‘King of Injustice’: Golden naked Trump statue installed at European Parliament

Danish artist Jens Galschiøt poses next to his sculpture “The Orange Plague,” which was installed in Strasbourg, France, the official seat of the European Parliament.

“At a busy thoroughfare inside the European Parliament, passing politicians are now confronted with a grotesque and gilded vision of American power: an 8.5-foot-tall statue of President Donald Trump, naked but for a thin layer of 23-karat gold leaf. ‘Trump likes gold,’ said Danish artist Jens Galschiøt, the statue’s creator, over the phone after it was unveiled Tuesday. ‘In a way, I think he would like this sculpture.’ Titled ‘The Orange Plague,’ the artwork has been installed in Strasbourg, France, the official seat of the European Parliament. The copper sculpture, also dubbed the ‘King of Injustice,’ imagines the US president on the shoulders of a frail smaller figure. His thighs and sagging belly wrap tightly around the man’s head; his hands clutch at a long golf club and the scales of justice. ‘I am sitting on the back of a man,’ reads the text on the statue’s plinth. ‘He is sinking under my burden. I will do anything to help him. Except step down from his back.’ For Galschiøt, the work symbolizes what he sees as the US president’s threats to the environment and the rules-based world order. ‘Trump is destroying all the things I believe in,’ he said. This is not necessarily a rebuke from the European Union, but rather from Danish politician Per Clausen, who sponsored the exhibit. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are entitled to host displays on parliament grounds, though all exhibitions must be approved by officials. Parliamentary rules prohibit events or exhibitions deemed ‘offensive or of an inflammatory nature or contradictory to the values on which the Union is founded,’ or those that ‘undermine the dignity of Parliament.’ Permission is not tantamount to explicit endorsement of their contents. Nonetheless Galschiøt, who had feared the application would be rejected, considers the green-light to be a form of tacit approval from Europe’s parliamentarians. ‘I think a lot of American people say, ‘OK, this is our president, but he’s also ridiculous in a way.’ And I think most Europeans see him like that, too,’ he said. Galschiøt is known for provocative political artworks including the ‘Pillar of Shame,’ a memorial to victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre that was controversially removed from a Hong Kong university in 2021. He said his decision to depict Trump naked alludes to Hans Christian Andersen’s story ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes,’ in which a vain emperor parades the city in the nude. ‘Dictators don’t like you laughing at them,’ he explained. …”
CNN
YouTube: Gold-plated with a golf club… ‘Naked Trump’ statue displayed at European Parliament headquarter…

The Debut Album from SANAM is Inspiring and Iconoclastic

“The debut album from the Beirut-based band SANAM, titled Aykathani Malakon ص​ن​م – أ​ي​ق​ظ​ن​ي م​ل​ا​ك (Awoken by an Angel) is a feast for the senses—an amalgam of krautrock, free rock, Arabic maqams, and poetry. The post-folk album unfolds slow and dreamlike, opening with echoing bells, resonating beats, and the melancholy melodies of the buzuq (a fretted string instrument with a pear-shaped body and long thin neck, popular in the folk music of the Levante), followed by striking guitar riffs and the sentimental voice of Lebanese singer Sandy Chamoun. ‘There are poets within the album invoking hallucinatory vibes,’ explains Chamoun. ‘They are philosophizing our lives because this is what we need: to philosophize and think over our society and our reality.’ It’s fitting that a group as experimental as Sanam can trace its origins to Faust’s Hans Joachim Irmler. Irmler was invited to participate in Lebanon’s Irtijal Festival by the festival’s co-founder, Sherif Sehnaoui. ‘It was Sheriff’s idea to ask Anthony [Sahyoun] if he could bring together a band from different backgrounds, to experiment with Irmler during a three-day residency,’ Chamoun recalls. ‘Anthony was the connection between us. He knew me, Pascal [Semerdjian], Marwan [Tohme], and Antonio [El Hajj Moussa] and I knew Farah [Kaddour]; so we met.’ Hajj brought his bass; Kaddour her buzuq; Sahyoun his guitar and synths; Semerdjian drums; and Tohme played an array of guitars, carving out a new sound from within one of the most challenging periods of Lebanese modern history, drawing on the haunting poetry of Arabic language giants like Paul Shaouland the songs of Sayyed Darwish. ‘[At first] I didn’t feel that Irmler was very active,’ Chamoun recalls. ‘But when we played together, he played things we didn’t expect. He told us things during the workshop that we didn’t understand. I really respect him, and how he left us to independently figure things out; he would only listen, observe, and make the random comment here and there. He comes from a completely different background, yet I had the feeling that it was refreshing for him to listen to new sounds.’ …”
Bandcamp (Audio)
Bandcamp (Audio) Aykathani Malakon
YouTube: Aykathani Malakon صنم – أيقظني ملاكٌ SANAM

Reggae Britannia

Reggae Britannia rediscovers Britain’s soul  “BBC4’s Reggae Britannia series continues tonight with another raft of excellent programmes. Following last week’s Reggae Britannia documentary, tonight sees Toots and the Maytals’ Reggae Got Soul film, an archival round-up of Reggae at the BBC, Toots live from Glastonbury and an Arena film on Bob Marley. This whole series – with its attendant concerts and web content – has been a long overdue tribute to Britain’s reggae scene. While there’s been some online grizzling about a few glaring omissions from the documentary’s roll call (David Rodigan, Misty In Roots, Black Slate etc) one would have to assume that these people were unavailable, rather than deliberately left on the cutting-room floor in favour of the distinctly un-dread Boy George and Stewart Copeland. Condensing any 50-year-old scene down into an hour – particularly one as nuanced and fragmented as British reggae – is always going to lead to a degree of oversimplification. Overall, the series has been a good corrective to British reggae’s frequent dismissal by casual observers as having been either a weak imitation of the original source material, or unimaginative mainstream fodder. As with all the Britannia series (Pop, Synth, Metal and Festivals), Reggae Britannia attempted to place the music in the context of the society around it. While there was plenty of enjoyment to be had in the vintage clips of Dave and Ansell Collins on British television, Prince Buster arriving at Heathrow airport and black and white archive of Sir Coxsone’s sound system, the real punch came from juxtaposition of the music with incidental shots of the contemporaneous wider world: black boys walking through grubby English markets, juvenile suedeheads eyeballing each other at youth clubs, tracking shots of council estates, record shops, NF graffiti and empty London streets at dawn. The combination of music and social documentary is far more revealing of the time than the resolutely upbeat, false memory that usually makes up retrospective talking heads shows. It’s closest antecedent is the BBC’s much overlooked Rock ‘n’ Roll Years (1985-1994) which also worked from the principle that pop music and the real world were inseparable and that the negative was as historically important as the positive. …”
Guardian
YouTube: Reggae Britannia Documentary Part 1, Part 2

The School Near Paris That Shows Why French Students Are Protesting

“When students at Paul Éluard, a high school in a working-class suburb north of Paris, arrived for the first day of school, they found classrooms lacking chairs, tables and reliable electricity, students and teachers said. With the school under renovation, students were being taught instead in prefabricated buildings with bad insulation, filthy toilets and regular power outages, they said. Then came the staffing shortage. Two mathematics professors were moved to another school, leaving no one to cover their classes for over a week. There were no replacements for the school’s absent psychologist or careers adviser, they said, and there was only a single part-time nurse to provide on-site medical care to roughly 2,000 students. ‘It was a completely chaotic way to welcome students,’ said Irène Cailleteau, a mathematics teacher at Paul Éluard since 2020. ‘It was an extremely difficult way to start the year.’ Those are among the frustrations that have fueled a surge of student protests since late September, both at Paul Éluard — one of the wellsprings of the unrest — and at hundreds of high schools across France. Thousands of students, sometimes backed by teachers like Ms. Cailleteau, have blockaded their schools to protest widespread teacher shortages, creaking school infrastructure and grueling schedules — and to demand an overhaul of the national system that allocates places in higher education programs. The movement, which was bolstered on Tuesday by union-led rallies in more than 40 French cities, has divided the country and inflamed political tensions, particularly after many demonstrations descended into violence. Some protesters have shot off mortar-style fireworks, burned public buildings and looted shops, while rights groups and jurists have accused the police of disproportionate force. In just over two weeks, more than 6,500 people have been arrested, and more than 750 police officers, as well as roughly 300 students and staff members, have been injured, according to French officials. At the demonstrations at Paul Éluard, footage showed largely peaceful protesters, disrupted by some participants who pulled down part of the school fence and set fires in the street outside. That led the authorities in late September to order the school’s closure, ban protests in front of it and arrest several students. The school’s principal and the local branch of the Education Ministry declined to comment on the accounts in this article. The office of the regional president, Valérie Pécresse, said that her administration had recently invested about $50 million to improve the school, which is among more than 50 in the area, a suburb called Seine-St.-Denis, that has been newly renovated. …”
NY Times
1960s: Days of Rage – The Walls Speak: Art And The Revolution In May ’68

Terry Iacuzzo and Tony Oursler Talk Tarot

“On a sun-blasted afternoon in July, I stepped into the low-lit galleries of New York’s Morgan Library & Museum to study the mantic arts. I was there with Terry Iacuzzo and Tony Oursler—a psychic and an artist, respectively—to see ‘Tarot! Renaissance Symbols, Modern Visions.’ The exhibition unites the three original tarot decks commissioned by the Sforza and Visconti families in fifteenth-century Milan, placing them alongside midcentury and contemporary work that charts the transformation of the card game into a tool for divination. ‘This is the holy grail,’ Terry announced as we entered the first room, where gilt cards from the Visconti-Sforza Tarot, ca. 1456–58, were displayed in tall cases. The objects were large and surprisingly dimensional, with intricate tooling punched into layers of gold and silver leaf affixed to pasteboard. Terry leaned in to marvel at the newly conserved artifacts, whose Major Arcana—painted in lustrous glazed colors—mapped a Renaissance cosmology based on the virtues promoted by the poet and scholar Petrarch. ‘Birth, death, mother, father, fears, time, destiny, religion, government, law,’ she said, inspecting one of the spreads. ‘There is no more than this in life.’ She furrowed her brow when she noticed that the cycle was installed in reverse. ‘This is not set up right.’ Apparently, you’re supposed to read right to left, starting with the Fool and ending with the Magician. ‘Why didn’t they call me?’ she quipped. Terry, who is seventy-eight years old, has been reading tarot for more than sixty years. I had invited her to explore the show with Tony, who had just returned to New York from installing ‘Tech/Gnosis—Magic, Media, Art,’ a major retrospective at the Mori Art Museum’s Tokyo Node space in Japan. Tony, who has assembled a fabled collection of esoterica, comes from enchanted stock: His father was the founder of a journal dedicated to real-life encounters with angels, and his grandfather was an accomplished magician (and a mystery writer). You know,” Tony told us as we glided along, ‘my grandfather worked with Houdini, debunking psychics around Manhattan.’ Was he going to debunk Terry right there and then, continuing a bitter rivalry I had unwittingly resurrected? Terry dispelled the tension: ‘I consider Houdini my mentor because he was the debunker of mediums!’ The duo went on to explain how disreputable mediums promising contact with the dead had flourished after the devastation of World War I. These charlatans sparked a countermovement of ragtag crusaders­—many of them magicians—who revealed the hidden devices sham mediums used to produce ‘spooky’ effects. …”
ARTFORUM
1960s: Days of Rage – Tarot Was a Courtly Card Game. How Did It Become a Tool for Divination?

