people to reach, to make the commitment to relax more, meditate... that's a big commitment. Also, frankly, those people were avant-garde. There was no music like that. And their limited success showed that it was avant-garde. It's like my music... it's difficult to be an avant-garde person and be recognized at the same time, because who would be avant? The frontline of research and development goes through those spiritual and cultural practices, but it's only by the reflection of the music that people outside those practices can connect. So via the music, you connect to the spiritual. So yes, Laraaji and IASOS are doing the guided meditations and talks. That's fantastic. Because they have been recognized as offering something that has a spiritual or meditative value, relaxing value. So great, wonderful.

As an example, I want to tell you one of the big experience in my life is when I came to a concert in New York, by Sri Chinmoy. I had heard about Sri Chinmoy before, and that he was a meditator and a guru, that he played this beautiful...instrument. So I was curious to go and see that. It absolutely stunned me what the radiance Sri Chinmoy was pouring out through his music. For me, it was such a beautiful discovery of, no matter who he is in his spirituality and his practice, the way he presented his music was completely open and completely transparent, and at the same time, connecting with the public, as if he was connected one-by-one to every member of the public. That was very, very significant for me to experience. And that's why I mention him on the cover of [my] album... as one of my mentors, although I've never met him; I've never talked to him. For me, he was absolutely important in my life, you know, and I'm so glad that I met him, because he gave me the opportunity to experience spirituality in action.

Have you noticed a shift in how people respond to your music over the years?

Yes, yes. When I started making music, there was really very few people who responded to my music, because there was no genre like that. Can you imagine, in 1975, when I came out with my album, Le Temps Des Moissons, in France, I went to record shops. First, I went to record company with my tapes, and they were saying, "What is this?" and then I produced my album myself, and I went to shops so that they could sell it. I had the product, but shops would say, "We have no box for it. It's not jazz; it's not classical; it's not rock. So... what else?" So in that sense, my followers were very little. So then this guy put my record at night, late at night, for a long program on French cultural radio, and there was a great response. But still, it was really limited, and at that time, who was interested?

There was Osmose, and Osmose had a small response also. It was with a record company, but it had such a small response; I never knew how many they had sold, because that record company never communicated after we published the album. There was very little reaction to my music.

Then I decided music would not be my career, because at that time, I thought life was my career, so I did all kinds of other things that took me to different realms of consciousness. I was always doing music because music is part of me, and I know how to record. I always did music. In the group therapy I was collating and sometimes leading, music was an important part. But still, it was a very limited reaction, interaction, with the public, in general.

It's only a few years ago that I realized, "Oh wow, my first albums are selling for quite expensive and people are interested..." My first vinyl LPs were selling for expensive, and people were interested, and I produced more recent albums and put it on the net and sold some and developed a following. But it's not until recently that I discovered, actually, there is a whole bunch of people who like my music, and all those years, my music has gone through scores of people, which is wonderful. I'm so happy about that.

So yes, I was avant-garde forty years ago, and now I'm not avant-garde anymore. I'm part of the circle of people who love Terry Riley, who love Tangerine Dream, who love all kinds of people, IASOS and Laraaji. And maybe more. I don't know who is really my public out there.

And then I'm happy to talk via your interview to the people who are interested in my music to just tell them I still have some avant-garde things to produce before I leave this planet.

Do you feel like something has been lost or has it been given a new life in a different context [with the resurgence of the New Age movement]?

Well, I think people are more sensitive now, and also the radios are opening up; there is the internet. Not the radios, because the radio's always been difficult for me, for example, with my long pieces of unconventional jazz... who would play my music? But now, the internet is here. The internet opens tremendous possibilities -- so I don't think something has been lost. I think something has been gained. It's a new life in a different context. It's called the internet. The age of instant communication, global communication, where anybody who has a voice can express and be heard by somebody. Not necessarily through the channels of record labels and syndicated radio shows which have no time for us. It's not mainstream. So I don't think anything has been lost. On the contrary, look at all those pieces that were on this double LP, Evolutionary Music, produced by RVNG; that might have been lost, although I was working on my archives. But to be presented like that by this brilliant company: it's beautiful... the globalization of communication has opened the possibilities. Infinite possibilities.

How do you feel about the recent reassessments of early ambient and New Age records and careers?

I feel good. I feel it's about time the general public realizes that there are choices other than Top 40's or jazz or... that there are so many different styles of expressing music, it opens the ears of everybody. That's one part.

The other part is the connection with nature and a simpler life in comparison to the hectic busy environment in which modern daily life puts us through. I think it's very important that I can go and play and bring my music, along with nature sounds and birds and things like that, and bring that quietness or inspiration -- because birds inspire me; they have their song, they have their callings, they have their voices, they are tuned in a different way -- and if we can tune into this, we become part of nature. Why have we lost that? I think that this ambient and New Age records... that's what they wanted to do. To reconnect us with the way of life which is not so hectic.

Now, about the careers of early ambient and New Age careers... I'm not sure about that, because I did not follow careers. I was busy with my own life.

But I'm very happy that people who devoted their careers to this type of music are recognized, and not only Brian Eno, so that lesser-known people become more known. There are so many absolutely gorgeous compositions out there, which need to be rediscovered, because it's eternal. Music for Airports: there is nothing like this, although it's easy to make, but he was the first one to make it. It's just a state of mind. And I think the state of mind is coming to the front for many people now, because it's important. We need to reconnect with nature; we need to reconnect with quietness. In the future -- not so long -- we will consider a square meter of nature with the same price as a master painting, because nature will have disappeared from our life, and therefore we will recognize a square meter of nature. And I'm very fortunate to live in nature after having been in urban environments for so long.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I have really enjoyed working with Robert, because he was so knowledgeable about so many details -- about technology, about developments, about synthesizers, about people. I mean, we had conversations where, when he was here to record the album, he was very animated. I was casually mentioning a name of somebody who I had met or who had a conversation, and Robert was saying, "Oh wow, tell me more about that; I know him from this, and I heard him from that" -- so it was really a wonderful immersion into a friendship which was developing and coming from a place of knowing where I came from. And Robert knew where I came from, because he knew his classics, so to speak. He knew the people; he knew the groups that I was with. Except some in France, of course -- he did not know that. But that was a particularly memorable moment.

Another one comes to me now -- and you saw in Sunshine Soup DVD -- at one point we went to... a little town near us. And of course, [directors] Misha [Hollenbach] and Joey [Rashid] were with us, because they were filming everything, so we met a few friends, and people were filming that, and then we went to a special coffee shop which has lots of memorabilia. So we went for a drink, but I struck conversation with a very colorful persona who was sitting on the bench, and I instantly saw that this was a trip guy. That this guy had stories. So Misha and Joey were inside the coffee shop, but I called them and said, "Come, come, and please film everything, because it's going to be very interesting."

And then it went on, and you probably saw the movie -- that guy who deliriously talks about how he was bitten by a snake and walked around, I don't know, 20 kilometers before he got rescued... that was a very memorable event for me.

www.igetrvng.com

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Ariel Kalma Musician Interview: We Know Each Other Somehow (RVNG INTL Collaboration w/ Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe)

Related posts:

1. Holly Herndon – Platform Album Review (4AD / RVNG Intl.)
2. Craig Leon – Nommos/Visiting Album Review: Anthology of Interplanetary Folk Music, Vol. 1 (RVNG Intl.)
3. Robert Francis Musician Interview

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Flatsitter Artist-Musician Interview: On Interactive Albums, Surround-Sound Installations, Visual Poetry & More

You guys are quite the artist duo. Can you tell me about your history and the unique strengths and weaknesses you each feel you bring to the table?

We met on an Amtrak train. Pure luck! We quickly found our common interest was exploring moving and sound, with our interests ranging from pop to immersive noise, which is pretty broad. Jax went to school for experimental video and sound and currently runs Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center, whereas Kyle is self-taught and thrives on learning new things, like coding. Kyle gets satisfaction out of coming up with an idea and figuring out the technical components of our projects, whereas Jax enjoys crafting the performative and temporal aspects. There is a general give and take that is expected in a collaborative project, but we work together throughout in various ways to make a finished piece. Both of us had already worked on individual projects up to this point, but our special powers emerged when we combined forces!

www.flatsitter.com

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Flatsitter Artist-Musician Interview: On Interactive Albums, Surround-Sound Installations, Visual Poetry & More

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1. TOKiMONSTA – “Clean Slate” / Toki’s Monstas Animated Interactive Music Video (w/ Director & Artist Interviews)
2. Robert Henke Artist Interview: Engineering Artistic Solutions
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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

DOOMSQUAD Band Interview: More Than A Family Band, A Total Time, Total Way of Life

Seeing Clear Through to the Other Side

Yes, despite their urban hippie vibes and the free-form flow of their music, a calculated ideology is woven through everything DOOMSQUAD does. Spend one day with the band, and one will easily discover that they are naturally deep and philosophical thinkers, drawn effortlessly to discussing political and social issues. Hence it follows that their latest EP, Pageantry Suite, is "overty political", even beneath its relatively poppy sounds.

"We wanted to make something in the vein of a lot of music we're really inspired by. A lot of it is really inspired by post-punk and the no wave movement," explains Blumas. "We wanted to kind of take that approach of... making something that was a bit subversive in a sense of making a more poppy album that felt kind of fun and summery and light but had a political message."

On Pageantry Suite's opening track, "Two-Way Mirror", the band tackles issues of misogyny and gender imbalance. The track's title comes from a cinematic scene, which provides the visual of two-way mirrors and interrogation rooms.

