01 Get Well Soon
02 Give Myself
03 Complexicated
04 Up
05 Poison
06 Shoeless Joe
07 Resurrect Me
08 Revenge (The Right Way) (ft Ruslan and Beleaf (of The Breax)
09 Nothing Left To Say
10 Surgical
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
Hospital Garden - Hospital Garden
AvE has been dormant too long. Leave it to this loud Chicago-by-way-of-Dayton trio to wake us up. Remember Hospital Garden? The post-Bear Mountain Picnic solo demo project of Lucas Hollow? Well those sketches are now a full fledged reality and Hospital Garden are three rather than one.
Hospital Garden is a team. An angry, righteous squad of rock n' roll with roots of influence extending down deep into the 1980s when their ears were very young, but not unreceptive. They are blistering guitar, bass and drums led by Lucas Hollow's feverish lyrical mumble, always seeming on the verge of exploding - the tried and true power trio, in lock-step, on a mission to blow up power chords in such effective time-tested methods that it all sounds new again.
They are a streak of pop core wrapped in the unassuming dirty frustration of an era when Reagan anguish had yielded to resigned Reagan fatigue, and something we all should have seen coming around again having just said goodbye to Bush II. Lucas, Sarah & Ian are re-exemplifying the rebellious good that was at the heart of what became labelled "alternative" before all of that rose to the braindead, cashcow top of college radio and Teen Spirit.
But Hospital Garden are not a historical reenactment of the alternative scene. They are diligent students of what has come before, but with a new vision for resistance - resisting the temptation to disintegrate into weirdness, incoherence and fake frame glasses like all your favorite Pitchforkers. Resisting the temptation to be boring and lame. These kids wear real glasses. Use real guitars. A true alternative to that which presently dominates our attention strapped ears and eyeballs.
If Guided By Voices and the Lemonheads were pop music prophets, then Hospital Garden is the new voice in the wilderness and their self titled work is the call to repentance from all your hip nonchalance in 2010. Purchase it at CD Baby or wait for it to show up on iTunes, Amazon, etc. in the coming weeks.
They are a streak of pop core wrapped in the unassuming dirty frustration of an era when Reagan anguish had yielded to resigned Reagan fatigue, and something we all should have seen coming around again having just said goodbye to Bush II. Lucas, Sarah & Ian are re-exemplifying the rebellious good that was at the heart of what became labelled "alternative" before all of that rose to the braindead, cashcow top of college radio and Teen Spirit.
But Hospital Garden are not a historical reenactment of the alternative scene. They are diligent students of what has come before, but with a new vision for resistance - resisting the temptation to disintegrate into weirdness, incoherence and fake frame glasses like all your favorite Pitchforkers. Resisting the temptation to be boring and lame. These kids wear real glasses. Use real guitars. A true alternative to that which presently dominates our attention strapped ears and eyeballs.
If Guided By Voices and the Lemonheads were pop music prophets, then Hospital Garden is the new voice in the wilderness and their self titled work is the call to repentance from all your hip nonchalance in 2010. Purchase it at CD Baby or wait for it to show up on iTunes, Amazon, etc. in the coming weeks.
Onra – Long Distance LP (2010)
01. Intro
02. My Comet
03. My Mind Is Gone (Ft. Oliver DaySoul)
04. Rock On
05. Sitting Back
06. High Hopes (Ft. Reggie cool.gif
07. Girl
08. Send Me Your Love
09. We Out Buddy (Ft. Satvia)
10. Moving
11. Mechanical
12. Dont Stop
13. The One (ft T3 from Slum Village)
14. Opor8tor
15. Long Distance (Ft. OliverDaySoul)
16. Tape This
17. Track 17
18. To The Beat (Ft. Walter Mecca)
19. Jeeps
20. L.I.A.B.
21. Cherry (Outro)
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Jimmy Powers - Cali-Foreigner (2010)
01 Keep It Short (Intro)
02 Cali-Foreigner
03 Classless ft Slaine of La Coka Nostra
04 New Era News ft Mr. Ridley
05 True Currency ft Blame One
06 Same James
07 Troops
08 Janice Marie ft Corina Rose
09 Evolution
10 Which Way Is Up ft Matlock
11 Worth ft 3ntra-P
12 Shits and Giggles ft Copywrite, 3ntra-P and Big Left
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
R.I.P. Guru of Gangstarr
""After a nearly two-month hospitalization, legendary rapper Guru (best known as the frontman for Gangstarr) died Monday morning (April 19), after a long battle with cancer, reports DJPremierBlog.com.
