#The Pantheon Tour 2017

[metalshockfinland]

ELUVEITIE: Hit The Charts; New Tour Dates Announced

ELUVEITIE: Hit The Charts; New Tour Dates Announced

NUCLEAR BLAST is proud to announce that the new album of melodic death/folk metal masters ELUVEITIE,  “Evocation II – Pantheon”, has entered the charts at the following positions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland: Switzerland: #2 Germany: #11 Austria: #18 Congratulation ladies & gentlemen! More chart results coming soon – stay tuned! Get your physical copy of the album, here. Or order the…

[theloniousbach]

ON THE ALL-STAR JAZZ BAND

COUCH TOUR: THE HEAVY HITTERS (Mike LeDonne, Eric Alexander, Jeremy Pelt, Jim Snidero, Alexander Claffy, and Kenny Washington!), SMOKE JAZZ CLUB, 19 AUGUST 2022, 2nd Set

BLACK ART JAZZ COLLECTIVE (Wayne Escoffery, Jeremy Pelt, James Burton III, Xavier Davis, Vincente Archer, and Darrell Green), DIZZY’S AT LINCOLN CENTER, 2017 via YouTube

Let’s start with The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever by THE Quintet (Charlie Parker, his worthy constituent Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach) at Toronto’s Massey Hall in 1953. Quite a band with plenty of overlaps in NYC clubs and recordings, but pulled together for the occasion with a quintessential bebop set that makes a good stab at living up to its name.

But jazz, with its standard book and sessions, seems so well suited to the format that you could say that the Verve, Prestige, and especially Blue Note albums of the 1950s and 1960s were all-star bands—Dexter Gordon and Freddie Hubbard with Butch Warren and Billy Higgins on Takin’ Off where, arguably the leader, Herbie Hancock, was the only non-all star even if he brought in tunes like Watermelon Man and Alone and I. But those albums had leaders who brought in the tunes even if Rudy Van Gelder, Alfred Lion, and Norman Granz helped figure out who was on the session.

No, I think what I’m discussion here is the deliberately formed band, that whatever leadership structure, is designed to put and, as importantly, keep a core of players working together.

In the 1980s, a more avant-garde group of players including Chico Freeman, Don Cherry then Lester Bowie, Arthur Blythe, Don Pullen to Hector Ruiz to Kirk Lightsey, Cecil McBee, and Don Moye then Billy Hart were The Leaders. They were during my hiatus so I don’t know their albums. Then McBee and Hart are in the occasionally still active The Cookers with Eddie Henderson, Billy Harper, George Cables and the organizer David Weiss. I’ve like their recordings but I can’t say they are more than the sum of their parts.

Let’s see if Artemis can bounce back after lockdown, but their parts—Renee Rosnes, Allison Miller, Anat Cohen, Ingrid Jensen, Nicole Glover replacing Melissa Aldana, and Noriko Ueda—are formidable. Their album and Jazz St Louis show were appealing, but I’m happy to see Anat Cohen and Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom this coming season. I don’t miss Aldana or Glover when they show up on the streams. But are they or any of these ensembles a team or just all-stars?

I’d spent the week listening to lots of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, so sextets and retrospective all-stars. But those were his bands with 35 years of consistent vision even as the music directors shifted from Benny Golson to Wayne Shorter to Wynton Marsalis and beyond.

Comes now The Heavy Hitters, with Mike LeDonne and Eric Alexander as leaders, as a recent addition to the format. These musicians are solid regulars I know from Small’s Live. Kenny Washington is the out and out all-star among them, but seeing him with horns is a treat. Indeed, such ensembles, often sextets, are an identifying feature of the format as clubs, on a night to night basis are trios or one horn and rhythm section with the occasional quintet. Jeremy Pelt is probably next in this pantheon for some very tasty trumpet work, but I also tend to underrate and undervalue the bench of trumpet players. I’ve liked Alexander of late for a nice middle tone and linear solos and Alexander Claffy is a welcome name on any gig for his reliability. It is LeDonne who is sometimes heavy handed, but not here. Indeed he steps out here with the bulk of the tunes and some solid not overly fussy soloing. Pelt was his reliable self with fine tone and thoughtful solo work. The most appealing horn was Jim Snidero’s alto and he’s the one who isn’t quite the streaming regular. But again the treat was to hear Kenny Washington have a horn section to whip into shape with his taste, elegance, and velvet glove power.

I thought I would get a Small’s Archive show from 2018 from the Black Art Jazz Collective but instead I found a 2017 gig on YouTube from Dizzy’s in Lincoln Center. The Small’s gig rhythm section was Victor Gould whom I’d heard in a recent trio gig, Rashaan Carter, and Johnathan Blake who would have been fun to hear with horns after lots of trio work. Instead, the Wayne Escoffery, Jeremy Pelt, and James Burton III frontline had Xavier Davis, Vincente Archer, and Darrell Green backing them up. Everybody got some space, but yes with six pieces the rhythm section made their marks with strong accompaniment. And they did. Archer is surprisingly forceful behind his thick spectacles and Darrell Green is solid. I did not know Xavier Davis but he shone in his couple of solos but even more in some very sympathetic fills and comping. I catch Escoffery often and he is, as he was here, solid and rich, but as the tenor player he wailed a bit. It was Pelt who was consistently tasteful, though he could growl. Burton was rich and patient in his soloing. The tunes were originals but thematically about the Black experience and so evoked WEB DuBois and Sojourner Truth as well as the plaint When Will We Learn.

BAJC, like Artemis and all of these ensembles, may be an occasional ensemble. I won’t wait for either of them or the Cookers or the Heavy Hitters to hear their members when they go out on their own gigs. But the all-star band has the advantage of, well, having all-stars.

[johnrossbowie]

LEAVING TWITTER

I wrote this earlier in the fall, before the election, after dissolving my Twitter account. I wasn’t sure where to put it (“try up your ass!” – someone, I’m sure) and then I remembered I have a tumblr I never use. Anyway, here tis.

How do you shame someone who thinks Trumps’ half-baked policies and quarter-baked messaging put him in the pantheon of great Presidents? How do you shame someone so lacking in introspection that they will call Obama arrogant while praising Trump’s decisiveness and yet at the same time vehemently deny that they’re racist? How do you shame someone for whom that racism is endearing and maybe long overdue?

You don’t. It’s silly to think otherwise.

Twitter is an addiction of mine, and true to form, my dependence on it grew more serious after I quit drinking in 2010. At first it was a chance to mouth off, make jokes both stupid and erudite and occasionally stick my foot in my mouth (I owe New Yorker writer Tad Friend an apology. He knows why, or (God willing) he’s forgotten. Either way. Sorry.) I blew off steam, steam that was accumulating without booze to dampen the flames. Not always constructive venting, but I also met new friends, and connected with people whose work I’ve admired for literal decades and ended up seeing plays with Lin-Manuel Miranda and hanging backstage with Jane Wiedlin after a Go-Go’s show and exchanging sober thoughts with Mike Doughty. When my mom passed in 2018, a lot of people reached out to tell me they were thinking of me. This was nice. For a while, Twitter was a huge help when I needed it.

I used to hate going to parties and really hated dancing and mingling, but a couple of drinks would fix that. Point is, for a while, booze was a huge help, too.

But my engagement with Twitter changed, and I started calling people my ‘friends’ even though I’d never once met them or even heard their voices. These weren’t even penpals, these were people whose jokes or stances I enjoyed, so with Arthurian benevolence I clicked on a little heart icon, liked their tweet, and assumed therefore that we had signed some sort of blood oath.

We had not. I got glib, and cheap, and a little lazy. And then to make matters much worse, Trump came along and extended his reach with the medium.

There was a while there where I thought I could be a sort of voice for the voiceless, and I thought I was doing that. I tried very hard to only contribute things that I felt were not being said – It wasn’t accomplishing anything to notice “Haha Trump looks like he’s bullshitting his way through an oral report” – such things were self-evident. I tried to point out very specific inconsistencies in his policies, like the Muslim ban meant to curb terrorism that still favored the country that brought forth 13 of the 9/11 hijackers. Like his full-throated cries against media bias performed while he suckled at Roger Ailes’ wrinkly teat.  Like his fondness for evangelical votes that coincided with a scriptural knowledge that lagged far behind mine, even though I’m a lapsed Episcopalian, and there is no one less religiously observant than a lapsed Episcopalian. But that eventually gave way to unleashing ad hominem attacks against his higher profile supporters, who I felt weren’t being questioned enough, who I felt were in turn being fawned over by theirdim supporters. If you’re one of these guys, and you think I’m talking about you, you’re probably right, but don’t mistake this for an apology. You suck, and you support someone who sucks, and your idolatry is hurting our country and its standing in the world. Fuck you entirely, but that’s not the point. The point is that me screaming into the toilet of Twitter helps no one – it doesn’t help a family stuck at the border because they’re trying to secure a better life for their kids. It doesn’t help a poor teenager who can’t get an abortion because the party of ‘small government’ has squeezed their tiny jurisdiction into her uterus. It doesn’t help the coal miner who’s staking all his hopes on a dying industry and a President’s empty promises to resurrect it. I was born in New York City, and I currently live in Los Angeles. Those are the only two places I’ve ever lived, if you don’t count the 4 years I spent in Ithaca[1]. So, yes, I live in a liberal bubble, and while I’ve driven across the country a couple of times and did a few weeks in a touring band and am as crushed as any heartlander about the demise of Waffle House, you have me dead to rights if you call me a coastal elitist. And with that in mind, I offer few surprises. A guy who grew up in the theater district and was vehemently opposed to same-sex marriage or felt you should own an AR-15? THAT would be newsworthy. I am not newsworthy. I can preach to the choir, I can confirm people’s biases, but I will likely not sway anyone who is eager to dismiss a Native New Yorker who lives in Hollywood. I grew up in the New York of the 1970s, and that part of my identity did shape my politics. My mom’s boss was gay and the Son of Sam posed a realistic threat. As such, gays are job creators[2] and guns are used for homicide much more often than they are used for self-defense[3]. I have found this to be generally true over the years, and there’s even data to back it up.

