Department of Eagles – In Ear Park
If you’re a fan of the Brooklyn based band, Grizzly Bear, then you’ve probably heard of Department of Eagles. The original project, turned side project of Grizzly’s Daniel Rossen and his NYU roommate, Fred Nicolaus, Department of Eagles touches close to the more known Bear band, but it envelops a sense of experimentalism and freedom of instrumentation into Rossen and Nicolaus’s minds. As connoisseurs and revelers of the new cherished movement of timeless rock/folk/pop/electronic/progressive music in Brooklyn, Department of Eagles has released their second effort, and the effort in my opinion is perfection. In Ear Park is quite different than their first release and it touches closer to Grizzly Bear in the way that it is pure cascades of harmonies, classical instruments, and dreamy soundscapes of love, relationships, family, and youth. This is the album I’ve been looking for all year, and I think you’ll love it too.
Here’s some examples of the new album, In Ear Park:
Reversing Heaven
The only peaceful scene from Gaspar Noe’s Irreversible, Yet it brings hard truth to the rest of it’s misery.
The combination of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony (alegretto) and the twirling predestined fate of Monica Bellucci’s character is astounding when put into context that the entire film plays each scene in reverse order (similar to Christopher Nolan’s Momento). The viewer finds a peaceful moment of rest in this beautiful park after already having been through experiencing how her day will end.
I won’t give anything away , but I must also SERIOUSLY WARN you NOT to see this film if you are disturbed by extremely dark and realistic content. Irreversible (France, 2002) contains graphic violence, graphic language, graphic adult content, strong sexual content, and pretty much everything else. The reason why I look beyond the gross parts is that Noe has a true talent of pulling the sugar shade off our eyes when it comes to the human condition. Why would we want to watch the downside of humanity? Because it is a part of our existence and it can’t be denied. In order to understand the lightness of being, we must face the dark and overcome it.
I also appreciate how original Noe’s style of filmmaking is. He wants you to become sick. He wants you to not valorize or eroticize these people. He wants you to feel good about who YOU are, as you are in your normal lives.
In an interview with Inside Out Film, Noe’s answer to his film is simple, “My aim was to make you feel out your minds”. Yeah totally. Made me not want to walk into strange places when in Paris.
Anyhow, here’s the official Cannes trailer if you’re interested:
Art Show @ Studio Number One
Mekenzie Kay and Alia are featuring work here this month starting on Saturday.
Their collaborations are mesmerizing.
Subliminal Projects present the first installment of their new Studio Number One curatorial program, Park Life, opening Saturday, October 4, 2008.
Amidst a neighborhood defined by fluid and fixed identities, the series of exhibitions focuses on the creative crossroads of art, design, popular culture, and technology. With works from an expansive network of artists, Park Life attempts to showcase the sense of community that art has the power to create.
In an effort to jumpstart this dialogue of the future, Park Life poses the question, “What defines a community?” Hmmm…good question.
The community theme of Park Life is very much a representation of the biography of Studio Number One, Subliminal Projects Gallery, and Obey Giant Art. With the recent move from Koreatown to Echo Park in early 2008, the underground art trifecta knows what it’s like to be the “new kids on the block” and respects the continuous process of adapting to the new environment they now call home. Throughout this process of discovery, the gallery has made it a priority to uncover new interests with old friends and to build a solid relationship with local vendors, neighbors and residents.
The works in this show celebrate the diverse creative collective of friends, relatives, and fellow creators Subliminal Projects has met along their journey. Subliminal Projects invited these “family members” to submit one to three pieces of artwork no larger than 3 feet by 3 feet, revealing the gallery’s open mind and open arms to those attempting to beautify the chaos of the world while simultaneously stimulating thoughts and ideas.
Of course, the response to Subliminal Project’s invitation has been overwhelming, attracting an impressive group of artistic contributors.