"The image we were conjuring up was about this woman in an interrogation room, and... it's like a faceless man confronting her from the other side of the mirror, and he has all this anger and all this resentment towards her, but they're like blocked. She doesn't really see him, but he's kind of maintaining his position from the other side," explains Blumas.

Repeating halfway through the track is the infectious line, "The apparatus is working" -- and even though Blumas details his struggle over whether or not such a line was too cliché, DOOMSQUAD's politicization of their music feels as though it is done with great grace. Perhaps due to the band's cascading rhythms and general ease of flow, the messages they expound feel honest, natural, and easy to swallow.

"[The track is about] how the roles are kind of shifting," Blumas continues, "so it seems like people are giving less potency to that straight white man in society. They kind of see these guys holding on for dear life, trying to hold onto that position of power, and they're trying even harder by applying more force and more mechanisms to maintain that. It's becoming more and more apparent. And the song is about the last grip of control from the dying figure of the person that once had the power. It's kind of about that, mixed with themes of surveillance and different things."

"'The apparatus is working' is more him kind of trying to say that, as a mantra to reassure himself that everything, all the stuff that he's applied, is still working, even though it's clearly not. I guess it's up for debate," Blumas then adds, "but I think it's clearly not."

Breaking Out of Space & Time

Outside of adhering to philosophies and manifestos, DOOMSQUAD like to challenge themselves by manipulating the frameworks and spaces within which they create, so that they mirror the output they wish to have. Due to the urban nature of Pageantry Suite, for example, the band purposely sought out a professional recording environment at Polyphasic Studios in Toronto.

"We were kind of going with the New York Bowery vibe and kind of evoking that energy and that spirit, so we went into a studio and did it," explains Blumas. "It was our first time actually in the studio; we've never recorded in an actual proper studio before that, and the next album isn't that either, and it was also our first time recording in a city."

By contrast, their previous full-length, the dark and moving Kalabogie, and their upcoming LP, 2016's Total Time, were birthed out of retreats into nature.

"[Kalaboogie], and the one we just finished recording in New Mexico, were a conscious effort to remove ourselves from distraction and into a pretty blissful, enlightening place where we could really focus on our music and focus on our whatever rituals and practices that we have and kind of conjur up our creativity and our approach to the music, in those kinds of spaces that cater to that," says Blumas.

In preparation for their next LP, Total Time, DOOMSQUAD rented a house outside of Albuquerque for two months, arriving there with a fully fleshed out concept for the record, but only a couple loosely written songs. What emerged was a true embrace of the creative in-the-moment, thus reflecting the timeless quality which is found in DOOMSQUAD's mesmerizing music.

"We usually kind of found in the past that the blend of all those things kind of has a really organic experience, where the music that you're making is kind of directly a response to the environment and the elements and places around you. So you kind of create everything around you, and the music is a response to that," he continues.

From this environment will come a record that boomerangs back towards Kalaboogie in sound.

"[Pageantry Suite] has a really hi-fidelity, and all of the elements were controlled in this really nice state-of-the-art studio, and yeah, it was surreal..." says Blumas. "When you're away recording an album, you live and breathe it, and when you turn off your amp or unplug your instruments for the night, you're still in the zone, but with that exchange, you walk away from it and you're back in the city, and you have your responsibilities and your back in your apartment, that kinda thing."

"[Total Time] is more in the vein of Kalaboogie, where it feels like an album and it goes on kind of a journey," he contrasts. "It's definitely a lot, lot darker than [Pageantry Suite]."

DOOMSQUAD - "Apocalypso" (Live)

Translating Concepts Into Tangible Results

DOOMSQUAD can sometimes be seen extending their divergent artistic backgrounds from concepts and music into other mediums. Thus far, these components are still a work-in-progress, to be fleshed out at a later date, but on rare occasions -- particularly during headlining shows in their hometown -- DOOMSQUAD will utilize more theatrical elements, such as costumes and projections.

"It has to make sense for us to do it. If we just do it for the sake of doing it, it feels contrived," explains Blumas, "but we travel around with that stuff when we're on the road, and if it's the right environment and we're feeling confident enough to do it, we do it. It helps us, and it sets a colorful tone, and it makes people feel like they can be a bit weirder."

When these attempts at branching out are successful, they sometimes result in repeat collaborations with close artistic friends. One repeat player is Chris Boni, a filmmaker and artist in Toronto who Blumas admits DOOMSQUAD "has always admired". Boni created the music video for "Ovoo" off of Kalaboogie, as well as the album artwork and two music videos from Pageantry Suite.

"Because there was a conceptual thing underlying the entire EP, we wanted to have that conceptual project carry out in the visuals as well, so we kind of brought [Chris Boni] into the conceptual project, even while we were recording," says Blumas. "And he had free reign; he had carte blanche on how he responded to that... it was 100% his response to the music."

The album cover for Pageantry Suite, which somehow feels like an abstracted extension of the ordered chaos of the album cover for Kalaboogie, is a mixed media wonder -- one that cannot be fully comprehended, even upon close inspection.

"The photo on the cover of the EP was a sculpture that [Boni] had built and he had photographed it from basically 360 -- so all these different angles -- and then he did a photo composite of all the photos on top of each other," Blumas says, while noting that his understanding of the artistic process is limited. "It's sort of this impossible sculpture. The sculpture doesn't look like that in person; it's kind of like a 360 photo composite crammed into one image, so it kind of has this impossibility about it."

Elements from the completed album cover were then incorporated into the two music videos for "Two-Way Mirror" and "Apocalypso", which Boni shot when he visited New Mexico with the band.

"He just kind of organically created that whole narrative when we were down in New Mexico... the way the art ties into it is that if you watch the two video, the part one and part two, you'll see different linework. You'll see these different paintings and drawings the main character does that's basically the album cover," explains Blumas, who adds that the American painter Richard Tuttle was a big visual influence for both Boni and the band on this record.

With 2015's Pageantry Suite and Total Time likely being released in 2016, the momentum DOOMSQUAD is generating with their various conceptual, musical, and artistic interests is impressive. Quite organically, but also through careful contemplation, they are pursuing their music career in exactly the kind of challenging and expansive way that other modern bands ought to take notes from.

"We're on such a roll, we're like, 'Why stop now?' You never know when the well is going to dry out, so might as well keep the machine rolling."

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Music Video Gallery

All music videos directed by Chris Boni

DOOMSQUAD -- "Two-Way Mirror" Music Video

DOOMSQUAD -- "Apocalpyso" Music Video

DOOMSQUAD -- "Ovoo" Music Video

DOOMSQUAD - "Eternal Return" (Live @ REDEFINE magazine SXSW 2015 Haus Party)

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

DOOMSQUAD Band Interview: More Than A Family Band, A Total Time, Total Way of Life

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2. DREAMFORCE (#37) Austin SXSW 2015 Unofficial House Party Announcement & Mixtape
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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Petite Noir – “Best” Music Video (w/ Director Travys Owen & Rochelle Nembhard Interviews)

Petite Noir - "Best" Music Video

Director: Travys Owen https://vimeo.com/travysowen
DOP: Michael Cleary https://vimeo.com/michaelcleary
Digital Art Direction, Animation, Compositing, Colouring : Dylan Wrankmore https://vimeo.com/user1362659
Edited by: Lucian Barnard
Art Direction: Rochelle Nembhard
Wardrobe and Styling: Gabrielle Kannemeyer
Hair and Makeup Amber Recha Caplan and Amori Birch
Focus Puller: Tim Christokat
DIT: Marina Korskowa
Spark: Faud Casker
Photographic Assistant: Jesse Fine
Produced By Travys Owen in association with Domino Recording Co

How did you come to collaborate with one another, and how closely did you work together on conceptualizing the pieces?

The music video incorporates "4 distinct tribes" of people, which are essentially summarised by different elements. How did the decision to incorporate these tribes come about, and how, if at all, does what they represent or tie in with indigenous or modern beliefs in South Africa?

The record is partially about a sense of freedom and about "seeing the positive in dark times"; the video likewise seems to address similar dualistic themes, with its stark minimalism and expansive landscapes. Can you talk about how this balance was achieved? How much was pre-determined versus spontaneous?

What are your favorite moments of the music video, and why?

Where there any particular challenges or super exciting victories you wish to discuss?

South Africa is quite a hot-spot for music and art these days. Where do you see the "scene" headed in the future near, and are there any notable creative figures that you think are contributing in a big way?

Petite Noir - Listening Station

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Petite Noir – “Best” Music Video (w/ Director Travys Owen & Rochelle Nembhard Interviews)

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3. South African Music: Feel-Good Mixtape (#29) – Curated by Umlilo

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Julie Alpert Artist Interview: Following Forms

S p l a t t e r s - -
         Discovery.
Freedom of form, in intuition...Backdrop at MadArt, 2015 - Photography by James Harnois

Seattle artist Julie Alpert speaks in the language of colorful flourish. Utilizing a brilliant slew of found objects and textural materials to evoke a hard-to-pinpoint sense of nostalgia, her work unravels on gallery walls like word associations mined from subconscious minds. Site-specific, certainly, but "site-transformative" may be just as strong a term. Far from passive, Alpert uses art to make bold statements, and employs a combination of spontaneous and planned processes to actively encourage viewers to reevaluate their relationship to white wall installs.

Art as an Anti-Analytical Action

Alpert's artistic path has always been a bit of a winding road, naturally snaking in and out of varied creative interests at different times of her life. Early on, Alpert was much informed by theatre, only to leave it behind as she sought an undergraduate degree in Painting from the University of Maryland. It was in college that she first began paving the roads towards her present work, initially by "tinkering with installation and things that were dealing with frames and paintings as objects extending off the wall."

