New Skate Deck Series from Zoo York

New York-based skateboard company Zoo York begins the fall season with two new skate deck lines. As expected, the Makeset and Broken Windows series follow the company practice of making New York City-centric products, but instead of enlisting graffiti dons, Zoo York enlisted the commercial skills of two sets of graphic artists.

The Makeset series finds the Brooklyn-based duo of Mike Perry and Damien Correll doing a playful take on some of New York’s iconic landmarks and pieces of architecture, including Coney Island, Times Square, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Chrysler building. It’s rare you’ll see a technicolor version of the Manhattan skyline turn up on a skateboard, but Perry and Correll pull it off here.

For those who prefer the darker, grittier side of the city, check the Broken Windows series, created by Zoo York’s in-house design crew. The series’ inspiration comes from a theory of the same name that once strategized how to eliminate petty crime in urban neighborhoods. Appropriately, the design features guerilla-style typography, and those who get the full set of six will see how the graphics of one board bleed onto the next, forming a complete picture.

Both series are available at authorized Zoo York retailers in late September.

Various Artists Belle et Fou Soundtrack: Compiled By Jazzanova

Berlin’s six-man production juggernaut Jazzanova hits a high point in their 12-year career with, of all things, a soundtrack to a German cooking show. Better still, 11 of the collection’s 19 tracks are unreleased. The group’s signature stutter beat is joined with gaudy ’70s soul strings on the title theme while, contrastingly, “Am I Losing You” is an understated orchestral instrumental; these guys are showing range. The other artists present (Forss, Outlines, Micatone, and Wahoo) also accomplish soulful, eclectic maneuvers. But the album belongs to the Berlin sextet’s masterful cinematic jazz, evidenced on the Rhodes-led “Behold These Days.” Grab your fork-Jazzanova is serving the main course.

Captain Phoenix “Pistols & Hearts (Bloody Beetroots Remix)”

Boredom, Italy based outfit The Bloody Beetroots have made a name for themselves in the last few months, remixing the hipster electro scene’s key players (The Whip, Fox N Wolf, Alex Gopher, to name a few). Their take on this track from up-and-coming indie rock band Captain Phoenix is a dizzying, deliciously intense trip through an onslaught of guitars and bleeps.

Captain Phoenix – Pistols and Hearts (Bloody Beetroots Remix)

Various Artists Wighnomy Bros.:Remikks Potpourri II

Robag Wruhme pushes minimal to the max, using the genre’s ever-changing template–including elements of negative space, microbeats, tinges of schaffel, and unusual vocals–to make music that doesn’t sound minimal at all. Alone, and with Monkey Maffia as Wighnomy Bros., his remixes take that same approach. Remikks Potpourri II is a satisfying sampler of what they’ve been up to since 2005’s excellent first installment; they take on older tunes by Depeche Mode, Underworld, and Nitzer Ebb, as well as of-the-moment tracks like Ellen Allien and Apparat’s “Way Out.” The collection starts strongly with a nearly unrecognizable twist of Future Sound of London’s “Lifeforms,” setting shards of the ambient original above a spooky hip-hop beat. The Brothers simplify Röyksopp’s “Beautiful Day Without You” into a leisurely motorik groove with a crystalline pulse. Like most of these masterfully re-appropriated tracks, it’s a perfect distillation of the original song’s emotion.

XLR8R Weekly Top Ten: Spankrock, Black Lips, Quantic

StarkeyStarkey Presents Street Bass Anthems Volume 2Seclusiasis
The second installment of this mixtape series sees Philadelphia’s Starkey remixing tracks to exploit basslines to their fullest potential. Here, The Streets, M.I.A., Wiley, and others sound harder than ever, and we have to give this guy props for closing the mix with a trippy reinterpretation of Warren G’s “Regulate.” JM

DisinterestedBehind Us Dynamophone
Rarely does ambient music flow with as much ease as Disinterested’s (a.k.a. Matt Brown) sophomore release. Behind Us is a gorgeous dream of shoegazey drones and echo-laden guitar melodies. It’s cinematic, it’s melancholy, and it’s definitely become our latest stoned-on-bus-at-night soundtrack. RH

CharalambidesLikenessKranky
As usual, Christina and Tom Carter as Charalambides have churned out another beautiful piece of psychedelic mastery. This time around, Christina’s voice is paired with subtle delays that match perfectly with the breathing tremolo guitarlines. It’s not surprising that Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore is backing this visionary couple. FM

Spankrock & Benny Blanco “Shake That” Downtown
While the whole club rap situation may be getting a little out of hand (consult the plethora off fluorescent-flyer-filled blogs), there’s something special about hearing the spirit of Luke reinvigorated through these two ass-obsessed MCs. If you haven’t downloaded this, do so immediately. FM

ReverbaphonHere Come EveryoneBenbecula
Post-rock, avant-rock, whatever you want to call it, the latest LP from Reverbaphon is a chin-scratching affair. With a mix of ambient electronics, samplers, and free jazz rhythms, Here Comes Everyone switches from melodious textures to experimental riffing with amazing confidence and skill. RH

StudioLife’s a Beach RemixesInformation
After countless twelves, remixes, and comps, Prins Thomas and Todd Terje are still unbeatable when it comes to lean, spacey disco-house. This single showcases their respective remixes of a cut by Sweden’s Studio, and both reinterpretations are fantastic. While Thomas goes for the slower, cosmic variety, Terje brings the real heat with an afro-disco percussion massacre. RH

Black LipsGood Bad Not EvilVice
At a recent Black Lips show, one of the dudes in the band hocked a loogie into the air and then caught in his mouth. It was rad, and so is their newest LP. Full of the wonderfully sloppy garage rock they’ve come to perfect, GBNE is a drunken, southern good time of a record from start to finish. RH