The exhibition will include works by: Willem Augustus, Stephen Bliss, Louise Bonnet, Nicholas Bowers, Lorin Brown, Jaspr Byrnes, Josh Cochran, Lane Coder, Jordan Crane, Poppy DeVilleneuve, Amy Jo Diaz, Keetra Dixon, Abbey Drucker, Elliot Earls, Tristan Eaton, Shepard Fairey, Amanda Fairey, Andrew Foster, Gary Garay, Zachary Gibson, Mathew Goldman, Kristian Henson, Dustin Hostetler, Victor Hu, Cody Hudson, Z James, Theo Jemison, Mel Kadel, Jeremy Kaplan, Mekenzie Kay, Chris Kasch, Michael M. Koehler, Curtis Kulig, Philip Lumbang, Blake E. Marquis, Travis Millard, Dan Monick, Jesselisa Moretti, Garrett Morin, Matthew Muller, Mylinh Nyugen, Kyle Oldoerp, Mike Pare, Louisa St. Pierre, Alia Penner, Cleon Peterson, Kill Pixie, Andrew Rae, Luke Ramsey, Jared Purrington, Razauno, Casey Ryder, Diana Scheunemann, Skullphone, Sophinie Som, Joel Speasmaker, Sumi Ink Club, Marissa Textor, Justin Vanhoy, David Whitcraft, Megan Whitmarsh, Ernesto Yerena, Sean Yoon, and Florencio Zavala.
Please visit www.subliminalprojects.com for details.
Pink Floyd as a Dietary Supplement
Most people say that they love Darkside of The Moon or The Wall. They’re pretty great, don’t get me wrong…but for me, nothing compares to Meddle. That’s my album. I like to rise to “A Pillow of Winds” in the morning and fall to “Echoes” in the evening.
Try it.
I would also suggest Obscured by Clouds and Animals as other lesser main stream works from the Pink.
The Memories of Billy Rainwater
Beautiful
95 Degrees at 7pm in September
Summer came back to say hi.
FIRST RAIN ’08
I was beginning to think that there was no such thing as nature in this place.
Reminds me of Ghostbusters when the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man is about to take over the world.
I Touched Invisibility
Sick on a couch for 3 days with no human contact. Now that I’m back, I really didn’t miss much at all.
Thanks to Munday.
Peace.
Nice.
My best friend, Geary, decided to take off last minute to Nice, France. Nice. Wouldn’t we all have loved to finish our last 3 months of education in France? Well, anyhow, I hope he finds his true love out there and returns with amazing stories that we grounded citizens only dream of. Hopefully Geary will think of me when Antoinette asks if her sister, Marie can come to America with them when he returns. That’d be swell. Say hi to Jean-Luc, Francois, and Claude when you’re out there. I hear they changed the world some years back.
I’ll see you next year, good friend…
Our Letters From Yesterday
Darren sits on his tattered high-back sofa as the war plays on the distorted television screen. Although appearing to watch as the bombs, bullets, and guts of a lost generation rip through his living room, our tired old boy gazes upon the endless seams of the table that cradles the screen. His hair: clean-cut, yet settled without care. His eyes: watered. Not from tears, but rather the swift irritation stemming from the dry fanned air in his locked down den. Darren stares as though he faces a million year ultimatum like the stalingrad from the old days of Butch Cassidy or Billy the Kid. To whom does he owe for such a swift immersion into a lackluster bliss? Averting from all things that matter for a so-called state of normality, more bombs and embedded distress cover the landscape of Darren’s eardrums as he remembers what silence used to feel like as a color in his head.
Once, not long ago, our boy was deeply in love with the strange days that tempt all the living creatures to reach out and be somebody. Whether large or small, simple or complex, mortal or divine; such feelings only remain out of contempt for those that seemed to have passed him by while he was suspended in a moral noose. Sharp cramps shoot up Darren’s arms as he briefly looks down to confirm that his fingers have been neglected and tightly clenched into his knees in the same way children animate make-believe spiders on their momentary lovers’ limbs.