But then Alpert decided to step back, taking a five-year break where she hardly made anything. When she finally decided to return to graduate school, she discovered that many of her previous artistic preconceptions were lost. She was essentially starting over from scratch -- and in the empty wake of endless possibility, one of the first significant issues she faced was that of overthinking her creative process.

"By the second quarter [of graduate school], I just sort of [realized]... all of this thinking is not really getting me anywhere, so I started to just doodle and collect things..." Alpert recalls. She explains that her first installation in graduate school was made entirely from paint from the hardware store and objects she found discarded in the hallways of the studios.

"Once I just started working in a responsive way, as opposed to in an analytical way -- that's when I started to feel that the work was becoming something, and that it was about something, although I didn't exactly know what it was about," she adds. "Of course, we're always still trying to figure that out. And it is always changing, right?"

Time and time again, Alpert professes herself to be "extremely analytical" and admits that she might even be "slightly neurotic". The evolution of her process, then, seems a direct response to the standard reign of her logical mind.

"I'm making this work to try and turn that off," says a very candid Alpert. "It's extremely calming to make, and I also think that I also make better work when I turn off those voices."

Collaborative student work at Clark College and Alpert's installation, Splat! 2015 - Photography by Dan Kvitka

Alpert's gallery installations are very much a "see what sticks" scenario. Though she may not be literally throwing things at the wall, she always leaves ample room for experimentation and customization within every space.

"I usually prepare about 50% and then do the other 50% [on-site]," she reveals. "I have the major elements figured out, but I just bring a big tub of things. If there's something I absolutely need that I didn't bring, then I just go on Amazon and overnight it."

At Look-Alikes, her 2014 show at Seattle's SOIL Gallery, Alpert relied on her go-to materials -- house paint, acrylic, markers, tape, vinyl, and cardboard -- to create a very distorted bedroom scene, full of illustrated lamps and ladder outlines that melted onto a wall exploding with strawberry reds. Perhaps it was due to the familiar nature of the household objects she manipulated, but the reactions Alpert received were humorously reflective of how polarizing her work can be.

"One of the SOIL members said to me during the critique that it made him feel really uneasy," she recalls, amused. "[Other] people were saying, 'Oh, I want to move into that space'... and this guy said, 'This makes me feel really uncomfortable.'"

In recent years, Alpert has begun incorporating complex patterns into her works, which include everything from stripes, dots, and floral motifs to repeating custom elements, which she then tiles like wallpaper. The method to Alpert's madness may only be evident to those who reside in similar states of mind -- but beneath such busy façades are a number of malleable "guidelines", which do in fact inform her works.

"I certainly have patterns and systems that I use, and I have a cache in my mind of certain shapes that follow other shapes -- but I'm totally working intuitively," she stresses again. "I'm trying really hard to let my brain not get involved."

Look-alikes at SOIL Gallery, 2015 - Photography by David Wentworth

Intentional Instances in Interactivity

The MadArt Studio is a relatively new space that sits in Seattle's Lake Union neighborhood, smack dab in the heart of recent office and condo developments galore. Located right on Westlake, its windows are massive, and due to the highly visible nature of the space, its artists are expected to actively engage with the public.

When the 2015 Seattle Art Fair invited Alpert to install in the space, she was the third artist to ever be extended the opportunity. She was rightfully intimidated. As though the lack of privacy and the high-profile nature of the show weren't daunting enough, Alpert was expected to fill a space that measured nearly 54' x 54' x 15' -- more than double or triple the size of her usual gallery habitats -- and unlike most galleries, the MadArt Studio is a re-purposed car dealership from the 1920s. Outfitted with steel beam constructions, it is housed in plenty of glass and brick, which required Alpert to rethink some of her tried-and-true habits.

"Normally, I'll make things that extend from the walls, so I had to come up with some pretty quick solutions on how I was going to suspend things," explains Alpert, who eventually created Backdrop using a large quantity of magnets and paper. "I really wanted to break up the space efficiently... big rolls of paper and tiling together big rolls of butcher paper or clear mylar: that ended up being the best solution."

Backdrop at MadArt, 2015 - Photography by James Harnois

Alpert emerged from that project stronger and more adaptable than she ever gave herself credit for. It served as affirmation of what Alpert has always known: that she creates her best work when she follows her intuition and trusts her artistic guts, even in the face of confusion.

"In the first week, I felt really tripped up, because I wanted [Backdrop] to work like my previous pieces... but it just wasn't the same kind of situation or the same kind of space. I kept trying to stick to my drawings, and I kept getting deeper and deeper into this hole of trying to solve problems that I didn't necessarily need to solve," Alpert says, as though recanting memories from college. "So I just sort of veered off to the right and said, 'Fuck it, I'm just going to make what feels right' -- and then it started to flow a lot better."

That Alpert was invited to work in the unconventional MadArt space is more than appropriate. Too often, art openings are fancy excuses for socializing, where the art itself is more atmospheric background fodder than an engaging experience. Naturally, these works and these openings fade passively from memory. Alpert's work, by contrast, demands attention. Her willingness to utilize every surface, including the ground, inherently sparks conversation about rigidity and rules within the gallery setting.

"I'm always surprised at how many people step on things and touch things..." says Alpert, who suspects that many who view her work may be unfamiliar with gallery installations. "I don't think that people know what the etiquette is, and not everybody sees everything. They [may be] looking up at something, but they're stepping on something else."

While these interactions make Alpert nervous, she shies away from over-explaining. She notes that some artists purposely create pathways for viewers to travel through, but she believes such restrictions "interfere with the experience", and instead, has found value in taking a more sociological view.

"I think I'm intentionally putting bright white vinyl on the floor, so that when I come in later, I can kind of see the history of people's track marks," she explains.

Tableau Vivant at Gallery 4Culture, 2012 - Photography by Steven Miller

For 2012's Tableau Vivant, Alpert gave movement artists Shellie Gravitt and Naomi Russell free reign to create an opening night performance for her site-specific installation. It seemed like a slight nod to her background in theatre -- and Alpert has expressed an interest in exploring similar projects in the future -- but even without dancers, artist-audience interactivity feels central to Alpert's work. In a recent conversation with Jen Graves, well-known arts writer for Seattle's weekly rag, The Stranger, Graves inquired, "Are you the director, or are you the performer?" Alpert's response was that she was probably both. She may not be posting signs or "to-do"'s, but attempts to guide in more subtle ways.

"It's kind of like saying, 'Don't' step here; do step here. I know you want to touch that, because the texture looks really exciting to touch, but I don't want you to touch it,'" Alpert explains. "I am interested in the tension that that creates."

"But you know, the roles come at different times," she continues, "so being the performer comes in private, as I'm making the piece, and then once it's up and people are moving through it, I'm sort of this ghost director."

Three Generations of Decorations at The MacDowell Colony, 2014 - Photography by Tom Weidlinger

Nostalgic Needs Nobody Knew

The concept of nostalgia as illusion parallels the Alice in Wonderland feel of Alpert's works, which evoke memories at once vaguely familiar and bizarrely otherworldly. To use a phrase borrowed from Bay Area artist Sara Applebaum, the creations allow for a "revelation of the mundane", wherein the recontextualization of warm color palettes and objects of vintage lore breathes new life into musty, dusty pasts.

"I use a lot of colors and patterns that... have, maybe a little bit of a David Lynch feel to it sometimes. I'm not trying to be campy or ironic," says Alpert, "but I am definitely trying to reference these somewhat iconic images or things that remind us of certain iconic images from certain time periods."

The factors which draw Alpert to these images remained a bit of a mystery until Spring 2014, when she had some epiphanies while participating in a residency at The MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire.

"That's why people go to residencies," Alpert states matter-of-factly. "[You] have these epiphanies, because you're spending so much time by yourself, and you're isolated, and all you can do is think about why you're doing what you're doing."

Surrounded by natural beauty, Alpert was given the opportunity to reflect on her very unique bringing, and she realized that her aesthetic is very much informed by her surreal relationship to her grandparents.

"It's the WWII generation, and each of my sets of grandparents decorated their homes in very different ways," she recalls. "My dad's parents were collectors, and they collected everything from very, very high art to objects that they would find at estate sales to furniture. [Their house] was just filled to the brim."

Within the clutter, Alpert states that there was "no hierarchy of the value of things"; her grandparents would have fine objects, such as Tiffany lamps, positioned side-by-side with knock-off paintings. Everything "worked together in a weird way", blending into one hell of an influential mish-mash.

By contrast was the home of her other grandparents.

"My mom's parents were very, very, very frugal, and they would cover their couches with plastic couch covers," notes Alpert. "There were TV trays that we would eat our boxed and canned food off of. Everything came from a box or a can or a bottle. And they had, in their backyard, one of those big clotheslines that kind of looks like a giant umbrella, that's on a big pole..."

"I think I'm sort of borrowing from my memory of both of those homes that I spent a lot of time in," she concludes.

Such logical insights into the past inform Alpert as she moves into the future, with assured confidence in her adaptability as an artist. As she follows her intuitive artistic mind further and further down the rabbit hole, Alpert will continue to manipulate the myriad textures and colors of the free-flowing worlds around her, in ever more dynamic ways.