“But Mr. Bowie,” you might say, though I insist you call me John - “those studies are conducted by elitist institutions and those institutions suck!” And again, I am not going to reason with people who will dismiss anything that doesn’t fit their limited world view as elitist or, God Help Us, fake news. But the studies above are peer-reviewed, convincing, and there are more where those came from.

“But John,” you might say, and I am soothed that we’re one a first name basis - “Can’t you just stay on Twitter for the jokes?” Ugh. A) apparently not and B) the jokes are few and far between, and I am 100% part of that problem.

I have stuff to offer, but Twitter is not the place from which to offer it.

After years of academically understanding that Twitter is not the real world, Super Tuesday 2020 made the abstract pretty fucking concrete. If you had looked at my feed on the Monday beforehand – my feed which is admittedly curated towards the left, but not monolithic (Hi, Rich Lowry!) – you’d have felt that a solid Bernie surge was imminent, but also that your candidate was going surprise her more vocal critics. When the Biden sweep swept, when Bernie was diminished and when Warren was defeated, I realized that Twitter is not only not the real world, it’s almost some sort of Phillip K. Dickian alternate timeline, untethered to anything we’re actually experiencing in our day to day life. This is both good news and bad news – one, we’re not heading towards a utopia of single payer health care and the eradication of American medical debt any time soon, but two, we’re also not being increasingly governed by diaper-clad jungen like Charlie Kirk. Clouds and their linings. Leaving Twitter may look like ceding ground to the assclowns but get this – the ground. Is not. There.

It’s just air.

There are tangible things I can do with my time - volunteer with a local organization called Food On Foot, who provide food and job training for people experiencing homelessness here in my adopted Los Angeles. I can give money to candidates and causes I support, and I can occasionally even drop by social media to boost a project or an issue and then vanish, like a sort of Caucasian Zorro who doesn’t read his mentions. I can also model good behavior for my kids (ages 10 and 13) who don’t need to see their father glued to his phone, arguing about Trumps incompetence with Constitutional scholars who have a misspelled Bible verse in their bio (three s’ in Ecclesiastes, folks).

So farewell Twitter. I’ll miss a lot of you. Perhaps not as badly as I miss Simon Maloy and Roger Ebert and Harris Wittels and others whose deaths created an unfillable void on the platform. But I won’t miss the yelling, and the lionization of poor grammar, and anonymous trolls telling my Jewish friends that they were gonna leave the country “via chimney.” I will not miss people who think Trump is a stable genius calling me a “fucktard.” I will not miss transphobia or cancelling but I will miss hashtag games, particularly my stellar work during #mypunkmusical (Probably should have quit after that surge, I was on fire that night, real blaze of glory stuff I mean, Christ, Sunday in the Park with the Germs? Husker Du I Hear A Waltz? Fiddler on the Roof (keeping an eye out for the cops)? These are Pulitzer contenders.). Twitter makes me feel lousy, even when I’m right, and I’m often right. There’s just no point in barking bumperstickers at each other, and there are people who are speaking truth to power and doing a cleaner job of it – Aaron Rupar, Steven Pasquale, Louise Mensch, Imani Gandy and Ijeoma Oluo to name five solid mostly politically based accounts (Yes, Pasquale is a Broadway tenor. He’s also a tenacious lefty with good points and research and a dreamy voice. You think you’re straight and then you hear him sing anything from Bridges of Madison County and you want him to spoon you.). You’re probably already following those mentioned, but on the off chance you’re not, get to it. You’ll thank me, but you won’t be able to unless you actually have my email.

_______

[1] And Jesus, that’s worse – Ithaca is such a lefty enclave that they had an actual socialist mayor FOR WHOM I VOTED while I was there. And not socialist the way some people think all Democrats are socialist – I mean Ben Nichols actually ran on the socialist ticket and was re-elected twice for a total of six years.

[2] The National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, “America’s LGBT Economy” Jan 20th, 2017

[3] The Violence Policy Institute, Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self Defense Gun Use, July 2019.

[stylesnews]

The fitting climax of Harry Styles’ album-launch bash on Friday night: the moment Stevie Nicks came out to join him for a surprise duet on “Landslide.” “For me, it wouldn’t be an album release without this young lady,” he told a rapt L.A. Forum crowd who’d already heard him debut the fantastic new Fine Line in its entirety. “I have a feeling you’re going to enjoy this as much as me. Please welcome to the stage, Stevie Nicks.” Never one to make a shy entrance, the Gold Dust Woman sashayed regally to the microphone on bootheels half Harry’s heigh, while he raved, “I know—cool, isn’t it?” Their duet was enough to bring down anybody’s mountains, as they held hands and slow-danced. He gazed deep into her eyes to sing the key line, “Can the child in my heart rise above?” The sold-out arena crowd of 18,000 swooned as these two hit their hair-raising harmonies on the final “snoooooow covered hills.”

Harry and Stevie have a long, touching history as everybody’s favorite rock-star friendship. One of the key moments that anointed him as a solo star after the end of One Direction was his 2017 show at Stevie’s old stomping grounds, L.A.’s famous Troubadour, where she joined him to sing “Landslide,’ “The Chain” and “Leather and Lace.” They did “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” last spring when he inducted her into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, with the iconic image of Harry dropping to his knees onstage to hand her the trophy. She called him her “love child” in Rolling Stone. (Mick Fleetwood was in the house tonight, so it was a family affair.) She dedicated “Landslide” to him at London’s Wembley Stadium with Fleetwood Mac in June, fondly calling him “my little muse.” But this duet felt special, celebrating their mutual admiration as well as his new Fine Line: the queen welcoming this prince into the pantheon.

Harry’s show was a triumph all the way through, as he leveled a rapturously screamadelic crowd in arena-slaying glam-rock monster mode. Honestly, Having Sex wiped the floor with Feeling Sad, and it wasn’t even close. “Fine Line Live: One Night Only” was a stand-alone gig, four months before he begins his 2020 world tour. He made the night more than a showcase for the new songs; he made it a celebration of this communal pop tribe he has somehow gathered over the years, reveling in his role as a madman master of benevolent mischief. He peacocked in his finery from the album cover, in a salmon-pink shirt, a pearl necklace and high-waisted white sailor pants. Fans had been camping out all week in the Forum’s parking lot, and nobody showed up in a mood to get mellow. To the surprise of absolutely not one single person, the entire audience sang virtually every line of songs that none of them had heard 24 hours earlier. “I’m baaaack,” Harry announced. “I have more than ten songs now.”

He kicked off with “Golden,” playing guitar hero over the surging Seventies-style Malibu harmonies. (His entrance theme was a spoken-word soundbite from the writer Charlies Bukowski: “To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art.”) For the first hour, he did all the new tunes, without a dud in the bunch: “Sunflower, Vol. 6,” which seemed like the closest thing to a weak link, turns out to be a gas live. In typical hyperactive starman mode, he twirled, waved, blew kisses, soared in the impossible vocal acrobatics of “Falling.” He seemed amused to note which moments got the biggest responses, especially after “To Be So Lonely,” with its hook, “I’m just an arrogant son of a bitch who can’t admit when he’s sorry.” “I have one question,” he said. “For what reason when I call myself an ‘arrogant son of a bitch,’ is that when you sing the loudest? Did you just decide to sing that one line with your whole chest?”

A surprise highlight came when he did the theatrical Pippin-smitten “Treat People With Kindness,” bringing out the pop duo Lucius to sing the chorus. The floor became a dance-off—in one corner, dozens of girls put all their bags and backpacks in one giant pile, so nobody had to worry where their stuff was, and then danced around the pile in a circle that was really moving to behold, an example of how a Harry Styles concert creates crucial moments of utopian unity and shared euphoria. At one point, he told the audience, “There’s nothing that makes me more hopeful than standing in front of you. Thank you for that. You absolutely changed my life.”

His ace band brought Fine Line’s wide range of emotions to life. “Canyon Moon” accelerated into a buckskin-fringe hippie hoedown that Crosby, Stills and Nash would have shaved their sideburns for. “Cherry” might be the album’s darkest and rawest moment, with its stark confession of jealousy. (“I confess I can tell that you are at your best / I’m selfish so I’m hating it” is really going all the way down.) But it’s also the prettiest, and tonight “Cherry” became a country-rock ballad with Sarah Jones’ drumrolls and plaintive pedal-steel flourishes from guitar wizard Mitch Rowland, who Harry playfully introduced at rehearsals as “Mr. Mysterious!” “Fine Line” ended on a grand note—the six-minute ballad has the introspective vibe of the final scene of Fleabag, as Phoebe Waller-Bridge takes that long slow lonesome walk home.

The night ended with a five-song victory lap, kicking off with “Sign of the Times,” the glam love-and-death piano ballad that began his solo career with a bang, and ending with the cataclysmic rocker “Kiwi,” which got a metallic new Iron Maiden-style intro. He did his slow dance with Stevie Nicks—finally, the rock & roll queen meets a real king who can handle. He busted out another surprise tribute to one of his classic-rock idols: Sir Paul McCartney. For some reason, “Wonderful Christmastime” sounds positively brilliant as a Harry song; a storm of tinsel confetti snow fell on the audience during what felt like several hundred repetitions of that “siiiim-ply haaaaa-ving” chant.

As he declared at the end, “The album is yours. I am yours. I couldn’t ask for a more incredible group of people to play my music for.” (The exit music: Van Morrison’s “Madame George.”) But there was an extra emotional edge to his version of One Direction’s 2011 debut hit, “What Makes You Beautiful,” revamped into a Stones-style rock groove. Harry’s now got more great songs than he can fit into a solo show. He doesn’t need any padding, any songs he doesn’t passionately want to sing. But it means something to him now to revisit “What Makes You Beautiful,” the hit that started him down the ten-year road to the glories of Fine Line.

As he told me this summer, it’s a toast to the shared history between him and his audience. As he told me this summer, “One of my favorite parts of the show always is playing ‘What Makes You Beautiful.’ Always. It’s not like, ‘I’m not playing *those* songs any more, because this is *me* now.’ I’m saying, ‘No, it’s *all* me.’ If there was any song where I should be saying, ‘I don’t know if I can fucking play that one again,’ that would be the one. So it means so much for me to do it and have us all sing it together. It gets more and more meaningful.” Like the rest of the show, this version of “What Makes You Beautiful” was a celebration of the unique bond between this performer and this audience—and a tribute to how far both have evolved over ten weird years.