He was just 43 years old.
Solar, Guru's business partner and sidekick in recent years, told the Yo!Raps (who's PR company had been coordinating press for Guru since his hospitalization) that the 43-year-old rapper had been suffering from a "malicious illness for over a year and after numerous special treatments under the supervision of medical specialists failed".
He had tried to keep the cancer diagnosis private, but in early March, news leaked that Guru had been admitted to the hospital, suffered a heart attack, and was recovering from a mystery illness. Previous reports said he suffered from Anoxia, effects from a lengthy history of asthma and lung problems, but these new findings reveal a much worst condition.
"The world has lost one of the best MCs and hip-hop icons of all-time -- my loyal best friend, partner, and brother, Guru," Solar said in a statement. "Guru has been battling cancer for well over a year and has lost his battle! This is a matter that Guru wanted private until he could beat it, but tragically, this did not happen. The cancer took him. Now the world has lost a great man and a true genius.
"For the fans that reached out with love and support, I can't tell you how much that meant to Guru and myself. Guru prepared this letter (read below) while he was in the hospital for the fans," the producer continued. "I hope now that Guru has moved on to a better place.""
-Rest In Peace-
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Devin The Dude-Suite 420(2010)
01 01:39 Cultural Coughee
02 03:46 We Get High
03 03:21 Still Comin
04 04:37 Pick My Brain
05 04:11 That Ain't Cool
06 04:40 I Gotta Ho
07 04:27 What We Be On
08 04:55 Ultimate High
09 04:05 I Can't Handle It
10 03:36 Where Ya At
11 04:39 It's On You
12 03:54 People Talk
13 03:57 All You Need
14 00:36 Twilla
15 03:18 Funky Lil Freestyle
Thursday, April 8, 2010
THREE THINGS I LIKE ABOUT JEFF KOONS
Has every bad thing that can be said about the art of Jeff Koons been said already?
It is worth revisiting this question at regular intervals because you never know when somebody might invent a new word for "stinks."
There are many reasons for disliking his work but my personal favorite is that Koons steals images from honest, underpaid commercial artists, sprinkles them with an invisible layer of irony and resells them as "fine" art for millions of dollars.
A person would need a pretty good excuse to expend fresh energy attacking Koons' work. After all, by now every sensible person realizes that Koons is an untalented artist with a gift for hypnotizing the tasteless rich. To revisit such well trod territory would not only be pointless, it might cause one to be ejected from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Dead Horses.
Well, here at the good ol' Illustration Art blog, we believe in accentuating the positive, so I have attempted to come up with three reasons to like Koons' work:
Reason no. 1: I like his attitude. Koons seems to have genuine fun with what he is doing. He takes explicit photographs of himself having sex with a porn star and hands them out to the world. He spends lavishly on art by artists with more talent but less marketing skill than himself. He lives life large, and takes full advantage of his superstar status. I approve of that.
Cheeky, sold for $4 million
Reason no. 2: His art inspires others to new heights of creativity. Take for example the imaginative text written by the shameless Alex Trotter of Sotheby's to promote the recent sale of the above painting, "Cheeky." Trotter bastes "irony" on the painting like a pastry glaze to prepare it for consumption by investment bankers (who achieved their status by being insensitive to genuine irony):
Reason no. 2: His art inspires others to new heights of creativity. Take for example the imaginative text written by the shameless Alex Trotter of Sotheby's to promote the recent sale of the above painting, "Cheeky." Trotter bastes "irony" on the painting like a pastry glaze to prepare it for consumption by investment bankers (who achieved their status by being insensitive to genuine irony):
An outstanding example of [Koons'] satirical commentary on late 20th-century society, this work has his traits of technical excellence and common subject matter while invoking lingering questions of irony versus sincerity-- what is the intent of the artist? Is he serious or is there an element of mockery? This oil on canvas work is composed of disconnected images and high definition colors, executed with photorealistic perfection. The random association of food, landscape and sex is a metaphor for the bombardment of stimuli present in modern life, while the size and fragmentation of the images further impedes their comprehension.