Hotel Exile – Jane Rogoyska (2026)

“The word ‘hotel’ is cognate with ‘hostel’ and ‘hospital’, and for a few short years in the middle of the 20th century, one Paris establishment functioned as all three. Hôtel Lutetia sits on the city’s Left Bank and exudes a certain nonconformist swagger. Opened in 1910 and built in a style that bobbed between art nouveau and art deco, it soon attracted an artistic and bohemian crowd. Hemingway hung out there in the 1920s, as did Picasso, Matisse and André Gide. James Joyce, resident in the city for 20 years, wrote a chunk of Ulysses sitting at one of its tables. In this outstanding book, which has been shortlisted for the Women’s prize for nonfiction, Jane Rogoyska reports that by the mid-1930s the Lutetia had become headquarters to German political dissidents fleeing Hitler. ‘The Lutetia Crowd’, as the Nazis disdainfully dubbed them, comprised the intellectual cream of the Weimar Republic. Heinrich Mann, novelist brother of the more famous Thomas, was the head of the organising committee that worked to bring down the Nazi regime from a distance. To this end, fake tomato-seed packets were sent into Germany containing a diatribe against the Third Reich and The Communist Manifesto was rebound into classic literature and pumped into the Fatherland. When they weren’t tampering with tomato seeds, these former lawyers, academics and journalists spent their days tramping around the City of Light in increasingly shabby clothing, trying to persuade someone to give them a job, any job. Even this misery, though, was nothing compared with the hellish conditions that arrived with the occupation of Paris in 1940. Under Hitler’s Nacht und Nebel (Night and Fog) initiative, any émigré or refugee could now be arrested without legal due process. Most of the Lutetia circle found themselves reclassified as stateless aliens, an utterly defenceless position. For those who were Jewish, there was every chance of being sent to concentration camps in the east. Having set up the Lutetia as the focus of her book, Rogoyska then traces a number of individual stories. Some of these have been told many times before. There is Walter Benjamin, who spends all his days at the Bibliotheque Nationale perfecting his life’s work on The Arcades Project, a study of the street life of 19th-century Paris. Then there is Irène Némirovsky, the Ukraine-born author who is secretly writing Suite Française, a novel depicting the fear, desperation and moral compromises of ordinary citizens during the German invasion. Gisèle Freund, a young German photographer and a lesbian, has already taken the precaution of making a mariage blanc to a Frenchman in order to gain citizenship. …”
Guardian
‘Hotel Exile’: The Riveting Wartime History of the Landmark Lutetia
amazon

Stephen Dedalus

“Stephen Dedalus is James Joyce‘s literary alter ego, appearing as the protagonist and antihero of his first, semi-autobiographic novel of artistic existence, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), and as a major character in his modernist novel Ulysses(1922). Stephen mirrors many facets of Joyce’s own life and personality. Joyce was a talented singer, for example, and in Ulysses Leopold Bloom notes the excellence of Stephen’s tenor voice after hearing him sing Johannes Jeep‘s song ‘Von der Sirenen Listigkeit’. In Stephen Hero, an early version of A Portrait, Stephen’s surname is spelled ‘Daedalus,’ a more obvious allusion to the mythological figure Daedalus, a brilliant artificer who constructed a pair of wings for himself and his son Icarus as a means of escaping the island of Crete, where they had been imprisoned by King Minos. Buck Mulligan makes reference to Stephen’s mythic namesake in Ulysses, telling him, ‘Your absurd name, an ancient Greek!’ His surname also suggests his desire to ‘fly’ above the constraints of religion, nationality, and politics in his development as an artist. Daedalus had been contracted by King Minos to build the Labyrinth in which he would imprison his wife’s son the Minotaur. Stephen’s surname may also reflect the labyrinthine quality of his developmental journey in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen’s first name recalls the first Christian martyr. The theme of martyrdom runs throughout the novel. … The childhood of Stephen Dedalus is recounted using vocabulary that changes as he grows, in a voice not his own but sensitive to his feelings. The reader experiences Stephen’s fears and bewilderment as he comes to terms with the world in a series of disjointed episodes.^[5] Stephen attends the Jesuit-run Clongowes Wood College, where the apprehensive, intellectually gifted boy suffers the ridicule of his classmates while he learns the schoolboy codes of behaviour. While he cannot yet grasp their significance, at a Christmas dinner he is witness to the social, political and religious tensions in Ireland involving Charles Stewart Parnell, which drive wedges between members of his family, leaving Stephen with doubts over which social institutions he can place his faith in. Back at Clongowes, word spreads that a number of older boys have been caught ‘smugging’ (the term refers to the secret homosexual horseplay that five students were caught at); discipline is tightened, and the Jesuits increase use of corporal punishment. Stephen is strapped when one of his instructors believes he has broken his glasses to avoid studying. Prodded by his classmates, Stephen works up the courage to complain to the rector, Father Conmee, who assures him there will be no such recurrence, leaving Stephen with a sense of triumph. …”
W – Stephen Dedalus
W – A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
NY Times: On Reading ‘Portrait of the Artist’ as a Young Man
Stephen Dedalus has an aesthetic epiphany along Dollymount Strand.

The 10 Best Americana Albums Of All Time

“Before we recommend the ten best Americana albums of all time, maybe we should define the term. In our mind, Americana is more a spirit than a sound – certainly based in the blending of country and rock, but with a rebellious attitude and probably more respect for tradition than you’d find in a lot of contemporary country-pop. And it doesn’t hurt if the main songwriter has a rugged personality that infuses every track. Put it this way: if the music makes you ask whether you’re sure Hank done it this way, then it’s probably Americana. … 10: Creedence Clearwater Revival: Willy And The Poor Boys (1969) It’s unthinkable to have a best Americana albums list without some Creedence Clearwater Revival. Willy And The Poor Boys was built around the single ‘Fortunate Son/Down on the Corner,’ which defined what the band was all about: disdain for the ruling class on one side and a celebration of common values on the other. They sustained that mood across the whole of this album, which was conceptual as CCR ever got. … 9: The Flying Burrito Brothers: The Gilded Palace Of Sin (1969) If you don’t already love this album, Americana just might not be your thing. Widely celebrated as the album that crystallized Gram Parsons’ vision of ‘cosmic American music,’ The Gilded Palace Of Sinwasn’t strictly a country-rock album. For one thing, there was very little rock on it. For another, its two classic non-originals come from the Stax/Volt catalogue. Otherwise, Parsons (and The Flying Burrito Brothers’ co-writer and co-singer, the eternally overlooked Chris Hillman) forges some timeless country ballads steeped in psych-era imagery and mystery. … 2: Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road (1998) Car Wheels On A Gravel Road is not the only essential Lucinda Williams album, but arguably it’s the most accessible. From the elegiac ‘Drunken Angel’ to the proudly sexy ‘Right In Time’ and the road song ‘Metal Firecracker,’ it covers all the bases. And it doesn’t hurt that the title track has one of the most memorable chorus hooks Williams ever penned. This album’s troubled birth got plenty of press at the time (she recorded it three times before it was just right) and led to the perception that Williams was a difficult artist. She has long since had the last laugh, having been on a prolific creative tear ever since, releasing some of the best Americana albums in the cannon. …”
udiscover (Video)

Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road

DJ Schmolli

“DJ Schmolli from Vienna (Austria) has established himself to a fixed size in the DJ business over the years. In his energetic shows musical boundaries are broken and songs from different genres and eras get mixed up to rock every party. Mashup is the magical word to thrill the audience, worldwide. Party goers in Berlin, Moscow and Rio know the score! He produced his first mashups during the time as an active musician in 2000, parallel to this he gained some experience on the turntables. Since 2007 he has devoted himself entirely to DJing. In addition to his role as resident DJ in Munich and Frankfurt he also played DJ sets in Vienna (eg Pratersauna, U4 and Ottakringer brewery), Paris, Berlin, Budapest, Zurich, Moscow, New York, Los Angeles and Rio de Janeiro, to name just a few. Not to forget the legendary performance in the birthplace of the “Bootie” mashup parties San Francisco where over 1,300 ecstatic fans celebrated with him. At festivals Schmolli is a frequently booked act, such as the Paaspop festival in Holland or the VOLT Festival in Sopron (Hungary). Until now DJ Schmolli has produced over 350 mashups that also get lots of radio airplay, for example on BBC Radio1 or Austria’s biggest station OE3. But above all the internet is the largest platform for his productions. His videos are reaching hundreds of thousands of views on Youtube, making him one of the most successful mashup producers in the world. He easily blended 80s cult hits with current chart toppers, mixes Coldplay with the Beach Boys, Sean Paul with Falco. Or why not taking all the stadium hymns & singalongs and blending them into the ‘Super Bowl Anthem’? Even print media such as the ‘Washington Post’ and the ‘Toronto Star’ have already become aware of him. …”
DJ Schmolli – About
DJ Schmolli (Video)
YouTube: Mix – DJ Schmolli

These salvaged relics in a Brooklyn subway station are the ghostly remains of old New York buildings

“Dating back to 1824 when it was a free library founded specifically for tradesmen, the Brooklyn Museum is a magnificent repository of 140,000 pieces of art spanning ancient Egypt to contemporary America. But beneath the museum at the grimy subway stop that takes you directly in front of the Beaux Arts building (which took 29 years to finally complete in 1926) are intentionally placed relics of another kind. Inside the station is an underground mini-museum of salvaged relics—from corbels to rosettes to human faces with eyes that follow you as you move toward the platform—taken out of the rubble of demolished New York City buildings. These 78 artifacts of terra cotta and stone are mounted on station walls with the care and precision of the mounted paintings inside the Museum’s halls and rooms. What are they doing here, besides giving passengers a reason to hang out and experience art underground? The relics come from the Brooklyn Museum’s longtime collection of ornamental architecture, and they were donated as part of the MTA’s Arts and Design program, which brings art installations to city subway stations. ‘New mosaic designs were added to frame the objects and make connections with the architecture of the station,’ states the MTA on a web page explaining the backstory of this underground exhibition. The Brooklyn Museum provides a bit more context, stating that this ‘long-term installation’ got its start in 2004 and was apparently planned to run through 2020, but the relics remain in what seems to be a permanent exhibit. The MTA also explains that the Brooklyn Museum ‘has long served as a repository for ornamental architectural forms salvaged from significant buildings that were being demolished.’ I wish we knew which ‘significant buildings’ these remnants came from, and if anyone recognizes them, let us know in the comments. But for now, they’re the ghostly remains of anonymous city architecture of the 19th and early 20th centuries felled by the wrecking ball. …”
Ephemeral New York