The only thing Darren fears is that he will relapse into a mental state that has slowly consumed him for the last few lingering weeks of his life. Something that cannot be explained without discomfort: a state of sleep in the form of an internal combustion mixed with a second and unknown realm inside his waking life takes over in waves of purple rouge. What started as an unusual event every so often has now become a perfectly measured routine that is entirely involuntary. Call it a trance, or coma if you will. Whatever it may be, and wherever Darren goes while inside of himself, he hasn’t quite yet realized that this secondary world is not true to the reality that we all know so well.
Blood begins to trickle out of the edge of Darren’s right nostril and fills a line through the spaced pores of his lip, down to his chin. His eyes suddenly adjust and focus onto the television’s fanfare as if he had not even been aware of it at all. Darren is awake now. Darren will be dead soon. Whether he knows it or not, he will be dead and he will not be resistant to such a notion of the things to come. Even if it were staring him down like wolves, Darren will not run from his death. He is done running, for now until forever.
These are our letters from yesterday.
In case you’re undecided…
Well put.
The Can
Whoa.
Lost in Tel Aviv
They lost a package for an unnamed hero in Tel Aviv. There were photographs of her while she was young and in a different place. It sits between the cracks of an international flight, aching to show its contents of youth and danger to the cracked fingers of the owner that reflects a colorful future to that of the captured black and white. Crests of saltwater and memory will only unite certain occasions in one’s life, and we, the new, have only our distant future to await such moments of being reunited with an image of our youth.
Godspeed, dear package.
Find your way home in Tel Aviv.
Polish Film Posters
I’m in absolute awe and adoration over Andrew’s post at wellmedicated.com that showcases 50 brilliant film posters that are distributed in Poland. Show this guy some love, because he found a mine of gems.
Curious where to buy these limited works of art? Right here, baby…
(they’re really pricey…but hey, it’s imported!)
YAR! Pirate Day!
International Talk Like a Pirate Day (ITLAPD) is a parodic holiday invented in 1995 by John Baur (Ol’ Chumbucket) and Mark Summers (Cap’n Slappy), of Corvallis, Oregon, who proclaimed September 19 each year as the day when everyone in the world should talk like a pirate.[1] For example, an observer of this holiday would greet friends not with “Hello,” but with “Ahoy, me hearty!” The holiday, and its observance, springs from a romanticized view of the Golden Age of Piracy.
Examples of Pirate Sayings:
Seamen in the days of sail spoke a language so full of technical jargon as to be nearly incomprehensible to a landsman. For example, few could follow these instructions:
Lift the skin up, and put into the bunt the slack of the clews (not too taut), the leech and foot-rope, and body of the sail; being careful not to let it get forward under or hang down abaft. Then haul your bunt well up on the yard, smoothing the skin and bringing it down well abaft, and make fast the bunt gasket round the mast, and the jigger, if there be one, to the tie.
—Richard Henry Dana, Jr., The Seaman’s Manual (1844)
These phrases date back to the 17th century:
If the ship go before the wind, or as they term it, betwixt two sheets, then he who conds uses these terms to him at the helm: Starboard, larboard, the helm amidships… If the ship go by a wind, or a quarter winds, they say aloof, or keep your loof, or fall not off, wear no more, keep her to, touch the wind, have a care of the lee-latch. all these do imply the same in a manner, are to bid him at the helm to keep her near the wind.
—former pirate Sir Henry Mainwaring (see Harland (1984) p.177)
From Lt. Robert Maynard’s report of Blackbeard at the Battle of Ocracoke:
He styl’d us ‘young puppies’ and shouted ‘May the Devil take my soul if I ever gives quarter or asks it of ye!’
“Damn ye, yellow-bellied sapsuckers, I’m a better man than all of ye milksops put together” – Blackbeard
The only written records recovered from the Adventure after Blackbeard’s death ran as follows.
Such a day, rum all out- Our company somewhat sober- A damned confusion amongst us !- Rogues a-plotting – Great talk of separation- so I looked sharp for a prize- Such a day found one with a great deal of liquor on board, so kept the company hot, damned hot, then things went well again.
(info from wiki….hehe yar be lazy bones today!)
PEACE INVISIBLE 