Dive into the archives.
- Listen up: DJ Haas - Bring the Rain
The newest/latest from my friend Jeroen AKA DJ Haas. I guess being a DJ is sort of like being a writer and for best results you should ‘mix what you know’. Haas is a native of water logged Holland, where it has apparently been raining for the past two weeks. Bring the Rain is his response and it is awesome. Check the tracklist to see what I mean…
DJ Haas - Bring the Rain
DOWNLOAD
right-click + save target as (windows) / save link as (mac)Tracks
1 - SWV - Rain
2 - Alexander O’Neil - Can you stand the rain
3 - Ashanti - Rain on me
4 - B.I.G. - Somebody’s gotta die
5 - Raekwon - Rainy Dayz
6 - Mary J Blige - Everyday it Rains
7 - Soul 4 Real - Candy Rain
8 - Orange Juice Jones - Walking in the rain
9 - Janis Joplin - I can’t stand the rain
10 - Ann Peebles - I can’t stand the rain
11 - Tina Turner - I can’t stand the rain
12 - Missy Elliot - I can’t stand the rain
13 - U Brown - The big licking stick
14 - Lee Scratch Perry - Rainy night dub
15 - The Dramatics - In the Rain
16 - 21st Century - Remember the rain
17 - Joe Chambers - Mind rain
18 - Freddie Hubbard - Here’s that rainy dayPopularity: 3% [?]
- Domus Interview 09: Mark Wigley
Here’s the latest in the interview series I’ve been doing for the Domus China. (I’ve put up a couple of the others here and here). It’s with Mark Wigley, author, curator, and Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture. The conversation focuses mostly on education and how he approaches things at Columbia.
At present, Mark is battling it out with Jemaine Clement for the title of Greatest Living Kiwi, and I like his chances, because the man knows his way around a soundbite. Here’s a few favorite quotes: “Architects’ gift is to produce a hesitation in the rhythms of everyday life”, “Massive incompetence is a kind of normative lifestyle”, “We have a kind of stupidity… and the mission is reduce the level of stupidity.”
+++++
BM: In this interview series we’re trying to get a sense of who the architect is by talking to the people closest to them. The hope that by filling in the area around the subject in great detail we can create something like a silhouette of a profession. I’ve been anxious to speak with you, because education is such an important part of understanding where architects come from.
MW: It’s a very interesting concept, and it immediately begs the question: what is an architect? For me, it’s quite simple: an architect is someone who doesn’t know what a building is. That is to say, someone for whom a building is a set of questions, rather than a set of answers. Almost everybody knows what a building is, but the architect is someone for whom the building is filled with mystery.
What’s interesting then about the school is that you’re training a group of people and what holds them in common is that they don’t know what a building is. So, actually, in a school you can’t simply deliver a set of information about what architecture is and a set of professional procedures for accomplishing that. I like your concept of the silhouette: in a way, what you can do is deliver the silhouette of the big questions, the big doubts. Interestingly, architects are not allowed to share that doubt in public. In fact, architects are called on to do quite the opposite, to produce images of certainty and security, stability, and so on. So that an odd assignment - you take the one group in society who sees objects as full of mystery and you ask them to invest those objects with the symbolism of certainty.
What that means is that there is a big difference between the public and the private in architecture. If you look inside an architect’s head, I think it’s pretty messy and yet the work they do is very clear. If you look inside an architect’s studio, it’s a mess, but when they present to the client it’s very clear. When you look inside an architectural school it’s pretty messy, but then you look at the publications and the website, and everything seems very clear. Publicly, architects are certain, sure, confident, precise; privately they really don’t know what they’re doing, how they’re doing, why, and so on. This is not to say that they’re ignorant. On the contrary, architects have been talking amongst themselves about what a building is for 3000 years in the west, 10,000 years in the non-west and so on.
Popularity: 4% [?]
- Habitus 05: Moscow
The next edition of my friend Josh’s journal Habitus is dropping soon. I’ve written about this wonderful project before (Issue 03: Buenos Aires, Issue 04: New Orleans) and I haven’t received the issue yet, so I’ll keep this post brief. Buy it.
Table of contents and a video interview with one of the issue’s contributors, the photographer Jason Eskenazi after the break.
Popularity: 3% [?]
- United New
My friend Rem just opened the flagship store for his shoe brand United Nude. His work is amazing and the store looks wicked and although I couldn’t make it I heard the opening party was great. Here’s a little something from the press release:
United Nude, a brand founded by architect Rem D Koolhaas and Galahad JD Clark opens a flagship store in Amsterdam on October 22, 2009. Located in the prestigious city center address of Spuistraat 125, United Nude presents their concept, the Wall of Light™. United Nude is distributed in over 300 points of sale worldwide in over 30 territories. Up next for the brand in early 2010, are flagship stores in Shanghai and New York.