John Coltrane – Alabama (1963) | A Historic Performance

“… On November 18, 1963, two months after the funeral oration, Coltrane brought his quartet to the studio to record a new song called ‘Alabama,’ a musical memorial for the four murdered girls in Birmingham. (Incidentally, the recording session took place just days before U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated; this was an especially tumultuous time in American history.) Pianist Tyner later recounted the effect of King’s words: ‘The song ‘Alabama’ came from a speech. John said there was a Martin Luther King speech about the four girls getting killed in Alabama. It was in the newspaper—a printed medium. And so John took the rhythmic patterns of his speech and came up with ‘Alabama.’’ Coltrane did not need lyrics to say what was in his mind and heart; he instead imbued the song with the essence of King’s eulogy. King’s words are not heard in ‘Alabama,’ yet they are felt. Coltrane begins and ends the song with aching expressions of grief. In the middle, as observed in JAZZIZ Magazine, ‘like the speech, ‘Alabama’ shifts its tone from one of mourning to one of renewed determination for the struggle against racially motivated crimes.’ One of Coltrane’s most emotional works, “Alabama” was one of two studio-recorded songs on the album Live at Birdland, released to the public on January 9, 1964.  …”
Kennedy Center Education
YouTube: Alabama (1963) | A Historic Performance
1960s: Days of Rage – Bombingham – Birmingham, Alabama

‘Roll With The Punches’: Van Morrison’s Knockout Blues Album

“Seminal, genre-blurring records imbued with folk, jazz, and mysticism, including Astral Weeks, Moondance and Veedon Fleece, have long since crowned Van Morrison king of Celtic soul. Yet the artist’s first love was always the blues, and on September 23, 2017, he went back to the blues with his hard-hitting 37th album, Roll With The Punches. As a young man, the Belfast-born icon-to-be had a head start. Having lived in Detroit during the 50s, his father had acquired one of Ulster’s largest record collections, ensuring that Morrison Jr was exposed to artists ranging from jazz greats such as Charlie Parker to folk trailblazer Woody Guthrie while still a child. As Morrison freely acknowledges, however, it was the pioneering blues artists with whom he really empathized during his formative years. ‘From a very early age, I connected with the blues… it was an attitude,’ Morrison reflects. ‘I was lucky to have met people who were the real thing – people like John Lee Hooker, Bo Diddley, Little Walter and Mose Allison. I got to hang out with them and absorb what they did. They were people with no ego whatsoever and they helped me learn a lot.’ Van Morrison’s long and distinguished career began with him fronting fiery Belfast outfit Them, whose evergreen mid-60s hits ‘Here Comes The Night,’ ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ and ‘Gloria’ (the latter covered by Jimi Hendrix, The Doors and Patti Smith) displayed Morrison’s love of R&B. The Northern Irish star has come full circle, returning to the genre with a vengeance on Roll With The Punches, wherein a series of blues standards rub shoulders with a selection of freshly-minted Morrison originals. Equal parts hungry and accomplished, Roll With The Punches was recorded with an incredible team of studio collaborators including Chris Farlowe, Georgie Fame, Jeff Beck, Paul Jones and Jason Rebello. Collectively, they show off their chops on a raw’n’slinky version of Bo Diddley’s ‘I Can Tell’ and a spirited medley of T-Bone Walker’s ‘Stormy Monday’ and Doc Pomus’ ‘Lonely Avenue,’ while Morrison flexes his versatile vocal cords on two of the album’s best self-penned numbers: the subtle, James Carr-esque “Transformation” and the pugnacious, Chicago-style blues of the title track. …”
udiscover (Video)

Music for Ancient Catacombs – Various Artists (2023)

“Music for Ancient Catacombs is the fourth installment in a series of thematic compilation albums from Eighth Tower Records that has established itself as a consistently rewarding project in drone and experimental ambient. The series began in 2023 with Music for Abandoned Monasteries, which invited fifteen artists to contemplate sacred spaces left to crumble and be reclaimed by silence. Later that same year, Music for Haunted Asylums turned its gaze to the deinstitutionalized psychiatric hospitals that litter the landscape of the post-war Western world. Most recently, Music for Alien Temples pushed the concept outward into speculative and cosmic territory, imagining the ritual spaces of non-human civilizations. That album earned a spot on our Best of the First Half of 2025 list. Now the series goes figuratively underground, a ‘back to basics’ release using drones, texture, percussion, and atmosphere to evoke states of dread, mystery, desolation, and the sublime. Thirteen artists, veterans of the form alongside newer voices, explore varying temperaments, from haunted stillness to barely-contained noise. Kammarheit opens with In Quiet Depths, a masterclass in restraint. Hushed and synth-driven, the track is suffused with a darkness that feels geological in its patience. Underground Sorrow from progettosonoro is sepulchral in the truest sense. The listener can feel the weight of stone overhead, and something unseen moving just ahead. Nerthus conjures a funerary atmosphere in Missa Tenebrarum, echoing percussion marking time in vaulted spaces while haunted melodic passages drift and dissolve.Ashtoreth & Penumbral Aethyr’s Khthon is the album’s most unpredictable offering, an abstract, shifting amalgam of noise and disembodied vocalizations that refuses to settle into any particular form. Adonai Atrophia fills The Lowest Chamber with echoing percussive thuds and wafting, processed vocal fragments implying presence while leaving its source unidentifiable. PNÉVMMA’s kry-pti is brief but effective, church bells submerged in gloom, a short passage that is transitional rather than absolute. Aconis continues this trend with Sanctum in the Depths, a quietly unsettling piece built on pulsating static and background crackling. …”
Avant Music News (Audio)
Bandcamp (Audio)

A Prospect Heights manhole cover reveals the source of Brooklyn’s water supply a century ago

“It’s not the only Brooklyn manhole cover with ‘Catskill water’ embossed in iron. But it’s the one that caught my eye when I found myself at St. Marks Place and Washington Avenue in Prospect Heights earlier this summer. And it led me to do a little research and discover that in 1917, Brooklyn began getting the bulk of its fresh water from the then-new Catskill Aqueduct. I knew about the Croton Aqueduct—the engineering marvel that brought clean water to Manhattan in 1842 and helped the city develop into a modern metropolis (and stop residents from relying on fetid wells and polluted ponds, which spread disease). But the Catskill Aqueduct? This upstate watershed, meant to ease the enormous demand for water in the early 1900s, featured 92 miles of tunnels and distribution pipes that carried water under the East River to the faucets of the borough’s homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses. Click into the map in the second image for a closer look at the route the Catskill Aqueduct was to take when construction began in 1905. It’s hard to imagine just how important healthy water was to Brooklyn in the late 19th century. It was so crucial, the promise of a mightier water source helped motivate the independent city to consolidate with Manhattan and form the City of Greater New York in 1898, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Before the building of the Catskill Aqueduct, Brooklyn relied on a system that brought fresh water from Long Island to the Ridgewood Reservoir, a distribution reservoir on the Brooklyn-Queens border. That worked in the 1850s, when the system was created. But with the population of Kings County booming toward the end of the 19th century, officials realized that a more modern water source would be needed. ‘With the completion of the Catskill Aqueduct (third photo) and City Water Tunnel No. 1 in 1917, Brooklyn was connected to the New York City water supply system, which brought water from watersheds located north of the city,’ states ASCE. The Ridgewood Reservoir was still in use, particularly as a backup water source later in the 20th century. In 1989, however, it was officially decommissioned. …”
Ephemeral New York

Hôtel Lutetia

“The Hôtel Lutetia (French pronunciation: [otɛl lytesja]), branded since 2025 as the Mandarin Oriental Lutetia, Paris, located on Boulevard Raspail, in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés area of the 6th arrondissement of Paris, is one of the best-known hotels on the Rive Gauche. Opened in 1910, it is noted for its architecture and historical role during the German occupation of France in World War II. The Lutetia was built in 1910 in the Art Nouveau style to designs by architects Louis-Charles Boileau and Henri Tauzin. It was established by Boucicaut family,^[1] owners of the Bon Marché department store, which sits opposite it facing Square Boucicaut. The Lutetia is located at the intersection of Boulevard Raspail and rue de Sèvres, adjacent to Sèvres-Babylone metro station. The hotel is named for an early pre-Roman town that existed where Paris is now located. Famous guests over the years have included Pablo Picasso, Charles de Gaulle, Marianne Oswald, André Gide, Peggy Guggenheim,Fritz J. Raddatz and Josephine Baker. James Joyce stayed at the hotel in January-February 1940, and it was his final Paris address. Dawn Powell lived at the Lutetia for three months in the fall of 1950, during her only visit to Europe. In the late 1930s, the Lutetia was a frequent gathering place for anti-Nazi German exiles, among them Heinrich Mann, Willi Mutzner and the young Willy Brandt. In the Nazi regime’s propaganda of the time, these exiles were disparagingly called ‘The Lutetia Crowd’. The war began in September 1939, and numerous refugees fled to Paris from conflict areas and places occupied by German forces. The Lutetia attempted to accommodate as many as possible. Because of its reputation, it was filled with a number of displaced artists and musicians. However, the French government evacuated Paris beginning June 14, 1940 and the Germans entered and occupied the city. A number of the Lutetia’s residents escaped; others were captured by the Germans. The hotel itself was requisitioned by the Abwehr (counter-espionage), and used to house, feed, and entertain German officers such as Alfred Toepfer and the French collaborator Rudy de Mérode. When Paris was liberated in August 1944, the hotel was abandoned by German troops and taken over by French and American forces. From then until after the end of the war, it was used as a repatriation center for prisoners of war, displaced persons, and returnees from German concentration camps. …”
W – Hôtel Lutetia
YouTube: Hotel Lutetia, the only palace on the Left Bank in Paris.