[peppersjam]

My Top 10 Albums of 2019

2019 presented me with a handful of incredible events and memories (I turned 30, I got married, etc.), while also serving me a big challenge (my partner is temporarily living on the other side of the country). In a poetic world, these things would have a significant impact on the music that I listened to and loved, but no, not really. This year is pretty on the nose for me, music-wise. Oh, except that I got really into Taylor Swift in the second half of the year.

Before we hop into boring Steve's boring top 10 list, let's revisit the 2018 list. The only album on the list that I barely listened to in 2019 was Cardi's Invasion of Privacy. Everything else gets at least semi-regular spins, although I'd elevate Historian, boygenius, and Big Red Machine above these others.

My biggest disappointment this year was Charli XCX's CHARLI, which is a solid album, but it didn't grab me nearly as much as Pop 2 did a couple years ago. It hasn't stuck in my rotation.

Runners up:

Bon Iver - "i,i" (I love it when I listen to it, but for some reason I'm not often compelled to listen to it)

Ariana Grande - "thank u, next" (Staple of early 2019, but fell off)

Carly Rae Jepsen - "Dedicated" (Great, but I'd rather listen to E•MO•TION)

Taylor Swift - "Lover" (Some true standout tracks, like Lover and Paper Rings, but too many cloyboys and CRJ rip-offs)

Weyes Blood - "Titanic Rising" (I could see this growing on me over the years, like a Radiohead record)

And the pre-2019 albums that should've made my respective yearly lists:

Beyoncé - "4" (2011)

Beyoncé - "BEYONCE" (2013)

Big Thief - "Capacity" (2017)

Big Thief - "Masterpiece" (2016)

Perfume Genius - "No Shape" (2017)

Snail Mail - "Lush" (2018)

Taylor Swift - "Red" (2012)

10. Big Thief – U.F.O.F

Early in the year, I "discovered" Big Thief. I don't know how I missed them before. Specifically, the song "Masterpiece" got right up in my brain and has been hanging out there since. Then Big Thief gave us U.F.O.F. which was yet another great Big Thief album. See #3 below.

9. Andrew Bird – My Finest Work Yet

Look, I'll stop putting Andrew Bird records on my end-of-year lists when he stops making them.

Andrew Bird turned a corner with the release of Are You Serious where he basically acknowledged that he was now going to work with other people and write scrutable songs. It was a good album, but My Finest Work Yet refines this Andrew Bird 2.0 and delivers some of his... finest work yet ("Sisyphus," "Manifest," "Olympians"). While I still prefer earlier Andrew Bird (A Nervous Tic Motion into Fake Palindromes into Measuring Cups... my gosh, that's 10 incredible minutes of music), I understand why he's moved on to something else.

8. JPEGMAFIA – All My Heroes Are Cornballs

I've been in a rap rut. Kanye is putting out self-indulgent gospel albums. Chance and Drake are boring now. JAY Z is working with the NFL.

But the rut is mostly a lack of imagination on my part. There's a lot of rap out there that hasn't made it through my naive filter, and I want to seek more of it out in 2020. Case in point: JPEGMAFIA. He's weird, political, funny... all the things that the aforementioned rappers aren't (or at least, aren't anymore). All My Heroes Are Cornballs is the most hypnotic rap album I've listened to in years. The glitchy beats and effortless flow makes it impossible to turn off mid-album.

7. BROCKHAMPTON – Ginger

GINGER is a proper follow-up to the SATURATION trilogy. While Iridescence had some good tracks on it, the overall experience was jarring (not without reason, given what the group was going through with Ameer). GINGER reads (ok, plays) like an album in a way that the Saturations never did. While it may be spiritually linked to the Satursation, it's a complete departure sonically. Even though it's more constrained and less bombastic than their hits from that era, it feels much bigger and, ahem, More Important. That might not be to the taste of some of their fans, but I'm happy to have both versions of BROCKHAMPTON in my music library.

6. Lana Del Rey – Norman Fucking Rockwell!

Music publications couldn't get over the fact that on NFR!, Lana, yes LANA DEL REY, was wordsmithing at a high level. Is it that hard to believe that someone would become a better poet as they gained more life experiences, inching closer to the mystical 10,000 hours? Some of the praise may have gone a little overboard (and, frankly, seems rooted in a narrow, misogynistic view of Who Can Do Music Good™️™️™️), but I agree with the underlying principle of the praise: that this is a collection of well written and well performed songs. It has my favorite album closer of the year, "Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have - but I Have It." I get chills just thinking about it.

5. Clairo – Immunity

I enjoyed my first listen.

On my second listen, I wondered if it was maybe too simple. I didn't listen again for several months.

But then, when I was working from Pittsburgh the week before Christmas, I listened again. And I couldn't stop listening. It's simpler music than many of the albums on this list, but it appeals to me for the same reason I had a fixation with Snail Mail's Lush this year: it's incredible that songs that sound so "simple" (and I truly do not mean simple in an insulting way) can still be different than anything we've heard before, and can still transfix us in new ways. Behold ye, the power of combinatorics!

4. Vampire Weekend – Father of the Bride

Channel Orange to Blonde was 4 years. There's nothing you can do to get your favorite artists to make music faster. There's some beauty in that... that if an artist is financially successful enough, they don't need to rush.

Modern Vampires of the City to Father of the Bride was 6 years (i.e., 20% of my lifetime). But at least there are no duds here, and "Harmony Hall" might sneak into my hypothetical favorite-songs-of-all-time pantheon.

3. Big Thief – Two Hands

Oh, but then a few months later, Big Thief gave us another album. They started working on it right after they finished U.F.O.F, which tracks based on every interview I've read with Adrianne Lenker. She talked about the insane touring and album release schedule they've been on in the past four years, but her point wasn't "I'm getting tired," but rather "let's see if I can do this forever." I saw them play at The Fillmore after they released Two Hands and I got the sense that Adrianne has to make and perform music. She was uncomfortable engaging in the standard nearly-identical pleasantries that artists share with the audience. She was shy. She was surprised to find that we were hanging on her every word and chord. It was relatable. She's the closest to a genius I've seen in an indie rock band in the last several years, although I'm sure she'd hate anyone calling her that.

That genius produced Two Hands, an affecting indie rock record that practically demands that you close your eyes because you need to experience it and only it.

2. Tyler, the Creator – IGOR

This year, I listened to IGOR over and over again. The hooks, verses, beats, and vibe are all infectious. Boring Steve says "hey, look, it's just a great album." I don't have a deeper thought about it. I eagerly await Tyler's next project.

1. Nilüfer Yanya – Miss Universe

This year, like 2009 a decade ago, was an exciting year to be an indie rock fan. Vampire Weekend and Bon Iver cemented their elder ("elder") statesperson statuses, Big Thief came into their own as a true force of nature, and acts like Clairo and Nilüfer made me extremely jazzed about the Ghost of Indie Future.

Nilüfer has a unique and delightful voice that punches through some really fun songwriting and arrangements. Like, what a dumb, awesome lyric:

Although I cannot tell if I'm paranoid

Or it's all in my head, it's all in my head

Miss Universe is her debut full-length album, and it's a lovable and off-kilter thesis statement for what I assume will be a lovable and off-kilter music career. I can better explain why some of the other albums on this list are great, but suffice it to say, the system rewards unique performances.

[aletdownsquid]

Comprehensive Exam Readings

My research “question”:

Many writers of U.S. fiction insert nonfiction documents into their narratives to critique how marginalized citizens are excluded from their rights to equal protection granted by the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I’m interested in how African American authors and other writers of color have employed these strategies since the end of World War II; for example, the inclusion of real warrants for runaway slaves in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, or passages from U.S. treaties with Native American tribes featured in Watershed by Percival Everrett. In the essay, I will identify, historicize, and examine some of these conventions, and drawing upon Assemblage Theory and Third Space theory,  explore how these subversions of the fiction genre might allow authors of color to highlight historical truths, erase some of the distance between literary and political realms, and possibly affect political change.

To be completed by September 2020. (note: Strikethrough is complete / Bold means I intend to cite them in my comprehensive exam)

U.S. Fiction (Post ‘45): Major List

Guiding Questions:

How do works of geopolitical American fiction since the end of WWII explore the ways in which American exceptionalism has subjugated people of color? Specifically, how do these works examine the ways American colonial rule define U.S.–indigenous relations; and how do these works continue to engage with race in America since the Civil Rights movement?

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. Americanah. Anchor, 2014.  

Akwaeke, Emezi. Freshwater. Grove, 2018.

Alvarez, Julia. How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents. Algonquin, 2010.

Aswany, Alaa Al. Chicago. Harper, 2008

Baldwin, James. Giovanni’s Room. Vintage, 2013.

Barthleme, Donald. “Concerning the Bodyguard,” Sixty Stories. Penguin, 2003. 

Beatty, Paul. The White Boy Shuffle. Picador, 2001.

Chabon, Michael. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Random House, 2012. 

Cisneros, Sandra. The House on Mango Street. Vintage, 1991.

Clemmons, Zinzi. What We Lose. Viking, 2017.

Currie Jr., Ron. God is Dead: Stories. Penguin, 2008. 

Diaz, Junot. The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Riverhead, 2006.

Egan, Jennifer. A Visit from the Goon Squad. Anchor, 2010.

Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. Vintage, 1995. 

Everett, Percival. Watershed. Beacon Press, 2003.

Gay, Roxane. Ayiti. Grove Press, 2018. 

Gibson, William. Pattern Recognition. Berkley, 2005.

Greene, Graham. The Quiet American. Penguin, 1980. 

Habila, Helon. Travelers. W.W. Norton & Company, 2019. 

Hagedorn, Jessica. Dogeaters. Pantheon, 1990. 

Hamid, Mohsin. The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Harvest, 2008.

Herrera, Yuri. Signs Preceding the End of the World. And Other Stories, 2015.

James, Marlon. A Brief History of Seven Killings. Riverhead, 2015. 

