The Squarepusher Dialectic
Squarepusher Q&A: A Chat With Electronic Music’s Own David Foster Wallace
May 17 2012, 8:03 AM ET
by Philip Sherburne
Tom Jenkinson on video synthesizers, synaesthesia and self-indulgence
Seventeen years ago, Squarepusher (Tom Jenkinson) began his career as a breakbeat gadfly, chopping up jungle with Jaco Pastorius into a style known briefly as “drill ‘n’ bass” (or, better still, “weirdy-beardy”). Since then, across a dozen albums, he has established himself as one of electronic music’s least predictable musicians, capable of infectious 2-step garage, sepulchral ambient, molecular breakbeat science and even an entire album of solo electric bass. Fair-weather fans might snicker, “Spinal Tap Mark II performs Jazz Odyssey,” but anyone who really knows Squarepusher — a gauntlet he threw down with 2002’s Do You Know Squarepusher — recognizes that there’s a method to his madness.
Jenkinson is famous for meticulously constructed rhythms and audacious, even alienating, stylistic shifts, and both qualities are readily apparent in a conversation with him. He’s cordial, candid and 100 percent engaged, but I’ve never heard another musician speak in such analytical terms about his own work — terms that might sound cold, until you realize the extent to which his right-angled career is as conceptual as it is wildly expressionistic.
Three Point Supercut
Still Love To Love You Baby – Disco’s Queen Donna Summer Gone
Donna Summer dies at age 63
The Queen of Disco Donna Summer died Thursday morning from cancer, TMZ reported. She was 63.
Known for belting it out on “Last Dance” and “MacArthur Park,” the singer had been trying to continue making music while keeping her condition secret.
“We spoke to someone who was with Summer a couple of weeks ago … who says she didn’t seem too bad,” TMZ said. “In fact, we’re told she was focused on trying to finish up an album she had been working on. “
She shot to fame in the 1970s singing a string of classic disco hits, including” Love to Love You Baby,” “Bad Girls” and “Hot Stuff.”
A Century Of Cheever
A toast to John Cheever on his 100th birthday
The master of the short story is remembered with a reissue of his classic tales and tribute events
SIDNEY FIELDS/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Long before Don Draper, there was John Cheever. The master of the American short story was the original purveyor of midcentury mystique, especially its darker facets.
The endless drinking, ever-present cigarettes, infidelities, secrets of suburban life and anxiety regarding America’s place in the postwar world — they’re all in the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Stories of John Cheever.”
That book is getting an updated edition from Random House come May 27, on what would have been Cheever’s 100th birthday.
Go-Go Godfather Chuck Brown Gone
Chuck Brown dies: The ‘Godfather of Go-Go’ was 75
Harry Naltchayan / The Washington Post
Chuck Brown, the gravelly voiced bandleader who capitalized on funk’s percussive pulse to create go-go, the genre of music that has soundtracked life in black Washington for more than three decades, died May 16 at the Johns Hopkins University hospital in Baltimore. He was 75.
Known as the “Godfather of Go-Go,” the performer, singer, guitarist and songwriter developed his commanding brand of funk in the mid-1970s to compete with the dominance of disco.
Like a DJ blending records, Mr. Brown used nonstop percussion to stitch songs together and keep the crowd on the dance floor, resulting in marathon performances that went deep into the night. Mr. Brown said the style got its name because “the music just goes and goes.”
Top 10 Most Read Books In The World
Bitfest @ Tiffany’s
from AP via Crain’s New York Business
Breakfast at Tiffany’s to enter the digital era
An e-book version of Truman Capote’s novella will be released this week for the first time. Other Capote classics will also debut in digital form, including In Cold Blood.
(AP) – Welcome, Holly Golightly, to the digital revolution.
Vintage Books announced Monday that Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote’s classic New York City novella, is coming out this week as an e-book for the first time.
Other Capote favorites, from The Grass Harp to Music for Chameleons, also will debut in digital form. Vintage, a paperback imprint of Random House Inc., is planning paper reissues of Capote’s work, including the true crime classic In Cold Blood.