Koons insists that there is no irony or agenda beneath the surface of his images-- that is, until someone sues his ass for copyright infringement, at which point he reverses himself and swears under oath that his work was not theft because it was intended as a "parody." See, for example, Rogers v. Koons, 960 F.2d 301 (2d Cir. 1992); See also UFS Inc. v. Koons, 817 F. Supp 370 (S.D.N.Y. 1993); Campbell v. Koons, No. 91 Civ. 6055, 1993 WL 97381 (S.D.N.Y. Apr 1, 1993). The courts in this country have not proven to be as gullible as the patrons of Koons' art, which summons up even more creativity from Koons' lawyers as they try to get him off the hook.
Reason no. 3: Koons' art performs an important social function. A private art market within a free society is one of history's most finely tuned instruments for identifying the morons among us (which is sometimes a handy thing to know). Art is broad and subjective; it can legitimately mean different things to different people in different cultures or different stages of life. However, on rare occasions an artist is born unto us who can serve as an aesthetic lodestone, providing civilization with an unerring compass needle to point out decadence and vapidity.
This compass needle is not fooled by quants who hide behind consultants or who outsource their taste and judgment to designers. It is a sure fire mechanism for weeding out embarrassing art critics who gush about the "enigmatic otherness" of a puppy dog sculpture. Such critics in turn persuade credulous corporate moguls that if they spend millions on such a sculpture for the lawn of their estate, they will be able to tell reporters, "my whole philosophy of life revolves around aesthetics." With Koons as your filter, you will always be able to tell the legitimate types from the frauds.
The lesson behind today's post is quite obvious. You might not think it is possible to find something good to say about Koons, but if you keep a positive mental attitude, you can find some good in everyone.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Murs and 9th Wonder - Fornever (2010)
01. ForNever (Featuring Kurupt)
02. The lick (Featuring Verbs)
03. Asian girl (Featuring 9thmatic)
04. Let me talk (Featuring Suga Free)
05. Cigarettes and Liquor
06. Vikki Veil
07. I Used To Love Her [AGAIN]
08. The Problem Is… (Featuring Sick Jacken & Uncle Chucc)
09. West Coast Cinderella
10. Live From Roscoe's (Featuring Kurupt)
Onra - Long Distance[EP](2010)
1. Onra - Long Distance ft. Oliver DaySoul (5:03)
2. Onra - Long Distance (Instrumental) (3:17)
3. Onra - Rock On (1:35)
4. Onra - High Hopes ft. Reggie B (4:17)
5. Onra - High Hopes (Instrumental) (4:18)
6. Onra - Oper8tor (1:56)
Falling Down presents Elijah-Fright Night(2010)
01: Elijah Intro
02: Shoot It Rapid
03: You Think You Tough
04: Rock That
05: Snitch
06: Stay Away From Me
07: We Are Strong
08: Criminal Rap
09: I’m Serious
10: New For The Club
11: This Life
12: Unravel That
13: Inspired
14: Lock In Part#3
15: Here I Come
Monday, April 5, 2010
The Pleasure of Absence
It is the pleasure of imagining a performance - or rather, of imagining a universe. A narrative, an aesthetics, an experience, a unity.
It is the pleasure of imagining a liveness, a directness, a presence.
The pleasure of experiencing the echo, the recording, the extract, the fragment of a copy of a copy. The pleasure Plato was so afraid of.
It is the joy of watching something on a small pixellated video image and imagining it live and juicily 3D.
It is the ecstatic moderato of my computer screen, of yours, which acts out the world that supposedly tastes better off-screen (heck, it tastes). Yet it is not off-screen, not in the performance space, but here, at this very desk, dressed in dark-green boxers, brown socks and a t-shirt, among the hills of papers and books and accompanied by the delicate sound of the washing machine and an occasional sms, that I experience it. The pleasure of absence. The ecstatic moderato.
The Pleasure of Absence
It is the pleasure of imagining a performance - or rather, of imagining a universe. A narrative, an aesthetics, an experience, a unity.
It is the pleasure of imagining a liveness, a directness, a presence.
The pleasure of experiencing the echo, the recording, the extract, the fragment of a copy of a copy. The pleasure Plato was so afraid of.
It is the joy of watching something on a small pixellated video image and imagining it live and juicily 3D.