For more, bigger photos click here.
For a more info on UN click here.But better yet get your ass down to the store and buy some shoes. It’s located at Spuistraat 125A, adjacent to Dam Square in Amsterdam. Open 7 days a week.
Popularity: 2% [?]
- DJ Haas: Women are beautiful
Another amazing mix from my friend DJ Haas. The third in his Stupidtelligent series and maybe his best ever. Hosted by Richard Pryor (in a way).
DJ Haas - Stupidtelligent 3: Women are beautiful
DOWNLOAD
right-click + save target as [windows] / save link as [mac]Tracklist
01 - Angels Instr. - Diddy & Dirty Money
02 - Fat LAdy Sings - Raekwon
03 - La La La - De La Soul
04 - True Love - Apathy feat. Phonte
05 - Fear Instr. - Drake
06 - Fear - Drake
07 - She dont have to see you (to see through you) - Bobby Patterson
08 - Soft Hoop - Metro Area
09 - Scorpio - Dennis Coffey
10 - Boriken Soul (dub mix) - Yonurican
11 - LAtrifying - Dam Funk
12 - Where’s My Money (Caspa remix) - TC
13 - Heartbeat - Nneka
14 - It’s Not Over (Skream remix) - Klaxons
15 - ReUp - Joker
16 - Miracles - Jamie Vexd
17 - Happy Feelings - Maze & Franky Beverly
18 - Seventh Dangerous Match - Scientist
19 - Love Hangover acapella - Diana Ross
20 - 2-D - Skream
21 - Ribbon in the Sky - Lloydie Crucial
22 - Sweet Love - M Beat
23 - The What acapella - Notorious BIG
24 - Run ‘Em Out (Ft. Roots Manuva) - Breakage
25 - Punanny - Admiral Bailey
26 - Go Go Club Riddim Instr.
27 - Bike Back - Blak Ryno
28 - Bill - Gaza Kim
29 - A Nuh Whore - DeMarco
30 - Knock Knock - OG Ron C & Pleasure P
31 - Be Mine - Donaeo
32 - In The Morning - Egypt
33 - I Should Have Cheated - Keyshia ColePopularity: 4% [?]
- Brett Domino all over your…
DJs it’s all up to you.
A while ago, I made a big post about nerd music where I tried to break down the various subsets of the category. It’s become an ongoing project and I always try to keep an eye out for new examples, and so I was suitably pumped earlier today when my friend Josh sent me a link to this video…
It’s by 2/3 of the Brett Domino Trio, a group music lovers out of Leeds. I can’t get enough of this clip. Check out more of their stuff on Brett Domino’s youtube channel, including an epic MJ tribute performed on the keytar.
Thanks Josh!
Popularity: 4% [?]
- Read this man!
My homey and former roommate Jason Horowitz just started his new job as staff writer at the Washington Post. Jason is a good friend, a dangerous drinking partner, and real deal journalist. He paid his dues writing for years for the New York Observer, and I’m very happy he now has a bigger platform.
His first Post piece is about the Cheney family’s rapidly enlarging sphere of darkside influence. Here’s the opener:
Good morning, you’ve reached the offices of Cheney, Cheney & Cheney.
Mary Cheney, the daughter of former vice president Dick Cheney and the sister of go-to Obama critic Liz Cheney, is leaving the political consulting firm Navigators Global to start her own consulting company, and multiple sources familiar with her plans say she will not be going it alone.
“She told me she is going to be starting a firm with her dad and sister,” said one friend of Mary’s, with whom she has shared her plans.
Read the rest here.
Keep up with all of Jason’s articles here.
And definitely look through his very impressive back catalog of Observer stories here.
Mets suck.
Popularity: 3% [?]
- Editalk with Jen Sigler
I’m in 60-year-old China now, but I’ve got one last bit of business from Holland to attend to.
I mentioned a little while ago that I’m doing an interview series for Domus China. The basic idea is to try get a sense of what architecture is by talking to people who are not architects themselves but who contribute in one way or another to architecture. So far that’s included graphic designers (Michael Rock of 2×4), 3D renderers (Lu Zhenggang of Crystal CG), curators (Barry Bergdoll of MoMA), engineers (Rory McGowan of Arup), etc.
A couple months ago I had the pleasure to talking to Jennifer Sigler, mother, motivator, and next level editor. Jen schooled me when I was a freaked out kid trying to make a book for OMA. She was then and remains the world’s leading expert, having been responsible for OMA’s greatest book S,M,L,XL.