I’m Waiting for the Man – The Velvet Underground Live 1969

“Audio taken from October 19, 1969, End of Cole Ave. club, Dallas. Picture taken from October 15, 1969, Dallas Peace Moratorium. For such a groundbreaking band, the Velvet Underground has little footage of them performing live. That was why in 2019 is was extremely exciting to see Texas film archives uncover three films of the Velvet Underground performing at the Dallas Peace Moratorium on October 15th, 1969. These films where: a short 16mm documentary of the event with some audio and picture of the Velvets performing (and Sterling Morrison being interviewed), a silent 16mm B-roll of outtakes from this doc, and a silent 8mm home movie shot from the audience. I was curious, would it be possible to take all of this footage and try to sync it to a live recording for an approximation of what it would’ve been like to see the Velvet Underground perform live? Luckily only a few days after the event on October 19th, a fan would make one of the best live recordings of the Velvet Underground at the End of Cole Ave. club in Dallas. So now the hard part was, which song has the most footage them playing? From the doc there were sync sound snippets of ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’, ‘Beginning to See the Light’, and ‘I’m Set Free’. To figure out the silent footage, I had to do a lot of lip reading. And as luck would have it, most of the other silent footage was also of ‘Waiting for the Man’. With another stroke of luck, it appears like they performed ‘Waiting for the Man’ almost identically across the two shows. So with a little bit of fudging, I tried to get ‘Beginning to See the Light’, ‘I’m Set Free’, and all the other footage synced up to the best of my ability. It’s not perfect, but I’m very happy with the results. A big thanks to the Texas Archive of the Moving Image, and the G. William Jones Film & Video Collection at SMU for posting such incredible footage!”
YouTube

Dirty Water · The Standells, The Who – Magic Bus, etc.

“‘Dirty Water’ is a song by the American rock band the Standells, written by their producer Ed Cobb. Recorded and released in 1965, the song is a mock paean to the city of Boston, Massachusetts, and its then-famously polluted Boston Harbor and Charles River. According to Standells keyboardist Larry Tamblyn, at least some of the song (notably the reference to ‘lovers, muggers, and thieves’) was inspired by a mugging of producer Ed Cobb in Boston. In addition to the Charles River, other local interest items in the song include the Boston University women’s curfew—’Frustrated women … have to be in by 12 o’clock’—and a passing mention of the Boston Strangler—’have you heard about the Strangler? (I’m the man I’m the man).’  The well-known guitar riff that opens the song was recorded with a Fender Telecasterthrough a Vox AC30 amplifier by Standells guitarist Tony Valentino. …” W – “Dirty_Water”
Dirty Water · The Standells
Tell Her No – The Zombies
Blues Magoos – We Ain t Got Nothin Yet
Canned Heat Woodstock Boogie
Ten Years After- I’m Going Home
The Doors – Road House Blues (Live At The Isle Of Wight Festival 1970)
The (Young) Rascals – Groovin’
The Grass Roots – Midnight Confession
Cream’s Epic Farewell: “Sunshine of Your Love” Live in 1968
The Who – Magic Bus – Live At Leeds HQ
“‘Magic Bus’ is a song recorded by the English rock band the Who. It was written by their guitarist Pete Townshend during the time that their debut album My Generationwas being recorded in 1965.  … The arrangement for ‘Magic Bus’ uses a Latin percussion instrument called claves, which is a pair of small wooden sticks that make a distinctive high pitched sound when struck together. The Who used this instrument on the song ‘Disguises‘, which was recorded in 1966. The song makes use of the Bo Diddley beat. …”
W – “Magic Bus”

Artforum

“Artforum is an international monthly magazine specializing in contemporary art. The magazine is distinguished from other magazines by its unique 10½ × 10½ inch square format, with each cover often devoted to the work of an artist. Notably, the Artforum logo is a bold and condensed iteration of the Akzidenz-Grotesk font, a feat for an American publication to have considering how challenging it was to obtain fonts favored by the Swiss school via local European foundries in the 1960s. Artforum is published by Artforum Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Media Corporation. John P. Irwin Jr. named the magazine after the ancient Roman word forum hoping to capture the similarity of the Roman marketplace to the art world’s lively engagement with public debate and commercial exchange. The magazine features in-depth articles and reviews of contemporary art, as well as book reviews, columns on cinema and popular culture, personal essays, commissioned artworks and essays, and numerous full-page advertisements from prominent galleries around the world. …”
Wikipedia

Bruised by War-Related Boycott, Artforum Seeks a Reset
“A skeleton crew of editors needed to take a hacksaw through the December issue of Artforum magazine. There were only a few weeks between the sudden firing of its editor in chief and a print deadline for the glossy’s annual ‘Year in Review’ issue. The fallout had been swift when Artforum’s owner fired the editor, David Velasco, after the magazine published an open letter about the Israel-Hamas war that supported Palestinian liberation and initially omitted mention of the victims of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7. At least six members of the editorial team resigned and nearly 600 writers signed letters boycotting the magazine and its sister publications like ARTnews and Art in America. Regular contributors like the critic Jennifer Krasinski and the art historian Claire Bishop requested to have their articles pulled from the December issue. Others such as the filmmaker John Waters, the curator Meg Onli and the artist Gordon Hall also withdrew their writing. The ‘Year in Review’ issue that has begun arriving to subscribers is a week later than usual and noticeably slimmer. At 150 pages of articles and advertisements, it is about a third smaller than last December’s 224-page issue. …”
NY Times (2023)
The Resounding Influence of John Coplans’s Artforum
YouTube: Artforum

Soul Survivors – “Expressway to Your Heart” (1967)

“The Soul Survivors are an American, Philadelphia-based, soul and R&B group, founded by New York natives Richie and Charlie Ingui along with Kenny Jeremiah. The Soul Survivors are known for their 1967 hit single ‘Expressway to Your Heart‘, which was the first hit by Philadelphia soul record producers and songwriters Kenny Gambleand Leon Huff. The Soul Survivors first played together in New York under the name The Dedications, founded by Kenny Jeremiah, who released several singles under this name in 1962 and 1964. They adopted the name Soul Survivors in 1965. They signed to Philadelphia labelCrimson Records, who put them in touch with Gamble & Huff. ‘Expressway to Your Heart‘ was a #1 hit regionally in Philadelphia and New York in the fall of 1967, and the tune reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 nationally. ‘Expressway to Your Heart’ spent 15 weeks in the charts and sold over one million copies.  The follow-up was ‘Explosion in Your Soul’, which was not as successful (U.S. #33); a third release, ‘Impossible Mission’, also was a minor hit in 1969 (U.S. #68). They quit playing for a few years, but re-formed with a different lineup in 1972. They had one more hit, ‘City of Brotherly Love’ in 1974. In the 1970s, the group lost its record contract and its manager and eventually disbanded. Charlie Ingui became a landscaper, Richie Ingui became a house painter, Paul Venturini became a restaurateur, and drummer Joe Forgione owned an auto body shop. At that time, Steely Dan noted in their song ‘Hey Nineteen‘ It’s hard times befallen the Soul Survivors’. …”
Wikipedia
YouTube: Expressway (To Your Heart)

Disco Maghreb: The Legendary Raï Label That Revived Oran’s Musical Soul

“Discover the fascinating story behind Disco Maghreb, the iconic music label that shaped the sound of Raï and brought Oran to the world’s stage. Once dormant, this legendary brand has risen from the ashes to celebrate Algeria’s rich musical heritage and inspire new generations. A Musical Legacy Born in Oran: Disco Maghreb was founded in the early 1980s by Boualem Benhaoua in the Ras el Aïn district of Oran. Starting as a modest cassette and music shop called Maghreb Musique, it quickly transformed into a major label that discovered and launched the careers of some of the greatest Raï stars, including Cheb Hasni, Cheb Khaled, Cheb Mami, and Hasni. Boualem’s exceptional ear for talent and passion for music turned Disco Maghreb into the beating heart of the Raï movement — a genre blending traditional Algerian folk melodies with modern rhythms and rebellious spirit. The Golden Era of Raï and Disco Maghreb: Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Disco Maghreb’s releases dominated airwaves and cassette players across Algeria and beyond. The label not only popularized Raï worldwide but also became a cultural symbol during Algeria’s turbulent decade of the 1990s — the ‘décennie noire.’ Even amid political unrest and violence, Disco Maghreb’s music remained a source of hope and expression for Algerians. The Decline and Revival: The rise of digital piracy in the early 2000s hit Disco Maghreb hard. With illegal downloads and free sharing online replacing physical sales, the label closed in 2005 after a quarter-century of success. But in 2022, global star DJ Snake, a French-Algerian with deep roots in Oran’s Raï scene, released a viral tribute song and video called ‘Disco Maghreb.’ The clip’s massive success sparked the label’s revival, inspiring Boualem Benhaoua to reopen the vintage boutique — now a nostalgic museum and symbol of cultural pride. Presidential Recognition and Cultural Impact: French President Emmanuel Macron visited Disco Maghreb during his 2022 Algeria trip, praising the label as the ‘epicenter of Raï’ and sharing a selfie with Boualem Benhaoua. His visit underscored the label’s ongoing importance in Algerian culture and its role in bridging Franco-Algerian friendship. Why Visit Disco Maghreb? Visiting the Disco Maghreb boutique in Oran means stepping into the birthplace of modern Raï music. The shelves still hold classic cassettes and CDs, echoing the spirit of a bygone era, preserved like a cultural museum for locals and tourists alike. …”
Visit Algeria
W – Raï: International_success
YouTube: DJ Snake – Disco Maghreb (Official Music Video)

The Harlem Trilogy: Cool Machine (2026)

“Cool Machine is the third novel in Colson Whitehead‘s Harlem Trilogy series. It was released by Doubleday on July 21, 2026. Cool Machine is the third and final novel in Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy, preceded by Harlem Shuffle, set in the 1960s, and Crook Manifesto, set in the 1970s. The book takes place in New York City, specifically Harlem, during the 1980s. This is a period with real estate development, homelessness, and high crime rates. The story centers on Ray Carney, a successful furniture store owner who also lives a double life as a part-time criminal fence, in other words, someone who buys and sells stolen goods. The novel is divided into three connected sections, each set in a different year of the 1980s. So, in 1981, after his wife Elizabeth is denied a bank loan to start her own travel agency, Carney decides to help fund her business by joining a crew for a major heist at the Waldorf Astoria hotel. In 1983, the focus shifts to Pepper, Carney’s noticeably older criminal associate. Elizabeth hires Pepper to act as a bodyguard for an art dealer transporting a valuable African mask. When the mask goes missing, Pepper searches the gritty East Village for it while dodging a violent hitman. In 1986, Carney is forced to use his criminal connections and skills to protect his nephew, Robert, the son of his late cousin Freddie, who is being framed for the murder of a corrupt lawyer.  In this book, the city becomes a character. Hence, New York City is central to the story, with its changing landscape that mirrors the characters’ lives and decisions. There are also themes of survival and morality. In other words, the book shows how the characters navigate a corrupt system. They have to juggle their family obligations and lives with their criminal activities to survive and protect the people they care about. According to Evan Kindley, writing for The New Republic, in recent decades, there has been a meaningful rebirth in the historical fiction genre. He says that it has become the most respected genre in contemporary literature. Kindley, citing a literary scholar, also points out that most of the novels nominated for major American awards since 2000 are historical fiction. …”
Wikipedia
NY Times: With His Latest, Colson Whitehead Pulls Off Another Score
YouTube: Colson Whitehead Talks New Book, Unusual Writing Process, More
amazon
1960s: Days of Rage – The Harlem Trilogy: Harlem Shuffle (2021), Crook Manifesto (2023)

