Clothes Captioned: 3sixteen

Andrew Chen and Johan Lam have based their six-year-old clothing brand 3sixteen in the heart of the Lower East Side, which means mice under the floorboards, hipsters on the streets, and plenty of rowdy meals at Congee Village, the Chinese porridge spot where they like to toast out-of-towners. An LES headquarters also means a live feed to the pulse of NYC streetwear. It’s a pulse they’ve read well but refuse to fall victim to, gracefully segueing in the past two years from a graphic tee-dominated line into a go-to for well-made men’s outerwear. “Our focus is on wearable garments that will stand the test of time,” says Chen. “We’re getting older and have found that we look for versatile clothing that can be dressed up or dressed down easily.”

While the spring ‘09 line definitely gets its grown man on—check the seersucker and herringbone patterns, USA-made selvedge denim, and “technical” fabrics—3sixteen isn’t always so staid, as collaborations with sunglass-makers Sabrevision, barbers Dickson Hairshop, and Philly punk band The Deathset attest. But Chen and Lam say they can’t stay away from the classics: Sonny Rollins and Coltrane on the stereo, Clarks Desert Boots on the feet, and a New York state of mind. Tyra Bangs

Canvas Peacoat ($240)
To me, this lightweight spring peacoat is a wardrobe staple. Dress it up or throw it on with a pair of jeans… It will be in rotation for many years to come.

Sunday sunglasses ($110)
We worked with California-based sunglass manufacturer Sabrevision to design these marbled acetate frames. They are great people and we’re looking forward to more projects together.

Monsoon Jacket ($220)
The Monsoon jacket was our fastest selling outerwear piece. We refined the fit, added lots of details, and gave it a breathable mesh lining for spring.

Hooded Henley ($165)
This Henley features a unique dual-layer jersey material that wicks away moisture better than a standard cotton material. We employ military-styled snap closures throughout the line so we incorporated them into this piece.

Utility Shirt ($130)
We combined traditional workwear and military design elements with a traditional summer fabric (seersucker) to create this button-down. I especially like the twill herringbone sleeve straps that hold your cuffs up when they’re rolled.

Vetiver Tight Knit

On Vetiver’s fourth full-length, frontman Andy Cabic continues his obsession with early-’70s folk rock and West Coast psychedelia. These tunes waft like summer breezes rolling in off the San Francisco Bay—Cabic’s lazy tenor intoning soft and lonely over scads of tasteful finger-picking and jazzy percussion. This makes Tight Knit real easy on the ears, particularly the gorgeous opener, “Rolling Sea,” and “Everyday,” which sounds like the best song Mojave 3 never wrote. But almost as often, Tight Knit feels too pleased with itself, too comfortable in its own soft skin. Whether it’s white-boy funk or Espers-esque folk dirges, the record’s second half fails to make much of an impression. What’s easy to listen to can be just as easy to forget.

Filippo Moscatello Pagliaccio

Now that Berlin-based Italian producer Filippo Moscatello has returned to his techno and house roots on Pagliaccio, gone are the days of his electro-focused DJ Naughty guise. But his nostalgia offers mixed results. While the bright horn accent on “Furio” is an easy nod to Moscatello’s Italo-disco past, the retro flourish doesn’t quite deserve the attention it receives on this fairly lackluster track. On the other hand, “Slave to the Dub” gracefully crafts an understated but satisfying song by pulling from a forgotten cast of alternately shimmering, croaking, and whirring ’90s keyboard synths. The jack-in-the-box intro of “Kleinmond” provides a sweetly innocent counterpoint to the subdued low-end richness of the track’s underbelly.

Factozoid!! Circlesquare!

All the weird facts you never knew you wanted ?to know about Circlesquare‘s Jeremy Shaw.

Circlesquare is a brainiac!
“My main obsession right now is MRI and CT brain-imaging scans of people under the influence of mind-altering drugs, or representations of the effects of cumulative use. I’m working on a bunch of visual art that uses them as source material so I have been going great lengths to find them, which is quite difficult if you aren’t a neuroscientist or neuroscience student.”

Circlesquare hates the prime minister!
“Unfortunately, after the U.S. finally stands up and votes a forward-thinking president into office, Canada is actually under the most right-wing government in memory, compete with massive cuts to arts and culture funding and statements [from Prime Minister Stephen Harper] like, ‘The average Canadian doesn’t care about art.’”

