db does a blog

Both of these bands have been on my radar for a few months; both use sampling (ES sampling & looping live sitar), both are referencing influences from the 60’s, both are very young in their development, & both have names that I think are poo, compared to the power of their music.
The first, SOS (formally known by the name I prefer, Shadows On Stars), was on Monday. Since all of New York went back to work & school after the summer, it can’t have been easy to get people to come out.
However, Glasslands was heading towards full for SOS's first NYC performance.
Hard to really put a genre name to SOS, but if pushed, I guess I’d call them a cross between abstract R&B/cyber soul & spaced-out modern rock. They simply call it Alt on their Soundcloud.
While the gorgeous Randa Leigh sings, one can not help but be seduced by her smile, & hips, but for me, the show was most interesting when Brian Vincent & the band actually dug in on the instrumental parts of the tunes.
 
Elephant Stone at Rock Shop, a venue I hadn't been to before, was equally a hard night to pull people since it fell on 9/11.
The band was cool & tight, playing their own brand of pop-tinged psychedelia, & channeling both the Beatles & the Byrds at times, but with bass & drum rhythms that are danceable.
I’d love to see/hear these guys with a "real" loud system.

Both bands will also benefit when they can afford to add visuals, & in ES's case I missed the diva-type backing vocalist on the record.
Even though they both played in Brooklyn, they could have been in different countries, in different eras.
Monday’s Williamsburg show was a young & cool crowd, making me feel my normal mix of uncomfortable & self-conscious, being the old guy in the room. While Thursday in Park Slope, I actually felt sorry for the band who were looking out on the oldest & uncool gig crowd I've ever seen. If I didn't live in Park Slope, which is a black hole of style, I might have thought this crowd came from some normcore fashion-week event.

It’s hard to believe, but I’d been trying to see this band for ten full years!

I knew that seeing an arena show was not going to be like seeing them at any of the unusual or tiny venues they played before they became real “rock stars.” So many times in the past I’d either been too late to buy tickets, wasn’t cool enough to know they were playing some invite-only event, or was away (in the case of the recent secret Reflektors shows). So when Barclays dates were announced, I was determined to buy great seats & make sure it was going to finally happen.

The show was great, making incredible use of live video, effects, and live editing! At one point Ned counted 18 people on stage. The band and audience gave their all. In fact, I felt like AF were really pushing themselves to give a fuller than normal arena experience, even to the point of keeping the venue open for an extra hour, turning it into a giant disco/dance party. “This was expensive to do, so enjoy it!” said Will Butler before leaving the stage.

I’m not sure how comfortable they actually are being rock gods. There are clues to their take on “celebrity" in recent videos, and in the show itself, including giant parody heads of themselves. It’s very clear that they made every effort to try and make this arena tour feel as intimate as possible. No easy task.

I know this is a very unpopular view, but for me each release of their four albums got stronger, with James Murphy’s magic touch on their last being by far my favorite. That might simply be due to my love of 303’s, analog synths & dancebeats, and Murphy’s immaculate taste and skills with them. I’d actually had hopes that Murphy was going to make a guest appearance, however it was great fun seeing guest Marky Ramone & the band tear through a couple of Ramones classics. I found this link of the appropriately shambollic covers.

Stephen Romano, one of the galleries in my office building in DUMBO, Brooklyn, has an exhibition that I simply do not have the vocabulary to describe. It is fascinating and bizarre.

The work that caught my eye was the gallery owner’s own cool Kris Kuksi piece. However, It's the book in the images below that so excited me. It’s called the "Hieroglyphica of Merkbeelden der oude volkeren," or the Hieroglyphica or icon images of Ancient Peoples, described by Romano as "a well known emblem book and sourcebook for classical mythology and its iconography.” It is the oldest book I've ever seen and the pages are full of icons, some of which evolved into modern “logos."  It was written and illustrated in 1735 by Romeyn De Hooghe (1645 - 1708). You can actually scroll through the book here. Exhibition is on till the end of August.

Since my two main passions are music and art, and it makes me very happy when the two beautifully merge together, I’m going to start posting designs for records that I consider worthy.
Below is the CD for FKA twigs' debut album, LP1.
The art is by Jesse Kanda. It was very kindly gifted to me by Ben & Patrick of XL Recordings. I’m not 100% sure if this is the final design, as there’s no text at all, so it might be a mock-up for approval.