Please Stand Clear of the Accidental Art Museum

“Over nearly two decades as a photographer for The Times, I’ve spent innumerable hours in the subway system. It’s not always the most pleasant place to work. Sometimes, as a diversion from the relentless onslaught of train clatter and the endless flood of humanity — hustling, jostling, trying to make it through the commute inside traveling bubbles of indifference — I stop to look for art. I don’t mean the excellent sculptures and mosaics commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to brighten up the commute. I mean the accidental kind. I look for the colorful scenes of decay on the tunnel walls, the rusted iron beams, patterns formed in crumbling tiles and peeling paint. I’m drawn to the strange forms found in discarded bubble gum and to the delicate sketches etched in HVAC soot. They appear to me as secret works of art just waiting to be noticed and appreciated. I like to imagine them under glass, on pristine white mats inside deep black wood frames on the walls of the Museum of Modern Art. I’ve come to think of it as the ‘M.T.A. Modern,’ a public museum open to all New Yorkers for a mere $3 — if only they knew where to look. Water is the key medium for much of the naturally occurring art within the subway. It acts as both builder and destroyer. As water permeates the surrounding bedrock, it picks up mineral passengers and slowly deposits them where it seeps through, streaks and evaporates. Shallow beds of milky white and amber crystals emerge, glistening, from the primordial solution. As water oxidizes steel, the chemical transformation creates streams of leathery ocher hues. The M.T.A. estimates that its workers — and 753 pumps — drain the equivalent of 15 Olympic-size swimming pools of groundwater every day. When there’s a storm or a water main break, the volume becomes almost unfathomable. It courses through an aging system, much of which still relies on its original infrastructure, sometimes more than 120 years old. It forces that water to surface in strange and surprisingly beautiful ways. It pushes its way under thick layers of ‘M.T.A. Green’ paint slathered on structural supports and emerges in bright orange streaks that seem perfectly picked from the opposite side of a color wheel. Several I-beams in Times Square Station display this kaleidoscope of texture and color. On a tunnel wall at 47th-50th Streets-Rockefeller Center, storm clouds stream down showers of acid rain against a foreboding night sky, while farther down the platform a form reminiscent of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting blossoms from an ivory canvas. …”
NY Times

Bistro

At the Bistro, Jean Béraud
“A bistro or bistrot (/ˈbiːstroʊ/), in its original Parisian form, is a small restaurant serving moderately priced, simple meals in a modest setting. In a 2007 survey of national cuisines, a bistro is characterised as typically: a neighborhood restaurant where one can partake of French home cooking, typically robust, earthy dishes such as cassoulet …. Bistros are not temples of haute cuisine, but places for affordable and simple country food. A Paris newspaper in 1892 referred to dishes served at a bistro, including escargots, veal with sauce ravigote, navarin of lamb, hachis Parmentier, eggs, sausages and hot roast chicken. The Oxford Companion to Food comments that the idea of simple inexpensive food served in a French atmosphere has wide appeal, so that by the end of the 20th century the term had ‘begun to be annexed by more pretentious premises’. Plaque about the legend of the origin of the word ‘Bistro’ at La Mère Catherine, 6, place du Tertre, Paris. (English: On March 30, 1814, the Cossacks were the first to launch their very famous ‘bistro’ here and, on the hill, the worthy ancestor of our bistros was born. 180th anniversary. Tourist Office of Old Montmartre) The etymology is unclear. The Dictionnaire de l’Académie française dates the word from the 19th-century term bistro (‘innkeeper’) and suggests that it may be linked to the Poitevin word bistraud (‘little servant’) or to bistrouille (‘cheap liquor’). It recommends the spelling “bistrot” in preference to ‘bistro’. The word was used to describe a drinking establishment, estaminet (‘saloon’), or small popular local restaurant where alcoholic beverages were served. In the early part of the 19th century, the term ‘gargote’ signified a basic style of restaurant,^{[n 2]} but the term ‘bistro’ or ‘bistrot’ was not recorded until toward the end of the century. An early appearance of the term in print is in Les deux gosses by Pierre Decourcelle, published in 1880. A popular folk etymology, not attested by the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, claims that the word originated among Russian troops who, following the Battle of Paris in March 1814,occupied the city and visited these tiny places to drink a coffee. They might have shouted Bistro! Bistro! (Russian: быстро, lit. ‘quickly‘) when they wished to be served quickly. This etymology has been dismissed by linguists, because there is no attestation to the occurrence of the term until the late 19th century. …”
Wikipedia
What is a Bistro Restaurant?

Plaque about the legend of the origin of the word “Bistro” at La Mère Catherine, 6, place du Tertre, Paris.

The Storyteller – A Musical Tribute to Yusef Lateef – The Nat Birchall Quartet

“With 20 years passing since his first foray into recorded jazz, Nat Birchall now ranks as one of the premier saxophonists of his generation. With several highly acclaimed albums in the locker, he now returns with his most ambitious project yet – a tribute to the legend that is Yusef Lateef. When Jazzman Gerald first mentioned to me the idea of doing an album as a tribute to the jazz giant Dr Yusef A. Lateef, my first thought was ‘Where on earth do I start?’ Lateef was such a colossus of music, and his scope so broad, that I couldn’t hope to begin to cover his musical universe. He was a master of the tenor saxophone, a master of the flute, a master ballad player, a master blues player. Not to mention his skills as a composer and arranger and of course his exploration and use of musical methodology and instruments from all over the world. I’ve always been a great admirer of Lateef, and the challenge was intriguing, so I decided to give it go. We interpreted some of his own compositions (Brother John, Morning & Ching Miau) as well as some compositions by others that he made his own by careful arrangement and interpretation (Love Theme from Spartacus, Ringo Oiwake). I also wrote some original songs that, while certainly not written in his style, might be said to fall into his very broad approach to music making. I also wanted to utilise as many different instruments as possible, something I hadn’t explored too much until this album. So it was a nice opportunity to finally get around to playing some of the many small instruments I’ve collected over the years; the Turkish zurna, the mbira from Zimbabwe, the balaphon from Mali and the arghul from Egypt. We have also tried to use varied time signatures in the music, so we have songs in 3/4, 5/4 and 7/4 time, as well as the standard 4/4. Ultimately the best music tells a story to the listener and takes them to places they might not have imagined themselves. Yusef Lateef certainly did that, and as such was a master storyteller.’ – Nat Birchall
Bandcamp (Audio)

DJ Shadow’s ‘Endtroducing’ Explained

“To listen to DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing is to hear sampling approached as a spiritual practice, an aural document of one man’s lifelong reverence for hip-hop and his communion with the history of recorded music. After years of bending over record crates and inhaling dust from decades-old vinyl in the basement of the Sacramento record store, Joshua Davis pulled hundreds of samples together to create a record that reimagined and expanded the possibilities of the art form. Producers had sampled for years, and perhaps the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique rivals the number of sources on Endtroducing, but nothing before Endtroducing had its sonic scope. The fact that Shadow was able to keep every musical fragment in his brain almost makes him seem more like a conduit than a composer. In the expansive, ethereal, and meditative world that is Endtroducing, The Meters coexist with Tangerine Dream (‘Changeling’), Pink Floyd plays on the same bill with Jimmy Smith (‘The Number Song’). Hip-hop, electronic, ambient, jazz, rock, classical, and more coalesce. Endtroducing was a hip-hop record that irrevocably blurred the lines between genres, exposing the reality that genre never really existed. It was a construct that DJ Shadow helped deconstruct one sample at a time. Endtroducing legitimized sampling as an art form unlike few albums before it. If ever anyone says sampling takes no skill, that’s it’s lazy theft, you can point to Endtroducing. The seamlessness and shape-shifting of Shadow’s sonic collages aren’t impossible to recreate, but they would take years of study and innate musical skill to get right. ‘By ’95, when I was really working on Endtroducing heavily, I was very much trying to make a statement about, ‘Why are we all abandoning this artform? What everybody else is doing is great, but I feel like there’s a lot of work left to be done in this discipline.’ And I wanted to create a record that pushed that conversation forward,’ Shadow told Westword. The album gave rise to the notion that hip-hop producers could create a full instrumental album, that they were more than composers for rappers. Without Endtroducing, the world might not have been ready to accept J Dilla’s Donuts, another brilliant work of sampling bricolage. Somewhere between Shadow’s Endtroducing and Dilla’s Donuts, you have the roots of the Los Angeles Beat Scene, the hip-hop and electronic music community that spawned Grammy-winning producers like Flying Lotus. There are decades of music that might not have happened if not for Endtroducing. …”
udiscover (Video)
W – Endtroducing….

