Two producers. Forty bucks. One junk store. One afternoon. One killer track.
XLR8R gave anticon. co-conspirators Jel and Odd Nosdam 40 bucks and challenged them to come up with a track in a single afternoon, made solely from records they found at a junk shop in West Berkeley, CA. Here, we follow them from junk shop to SP-1200 and, finally, to debuting the breezy, psychedelic afternoon masterpiece at their regular DJ night.
The resulting track is available for download here.
From endless photography projects to social experiments, detailed zines to mail-order mischief, New York-based photographer and conceptual artist David Horvitz is a poster-boy for DIY prolificacy. “When I finished college, I got a job at a one-hour photo store in Hermosa Beach,” he recalls. “When the manager wasn’t in I would make my own prints, and then give them away for free at The Smell or other shows in L.A.”
Horvitz is deeply involved with the indie rock community, directing music videos for High Places and B.A.R.R., and curating and photographing a picture-disc series for Aagoo Records that includes contributions from No Age, Casiotone For the Painfully Alone, Sunset Rubdown, and others. He’s joined Oakland noise-pop weirdos Xiu Xiu on tour numerous times, and published a photo book and DVD about the band as well as conducting an experimental Polaroid project with their fans.
Still, Horvitz’s most fascinating work is his least conventional. He has spent much of 2008 photographing the sky every day and forwarding the shots to an online mailing list, stamping every dollar bill that crosses his path with the phrase “A small distraction interrupting you from your everyday routine,” and collaborating on bizarre projects like The Wikipedia Reader, a print edition of the ever-changing online encyclopedia. We caught up with Horvitz to understand his methods and learned a bit about Okinawan music and astral projection along the way.
XLR8R: Is there a central theme surrounding all of your projects?
David Horvitz: That anything is possible anywhere at anytime. And to give everything away for free.
Who do you consider your inspirations?
Rabble-rousers, mischief-makers, saboteurs, subversives, insurgents, tricksters, magicians, drifters, wanderers, the bored, the restless, the playful, the hopeful, the lost…
Do you take time to reflect on a project once it’s complete, or do you generally move on to the next thing right away?
I usually put a lot of thought and energy into projects before I start them, and while I am in the process. So, by the time they are complete, they are complete because I have fully articulated them, and everything I am doing and wanted to do has worked itself out. I will reflect upon my practice as a whole, and try to figure out what it is I am doing, and why. But for single projects, their process and completion is a process of thought and reflection.
Where do you stand in the debate of digital versus analog photography?
I think a lot of the argument is based around taste–preferring one over the other– which makes it a pointless argument because taste is so arbitrary and subjective. I think to resist digital is an act of Ludditism. Both are their own things, and have their own qualities and potentials. One thing I think is lost in the shift into digital is the role of waiting to see what is on the roll of film while the film develops and the prints are made. Waiting in the dark room as the print slowly appears onto the paper in the tray of developer. Waiting for the Polaroid to develop, for the photo-booth picture to drop out. These vacuous moments, these really beautiful moments–they are lost.
What kind of equipment do you use?
I use whatever I have. It doesn’t really matter. I feel I can make do with anything: a Polaroid camera, a small point-and-shoot digital camera, a throwaway camera. I don’t have a 35mm anymore because I was at the end of the Coney Island Pier at dawn one morning and the wind blew over my tripod and the camera smashed into the pier. For printing, I use my home consumer printers, or sometimes just take it to drugstores. I just did a project where I made an exhibition available at drugstores. I’d upload the files from my computer to a Rite Aid or CVS or Walgreens near whoever wants to see it; then they would walk in to their local store and buy it. I actually just saw the William Eggleston show at the Whitney, and some of his drugstore prints were there. I’ve also been doing newsprint the last few years. These are great because so many are printed, and then I can just give them away for free or sell them for really cheap. I feel that the quality of the material should have no say in the weight of the work. Something can be so light, yet seem so heavy.
Are you able to make a living from your art?
I don’t have a day job, so I am somehow able to live without working all the time. I get some money from advances, lectures, sales, and random small jobs… I personally don’t want what I do to have anything to do with the corporate world. However, I think you can be smart about it. For example, what if you did design work that had hidden subversive potential? I don’t mean corporatizing revolutionary politics or creating a “radical” aesthetic, but to actually infiltrate society with ideas of resistance and play via the corporate field. Or, what if some company gave you thousands of dollars to design their campaign, and you directly funneled every cent of it to someone or some organization that could actually use the money in a positive manner? I don’t think that would be selling out. That’d almost be like a form of volunteering.
If you had unlimited resources, what would you do?
I had this idea a few years back to take a skywriting jet and write “I’M BORED” across a clear blue sky in Los Angeles on a Sunday afternoon in the summer. I thought it’d be funny if all the people leisurely laying in the sand looked up and saw it. It’d be a total waste, and pointless, but a little humorous.
