References to the abuse of pink and octopi, a nudie flip book sequence with an ode to spider webs voice over and a series of all-to-brief, intimate conversational excerpts found in the trailer for Eileen Yaghoobian’s doc about rock posters all leave me hoping it way to the states much sooner than later.

The film’s description and featured artist list from the site only serve to hammer the anticipation home. See for yourself:

Died Young, Stayed Pretty is a candid look at the underground poster culture in North America. This unique documentary examines the creative spirit that drives these indie graphic artists. They pick through the dregs of America’s schizophrenic culture and piece them back together…Yaghoobian shows these artists for what they are: the vivisectionists of America’s morbidly obese consumer culture.

Brian Chippendale • Art Chantry • Print Mafia • Andrew Bird • DMBQ • Clyde Jones • Ron Liberti • Tom Hazelmyer • Stephen McClellan • Bryce McCloud • Seripop • Ames Bros • Methane Studios • El Bado/William Ballard • Tyler Stout • Rob Jones • Jay Ryan • Mat Daly • Nick Butcher • Keith Herzik • Steve Walters • Shawn Wolfe • Noel Waggener • Jeff Kleinsmith • Mig Kokinda • Dale Flattum • Mike King • Dan Schlissel • Stainboy • Uncle Charlie • American Poster Institute

via: Eileen Yaghoobian / diedyoungstayedpretty.com

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I stumbled on Dark Beloved Cloud sometime in 1999. Back when the label was still based in New York. I was digging for a copy of Fly Ashtray’s Clumps Takes A Ride, yet another cassette that suffered the same fate as the Mommyheads tape I’ve written about… curdled in the heat of early-90’s South Floridian sun. And just like Swiss Army Knife, Clumps became progressively harder to find as the years went on. The fact that even in their “heyday” both were relatively obscure, compounded their elusivity further.

After a few emails and a never-realized design trade, Dark Beloved Cloud’s owner, Douglas Wolk, confirmed that he did indeed have a copy, and kindly hooked me with Clumps in both plastic and vinyl. A couple more generously stuffed envelopes later, and many other DBC artists found their way into my collection and onto my plate of earfood — Azalia Snail, The Magick Heads, Spaceheads, some Uncle Wiggly that I never knew existed and Fly Ashtray guitarist James Kavoussi’s almighty alter-persona, pHoaming Edison.

Fly Ashtray deserves and likely will receive a post of their own here someday. They’re among the handful of bands whose music fundamentally altered the landscape of listening for me. In fact, they were a shoe-in before I ever even dropped the needle. Their name alone detonated an avalanche of pre-pubescent memories — Star Wars and Micronaut figures manning the cockpit of my parents ashy, functional version of their namesake.

Then as now, Fly Ashtray’s sound swings the ~25yr gamut from quirky pop, deeply explorative noise to neo-psychedelic heaviness. Even when coupled with a frequent helping of silly lyrics and song titles, the hallmark of their home/rec mastery is never lost. Kavoussi’s solo releases as pHoaming Edison bear the brilliant genetic signature of Fly Ashtray (and vice-versa) garbled in crap-sounding lo-tech splendor. Occasional cover tracks easily finding a place in the ranks of an unrealized list of tops (should I ever realize the need to write one).

When Douglas Wolk moved to Portland a few years ago, he made the coastal switch with a new addition to the family and a few book titles in tow. Namely, the much-heralded Reading Comics and his 117 page critical introspective James Brown: Live at the Apollo for Continuum’s 33⅓ book series.

It turns out Wolk is also one of the hardest working men in the music/comic critic business. Lucky for us, he brought Dark Beloved Cloud along with him and still finds time to bring the precipitating noise.

Noise that is made readily available via the DBC catalog and the ill-conceived (not ill meaning ill, but ill meaning ill) Singles Club. A collaborative means of sampling the label’s catalog in the form of 3-inch CD singles swapped in exchange for the investment of your own creative time and effort. Design a cover for the latest single, send it in and get the single adorned with someone else’s cover artwork. A simple, brilliant concept that Fly Ashtray is currently wielding for the release of their latest plate, Pantswind Folder. See? Totally silly album titles as well.