O Leica 2.8
Leica camera auctioned in Austria for record $2.8 million
VIENNA (Reuters) – A rare 1923 Leica went for 2.16 million euros ($2.8 million) at an auction in Vienna at the weekend, making it the most expensive camera ever sold, the auctioneer said.
An anonymous buyer won the bidding battle for the German camera, which still works and is one of around 25 test versions of Leica 0-Series cameras produced in 1923, two years before the start of serial production. Only half of them have been preserved.
Wes Lang @ HALF GALLERY
Carroll Shelby Gone
Legendary racer Carroll Shelby dies at 89
by Nomaan Merchant – May. 11, 2012 04:27 PM
AP
Decades after a heart condition forced him to retire from racing, Carroll Shelby still loved to drive muscle cars. Well into his 80s, the legendary car designer spent hours testing his last Mustang Shelby GT500, which sets a new record for horsepower and hits a top speed of more than 200 miles per hour.
A one-time chicken farmer, Shelby had more than a half-dozen successful careers during his long life: champion race car driver, racing team owner, automotive consultant and safari tour operator. His fabled Shelby Cobra sports car became an automotive and cultural icon, and he was later credited with injecting testosterone into Ford’s Mustang and Chrysler’s Viper.
Shelby first made his name behind the wheel of a car, winning France’s grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car race with teammate Ray Salvadori in 1959. He had turned to the race-car circuit in the 1950s after his chicken ranch failed. He won dozens of races in various classes throughout the 1950s and was twice named Sports Illustrated’s Driver of the Year.
Classic Games 2 Dubstep
Vidal Sassoon Gone
Vidal Sassoon dies; hairstyling trendsetter popularized wash-and-go
By Adam Bernstein, Published: May 9
Vidal Sassoon, the British-born hair-care magnate who built a global enterprise of salons and hair products and helped liberate women from time-consuming beauty parlor coiffures by popularizing a wash-and-go approach to hairstyling, died May 9 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 84.
Trim and dashing, with a baby face and cultured manner that belied his Cockney upbringing in a Jewish orphanage in London, Mr. Sassoon became an international sensation in the 1960s with his vast network of salons and styling schools.
Mr. Sassoon, long a vivacious fixture on social circuits in New York, Los Angeles, Paris and London, gained instant household recognition by appearing in television commercials for his shampoos and sprays. His tagline: “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.”
Jaime Gets Pinned
MCA Gone
`CH-CHECK IT OUT’
One Goat, on Account
To the Editor:
I had the great pleasure of reading your unsolicited critique of the “Ch-Check It Out” music video [“Licensed to Stand Still” by Stephanie Zacharek, May 16]. It took some time to get to me, as it had to be curried (sp?) on goatback through the fjords of my homeland, the Oppenzell. And in the process the goat died, and then I had to give the mailman one of my goats, so remember, you owe me a goat.
Anyway, that video is big time good. Pauline Kael is spinning over in her grave. My film technique is clearly too advanced for your small way of looking at it. Someday you will be yelling out to the streets below your windows: “He is the chancellor of all the big ones! I love his genius! I am the most his close personal friend!”
You journalists are ever lying. I remember people like you laughing at me at the university, and now they are all eating off of my feet. You make this same unkind laughter at the Jerry Lewis for his Das Verruckte Professor and now look, he is respected as a French-clown. And you so-call New York Times smarties are giving love to the U2 because they are dressing as the Amish and singing songs about America? (Must I dress as the Leprechaun to sing songs about Ireland so that you will love me? You know the point I make here is true!)
In concluding, “Ch-Check It Out” is the always best music film and you will be realizing this too far passing. As ever I now wrap my dead goat carcass in the soiled New York Times — and you are not forgetting to buy me a replacement! Please send that one more goat to me now!
Nathanial Hörnblowér
Manhattan
The writer, whose real name is Adam Yauch, is a member of the Beastie Boys. He directs their music videos under the pseudonym Nathanial Hörnblowér.
Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio
Self-Published Author Lands Book Deal After 125 Years
By Jason Boog on May 3, 2012 3:23 PM
125 years after it was first self-published, Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio by naturalist and artist Genevieve Jones will be published by Princeton Architectural Press.