Jarrar, Randa. A Map of Home. Other Press, 2008.

Jen, Gish. Typical American. Harcourt, 2014. 

Johnson, Adam. The Orphan Master’s Son. Random House, 2013. 

Johnson, Mat. Pym. Spiegel & Grau, 2011.

Kaulfus, Ken. A Disorder Peculiar to the Country. Harper Perennial, 2006. 

Kingston, Maxine Hong. The Woman Warrior. Vintage, 1989.

Kushner, Rachel. The Strange Case of Rachel K. New Directions, 2016.

Lahiri, Jhumpa. Interpreter of Maladies: Stories. Mariner, 1999. 

Lapcharoensap, Rattawut. Sightseeing: Stories. Grove Press, 2005. 

Le Nam. The Boat: Stories. Vintage, 2009.  

Lee, Chang-rae. Native Speaker. Riverhead Books, 1996. 

Luiselli, Valeria. The Story of My Teeth. Coffee House Press, 2015.

Mathews, John Joseph. Sundown. University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.

Mbue, Imbolo. Behold the Dreamers. Random House, 2017.

Mengetsu, Dinaw. How to Read the Air. Riverhead, 2011. 

Momaday, N. Scott. House Made of Dawn. Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2010.

Ng, Celeste. Everything I Never Told You. Penguin Books, 2015.

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. The Sympathizer. Grove Press, 2015.

Nguyen, Viet Thanh. The Refugees: Stories. Grove Press, 2018.

Okada, John. No-No Boy. University of Washington Press, 2014.

Orange, Tommy. There There. Vintage, 2018. 

Otsuka, Julie. The Buddha in the Attic. Anchor, 2012. 

Ozeki, Ruth. A Tale for the Time Being. Penguin Books, 2013. 

Packer, ZZ. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere: Stories. Riverhead, 2004. 

Pena, Daniel. Bang. Arte Publico, 2018. 

Reed, Ishmael. Japanese by Spring. Scribner, 1993. 

Reed, Ishmael. Mumbo Jumbo. Scribner, 1972.

Rekdal, Paisley. Intimate: An American Family Photo Album. Tupelo Press, 2012.  

Salesses, Matthew. The Hundred-Year Flood. Little A, 2015. 

Sebald, W.G. The Emigrants. New Directions, 2016.

Shamsie, Kamila. Burnt Shadows. Picador, 2009. 

Silko, Leslie Marmon. Ceremony. Penguin Books, 2006.

Washington, Bryan. Lot: Stories. Riverhead, 2019.

Williams, John Alfred. The Man Who Cried I Am. Harry N. Abrams, 2004.

Wright, Richard. Native Son.Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2005. 

Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse Five. Dial Press, 1999.

Vonnegut, Kurt. Breakfast of Champions. Dial Press, 1999.

African-American Iconoclast Fictions: Minor List

Guiding Questions:

What methods do African-American fiction writers use to interrogate racial subjugation for people of color in the United States and across the Global South?

Adjei-Brenyah, Nana Kwame. Friday Black. Mariner Books, 2018

Baldwin, James. Go Tell it On the Mountain. Everyman’s Library, 2016.

Baldwin, James. “Sonny’s Blues.” Going to Meet the Man. Vintage, 1995.

Beatty, Paul. The Sellout. Picador, 2016.

Bell, Derrick. “Space Traders”

Brooks, Gwendolyn. Maud Martha. Third World Press, 1992. 

Butler, Octavia. Dawn. Aspect, 1997. 

Butler, Octavia. Kindred. Beacon Press, 2009.

Cole, Teju. Open City. Random House, 2012. 

DuBois, W.E.B., “On Being Crazy.”

Dumas, Henry. Goodbye Sweetwater. 

Ellis, Trey. Platitudes. Vintage, 1988.

Everett, Percival. Erasure. Graywolf Press, 2001.

Gaines, Ernest J. A Lesson Before Dying. Knopf, 1993.

Hannaham, James. Delicious Foods. Back Bay Books, 2016. 

Hopkinson, Nalo. Falling in Love with Hominids: Stories. Tachyon Publications, 2015. 

Hopkinson, Nalo. Midnight Robber. Grand Central Publishing, 2000.

Hughes, Langston. “One Friday Morning”

Hughes, Langston. “Salvation.”

Hurston, Zora Neale. “Sweat”

James, Marlon. The Book of Night Women. Riverhead, 2010.

Jones, Edward P. The Known World. Amistad, 2006.

Keene, John. Counternarratives: Stories and Novella. New Directions, 2015.

Kincaid, Jamaica. “Girl”

Larsen, Nella. The Complete Fiction of Nella Larsen: Passing, Quicksand and The Stories. Anchor, 2001.

Laymon, Kiese. Long Division. Agate Bolden, 2013.

Mackey, Nathaniel. Late Arcade. New Directions, 2017.

MacPherson, James Alan. Hue and Cry: Short Stories. Harper Collins, 1969.

McFarland, Jeni. The House of Deep Water. Putnam, 2020.

Miller, Keith D., Joyce Lausch and Kevin Everod Quashie. New Bones: Contemporary Black Writers in America. Prentice Hall, 2001. 

Morrison, Toni. Beloved. Vintage, 2004.

Morrison, Toni. Jazz. Vintage, 2004.

Morrison, Toni. Paradise. Vintage, 2004.

Reed, Ishmael. Flight to Canada. Penguin, 1976. 

Ross, Fran. Oreo. New Directions, 2015.

Scott, Rion Amilcar. The World Doesn’t Require You: Stories. Liverlight, 2018. 

Senna, Danzy. New People. Riverhead, 2017. 

Shuyler, George. Black No More. Penguin Classics, 2018. 

Thompson-Spires, Nafissa. Heads of Colored People: Stories. 37 Ink, 2018.

Toomer, Jean. Cane. W.W. Norton & Company, 1988.  

Toure. The Portable Promise Land. Back Bay Books, 2003.

Whitehead, Colson. Sag Harbor. Anchor, 2010.

Whitehead, Colson. The Underground Railroad. Doubleday, 2016.

Widerman, John Edgar. American Histories: Stories. Scribner, 2018.

Wideman, John Edgar. Phildelphia Fire. Vintage, 1991

Wideman, John Edgar. Fanon. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008.

Theory: Assemblage & Third Space Theory 

Guiding Questions:

Can fiction be used as a tool to engender a new sense of belonging while rejecting a stable state of being? If so, how can this framework of assemblage be applied in fiction to highlight the ways local identities intersect with shared global perspectives? Can an assemblage approach to fiction encourage accountability for civil rights without state sanctioned legal status?

Agamben, G., 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by D. Heller-Roazen. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books, 2012.

Anzaldua, Gloria. Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro: Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality (Latin America Otherwise). Duke University Press Books, 2015.

Appiah, Kwame Anthony. “The Case for Contamination." The New York Times Jan. 2006. 5 Nov. 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/magazine/01cosmopolitan.html

Bakshi, Sandeep, Jivraj Suhraiya and Silvia Posocco. Decolonizing Sexualities: Transnational Perspectives, Critical Interventions. Counterpress,  2016.

Belletto, Steven and Joseph Keith. Neocolonial Fictions of the Global Cold War, University of Iowa Press, 2019. 

Bhabha, Homi K. Nation and Narration. Routledge, 1990.

Bruynell, Kevin. Third Space of Sovereignty. University Of Minnesota Press, 2007.

DeLanda, Manuel. Assemblage Theory. Edinburgh University Press, 2016.

DeLanda, Manuel. A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. Continuum, 2006.

Dubey, Madhu. Signs and Cities: Black Literary Postmodernism. University of Chicago Press, 2003. 

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Grove Press, 2005. 

Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey. Oxford University Press, 1988. 

Gwaltney, John Langston. Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America. The New Press, 1993. 

Goyal, Yogita. The Cambridge Companion to Transnational American Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Goyal, Yogita. Romance, Diaspora, and Black Atlantic Literature. Cambridge University Press, 2015. 

Goyal, Yogita. Runaway Genres: The Global Afterlives of Slavery. NYU Press, 2019.

Knadler, Stephen. Remapping Citizenship and the Nation in African Literature. Routledge, 2010. 

Lorde, Audre. Zami: A New Spelling of My Name: A Biomythology. The Crossing Press, 1982.  

Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider. The Crossing Press, 1984.  

Machado, Carmen Maria. In the Dream House: A Memoir. Graywolf, 2019. 

Madsen, Deborah L. Beyond Borders: American Literature and Post-Colonial Theory. Pluto Press, 2008.  

Munoz, Jose Estaban, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. University of Minnesota, 1999. 

Okker, Patricia. Transnationalism and American Serial Fiction. Routledge, 2012. 

Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s. Routledge, 1994. 

Puar, Jasbir. “I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess: Becoming intersectional in Assemblage Theory.” philoSOPHIA, vol. 2, no. 1, 2012, pp. 49-66. 

Puar, Jasbir. The Right to Maim. Duke University Press, 2017. 

Puar, Jasbir. Terrorist Assemblages. Duke University Press Books, 2007.

Rosen, Jeremy. “Literary Fiction and the Genres of Genre Fiction.” Post45, Aug. 2018. http://post45.research.yale.edu/2018/08/literary-fiction-and-the-genres-of-genre-fiction/ 

Rutherford, Johnathan. "The Third Space Interview with Homi Bhabha." Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, Lawrence and Wishart, 1990, pp. 207-221. 

Said, Edward W. Culture and Imperialism. Vintage, 1994. 

Scott, James C. Weapons of the Weak. Yale University Press, 1987.

Shackleton, Mark. Diasporic Literature and Theory – Where Now? Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. 

Shamsie, Kamila. “The Storytellers of the Empire.” Guernica, Feb. 2012. <http://www.guernicamag.com/features/3458/shamsie…> 

Sharpe, Christina. In the Wake On Blackness and Being. Duke University Press. 2016

Shklovsky, Viktor. “Art, as a Device.” 

Soja, Edward. Thirdspaces: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other-Real-and-Imagined Places. Blackwell Publishers, 1996. 