VariousIceland Airwaves EruptionIceland Airwaves
The Iceland Airwaves festival annually showcases the musical variety this country has to offer, and a new compilation further affirms there’s more in Iceland than Bjork and Sigur Rós. Iceland Airwaves Eruption features Gus Gus’s jumpy electronic grooves, Northern Light’s bizarre take on hip-hop, Benni Hemm Hemm’s blissful acoustic song scapes, and some good old fashioned indie rock. JM

The Quantic Soul OrchestraTropidelicoTru Thoughts
Will Holland has always drawn inspiration from salsa, funk, and jazz, but Tropidelico, the fourth album for his Quantic Soul Orchestra outfit, finds the multi-instrumentalist adding to this usual palatte of sound. Now working out of Colombia, Holland rides the Cumbia sound, working its percussion, flutes, and guitars into every musical nook and cranny possible. JM

I Broke My RobotTomorrow Does Not ExistBroken Fader Cartel
When an album claims on its press sheet to be “the soundtrack to a 14th century torture chamber played by modern electronics and the Boston Philharmonic,” there’s not way we’re not having a listen. Tomorrow Does Not Exist is an intricately orchestrated train wreck of breakbeats and IDM, and really does sound, in some places, like you’re trapped in an iron maiden. Deliciously dark and definitely not for fans of the Postal Service. JM

Ross Holland
Fred Miketa
Jennifer Marston

Slav to the Rhythm: Fest Time

At the Exit Fest (July 12-16, 2007) you never know what’s around the next corner. Quite literally. This year, there were 15 different stages crammed into every conceivable nook and cranny of the vast Petrovaradin fortress complex, which overlooks the Danube River in Novi Sad, Serbia. On Saturday night, a survey of the grounds revealed 30,000 people raving to Frankie Knuckles in a drained moat on one end and Serbian hip-hop group Beogradski Sindikat rocking a home crowd high on a hill on the other, with everything from Balkan death metal to gypsy folk to drum & bass in between. To some, the number of different genres represented will come as less of a surprise than the fact that there’s a festival here at all. Serbia and the Balkans are still fixed in many people’s minds as a former war zone following the brutal conflicts that tore the former Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s. While Exit was borne out of that era–beginning as a protest against Slobodan Milosevic in 2000–it has since become one of the largest festivals in Europe and is emblematic of the new spirit of hope in a region genuinely rising from the ashes.

Speaking of finding things in unusual corners of Eastern Europe, XLR8R also checked out the second year of the Garden Festival (July 6-8) in Croatia. Although this country’s beautiful coastline means its tourism industry has recovered quicker than that of its former enemy, it’s hardly the first place you’d expect to find this kind of boutique festival. Dwarfed by Exit in size, but certainly not in atmosphere, Croatia’s first international dance music festival drew a few thousand people, who danced al fresco to nu-jazz stalwarts Mr. Scruff, Rainer Truby, and Domu in the fishing village of Petrcane, and set sail on boat parties as the sun set on the glistening Adriatic–and, hopefully, the Balkans’ troubled history.

Exhibition: Scott Hewicker and Cliff Hengst’s S.A.N.E.

What happens when an altered mental state goes wrong? Lots of freaking out and, in many cases, artistic interpretation in the aftermath. Trying to make visual sense of a bad trip is nothing new, but artists Scott Hewicker and Cliff Hengst have made an entire book, along with an exhibition, out of their collective psychedelic crises. Good Times, Bad Trips (Gallery 16 Editions) collects the various tales of woe and pairs the stories–from the likes of Devendra Banhart, Lars Bang Larson, Tony Labat, and others–with the artists’ paintings, collages, and photographs.

An exhibition entitled S.A.N.E. (Something, Anything, Nothing, Everything), at San Francisco’s Gallery 16, sees Hewicker and Hengst further exploring this subject matter. Hewicker will exhibit new paintings and a video, while Hengst will show off handmade signs and drawings.

S.A.N.E. runs from Friday, September 14 – Saturday, November 3, 2007.

Opening Reception Info
Friday, September 14, 2007
Music By Arp (Smalltown Supersound)
Gallery 16, 501 3rd St., S.F. 

The Politik The Politik

New Zealand keyboardist Mark de Clive-Lowe links with vocal goddess Bembé Segué to create The Politik, a soulful broken-beat project that expertly showcases each artist’s shimmering talents. For those unfamiliar, both de Clive-Lowe and Segué have enhanced dozens of West London tracks by the scene’s top producers (I.G. Culture, Bugz in the Attic, etc.). This self-titled release invokes the spirit of Minnie Riperton, Teena Marie, or Betty Davis’ pioneering funk–layered, scatting, and sustained vocals swing with stabby, analog synth-bass riffs in a passionate boogie. “Money (Don’t Let It Catch Ya)” exemplifies the album’s lively give-and-take. No debate here: The Politik lobbies successfully for authentic, new-century soul.

The Revolutionaries Drum Sound: More Gems from the Channel One Dub Room-1974 to 1980

Sly Dunbar is perhaps best known as the “drum” half of original D&B gods Sly & Robbie (whose credits are too numerous to mention). Pressure Sounds’ latest excursion into dubwise version helps explain how Sly (leader of The Revolutionaries) became a deity of riddim-given free reign to tinker and experiment with his sound at the legendary Channel One studio, he did the damn thing. Old-school dub albums are no mystery: They work best when they’re thick, heavy, and dry. Drum Sound offers no real surprises for seasoned echo heads, just killer dubs of 16 classic Channel One tracks.

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