If you dig the links below, get in on both collabs and find yourself far from disappointed.

s|b Muxtape v.0002 → HYPOBLAST! Fly Ashtray + pHoaming Edison
The Dark Beloved Cloud Muxtape

Dark Beloved Cloud: Precipitated / Band Pages / Singles Club / covers
Douglas Wolk: Lacunae / Reading Comics / JB 33⅓ / 52 Pickup / Slate / Savage Critic / Kottke Interview
Fly Ashtray: off.site, blog + mspce / Discog / Videos / Song Titles / Thanks Mauvis
pHoaming Edison: mspce / Silly Bird

 

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Received a bubble-lined manilla from Ecstatic Peace last week (Thanks AK!), packed with good, good stuff more than worth mentioning. Here’s my tops:

Free Kitten Inherit
Its been over a decade since Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Julie Cafritz (Pussy Galore) and Yoshimi P-We (Boredoms) released a Free Kitten disc. If you’ve been waiting since Sentimental Education, it was well worth it. Inherit is what you’d get if the combined lucid dreams of all three and their former/current band mates were pre-recorded while listening to Evol’s Shadow of a Doubt, only with a distinctively dirgey backbone. It’s like the more noisy, experimental passages of each, fine-tuned into one brash, hypnotic and totally accessible sound.

Track 01. Erected Girl (6:45)
Track 03. Seasick (3:24)
Track 04. Free Kitten On the Mountain(7:51)
Track 09. Bananas (2:49) w/ J.Mascis on drums

Awesome Color Electric Aborigines
This album would have certainly been included on the tracklist of any Thrasher Skate Rock comp, as easily as I would have coveted it by album cover alone in the forbidden racks of the Golden Triangle heavy rock aisle when I was a kid. Unabashedly heavy, distorted, power rock wrapped in a sheet of White Lightning. Critics will doubtlessly cite obvious references to Detroit in general and the MC5 in particular when bashing Electric Aborigines for all the things that make them the great continuation of the lineage that they are. If this doesn’t make you want to load up the van, drop acid and head out the weird wilderness, then enjoy your dirt nap. The soundtrack of Summer unbridled.

Track 01. Eyes of Light (5:43)
Track 02. Already Down (2:42)

via: Ecstatic Peace / Free Kitten (PK) / Awesome Color (PK)

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Needles + Pens have updated their site with new images from opening night of There is Xerox on the Insides of Your Eyelids. They’ve also made the show Catalog/Zine by Rich Jacobs available for $5 along with #13 of his ongoing exploration in toner, MOVE.

Speaking of Rich, I just received word that he’s hanging the next installation of the show in London. More to follow…

Opening photos / Catalog / Move #13

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“Dan’s work bears the hallmark of his intelligence…”
—Liz Siegel, The Art Institute of Chicago

Artist, photographer and old friend Dan Estabrook, who’s show I recently posted about, has been included in Anthropy Arts, The Photographers Series. A new DVD series that provides the first comprehensive study of today’s most influential photographers.

That’s perfectly fitting description of Dan and his decades-long exploration of vision and technique which began around the time of our late-night Harvard darkroom stints, when he would sneak me in between skate and zine-making sessions.

From Anthropy Arts:

Working exclusively in 19th century processes, Dan Estabrook produces intimate, yet compelling photographs that illustrate the beauty of long forgotten methods.
- - -
Dan Estabrook discovered photography through the underground magazines of the punk-rock and skateboard culture of the 1980’s. As an undergraduate at Harvard, he worked with Christopher James, from whom he learned alternative photographic processes as well as ways to combine his disparate artistic interests.

It’s great to see another document serving up the recogntion Desta deserves. 

Dan’s skate zine Contort is also traveling with the show, There Is Xerox on the Insides of Your Eyelids.

The Photographers Series: Dan Estabrook (trailer)

via: Anthropy Arts / Pathetica / Desta: Flickr

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Girl Skateboards has collaborated with (RED)™ in the global fight against AIDS with an Eric Koston limited edition deck series. Designed by old friend and Girl AD, Andy Jenkins the decks are beautiful and ready for hanging or wiping clean this Summer.

(PRODUCT)RED™ (+vids) / Girl Skateboards / Purchase

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My good friend, Art Director for Girl Skateboards and founding member of The Art Dump (among many, many other hats) , Andy Jenkins has a shitload of reasonably priced 5×5″ paintings for sale from the Lab101 show, “stAAAmmering” he took part in earlier this year. I’ve got two on the way. Wish I’d had the chance to score some of these too.

Get ‘em before they’re gotten at Andy’s site, Bend Press.

via: BEND / Lab101 / stAAAmmering 01|02

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GSD.

Unless your skateboarding enthusiasm pre-dates 1990, chances are good you’ve never heard of him. That’s about to change.