Shape Shifters at Cornish College of the Arts, 2013 - Photography by David Wentworth

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Julie Alpert Artist Interview: Following Forms

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Autre Ne Veut – World War Pt. 2 Music Video (w/ Arthur Ashin & Director Allie Avital Interview)

Autre Ne Veut - "World War Pt. 2" Music Video

Director: Allie Avital
Producer: Andrew Krasniak
Cinematographer: Kate Arizmendi
Production Designer: Emma Rose Mead
Set Dresser: Ashley Brett Chipman
Assistant Director: Yori Tondrowski
Special FX Makeup: Jeremy Selenfriend
Animation / VFX: Milton Ladd
Editor: Allie Avital
Colorist: Jaime O'Bradovich / Company 3
Featuring: Macy Sullivan
Special thanks to Evelyn Preuss

What were your first impressions of one another's work, and how did this collaboration come to fruition?

The album is called Age of Transparency and explores the difficulty of making personal connections within this day and age. The physicality of this video is quite a literal response to that. How did this concept develop, and how does it thematically fit into the record, as a whole?

The body language between the two people is represents the burdens we carry with us through life. Does the placement of them within a home environment imply specific types of burdens -- possibly emotional or domestic? Or is the interpretation wider than that?

How much time was spent exploring the "choreography" between the two people? What were some of the challenges you faced?

Arthur, you were quoted as saying that Age of Transparency "is a term for the place we're in now, where truth and transparency are just ways to sell things and honesty is its own kind of performance." How did this marketing idea first enter into your respective lives, and what were your gut reactions to it?

The nudity and "grotesque" nature of this music video make it feel raw and honest from the get-go. In that sense, and because music videos are obviously promotional tools, its existence is referential to the album theme in an almost experimental way. How have reactions been to this music video, and how effective do you think the "age of transparency" is in this case?

If efforts to be honest and transparent inevitably lead to failure due to their impossibility (for everyone is an "island universe", to quote Aldous Huxley), do you consider it a valuable effort to try and undertake nonetheless? Why or why not?

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Autre Ne Veut – World War Pt. 2 Music Video (w/ Arthur Ashin & Director Allie Avital Interview)

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Alice Cohen – Backwards Music Video (w/ Musician & Director Micki Pellerano Interview)

Alice Cohen - "Backwards" Music Video

Cinematographer: Lucky Cheng
Effects and Main Titles: Zev Deans
Choreography: Alta Finn
Production Design: Micki Pellerano
Neptunian Staffs: Frank Haines
Wardrobe Provided by: Christiana Key, Alix Brown, Windish-Michel
Production Assistants: Alice Millar, Carey Hu, Asa Westcott, Karli Malone, Gabrielle Muller

How did the two of you first come to collaborate, and what were your initial impressions of one another's work?

How much free artistic reign was given to Micki on the project? Was there active collaboration and discussion about the aesthetics of the video, as Alice is a visual artist as well?

The album, Into the Grey Salons, is inspired by a department store in Philadelphia. How are the themes from the record incorporated into this music video?

How does the Kabbalistic Tree of Life tie into the concepts of the record or just your personal interests and beliefs more generally?

Is the incorporation of tarot imagery, such as thrones, vessels, etc. a symbolic decision or just visual or coincidental?

Can you comment on the push-and-pull of the masculine and feminine, particularly towards the midpoint?

This video seems like quite the undertaking. How long did the various stages of it take?

What was a highlight or a challenge?

Why is this song so damn good?

Pantelia: Meditations on the Number Ten (Directed by Micki Pellerano)

Alice Cohen - "Cascading Keys" Music Video

ALICE COHEN "CASCADING KEYS" from OLDE ENGLISH SPELLING BEE on Vimeo.

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Alice Cohen – Backwards Music Video (w/ Musician & Director Micki Pellerano Interview)

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Gardens & Villa – Maximize Music Video / Mini-Documentary (w/ Musician & Director Interviews)

Gardens & Villa - "Maximize" Music Video & Mini-Documentary

Director & Editor - David Del Sur
Director of Photography - S.L. Perlin

You are all long-time friends and collaborators. How was this particular project conceptualized?

This mini-doc is inspired by La Jetée. What do you find most appealing about that work, and what from it were you hoping to extend to this?

"Maximize" is a collection of moving image and still photography, using Super 8 and 35mm film cameras. How long did filming take, and how much was manipulated in post-production?

The narrative of the video surrounds the dilemma of living in the modern world and conveys this while using vintage equipment. The aesthetic benefit is obvious -- but how does the choice of equipment contribute to the philosophical message at hand?

The video is intended to capture the "mental and physical environment in which the music was created" -- a bit raw, a bit dystopian. What are some moments or feelings which stick out as particularly representative of this environment?

The images are shot in Los Angeles, but are there other cities or locations that come to mind as parallels? What is consistent between these places, and what do you find attractive about them?

What do you find most exciting about future technologies, and what do you find most disheartening about it?

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Gardens & Villa – Maximize Music Video / Mini-Documentary (w/ Musician & Director Interviews)

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Mind Over Mirrors – Strange(r) Work Music Video (w/ Musician & Director Timothy Breen Interview)

Mind Over Mirrors - "Strange(r) Work" Music Video

Stop-Motion Animation and Video by Timothy Breen

You have been working together for some time. What were your first projects together, and how the relationship has changed since?

How was this music video conceptualized, and how closely did you two work together on the exchange of ideas? Was there a concrete "concept"?

There is an obvious meditative quality to this song, which carries over into the hypnotic nature of the music video. Yet this seems almost counter-intuitive in some ways, considering how painstaking the process of stop-motion is. How does spontaneity play a role in the music-making and the video-making processes?

This video could very easily have been a simply abstract work without recognizable creatures, but animal and naturalistic forms are present throughout it. Why the decision to include them, and how does that connect to the work of Mind Over Mirrors?

How would you describe the similarities between your work?

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Mind Over Mirrors – Strange(r) Work Music Video (w/ Musician & Director Timothy Breen Interview)

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1. Spectral Hypnosis: Mind Over Mirrors – Check Your Swing Album Review (w/ Full Album Stream)
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3. David Daniell & Douglas McCombs – “30265” Music Video (Interview w/ Director Timothy Leeds)

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

25 Essential Modular Synthesizer Records

Moog's synths, the most famous and iconic electronic instruments of all time, achieved widespread popularity thanks to Moog's decision to attach the familiar black-and-white keyboard instrument everyone knows. Musicians could work the Moogs like futuristic organ wizards, playing intricate baroque counterpoint with one hand while performing the signature filter sweeps with the other.

Buchla, however, didn't want to restrict the endless possibilities of electronic music. Instead of a keyboard, which would inspire musicians to make music like they always had -- thus relegating the new synths to wacky gimmicks -- Buchla opted for a touch sensitive controller, which produced eerie theremin-like warbles. Buchla's synths, characteristic of the West Coast scene, produced sounds unlike anything anyone had ever heard before: wild, glistening, horseshoe nebulas and alien swamplands.

The schism can be seen today in the dichotomy of high-gloss pop with electronic flourishes that create hyper-efficient big room club bangers, versus the alien beat deconstructions of recent labels at the vanguard of dance music, such as Diagonal or PAN.

In the 21st Century, modular synths have been enjoying a Renaissance, thanks, in large part, to a new manufacturer, Doepfer's Eurorack. The Eurorack format is smaller and more affordable than the archaic versions, inspiring a new generation of basement New Age head-nodders to get lost in sequenced mantras and oscillator meditation.

As technology has become more amorphous, surrounding every aspect of our daily lives, musicians and producers are returning to the intuitive, tactile modes of production encouraged by modular synths. New modular components are constantly striving to pack more features into more efficient packages, serving as a sonic analog to today's design and development culture. Modular synths also provide a much needed sense of community to their acolytes, with swap meets popping up in cities around the globe, for devotees to gather and geek out.

Recordings of modular synth run the gamut from sterile, academic laboratory studies to full-on alien landscapes. Sometimes they are the sound of a lone meditator, lost at the patch bay and laid straight to tape. At other times, the bubbles, burbles, whooshes, and laser zaps are recorded and layered into intricate tapestries of electronic exotica.

In 2013, the documentary I Dream Of Wires told the story of modular electronics, from the Electronic Sackbut to the Eurorack, in a mind-melting 4-hour "hardcore edition". I Dream Of Wires has recently been re-released as a theatrical cut, which is now streaming for the whole world to see. To honor the occasion, we’ve compiled 25 essential modular synth records -- listed in no particular – which examine the wide range of tones, textures, and styles these archaic electronics are capable of.

Aphex Twin - Syro (Classics, Varied)

For his first album in years, Richard D. James, Aphex Twin, used nearly every electronic music-making device known to humankind. Unsurprisingly, some modular synths are on the list. Syro could be seen as the ultimate hybrid electronic record, with James using gear from every era and weaving them into compelling dancefloor narratives that are both academic and funky. In conjunction with Syro's bizarre press cycle, Richard D. James dumped metric tons of unreleased recordings onto an anonymous SoundCloud account, resulting in the companion compendium, Modular Trax. Both should be investigated as an entryway to modular synths.

Jessica Rylan - Interior Design

Another sonic alchemist that got their start working under Don Buchla, Jessica Rylan is noteworthy for actually building her own synths. Interior Design was was her first fully-formed synth record, released on the experimental juggernaut Important Records.

Rylan's modular synths cross the void from '50s academic synthesis to the noise underground of the '00s. Raw, scraping, throbbing, burbling, wheezing, hissing... Rylan's long-form compositions are uncompromising yet sonically interesting. Rylan updates the sterling chrome sound palette of early synth records into pastel curlicues of 8-bit abstraction, sending one lost into a ketamine daze in Lavender Town.