If you’ve yet to discover the fantastical world of FKA twigs, check her videos out..

What really excites me in art is when I see an artist using their medium, whether it be fine painting or graffiti stickers, as a way to deal with personal problems (eg, the canvas or the streets become the place where the artist purges his or her issues).
It’s a little more unusual to find it raw and unhinged in these days of corporate sanitized music, but a few months ago I stumbled, via FaceBook, on a musical artist whose life is literally turning to shit around him. Rock Bottom Boy is dealing with it by raging publicly against those he’s perceived as wronging him. Here’s the YouTube channel dedicated to playback of voice messages, starting with his wife telling him she’s leaving him for his own guitar teacher.

He's recruited family members that have not turned against him (nephews, I think) and formed a naïve, but tight little punk rock outfit.
Every song is like shock/scream therapy. One’s heart can not help but go out to him when he sings about how he’s been fucked over, but at the same time cringe with embarrassment that it’s all so public. One song is about how he “Hasn’t Been Hard” in 15 days.
The live performance is hard to watch, in the same way it's tough to watch an old man crying on a crowded subway train.

John comes from some sort of corporate day job and looks like he came straight from work to the stage. One of the songs is about what he describes as "a secret epidemic: office bullying."
His attire would be uber Normcore if it wasn't the real deal, right down to his clip-on belt phone holder & Bluetooth ear piece.
One aspect I’m not clear on is who & what BIGMUNENTERTAINMENT is, other than the production company behind all his PR & promotion. I wonder/worry that it’s some sort of Svengali in the company that’s exploiting him simply for the sensationalist headlines, and going to push him over the edge.

One can follow the who saga unfold on Rock Bottom Boy's FaceBook.

While on a family vacation in Stresa, Italy, the last thing we were expecting to see among the gracefully aging Italian & British tourists was a serious sprinkling of metal & goth types. Stresa is a magical place, built hundreds of years ago, barely changed, on the side of Lake Maggiore, whose waters I think also touch the Swiss Alps on the other side of the lake. We also noticed that there were many groups of men. Also strange, the age of these male packs ranged from their twenties to their seventies. I finally stopped one and asked why they were here, and he pointed to a sign that said "World Model Design Expo 2014."

Hidden behind one of the hundred year old, over-the-top, opulent lakefront hotels was a modern convention center with thousands of men, all showing their prowess and undeniable skill at creating all manner of models. The main difference between this and a Comic-Con type of convention was the lack of technology, or for that matter any screens at all.

The majority of the models focused on characters or scenes from famous wars, hence the men in their seventies. I’m guessing the younger creators & collectors were bringing the fantasy to the culture. I normally make every effort to credit all creators of work but in this case these were not marked or credited at all, except with a coded number. So here are just few images of the bizarre model makers' world. Some of the dioramas were so much like a work by Jake & Dinos Chapman called "Hell", it was unintentionally comical. I wondered If the Chapman's used any of these guys to create it.

Neither Max nor I are what one would call boat people, and I was a little concerned about whether this was going to be a dingy, or some sort of leaky, rowing contraption. So I was relieved and happy to see a very tasty little Cobalt speed boat, called the Blue Pigment.

What a great day it turned out to be.

First, James showed us some new awesome finished works, then we boated out to New Jersey for a feast of burgers, ribs, fish & chips, wings, and more! Then we went up the East River and got to view New York from a totally different perspective. Seeing the Domino Sugar Factory from the river, up close and personal, with the fantastic structure adorned with beautiful graffiti, was a real treat!

I don't remember exactly when Ned White & I stumbled on JUNGLE via their Soundcloud but it was before they got signed to XL Recordings.

Once XL is involved, you know this is potentially a game-changing artist, so we've been paying close attention, really enjoying each consecutive new song.

Ned got guest-listed for a secret TUMBLR show at the Wick & I gratefully tagged along. JUNGLE's sound is hard to describe. Its closer to 70's funk than anything currently popular. While the live show is cool now, what will be exciting is when they have the resources to bring a big badass brass section like Tower of Power on tour with them.

The whole thing does feels a little branded, marketed & controlled, but the bottom line is, its wicked music & better than every other branded, marketed & controlled thing that's out there!

Here's one of my fave tunes..