Inspired by viewing John James Audubon‘s The Birds of America collection, the 29-year-old author wrote and illustrated a lovely volume before her tragic death. The new $45 book, America’s Other Audubon, contains 68 color illustrations, the original field notes and new text by Joy M. Kiser.
Check it out: “Her brother collected the nests and eggs, her father paid for the publishing, and Genevieve learned lithography and began illustrating the specimens. When Genevieve died suddenly of typhoid fever, her family labored for seven years to finish the project in her memory. The original book, sold by subscription in twenty-three parts, included Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes and Theodore Roosevelt among its subscribers. Only ninety copies of the original book were published in 1886, and fewer than twenty-five copies now remain in institutions and private hands.”
Terry Richardson Has The Worst Job Ever
Munch Cries Kiss My Ass-o, Picasso – $119.9MM for The Scream
Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream’ goes for $119.9 million at Sotheby’s
NEW YORK — Sometimes beauty is trumped by the beast. After bullish expectations and an aggressive marketing campaign for an image considered the quintessential expression of modern horror, Sotheby’s New York sold Edvard Munch’s 1895 “The Scream” for $119.9 million on Wednesday night, setting a record for the most expensive artwork sold at auction.
The top spot was previously held by Picasso’s 1932 “Nude, Green, Leave and Bust” — a painting of his much-younger lover Marie-Therese Walter that sold at Christie’s in 2010 for $106.5 million.
Poetry Is Eternal
Poetry is not dead: It’s eternal
By Richard Abowitz
Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Each April, editors at publications all over the country performed the annual ritual of granting space to poetry. There was a time when most daily newspapers in this country published poems as commonly as crossword puzzles. Instead, poets now get April as National Poetry Month.
So, at JH Weekly we’ve decided to demonstrate the importance of poetry all year by doing our poetry issue outside the April boundaries as strict as the meter in a line in Tichborne’s “Elegy” (that’s a poetry joke). But reflecting the ambiguous nature of poetry, we smirk, the issue date is May 2, and so we are getting our poetry push in before poetry has faded from your mind until next April, the cruelest month (a gratuitous T. S. Eliot reference).
I am amazed how divisive poetry loving can be. In his last column, Mike Bressler, the Public Editor of JH Weekly, who is constantly trying to paint me as a snob like he is Rick Santorum and I’m Barack Obama, mocked me for an article Bressler compared to my “interview with a poet.” Interestingly, he is mistaken, not about the merits of the article, but by his belief that I interviewed a poet in the pages of the JH Weekly. Until this issue, I had not. I am sure that won’t stop Bressler from knocking the elitism of JH Weekly doing a poetry issue next week with fresh vigor.
Poetry does not just produce indifference the way you may not like ballet, but often the special irritation of those who seem stuck in a view of poetry as a fraud to contemporary relevance. Can you name a single living poet? Yes, Allen Ginsberg is dead.
But that is only part of the story. The Internet has shown that poetry still has a massive audience with sites that achieve significant traffic, interaction and vibrancy that has nothing to do with the way poetry is seen as an art form kept on life support by government subsidies, editorial goodwill, and tenure.
The audience for poetry has turned out to be not only large but surprisingly diverse, covering those who enjoy urban spoken word, slams, cowboy poetry, and reading classics like Whitman. There is even a movement among the school aged, culminating in the Poetry out Loud (which will take place later this month) contest started in 2006, now centered on the once moribund art of memorizing poetry.
Outside the United States, poetry can still be a matter of life and death.
[ click to continue reading at JH Weekly – Jackson Hole’s Only Indy Newsy ]
Jelly Face
That’s going to hurt in the morning: Brutal knockout blow turns boxer’s face to jelly
This brutal knockout blow turned a boxer’s face to mush – making him look more like jelly than a prized jouster.
Tony Pietrantonio came crashing to the canvas in the 31st second of the third round following the devastating right-hander from fellow U.S. light heavyweight Lavarn Harvell.