Garry Scott Davis is a prolific, obsessive-compulsive collector/creation-engine currently working and living in Lake Forest, California. He is one of skateboarding’s forefathers. He invented the boneless one, and was the first street skater with a pro street deck. For the past decade he’s been playing in bands with “Floor” in their names, Custom and Carpet respectively. His zine Skate Fate, was not only the first and longest running in skatezine history (1981-91), it was also one of the most creative (grip tape, Del Mar pool tiles, an issue issue folded up into a kite). Though Winford Thomas has been relegated to the past, and still staples xeroxed piles of paper to this day.

GSD is one of the true fathers of grunge design.

Others may have carried it into the public eye, but all one needs to do is rifle through mid-to-late 80s issues of Skate Fate to see where crossed-out/truncated type and xerox crunk was “discovered”. The evidence is there, in xeroxed and stapled black and white.

I was Assistant AD to GSD when David Carson left Transworld and the AD title to him. At the advice of my film professor, I quit art school to work that dream job, and Garry gave me all the foundations in graphic design i still draw from to this day. He once made me adjust the leading of a long-ass article by a few picas. This was before pixels. When it required x-acto knifing each waxed line out and physically adjusting them all with a pica ruler and straight edge. He checked them all too. What a bastard. I still have the x-acto knife I borrowed from him to do it.

We’ve kept in touch since then, occasionally swapping envelopes of recent work and xeroxed ephemera. It appears I’ve got some catch-up to do, having recently received a copy of the long out-of-print skate art book, Dysfunctional which Garry authored with Aaron Rose and C.R.Stecyk III. It remains the pinnacle skateart book to this day — one just turned up on amazon.uk for $705. I was stoked to see a couple of my zines in there, along with so many others from that time.

Also included in the classically re-purposed envelope were a handful of Carpet Floor discs to add to my collection of Garry’s musical explorations. Having grown weary of most guitar-accompanied vocals, I was never as big a fan of Custom Floor as I wanted to be. Carpet Floor on the other hand, is right up there with a lot of the instrumental contemporary psyche and experimental stuff I’ve been digging so much lately. With the exception of some righteous chanting it’s pure, spontaneous instrumental goodness and has been filling my home since it arrived.

At a time when heroes were meant to be killed, GSD filled the role as an enigma, a good friend and an inspiration. He remains so on all accounts to this day.

Mass Ejection / Case Sensitive (3.4mb, mp3,mf)
Majestic / Discreet Meds (7.4mb, mp3, mf)
Hovering Pillows / On the Resurgance of Power Ballads (22.4mb, mp3, mf)
Blow Out / Pour Some Fructose On Me (8mb, mp3, mf)

GSD / Custom Floor / Carpet Floor /
TWS Interview / Apple Memorial Site / El Cortez session
Eye Deck reissue!

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One of the first posts here was centered around David Lynch’s latest and most impactful movies to date, Inland Empire. I have yet to set my thoughts and interpretations to keyboard (which means I probably won’t) but suffice it to say, Inland Empire inspired plenty. As if the novel process by which it was “written” and the fact that it was shot entirely in low res digital weren’t inspiring enough…

“Film, at least for me, is dead. I never want to go back. Even thinking about it now makes me feel weak and sick.” —David Lynch, AE

I’ve been looking forward to the DVD release of Inland Empire not only because it offered a third of many more viewings to come, but because it suggested that the soundtrack would become available too. More specifically, it meant that I’d finally get my hands on a full-length version of Ghost of Love, one of Lynch’s own additions to the score. Initially heard on the first trailer, it has haunted me ever since.

Toward the exorcism of such ghosts and as a completion to this thread, Ghost of Love can be found below. I’ve also included links to several interviews with Lynch covering topics related to Inland Empire ranging from influences, process, digital cinematography and transcendental meditation.

David Lynch: Ghost of Love (9.2MB, mp3.zip, mediafire)

Inland Empire: DVD (Limited Edition) / Soundtrack
Interviews: AE / Salon / RS / Brattle Theatre (intro /q&a) via: Bradley’s Almanac

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Dan McPharlin’s miniature scaled, cardboard models of analog audio equipment have made the rounds, but they’re just too incredible not to re-up. His illustration work is equally impressive on display in all their Mobius-esque sci-fi splendor — taking me back to the pages of early-80s OMNI and HeavyMetal magazine, minus the fantasy T+A.

McPharlin’s Flickr portfolio also grants us a glimpse into his ultra-mod dwelling, where Eames, Grcic and Noguchi share the floor with analog effects pedals and his canine familiar, Old Girl. Have a look around.

via: CH / cpluv / danmcp

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