Matthew Thurber’s “Hong Kong Bong”

Comic book artist Matthew Thurber is a man of many talents. In addition to his cartooning and painting (see my post on the Hope Gallery’s Male Odor Monsters show for some of his canvas work and his comic 1-800-Mice), he’s also a multi-talented musical savant. Perhaps best known for playing saxaphone in Soiled Mattress and the Springs (which, sadly, has recently disbanded), Thurber’s currently concentrating on a solo project called Ambergris, which sounds something like Captian Beefheart and Steve Buscemi getting funky in a sea of broken glass, and sometimes reminds me of early Of Montreal records, and sometimes sounds like the video game score for a dangerously jocular trek through a demonic Eastern European elementary school.

I’m not sure if this will help clarify what the project is all about, but here’s how Thurber describes the latest Ambergris release, a cassette tape entitled “Anti-Matter Alma Matter.”

The soundtrack to an art exhibit displayed in Switzerland and Brooklyn, side 1 is a radio play-style dialogue describing the amnesia-riddled dialogue between two students of the Carrot University of Time Travel, one of whom is a teenage girl made of crystal. Side two is a suite of songs which were performed during the exhibition, in which the same characters find themselves trapped in a Wormhole for all eternity, due to poor study skills.

Wormholes and Sperm Whales aside, I’m in love with the prolific artist’s latest comic book. The final Soiled Mattress album, entitled Honk Honk Bonk!, was recently released on vinyl, accompanied (for a limited time) by complimentary copies of Thurber’s Hong Kong Bong.

It’s a story of intrigue and betrayal, taking place in the near future ( “Filmed in front of a live audience at Family Bookstore, Los Angeles © MCMXI” ), when a string of Kombucha overdoses leads notorious police detective Serpico into the seedy underbelly of “The Smell” — a 2000s-themed animal-only nightclub in Upper Bed-Stuy Heights, New York, full of shape-shifting spies and sinister scenesters covering up a horrible secret! It’s worth the cost of a useless vinyl disc (JK, analog-lovers) for the hilarious puns, fedoras, and psychedelic non sequiturs alone.

+ Video interview of Soiled Mattress and The Springs from The Fader
+ Soiled Mattress keyboardist Peter Schutte’s awesome music videos for the band

post a comment | Art, Books, Music | posted on August 12, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Jesse Spears Interviews Global Filmmaker Wendy Morgan

Jesse Spears (pictured on the top right, smelling a buttercup) is one of my favorite artists. In addition to the blog she uses to document her endless creative output (Long Live Cartoon!) she also keeps a personal blog called Carnage Knockout, filled with sublime ephemera: snapshots of plants and pets, 911 calls, bubble wrap, and lists: like, “Things I Don’t Understand,” and “People I Want To Meet.” It was on Carnage Knockout that I first came across Wendy Morgan’s godly music video for the Gnarls Barkley song “Going On.”

Wendy Morgan is a Canadian commercial and music video director who’s made some great ad spots for Ikea, Girls Inc., and MTV Canada that are often bizarre or bemusing and occasionally even tackle the ungraspable nuances of Canadian national identity. Truthfully, Wendy’s MTV commercials are too good for MTV… though, who knows, maybe in topsy-turvy Canada, that sad vestige of a former pop culture powder-keg has managed to retain some semblance of watchability.

Regardless of MTV’s contemporary significance, its legacy lives on in cyberspace as the music video medium continues to thrive on a newly global scale– thanks in no small part to directors like Morgan. She’s crafted unaffected, imaginative videos for bands like The Unicorns and Dragonette– bands which don’t get any significant air time on the highly corporatized cable networks, but are now finding a home on the information superhighway.

I thought it would be fun to interview Wendy Morgan, but even more fun to let Jesse Spears do most of the work, since she loves the “Going On” video so much. Jesse came up with a bunch of questions, and I threw in a couple of my own, and we e-mailed them off to the jet-setting filmmaker, whose blog is replete with images from Jamaica, Barcelona, Italy and France. I’m enormously grateful to Wendy for humoring us by responding to this interview, and to Jesse for conducting it. I’ll pass things over to Ms. Spears for a proper introduction:

1. What was the crew like for the filming of the “Going On” video? Like, how big was the crew, and how long did it take and stuff.?