A Renaissance painting inspired this New York photographer to take tender portraits of kids at play

“Born in Brooklyn in 1918, Arthur Leipzig traveled the world with his camera to document people and tell their stories, from Yiddish theater actors in Communist Romania to Sudanese fishermen battered by a storm. But it was his sensitive, evocative images of children at play on New York City streets that first won him acclaim. And the idea of capturing these ordinary kids engrossed in stickball, hopscotch, and other popular Gotham street games in the middle decades of the 20th century came not from a teacher or a trend but from a painting by a Flemish Renaissance master. That painting is ‘Children’s Games,’ by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (above). Dating back to 1560, it’s a richly detailed, bird’s-eye depiction of more than 230 children playing 83 different games in a town square, from hoops to blind man’s bluff to leapfrog. Leipzig spoke out about the effect Bruegel’s painting had on him shortly after he began documenting New York’s children’s games in the 1940s. At the time, he was a member of the Photo League, a cooperative of socially conscious photographers who chronicled the rougher edges of the Depression-era city. ‘When photographer Arthur Leipzig recently saw a picture of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s famous painting ‘Children’s Games,’ he was struck by the resemblance of games of nearly 400 years ago to those one sees today,’ according to the New York Times. The many similarities he noticed by watching children jump, run, swim, and hop from his own window proved ‘that boys and girls play in New York in 1950 about the same way they did in Flanders in 1560,’ continued the Times. From the 1940s to the 1960s, Leipzig documented the children’s games he observed, as well as the dirt lots and asphalt surfaces that inventive city kids turned into playgrounds, ball fields, and game boards. Like the cheeky youngsters in Bruegel’s painting, these New York children didn’t have specially made toys. Games could be played with chalk, sticks, hoops, or a box fashioned into a cart—most of which could be found discarded on the streets. Some of Leipzig’s photos share a similar vantage point with Bruegel. The first image in this post, ‘Chalk Games,’ features a bird’s-eye view likely from the first or second-floor balcony, window, or fire escape of a building on Prospect Place in Brooklyn. Yet Leipzig didn’t set out to copy Bruegel’s painting but take inspiration from it. He channeled its imagination and spirit from a dirt town square in Flanders to the black and white of New York’s midcentury cityscape. …”
Ephemeral New York

1970 Jazz: Free, Avant-Garde and Experimental (Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra)

“In previous articles about jazz music recorded in 1970, we featured albums on major jazz labels including Atlantic, Impulse! and Blue Note, with some of the releases showcasing free and experimental jazz by artists such as Chick Corea’s Circle Quartet, Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. In this article we will review other recordings of the esoteric sides of jazz, all recorded in 1970 and released on various labels. We open with a free jazz royalty. In April 1968, as a shareholder in a co-op that purchased an old seven-story factory at 131 Prince Street in Soho, just south of Greenwich Village in New York, Ornette Coleman became the owner of the street-level and third floors in the building. ‘I was just trying to find a place where I could go and make music at any time,’ he said. The space soon became a hub for the free-thinking musicians community in the city. Drummer Rashied Ali remembers: ‘Ornette would give out the space to musicians. It wasn’t even about renting the space. He would give it to you for almost nothing. We would produce and perform our own concerts there. We were the producer, the performer, did all the leg work, the PR work and everything like that in order to get people to come.’ A precursor to the loft-scene that thrived in NYC in the early 1970s, the building served as a home, rehearsal and performance space for musicians associated with Coleman. He later named it ‘Artist House’. On Valentine’s Day in 1970, Ornette Coleman assembled a group of friends, neighbors and musicians to his loft to record a spontaneous performance in a community-gathering atmosphere. The resulting album was released on Bob Thiele’s newly-found label Flying Dutchman, aptly titled ‘Friends and Neighbors: Live at Prince Street’. … Coleman is joined on this album by the fantastic rhythm section of his classic quartet from the early 1960s – bass player Charlie Haden and drummer Ed Blackwell, plus tenor sax player Dewey Redman. The DownBeat review was much more complementary of their contributions: ‘Blackwell does a splendid job in the rhythm section. It’s a pleasure to listen to his dialogue with the soloists; he not only drives them but his playing is sometimes so sensitive and musical that he seems to be reading their minds. Haden also does a commendable job. He plays powerful and inventively yet unobtrusively, doing all sorts of interesting things behind the soloists but not drawing attention away from them.’ …”
MUSIC AFICIONADO (Video)

Art Ensemble of Chicago

MAGA’s Big, Beautiful Quest to Rename the Entire World – Brian Phillips

“If nothing else, you have to respect the commitment to laziness. Lake America. It’s a name that somehow combines the height of imperialist arrogance with an unshakable determination to leave work at 2:30. We’re going to conquer the world. Just don’t expect us to sit in traffic. I keep picturing Lake America’s origin story as one of those sitcom scenes where the protagonist has to come up with a pretend name on the spot and panics into grabbing words from his immediate surroundings. I’m, uh … Desk McLaptopman. … I’m walking into a trap here. I’m doing it on purpose. The executive order Trump signed on August 27 decreeing the renaming of Lake Ontario was primarily intended to distract us all from talking about anything more substantive. (Do you need a list? Rising prices, war in the Middle East, ICE raids, data centers, election rigging by the right, the normalization of corruption, the general feeling that reality itself is slowly dissolving into a corrosive slurry of precarity and grift, to name a few.) Every 10 minutes we spend yelling about the monikers of freshwater aquatic bodies is 10 minutes that Trump and his administration can spend rewriting federal guidelines to mandate death by firing squad for a poor person who eats an acorn or whatever. Yet here I am, yelling about exactly the freshwater moniker they want me to yell about. I’m a sucker! But I keep thinking about Trump’s obsession, and really the whole political right’s obsession, with renaming stuff. Not just the lake, but everything. Every political movement tries to influence language to some degree; the more totalitarian the movement, the more linguistic control it attempts to seize. When George Orwell wrote 1984, he made it clear that the Party’s most sinister act—more than the surveillance, the propaganda, the enforced scarcity, or the torture—was the rewriting of the language itself to make it harder for people to conceive of dissent. MAGA and its Republican forebears aren’t working on that scale, partly because working on that scale would require things like ‘foresight’ and ‘a plan’ and ‘hours of painstaking labor.’ But there’s still something revealing about the half-assed cartoon vision of Trump-led American dominance that they’re trying to rebrand the country around. Let’s run back the highlights of recent right-wing renaming efforts and see what they can tell us about MAGA’s agenda to co-opt the power of words, or as I call them, ‘America noises you can also write down.’ …”
The Ringer

Indochine (1992)

“Indochine (French pronunciation: [ɛ̃dɔʃin]) is a 1992 French period drama film set in colonial French Indochina from the 1930s to the 1950s. It is the story of Éliane Devries, a French plantation owner, and of her adopted Vietnamese daughter, Camille, set against the backdrop of the rising Vietnamese nationalist movement. The screenplay was written by novelist Érik Orsenna, screenwriters Louis Gardel and Catherine Cohen, and director Régis Wargnier. The film stars Catherine Deneuve, Vincent Pérez, Linh Dan Pham, Jean Yanne and Dominique Blanc. The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 65th Academy Awards, and Deneuve was nominated for Best Actress. In 1930, Éliane Devries, a woman born to French parents in colonial Indochina, runs her and her widowed father’s rubber plantation with indentured laborers. She is the adoptive mother of Camille, a teenaged girl whose birth parents were friends of Éliane’s and members of the Nguyễn dynasty. Éliane meets young French Navy lieutenant Jean-Baptiste Le Guen when they bid on the same painting at an auction. He challenges her publicly and, days later, turns up at her plantation searching for a boy whose sampan he set ablaze on suspicion of opiumsmuggling. Éliane and Jean-Baptiste begin an affair. … Camille meets Jean-Baptiste by chance when, one day, he rescues her from a prisoner escape attempt. She falls in love with him. After learning of this, Éliane uses her connections with high-ranking Navy officials to get Jean-Baptiste transferred to Haiphong. He confronts Éliane about this during a Christmas party, and in the ensuing argument, slaps her in front of his fellow officers. For this, he is sent to Dragon Islet(Hòn Rồng), a remote French military base in northern Indochina. Éliane allows Camille to become engaged to Thanh, a pro-Communist Vietnamese boy expelled as a student from France because of his support for the 1930 Yên Bái mutiny. A sympathetic Thanh allows Camille to search for Jean-Baptiste up north. Traveling on foot, Camille reaches Dragon Islet and is imprisoned along with a Vietnamese family she travels with and other laborers. After seeing French officers torture and murder her traveling companions, she attacks an officer and shoots him in the struggle. Jean-Baptiste defies his superiors to protect Camille in the ensuing firefight, and the two flee. …”
Wikipedia
6 Facts About Indochine (1992): A Historical Movie About Vietnam That Won An Oscar
Excerpts from David Nicholls’ comments on INDOCHINE
amazon $
YouTube: Indochine

The Revolutionaries ‎- Reaction In Dub (1975), etc.

“The Revolutionaries (sometimes known as ‘Revolutionaires’) was a Jamaican reggae band. Set up in 1975 as the house band of the Channel One Studios owned by Joseph Hoo Kim, The Revolutionaries with Sly Dunbar on drums and Bertram ‘Ranchie’ McLean on bass, created the new ‘rockers‘ style that would change the whole Jamaican sound (from roots reggae to rockers, and be imitated in all other productions). Beside Sly, many musicians played in the band: Robbie Shakespeare on bass, JoJo Hookim, Bertram McLean, and Radcliffe ‘Dougie’ Bryan on guitar, Ossie Hibbert, Errol ‘Tarzan’ Nelson, Robbie Lyn or Ansel Collins on keyboards, Uziah ‘Sticky’ Thompson, Noel “Scully” Simms on percussion, Tommy McCook, Herman Marquis on saxophone, Bobby Ellis on trumpet and Vin Gordon on trombone. In 1976, The Revolutionaries attained further respect from the Sound System and dub fraternity when they recorded a track named after author Alex Haley‘s character, Kunta Kinte, which would become one of reggae music’s most recognisable riddims and which for many years was only played by selected sound systems on dubplate. The track Kunta Kinte was based on an earlier tune, Beware Of Your Enemies, released from Jamaica‘s Channel One. The 1976 dub version released by The Revolutionaries became a sound system anthem for many years on dubplate, and also inspired a UK version produced by Mad Professor in 1981. It has also inspired Drum and Bass and jungle covers, and was consistently played by Jah Shaka. The band played on numerous dub albums and recorded as a backing band for artists like B.B. Seaton, Carl Malcolm, Black Uhuru, Culture, Prince Alla, Leroy Smart, Gregory Isaacs, John Holt, The Heptones, Mighty Diamonds, I-Roy, Tapper Zukie, Trinity, U Brown, Errol Scorcher, Serge Gainsbourg among others. …”
W – The Revolutionaries, YouTube: The Revolutionaries ‎- Reaction In Dub, The Mighty Diamonds ‎- Dubwise, Meditation Dub, The Aggrovators At King Tubby’s Studio, Jah Shaka – Meets Aswad In Addis Ababa Studio, Scientist – The Dub Album They Didn’t Want You To Hear, Roots Radics Meet Mighty Revolutionaires – Outernational Riddim, Roots Radics featuring Gladstone Anderson ‎- Radical Dub Session, King Tubby’s Tribute To Augustus Pablo, Scientist vs The Professor – Dub Duel At King Tubby’s