In 2013, Jessica Rylan started her own modular synth company, Flower Electronics, combining her love and deep knowledge of modular synthesizers into colorful and imaginative designs to kick-start creativity and invite sonic exploration. It is the efforts of underground aficionados, like Rylan, that have kept these monoliths alive for a new generation to explore and innovate.

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

25 Essential Modular Synthesizer Records

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2. M. Geddes Gengras – Ishi Album Review (Leaving Records)
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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Matthew Craven Artist Interview: Getting Existential Through Pattern, History & Anthropology

"[I realized], 'Oh, to be a painter in New York, I'm going to have to hang out with painters and talk about paintings and reference the history of painting into my work -- and that just wasn't what I was personally interested in," he recalls.

That epiphany paired well with the grad school environment, which encouraged Craven to experiment outside of his comfort zone. That, coupled with a blissful coincidence, led Craven to the discovery of his current medium.

"I went back to working with paper and making ink drawings, when another student -- a friend of mine I was in grad school with -- gave me a stack of frames he had. He was like, 'Oh, you might want to frame your drawings,' and inside the frames were all these American history illustrations," Craven remembers. "And because I was in this place where I was just trying to figure out my direction, like, I just took them out and started drawing on top of them."

Craven crafted multiple pieces after these experiments, and much to his surprise, the responses were overwhelmingly positive. During an open studio at the end of his first semester, a gallery in Chelsea was so impressed that they offered Craven a solo show for the first body of collage work'd he ever made. He had found a medium, it seemed, which offered him a different kind of history than that of the painting world. He became enamored. Mixed media and collage resonated much more with him, and the discoveries about just who he is as an artist have been a "series of events" since then.

Breaking New Collage Frontiers by Honoring the Old

He began by establishing a firm set of stylistic ground rules for himself. First, he opted to never use National Geographic or any magazines that were glossy -- "I just hated that aesthetic," he admits -- which automatically dismisses a large amount of his potential source material. He also vowed not to make pieces just to be "psychedelic", which is often the tendency for other artists.

Following these parameters has ensured Craven a level of sophisticated cohesion rarely found in modern collage. Details are everything. Though his images look plenty impressive on the internet, it is in-person that viewers will truly appreciate the tactile nature of the smaller elements, such as the paper stock, the scraggly line work, and the careful way in which Craven applies images to paper with "very toxic but very permanent" spray adhesive, so as to almost erase all of the three-dimensionality usually found in gluing images to paper.

"When you're taking such care in taking the paper and the collage material and you're putting it on right, it almost becomes seamless. When I reconstruct an image on the size of a book page, it can look like an actual book page," says Craven. "It doesn't look like a bunch of things smashed together and glued together. It's all the little things that really matter to me."

Many of Craven's pieces feature hand-drawn repeating elements -- but those that aren't, such as the duplicated usage of iconic statue heads from cultures long gone -- are, quite impressively, never photocopied replicas.

"If I use the same image more than once, that means I've found the same book more than once. There are certain books that I have forty copies of," Craven says, detailing how important it is that originals are ever-present in his works.

Just as important is the paper stock upon which his collages are mounted. Smaller pieces may be glued on the inner and outermost pages of old textbooks, and more recently, Craven has begun creating impressive large-scale pieces by seeking out old movie posters. Their age-worn stains, dirt, tape residue, and off-white colors add a subtle grit, which furthers Craven's style visually and conceptually.

"I was taking such time to find images from old books and the quality of the paper was really important, and I would adhere it to a new piece of paper and it would completely change the whole thing," he muses, proving that the hunt for raw materials is a thoroughly considered philosophical choice. "I want everything to have its own history -- even my materials I want to have their own history."

Initially, Craven did face a minor dilemma regarding his re-use of vintage materials -- but over time, he has managed to find source material that not only falls in with his aesthetic principles but is relatively sustainable as well. Much of this has to do with changing technologies. For the past five years, Craven has been using primarily textbooks from the '70s, '80s, and '90s, as the closing of schools and shift towards digital classrooms have rendered old textbooks effectively useless.

"I didn't even really think about it when I first started it -- but as technology's changed, these books are disappearing. They're not even used for teaching. They're not novels that can be used for entertainment, and most of all, they're full of information that's not even accurate," he says. "All these Western-centric narratives: almost every English history book printed from the '60s, '70s, '80s came from one manufacturer in London. They're the ones writing history, and we're all observing it as truth, and that's been a part of the work."

"It's a dying medium," he continues. "These are beautiful images out of these old beautiful books that are never going to be seen anywhere, so I got to the point where I was like, 'I'm actually preserving these things in some ways, and showing people things they're not going to see' -- or just having it be real, as opposed to on a tablet, or on a laptop... When you see the work in person, you can tell that it's on old paper and old books, and I've kind of somehow crossed the line where you realize that these books are going to dumpsters; they're going to landfills; they're going to be destroyed; they're never going to be used again."

For Craven, this realization comes as a bit of a relief, and adds a meta dimension of timeliness to his already richly layered conceptual framework.

"I like history; at the same time, I'm very much trying to make work from 2015 and speaking about these kinds of things," he says. "[It is important] to have my work speak to the fact that all these materials are coming from something that's just slowly disintegrating from our conscience, with most of them being from textbooks that educate. That's the first wave... kids are only going to [continue] using iPads and laptops, and they won't carry around a backpack full of books."

Touching on The Universality of All Things

Diverse histories belonging to numerous cultures and populations are found throughout Craven's work, and perhaps what fascinates him most is how disparate civilizations -- many of which lived thousands of miles apart, and at different times -- often had similar ideas. Yet Craven is an American Caucasian male, and as such, naturally faces judgments about making ethnically-sourced work. Over the years, he has received enough skeptical feedback that he realizes his work can trigger some viewers in ways that he does not intend, and in fact, finds rather disheartening.

"People can read into the work how they want to -- of me appropriating different cultures and different times and different aesthetics... I'm hoping people see it and they feel unified with humanity, and not segregated," Craven states hopefully. "Some people see what I do and they get confused about my intentions as a white male artist talking about history, and it's really sad sometimes, when I'm like, 'I'm talking about humanity, and people.'"

There is a sense of meta-narrative in Craven's works, which are rooted in history both conventional and "alternate" -- but its wider view seems to possess sci-fi elements as well. Such an all-encompassing outwards stretching of time speaks to the artist's interest that human beings -- whether in the past, present, or future -- have always, and will always, share a number of commonalities.

"You look down from outerspace, and we're all the same, but we've made all these lines to separate ourselves from other people and cultures and we've created different languages even though we live right next to people," states Craven. "That's why I like the idea of just letting these images speak for themselves..."

Nowhere in Craven's work will text be found, and the choice is very much intentional. His images are meant to stand alone, and the artist leaves subtle contextual clues only through his statements, the titles, and how the collaged elements are composed and juxtaposed with one another.

"I'm most drawn to patterns, not by what the culture is, but I'm most drawn to it when I kind of see it reappearing in different groups. A lot of times, people will be like, 'Oh, that's a Navajo pattern' -- but that's also a pattern that was used in Ancient Egypt, and it's also a pattern that was used by the Assyrians," Craven explains, stressing that "finding universal patterns" is what he really likes about the process.

To the untrained eye, certain base elements of Craven's works may look "tribal" or "appropriated", but it takes someone who is a collector -- who is truly fascinated by ancient cultures and has seen a wide cross-section of their collective output -- to actually be able to gather and synthesize the commonalities in an accurate way.

And all of this research and pattern discernment basically comes down to one main thing: what interests Craven is and has always been the bigger story: the humbling universal story. It's what pulled him away from abstract painting, and it's what continues to drive him to unearthing new discoveries.

"Most of the cultures and work I'm using: they didn't have their modern understanding of who they were and where they were. To me, we still don't, but people act like we do or act like it isn't a big deal, but that's a common connection that I try to get across through my work: a little more mystical, a little more giving it up to the idea that this is all bigger than us," Craven admits with great honesty. "Without being heavy-handed, I don't make work about gestures or things about modern life. I really am trying to speak to very big concepts. It's just the things that I lay in bed and I love talking to other people about."

"I want people to stop and think how we got here. I'm not saying it was better before; I love living in the modern world -- but to me, it's fascinating that we went from there to here," he continues candidly. "And I think it's so easy to forget that there was this millions of years of human evolution to get us to this point, and it's bigger than all of us.

"To me, it's humbling. The subject matter is humbling. I like to feel small in a big universe. I know that scares some people. Some people don't like to think about that. I feel inspired when I feel how big everything is; how long it's been here."

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Select Works (from Newest to Oldest)

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Matthew Craven Artist Interview: Getting Existential Through Pattern, History & Anthropology

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Empress Of – Standard Music Video (Interviews w/ Lorely Rodriguez & Director Zaiba Jabbar)

Empress Of - "Standard" Music Video

Director: Zaiba Jabbar
Production Company: Partizan
Executive Producer: Claire Stubbs
Producer: Adam Lilley
1st Assistant Director: Tom Kelly
Director Of Photography: Arthur Mulhern
Choreography Stefan Puxon
Editor Sam Jones @ Cut and Run
Steadicam Richard James Lewis
Gaffer: Kilian Drury
Stylist: Rhona Ezuma
Hair & Make Up: Emily Bilverstone
Colorist: Lewis Crossfeild @ ETC
Post Producer: Jon Mealing
Label: Terrible Records / XL Recordings
Commissioner: Phil Lee

How did you first come to work together on this project, and what were your first impressions of one another's work?

The music video hoped to challenge perceptions of body image. How and why did this concept first come to mind?