What music do you like to listen to?
When I work I listen to music to create a headspace to think. Brian Eno, William Basinski, Javanese gamelan, songs on repeat, Genevieve Castree, this great live recording of Nels Cline, Thurston Moore, and Zeena Parkins that I’ve had for years… I love Okinawan music. Right now I am listening to this amazing track by Infinite Body, which is going to go on one of my free downloadable collaborative projects with Mylinh Nguyen [Songs for the Arctic Ocean]. But to be honest, I find myself listening to sad, depressing music most of the time.
What is the most valuable lesson you’ve learned as an artist?
This isn’t a lesson I’ve learned from being an artist, it’s just a lesson I’ve learned in life in general, and can be applied to anything, especially to artists: Nothing is going to happen unless you make it happen.
What do you hope to accomplish in the future?
I want to learn how to astral project. This is going to take a lot of practice and patience, but I think I can do it. I got a book I found in a collective library at a DIY punk house in Santa Barbara that I have been “borrowing” for a few years now.
Sure, we’re always curious to know about an artist’s upcoming release, most recent tour, or arsenal of analog gear, but XLR8R‘s also got a curiosity for quirk. Thus, each week, we email a different artist and find out what makes them tick, in the studio and in life. This next artist could still be deemed a newcomer, but you wouldn’t know it upon hearing the intelligent, carefully crafted dream-pop on Good Evening, her debut album alongside partner-in-crime Emily Jane. Here, we talk music and more with Nite Jewel’s Ramona Gonzalez.
XLR8R: What are you listening to right now?
Ramona Gonzalez:Journey in Satchidananda, by Alice Coltrane
What’s the weirdest story you ever heard about yourself?
I’m an American Apparel ad come to life.
What band did you want to be in when you were 15?
The Berkeley high school jazz band.
Worst live show experience?
Even the bad shows are good in some shape or form, like playing (badly) in Oakland to a bunch of semi-aggressive DIY punks in the midst of a noise showcase. Matt Fishbeck [of Holy Shit] saved the day by standing in front of me the whole time and blowing cigarette smoke in my face.
Favorite city to play in?
So far, New Orleans.
Good Evening seems influenced by dozens of genres and styles of music. Can you elaborate on a few artists you went to for inspiration while making the album?
During the first stages of recording that album, I was listening to a lot of instrumental electronic stuff: cluster, woo, L.A. Free Music Society stuff. Along the way, I listened to a bunch of different artists, but off the top of my head, I can think of Virna Lindt, Wire, and Bill Nelson.
What is your favorite thing you own?
Well, I wouldn’t say I “own” them really, because I found them on the street, but I love my cats, for sure.
Name one item of clothing you can’t live without.
Black Jeans.
What is your favorite place in Los Angeles?
My little house, in Lincoln Heights.
What did you always get in trouble for when you were little?
Leaving my shit all over the house. Disorganization.
What other artist would you most like to work with?
Kevin Shields.
What’s the last thing you read?
I’m finishing [Louis Aragon’s] Paris Peasant right now.
Complete this sentence: In the future…
I’d like to live in Berlin.
Stupidest thing you’ve done in the last 12 months?
I do something really stupid, like, five times a day.
What’s next?
Getting a three-piece band together and recording a bunch more songs, releasing a 12-inch, a 7-inch, and I’m graduating from college in two months.
MP3: “Weak for Me”
Australian electro gurus The Presets seem to crop up every other week with a new project or show date. The duo’s latest endeavor (besides yet-another tour) comes in the form of a collectors’ edition of the single “If I Know You” (off 2008’s Apocalypso). The release will be packaged with several remixes, and here’s the version from Tania and Jori Hulkkonen, where the minimal meets the ethereal.
If I Know You will be released in early April.
Bisc1 is a busy man, and that’s no secret to anyone in underground hip-hop. Since last March, when his debut album, Electric Night Falls, was released via Embedded Music, the Queens-based MC has crafted a remix album that includes work from not just producers, but visual artists too, thrown himself into an ambitious video, for the single “Strange Love,” held a remix contest, and now plans to embark on a mini-tour.
For the Special Delivery tour, Bisc will cram four shows into three days, keeping performances packed tightly into the Northeastern region of the U.S. Detroit-based rapper One.Be.Lo. will join him on all of these dates, as will Burlington-based rap group The Aztext. Catch the crew at one of these (reasonably priced) dates:
03/26 Burlington, VT – Club Metronome *
03/28 Lake Placid – NY – True Vision Concepts (In-Store) *
03/28 Saranac Lake, NY – The Waterhole *
03/29 Brooklyn, NY – Public Assembly ^
* = w/ One.Be.Lo., The Aztext, The Truth
^ = w/ One.Be.Lo., The Aztext, Jake Lefco, Double AB, Team Animal Riot
MP3: “Turbulence”
Here’s more of the mulched-up, bizarre, and vaguely danceable music we’ve come to expect from the Brooklyn-based trio of aural alchemists known as Black Dice. “Glazin” comes courtesy of the band’s previously announced fifth full-length, REPO, due out April 7.