[mekagojira3k]

BRIEF REVIEW OF SCYTHIAN FROST & OTHER STORIES

One of the first things that struck me upon reading Daikaiju Yuki back in 2017 is that the world was obscenely rich. The world tour nature of the story allowed us fleeting glimpses into these cultures and locales as the story necessitated. Scythian Frost, however, gives us three distinct glances into the world of the Pantheon as well as glimpses into worlds beyond.

Each locale features exciting new elements either hinted at or suggested previously and with it comes new Kaiju to further flesh out this already mythic world. The stories move along at a pleasant pace, and pack a novel's worth of action into a few small sections.

The first, Scythian Frost, is undoubtedly my favorite. Blending bits of all the great pulp scifi and fantasy which choose the remote and cold settings of the world to unearth some ancient horrors. The Second gives us an adventure on the seas which conjures Jun Fukuda's Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster (1966) as well as the age-old tale of man, in his infinite smallness, traversing one of the most unexplored arenas of our planet. The third is an adventure set within Akelbulan (introduced in Y2K along with the kaiju Mugonde who makes a cameo here) and follows protagonists looking for a myth within a world of myths. Part Indiana Jones and part Kaiju flick the third comes up as my close second favorite here.

Scythian Frost, like each entry into the series before it, appeals to the part of my brain in love with the Neo Mythic world of Daikaiju Yuki. I get to meet new varieties of creature and new kinds of people. The fascinating thing is seeing how these giant god-like beasts affect the lives of everyone from sailors to soldiers.

The final piece hints at even greater vistas and has me, and I'm sure a lot of people, hyped for Yuki's third outing which is coming out soon.

[haitilegends]

🎥 HERVÉ LEBRETON & PETERSON PIERRE PAUL |

LE POINT sur RADIO et TÉLÉ MÉTROPOLE Haiti (2017)

https://youtu.be/fTFAm_8kGpQ

À PROPOS DE VOUS

HERVÉ LEBRETON

Artiste peintre de notoriété internationale, de la mythologie picturale afro-égyptienne, gréco-latine

Artiste complet : chanteur, compositeur, guitariste, danseur et peintre. À son actif, 18 disques de 45 tours et 4 microsillons. Le chanteur s’est produit au Mexique, Chili, Puerto Rio, Vénézuela, Panama, Argentine, Haïti, États-Unis et Canada. Né à Port-au-Prince le 27 mars 1941, il suit des cours de dessin et de peinture dès l’âge de 9 ans. Il poursuit sa formation à l’École des beaux-arts de Port-au-Prince, puis à l’ABC de Paris et au Bellas Artes de Santiago, Chili. Depuis 1970, Lebreton vit au Canada et se partage entre l’écriture et la peinture. Ce passionné d’art et de psychologie analytique a su développer un potentiel universel qui lui permet de peindre des toiles où chacun arrive à reconnaître son propre cheminement. Son style pourrait être qualifié de néo ou para surréaliste avec une dominante onirique.

Pour conclure, on peut dire que Lebreton a comme but de donner à chacun l’occasion de faire l’expérience de se projeter dans la globalité de sa vie de telle sorte que chacun puisse entrer en communion avec lui-même, l’univers et les autres avec un sentiment de joie et d’émerveillement avec pour médium UNE PEINTURE.

Ses œuvres ont été exposées à la Galerie d’art Nader (Haïti), Limited Art Gallery (New York), Terre des Hommes (Montréal, Museo de Arte Moderno (Saint-Domingue), Museum of Fine Arts de Shreweport (Louisiane), Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Musée du Panthéon national (Haïti), et plus. Ses œuvres figurent également dans d’importantes collections d’Europe, des États-Unis, de l’Amérique centrale et du Sud, etc…

--------------

BIOGRAPHY

HERVÉ LEBRETON

Painter of international renown, of the pictorial mythology Afro-Egyptian, Greco-Latin

Multitalented artist: singer, composer, guitarist, dancer and painter. To his credit, 18 records of 45 rpm and 4 LPs. The singer has performed in Mexico, Chile, Puerto Rio, Venezuela, Panama, Argentina, Haiti, United States and Canada. Born in Port-au-Prince on March 27, 1941, he attended drawing and painting classes at the age of 9. He continued his training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Port-au-Prince, then at the ABC of Paris and Bellas Artes de Santiago, Chile. Since 1970, Lebreton has lived in Canada and is divided between writing and painting. This passionate of art and analytical psychology has developed a universal potential that allows him to paint paintings where everyone can recognize his own path. His style could be described as neo or para surrealist with a dreamlike dominance.

To conclude, it can be said that Lebreton's goal is to give everyone the opportunity to experience the whole of his life so that everyone can enter into communion with himself, the universe and the others with a feeling of joy and wonder with the medium of PAINTING.

His works have been exhibited at the Nader Art Gallery (Haiti), the Limited Art Gallery (New York), Terre des Hommes (Montreal, Museo de Arte Moderno (Santo Domingo), Museum of Fine Arts, Shreweport, Louisiana), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, National Pantheon Museum (Haiti), and more, and his works are also in major collections in Europe, the United States, Central and South America, etc.

Hervé Lebreton (Facebook)

Source: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1541399699304756&id=100003042238200

📸 Photography by gjeannit - June 8, 2019

HAITI⭐LEGENDS

#Artiste #chanteur, #compositeur #guitariste, #danseur #peintre

#artist #HaitianPainters

#Singer #Entertainer #guitarist #Dancer

#Haitilegends #LePoint

#Métropole #Multitalented

[onestowatch]

6 Ones to Know If You’re a Fan of BROCKHAMPTON

Rap is expanding. New sub-genres, especially alternative hip hop, have come out of the shadows and into the mainstream. Shout out to “America’s Favorite Boyband,” Brockhampton, for being at the forefront of all of this awesomeness. With their cult-like impact and ability to capture younger demographics, those that fall into this genre (or lack thereof) make some wonder where this music has been their entire life. 

With the recent release of Brockhampton lead man Kevin Abstract’s latest track & video, we curated 6 rappers (or groups) who are also ready to make a splash in the world of hip-hop. These six artists are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of pushing the current boundaries, and we must say the future of rap looks pretty good. Go on, read on!

Injury Reserve

The trio that makes up Injury Reserve hails from the unexpected city of Tempe, Arizona. Formed in 2013, the group consists of producer Parker Corey and rappers Stepa J. Groggs and Ritchie With a T. Reminiscent of A Tribe Called Quest and Black Sheep, Injury Reserve pushes the boundaries of hip hop, not only with their beats but also with their lyrics. Their song topics range from criticism of the music industry, to racism in America, and even to hype-beast culture. Since releasing Live From the Dentist Office in 2015, the group has released two more full projects and singles while captivating the ears of many. Their most recent single, “Jawbreaker,” which dropped in 2019, featured Rico Nasty. Plan to dedicate a lot of your time getting to know Injury Reserve.

PNTHN

There’s something about Texas and its ability to produce highly talented rap groups. Pronounced Pantheon, the 10-man rap collective from San Marcos is building off groups like Wu-Tang Klan, A$AP Mob, Odd Future and of course Brockhampton. Although those groups opened the gates, PNTHN only further widens them. They have hit the ground running since forming in March 2017. The collective has already released two EPs and has toured with acts like Vince Staples and Freddie Gibbs. Their diversity and ability to produce both chill and hype beats has put them on the radar. Recently, the group showcased their live performance abilities at SXSW. If you want to say “I told you so” to your friends in the future, peep these dudes.

Dre’es

Not that much is known about Dre’es, which adds to his mystique. Born Dre’es de la Pena, he grew up in Wilmington, California. Dre’es is signed to Futile Sounds, which had led him to collaborate with artists such as Mia and Pontiac. The first single Dre’es released was in 2017 and since then, it has gone on to reach nearly 7 million streams. His songs are wavy, yet he still maintains an amazing ability to turn it up and tear into a verse. Dre’es is not only different, but also exciting. It is clear that Dre’es is influenced by pioneers Frank Ocean and Tyler, The Creator. Although he currently raps about being a struggling rapper, don’t be surprised if 2019 is a huge year for Dre’es.

JPEGMAFIA

Sophisticated is a good place to start when talking about JPEGMafia. JPEG, AKA Peggy, often greets listeners with “damn Peggy” in his intros. Hailing from East Flatbush, New York, JPEGMafia is one the newest rapper to embrace the role of genre expander. At the age of 13, JPEG had his first experience with racism which not only affected his mindset, but also his future music endeavors. JPEG later enlisted in the military where he served time in Iraq and also started to let his creative juices flow. Between 2009 and 2015, JPEG released 7 mixtapes and since 2016, he has released 3 studio albums. JPEG’s most recent project Veteran will leave you wanting more. Buckle down and dive deep into the gifted brain of JPEGMafia.  

Mick Jenkins

Born in Alabama but raised in Chicago, Mick Jenkins was exposed to other Chicago rappers Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa as early as 2013 -- but his rise has been slow and steady. Many are familiar with his hit single “Jazz,” but Jenkins is more than that. Collectively, he has released 4 mixtapes, 3 EPs, and 2 albums since 2012. His bars are smooth, filled with meaning, and draw emotion from listeners. As he has grown, he also has become more confident. His true capabilities shine through on his newest project, Pieces of a Man, which further prove that Mick’s rapping is true talent. As he rounds out his international tour, don’t be surprised if his popularity continues to rise. 

KOTA the Friend

Brooklyn based KOTA the Friend is crafty. Growing up listening to the likes of Ms. Lauryn Hill, Jay-Z, Nas, and Eminem, it’s no surprise KOTA got into rapping. As he grew, music became a way for the artist to communicate with those who previously misunderstood him. KOTA would now describe his music as a fusion between Jay-Z, Jimi Hendrix, D’Angelo, Bob Dylan, Ingrid Michelson and more. Not many other rappers can say that they incorporate Dylan into their bars. KOTA is the complete package, and his music not only inspires but also unites his listeners. His unique voice melts over the beats making it impossible to not bop along to the music. His vibe is simplistic, but don’t be shocked when he’s the next one to get stuck in your head.

[soundsof71]

David Bowie, “Kooks”, solo acoustic, from Bowie at the Beeb, recorded June 3, 1971, broadcast June 21.