How did you come to settle on the two contrasting "characters" in the music video? Were there other dichotomies that were considered to try and get the point across?

Can you tell me about the casting process? How was it working with Rob?

Although this is certainly a generalization, I think it's somewhat safe to say that bodybuilders are not a demographic that intersect too often with the indie music scene. How, if at all, do you think that disconnect helps support the ideas driving the music video?

There is a clear display of physical strength, as represented by Rob holding Lorely, but also a tenderness in gentler scenes, such as that of him combing her hair. What are you hoping to achieve with these scenes?

More generally, what are your thoughts on "strength" as it traditionally refers to males and females, masculinity and femininity? Do you think it is changing? If so, how?

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music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Empress Of – Standard Music Video (Interviews w/ Lorely Rodriguez & Director Zaiba Jabbar)

Related posts:

1. Top Pops! May 2013: Royal Canoe, Empress Of, AM & Shawn Lee, Starlight Girls
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3. Shy Girls – Voyeur’s Gaze Music Video w/ Director Tony Lowe & Bailey Stiles Interview

music art film review - REDEFINE magazine

Harmonia Complete Works Reissue: Recalling an Influential Krautrock Supergroup

Moebius and Roedelius had already been working together in Cluster, after having met in Berlin in 1968. Due to the the political and socioeconomic climate, Berlin was its own musical island in the sea of Europe, making it hard for musicians to tour and travel. These conditions ultimately compelled Cluster to seek a more viable solution; on the recommendation of one of their friends, they relocated to Forst, a city on the German-Polish border.

In this idyllic locale, some of electronic/psychedelic music’s most visionary music would be summoned, from the crumbling parlors of 500-year old farmhouses, as Harmonia was formed when Neu! guitarist Michael Rother came to visit Cluster.

While Harmonia has always been well-received by the critics, in many regards, they are the ultimate indie band. Despite regularly included in “Best of Krautrock” lists, and influencing subsequent generations of musicians, not that many people heard Harmonia’s influential first two albums, 1974’s Musik Von Harmonia and 1975’s Deluxe.

Musik Von Harmonia (1974)

Musik Von Harmonia and Deluxe could be seen as a pair of conjoined twins, showing the two faces of Harmonia. Taken together, they form an almost eerie precognition of the shapes, textures, and sounds of the next 4 decades. They drew the blueprints that subsequent musicians are now designing and decorating.

Musik Von Harmonia is the “punkier” of the first two Harmonia records, in the sense that it is raw, immediate, and DIY. Aside from that, the record, with its languid lines of drifting synthesizers and hand-modulated machine rhythms, can be seen as a precursor to new age and techno music. Its songwriting process was also the most egalitarian of the Harmonia albums. Everyone did everything, with each member of the triptych taking turns playing guitars, keyboards, and electronic percussion. Cluster was already quite well-known and regarded when Michael Rother showed up at their doorstep, leaving the Neu! guitarist to play more of a backseat role in Musik Von Harmonia‘s genesis, although you can already hear glimpses of his almighty guitar tone, which would go on to influence so many. With the Cluster duo taking point, Musik Von Harmonia is a more immediate and improvised affair, showcasing Moebius and Roedelius’ reluctance to play the same music twice. Instead, lengthy jam sessions were laid to tape and later mined for gold. This loose, ramshackle, and intuitive method of making music would both attract and frustrate Michael Rother, who was used to the harsh strictures of his Neu! day job.

Despite being essentially a loose collection of jams, Musik Von Harmonia has some of Harmonia’s most memorable tracks, particularly album opener “Watussi”, with its meteor shower synths and repetitious drum machine grooves. The gorgeous “Sehr Kosmisch” also illustrates Harmonia’s playfulness, translating to “very cosmic” but being only one letter away from the German phrase for “very funny”. Here was a music that is playful, but also takes itself very seriously. It seems that Harmonia were heavenbent on opening a portal to some astral otherworld, from their living room to yours.

Judging from the iconic pop art album cover, which was also designed by Dieter Moebius, it seesm they were convinced the world was ready for this music, needed it — though in a lengthy interview for Red Bull Music Academy a few years before his passing, Moebius talked about starting Harmonia as a way to “get rich”. That, sadly, didn’t happen, but adorning the experimental, uncompromising recordings of Musik Von Harmonia with bright pop-art-as-product album design showcases where Harmonia’s minds were at. It was as if they could see the emerging trends of discos, raves, home recording, and were trying to get ahead of the curve.

Deluxe (1975)

Having gotten more comfortable with his position in the band and with his desire to realize his sonic vision, Michael Rother would step up to mastermind Harmonia’s second record, Deluxe. Rother loved the loose, organic method of creation, but wanted to find a way to balance freedom and organization. And while Deluxe almost sounds like a Fourth World Neu! record because of it, it is an essential aspect to what Harmonia were, and their enduring legacy.

Deluxe is a prototype for the hyper-detailed technological art pop record, meticulously sculpted, textured, and layered. It is a striking statement, with its adventurous, optimistic melodies eked out of plastic synths, and, of course, beautifully showcases Rother’s glorious guitar playing. The synths themselves speak volumes of to duality of Musik Von Harmonia and Deluxe. Musik Von Harmonia was mostly constructed with archaic junkstore organs, which were processed through a battalion of guitar pedals. The music sounds like it could have come from 1666 or 2666. Deluxe, however, sounds almost digital, secured to a particular time and place. It could serve as the soundtrack to some sci-fi adventure movie, full of cities in the clouds and flying cars. It also finds Harmonia at their most rockist, with the wild-and-wooly guitar workouts of “Monza”, which was along the lines of what bands like Amon Düül II were doing around that time.

Tracks And Traces (1974)

One of the greatest gifts of having all of Harmonia’s music in one place and time is restoring the original timeline of the group. Harmonia initially disbanded in 1975, after Deluxe, succumbing to their creative differences. In 1976, however, one of Harmonia’s greatest advocates, Brian Eno, would pay a visit to Forst.

Eno called Harmonia “the world’s most important rock group”. Being a longstanding fan, Eno found an opportunity to visit in ’76, en route to work with David Bowie on his milestone Berlin Trilogy. Rather than sitting down to hash out a session, Eno found himself drawn into Harmonia’s rural rhythm of life, going for long walks in the primeval forests, helping to take care of the children, having long conversations about art and life. In the in-between moments, the music that would make up Tracks And Traces was recorded, using much better recording technology than the first two records..

Tracks And Traces, with credit to not Harmonia, but the project name Harmonia ’76, wouldn’t be released until 1997, but you can hear seismic echoes of the sessions throughout each of their subsequent solo careers. Tracks And Traces comes one year after Eno’s first foray into ambient music, with 1975’s Discreet Music, but two years before he would coin the term with 1978’s Ambient 1: Music For Airports. He was clearly seeking an eternal, transhuman music — a modern day Music Of The Spheres — that was also anticipating the rise of Muzak and the omnipresent soundtracking of our lives that we now know today.

Tracks And Traces is a dazzling, dreamy instrumental rock/proto-techno record. Monolithic guitars carve across the sky like some millennial comet on “Welcome”, while “Vamos Companeros” is a hypnotic, grinding, pulsing motorik groove — essentially minimal techno, 20 years early. Despite being unreleased, “By The Riverside”‘s twittering field recordings and restrained spacious electric pianos would be the inspiration for Eno’s “By This River”, from 1977’s Before And After Science.

It was through Eno that Harmonia’s ripples and rumbles would be felt. Although not specifically stated, Robert Fripp’s guitars on the early Eno solo records might as well have been sampled from a Harmonia record. And of course, Eno is well-known (and often criticized) for incorporating Klaus Dinger’s motorik groove into Bowie’s Heroes, introducing millions to the wonders of the German psychedelic underground.

Harmonia in the Present

It would not be an overstatement to claim that the music scene we’re living in today would not exist without the works of Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius, Michael Rother, Brian Eno, and too many more to mention. Their pastoral lo-fi recording setup in ancient farmhouse living rooms predicts the home-recording revolution that would begin in earnest in the late ’70s, creating the conditions for the postmodern meltdown of the indie revolution.

Their music is perhaps most striking as a confluence, smack dab in the middle of the Ancient and the Modern. They’re a perfect hybrid of Neu! and Kraftwerk’s rigid, autonomic future pop and Faust and Amon Düül II’s more ritualistic take on kosmische. While being comprised of many threads and themes, Harmonia remain resolutely their own. Today, their music sounds unabashedly hopeful; like gliding into the future on a cushion of air.

As we straggle our way into the 21st century, this is what we are still navigating: how to balance chaos and order, the handmade and the technological. At the turn of the century, it seemed that everyone was afraid of the future, choosing instead to lose themselves in pastoral fantasies, in the alternate dimensions of freak folk and throwback culture – the auditory equivalent of dropping out and joining a commune.

But like it or not, this is the world we’re living in. We carry our technology with us wherever we go. At every moment, all of the world’s information surround our heads like a stormy halo, and we are left to deal with that fact. We’ve got all the loops, all the grooves, all the tools and templates and formats you could ever want to construct your masterpiece.

Harmonia’s music seems timeless, endless. It’s like you come into it, as it’s happening, and it doesn’t end, you just walk away. These musicians seem to be perpetually gathered in some twilight clearing, jamming their way to infinity, opening the pathways to the stars. It sounds like the groove of the Earth, tearing its way around the sun — a musica universalis for the modern day.