It is the ecstatic moderato of my computer screen, of yours, which acts out the world that supposedly tastes better off-screen (heck, it tastes). Yet it is not off-screen, not in the performance space, but here, at this very desk, dressed in dark-green boxers, brown socks and a t-shirt, among the hills of papers and books and accompanied by the delicate sound of the washing machine and an occasional sms, that I experience it. The pleasure of absence. The ecstatic moderato.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Louis Logic-Me & Everyone You Know (2010)
01. Playing For Keeps (with Mdusu)
02. Right N Wrong (with Bo Jankans)
03. Natural Selection (with Anecdote & M-Phazes)
04. What You Want (with Nocturnal Artist, Ivan Ives & Big Jess)
05. The Lone Gunners (with Bugz)
06. Knock Knock (with Lakai)
07. Party Crashers (with The Let Go)
08. Knock Knock Bastardface (with Atari Blitzkrieg & Roc C)
09. The Long Way Down (with KAWZ)
10. Confinement (with The Day Laborers)
11. Broken Record (with Black Mask)
Diabolic - Liar And A Thief (2010)
01 Stand By
02 Frontlines (Feat. Immortal Technique)
03 Riot (Feat. Deadly Hunta & John Otto)
04 Reasons
05 Soldier's Logic
06 Order & Chaos (Feat. ILL Bill)
07 I Don't Wanna Rhyme
08 Truth Pt. 2
09 Nicolai Ros To The Goul (Interlude)
10 Not Again (Feat. Vinnie Paz)
11 Loose Cannon
12 12 Shots (Feat. Nate Augustus)
13 In Common (Feat. Canibus)
14 Modern Day Future (Feat. Deadly Hunta)
15 Behind Bars
16 Right Here
17 Self Destruction (Outro)
Thursday, April 1, 2010
GIRLS GATHERING FLOWERS
The surest way to breach the dividing line between gods and mortals is with girls gathering flowers by a stream.
Vassar college girls practicing their Greek dances, circa 1923
When mighty Zeus spied the young and beautiful Europa picking flowers with her girlfriends by a river, he fell in love and-- adopting the shape of a white bull-- carried Europa off across the waters to Crete (causing pandemonium amongst both mortals and gods).
Titian
Zeus and Europa had three legendary children together and gave rise to a continent named Europe, a moon of Jupiter named Europa, and a constellation of stars named Taurus (the bull).
Who would have guessed that a girl gathering flowers in a meadow would transform the stars? (To this day, mathematicians haven't been able to invent a word to cover such a multiplier effect.)
But the story of Europa and the Bull is hardly unique. Roberto Calasso observed that gods have repeatedly been lured to cross the line by girls picking flowers:
Cupid and Psyche by Bouguereau
Meanwhile, over in Mexico the gods spotted Princess Iztacihuatl taking "long walks picking flowers along...a lovely mountain spring" and were so smitten that when she came to a tragic end, the gods intervened and "turned her into a beautiful white mountain to watch over the Mexica people and bring joy to their sight with her beauty."
Princess Iztacihuatl and her mountain
Why do gods repeatedly abandon the grandeur of heaven to pursue mortal girls picking flowers? The gods are clearly unimpressed by our earthly manifestations of power and wealth, yet they are moved by the most gentle, delicate things-- sunlight on a particular face, or flowers in someone's hair-- to come down and wreak havoc, creating whole mountains or scattering constellations across the night sky.
Sometimes things that seem small and mortal are in reality immense and divine, but can only be experienced in small and mortal increments.
You may wonder why any of this is relevant to a blog about art (apart from the fact that this is the first week of spring and at such a season, no topic other than girls and flowers is conceivable).
The answer is that the same types of inspiration that lure gods down from the heavens seem to raise artists up to immortality.
When Dante Alighieri, author of The Divine Comedy, first saw his beloved Beatrice he felt certain that a deity had come to earth. He famously declared, "Ecce Deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi" (Behold, a god stronger than I, who coming, shall rule over me.) There's that crazy multiplier again: an artist catches a brief glimpse of a (probably not very bright) teenage girl, and transforms the experience into one of the greatest works of literature in the history of the world.
Inspiration may not always be found wearing a toga and picking flowers by the banks of a river, but history is certainly littered with artists (who let's face it are generally a scruffy and oafish bunch) who created great and timeless works of beauty from small and personal motivations. Such transformations are often more improbable than Zeus transforming his lover Callisto into a constellation of stars.
