Music / The aesthetics of Lightspeed Champion
As head honcho of my band The Paper Scissors, I am in charge of many things both musical and menial, and then also the aesthetic and web aspects — artwork, blogs, and the whole identity of the band. Bands these days have to offer more than just a product, a CD, a clip and then a live show. There are people that have really embraced the change of the industry, not just the over talked MP3 killing the record industry debate, but the interactivity and dialogue that artists now have with their audience, through the web. One artist who I discovered recently and who epitomizes this is Lightspeed Champion, the solo project of Devonte Haynes, an English singer-songwriter. He plays very melodic pop with elaborate arrangements — Elton John meets Fleetwood Mac with a Jarvis Cocker-like vocal twang. Lightspeed Champion (named after a comic he drew as a kid) is a far jump from his previous job as guitarist with cult London screamos Testicicles. I think a lot of his appeal can be attributed to his aesthetic. He has impressive press shots with his ever present thick rimmed glasses, random animals, ten minute videos, and a blog where he writes and uploads photos and videos every day. There is a thick tapestry that shapes a cult of personality around him. He talks candidly about his friends and his life on his blog; taking in celebrities (doing songs with Klaxons, Patrick Wolf, playing Strokes songs with The Arctic Monkeys), parties, the DVDs that he’s watching, and so on. From the outside, it seems that he is a super connected, prolific, slightly narcissistic, yet brilliant artist who is fully embracing the web and shaping the aesthetic of his music. All of this with only one single lifted so far from his debut album.
Listen to the Lightspeed Champion song, Waiting Game.
[audio:http://www.acertainromance.com/files/11.27.07/LightspeedChampion_WaitingGame.mp3]
Also by JAI PYNE
TV On The Radio’s Dear Science
It was a privilege being able to sit down and listen to TV On The Radio’s album Dear Science from start to finish. An added bonus was the fact that I’ve been in the America for a month — the album sums up the atmosphere I have witnessed in the US: tension, money, a bigger gap between rich and poor than I’ve ever seen, a never ending far away war, and some vague hints at political hope. From the inset, TV On The Radio get bad ass on you, combining their trademark layers of barber shop vocals with criss-crossing handclaps over doomsday synth pads and screaming guitars on Halfway Home, which is like a grown up cousin of Wolf Like Me from their 2006 LP Cookie Mountain, easing you into the fact that beyond this point they are going to erase everything you thought you knew about TVOTR. But you should have expected that anyway.
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Anytime you find Houndstooth and Hoody in the same sentence you know it will be a good day. Well, today has been a great day and New Dandyism, the lovechild of a conglomate of lusty designers — Sons by Obedient Sons, wood wood and Call of the Wild — is the reason. It’s a surprisingly coherent and articulate project for one cooked up in a kitchen filled with chefs. Read more
You hear the words ‘unique’ and ‘original’ thrown around quite a lot these days. I use them myself regularly. But every now and then you find an artist who truly deserves those terms to be used in relation to their work. Travis Louie is one such artist. Read more
Clusters of mysterious balloons, packs of terrifying cats, bunnies, and burning people, and other absurd or abstract elements haunt Andrea Galvani’s beautiful and eerie landscape photos. The Italian artist’s work seems to comment on man’s hand in altering nature. Read more
DJ Spooky — That Subliminal Kid — is just about the deepest crate digger around, trawling the barrels of long-lost record stores for choice vinyl to spin in his wickedly dubby sets. He gave us the inside word last week on his eight favourite songs right now via our sister website, My Secret Playlist. This is what he had to say about Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Panic in Babylon: ‘If there’s anything that the twenty-first century has told us, it’s that dub is the real original hip-hop. Lee Scratch even had to make it clear in 1965 by adding “Scratch” to his middle name. Take that, Grandmaster Flash!’ Read the rest of DJ Spooky’s Secret Playlist.
Oh man, this is good. If Jamie Lidell was born in any earlier era, he would have soul brother number one plastered all over his birth certificate.
The coolest band in Indonesia? I think so. White Shoes & The Couples Company describe themselves as a small band that is ‘influenced by Indonesian movie soundtracks from the 70s and inspired by the acoustic spirit of 1930’s classic jazz musicians’. But I like to think of them as carrying the torch for artists like Benny Goodman, Tahiti 80, and The Cardigans, all at the same time.
Listen to their track, Super Reuni.
[audio:http://www.thepinglepad.com/music/2008/January/SuperReuni.mp3]
The Dutch, the beautiful Dutch, in terms of architecture anyway. Here they have led the way again with this reuse of an old crane dock. A new glass office building, with a climatic façade of double glazing, motorized louvers on the outside and full length windows on the inside, hovers above the old dock. Read more
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Christine Callahan’s colourful photography
There is magic in these photographs by New York photographer, Christine Callahan. The vibrant colors and the beauty in the everyday give me the feeling that everything is going to be just fine. Read more
People are always looking to push the boundaries of street art, perhaps fed up with seeing the same (wild) style of graffiti over and over again. So, like Blu and Dan Witz, Julian Beever came into our lives like a breath of fresh air. His work is stunning, mind-boggling stuff: he manages to create a world ‘inside’ a pavement with his 3D pastel illustrations, tricking the eye into believing a dimension exists right below our very feet. Read more
Sam Weber on his favourite emerging artists
We asked illustrator Sam Weber to give us the inside word on some of the young artists who have caught his eye recently: ‘Francis Vallejo, Yoko Furusho [above], and David Jien [below]. For up-and-comers, they are a few with some really amazing work’. Read more
Kristin Baker’s paintings strike the eye like massive Hollywood blockbusters, but have the elegance of delicate watercolors. Read more
The Japanese sure know how to think outside the box. The country that brought us Takeshi’s Castle has come with this equally genius take on modern sport, and it’s absolutely hilarious.
Australian illustrator Moofus is just 11 years old. As he says, ‘my mum and dad won’t let me leave school to get a proper job, so I draw lots of pictures’. This limited edition print of Sydney’s Coogee Beach is printed on Epson heavyweight matt paper with archival inks and is just US$20 through the Lost At E Minor store. Read more
Woohoo! We have five copies of the new Faint album, Fascination [Inertia], to give away to randomly selected Australian-based Lost At E Minor subscribers who leave a message under this post telling us about the last time they, ummm, Fainted.
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Tom Wade said | 29 January, 2008
His album was sitting pretty between Radiohead and Amy Winehouse in the iTunes UK charts earlier this week. He must be quite pleased with that. On some of the tracks on the album his voice sounds just like an English Murray Lightburn (The Dears).