We shot for two days, prepped for probably five days, the crew was around 20 or so people I think, it felt pretty small in reality. The producer was Jannie McInnes of Revolver Films, the cinematographer was Max Goldman, who makes a ton of great videos, and I think he’s amazing.

2. How did you come up with the story of dancing Jamaican kids finding a portal to an alternate dimension?

Well, the original story that was written was: we do a musical-style approach with singing and dancing that takes place in Africa. But it made more sense to go to Jamaica, and I love dancehall style dancing, but you’ll notice there are no obvious Jamaican references or locations. I wanted it to be a nether world. The song sounded like dancing and celebration to me and lyrically, it talks about going on. I imagined the farthest you can possibly go is another dimension, so we’ll go there.

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3 comments | Interviews, Music, Video | posted on August 11, 2008 at 6:23 pm
Dr. Dog’s Scott McMicken on Trains, Tea and Time Travel

Emerging from an angsty, melancholy, Bright Eyes-heavy bout of introspection in my last year of high school, I had the good fortune of catching an intimate Dr. Dog show at one small venue in UC Davis’ myriad of coffee shops. Like a dark cloud parting to reveal the big bright shining sun, Dr. Dog guitar-plucked their way into my teenage soul that night, and has remained one of my favorite bands ever since. So when the chance came to do an interview with co-lead singer Scott McMicken for Mean magazine, I leapt at the opportunity.

After attending an awkward industry-only midday peformance in Hollywood, I met Scott in the parking lot of the Roosevelt Hotel and we spoke for a blissful hour and a half of matters great and small. The meat of that interview will be published in the upcoming August issue of Mean (along with my interviews of Six Feet Under creator Alan Ball, Towelhead star Summer Bishil, and my first sneaker column). In preparation of Dr. Dog’s amazing new album, Fate, which hits shelves tomorrow, my editor has given me permission to post some excerpts from the remainder of my rambling conversation with Scott McMicken here. Enjoy!

Download: “The Old Days” from the new album, Fate

Have you ever thought about creating a Dr. Dog musical?

That would be really awesome. We did this album, Psychedelic Swamp a long time ago, and we’ve always had dreams to make it a traveling piece of theater. There’s a real strong narrative throughout the album and it would be pretty easy and really fun to try and make it into a sort of low-budget theater production. But even a movie of that…

Is Psychedelic Swamp available anywhere? I’ve tried to find it before and haven’t had any luck.

No, it’s not. The problem is… we would have put it out already, but the concept on the album is that we didn’t make it, we got it in the mail. So the packaging is an envelope with our address on it. The idea is that we got it—this cassette tape—from this dude who used to live on earth, but escaped into this psychedelic parallel universe, as an effort to escape all the problems he was having on earth.

And when he got there, initially he was like, “Wow, this is awesome! Everything is so weird, and everything is upside down, with psychedelic aesthetics—nothing is predictable!” But over time, as he gained his frame of reference there, he realized that the same problems persist and there’s no real escape other than accepting and dealing with these issues that you have in your life. So he wants to make this album and send it back to earth to spread that message, like, “I’ve made this mistake, I thought I could escape but now I’m just trapped here. Everything’s the same.” And he appeals to us, saying, “Can you be the band that’s going to translate this music into modern American pop music, so that the message is understood?” He’s becoming so detached from reality the more he’s there, his ability to communicate and his way of going about representing information is becoming more and more garbled and detached and that’s why it sounds like a very psychedelic album.

The reason we haven’t put it out yet is because before we do that, I want to do what he’s asking us to do, which is to take all the music and re-record it as a live rock band with no psychedelic elements whatsoever. Very straightforward, immediate delivery, just like he wants it to be—a translation of his psychedelic mess. So when we do that, we’ll put ‘em both together and it’ll be like a double album.

Have you ever hopped a train?

