"In my work I am interested in the borders between fantasy and reality.
I have no intention to make a portrait of any specific person; the people in the pictures serve as actors or metaphors for a feeling or a condition.
In the pictures the characters move in a symbolworld that is their own. A world where the borders between child, adult, dream and reality are dissolved."
I know your stuff, Capp. You're going to be around a long time. Take my advice and buy a house in the country. Build a wall around it. And get ready to protect yourself. The way things are going, people who earn their living someday are going to have to fight off the bums.No matter where he is categorized, I will always view Gray as an extremely talented and insightful artist. In the following panel, I love how the word balloons curl around the corner, how the cluster of eavesdropping hoodlums form a parabola, and how two random alley cats occupy center stage:
"Sometimes the pieces drone on like an extended wordless hymn; other times they build into soaring polyphonies."And check out Rx Gibbs on Myspace
Michigan's four-armed behemoth, Goro, is a tribute to the Mortal Kombat character and to all things awesome. Adam Jaros and Brian Wiers, shirtless and strapped back to back, battle for the microphone to sing their respective lyrics while the band plays metal-influenced, G.G. Allin style rock written by Joel Schrauben - also of Gates McFadden and Fields of Industry. This is sweat-drenched vulgarity that could only have been birthed in a filthy university co-op house.
The duo of Cathartic Pipe is Reverend Doomhammer and Joshua Barton of Fields of Industry. This side project is essentially a blatant infantile spree of any kind of energy music the boys happen to feel up to at the instant they press record. They have covered the territory of ultra abrasive sheets of noise, microphones in dryers, sensual wood-flute scores on themes of arson, irreverent send-ups of Jimi Hendrix derivatives and crude approximations of hip-hop. Their rise would bode ill.
The Arts Vs Entertainment Ensemble is the namesake creative endeavor of the AvE label. The ensemble's first self-titled release features collages of a year's worth of live, impromptu recordings. The recordings are primarily improvisational, experimental music with a wide variety of instrumentation and a different lineup of participants at each session.
Gates McFadden is the solo project of Joel Schrauben of Michigan-based bands Fields of Industry and Bear Mountain Picnic. Schrauben's solo work is diverse and can range from abrasive noise to light electroacoustic compositions. His music is instrumental, often loop-based and largely informed by experimentation with recording technique. In 2008, Gates McFadden's first release from Arts Vs Entertainment, 8 Tracks, showcased a selection of Schrauben's guitar driven work.
Fields of Industry is a Michigan band that plays minimal, affecting pop music while also dabbling in ambient, psychedelia, and burnout improvisation. Since 1999, they have performed and recorded songs by vocalist and guitarist Joshua Barton with a revolving lineup of bandmates. Champions of crawling tempos, FoI can vacillate between abysmal melancholy and mountainous blitzes of sound. The band also sneaks in the noisy disorientation of bands like Spacemen 3 and The Jesus and Mary Chain, but remains centered on the staid and pious (or anti-pious) minimalism of major influences like Low and the Velvet Underground.
Michigan's Reverend Doomhammer merges noise, synth pop and gore grind to massive, overdriven effect, conjuring a sweltering, slimy world of pink, bubbling toxic sludge and balloon animals where everyone is happy and no one goes hungry because there are plenty of corpses to satiate the masses of undead every mealtime. The Right Reverend is inspired by Wendy Carlos and Gary Numan as much as he is by Wolf Eyes, Carcass, George Romero and H.P. Lovecraft. Fans of abrasive finesse and creepy glee can't go wrong.