Desmond “Ninjaman” Ballentine has been arrested and charged with murder, conspiracy to murder, shooting with intent, and illegal possession of a firearm, it’s being reported.
According to the Jamaica Star, the well-known dancehall DJ has been linked to the murder of 20-year-old Robert Johnson. Johnson, according to the paper, was outside of his Kingston, Jamaica home with a friend on Tuesday when a gray car containing three men showed up. An argument broke out between Johnson’s friend and the vehicle’s occupants. The car drove away, but later returned, at which time the occupants opened fire and hit Johnson, who later died in the hospital.
Assistant Police Commissioner Les Green told the Jamaica Observer, “[Ballantine] was questioned [Tuesday] afternoon and, as a result of that interview, the chargers were laid.” He added that the police “had a good case” against Ballantine.
The arrest isn’t the first run-in Ninjaman has encountered with the law. In the late-’90s, he was accused of raping a woman at knife point and murdering a taxi driver, in addition to being sentenced to a year in jail after being convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm.
He is currently being held in custody.
Maybe there’s something in the water, because the list of top-flight disco producers coming out of Norway just keeps on growing—Lindstrøm, Prins Thomas, Todd Terje, and now, Blackbelt Andersen. His self-titled first outing is a sprawling affair, 70-plus minutes of smoothly crafted cosmic disco with healthy nods to classic Detroit techno and Chicago acid house. From the arpeggiated basslines of “Søndag” to the acid stabs of “Mamma” to the dense, washed-out keys of “November,” Blackbelt Andersen is deliberate without being boring, and danceable without being obvious. I hate to tag things with the dreaded “M” word (mature), but this is one incredibly self-assured debut album.
Dance music isn’t exactly renowned for its longevity, which makes it all the more impressive that a label like Poker Flat could stick around long enough to commemorate a full decade of existence and, more importantly, relevance. Determined to celebrate in style, label head Steve Bug has dug deep into the vaults and assembled a massive three-disc collection of Poker Flat’s signature party-starting, electro-tinged house and techno. Bouncing between classic tunes, exclusive rarities, and present-day singles, and tapping into a label roster loaded with heavy hitters like John Tejada, Trentemøller, and Märtini Brös (not to mention Bug himself), All In! is simply bursting with top-shelf tunes.
It’s no secret that Waxploitation is a label that spends as much time raising awareness about the Darfur’s genocidal landscape as it does releasing music. The Causes series—which kicked off in 2007—is yet-another effort on the part of the label to collect aid money for the millions of refugees displaced due to the conflict. The label compiled rare and exclusive tracks from Animal Collective, The Cure, Spoon, Teargas & Plateglass, and others for Causes 1, and it’s about to do the same thing, as Causes 2 was announced today.
As with the first edition, the new compilation will plenty of feature-hard-to-find material that aids a worthy cause. Black Moth Super Rainbow, Diplo, LCD Soundsystem, Matthew Dear, Neon Neon, and RJD2 are a few of the names that appear on the tracklisting. 100% of the profits go towards Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, and Oxfam America, all aid groups currently working in Darfur.
“There are untold numbers of people committed to changing the outcome,” says label founder Jeff Antebi of the conflict. “It takes humanitarian assistance, tenacity, and political will.”
Good music doesn’t hurt either. Get thee to iTunes on May 5, when the compilation is released.
Causes 2
01 Black Moth Super Rainbow – “Happy Melted City”
02 The Decemberists – “After the Bombs (Live Version)”
03 Devendra Banhart – “White Reggae Troll”
04 Diplo – “Wassup Wassup (Exclusive Samiyam Remix)”
05 Federico Aubele – “Luna Y Sol”
06 Gnarls Barkley – “Mystery Man”
07 LCD Soundsystem – “Starry Eyes Original (Causes Exclusive)”
08 My Morning Jacket – “Highly Suspicious (Exclusive VHS or Beta Dee Jays Remix)”
09 Matthew Dear – “When She Don’t Need Me (Causes Exclusive)”
10 Mum – “Sleep in a Hiding Place”
11 Neon Neon – “I Lust U Feat. Cate Le Bon (DJ Eli Escobar Remix)”
12 Richard Swift – “Wastin’ M’ Time”
13 RJD2 – “Wherever”
14 Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings – “It Hurts to be Alone”
15 Tim & Eric – Petite Feet (Exclusive Devlin & Ghostdad Remix Feat. Sylvia Gordon)”
Pictured: Matthew Dear. Photo By Doug Coombe.