No… I want to. My friends do that. I have a few friends who live that way, riding around on the rails, and there’s something about it that’s very romantic. The three people I know who do it, it’s not a big social thing—they’re not with a huge group of people. Most of the time they’re on their own, so it seems kinda cool. Dangerous—very dangerous. Probably very uncomfortable. In truth, I’ll probably never ever do that, but I certainly like the idea of that. All I can picture are horror stories of getting sucked under and your legs get chopped off.

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2 comments | Interviews, Music | posted on July 21, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Frisco Dykes: Live at The Echo
Frisco Dykes, the badass barely-legal punk/noise band featuring two of my boyfriend’s nephews, has quickly risen from playing tiny shows in our living room to playing at LA’s premiere punk venue, The Smell (twice in one week), touring throughout the Pacific Northwest, and opening for Gravy Train!!!! at The Echo. Not bad for a trio of 18-year-old whippersnappers from Chino who got their start covering Mika Miko songs! Check out some pictures I took at the aforementioned Gravy Train!!!! gig after the jump, plus a new video of their song “TTB” from YouTube.

+ Frisco Dykes on Myspace
+ Rudy’s interview with Frisco Dykes on RudyBleu.com
+ My earlier post introducing Frisco Dykes
+ Even Jonny Makeup (aka Little Scotty Mouthbreather) loves Frisco Dykes! Or at least Paul, the drummer.

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1 comment | Music, Photo | posted on July 9, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Princeton

I took the Gold Line up to Pasadena last weekend to catch just-breaking indie pop band Princeton at the Make Music Pasadena festival. Princeton is the saccharine bittersweet endeavor of twin brothers Jesse Kivel and Matt Kivel, who, along with their childhood friend Ben Usen, sing songs about the Bloomsbury Group in a deliriously dreamy orchestral style that recalls John Cale and The Kinks. It’s Edwardian British high culture by way of folksy LA beach pop. The members of Princeton were kind enough to tell us a little about themselves (and their love of donuts) in the video above.

This is the first video I’ve edited in HD, with many more to come! Watch the compressed version above, or click here to watch the video in all of its High Definition glory over at Vimeo.


 
+ Princeton’s website
+ Purchase the Bloomsbury EP for just $3 at Amie Street

1 comment | Interviews, Music, Video | posted on June 25, 2008 at 11:05 am
Mystical Unionists

“Forget about the aesthetic,” says Becky Stark, the lead singer of Lavender Diamond. “Recent scientific studies have shown that men have a greater tendency to interpret things visually than women.”

Stark and her cartoonist/drummer boyfriend, Ron Rege Jr., are the sole members of a new side project called Mystical Unionists. They played a low-key yet sublime show at the aptly titled Hope Gallery in Echo Park this weekend, where Rege’s artwork is currently on display.

“This is entirely about the aural,” says Stark, hoping to effect a sea change, one small drop at a time, from the hegemony of the male perspective towards something much less aggressive. If she can get this small, devoted audience to even slightly alter the way they process things, perhaps it can affect a widespread shift towards the global acceptance of “love” and “peace” she’s always touting in her music, with utmost sincerity. “Close your eyes and let go of the visual,” she advises before launching into a subdued melody. “Well, except for Ron’s art,” she qualifies. “You should look at that.”

Armed only with a microphone masking-taped to a wooden stick and a pair of carefully decorated floor toms, Mystical Unionists sounds something like a campfire lament at the end of the world and a hopeful appeal to America’s frozen heart. Ron and Becky are a dynamic duo whose artwork couldn’t be more aligned. In her lyrics and his cartoons, in her stage banter and his illustrations, the couple is devoted to building a Utopian world that shares the optimistic ideals of the 60’s, minus the questionable hippie trends of the day (is anyone really longing for a revival of door beads and lava lamps?).

“I had a dream the other night,” Becky tells me when I approach her after the show, “where everything I had ever thrown out was turning into cups of tea that I was forced to drink. Every piece of Scotch Tape– everything.” A regime change or a liberal political upheaval is good, Becky says, but we can’t rely on politics to change the world for us. “Each one of us is accountable for everything we do.” Somehow, when Becky says it, it sounds less like a lecture and more like a fun challenge, full of dancing and color and song. Becky Stark is our generation’s Yoko Ono.

