Coachelletta from Sam O'Hare on Vimeo.
BYUN from thismustbetheplace on Vimeo.
Well that was a nice three month vacation... if only I could survive on a 1 month working / 3 vacationing schedule with everything in my life. Nonetheless, I'm back with a month and a half left in the year to make some dents on this blog.
This video of the Brooklyn artist, Byun, has been sitting in the queue for a few months now. It provided some great inspiration for the new header and has a different look into the influence of space and design in the places we live and create...
The Pass - "Treatment of the Sun" PMA Premiere from Pretty Much Amazing on Vimeo.
BATHS // AMINALS from visonoid on Vimeo.
On Friday August 6th, a small quintet of Angeleno musicians finds their way through the Griffith Park brush to the center of The World of Birds stage at the Los Angeles Zoo. The air is heavy with the chatter of their neighboring mammals and an ageless crowd gathers as the five approach in calm and gallant pace and the feral stir of The Lonely Wild begins…
For most of us this is a brief retreat from the city; an oasis stumbled upon at the center of a concrete basin. And perhaps the very same thing could be said of The Lonely Wild themselves as their tone pulls from old spaghetti-western flare and their lyrics often clamor out in proclamation of journey for journey’s-sake and for our old wild and forlorn lives that sometimes find themselves restricted by self-constructed cages.
While most of us spend tireless hours searching for music to help us pass time in our commutes, to guide us through our bad times and through our great ones, The Lonely Wild is capable of serving us with something so much more: an intermission. An intermission from our search for purpose and grandeur, an escape from our heavily tracked vehicle timecards as we traverse from one side of the city to the other, an escape from all that we search to have in our lives so that we may dance and play loudly and ferociously in the moment. The sound encourages us to howl at the raw intonation of our souls and recall the nostalgic feel of the unexplored so that we may move on, ready for the adventure that begs us to turn from the roads we are on and into the brush of the uncharted days to come.
As a real live adult I am what you call “sans parents” and can do whatever the hell I want to on Friday nights and this Friday night in particular happens to be bursting out of it’s dress of activities with copious amounts of awesomeness. Introducing THE FRIDAY NIGHT SHOWDOWN:
LOCAL SCENE @ THE LA ZOO:
A number of local bands are playing at the LA ZOO in Griffith Park tonight including two of my favorites, The Lonely Wild and Voxhaul Broadcast ("Fact or Fiction"). Not to mention the fact that this is at the fricking ZOO!! It’s at the ZOO! They’ll probably let you have a monkey on your shoulder while you skank around and he’ll probably high-five you and clap for you! Either that or he’ll kill you.
http://www.facebook.com/MITZLocalScene
TIMELESS: J Rocc Live VJ Set at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center
VJ performances have been increasing like crazy over the last few years, in part by the increased availability of the equipment and software but also because of the unmistakable talents of VJ’s like Peanut Butter Wolf and J Rocc whose TIMELESS performance at SXSW this year was so loudly praised they’ve arranged for him to do another set here at LA’s JACCC Plaza. TIMELESS is a collection of three concert films featuring the music of legendary hip-hop influences like J Dilla, Mulatu Astatke, and Arthur Verocai that J Rocc will be VJing live.
http://www.mochilla.com/events?oid=2243
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=114737098561373
ROLLING ROADSHOW: Jackie Brown showing at The Proud Bird
Levi’s has been putting on this event called the Rolling Roadshow where they take iconic films and play them in the setting of the actual film. ROBOCOP will be playing in Detroit, THE BLUES BROTHERS in Joliet, Illinois, ROCKY in Philly, and tonight JACKIE BROWN is playing at The Proud Bird next to one of LAX’s approach runways where you can watch planes taking off and Pam Grier kicking some ass all at the same time. Some of the actors and Tarantino are rumored to be there. Do you see what I’m dealing with here? It’s free so it will likely be crowded as hell, but no doubt worth the effort.
http://rollingroadshow.com/aug-6-jackie-brown
ABBOT KINNEY FIRST FRIDAYS: Venice
This is best to save for the late night event. The crowds at Abbot Kinney’s First Friday event keeps getting worse and worse, but it is the best place for some greasy foodtruck food and if you can find your way into a few of the parties that are giving out free wine and beer it’ll be a good night.
http://www.abbotkinneyonline.com/index.php?/August-First-Friday/
On July 23rd, the Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble and the masterful talents of Bilal, Flying Lotus, Sheila Govindarajan, Thundercat, Aloe Blacc and many more graced the stage of the Downtown LA MOCA for a free show for over 4,000 Los Angeles residents. The collaboration of this kind of supreme talent and the mingling of their vastly different sounds is the type of landmark event that defines greatness in an art thirsty for it. It’s something raw and revealing enough to, once again, revive purpose in a word like “Fresh”.
Miguel Atwood-Ferguson Ensemble, Ft. Flying Lotus, Bilal, Thundercat, Aloe Blacc & More - LA Downtown MOCA - July 23rd, 2010 from Wormholes&Vitamins on Vimeo.
At first listen (and watch) his work is the kind of temporary anecdote that the age of quirk and electro would see fade and become something of a novelty, but 21 year old Nick Bertke, more commonly known as Pogo, has developed such a fun and enjoyable niche for himself that I can’t help but be obsessed and, albeit, a bit jealous I didn’t think of it first. His sampling and re-working of dialogue from films like Alice in Wonderland, Mary Poppins, Hook, and another childhood favorite of mine, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, have all had the uniqueness and general familiarity of content to draw huge interweb crowds. But his skills as a producer have proven he’s a palpable and innovative artist. Using Pixar's popular film Up, Pogo's latest piece proves he can also build an emotionally driven visual story you couldn’t get from the track alone. Expect him to set some new bars in the search for sound. - W&V
Check out the remix on Hype Machine (working on the internal player... STOP SHOUTING!)
Pogo - Upular (rynecologist helium rework)
And check out Pogo's other work, including the “un-finished” song he did for Honda, on his website:
