#lodown

[warhead]

[michaelwoodruffnectarmotion]

battle series no.5 - inspired by Paris Texas

[firmamentberlin]

Lodown Magazine Vehiculum (5) #lodown #lodownmagazine #vehiculum (at Firmament) https://www.instagram.com/p/CmyRySQMi3B/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[omegaremix]

Tower Records (final visit); 2006.

Close to the end of the year, and also when the semester ended, I looked forward in selling my books after finals so that I would get money back. Then I got a friend together to go with me to Tower Records in Huntington. In a matter of one hour, that money would be gone. Right now I’d be very excited about what I would find in those bins. But for years it hasn’t been the case and the euphoria of being in a store, any store at midnight, has been long gone. The entire chain went under and currently co-opting it is a third-rate clothing store.

Autumn of 2006, people were standing on the sidewalks of Route 110 holding picket signs like it was the end of the world. First advertised on those signs were ten to thirty percent off all merchandise at Tower. When passers-by and sidewalk shoppers took a closer look, they ended up in shock as they realized that it was an end of an era of some sort. Time passed by and the stakes went up. Forty to sixty percent discounts finally garnered Tower’s final audience and rush of shoppers. The final swan song came when all merchandise was down to a whopping seventy to ninety percent off. That was when they had their biggest ever turnout because no one wanted to pay full price for music. Not then, not now.

Music collectors and fans were reluctant to buy any new release or any title that was full price. They all jumped at the opportunity to clean out Tower’s shelves with a steal. Buyers hovered and tracked entire sections looking for that one shining crown jewel that made their lifetime.

As a music fan for years, I couldn’t begin to tell you how much Tower shaped my taste in music and style. Unlike FYE and Sam Goody, Tower was the one commercial music chain that had a lot of artists and titles that no other commercial store had. Think of what was the Port Jefferson Music Den (closed down in 2002) where they were the one underground record store that had everything other stores didn’t even come close to carry. I remember Nineties summertimes visiting the Massapequa location picking up rare CD singles and imports as well as other rare hard-to-find and ahead-of-release-date CD’s and artists I picked up such as Autechre’s LP5 (1999) and EC8OR’s World Beaters (1998).

And being a fan of print media and graphic design, I also bought stacks of magazines every week. The magazine selection in Huntington was unrivaled, measuring at least several rows  of sixty to seventy feet of anything and everything you could think of: industrial (Industrial Nation), punk (Punk Planet), experimental (Wire), graffiti (Disruptiv), style (Mass Appeal, Mean, Vice, YRB), and art design magazines (LoDown, especially LoDown because it satisfied my requirement for underground German pop-kultur) as well as hardcore zines (Short Fast Loud!, Maximum Rock And Roll, Under The Volcano) and other cult magazines I happened to be lucky to pick up (Lisa Carver’s Rollerderby, anyone?). Every month went at least sixty to seventy dollars total on magazines alone.

Yet towards the end of Tower’s presence I didn’t pick up on music as much because just like other buyers, I had to stand back at the higher-than-usual prices for releases. Compared to discount chains like Best Buy and other record stores, it wasn’t unusual to find a new release with no-frills to be priced at $19.99 or even $21.99. DVDs I noticed were priced at times to be five dollars higher than their competitors. Maybe some shoppers felt the same sentiment as I did.

Not only that, the forces of internet piracy and MP3 downloading of recent years proved to be too dominant and powerful to be stopped, and is currently co-existing with other existing record stores this day and age. Consumers then re-routed the system right to their own bedrooms with no price to pay for their music. These factors, plus incurring debt that led the chain to bankruptcy in 2004, proved to be too much for Tower.

Without Tower Records, it was less convenient for me to pick up whatever artist or movie title I wanted right away right after work. When Tower closed down it took a bite of some of the physical record collecting I had. Yet, only they could have given me these experiences: no more magazines letting me know what the latest art direction was or who was in the spotlight. No more frantically walking around with a huge stack of everything and more in my hands still looking for one more CD. No more back room full of posters, sheet music, jazz, classical, hip-hop, techno, and soul. No more silly Hollywood memorabilia and comic-book fantasy merchandise. No more video games, no more characters hanging out in the store wearing goth, back-pack indie, or hardcore.

No more attitudes from the employees who treated customers like nothing because they felt like it. That was really the only problem I had with Tower Records, mostly in Huntington. The cashiers pointed people out with a huff and puff because they were given more than enough change or money, or how they rang up a transaction without even making an emotion or saying a word. Some stuck female cashiers had that flat out know-it-all act for no apparent reason. Sometimes I even renounced the shop because of its sometimes poor service, but that was not the case in the end as the attitude did improve, thank you.

And no more of what would be where I had my first date with my Peruvian then-girlfriend Jenny. I would never forget wandering in that Huntington store looking for the next purchase when she walked in, greeting each other with open arms. We left when a thunderstorm knocked the power out, but we returned after dinner and had a fun time, the first of many for months to come. This was also where I met a pretty and pale Irish redhead who I later met again into at community college the following year.

What is now left of the record store scene on Long Island? A few of them which existed when Tower crumbled are still around and even new ones popped up. The majority of shops in total are still around because internet opinion made their case about the lack of quality, esthetics, art, and ritual of having the physical thing, making the case of cherishing these shops. On the online circuit, some titles are now being released in very limited quantity, mainly in the low thousands or even in the mere hundreds. It’s a huge drop-off from what the millions in print runs used to be. Naming your own price for digital downloads, sharing streams to the public, or even buying from the label or artist directly is the way to go nowadays.

Doing my Ω show, I do most of my music testing at home.  My habits have been ruined by MP3s and streams as acquiring music is of very low cost and extremely ubiquitous. After all that, it hasn’t stopped me from going to a music warehouse in Shirley or celebrating Record Store Day annually in April to find breaks, samples, or dollar music to win it all. Yes, I still very much prefer to go out of town to buy music with my money which I support the artists and shops I like. Even to this day, I’ll be very happy spending two-hundred to two-fifty a visit, if I have it, on music just to have the artwork, colours, lyrics, pictures, ink, liner notes, credits, barcode, and the entire CD itself, because later on I will turn a profit in style points as time goes by, just like when people are hoarding and sharing their vinyl and cassette collections now.

November of 2006 was my last visit to Tower Records ever. Acquired would be some titles that made my pre-Ω shows and would be part of some personal mixtapes. Prices were forty percent off on music and that was when I decided to go and treat myself. There comes a time when you just can’t wait and risk a good sale on music before they no longer have stock. The total spent on my last ever visit to Tower Records was two-hundred on music and the Andy Warhol book at seventy-five, originally one-twenty-five. (Have you ever carried a book so massive and so heavy?) I took my bags worth of music and magazines with me to the trunk of my car, never to return to the Tower Records experience again.

On another note, I am in contact with M-Ro, a former manager of Tower Records, same location. He later on became a manager of a lifestyle store more out west and is now a ticket broker in an independent movie house. He once had a show on WUSB and was a major figurehead and darling of the Long Island underground and punk scene. You may also know his brother J-Ro, who still has a slot with us at WUSB.

Andy Warhol Giant-Size

Hatebreed Supremacy

Deftones B-Sides And Rarities

Boysetsfire The Misery Index: Note From The Plague Years

Lamb Of God Ashes Of The Wake

Throwdown Throwdown

Kill Your Idols From Companionship To Competition

Stereolab ABC Music

Pretty Girls Make Graves Elan Vitale

Roots Manuva Awfully Deep

A Tribe Called Quest The Low-End Theory

Leonard Cohen Death Of A Ladies’ Man

Jesu Silver

Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins Rabbit Fur Coat

Stereolab Fab Four Suture

Boards Of Canada Trans-Canada Highway

Ladytron Light And Magic

Kid 606 Pretty Girls Make Raves

Buzzcocks, The Operator’s Manual

Public Image Ltd. Greatest Hits So Far

Roy Ayers Virgin Ubiquity 2

Flyleaf Flyleaf

various artists Punk v. Emo

Total cost: ~ $275.00

[trvefenrizposts]

is he married and does he have kids

He is married to a woman named Marte but doesn't have kids

[lodown2002]

LoDown can’t wait til his music reaches the masses and can help the crowd heal almost like we’re meditating at the show of 20,000 people only difference is we’re jumping up and down together and forgetting we’re on earth

We just went to the astral plane

[alexandersahm]