Check out 21 pictures I took at the show, after the jump!

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6 comments | Los Angeles, Music | posted on June 12, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Coachella 2008: Volume 2 + MP3 Mix

And now, 27 more pictures from Coachella. We’ve got M.I.A.’s insanely packed show, MGMT, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Hot Chip, and of course, the artist currently known as Prince. Unfortunately, there was a “no shooting Prince” policy, so press was banned from the photo pit– but I think I captured some of his ethereal glory from the crowd, through the mystifying fog machines and lights.

While you’re looking at the glorious sights, listen to the soothing sounds of Coachella with a mix of songs from 14 artists who played at this year’s festival.

1. Man Man - Doo Right
2. Hot Chip - Ready for the Floor
3. Black Kids - Hurricane Jane
4. Café Tacuba - 53100
5. Goldfrapp - Cologne Cerrone Houdini
6. Animal Collective - Water Curses
7. My Morning Jacket - Golden
8. Cut Copy - So Haunted
9. MGMT - Electric Feel
10. Santogold - L.E.S. Artistes
11. M.I.A. - Paper Planes
12. Jens Lekman - Kanske Ar Jag Kar I Dig
13. Vampire Weekend - Walcott
14. Prince - Head
Download The Coachella Mix (84.9 mb)

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2 comments | Music, Photo | posted on May 1, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Coachella 2008: Volume 1

After five years of unrequited Coachella love, I finally made it down to the festival this year, courtesy of Mean Magazine. It was an amazingly fun and excruciatingly hot weekend, full of schwag, celebrity sightings, and deliciously overpriced food. Since I had a press pass, I was lucky enough to take pictures right up front, between the audience and the stage. Here’s the first batch of shots, including pictures of Jens Lekman, Santogold, Vampire Weekend, Dan Deacon and Goldfrapp. Check back on Thursday for the rest of ‘em, plus a crazy sexy cool Coachella mix!

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4 comments | Music, Photo | posted on April 29, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Subversive Formal Dancing, ca. the Early 2000s

In the early days of the 21th century, when Bush II was taking his first spin around the block, two music videos threatened to detonate the formal dancing world’s arcane infrastructure like a proverbial crate of Semtex. With the 2001 video for “Since I Left You,” sample-happy Australian electronic group The Avalanches presented us with a uniquely 9/11 vision of two blue collar workers escaping their cramped mine shaft confines to discover a glorious Flashdance-esque world of splendor. One man would find his Camelot, breaking down stereotypes and reveling in his new environment– while the other would fade back into the harsh pain of reality, unable to act upon his desires. Clearly, there was still work to be done.

By the end of the W.’s first term, however, the results of such efforts to revolutionize classical dance through indie pop music videos had been upgraded from lukewarm to red hot with Kings of Convenience’s 2004 clip, “I Wanna Dance With You.” Norwegian superstar Erlend Øye not only challenged the conventions of a dance style that originated in the 15th century, but managed to win over first a classroom of stoic pre-adolescent ballerinas, and eventually an entire auditorium full of finely dressed connoisseurs.

As demonstrated through the thematic, aesthetic and chronological links between these two videos, we understand that the early 2000s were a time of quiet upheaval and unrest that challenged the status quo and refused to accept any form of explicit complacency.

post a comment | Music, Video | posted on March 27, 2008 at 8:14 am
Gnarls Barkley Hands Out Free Seizures
Someone I know recently told me that I was too obsessed with the 80’s and the 90’s. This person, someone who generally has a pretty good eye for design, just didn’t get it. Well, for everyone else– here’s Gnarls Barkley’s awesome new video, which “…centers around the fictional public access TV show ‘City Vibin’ and is set in the early ’90s.” (Yahoo News)

Why aren’t there shows like “City Vibin’” on the air anymore? We’re stuck with shit like “Dance War: Bruno vs. Carrie Ann.” It’s not too hard to see the appeal of those early 90’s days of yore, is it? A note to all epileptic viewers: MTV U.K. banned this video after its funky high frame rate animation failed the Harding Test– watch at your own risk!

