Nice lil’ animation that Os Gêmeos created for the 33rd Annual São Paulo film festival, from the niceproduce blog.
February 5, 2010
Lightworks
Another anticipation-builder for Cibelle’s new album, which now has a name (Las Venus Resort Palace Hotel) and a vague release date (Spring 2010). This is the video for her cover of obscure electronica pioneer Raymond Scott’s Lightworks, which is definitely better than I make it sound.
There seems to be some back-story about an alter-ego called Sonja Khalecallon playing live at the last cabaret on earth, which you can find out all about here. But the most important thing is it sounds great. Plus, of course, it’s another reason – in case you needed one – to dust off this equally awesome version by the late, great J Dilla.
J Dilla – Lightworks
More Lightworking goodness here, courtesy of MF DOOM
February 1, 2010
New Band: Holger
photo from surfacetoair via holgerflickr
Young? Check.
Weird? Check.
Cool name? Check.
Great hair? Check.
Overly-verbose myspace page? Check! No, it’s not Little Joy. This is Holger.
Any guitar band whose list of influences includes Fela Kuti and Jay Z has to be worth checking out, at least, and Holger turned out to be all that, and then some. They’ve been compared to bands like Passion Pit and – probably thanks to the Fela reference – Vampire Weekend, but these boys sit some way to the left of The Biggest Indie Band In The World Right Now. Have a listen for yourself down there ↓, and read their Made-Up Disease interview here.
Holger – Caribbean Nights
January 31, 2010
snap.
I’ve been taking a bit of an interest in favela tourism recently. It was an idea that turned my stomach for a long time, but I’m beginning to see that it might have more dimensions that just being straight-up “exploitative”.
Anyway, I came across this post by a guy called Nat Friedman, who decided to take a tour in Rocinha despite his own reservations. Long story short, the next day he went back with a stack of disposable cameras and handed them out to a bunch of kids. The results are illuminating.
“After I got back and started telling this story to people, I read a newspaper article about some Kodak marketing team that hands cameras out to starving kids in Kenya and posts their photos on kodak.com somewhere, and it made me sick. So I don’t know if my project will disgust you. We did our best to explain the project to everyone who got a camera, some people declined, and everyone who got prints was thrilled to have them.”
The project has generated a fair amount of debate on his blog, and rightly so, but for me it’s interesting (not to mention rare) to see some totally mundane images of Rocinha minus the usual, slightly schizophrenic layer of post-City of God glamorization/condescension. A lot of the photos are awesome, too.
See the whole project here.
January 27, 2010
Pixionary: a pixação alphabet
January 23, 2010
OSS 117: Lost in Rio
Lost in Rio, the follow-up to the excellent OSS 117: Nest of Spies is showing at the ICA in London until the 11th of February. Like the trailer says, if you like dancing and Chinese people, you’ll love it.
