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30 August 2010
Die Antwoord + Aphex Twin = Next Next Level Shit
I tried ’splaining to you back in February why Die Antwoord were onto some next level shit.
In that blog post, my proposed RIYL (recommended if you like) list of comparative artists included Vanilla Ice, Kool Keith, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Zomby, Aphex Twin. At the time, even I found that list of comparisons a bit much. But here we are, a few months later, and “Weird Al” has been added to an ATP Festival curated by the dramatic post-rock sad sacks in Godspeed! You Black Emperor. And now Aphex Twin has officially collaborated with Die Antwoord.
The evidence (via Pitchfork):
No there’s nothing groundbreaking about Die Antwoord’s contribution to the track — but still, one begins to wonder, what is the artistic world coming to. Or rather, one begins to take great joy in the open-mindedness with which visionaries of different emotional tenors are joining hands. Just goes to proove it takes some next level shit to recognize next level shit.
Posted by Alec Hanley Bemis
Tags: Aphex Twin, Die Antwoord, Great New Music, Next Level Shit, South African, The Problem With the Avant Garde
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2 August 2010
Kanye West on the underground, great pain & Renaissance painting
Say what you will about Kanye being a douchebag occasionally.
…but he also gives great Twit. And he is, right here, right now, onto some next level shit.
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“Great art comes from pain”
True enough.
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“I forget the word but there’s people throughout history that there responsibility is to be conveyors of truth onto next generations — there’s a word for that type of person — and I feel like I’m type of person that needs to carry on the truth that needs to tell the story not his story, to tell the story. It’s like Raphael painting Jesus’s wife knowing that the pope would have his head.”
Okay now.
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“It takes so much for a me or an Eminem or you know, to come back and embrace and say, you know what, but we have to deliver this on a major level to make a difference. It’s just such a shame that all your favorite artists are so underground. It’s like not cool for no one to hear shit anymore. And that’s the hipster justification of failure.”
Yes yes yes!
More importantly he is wearing some very nice suits. And I hear his forthcoming album is going to have some trippy collaborators from “the underground” which will blow our minds.
Follow him now.
Read more »
Posted by Alec Hanley Bemis
Tags: Good Tailoring, Internet Poem, Kanye West, Next Level Shit, Raphael, Rolling Stone, The Problem With the Avant Garde, The Underground, Twitter, Video
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26 July 2010
Isn’t this even more insane?
The dominant weather pattern in New York City this summer has been HOT. The dominant weather pattern on this blog seems to be STRANGE. Today Hermeto Passcoal. (Via Sophie Brous, I think.)
Posted by Alec Hanley Bemis
Tags: Brazil, Hermeto Pascoal, Nature Worship, The Problem With the Avant Garde, Video
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12 April 2010
Scott Williams starring in “Nirvana on ice”: a worthy internet meme & some thoughts on web commentary
“Again, very unusual choreography.”
“I always want to know how do they skate in those jeans?”
“Scott doesn’t have a long list of medals or credentials as an amateur but he’s really come into his own as a professional and a performer and he’s always valuable to a show.”
And that sample from the color commentary is only the beginning of the awkwardness on display in this video — an internet meme I’ve been sitting on for awhile. I’ve done the research. It’s not an internet parody, a YouTube vid equivalent of Blades of Glory.
Nope, rather this is figure skater Scott Williams‘ championship effort to revolutionize skating. Just to show the shallowness of the information available on the internet, I clicked in three links deep into this meme without so much as seeing the skater’s name written out. It took watching the whole thing (boring!), listening to to the commenters announce his name, and then doing a Google search to figure it out (boring!).
But wait a second, is the dialogue on the internet so shallow after all? Read more »
Posted by Alec Hanley Bemis
Tags: Internet Poem, Nirvana, Scott Williams, Smells Like Teen Spirit, The Problem With Nostalgia, The Problem With the Avant Garde
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4 April 2010
What Mark Morris thinks about butts
Of late I have been endeavoring to understand dance. A review of Mark Morris’s “Socrates” at BAM helped me some with its inclusion of a quote about…butts.
This led me to the quote’s original appearance, a passage from The New Yorker writer Joan Acocella’s book on the choreographer:
- “I love to see their butts,” says Morris. Read more »
Posted by Alec Hanley Bemis
Tags: Brooklyn Academy of Music, Butts, Joan Acocella, John Cage, Mark Morris, The New Yorker, The Problem With the Avant Garde