Anyway, here’s the conversation. Long as hell, but very worthwhile to read for all the previously unknown S,M,L,XL back stories among other things…
Brendan McGetrick: The aim of this series is to try to understand the experiences of people who work with architects and find out what they give and receive in the collaboration. I want to begin with the basics. How did you start editing?
Jennifer Sigler: Actually I started making books as a kid… writing, drawing, cutting and pasting words and images and letters from magazines to construct these stories. I was less interested in writing the stories than in assembling them – in arranging these sequences and stapling them together. The act of turning pages has always been important. There’s drama in that—suspense, engagment. It’s physical.
Popularity: 4% [?]
- Philly Phil
When I was back home a couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to see my friend Phil Forsyth on his 31st birthday. Phil is an all-around amazing person. A poet, a card shark, a relentless b-baller, a green thumb, and, most important for this post, a full bodied music lover. Phil is the kind of guy that, when you show up at his birthday party, gives YOU a present. That’s how I got “Rank Strangers”, the wonderful countrified mix illustrated above and featured below.
I’m gonna get into the music in a second, but first I want to big up two of Phil’s projects that I hope you’ll check out and support.
First, Philadelphia Orchard Project, a non-profit collective that works with community-based groups and volunteers to plan and plant orchards in the many unused spaces around Philly.
POP provides the plants, trees, and training. Community organizations own, maintain, and harvest the orchards, expanding community-based food production. Orchards are planted in formerly vacant lots, community gardens, schoolyards, and other spaces, almost exclusively in low-wealth neighborhoods where people lack access to fresh fruit.
Second, is Phil’s blog, where he drops incredible amounts of knowledge on urban farms, edible landscapes, permaculture, and sorts of good shit.
As you can imagine, planting orchards in vacant lots and blogging about permaculture doesn’t necessarily make the ends connect, so Phil also has a commercial landscaping business called Forsyth Gardens, and if you’re in the US and want an incredible, edible garden, then you need to holla at them.
So, to the music… Even though Phil is one of the warmest, most loving people I know, he’s got a taste for the darker side of life and it’s represented on every one of his mixes, but this one maybe more than most. Here’s a small selection of bitter pills…
The Everly Brothers - I wonder if I care as much
My pride is made to say forgive,
and take the blame for what you did,
It’s your mistake I’m thinkin’ of,
I wonder if I’m still in love.The Statler Brothers - Half a man
I know you’re looking for someone to bow down to you,
and to lift their head and smile each time you call.
But the more I think about, the less I think about it,
and the more I think it just ain’t worth it all.Tanya Tucker - Blood red and goin’ down
Daddy said: “Now come girl, we’re headin’ down the road to Augusta.”
And faintly through his clenched teeth, he called Mama’s name, then he cussed her.
He said: “Girl, you’re young, but some dude has come along and stole your mother.
Ah, but you can’t steal a willin’ mind ’cause mom is always lookin’ for a lover.”Tom Waits - Tell it to me
I know, you will not see me, but I know you have a daughter
And I hear she has my eyes
They say she calls him “father”, and he’s proud of her
And even believes all of your liesDownload the whole beautiful collection here.
Popularity: 4% [?]
- Drunken Lion Mixtape #8: Rainforest Mix
There’s a new Drunken Lion mixtape out now. #8 in the series, the first mixed by Mr. Mike Speciaal. For your listening pleasure click here.
Popularity: 5% [?]
- Urban China: Informal Cities at New Museum
In all of last week’s drama I completely forgot to mention that my friends at Urban China are having a big exhibition at the New Museum in NY (!) I’m still in Beijing working on a book based on their magazine that unfortunately won’t be ready in time for this. But I’ve put up some of the material that’s going into it here, here, here, here, and here. If you liked that and will be around New York between now and the end of March I strongly urge you to check it out. Here are some images from the installation…
After NY the show will travel to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. Big!
More info at the New Museum site…
Popularity: 4% [?]
- Calling all Berliners…
Get your asses to the AedesLAND Gallery this Friday (or any other day between then and March 26) and check out “True Cities,” an exhibition of photos by artist/curator/editor/writer/very friend Charlie Koolhaas. Here’s some more info from the PR release:
‘True Cities’ is a collection of photographs by Charlie Koolhaas featuring four global cities that determine, in different ways, our political and cultural landscapes and that will increasingly shape our collective destinies in the future. Within a single space, ‘True Cities’ weaves a photographic patchwork of urban fabrics from Guangzhou, Dubai, Lagos, and London, creating a multi-layered picture of an intricately connected world.