Harmonia’s First-Ever Performance

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Hit City U.S.A. Record Label Feature: A Casual Californian Approach to Music & Lifestyle

A Personal Touch

Hit City U.S.A.’s DIY attitude is exemplified by the way they choose the bands on their label. They don’t do any signings with specific business goals in mind; most importantly, the pairings just have to feel right. All of their artists are signed through instinct as well as personal connections and recommendations.

KISSES, an upbeat male-female pop duo from Southern California, have previous full-length releases on This Is Music and Cascine, but chose to take their third full-length record, Rest In Paradise, to Hit City. As they were already friends with the label founders, the transition was quite simple.

“I think we met up for coffee, sent them the album, and the rest is Hit City U.S.A. legend,” states vocalist and guitarist Jesse Kivel.

(Right: KISSES – Photography by John Michael Fulton)

The intimate structure of Hit City allows for a unique type of camaraderie that can often be lost with larger labels. The exuberant indie folk band Lord Huron, for example, were introduced to them through a relative.

“Colin worked with my sister at the LA Times, and I think she passed along some songs,” recalls lead singer Ben Schneider,who expresses surprise that Stutz and Parkins actually listened to his music. “They were into it, and we all met up for a beer downtown to talk turkey.”

And right then and there, thanks to that one casual meeting, Hit City U.S.A. decided to put out the Lord Huron’s 2010 EP, Into the Sun.

Meeting with and signing bands in a relaxed setting seems to be a standard for Hit City, who have a natural ability to make their talent feel at home. Soulful roots rock artist Maxim Ludwig, who just released his All My Nightmares/Assembly Line EP on the label, respects the values that Stutz and Parkins promote. The fact that they are relaxed while also encouraging experimentation and creativity is one of his favorite things about working with them.

“I’m very into the familial aspect of making art. I like working with a small group of people over a long period of time. It creates a common language in all parts of the music,” explains Maxim Ludwig. “Hit City U.S.A. shows the business side of art can be creative. It’s important to me to eat and drink and have fun when discussing the album, the promotion, the ‘thing’, and they always indulge me.”

Not every artist on the Hit City U.S.A. roster had heard of the label before they signed — but they too trusted their guts and the vibe they received from Parkins and Stutz. Electronic pop musician Calvin Love, who released his 2014 Cool EP on Hit City, is one of those artists.

“My first impressions were positive, [and] I continue to be impressed by Hit City U.S.A.,” Calvin Love explains. “I think they have evolved in the best way possible; ever expanding and pursuing their dream.”

A Collaborative Process

Teamwork is essential to running Hit City U.S.A., and as Parkins explains, the process of signing each band is always a shared decision.

“Usually one of us hears some demos or gets sent some tracks, and then we bounce it around and see what sticks,” he explains. “It’s pretty fluid at the outset, but from there, we collectively really need to feel something when listening to the music.”

Across the board, it seems that bands on the Hit City roster agree that the label works for them because the founders have a deep understanding of what it is like to be in a band. The artists feel invested in the label, and know that the label feels mutually invested in their success. The feeling of everyone being in it together leads to a shared sense of loyalty and devotion.

“I met Cameron for the first time at a show he played in Portland with his band, Superhumanoids, and I remember walking away thinking, ‘That guy is a 100% genuine person’. Same feeling when I met Colin…” says Dan Vidmar, of the contemporary R&B project, Shy Girls.

In late 2013, Vidmar worked with Hit City to release his first EP Timeshare — and though he chose to self-release his 2015 follow-up mixtape, 4WZ, he is quick to promote the sense of ease musicians find when working with the label.

“My very first impression was: ‘kind of a weird name for an indie label’,” Vidmar laughs. “My second impression was just really trusting that they believed in the project. They seemed so ready to work my EP and so hungry to be on my team — and that was important to me.”

Anthony Ferraro, lead singer of Northern California’s mellow, lo-fi indie rock band Astronauts etc., holds a similar perspective. Their recent release, Mind Out Wandering, is a catchy debut that includes the single “No Justice”. The release is a big score for the label, with an artist-label exchange that is symbiotic for all.

“Hit City U.S.A. is a young label, and we’re a young band. The face of the industry is changing dramatically right now,” explains Ferraro, “and I think it’s a great benefit to be able to face that with a label that understands how to adapt — that hasn’t ossified into a machine with a rigid M.O.”

A Formidable Future

Thus far, Hit City U.S.A.’s track record has dictated that they generally sign artists for only a release or two — but come the year 2016 and beyond, one can expect Parkins and Stutz to be working more tirelessly than ever on expanding their project.

“Working with bands over multiple releases is always the goal,” explains Parkins. “We invest ourselves pretty fully into anything we do, so having a long view of our growth with an artist is always on our mind.”

“Sometimes this works out nicely and we’re able to do multiple releases,” he continues. “Sometimes one EP or a single is all that really makes sense for everyone involved. Broadly, though, we look at what we’re building with Hit City as something beyond just releasing records — we may not work with an artist on their next musical release, but we may do an event with them, for example.”

In addition to events, other experiments Hit City is undertaking include in-depth editorial pieces with bands they represent as well as artists they love, limited edition food products, and simple apparel items, such as locally-manufactured bandanas and classic white tees. All of it cohesively forms a brand that is relaxed, grounded, and very Californian in style and execution.

“I think the label has only gotten stronger with every release,” says Kivel of KISSES, “and as they have broadened the label to include lifestyle items, I think that has helped build a world around the label itself.”

Stutz echoes this sentiment, saying, “If we aren’t pushing things forward to do better and achieve more, no one else will. It also means we’re sort of too small to fail.”

As to what quantifies success for the label founders, it’s quite simple.

“It really comes down to sustaining a living as a creative entity, both for ourselves and our collaborators, through a holistic ecosystem of our own design,” says Stutz. “That, and feeling like we’ve contributed to the world with something good and inspired, rather than just more noise.”

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Yumi Sakugawa Artist Interview: Expansion through Meditation and the Dark Corners of the Mind

From There Is No Right Way to Meditate: And Other Lessons, 2015

Meditation as a Grounding Foundation

Sakugawa has said it time and time again, in interview after interview: she fell into meditation in 2008, when she was massively depressed and living in Japan. She shares this detail not necessarily because it is convenient, but because it is absolutely foundational to her work.

“It was a window of time where I just so happened to learn more about meditation and mindfulness through colleagues and through my boyfriend,” she recalls, “and I didn’t even have a long-term project in mind. I was making comics about meditation because it was my own way of anchoring myself to why the practice was important to me and why it was helping me as a person.”

Discovering meditation was a rare a-ha moment for Sakugawa, and similarly groundbreaking moments have continued to be rare. Nonetheless, meditation is a practice she has incorporated more and more into her everyday life and art practice; it gives her fodder for comics about meditation, helps her clarify initial concepts, and aids in untangling themes from her works-in-progress.

“Over the days and weeks and months, you just have these moments of extra-clarity, and you could tell that it’s different from how you experienced time in this present moment than before you were meditating… if that makes any sense,” she expounds.

From There Is No Right Way to Meditate: And Other Lessons, 2015

Over nearly a decade of meditative explorations, what began as regular blog posts became self-published zines, which — “luckily for me,” Sakugawa shares, “started turning into books.”

“It really was a side, side project, but I feel like only now, I’m starting to embrace being a self-help author, in addition to being a comic book artist, which I resisted for a long time.”

Part of the reason Sakugawa’s mindset has shifted through the years is because she represents a minority within a minority. It’s true that the topics she explores can generally be considered universal, but her demographic as a North American comic book artist — or even as an author, more generally — is decidedly not universal. Though Sakugawa says that conversations about race and gender have become more prevalent within the comics medium and that women are winning more awards than ever, she believes that a great deal of work still needs to be done.

“There aren’t enough Asian-American people in self-help — especially women, especially millennials — so I think it’s important,” Sakugawa notes. “Even though my comics aren’t specifically about Asian-Americans or Asian-American women, I just think it’s important for people to see that face in a sea of blue-eyed faces.”

Confidence from Strange Dissemination

Sakugawa’s work does not exist in a bubble. Thanks to the internet and positive feedback from the wider artistic community, she has learned first-hand that her work resonates widely. Her first published book, late 2013’s I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You, jumpstarted her career; it was the first time Sakugawa experienced what it is to have her work go viral and become internet-famous.

“[It] is always funny to me — not funny, but always a bit of a surprise to me, because I feel like a lot of the meditation and self-help work that I do, they’re primarily reminders to myself, not so much to other people, so it’s always a pleasant surprise that it helps people,” she shares humbly. “It just never gets old to me that people really respond to my work. It’s surprising every single time.”

Following the success of I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You, her next biggest hits may be even more surprising. One which came to mind is “Have Cake And Tea With Your Demons”, a tiny chapter from 2014’s Your Illustrated Guide To Becoming One With The Universe, where an adorably peaceful white blob shares snacks with a one-eyed shadow creature — who’s also adorable, of course.

“For whatever reason, I think people just really like that chapter because they aren’t told enough that it’s okay to live with your weaknesses,” says Sakugawa. “It’s okay to have these dark corners of your mental space and not try to repress it and push it away.”

Along those lines is a thirty-second doodle Sakugawa made of a bunny lying prostrate, captioned simply by the words, “I did nothing today, and that’s okay.” The piece received thousands of notes on Tumblr, leading Sakugawa to hypothesize that, “People just want to be told that it’s okay to not be productive. People are relieved to hear that, so I’m happy to spread that message.”

Despite how prolific Sakugawa is — with the number of workshops she teaches and media she releases, is she really ever sitting idly…? — it actually does stand to reason that these one-offs, in particular, are resonant with Sakugawa’s audience. At their core, they actually reflect the source of the artist’s confidence in a fascinating way. What she has learned through trial-and-error is that embracing what might be considered “dark” or “idle” is actually very beneficial for her, artistically and as a person.