Duncan Zowie Haywood Jones (b. May 30. 1971) was by no means the first rock kid, but he was perhaps the first whose dad wrote a song to him and put it on an album, 1971′s Hunky Dory. 

That version of “Kooks”, recorded in July, was quite elaborate, featuring the band soon to be known as The Spiders from Mars, with Trevor Bolder adding trumpet to his unusually busy bass, Mick Ronson’s string arrangements, and guest Rick Wakeman’s dance hall piano (who also played on “Changes”, “Life on Mars?”, and “Oh! You Pretty Things”). I think it’s perfect, one of the highlights of the album, and of David’s discography.

This is the first recording of “Kooks”, though, recorded live by the BBC, with just David and a guitar, only 4 days after Duncan was born. This one is perfect in its own way, too, and quite a revelation. Before he starts the song, David notes that he’d been at home listening to Neil Young when he got the news of Duncan’s birth (Angela’s labor went on for 30 hours, so David left?), and this version of “Kooks” really does sound like it could have come straight off of After The Gold Rush.

That may seem an odd point of origin, especially given how very, very English “Kooks” sounds in its released version, but don’t forget that David started 1971 with his first trip to the US, traveling cross-country (from Washington DC to Los Angeles) by bus on a three-week press tour. 

As he said in 1999, “The whole Hunky Dory album reflected my newfound enthusiasm for this new continent that had been opened up to me [in 1971]. That was the first time a real outside situation affected me so 100 percent that it changed my way of writing and the way I look at things.” 

It was reflected in songs inspired by Bob Dylan, Andy Warhol (both of those by name, of course), and Lou Reed, among many others, including yes, Neil Young. After the Gold Rush spent that entire year on the Billboard charts, and landed as the 20th-best selling album of 1971. It would have been inescapable for David (as indeed it was for all of us!).

In fact, David’s next recording of “Kooks”, the first official demo, was even more Neil Young-inspired, verging on the downright derivative – slower, sleepier, folkier, and honestly, a little spooky. Neil would’ve been all over this, I think. You can hear that version over @bowiesongs, Chris O’Leary’s companion tumblr to his Wordpress blog Pushing Ahead of The Dame (named for the great line from Hunky Dory’s Velvet Underground tribute, “Queen Bitch”), one of the best fan-based resources for any artist on the web, and the best textual resource on Bowie, period, as well as the first volume of the book(s) coming out of it, Rebel Rebel: All the Songs of David Bowie From ‘64 to '76 (needless to say, highly recommended).

There was another version of “Kooks” that aired on the BBC on September 21, 1971, “Bob Harris’ Sounds Of The Seventies”, which had been recorded for what turned out to be  an extremely rare (500 copies) Hunky Dory promo called  BOWPROMO1, featuring 7 songs from David on side 1 and 5 from Dana Gillespie on side 2. (The Bowie tracks were officially released on Record Store Day 2017.) 

It’s quite charming, too – starting to sound considerably more British with Trevor Bolder on bass (but no brass), and Mick Ronson on acoustic guitar and vocals (but no strings) – but to me it falls short of both the polished gem of the Hunky Dory version, and the intimacy of the first BBC version. Still, you can hear David’s laughter as the song begins, and the smile of his that you hear throughout will wind up on your own face too.

(Young Duncan sucking Dad’s finger, June 29, 1971, by Ron Burton.)

My favorite versions of “Kooks” are definitely the ones from Hunky Dory and the June 1971 BBC version that I brought you at the top of this post, but all four are completely unique, and very much worth hearing. You’ll come away with an even clearer picture of how much craft David put into every aspect of his presentations, as well as a razor-sharp view of how much of it was all the way there from the very first moment. 

And yeah, a reminder of how closely connected David remained to Duncan through the rest of his life. Theirs is my favorite parent-child relationship in the rock pantheon, and you can hear the beginning of it right here, days after they met for the very first time.

[dustedmagazine]

DKV & Joe McPhee — The Fire Each Time (Not Two)

Ken Vandermark and Joe McPhee share many philosophical commonalities, prominent among them a propensity for giving figurative flowers to the legion of individuals who have influenced their art. Vandermark regularly lists and explicates the members of his expanding pantheon and often composes with particular people in mind. McPhee does the same if less frequently, returning to a select few with semi-regularity. The Fire Each Time intimates at the identity of a mutual mentor, adapting the title of one of author James Baldwin’s seminal non-fiction treatises to apply to a series of concert recordings from a two legs of 2017 tour by the team-up of Vandermark’s DKV Trio with McPhee.

DKV, the first two consonants abbreviating drummer Hamid Drake and bassist Kent Kessler alongside the leader’s surname initial, remains among Vandermark’s oldest working groups. It’s also one of his most visceral and satisfying as it takes the time-honored template of reeds plus rhythm and applies it to a free jazz context fueled by equal parts composition and improvisation. Guests to the framework, at least on record, can historically be counted on a handful of fingers and include the late Fred Anderson, guitarist Joe Morris and members of the Swedish trio The Thing. McPhee has an analogous ongoing outlet in Trio X with drummer Jay Rosen, that recently resumed activity with the addition of the late bassist Dominic Duval’s son in place of his dad. 

Baldwin’s memory resonates in the set’s title, but another massive influence manifests in both the collective spirit of the music and the first of two McPhee-composed poems that serve as framing notes. McPhee threads a baker’s dozen of John Coltrane’s titles into a text alongside several more by Baldwin lamenting the iconic saxophonist’s passing. The second recontextualizes McPhee’s pivotal “Nation Time” (a piece given three medley-fused readings throughout the box) to our current “Error of Trump” and pulls zero punches in relating both the stakes and the consequences for those billions maliciously and mendaciously left outside of the orange demagogue’s new world order. Internalized in tandem with the galvanizing music the effect of McPhee’s righteous invective is immediate and incensing. 

Musically, the five performances spread across six discs hew to roughly similar durations; but they vary dynamically in terms of content. Even pieces given repeat investigation are ripe with righteous interplay and variation. DKV has never been shy about reveling in covers and the setlists are littered with choice selections in that regard. Don Cherry’s “Brown Rice,” Jerome Kern’s “Ol’ Man River” and Monk’s “Evidence” each receive incisive interpretations. There are also numerous Vandermark pieces that reference locations including “81 Horatio Street,” Baldwin’s erstwhile West Village residence, which recently sold through Sotheby’s for $20 million, egregious advancement of income inequality be damned.  “P.S. 24” and “West 128th Street” reference Baldwin’s boyhood alma mater and posthumous memorial both located in Harlem.

Vandermark also scripts aural homages to several of Baldwin’s Parisian haunts (“Rue de Tournon,” “Les Deux Magots,” “Café de Flore”) and other geographical stops he made in Turkey and Switzerland. Each of the pieces flows easily one to the next with foursome working equally well at full muster and component combinations. Even on the rare occasions where they coast together on vamps the feel is not one of time-killing, but rather recalibrating for the next collective trajectory. That continuous and purposeful momentum makes for a rich comparison to each of the set’s dedicatees, neither of whom could subsume or shelve restless creativity coupled unerringly to urgent advocacy for social and racial justice.

Derek Taylor

[driftingthroughabsentmindedly]

Italians love babies so even if you need to beg your next-door-neighbour, bring one with you to Rome, they’re like a free pass to everything! Listen up, I’m about to give you the ins and outs of how to do the Rome thing, this mainly applies if you have a little one but there are some gems of advice for the baby-less too.

Italians absolutely adore babies. Because of this it was an amazing experience bringing our Little One with us to this incredible city. Travelling with a baby can be quite nerve-wracking for some people, but I think for most things with plenty of research in advance a lot of the stress can be eliminated. D had to go to Rome for work so we hitched along at the end of his trip for a little holiday, it had been a long summer in the UK and we both needed some kind of break!

This blog is being broken up into different segments to make it easier to navigate your way through the piece. The full itinerary is included at the end too as is the walking tour map we used.

Accommodation

We were lucky enough to have his mum join us for the trip. So after a few comparison websites I found the best route was to go with an Airbnb. An entire two-bedroom apartment on the edge of Vatican City was cheaper than two bedrooms in a hotel. With the apartment we not only had the two bedrooms, we had a living room and a kitchen, which turned out to be a godsend. It meant the Little Lady wasn’t confined to one room and could roam about the apartment semi-freely.

We were also right across the road from a gorgeous coffee place which we got breakfast from every morning, it was €1 for a cappuccino!

Planning

I structured a plan for the few days we had but made sure it was flexible. As someone who is possibly a little too keen for organisation it was a lot for me to say this!

We had three full days in Rome, so though we didn’t get to see everything on the list, the Jellybean was the priority and we went by her moods, stopped when we needed to and gave her plenty of chill time in the morning and evenings in the apartment.

We made sure we had ample snacks and water for the Little Lady and brought a packed lunch along so we could let her run around in a shaded spot rather than try and restrain her in a highchair in a restaurant.

Tips

Stay outside of the main tourist hot-spots, though this is a tired piece of advice it’s very poignant. We ate out all but one night because the cost wasn’t horrendous.

They LOVE babies. The Jellybean got the royal treatment in a restaurant we went to on the first night, she attracted attention from all of the staff, they taught her how to blow kisses and she even got her own free dessert. Did I mention she had only just turned one?!

Prams are useless in Rome. If you have a carrier bring that, if not, see if you can borrow one. Remember most of the attractions are OLD buildings and don’t usually have elevators available to the public. We saw a couple having to carry a newborn in a pram up all the steps at Castel Sant’Angelo, I did not envy them.

All of the tourist hot-spots are crazy busy! I’m not talking a few tourists getting in your pictures, I’m talking jam-packed. It was the worst at the Trevi fountain and going through the museums in Vatican City.

Trevi Fountain

Baby Carrier at Trevi Fountain

  ALL of the multi-passes available; Omni Pass, Roma pass…etc really aren’t worth it.

We booked nothing. NOT A SINGLE THING in advance.

Don’t fall for the trap of buying a skip the line ticket for Vatican City, listen up I’m about to seriously make this trip a hella lot easier for you.

We got approached at the entrance by many poachers who wanted to sell us a skip the line ticket for extortionate prices of €50+, we ignored them all and almost ignored the actual official man who let us skip the THREE-HOUR-LONG-QUEUE all because we had a baby strapped to our chest. We strolled on in, walked up the stairs and bought our €17 tickets.

THIS PART IS IMPORTANT FOR EVERYONE. The Basilica is FREE to enter, however, after you go through the museums and see the Sistine Chapel, you technically need to queue again to see the Basilica – if you haven’t paid for a group ticket. You are encouraged to follow the ‘Exit’ sign at the left. Now, because my husband is a genius, he also did some research and found out if you follow the groups exit which is at the back right of the room, you can skip the next load of queues and enter the Basilica nice and easy. We felt like some super sneaky ninja spies defying the rules – so badass.

Give yourself enough time for Vatican City, you won’t appreciate it if all you’re concerned about is getting through it. Also the amount of people that will be there will just stress you out because everyone moves very slowly, the ambling pace however was good enough for the little lady to nod off so I wasn’t complaining.

Vatican Museums

Family Pic

Going Through into Sistine Chapel

Gardens at Vatican Museums

Vatican museums

  Gardens at the Vatican museums

We struggled to book tickets for the Colosseum online without paying for a guided tour – which really wouldn’t be ideal with a baby. Instead, after buying the Red Sightseeing Tour Bus ticket, we added on the Colosseum Fast Track when we got on the bus. The queues for these places really are hours long, and this was the best deal we could find. We waited a total of fifteen minutes before getting through security and being inside.

Me at Colosseum

Outside Colosseum

Take it easy, give yourself plenty of time and try not to over plan things, your child is going to get tired and depending on how old they are they’re not going to want to stay in a carrier all day. We broke up the day by sitting in parks, letting her walk around and allowing her explore.

Pack PLENTY of water and snacks for yourself and your child. There is nothing worse than a hungry child besides perhaps a cranky Mama to match. This is where the kitchen in the apartment came in handy. We made a packed lunch and brought it with us for the days, which cut down costs as we were in the top tourist attraction places, but it also meant we could eat when hungry and keep everyone happy.

Despite reading otherwise, most of the restaurants we went to for dinner had some kind of highchair, though I did have to hold her in one place, Rome is definitely becoming more with the times when it comes to dining out with children!

The driving in Rome is TERRIFYING, lanes don’t seem to be a thing. We got a standard taxi from the airport and I genuinely couldn’t look at the road. We got an Uber on the way back to the airport and the driver seemed to have a lot more consideration for us as customers so I would definitely recommend them over the standard taxi service.

Itinerary

Day 1

Castel Sant’Angelo

Walk along the River Tiber towards shopping district

Spanish Steps

Gelato Stop

Trevi Fountain

Pantheon

  Walking Along River Tiber

Spanish Steps

Inside the Pantheon

Fountain outside the Pantheon

  Day 2

Red Sightseeing Bus

Pyramid

Colosseum

Pyramid

Colosseum

  Day 3

Vatican City; Museums and Basilica

Tourist Shop Hopping

The Blog I found very useful and the Walking Tour included.

If you’ve never travelled with your little one before and would like some more generic airport advice then have a look at my previous post, Travelling Alone with an Infant!

Rome: Travelling with a Baby Italians love babies so even if you need to beg your next-door-neighbour, bring one with you to Rome, they’re like a free pass to everything! Italians love babies so even if you need to beg your next-door-neighbour, bring one with you to Rome, they’re like a free pass to everything!

[baileymetz]

Entry 3 - Design Innovation of a Sports Venue

Mercedes Benz stadium is a multi-purpose stadium which is based in Georgia in the United States. The Mercedes Benz Stadium is the home stadium of the Atlanta Falcons in the NFL and the Atlanta United Football Club in major league soccer. The stadium has multiple purposes as it can be a stadium that can hold different sports and events so that the stadium can cater to whatever event/whoever wants to play or perform at this stadium. The design on the stadium is a one of a kind design with its sharp edges and modern design the stadium is a piece of art. The design of the roof was made so it can retract itself closed which features a “pinwheel”. This pinwheel consists of eight triangle panels, these panels operate on two parallel rails in the stadium which are responsible for moving the panel around which allows for the stadium to retract its roof. 

(Speddon, 2019)

(Kruger, 2019) - The Roof of the Stadium

The stadium was designed by architect Bill Johnson and the innovative design of the roof was inspired by the Roman Pantheon. The structure of the building was designed in the opposite way of a traditional building as explained by (Owens Corning 2018) it was made “from top to bottom” by putting more emphasis on the innovation and art for the design of the one of a kind roof. The roof was designed to be made of a clear lightweight material which allows for much easier access of opening and closing the roof and more flexibility in the design. Below the roof in the circular ring is a video board that provides fans with more access to replays statistics and provides sponsors with more signage space that they can use to advertise to fans in the stadiums. 

The stadium as stated by (Hughes, 2016) explains that their new LED lighting system can create a fantastic viewing experience for the fan improving visibility from the front to the back and is also environmentally friendly with its energy saving system. The innovation in design and new features has made the stadium more accessible to host different types of events like different sports and concerts etc. Most notably Coldplay has decided to go on tour after taking a 10 year break and focusing on a sustainable and low carbon tour (Ho. 2021). With the innovation of this stadium both expressing new design and more possibilities to event entertainment this is where the band will start its tour. 

References:

Hughes, B. (2016). Future Stadiums. Australasian Leisure Management, 119. https://search.informit.org/doi/pdf/10.3316/informit.533218182721506?casa_token=IYsWMg1hpzwAAAAA:QSAYdJPM8p5KnYXAl9sm8Qu_psTkmVYvZ8Igo3AY5uoV-2gX8sohZvYo7YicS5BtH27p6Wj6n80wwKQ

Ho. (2021). Coldplay to perform in June at Mercedes-Benz Stadium: Band is touting tour as 'sustainable and low-carbon.' The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (2001), D2.

Owens Corning. (2018). Owens Corning® FOAMULAR® XPS solution brings game-changing solution to Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Building Design & Construction.

Wikipedia contributors. (2022b, May 7). Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_Stadium

Yao, & Schwarz, E. C. (2017). Transnational venue management corporations and local embeddedness. International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship, 18(1), 70–80. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSMS-05-2016-0008

Deng, & Poon, S. W. (2014). Positioning mega-event flagships - from Performing Arts Center of Expo 2010 to Mercedes-Benz Arena. Architectural Engineering and Design Management, 10(3-4), 233–250. https://doi.org/10.1080/17452007.2013.775101

Kruger, R. (2019, February 1). Will the Mercedes-Benz Stadium roof be open or closed? That’s the question [Photograph]. 11alive. https://www.11alive.com/article/news/open-or-closed-thats-the-question/85-a78da06a-acc8-4147-bd7d-00351fb6b1bb

Speddon, Z. (2019, September 16). Preview: Mercedes-Benz Stadium [Photograph]. Soccer Stadium Digest. https://soccerstadiumdigest.com/2016/09/preview-mercedes-benz-stadium/

[firefield]

DAVID BOWIE - Stage

Original mix from the box set,

A New Career In A New Town 77-82

Stage was the first live recording I ever bought with my own money... lawn mowing money that would have been in 1981 or so. At that point I was buying whatever Bowie record the local shop got in and riding home with it on my bike. There was no internet of course, so it was a sort of disorienting way to get to know his music... what came before what? What album is *that* song from? Etc. This record contains some of my favorite Bowie live performances - how cool is Breaking Glass, with those amazing additional bass figures, and that finger snap coda? LOVE. And that reduced tempo hint-of-funk version of What In The World? Groovy. The change of emphasis/rhythm on the lyrics works so well.

I get what they were thinking with the mutilated track order - it hits hard with rockers and hits, eases into this instrumental mid-section, lifted up by an earnest and beautiful version of Heroes and closes with frenetic newer tracks from the 'heroes' record. It plays like something record executives would put together and stamp their Royal Seal of Approval on, but the differences in Bowie's voice/energy level is totally contrary to the feel of a "show" and I'm glad they included an expanded triple LP with accurate show order and new mix. I'm fully aware of the "it's a cash grab!" crowd and I won't pretend to understand that perspective about art.

This has been remastered a couple of times, along with the DVD-A surround treatment, but I've only ever owned an RCA mid-80's reissue I bought in high school, and it is PTD (played to death)

So I am of course thrilled to have this beautiful edition on wonderfully weighty yellow wax mimicking the limited U.K. Edition... (France got blue I think) but unlike the two versions of David Live in the previous box that both vie admirably for top spot - the two presentations of Stage in this box (this version and Stage 2017) the latter, with its natural pacing and arc, is my go-to.

I understand the decision... open the record with Warszawa? Yeah - right. Nope, we have to hit 'em hard with Ziggy and *e a s e* into the new stuff. Apparently this was Visconti’s idea initially, and presented to DB and approved by him. The entire first disk is mainly Ziggy with a couple STS tracks and a nice version of Fame. The second disk lays out the newer material, all from Low and Heroes, and is difficult music beautifully performed.

A new guitarist is added to the pantheon of brilliant DB sidemen, Frank Zappa guitarist Adrian Belew. Again a recommendation from Brian Eno, and after catching a Zappa show in Cologne, Bowie made the offer to snatch him up after that tour concluded. He went on to work with DB/BE for Lodger, and once again on the Sound & Vision Tour. You realize, especially when you move through his discography chronologically, how important it was that Bowie’s lead guitarists all, each and every one, have the ability to make the electric guitar do unusual things and sound very unique. They all have a certain flamboyance and bombast that is a thread throughout DB’s career.

This is a nice remaster from the original edition. Stage always sounded great - especially for a live show - so great in fact, some doubted it’s actual “liveness.” This remaster is a Ray Staff job, assisted by Tony Visconti and as with all the legacy remasters so far, it’s packed with attention to detail and wonderful natural dynamics. Although the 2017 remixed version is superior as a live document of a performance in time, for those of us with very well-played copies from the 70’s and 80’s, and a sense of nostalgia about this track sequence and overall sound - this is a welcome addition to a great box set.