Charlie Koolhaas is a Dutch artist raised in London who currently works from her studio in Guangzhou, China. Trained as a sociologist, throughout her career she has worked as a magazine editor, exhibition curator, writer as well as photographer, and in her photos we see this multidisciplinary approach applied to the urban experience. In ‘True Cities’ she brings together hundreds of disparate images of different places to bounce off each other, resonate, and begin a dialogue.
The exhibition will include a series of 200 images viewed like a large book that spans the entire wall of the AedesLAND space. Within these pages images of Lagos, Nigeria are paired with images of Dubai, UAE. In the arches of the gallery hanging photographs place Guangzhou, China and London, UK side by side so that they feel like two distant suburbs in the same city. ‘True Cities’ is an exhibition of the world. It is about cultural fusion and confusion, connections, moments of creativity and pain. By looking at the opulent and insignificant, the broken down and the emerging, these photographs depict the mundane and the absurd with equal enthusiasm.
It’s sure to be eye and mind opening. If you can, check it out…
For more info, visit the AedesLAND site.
Download the opening invite here.Popularity: 3% [?]
- Stoned Kitty: “Salted Sessions is my shit”
Last time I saw my friend Jesse he gave me a copy of Salted Sessions, an instrumental EP he’d just made under the name A La Shook. It’s been in steady rotation ever since and is now a household favorite, particularly with the cat pictured above. Jesse’s now put the EP up on his website for the recession-proof price of Free.99
Here’s a sample:
A La Shook - 77
DOWNLOAD
right-click + save link as (mac) / save target as (windows)To download the whole thing, press HERE
Check out more of Jesse’s music on his site jessekoolhaas.com
Popularity: 4% [?]
- TD Year in Review
I just received this XMas/New Year’s card from my friend Theo of TD Architects. It’s rendered in Theo’s often-imitated-never-duplicated collage style and covers some the key events of 08. I was thinking about making a year in review type post, but this is better. Click To Read.
Popularity: 4% [?]
- Habitus 04: N.O.L.A.
A few months ago I mentioned a trip I made with my friend Josh to the great city of New Orleans. He was putting the finishing touches on the fourth issue of his magazine Habitus and I was tagging along. (Wrote a post about, want to hear it, here it go…)
The issue is out now and it’s very good, probably my second favorite so far. (Issue 02: Sarajevo is still holding down #1) Here’s a little blurb on the content…
Our edition features some of the leading writers and thinkers from the city and beyond: including Rodger Kamenetz, Andrei Codrescu, Nancy Lemann, and others. In addition to our usual array of terrific fiction and poetry, we have a meditation on disaster and memory from Ari Kelman, a celebrated environmental historian, a photo essay documenting the city’s unique and exuberant street culture from photographer L.J. Goldstein; an extraordinary memoir of the intersection of African-American and Jewish roots in one New Orleans family from Ronne Hartfield; interviews with musician-historian Ned Sublette and the Brazilian urban-planning innovator Jamie Lerner; and many more exciting features.
Regardless of the fact that’s its my friend’s project, Habitus really is a unique and constantly edutaining publication. Order a copy yesterday or better yet subscribe…
To celebrate the issue I want to post up a conversation that I sat in on while I was down in NO. It was between Josh and Ronald Lewis, an advocate and spokesperson for the city’s Lower Ninth Ward and the founder of The House of Dance and Feathers , a museum that honors the cultural traditions of the Mardi Gras Indians and Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs of New Orleans. The conversation provides as much background as you’ll need, so I’m just gonna get to it. VERY good read for anyone interested in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina, parade culture, or hearing a southern black man describe the horrors of eating Gefilte fish…
Joshua Harry Ellison: How did this place get started?
Ronald Lewis: Well, you know, I started this before Katrina. I had a little building called The House of Dance and Feathers…
JHE: Here?
RL: Yeah. But it was a smaller building that faced the street. That picture in front of you there, that’s how the interior of the original building looked. And Katrina took all of that. And I remember, right after the storm, me and LJ [Goldstein] made contact with each other, and he came out with his little club - the 69 Social and Pleasure Club, Krewe du Jieux, and everybody - and got me some help to clean out my house and get my life back started.
Then I spoke at a conference called Reinhabiting NOLA at Loyola University, with Rachel [Breunlin]’s husband Dan Etheridge and Dr Helen Regis. I spoke and told them that I needed help to rebuild to show that this could happen after all of this devastation. And the help came, and out of that came this: the new House of Dance & Feathers - a living story out of all this pain and suffering and misery.
Popularity: 4% [?]