Jeff Tweedy: Staying Warm at The Loft

“I’ve been in studios and rooms all over the world. I’ve seen where The Beatles spent hours creating masterpieces. I’ve been in the room where Buddy Holly’s hits were made. I’ve stood at the mics that Al Green used on many hits. I’ve been in several rooms that David Bowie spun his magic in. Many of these places have something special going on maybe those creative vibes soaked into the walls but almost all of them require the musicians to cart their instruments and gear in, as well as to spend some time sorting out and setting up. And, by virtue of the usual studio layout, many professional studios leave the musicians and engineers in isolation from each other, especially during overdub sessions. In contrast is The Loft, a third-floor warehouse practice space turned studio, where Wilco and Jeff Tweedy have created a musician’s dream. Racks of drums and other instruments fill the space, with the control room area (not “room”) taking up the front part of the building. There’s even a kitchen/dining area, a tech bench for repairs, and various little hideaway spots scattered all around the 5000 square foot room. My partner in Tape Op, John Baccigaluppi, noted that Jeff’s memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording with Wilco, Etc., and a solo album, Warm, were being released, and he asked if we should have Spencer Tweedy, Jeff’s son, conduct an interview with his dad. Spencer has been in touch with Tape Op for years, letting us know about his wonderful boutique mic cable company, Fjord Audio [Tape Op#126], as well as suggesting some book ideas for us. So, I asked Spencer to do an interview, but Spencer and Jeff asked if I would come visit and do one in person. I’m very glad I did. I spent time interviewing Jeff and engineer Tom Schick [see his interview this issue] over the course of two days, and I was able to hang out with the rest of Wilco, even enjoying a lunch with them. The band was hard at work on an upcoming album; it was an honor to hang with them, as well as Tom, studio manager-and-more Mark Greenberg, and the enthusiastic and talented Spencer. …”
Tape OP
W – Being There
YouTube: Being There – Wilco 1 / 19

Dur-Dur of Somalia – Volume 1, Volume 2 & Previously Unreleased Tracks (Analog Africa Nr. 27)

“When Analog Africa founder Samy Ben Redjeb arrived in Mogadishu in November of 2016, he was informed by his host that he would have to be accompanied at all times by an armed escort while in the country. The next morning, a neighbour and former security guard put on a military uniform, borrowed an AK-47 from somewhere and escorted him to Via Roma, an historical street in the heart of Hamar-Weyne, the city’s oldest district. Although previous Analog Africa releases have demonstrated a willingness to go more than the extra air-mile to track down the stories behind the music, the trip to Mogadishu was a musical journey of a different kind. It was the culmination of an odyssey that had started many years earlier. In 2007 John Beadle, a Milwaukee-based musicologist and owner of the much loved Likembe blog, uploaded a cassette he had been handed twenty years earlier by a Somalian student. The post was titled ‘Mystery Somali Funk’ and it was, in Samy’s own words, ‘some of the deepest funk ever recorded’. The cassette seemed to credit these dense, sonorous tunes to the legendary Iftin Band. But initial contact with Iftin’s lead singer suggested that the ‘mystery funk’ may have actually been the work of their chief rival, Dur-Dur, a young band from the 80s. Back then, Mogadishu had been a very different place. On the bustling Via Roma, people from all corners of society would gather at the Bar Novecento and Cafe Cappucino, watch movies at the famous Supercinema, and eat at the numerous pasta hang-outs or the traditional restaurants that served Bariis Maraq, a somali Beef Stew mixed with delicious spiced rice. The same street was also home to Iftinphone and Shankarphone, two of the city’s best known music shop. Located opposite each other, they were the centre of Somalia’s burgeoning cassette distribution network. Both shops, run by members of the legendary Iftin Band, would become first-hand witnesses to the meteoric rise of Dur- Dur, a rise that climaxed in April of 1987 with the release of Volume 2, their second album. …”
Bandcamp (Audio)
YouTube: Dur-Dur of Somalia – Volume 1, Volume 2 & Previously Unreleased Tracks

New York Amsterdam News

“The Amsterdam News (also known as New York Amsterdam News) is a weekly Black-owned newspaper serving New York City. It is one of the oldest newspapers geared toward African Americans in the United States and has published columns by such figures as W. E. B. Du Bois, Roy Wilkins, and Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and was the first to recognize and publish Malcolm X. From 1916 to 1938, the paper operated from the New York Amsterdam News Building on Seventh Avenue in Harlem. The building is a National Landmark. The Amsterdam News was founded on December 4, 1909, by James Henry Anderson in the San Juan Hill neighborhood of Upper Manhattan. The newspaper takes its name from Amsterdam Avenue, the location of Anderson’s home where he first published the newspaper. An investment of US$10 in 1909 (equivalent to $358 in 2025) turned the Amsterdam News into one of New York’s largest and most influential Black-owned-and-operated business institutions, and one of the nation’s most prominent ethnic publications. It was later reported that James Henry Anderson published the first copy: ‘…with a dream in mind, $10 in his pocket, six sheets of paper and two pencils.’ The Amsterdam News was one of about 50 black-owned newspapers in the United States at the time it was founded. It was sold for 2 cents a copy (equivalent to $1 in 2025) from Anderson’s home at 132 West 65th Street, in the San Juan Hill section of Manhattan’s Upper West Side. With the spread of Blacks to Harlem and the growing success of the paper, Anderson moved the Amsterdam News uptown to 17 West 135th Street in 1910. In 1916, it moved to 2293 Seventh Avenue, and in 1938, it moved again, to 2271 Seventh Avenue. In the early 1940s, the paper relocated to its present headquarters at 2340 Eighth Avenue (also known in Harlem as Frederick Douglass Boulevard). …”
Wikipedia
Amsterdam News
YouTube: New York Amsterdam News

11 Creative Ways to Store Your Books

“A few months ago, my boyfriend and I reached a new relationship milestone: We moved in together. He’s also a writer, and a shared love of literature is one of the first things we connected over. In the early days of our courtship, we’d run fingers along the spines of each other’s collections, discussing favorites and lending what we thought the other might like. If you love literature, you’ll rightfully interpret this as foreshadowing for what comes next: two readers, two libraries, and one 850-square-foot apartment. Uh-oh. My mother warned me, in a hushed and serious tone, that if I were to ask my boyfriend to downsize, he’d ‘have the right’ to dump me. But I also knew that culling my own books down to only the most vital titles was a task easier said than done. Who could say whether Woolf was more precious than Wilde? Who could evict our old friends Carrie, Rebecca, and Emma. Stacked in boxes on the floor and shoved into our single closet, the books nevertheless demanded an answer. I was stumped. So I did what any reporter would do: I reported. After interviewing four designers and then talking to colleagues and friends, I realized something: With a bit of creativity, your books can become a design element in your home, bringing warmth, color, and texture, whether you live in a small apartment or a sprawling house. As for my own little apartment? In the end, my boyfriend and I didn’t have to get rid of our books. Instead, we took the advice of interior designer Corey Damen Jenkins, who told me: ‘A shelf that showcases the things you love tells a story about who you are, and that is always worth making room for.’ Now, our little library feels exactly like that — like us. Here are 11 expert-endorsed strategies you can put to work to display your own collection creatively and personally, no matter its size. Maximize vertical space: When it comes to storing just about anything, experts agree: There’s usually ample space if you just look up. Books on a wall can also function decoratively and bring visual interest, much like a wall sconce or a framed print would. Install floating shelves: Floating shelves allow you to make the most of your home’s vertical space without sacrificing the functional space below. Thanks to their gravity-defying appearance, they also give your space an airier look than bookcases that are anchored to the floor. These shelves work well over a desk, a couch, or any other low furniture, so you won’t risk bopping your head. …”
NY Times

The Harlem Trilogy: Crook Manifesto (2023)

Colson Whitehead Returns to Harlem, and His Hero Returns to Crime: “Returning to the world of his novel ‘Harlem Shuffle,’ Colson Whitehead’s ‘Crook Manifesto’ is a dazzling treatise, a glorious and intricate anatomy of the heist, the con and the slow game. There’s an element of crime here, certainly, but as in Whitehead’s previous books, genre isn’t the point. Here he uses the crime novel as a lens to investigate the mechanics of a singular neighborhood at a particular tipping point in time. He has it right: the music, the energy, the painful calculus of loss. Structured into three time periods — 1971, 1973 and finally the year of America’s bicentennial celebration, 1976 — ‘Crook Manifesto’ gleefully detonates its satire upon this world while getting to the heart of the place and its people. This is a story of survival without redemption, where the next generation loses some of the well-honed instincts that have built this world. Whitehead’s hero, the furniture salesman and opportunistic small-time criminal Ray Carney, is older than he was when we last met. He has retreated from his practice of working in the ‘secondary economy.’ But outside his successful furniture business’s showroom window, Harlem is stirring with the unease of change and oppression. The presence of the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army has set a new edge to the age-old battle between the neighborhood and the white policemen riding roughshod down its streets. From behind his store’s plate-glass window Carney takes it all in: the thump of car engines, the shouts and taunts, the stand-downs of Black men being pushed against walls and searched by white police officers, the news headlines of police officers killed. Sirens cut through conversations; people traverse the powerful river of the sounds and smells that are Harlem. Carney wants to stay out of trouble, but his daughter, who feels lost to him through teenage angst, wants tickets to see the Jackson 5, a show sold out long ago. Whitehead uses that bittersweet pull of parental loss to plunge into a comedic — and deadly — journey. From here Carney revisits and rekindles connections he once had and paid dearly to leave behind. He blunders through criminals’ apartments, carries hot jewels in his briefcase and is forced to rob a poker game. …”
NY Times
W – Crook Manifesto
The Harlem Trilogy: Harlem Shuffle (2021)

Stockholm, Berlin 1966 – Albert Ayler

“Stockholm, Berlin 1966 is a live album by saxophonist and composer Albert Ayler, recorded in Europe in 1966 and released on the Swiss hatOLOGY label in 2011. The Berlin tracks were previously released on The Berlin Concerts – 1966 (Relyable Records), Albert Ayler Live In Europe 1964 – 1966 (Landscape Records), and the compilation Holy Ghost: Rare & Unissued Recordings (1962–70) (Revenant). All of the tracks were reissued on a 2021 Hat Hut release titled Albert Ayler Quintet 1966: Berlin, Lörrach, Paris & Stockholm. Revisited.  The Stockholm and Berlin recordings were made during Ayler’s thirty-day 1966 European tour, which lasted from November 3 through December 2.^[4] The tour, which also included Lörrach, Rotterdam, Paris, and Copenhagen, came about when Joachim-Ernst Berendt, director of the Berlin Jazz Festival, asked promoter George Wein to include Ayler’s group in his annual festival tour. (John Coltrane had also been invited to participate, but declined due to health issues.) Henry Grimes and Sunny Murray were unable to accompany the band on the tour, so Ayler asked bassist William Folwell and drummer Beaver Harris to join him. The group also included Ayler’s brother Donald on trumpet and violinist Michel Sampson. According to Ayler biographer Jeff Schwartz, the recordings show Ayler using a modular approach to his music, with thematic sections that can be reshuffled interspersed with improvisations, including brief solos by Harris and Folwell. Schwartz noted that Ayler’s vocalizations on Pharoah Sanders‘ ‘Japan’ on the European recordings are the first time he is heard as a singer. He also suggested that the singing may be an extension of the moaning sounds that Sunny Murray emitted while playing the drums. In a review for The Guardian, John Fordham wrote: ‘Ayler’s blazing shows were following sets by Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz and other more orthodox jazz artists, but his finales roused the European crowds to ecstatic acclaim just the same. Sometimes the music sounds like the work of a dishevelled Salvation Army band, sometimes like a series of strange, hooting operatic arias, in which jaunty themes Sonny Rollins might edge their way into the midst of big, rapturously lamenting harmonies. The repertoire is much the same from both gigs…, and has an even more emotional quiver for the addition of fine Dutch violinist Michel Samson, meshing evocatively with the vibrato and clarion lead-lines of Ayler’s trumpeter brother Donald.’ …”
Wikipedia
YouTube: ALBERT AYLER Quintet Live in Berlin, 1966 | THE JAZZ LIBRARY