PRESS/PUBLICATIONS 2023 Welcome to Cyborgeoisie, queercomputer.com, digital 2022 BBB_ im Interview: "Wie sieht eine neugeborene KI die Welt?“, DJ LAB, online 2023 What was growing there/PL3A$URE, Young Urban Performances, publication, print 2021 Koi Pond exhibition catalog, by KVTV, print 2020 Digital Identities, Feminist Futures, The CtrlZ.AI Zine Fair, Barcelona, print 2019 The Assembled Human, exhibition catalog Museum Folkwang, Essen, print 2018 Radiance VR, online 2018 WDR 5 Scala Radio Broadcast 2018 Zwischen Dystopie und Utopie, Schirn Mag, online 2017 BBB_ at Radio X, Frankfurt (M), DE 2017 Future Visions, exhibition catalog, Hochschule Zittau-Görlitz, print 2017 172 new book projects, Museum for Applied Arts, Frankfurt, print 2017 Video Premiere: BBB_ Nobody, Kaltblut Magazine, online 2017 Video Premiere: BBB_ Nobody, Lodown Magazine, online 2017 Keine Dekoration, Schirn Mag, online 2017 The Future Is Now, Schirn Mag, online 2017 Journal Frankfurt, online AWARDS / RESIDENCIES 2022 #takeheart research grant, with Hellerau European Center of the Arts 2020 Production grant of Initiative Musik 2020 Production grant by Musikfonds e.V., Germany 2020 Scholarship by Hessian Cultural Foundation 2018 First place of Samsung “Moving Image Award“, HfG Offenbach 2018 Grant of Rita Höfer Foundation, Sparkasse Frankfurt 2018 Web-Residency Favoriten Festival, Dortmund 2018 Residency at Transeuropa Fluid, Hildesheim 2017 Residency at Hellerau - European Centre for the Arts Dresden  2017 Production grant by Musikfonds e.V., Germany 2017 One year scholarship of the Art Association Frankfurt, Kuenstlerhilfe Frankfurt e.V. 2017 HfG Offenbach Annual Exhibition Award of the Art Association Frankfurt TEACHING / WORKSHOPS / RESEARCH 2022 AR/Sound Workshop, Summer Academy @ Art School Gera, DE 2020 Posthuman Music: diploma thesis, University of Art & Design Offenbach, DE EDUCATION 2022-2023 East Asia Studies, Humboldt University Berlin, DE 2020 Posthuman Music, design diploma, University of Art & Design Offenbach, DE 2017-2018 Collage of Design and Innovation, Tongji University Shanghai, CN 2012-2020 Electronic arts, University of Art & Design Offenbach,DE Born in Germany

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[deandacosta]

Lodown https://t.co/m9hRBtbPYq

[vtgbooks]

LODOWN MAGAZINE Milk Mills CLIVE OWEN Luca Ionescu KEIICHI NITTA Music Art Book

[hardgraphics]

[gigi-wallace-blog]

Magazine aesthetic

I would like to draw inspiration from the graphics used in Lodown magazine. The colour schemes used are very vibrant and lots of graphics are used in their covers, unlike most magazines which only feature photographs. However, the font of the magazine name itself changes to fit with the graphics; i would like to avoid doing this as it makes the magazine less recognisable.

As for my double page spread I would like to format my pages in the style of the page above with more text as I must write an article. This is from a fashion catalog by golf wang. The use of pngs is useful for showing the actual articles of clothing themselves as well as the use of annotation on the images. The background is a light colour to make the pngs and text obvious; but unlike many magazines and catalogs it is not white.

[cosmicdelights]

(Lodown95)

[firmamentberlin]

Lodown Magazine SAVAGES offers another ambiguous look an the leftfield side of pop culture and contemporary art. The latest issue featuring Ricky Powell, Why Ebay, Richard Kern, Cali Thornhill Dewitt and more. Available online at Firmament with worldwide shipping and in-store pickup options. #lodown (at Firmament) https://www.instagram.com/p/CNUu2ixJgOM/?igshid=xnbol49gdql7

[williammarksommer]

Drifters, Lodown Magazine

Thank you Lodown Magazine for interviewing me and featuring my work in their “Drifters” issue. It is really amazing to be featured alongside so many great artists, especially many I have looked up to over the past few years. I’m really happy to share the pages from that interview. 

160 pages, 205 x 30 cm.

Please grab a copy in their online shop below. 

https://shop.lodownmagazine.com/product/drifters

Used to telling stories to further his understanding of a diverse range of human experiences, American photographer William Mark Sommer started to work on a new project titled "The Loneliest Highway" in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, for which he was trying to find solace in the emptiness along Nevada's Lincoln Highway. The result is nothing short of remarkable, as he portrays the impact of seclusion with great empathy, a melancholic love letter in black and white addressed to those who struggle. Lodown caught up with the California-based artist to learn more about his work.

[berniearchiemac]

Today's t-shirt courtesy of @prowrestlingtees is my #dlobrown #teambrown #familymember which is appropriate cause I am a Brown @wwe #nationofdomimation #lodown #acesandeights @impactwrestling (at Newberry, South Carolina) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4xKE5_hc1w/?igshid=1nd33pn5d6ixe

[ddixon764]

#NovemBear #Day #8 #UniversaLLoLifes #ullsouth #RalphiesKidsLLC #PoloLife #allwedoisrocklosymbols #BearHunters #Streetwear #BrooklynStyle #LoveAndLoyalty #LoVestShoot2020 #losouthapparel #EverythingLo #LoDown #PoloBears #PolarBear #lolife #Bearly #ULL #GetYourBearsUp #HipHop #AllWeDoIsRockPoloBears 🐻🐻🐻🐻🐻👑👑👑👑👑 (at Dixon Kitchen BBQ & Smokehouse) https://www.instagram.com/p/B4oDuSWlPOB/?igshid=cy5osh92ruhf