Harvell, 23 – dubbed Baby Bowe because of his resemblance to former heavyweight champ Riddick Bowe – said: ‘I felt that punch all the way up my shoulder and back, so I knew he wasn’t getting up.
Pietrantonio, who only agreed to Saturday’s fight three days previously, was unconscious as he hit the Atlantic City, New Jersey floor.
Matangi Breaks
Nerd Rage
10 Extreme Cases of Nerd Rage
A handful of the many things that have made our geek blood boil.
Nerd rage. We’ve all experienced it. Perhaps you feel it in a darkened movie theater while watching a timeless graphic novel unravel before your eyes (ahem, Watchmen). Maybe you feel your temperature start to rise when a Joss Whedon show is cancelled. It might even be because that hobbit looks a little too uncomfortably real. Whatever the catalyst, something you love has been degraded or insulted in some way and your anger, offense, or indignation may result in a destructive Hulk-like rage. Or, more likely, you turn to Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and the comments sections of blogs to unleash these feelings of fury on the world.
Not that every nerd is sitting around all day finding things to complain about. There’s even what we like to call “anti-nerd-rage,” which is exemplified with Bronies. When one thinks of a fanbase, it’s common to conjure images of bitter cynics who attack everything that’s wrong with the subject they hold dear. However, the fanbase of the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic boasts a remarkable amount of optimism and sincerity. Bronies, show us that nerd rage can sometimes work in a positive light. That being said, maybe the Bronies are among the things that ignite your rage.
Click here to see “10 Extreme Cases of Nerd Rage” slideshow >
“between my cat and my pups, i’m about to f**n kill things”
Hawk Snatches Shanna Moakler’s Dog From Her Calabasas Home
CALABASAS (CBS) — Former Miss USA and Playboy model Shanna Moakler says one of her dogs is missing and another is under veterinary care after the animals were attacked by a hawk at her Calabasas home.
“A eagle attacked my 2 chi’s today, my girl pup is at the vet, my boy is missing, between my cat and my pups, i’m about to f**n kill things,” she tweeted Monday, but later referred to the animal as a hawk.
“Not gonna lie, feel like hunting hawks today… don’t feel bad about it either,” she tweeted Wednesday.
Holly Golightly’s Townhouse Turned Over Again
Breakfast at Tiffany’s House, Where Martha Stewart’s Co-Defendant Once Lived, Sells For $6 M.
The elegant townhouse at 169 East 71st Street has played a role in two great dramas—starring first as the facade of Holly Golightly’s apartment in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and decades later acting as the hideout of owner Peter E. Bacanovic, the disgraced Merrill Lynch broker who spent five months in prison as part of the Martha Stewart insider trading scandal.
And who knows what lies in store next for the gracious old beauty, bought for $5.97 million, a smidge over the $5.85 million ask?
The buyer was mysterious Cyprus-based Costalea Holdings Limited.
And although film websites report that the movie’s interior scenes were shot in a Hollywood studio, Mr. Browne gave The Times a little inside information: After a careful viewing of the film, Mr. Baconvic was convinced that his living room hosted the party where Holly donned a dress fashioned from a bed sheet.
Book Pirate?
from The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Richard Prince: Book Pirate?
“This is an artwork by Richard Prince. Any similarity to a book is coincidental and not intended by the artist.” © Richard Prince – so says the colophon.
Richard Prince has made a very good living out of appropriating and transforming material from the cultural ether. So why not take what many believe is the quintessential American coming of age novel and make it his own.
With the exception of the title page Prince’s “sculpture” is an exact facsimile of the first edition with the second issue dust jacket (lacking the author photo). The dust jacket text reads: “Anyone who has read Richard Prince’s New Yorker stories, particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esmé–with Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is full of children.”
The details:
Prince, Richard. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: AP. American Place, 2011. Hardback, shrinkwrapped as issued, 5.5 x 8 inches. One of 500 copies. The Catcher in the Rye a ‘sculpture’ book by Richard Prince. Released at the Printed Matter BookFair NYC 2011 and through several ad hoc ‘performances’ in NYC in late 2011. No longer available.
James Frey (center) and Richard Prince (dark jacket) selling books outside Central Park, 2011.