Gloria Steinem (March 25, 1934 – September 2, 2026)

“Gloria Marie Steinem (/ˈstaɪnəm/ STY-nəm; March 25, 1934 – September 2, 2026) was an American journalist and social movement activist who emerged as a nationally recognized leader of second-wave feminism in the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and who remained particularly prominent in the 1980s and early 1990s.  Steinem was a columnist for New York magazine, and co-founder of Ms. magazine. In 1969, she published ‘After Black Power, Women’s Liberation’, an article that brought her national attention and positioned her as a feminist leader. In 1971, she co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus, which provided training and support for women seeking elected and appointed office. Also in 1971, she co-founded the Women’s Action Alliance, which until 1997 supported a network of feminist activists and worked to advance feminist causes and legislation. In the 1990s, Steinem helped establish Take Our Daughters to Work Day, an occasion for young girls to learn about future career opportunities.^[8] In 2005, Steinem, Jane Fonda, and Robin Morgan co-founded the Women’s Media Center, an organization that ‘works to make women visible and powerful in the media’.  She traveled internationally as an organizer and lecturer and was a media spokeswoman on issues of equality. In 2015, Steinem, alongside two Nobel Peace laureates (Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia) and other prominent women peace activists, undertook a journey from the capital of North Korea, Pyongyang, to South Korea, crossing the Korean Demilitarized Zone. … In 1972, Steinem co-founded the feminist magazine Ms. alongside founding editors Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Mary Thom, Pat Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, Dorothy Pitman Hughes, and Mary Peacock; it began as a special edition of New York, and Clay Felkerfunded the first issue.^[33] Its 300,000 test copies sold out nationwide in eight days. Within weeks, Ms. had received 26,000 subscription orders and more than 20,000 reader letters.  In 1974, Ms. collaborated with public television to produce the television program Woman Alive!, and Steinem was featured in the first episode in her role as co-founder of Ms.magazine.  The magazine was sold to the Feminist Majority Foundation in 2001; Steinem remains on the masthead as one of six founding editors and served on the advisory board.  Also in 1972, Steinem became the first woman to speak at the National Press Club. Steinem spoke at the 1977 National Women’s Conference among other speakers, including Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford, Lady Bird Johnson, Bella Abzug, Barbara Jordan, Cecilia Burciaga, Lenore Hershey, and Jean O’Leary. …”
Wikipedia
NY Times: Gloria Steinem, Personification of the Women’s Movement, Dies at 92 (Video)
Guardian: Gloria Steinem personified America’s feminist movement
YouTube: Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem Dies at 92, Feminist icon Gloria Steinem dies at 92

Deutsche Courage: The Boundary-Breaking Minds Behind Experimental German Music

“Thanks in large part to Kraftwerk’s weighty influence on synth-pop, hip-hop, and subsequent strains of dance music, German music has long since overturned the preconceptions that initially (and insultingly) went with the territory. Nevertheless, in certain quarters there is still a bewildering inclination to lump it all together. The common ground between, say, Scorpions and Faust is negligible at best, but the despised appellation ‘krautrock’ did little to encourage the expectation of stylistic diversity. (Faust, cheeringly, up-ended the term with their sarcastically monomaniacal ‘Krautrock,’ from the 1973 album Faust IV.) It’s perhaps fairest to suggest that the minds behind the most experimental German music in the transitional period between 1967 and 1976 shared a commonality of purpose. Out on a limb, and largely working in isolation from each other, they were nevertheless unified by a compulsion to forge ahead, to experiment with modes and means of expression, and consequently to establish an entirely new milieu. In so doing, they were tacitly seceding from the American and British rock, pop and soul archetypes that had previously held sway. That said, there were certain British and American totems whose influence fed directly into the development of Germany’s new music. Pink Floyd’s solemn galactic bleeps echoed right across the kosmische firmament; Jimi Hendrix’s sonic boldness heralded revolution, even if his scorching flamboyance found little purchase in the broader context of drone-based minimalism; and Frank Zappa’s subversive cynicism chimed with then-prevalent student insurrection – much to his distaste. Tellingly, appearing alongside Frank Zappa & The Mothers Of Invention at the Internationale Essener Songtage festival in Essen, in September 1968, were three pivotal new German bands who pointed towards the future of German music: Amon Düül, Tangerine Dream and Guru Guru. The first of these were a loose collective, living communally in a house in Munich and intermittently flailing away at instruments. Their fitful, floating line-up included relatively accomplished players and some decidedly less competent accompanists whose presence represented a political or artistic gesture: as a result, the group unavoidably split into factions. …”
udiscover (Video)

Stepping Into A New Age 1980–2012

“There was always so much more to the legacy of punk than the orthodoxy that followed in its wake. Indeed, the seeds were sown right from the early days thanks to the punk’s interface with the reggae that soundtracked the early club nights as well as the covers that followed. Even Bob Marley gave his seal of approval. But while the less inspired purveyors that followed stuck to rigid formulas, the influence of reggae was keenly felt in the wave that immediately followed punk’s brief but seismic blast. Formed by The Slits’ Ari Up and reggae fan and producer Adrian Sherwood, New Age Steppers were a collective of sorts that included contributions from members of Aswad, The Pop Group, The Raincoats, and others who swan-dived into deep bass work-outs and dub-inflected dread to soundtrack the increasingly heavy times in which they were recorded in. This comprehensive boxset sees New Age Steppers’ first three albums – New Age Steppers (1980), Action Battlefield (1981) and Foundation Steppers(1983) – on vinyl for the first time since their release, as well as 2012’s posthumous Love Forever and a collection of outtakes and rarities in the shape of Avant Gardening. Presented together, they tell an intriguing story of musical development as well as the launch of the celebrated On-U Sound record label. The eponymous debut finds the collective at its most adventurous. Blending cover versions such as Junior Byles’ ‘Fade Away’ with righteous originals, this is a sonic feast that tests speakers and bowels in equal measure. Crucially, it brings to together the spirituality of Rastafari with political awareness, most notably on the spaced-out neo-dub of ‘Crazy Dreams And High Ideals’ wherein The Pop Group’s Mark Stewart intones, ‘We refuse to be the stepping stone / That paves the way for the small minority.’ But it’s the aural delivery that truly lingers as dub techniques are deployed and twisted to create a new, domestic vernacular of the form. From here on in, the albums become more song-based though no less arresting. Action Battlefield’s reliance on covers doesn’t count against it, not least as the playing and production are absolutely on point. Ari Up’s vocals on ‘My Whole World’ are some of the best she ever committed to posterity, while a pre-fame Neneh Cherry makes her presence felt on a sweet reading of BB Seaton’s ‘My Love’. The absence of Ari Up on Foundation Steppers is more than made up for thanks to Bim Sherman’s honeyed contributions though, as evidenced by the likes of ‘5 Dog Race’, Sherwood’s taste for studio chicanery was still firmly in evidence. …”
The Quietus
Bandcamp (Audio)
YouTube: New Age Steppers

Hip-hop culture

DJ Grandmaster Flash 
“Hip-hop culture is an art movement that emerged in New York City, in the borough of the Bronx, primarily within the black community. Hip-hop as an art form and culture has been heavily influenced by both male and female artists. It is characterized by the key elements of rapping, DJing and turntablism, and breakdancing; other elements include graffiti, beatboxing, street entrepreneurship, hip-hop language, and hip-hop fashion. Many cite hip-hop’s emergence as beginning in August 1973 when brother–sister duo DJ Kool Herc and Cindy Campbell hosted the first documented indoor hip-hop party and culture event in the Bronx; Helping to spark the rise of the genre. However many hip-hop pioneers and historians contend that hip-hop did not have just one founding father. …  Since then hip-hop culture has spread to both urban and suburban communities throughout the United States and subsequently the world. These elements were adapted and developed considerably, particularly as the art forms spread to new continents and merged with local styles in the 1990s and subsequent decades. Even as the movement continues to expand globally and explore myriad styles and art forms, including hip-hop theater and hip-hop film, the four foundational elements provide coherence and a strong foundation for hip-hop culture. … In the 1970s, an underground urban movement known as ‘hip-hop’ began to form in the Bronx, New York City. It focused on emceeing (or MCing) over house parties and neighborhood block party events, held outdoors. Hip-hop music has been a powerful medium for protesting the impact of legal institutions on minorities, particularly police and prisons. Historically, hip-hop arose out of the ruins of a post-industrial and ravaged South Bronx, as a form of expression of urban Black and Latino youth, whom the public and political discourse had written off as marginalized communities. … Graffiti is the most controversial of hip-hop’s elements, as a number of the most notable graffiti pioneers say that they do not consider graffiti to be an element of hip-hop, including Lady Pink, Seen, Blade, Fargo, Cholly Rock, Fuzz One, and Coco 144.  … Hip-hop pioneer Grandmaster Flash has also questioned the connection between hip-hop and graffiti, saying, ‘You know what bugs me, they put hip-hop with graffiti. How do they intertwine?’ In America in the late 1960s, before hip-hop, graffiti was used as a form of expression by political activists. …”
W – Hip-hop culture
HIP HOP- A CULTURE OF RESILIENCE, RESISTANCE, AND REVOLUTIONARIES
HIP HOP HISTORY: FROM THE STREETS TO THE MAINSTREAM (Video)
YouTube: The Birth of Hip Hop, How ‘Apache’ Became Hip-Hop’s National Anthem
An aerosol paint can, a common tool used in modern graffiti