Circlesquare loves David Lynch and Harold and Maude!
“Lynch always creates an underlying tension. It could be through sound design or unnerving images that are never really referred to or resolved, but there is always a bit of unease with everything he does. The ability to create a tension that might not ever climax is a really amazing thing. Harold and Maude includes nearly everything that I value in life and art: it’s dark without being sinister, sly and funny without being smarmy or negative, incredibly stylish and it’s a reminder to remember what it is to be full of wonder. It has very bleak moments and a somewhat bizarre, morose tone at times, yet at the end of it all, it’s bittersweet and optimistic. Plus it has an all-Cat Stevens soundtrack, which is incredible.”

Circlesquare moved to Berlin but still loves Vancouver!
“Vancouver pros: sushi and coffee. Cons: rain and no nightlife. Berlin pros: nightlife and techno. Cons: never-ending nightlife and the single-bar-looping deep-house revival…. I’m doing a project about the 1986 Vancouver Expo, so that’s become an imposed obsession of sorts. I scour eBay daily, looking for random ephemera from it and have had days digging through the Vancouver archives.”

Circlesquare is named after a Christian kids’ show from the ’70s!
“I barely remember the show [Circle Square] but for the theme song, and the way they’d sing their address for people wanting to send letters. It was on on Sunday mornings when there was nothing else on TV. It had these puppets mixed with real kid actors. I didn’t really realize that it was Christian at the time, even though I was going to church in those days. I have no idea why I missed this point. I definitely found it somewhat creepy, yet continued to watch. It was like a Sunday school show for kids who didn’t go to Sunday school, but [set] on a ranch… with puppets.”

Cazals What of Our Future

One might expect a more schizophrenic offering from a band that rolls with Daft Punk, Pete Doherty, and Kanye West, but Kitsune’s new sweethearts Cazals play it straight on their guitar-driven debut full-length, What of Our Future. The London five-piece balances retro-pop melodies reminiscent of XTC with DJ-minded fist-pump breakaways and a gritty garage edge. “To Cut a Long Story Short” is a classic dance-punk number, with vocals that relax from a rough grain into something approaching Elvis Costello. “Comfortable Silence” is darker, featuring opaque synths, high-pitched xylophone, computerized back-up vocals, and bass so low as to be almost inaudible. While these and other tracks stand on their own, they’re especially ripe for remixing.

What You Talkin’ Bout, Willits? Part 9

Guitarist and electronic musician Christopher Willits continues his monthly series from SoundArts studio. In this episode, he gives us a rundown of Ableton’s fabulous and just-beta’d Live 8 Looper effect, then gives a preview of the very exciting Max for Live.

Tune in once a month as Christopher shows us some of the ways he produces his own music, as well as the many cool things you can do with recording software. According to Christopher, “I simply want to excite people’s imaginations and creative processes so they can more easily create the sounds and music and art they love.”

Rafael Toral Space Elements, Vol. 1

Known mostly for his innovative guitar compositions in the ’90s that turned MBV squeals to liquid and foreshadowed the atmospheric electronic work of acts like Pole and Oval, Portuguese-born Rafael Toral has, over the years, moved toward a curatorial role amongst avant-garde experimenters. Recorded for his Space Program series, Space Elements, Vol. 1 finds Toral shaping tracks around a guest contributors’ chosen instrument; “I.I,” for instance, erects a moaning ambient passage behind cellist Rute Praça’s atonal wails. Recalling free-jazz structures, the record’s seven tracks investigate the space between sounds, exploring the role of silence in music. But it favors high concept over melody (or “songs,” even), and Space Elements is far more interesting than it is listenable.

Buraka Som Sistema “Kalemba (Wegue Wegue) (Hot Chip Remix)”

What happens when the boys from Hot Chip get their hands on a track from kuduro DJ/production team Buraka Som Sistema? This rowdy, bouncing remix that combines techno rhythms with Latin sensibilities and should please fans of both groups.

The original version of “Kalemba (Wegue Wegue) appears on BSS’ debut full-length, Black Diamond, out April 7.

Buraka Som Sistema – Kalemba – (Wegue Wegue) Hot Chip Remix

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