+ Via Viewers Like You [contributor Max Erdenberger was the video's lead designer/animator]

Bonus: Check out this intentionally seizure-tastic Young Cream video by one of my favorite young photographers, Brad Troemel.

I’ve been researching medical journals on photosensitive seizure triggers and used all of them in this music video. PSS is interesting because you might not even know you have it until you begin convulsing.

7 comments | Music, Video | posted on March 14, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Rudy Bleu’s Cyberspace Adventures!
Please welcome my BF/BFF, Rudy Bleu, to the blogosphere. He decided to put his years of DJ experience and zine-writing to use in the web 2.0 world, and the results are off the charts! Check out his blog at rudybleu.com, where he posts music recommendations, obscure YouTube gems, and original interviews. In less than a month, he’s already interviewed former Bis lead singer Manda Rin, JD Samson and Johanna Fateman of Le Tigre/Men, and M.I.A.’s 15-year-old protege, Rye Rye.

It’s not all music– Rudy’s also featured exclusive sexy comics form Pretty Things comedian Michael Lucid, and he’s got top secret plans for a super fun art project coming up. Oh, and he also posted about that Mariah Carey video I (unsuccessfully) auditioned for, in case you were wondering how that whole thing turned out.

Keep reading Rudy Bleu’s blog for frequent mp3 downloads and a whole slew of fun surprises that await just around the corner!

post a comment | Life, Music, The Internet | posted on March 7, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Karen and Jeff, Lost in Space
I wish there was a video for the ELO song “Yours Truly, 2095,” to help me illustrate my point. But the one below, for “The Diary of Horace Wimp,” will stand in just fine. I have a hypothesis to relay: Karen Carpenter and Jeff Lynne are cosmic lovers that will be reunited in 87 years with a galactic collision that will either take humanity to its next stage of evolution, or destroy the universe.

Supporting Evidence:

1. The album Time by ELO. A futuristic sci-fi concept album which tells the (true?) story of a hero (Jeff Lynne) who is taken to the future (2095) but longs to return to his ancient lover– an ethereal vixen who remains trapped in the golden age of 1981 (”Remember the good old nineteen-eighties / when things were so uncomplicated!”). In the future, he is provided with a robot that appears identical to his former lover in many ways, but ultimately cannot provide the same lovin’, as she is in fact a soulless IBM. See also: Wong Kar Wai’s 2046.

2. The Carpenters’ 1977 cover of Canadian prog-rock group Klaatu’s desperate cry for interplanetary contact, “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” (see video above). The video says it all: Karen, floating through space on a grand piano, pleads the aliens to take her. If 160 musicians and the soul-piercing gaze of Ms. Carpenter can’t cut through the depths of space to reach our anti-adversary interstellar buddies– then what can?

3. Karen’s highly mysterious death in 1983 from “irregular heartbeats” at the age of only 32. How a young, vibrant star like Karen could have died so unexpectedly remains one of pop culture’s great mysteries, along with the still unresolved murder cases of Biggie and 2Pac. How come they never found the body? It’s because she’s still up there somewhere, on the spaceship ELO. She’s waiting for Jeff Lynne to meet up with her in the year 2095, where he’ll unfortunately mistake her for a robot, and set forth a tragic 4th dimensional feedback loop that holds the potential to obliterate the Universe. See also: Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales.

Our only hope for salvation is for Jeff Lynne to accidentally impregnate the robot, and allow the foetus to come to fruition (whether that will happen depends upon the cryptic, also unsolved meaning of ELO’s “Livin’ Thing“), creating a Star-Child that, according to Mayan calendar prophecies, will save humanity.

See Also:
+ Karen Carpenter’s House
+ Superstar

1 comment | Music, Video | posted on February 2, 2008 at 9:32 am
Music To Remember Me By

It’s early Christmas at Future Shipwreck, and you’ve got a shitload of presents under the tree! It was hard to pick only 21 tracks to summarize 2007, given the huge amount of rad music that made its way onto the shelves this year, but I tried my best– and I hope you’ll be pleased with the results. A few of these songs you may have heard from earlier podcasts, but I’m confident you’ll find at least one overlooked gem in the bunch.