[youngandhungryent]

Lil Uzi Vert Vs The World: What’s Next For The Rapper?

When assigning attributes to Lil Uzi Vert, master tactician likely isn’t one of the first that springs to mind. Adored the world over for his potent mix of fashion-laden flashiness and romantic misadventure, it’s easy for a generation of jaded hip-hop fans to write the Philadelphia native off as just another SoundCloud rap alumni from the conveyor belt. Or at least they could until he entered the pantheon of hip-hop’s top selling artists with his new record.

Earlier this month, Uzi’s sophomore major label project Eternal Atake arrived with such a colossal thud that it siphoned the shine off of other new releases in the process. An interstellar trip rendered in his own distinctive image, the project and its deluxe expansion pack acted as a cultural diversion that implored everyone—lover, hater and floating voter alike—to listen. However, the sense of occasion that surrounded its release was birthed by the fact that we, the listeners, had endured such a long and winding journey with him. Over this agonizing two-year stint in the wilderness, Uzi and his fanbase have contended with extensive label drama, Roc Nation intervention, premature cries of retirement and a near-endless array of leaks.

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

After enduring this firestorm of adverse circumstances, the hype around Lil Uzi’s first project in three years was enough to elevate him far beyond any sales projections that he’d obtained in the past. To put it into perspective, the project’s 288,000 worth of first week sales allowed Uzi to surpass the initial numbers of another blockbuster surprise release in Eminem’s Music to Be Murdered By.

Doubling the 135,000 worth of first week sales that 2017’s Luv Is Rage 2 accrued, it’s here that we see Uzi’s masterclass in brand management. By making Eternal Atake into a near-otherworldly commodity, the audience’s eagerness meant that they fiendishly devoured every last second of it to the tune of over 300 million streams. At a time where omnipresence is seen as a sure-fire business strategy, “Baby Pluto” reasserted the power of keeping the audience yearning for more.

Now, as the dust begins to settle, attention turns to where Uzi goes from here. After pulling off a promotional coup with EA, it seems implausible that he’s going to slink back into the shadows. After all, a magician’s sleight-of-hand is a lot less astounding when you know how the illusion is accomplished.

Entering a period of enhanced visibility that’s been compounded with his feature on The Weeknd’s “vaporwave remix” of “Heartless,” it remains to be seen whether the success of his new project will inspire him to embark on a feature spree. Nonetheless, Uzi’s remarks would imply that those who yearn to see Uzi in the flesh will have the opportunity to do so.

Although the world has been thrown into a state of dysfunction by the pandemic, the inability to congregate en masse doesn’t mean that shows aren’t being pencilled in behind-the scenes. In tow with comments on Instagram live about shows that’ll feature “fireworks and spaceships”, the emergence of his new project prompted an excitable Uzi to announce that “This is a Performance Album. #ETERNALATAKE TOUR!”

If and when a run of dates arrives, it’ll mark his first major live jaunt since his 2018 co-headline shows with G-Eazy and– when you consider the thematic scope of the record– all signs suggest that it’ll be his most visually impressive undertaking to date.

Image by HNHH

In releasing Eternal Atake, Lil Uzi Vert delivered one of the hip-hop internet sphere’s biggest holy grails and quelled the endless memes, theorising and forum discussion over what it’d sound like. However, there’s still one elusive project that’s out there in the ether and it’s one that it appears Lil Uzi is waiting on for different reasons.

Cryptic in the most thinly veiled sense, a recent tweet from Uzi simply read “Soon as HE drop imma drop again.” Almost immediately, many concluded that there was only one contemporary he’d be talking about. Subject to even more leaks than Uzi, Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red has become a record of almost mythical proportions due to the setbacks and delays it’s faced.

At one stage, Uzi and the Atlantan artists were firm friends, collaborating with one another on tracks such as Die Lit’s “Shootas,” “Of Course We Ghetto Flowers” and ASAP Mob’s “RAF” among others. Then in November 2019, Uzi claimed that the pair were no longer on good terms before walking back his claims in the wake of EA’s release. Amid retweeting a fan’s plea for an unreleased track to be released, it appears that Uzi is looking to test his mettle against the groundswell of hype that surrounds Carti’s first project since May of 2018.

As for other tracks that remain in the vault for now, Uzi informed fans that “I got different plans wit the lil baby song and the a boogie song they hit different” while “Don’t Want It,” his frequently teased team-up with Lil Nas X, continues to take on a life of its own as an elusive property.

At the moment, Lil Uzi’s current formula is transfixing audiences the world over. Cruising in the trap-infused hip-hop lane that became his staple, Uzi’s persistence with the sound casts an uncertain fate over one sonic shift that he’s alluded to at regular intervals.

Over the years, Lil Uzi has been forthcoming about his disdainful relationship with the categorization of rapper. Seeing himself as more of a “rockstar” than an MC by traditional metrics, his love of the nihilistic punk of GG Allin and the horror-based work of Rob Zombie has been discussed at length but it’s yet to result in any specific genre-melding work. That said, it’s not as if he hasn’t vocalized his ambition to create a rock album in the past and even outlined what the project would entail during a lengthy chat with Zane Lowe.

Speaking in 2017, Uzi’s rough schematics for the project included an “all chicks” band. In terms of who the ensemble would include, Uzi had his sights on his idol in Paramore’s Hayley Williams, claiming “It’s hard to top that. She’s like the best, just of my generation… There’s nobody bro.”

Although it may have been three years ago, it seems as if this was a pressing concern for Uzi at the time. In fact, his plans had even met the approval of one of his biggest inspirations—and a man who he has the likeness of on a $200,000 chain— Marilyn Manson.

“He wants to do a rock album next, and I would love to see that happen because I think that he could make a new thing,” Manson informed CoS. “Not some rock/rap type of thing, something special and new that I think needs to be created just to fuck the world up more…. I think that if I had to pick what Lil Uzi Vert should be, if he’s involved in rock, it’s an early Bad Brains or Faith No More, but with a catchier element.”

The rampant success of Eternal Atake could provide him with the necessary creative free rein to bring these plans to life and, if the daily social media enquiries from fans about its status are an indication, the appetite is very much there for a crossover project.  

While Uzi is willing to propagate the idea that he’s got another album waiting in the wrings, it’s important to remember that this could be hubris when you consider what went into making Eternal Atake. Comments from his long-time engineer about EA’s structure go some way to lifting the lid on the painstaking process of refinement that took place behind-the-scenes.

Image by HNHH

“I thought it would be cool if there was a whole storyline with it,” Kesha Lee informed Rolling Stone. “So, I went ahead and started working on one. That version of it took me a year. There were some changes as far as some of the skits. When I only had two weeks to finish up everything, I had to cut it down to a couple seconds.”

Coupled with Supah Mario’s claims that he sent him over “300 beats” and TM88 spending “multiple hours” on the phone with him every day, it’s evident that Lil Uzi Vert, beyond all of the hype and misdirection that dogged the project, is a perfectionist that’ll only release music that he feels is up to his preordained standards.

Only time will tell exactly what the next stage of Lil Uzi’s career will look like. Yet in light of Eternal Atake’s success and the levelling up that it’s came to represent, all signs suggest that we won’t be going back into hibernation for a long, long time.

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[newstfionline]

Jesus won’t save you—President Xi Jinping will, Chinese Christians told

By Simon Denyer, Washington Post, November 14, 2017

BEIJING--Jesus Christ won’t drag you out of poverty or cure your illnesses, but the Chinese Communist Party will, so take down those pictures of Christ and put up a nice photograph of President Xi Jinping.

That’s what thousands of villagers in southeastern China have been told by local officials, in a sign of the growing cult of personality around the country’s powerful leader, as well as rising pressure on Christian worship.

A social media account in Jiangxi province’s Yugan county said villagers had “willingly” removed 624 posters showing Christian religious sayings and images, and replaced them with 453 images of Xi. The move, while still on a small scale, harks back to the personality cult surrounding Communist China’s first leader, Mao Zedong, whose picture was in every home.

In the latest campaign, party members involved in poverty alleviation toured villages telling people how the party was supporting agriculture and removing poverty, “melting the hard ice in the hearts of religious believers” and “helping turn them into believers in the party.”

Qi Yan, chairman of the people’s congress in the township of Huangjinbu within Yugan county and the man in charge of the local poverty alleviation effort, told the South China Morning Post that villagers “should no longer rely on Jesus, but on the party for help.”

Qi said the campaign has been running since March in Huangjinbu township, with more than 1,000 portraits of Xi distributed and hung in homes. Christians make up around one-third of the population there, with between 5,000 and 6,000 families, he said.

“Many rural people are ignorant. They think God is their savior,” he said. “After our cadres’ work, they’ll realize their mistakes and think: We should no longer rely on Jesus, but on the party for help.”

In October, officials in Yugan county held a meeting in which they talked about “having a sense of crisis” about the presence of religion there, according to the county’s official website. County party secretary Hu Wei said they must insist on “uniting people of faith around the party.”

In August, officials also forcibly removed crosses in Yugan county, according to Radio Free Asia--mirroring a similar campaign that took place in recent years in neighboring Zhejiang province.

A resident of another township in Yugan, a man surnamed Liu, told the South China Morning Post that villagers had no choice but to comply.

“Some families put up gospel couplets on their front doors during the Lunar New Year; some also hung paintings of the cross. But they’ve all been torn down,” he said. “They all have their belief and, of course, they didn’t want to take them down. But there is no way out. If they don’t agree to do so, they won’t be given their quota from the poverty-relief fund.”

China’s constitution protects the right to religion, but the state also takes a dim view of any institution that might challenge its total control over society. So Christians, Buddhists, Muslims and others have the right to worship, but their houses of worship are often tightly controlled and can easily be shut down if deemed distracting or a threat to official dogma.

More than any other time in decades, the party is now seeking more control. At last month’s Party Congress in Beijing, Xi Jinping was granted another five years in power as general secretary, and elevated almost to the level of Mao in the Communist pantheon, with his name written into the party constitution. Critics say it spells a dangerous return to one-man rule in China, something that had disastrous results under Mao.

During his speech at the congress, Xi said religion must be guided by the party to adapt to socialist society.