Artist Gaston Lachaise discovered the woman he declared his "goddess" when she was strolling by the river Seine and accurately said, she “immediately became the primary inspiration which awakened my vision...." (and transformed him from a bum to an internationally renown artist). Bonnard spotted a young woman who made wreaths and who went on to transform his artwork and his life. Gustav Klimt's affair with a housewife led to a $135 million portrait (the most expensive painting in history up to the time of the sale) and a quarrel among nations. Time and again the smallest, humblest most personal developments are transformed by this thaumaturgic process into something universal and divine.
Things that blur the dividing line between gods and mortals are so small and delicate they sometimes escape human attention, but it seems the gods have figured it out.
It's springtime. Pay attention.
Vassar college girls practicing their Greek dances, circa 1923
When mighty Zeus spied the young and beautiful Europa picking flowers with her girlfriends by a river, he fell in love and-- adopting the shape of a white bull-- carried Europa off across the waters to Crete (causing pandemonium amongst both mortals and gods).
Titian
Zeus and Europa had three legendary children together and gave rise to a continent named Europe, a moon of Jupiter named Europa, and a constellation of stars named Taurus (the bull).
Who would have guessed that a girl gathering flowers in a meadow would transform the stars? (To this day, mathematicians haven't been able to invent a word to cover such a multiplier effect.)
But the story of Europa and the Bull is hardly unique. Roberto Calasso observed that gods have repeatedly been lured to cross the line by girls picking flowers:
How did it all begin? A group of girls were playing by the river gathering flowers. Again and again such scenes were to prove irresistible to the gods. Persephone was carried off "while playing with the girls with the deep cleavages." She too was gathering flowers... mainly narcissi, "that wondrous, radiant flower, awesome to the sight of gods and mortals alike." Thalia was playing ball in a field of flowers on the mountainside when she was clutched by an eagle's claws: Zeus again. Creusa felt Apollo's hands lock around her wrists as she bent to pick saffron on the slopes of the Athens Acropolis.And those were only the beginning. In the tale of Cupid and Psyche, the Roman god of love broke the rules by falling in love with the mortal Psyche who, depending on the version of the story you read, was either picking flowers or receiving flowers given in tribute to her beauty.
Cupid and Psyche by Bouguereau
Meanwhile, over in Mexico the gods spotted Princess Iztacihuatl taking "long walks picking flowers along...a lovely mountain spring" and were so smitten that when she came to a tragic end, the gods intervened and "turned her into a beautiful white mountain to watch over the Mexica people and bring joy to their sight with her beauty."
Princess Iztacihuatl and her mountain
Why do gods repeatedly abandon the grandeur of heaven to pursue mortal girls picking flowers? The gods are clearly unimpressed by our earthly manifestations of power and wealth, yet they are moved by the most gentle, delicate things-- sunlight on a particular face, or flowers in someone's hair-- to come down and wreak havoc, creating whole mountains or scattering constellations across the night sky.
Sometimes things that seem small and mortal are in reality immense and divine, but can only be experienced in small and mortal increments.
You may wonder why any of this is relevant to a blog about art (apart from the fact that this is the first week of spring and at such a season, no topic other than girls and flowers is conceivable).
The answer is that the same types of inspiration that lure gods down from the heavens seem to raise artists up to immortality.
When Dante Alighieri, author of The Divine Comedy, first saw his beloved Beatrice he felt certain that a deity had come to earth. He famously declared, "Ecce Deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi" (Behold, a god stronger than I, who coming, shall rule over me.) There's that crazy multiplier again: an artist catches a brief glimpse of a (probably not very bright) teenage girl, and transforms the experience into one of the greatest works of literature in the history of the world.
Inspiration may not always be found wearing a toga and picking flowers by the banks of a river, but history is certainly littered with artists (who let's face it are generally a scruffy and oafish bunch) who created great and timeless works of beauty from small and personal motivations. Such transformations are often more improbable than Zeus transforming his lover Callisto into a constellation of stars.
Artist Gaston Lachaise discovered the woman he declared his "goddess" when she was strolling by the river Seine and accurately said, she “immediately became the primary inspiration which awakened my vision...." (and transformed him from a bum to an internationally renown artist). Bonnard spotted a young woman who made wreaths and who went on to transform his artwork and his life. Gustav Klimt's affair with a housewife led to a $135 million portrait (the most expensive painting in history up to the time of the sale) and a quarrel among nations. Time and again the smallest, humblest most personal developments are transformed by this thaumaturgic process into something universal and divine.
Things that blur the dividing line between gods and mortals are so small and delicate they sometimes escape human attention, but it seems the gods have figured it out.
It's springtime. Pay attention.
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