Act fast, because I’ll be taking these down come New Year’s (or else I’ll end up hot-linked on a bunch of shady Russian websites). Listen to each one individually below, or download the whole bunch in a .zip file. Enjoy!

David Lynch: Ghost Of Love [ download ]
Of Montreal: The Past is a Grotesque Animal [ download ]
The Tough Alliance: First Class Riot [ download ]
The Teenagers: Homecoming [ download ]

The Teenagers

Fiery Furnaces: My Egyptian Grammar [ download ]
Blonde Redhead: Silently [ download ]
Rilo Kiley: Silver Lining [ download ]
Lavender Diamond: Open Your Heart [ download ]
 

The Fiery Furnaces
 
Taken By Trees: Lost And Found [ download ]
The Shins: Phantom Limb [ download ]
Sunset Rubdown: The Taming of the Hands That Came [ download ]
Dr. Dog: The Way The Lazy Do [ download ]
 

Dr. Dog
 
José Gonzales: Teardrop [ download ]
Chromatics: Night Drive [ download ]
Snoop Dogg: Sensual Seduction [ download ]
Bright Eyes: Cleanse Song [ download ]
Jens Lekman: Kanske Ar Jag Kar I Dig [ download ]
 

Gruff Rhys
 
M.I.A.: Paper Planes [ download ]
Spoon: The Underdog [ download ]
Gruff Rhys: Skylon! [ download ]
Patrick Wolf: The Magic Position [ download ]
1 comment | Music | posted on December 21, 2007 at 9:13 am
Snoop Dogg’s Giving Me A Sexual Eruption
I am unreasonably obsessed with Snoop Dogg’s “Sensual Seduction”. I’ve always held lukewarm feelings towards the Dogg– especially despising the unavoidable “Drop It Like It’s Hot”– but this song is unbelievably good. I hadn’t even seen the astounding music video when I decided that it was my favorite pop song of the year. I shouldn’t need to mention how rapturous the video is– you should be watching it right now.

Directed by Melina Matsoukas, the rad chick behind Beyoncés crazy-ass “Kitty Kat” video, “Sensual Seduction” combines every shitty/awesome thing that has ever existed, in the words of my friend Mya. I want to live in the universe Snoop inhabits, rolling around in the sheets of an intergalactic rotating bed. I can only hope the rest of his new album, Ego Trippin’, is half as brilliant as this single.

3 comments | Music, Video | posted on December 7, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Tom Zacharias, Swedish Porn Funk Genius

Tom Zacharias is a teenage tennis champion and former schoolmate to the future King of Sweden. Tom Zacharias is a struggling actor and Lenny Bruce-esque performance artist, arrested for urinating on his audience at a posh performance space. Tom Zacharias is a Swedish pin-up boy of 1970, described as a “hairy lion” with a “charming smile and virile charm”.

Tom Zacharias is a controversial recording star, with a murderous keyboardist that comes to the studio in handcuffs with a police escort. Tom Zacharias has the biggest Swedish funk record of 1975, Belinda, and it can only be bought through porn shops and mail-order ads in men’s magazines. Tom Zacharias is an award-winning children’s music performer, squashed into obscurity by the unstoppable Smurfs. Tom Zacharias is a kooky television personality and star of a bizarre televized enema championship.

You can (and must, really) buy Tom Zacharias’ Belinda from the rad online reissue label Anthology Recordings. The amazing first six tracks on the album are in English, recorded for a North American version of Belinda that was to be sold through Hustler and Screw. However, no one bothered to convert their dollars into Krona and the album never sold a single copy. Thus, these rare English recordings of Zacharias’ ridiculously explicit funk masterpieces had never been heard until Subliminal Sounds re-issued the album in 2004.

This shit is crazy. If you like Gravy Train!!!!, Peaches, or Karen Finley you will love Zacharias’ groove-tastic explorations of scat, incest, fetish and rape. Check out “Nice Cooks” from Belinda below.

+ Get Belinda from Anthology Recordings.

3 comments | Music | posted on December 1, 2007 at 9:16 am