In the fall of 2011 Prince took to the streets of New York to peddle the book. Setting up shop on a blanket outside Central Park, with none other than James Frey starring as the bookseller, the book was offered for sale to the public for $40 a copy. My head is still spinning as I try to wrap it around the choice of Frey, an admitted fabricator, as the bookseller for Prince’s work, which is a deliberate fabrication.
It would have been interesting to see Salinger’s reaction to such a “performance” if he were still alive. Salinger was never one to shy away from litigation when it came to protecting his work and his brand and this work of appropriation has all the makings of an epic legal battle.
Third Mall From The Sun
Third mall from the Sun – Morrison and Cargo combine on a brave new world
CHAIN stores, skateboarding neds, Gok Wan fashion shows and zombies – a few of the things I associate with shopping malls.
Luckily Ewan Morrison has a different story to tell . . . quite a number of stories to be exact.
And even more luckily the hip young gunslingers at Cargo – Scotland’s most cutting edge publisher – are bringing the stories to life in a unique way.
‘Tales From The Mall’ is threatening to break ground in almost every department (store).
From one of the UK’s most acclaimed literary and film talents, ‘Tales From The Mall’ is a mash-up of fact, fiction, essays, true stories and multi-format media that describes the rise of one of the most defining and iconic symbols of the modern age – the shopping mall.
Wry, humourous and fast-paced; packed full of brain-boiling facts and gut-wrenching, often hilarious stories; it will change the way you think about your hair colour, your loyalty cards, the global economy and your boyfriend . . . forever.
Morrison has been praised by no less than Douglas Coupland, author of ‘Generation X’, and controversial literary force James Frey.
Robert, you have some frightening sexual issues that I think you need to work out before you make this movie.
Brilliant Idea or Literary Cannibalism
How to Star in a Classic Novel
By Jason Boog on April 19, 2012 6:23 PM
For $24.95, the customized book company U Star Novels will reprint a paperback edition of a classic novel starring you and your friends as the main characters.
The titles include everything from Pride and Prejudice to Dracula to A Christmas Carol to Anne Of Green Gables. The company will also create customized customized romance novels for lovers. What do you think–brilliant idea or literary cannibalism?
Picasso Found In Cleveland
Man Finds Picasso Original In Thrift Store
COLUMBUS, Ohio (CBS Cleveland) – Thrift stores have often been a popular hunting ground for collectors, but few of them find anything of worth, except for one man.
Zach Bodish, a 46-year-old University District resident, purchased what turned out to be an original Picasso print at a Volunteers of America thrift store in Clintonville for $14.14, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
Initially, Bodish thought that the print was a reproduction, but he noticed on the corner there was a red signature and after some research he realized that he owned an original artist proof.
“I started shaking a little bit,” Bodish told the paper. “I realized it wasn’t going to make me rich, but still, how often do you find a Picasso?”
Bodish’s print turned out to be a linocut in which Picasso himself carved a design into a linoleum block. The block was inked and pressed into paper.
Jimi ’69 – American Dessert
When Your Girlfriend’s Breasts Are Used Against You
Suspected Anonymous Hacker Busted By FBI — Thanks To A Racy Photo
HOUSTON (CBS Houston) – The evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigations gathered against an alleged Galveston hacker didn’t come from a techno-chase through the expansive Internet. Instead, the FBI used the information embedded in a photograph of his girlfriend’s breasts.
Higinio O. Ochoa, 30, is a Linux administrator by day, but by night he’s accused of being part of the group “CabinCr3w,” an affiliate of the hacktivist organization Anonymous.
According to Gizmodo, Ochoa allegedly used the Twitter handle @Anonw0rmer to link to a site boasting personal information on law enforcement officials, along with a picture of a young women in a low-cut shirt that read, “PwNd by w0rmer & CabinCr3w.”
The FBI found the image in February and checked the exchangeable image file format, or EXIF data, for evidence. EXIF data is information that a digital camera imprints onto an image.
This particular image’s EXIF data revealed that it came from an iPhone near Melbourne, Australia, which then led the FBI to Ochoa’s Facebook page.