“Before I posted the comic, I was a little afraid to post it, because I thought it was really weird and really putting myself too much out there,” says Sakugawa, who also shares candidly that she was shocked by the popularity of that particular piece.

“With every new work I put out,” she continues, “if I’m a little scared to put it out, then that’s a good thing, and that usually leads to really good things for me. I use that as my own personal barometer of whether or not something is good: if it feels a little risky and scary to put it out there.”

From Your Illustrated Guide To Becoming One With The Universe, 2014

Comics as an Expansive Destination

Sakugawa didn’t always want to be a comic book artist. In undergrad, she studied Painting at UCLA while exploring her many other passions in theatre, writing, and drawing angsty comics. It took a slow-process of elimination — of realizing she didn’t want to go the traditional route of academia to practice art through museums or attend grad school to become a Painting professor — that she arrived at indie comics, which blended her love of abstract storytelling with visual art.

“I looked back on the things I was most interested in, and it seems like such an obvious choice now, in retrospect, but [I focused on what] I’ve always been interested in,” shares Sakugawa.

To leave the academic art world and fall into the zine world is to essentially embark on a whole new creative path. It requires different connections and a different mentality. In her last year of college, Sakugawa finally made the decision to pursue comics, and to her benefit, things unfolded blissfully. She was immediately exposed to more comics and easily made comic friends. Those connections led to the zines and books that Sakugawa now makes her living from. Yet the process was slow. It required that she gradually scale back her hours at her then-day job so that she could increase her own art hours.

“When they’re just starting out, a lot of young people see it as an all-or-nothing situation, where either you have a day job or you’re a full-time artist,” she says. “For me, as a comic book artist, I feel especially lucky, because I don’t have to rely on expensive equipment or a crew of people to make the art I want to make. If you’re doing comics, it’s very doable to do it in your free time.”

The freedom Sakugawa has found in comics, and the modest ability to live as an artist, defines success for her.

“So long as you’re financially sustainable, you’re really happy with the work you’re doing, and you’re still in the game, that’s great,” she states. “I wouldn’t say I’m poor, but I’m definitely not rich, and I’m nowhere close to buying a house like some of my peers. But I’m also really happy with my life and the freedom living this life brings, and even though it’s unstable and I have no idea what lies in the future for me, I’m really enjoying what I’ve built for myself, so I feel like that’s successful.”

“I used to have all these benchmarks when I was younger,” she continues. “I thought, ‘Oh, if the New York Times wrote a review, then I’m successful’ or, ‘If I have a New York Times Bestseller then I’m successful,’ and now that I’ve had a few books under my belt, I’m not as interested in that.”

Sakugawa is a published book author, but the flexibility of comics allows her fans many entry points into her work. While the wider world can purchase beautifully printed books via major retailers, those who would rather not spend money can find her pieces online, and zine lovers can enjoy black-and-white photo-copied pamphlets. All of these options appeal to Sakugawa.

“I like the instant gratification of posting something online,” she details. “I think people really like the physicality of a zine, because it’s personal and stapled and handmade. And of course, I love books, because the publishers take care of putting everything in all the bookstores across the nation. You don’t have to lift a finger. I really embrace all formats.”

“I feel like — especially if you’re a comic book artist — there’s no reason to limit yourself to just one form. They’re all great,” she concludes.

Sakugawa spent most of her early 20s hunkering down with the mediums which interested her. Comics will probably always be a part of her practice; her upcoming projects, slated for well past 2017, involve a DIY lifestyle book suitable for outlets like Urban Outfitters, and “a book of meditative comics geared towards artists about the creative process”. In her late 20s, Sakugawa is beginning to feel the need to expand once again — perhaps by reintroducing her academic training and love for theatre into her practice.

“Now it’s not so much about the medium, but more about the message, and what mediums can support that message,” she explains. She is now considering her work on a more conceptual and theoretical level, by truly embracing her ability to nonchalantly expound deep life lessons. A 2015 Giant Robot Biennale resparked her interest in doing installations and multimedia pieces which inspire meditation, and she is increasingly excited to explore different ways to share her message.

“I’m thinking more about how I can emotionally and spiritually support people in ways where I don’t have to be there, but my message is spread to more people on a national and global scale. I feel like that is more exciting to me than sort of having arbitrary external validations,” she states.

And when asked to sum up some important life lessons, Sakugawa does so in her classically easy-to-digest way.

“A couple things come to mind. One of them is, ‘Love yourself; you’re doing okay.’ The other one is, ‘Pay attention and listen,'” she says simply. She then hesitates for a moment and mulls over if she has more to say, before concluding with a gentle smile, “I think that sums it up, actually.”

From There Is No Right Way to Meditate: And Other Lessons, 2015

From Your Illustrated Guide To Becoming One With The Universe, 2014

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Yumi Sakugawa Artist Interview: Expansion through Meditation and the Dark Corners of the Mind

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Top Albums of the Year 2015: Staff Picks

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Top Albums of the Year 2015: Staff Picks

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Psychoactive Soundscapes: Top Psychedelic Records of 2015

This world is just our bullshit day job, but man, talk about some tedious shit. I don’t honestly even want to harp on this stuff really, but 2015 might just be the year music “journalism” officially died. It’s getting beyond absurd and apparently exactly no one else is going to mention this other than me, but we’ve just hit another all time low on that front recently. What we should be learning from information technology is that in any given year, roughly a million or so amazing albums are released onto the internets. It’s a number that’s literally incalculable from the standpoint of individual consciousness. We could quantify it as beyond human comprehension, which is a variable hard science types need to start recognizing before they doom us all with imperialist kill bots. If you want to find like Guatemalan electro death polka stuff these days, it’s probably out there and within your quick reach.

Which is why it’s so unbelievably creepy that all the major taste making magazines and websites are now doubling down in their attempts to control the headspace of trend conscious Joe Six Pack and Suzie Strip Mall. I mean, I’m guessing they’re all owned or in bed with the same corporations. Almost all the major labels and major indies are. Hell, we all are in a way (hey, subscribe to my YouTube channel). So what you get in year-end lists is a bunch of identical countdowns informing you that the exact same fifty records, out of millions, are somehow the best by some objective form of critical measurement. It’s frightening, and I’m not sure what’s more depressing – browsing these articles or the comments sections, where everybody agrees about the selections but proceeds to argue about the order. Operation mind controlled robot populace is in full swing, and sadly, it’s actually probably much better than it ever was in decades past, before the web. I mean, at least now one can access smaller independent sites that aren’t just churning out label payola passed off as journalism. It’s just that very few people do so percentage wise.

I first noticed the phenomenon that I like to call monoculture music writing back in 2010 when Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was somehow the album of the year across the board pretty much everywhere. I’ve never really understood Kanye’s arty bling rap myself, and maybe it’s really amazing, but fuck, nothing is that fucking good unless it’s an album that somehow forgoes your ears and broadcasts pictures and orgasms directly into your mind. If a band does that, then I’m like, okay, gotcha, hard to argue that isn’t the best thing that came out last year. Not long after, while bored at work, I actually mapped out exactly how similar the top 50 year end lists for Pitchfork, Spin, and Rolling Stone were. I came up with roughly 65% the exact same stuff, and the top 10 reflected an even higher percentage of sameness. I mean, the order was honestly the only thing that was different, and it wasn’t that much different.

Unbelievably, since then it’s been getting even more bleak. Look, I’m not going to say Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly is a bad record. I quite like it, although I must confess I find myself skipping tracks here and there, especially that whole cry rapping thing. But fuck, really? It was the number one album on every single major year end list in 2015. Seriously. It was number one on Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Spin, Vice, The Guardian, Onion AV Club, Sputnikmusic, etc. Where it didn’t end up number 1, it was number 2. Again, even I didn’t realize how deep this mind rape propaganda campaign even ran until I stumbled on this year-end list aggregator last week. Soooo creeeeepy. It’s all the comprised of the exact same albums. Insidious, and the message is so crystal clear; you know what albums are great kids? Albums that make increasingly interconnected conservative media corporations fat cash on the backs of a tiny number of largely underpaid artists. Again, I like Kendrick Lamar (although I could do without the materialism and misogyny), but even if To Pimp a Butterfly was my favorite album of all time, I’d still be disturbed on a fundamental level by the sheer mind control factor going down.

The beauty of art is its sublime subjectivity. (Editor’s Note: This is why you will never find a comprehensive year-end list on REDEFINE; what you’ll find is an interconnected wonderland of our individual tastes from year to year, and it’s always pretty weird.) What sounds amazing to some people might come across like auditory torture to others. It’s these difficult to fathom concepts that the hard sciences will always fail to comprehend. That kind of automated thinking is good for marketing, not art, and that’s all one album being declared the best of millions to come out in any given year signifies, precision marketing. If we’re to ascend towards godhood, which is our most logical trajectory as cosmically aspiring monkeys, we have to start putting spells on ourselves that pull us out of our consumerist trance rather than reinforcing it. It’s happening, but on a macro level, the good stuff is still falling largely under the monoculture media radar, on purpose.

So rather than going out shopping for useless shit you don’t need this weekend, as you’re being unconsciously commanded by sexy-looking advertising passing as journalism, why not smoke a “quite possibly legal in some capacity where you live” joint and space the fuck out to some of these mind-manifesting records? Culture is not your friend, my friend. This music is designed to help you resist it.

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Psychoactive Soundscapes: Top Psychedelic Records of 2015

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