Holy Ghost!

Om Records turns fifteen

Om Records are turning the big fifteen and to celebrate they’re going to release the double disc, Om:15 album, featuring exclusive tracks from Radio Slave, Charles Webster, Crazy P, Atjazz, Fish Go Deep, John Beltran and more. The art on the record was done in collaboration with urban street artist, Sam Flores of Upper Playground, and full versions of the design will also be available in a limited high quality 18″x24″ digital print. The album drops on July 21. Check out the single — Orchestrating Maneuvers In The Dark by Radio Slave below.

Girl Talk digs, errr, Beyonce

We invited Greg Gillis, aka Girl Talk, who aside from being the DJ of the moment is also the remix whiz behind tracks from Beck, Tokyo Police Club, and Grizzly Bear, to give us a rundown on the songs he’s wearing out right now for our sister site, My Secret Playlist. He started off by propping Beyonce’s anthemic single, Single Ladies [listen below]. Go figure! ‘This is one of my favorite Beyonce tracks ever. It has so much energy, and the chorus gets dark in a great way. The clapping never stops. The video is a flawless execution of a performance style clip. It’s perfect’. Read the rest of Girl Talk’s Secret Playlist.

Prodigy live

More than a decade of built-up expectations are going to be hard to deliver on. Without realising it, the years spent wrecking my eardrums with Their Laws and Out of Space inadvertently resulted in setting Prodigy the massive task of promising me the greatest live performance I would ever see. It had to be the ultimate experience: a band who have delivered the heaviest beats of the last sixteen years fronted by a man who’d give Jonny Rotten a run for his money. On the night, it was good — very good — but not good enough. There was a hint of fatigue: they’ve been destroying arenas with the same tunes for almost two decades, and the whirlwind behind their live shows, Keith Flint, will be 40 next year. After all, sixteen million albums sold and an almost cult following secured them the title of greatest dance act of all time long ago, so now it’s just for fun — something to keep the fans loyal to their king. So, here’s a clip of them way back when they started, at their freshest. The early 90’s acid rave scene barely gets a flicker on television these days, so it’s also a nice piece of memorabilia of a culture forced underground and eventually washed away.

The Depreciation Guild

The Depreciation Guild is two guys and a Famicom. That’s techno for a certain brand of gaming hardware — Nintendo. The result is an intoxicating swirl of shoegaze dreampop and electro artfulness that leaves you swooning. Kurt Feldman and Christoph Hochheim take notes from My Bloody Valentine, Ride, and Cocteau Twins, as well as more contemporary acts like M83 and Ulrich Schnauss. Hmmm. Taking your beloved old school Nintendo Entertainment System to unexpected concert-hall packing potential; now there’s an idea! Their album — In Her Gentle Jaws — is available for free download via their website. [hear also the music of fellow Brooklynites, Yeasayer]

Listen to The Depreciation Guild track, Sky Ghosts.

David Reed

It’s either the eye-pop effect of his palette or the graffiti tag sensibility of the brushstrokes that endear David Reed’s new paintings to me. They just seem familiar. In what can feel like an austere and exclusive world of high culture and Chelsea art openings, his solo show opened with a mix of 20-something hipsters and beret-topped collectors. So it seemed like Reed achieved what his bio outlined as his original premise — to re-contextualize abstract painting within a greater visual culture. His exhibition runs at New York’s Max Protetch Gallery until December 22.

Clinton Gorst

Says Sydney-based artist, Clinton Gorst, of his work: ‘About fourteen years ago, I started to make collages for my walls when I was living in a bedsit in London, and soon after that I started to give them away as framed presents. It was just a hobby at the time, but that grew to become a passion once I started to collect resources for future works. I was encouraged to exhibit after a friend of a friend looked at my works and bought five or six pieces on the spot! Recently, I’ve been taking my own photography and using that in photomontage. I’m also creating a new series of digital images that mixes portraiture with pop aesthetics’. Read more