Music / DAM: Israeli hip-hop
DAM are a hip-hop trio of ethnically Arab Israelis from the ghetto of Lod, between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Their eclectic and energetic style draws from the usual suspects of American MCs as much as it does from French rap and traditional Arab music, and while their unabashed anti-Zionist call for Palestinian liberation may enrage many, they’re careful to not be anti-Semitic — they even rap in Hebrew on occasion, and have made an entirely Hebrew version of their hit Born Here — winning them many Jewish and Israeli fans and allies. Their show at Southpaw in Brooklyn recently was perhaps one of the most hard-hitting and politically rousing concerts in recent memory.
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The Ritz is a Chicago-based underground hip-hop duo comprised of Apoc and Rel. For their first full-length album — The Night of Day — they took their inspiration from the themes and aesthetics of 1940s and 50s film noir, with Rel creating a collection of beats that demonstrate his range as a producer. Apoc handles the majority of the rapping, jumping seamlessly from one style to the next as the album shifts tone and tempo.
Download The Ritz track, Blown.
We launch our new newsletter, My Secret Playlist next Tuesday — with Moby’s selections — and as a teaser for it, we asked Brooklyn power pop group Hello Tokyo to tell us about eight of their favourite songs right now.
Also by GERRY MAK
Darkestrah are a kind of perfect storm of everything I look for in music. They’re a German-based black metal band from Kyrgyzstan with a female singer, and they incorporate Central Asian folk elements like throat-singing into their frighteningly harsh yet majestically beautiful and epic songs. When I’m having a crappy day, I go away to a special place with marauding Mongols, wide-open spaces, star-filled skies, and wrathful demons bent on destroying civilization — that’s what Darkestrah sounds like.
I saw pretty rad illustration in a recent Newsweek of a two-headed snake. I think it was an article about the economy, but I honestly can’t remember. I remembered the artist, though, and looked him up online. Chris Buzelli does some pretty great paintings that liven up articles in Men’s Health, Rolling Stone, and many others. They kind of remind me of Mark Ryden, but with a little more restraint. Read more
Seriously, nothing beats good old 35mm film. To me photography isn’t about capturing every pore in someone’s face, or even making slick, magazine-ready images. The imperfections in film put just enough distance between the viewer and the moment that allows room for an emotional and nostalgic response. Digital photos are generally so vivid that it eliminates all the mystery of an image. Check out Jeff Luker’s photostream to see what I mean. Read more
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Chicago artist Damara Kaminecki (aka Damarak the Destroyer) creates the some seriously bad-ass woodcuts. With a darkly gothic, antique aesthetic, and subject matter tending towards ye old curiosity shop, Kaminecki has a body of work which truly stands out. Read more
We featured White Williams on Lost At E Minor recently, so we thought it was time to pin him down for a chat. Metaphorically speaking of course. Read more
While I feel I am not alone in breathing a sigh of relief over this season’s purging of fluoro, in retrospect there was a lot to be learned from the experience: don’t wear all fluoro, or don’t wear fluoro at all. And we slowly trudged back to black, which, despite what other colors may think, will always be the new black. Read more
I tossed and turned through three chapters of an epic Russian novel last night. Or so it felt as a constant stream of characters made their way past the stringent casting couch and into the deepest reaches of my dreams. Read more
We have a bunch of new playlists up on our sister site, My Secret Playlist, a music discovery website and weekly email publication in which we invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. Over the past few weeks, acts such as The B52s, Team Genius, Pivot, Jukebox the Ghost, Moby, Katy Perry, and the Dandy Warhols, among many others, have written about the music that inspires them. To sign-up to receive the weekly My Secret Playlist publication, just enter your email address into the website’s subscription box.
This interview with James Lavelle gives a fascinating window into the making of the latest UNKLE opus, End Titles, Stories for Film.
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Beverly St. Clair’s Genome quilts
Artist Beverly St. Clair has translated the four DNA bases into certain shapes and patterns, which she uses to translate genomes into beautiful quilts.
Herzog and de Meuron, the Swiss architects, have led the way with this re-use of the existing building fabric of CaixaForum in Madrid. Rather than being slavish to the existing openings, the building has been cut away for a contemporary practicality. We think this is an example of heritage not getting in the way of progress. Check out a similar concept of a previous post re-using the city fabric, where we were dreaming of such thing.
This is Mike Bertino and his work absolutely wonderful. He’s got this original, almost lo-fi Tim Biskup thing going on and it makes me really want to grab a beer with him. I love when artists give their pieces names like Knuckle Inferno and Man Beard. It just makes them that much better. He keeps a blog where he publishes his latest work and lets you know where they’re available for purchase, so go check it out. I think I’m going to ask him to be my BFF. Well, at least one of them. Not the only one. Cause, you know … I have more than one. Read more
Kikkerland, the company behind those campfire tea light holders, has a line of amazing snap-together anatomic models of beetles, frogs, moths, cows, humans, and a wide range of other animals, even a wooly mammoth. Where the hell were these when I was a kid?
I love art that scares me a little. Erica Eyres somehow manages to make subtly unnerving drawings of distorted figures using nothing more than a ballpoint pen and a piece of paper. She renders shockingly realistic hair, yet skews the proportions and features of her subjects, exaggerating their expressions and making them look monstrous.
For visual people who rely on shapes and imagination, this eye test t-shirt by Hong Kong-based studio, WEME, is a perfect conversation starter. It’s available through the Lost At E Minor online store for just US$30. Read more
UNKLE’s new album, End Stories … Music For Film, comes in a limited edition gatefold vinyl gloss with sculptured panel embossing. We have three copies to give away to randomly selected Australian Lost At E Minor subscribers who leave a comment under this post.
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Music Blog Girl said | 19 May, 2008
Yo, Shalom!!! You guys rock!! or should I say rap!!!