"Ja, Das ist so cool": Updates From Deutschland on Slang Editorial

Father chasing after son in Julie Mehretu Studios

Berlin Photos and nonsense here: slangeditorial.net

And in a few days, much more here: flickr.com/jeffreybeaumont

Recap: Black Ghosts show at Glasslands, Saturday May 10

More photos and tunes below...

Went to Glasslands Friday night to get into a free (RSVP-only) Vice Records sponsored show by British band The Black Ghosts. I'd never heard them before, but they were pretty great in the post-techno dubsteppy "very British" vein occupied by artists like Burial.



What wasn't great, however was the ridiculous ordeal involved in actually getting into the show. When we arrived at Glasslands, we were treated to a laughably by-the-books situation of forced (and unnecessary) line creation. That is, there were bouncers outside--does anyone else find it bizarre that Glasslands, a pretty non-legitimate venue, uses pro bouncers?--getting aggro about the venue being at capacity and a need for people to "form two lines" and be patient for people to leave before more people would be allowed inside.

The situation was frustrating enough that even the Vice people were exasperated with the bouncers and trying to get folks in. We had arrived late, around 12:15, assuming that we'd miss the queues by doing so, but we were wrong. We waited for, I dunno, 30 minutes before finally being admitted, but even this was only after an aborted attempt to go inside where our hands were stamped and ok'd to enter, but a hardcore bouncer yelled at us to get back in line. And of course, when we got inside, a) they didn't even bother to check our names for the RSVP list and b) it became obvious that the venue was nowhere near capacity whatsoever--I would estimate that there were about 1/3 the amount of people that attended the Blue Album Group show there. By the time we left, the venue had filled up, but it still felt like the whole experience had been an exercise in the ways in which New York can sometimes be a total shithouse.

Despite all that though, Black Ghosts were truly great. Looking like two very typical hip English dudes, I found myself shocked at the impressive pipes of the singer, Simian's Simon Lord (the DJ being The Wiseguys' Theo Keating) . What initially seemed like it might be a boring DJ set of blah tunes was in fact an engaging set of very danceable songs with a nice "band" performance.

If you're interested, here's a few mp3s:

- Black Ghosts 63 min mixtape (click here for link to tracklist)

- Black Ghosts - I Want Nothing (Frankmusik remix)

- Black Ghosts - Face (Switch mix)

Music Video of The Black Ghosts: 'I Want Nothing'


And these are some photos I took:

Looking Kinda Anxious in My Cross-armed Stance

Back in Upstate NY

Speaking of old weirdness, my mom handed me a pile of forgotten errata today, including photos of the past, random trinkets, and a postcard from an old girlfriend sent to me in the middle of a bout of insanity. Here's some photos of those items as well as some others I've taken:


Mom, in typical form


Dad


The Crayon Family


A little boy hammers nails to help build his new home.


A book of sister


Some things never change.

From a Rotterdam "park" off Rt 5S near Schenectady


This sign pinpoints precisely why this park seemed so strange.


This is the gross restroom Lil Beaumont insisted on using. Inviting, mmm.


And this is the toilet that she actually sat on.


And this is the mantra she stared at while she peed: "I want young dick in my mouth."

-----------------------------

It's been an odd, albeit wholly uneventful, few days up here. Even when nothing happens in Upstate NY I am reminded of everything that has come before and everything that didn't and might. There is a feeling here that always overcomes me, managing to present both sweeping stillness and also terrible uneasiness.

UPDATED: More from Deerhunter/Atlas Sound "Secret Show"

[New (better) photos added below, mostly of Knyfe Hyts]

Took lots of photos from Friday night's showplex at the "Market Hotel" in Bushwick proper. This "secret show" was about as ridiculously New York/Burg "cool" as it gets--it was announced only last Friday and tickets were only available for purchase (cash only) from the Cinders art gallery in Williamsburg. Umm. Yeah. Best of all, as it was a "secret show", this meant that not only was it announced late and to little fanfare, but, best of all, the venue was to be a secret as well--we were asked to leave our email addresses at Cinders so the location and time of the show could be sent to us the night of the show via cryptic Todd P message. At 6:00 last night the details were sent to us, including the lineup of Deerhunter (rather than Atlas Sound, other band of lead singer Bradford Cox, as advertised), AIDS Wolf, Knyfe Hyts and another (shitty) band.

Yes, one band was called AIDS Wolf (or, in the words of Todd P "Wolf with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome"). They were, thankfully, as bad as any band called AIDS Wolf should be. The first band was pretty "ungh" but, despite Doorknobs's complaints, I really liked Knyfe Hyts (ex- "Ex Models"). Deerhunter though were truly awesome. In town recording their new album, they came out in essence to play it straight through for an audience. I'd never seen them before or really even heard them--I'd only listened much to the Atlas Sound side project--but they really spoke to me and sounded great.

I'll post pictures of the other bands later, but unfortunately, the battery on the nice camera I was using died after I grabbed two shots of Deerhunter, so I can't retrieve the photos yet, but here's a few of Deerhunter I took on another camera I borrowed.

I've added the photos I took with "my" nice camera so the photos below are a mixture of those I took with that camera and those taken on the second borrowed camera (the last four):

"Pre-game"


Matt, moments before he sprung from his seat and flipped the table over


Doorknobs wondering whether or not the J train will ever come

The Rings


Second band The Rings, who we could pretty much do without


The Rings guitarist grrrrrrllll pwwwrrrring it

Kynfe Hyts (pron. "Knife Hits")


Knyfe Hyts singer/guitarist/bass player, in full


You know it's good when the heads go back and the guitars go up.


This man has so much hair that Doorknobs thought, from far away, that it was all fake.


Knyfe Hyts brought on this strange English footie hooligan looking "rapper" and coolster companion. Not good.

AIDS Wolf


The makeshift Market Hotel bar--they charged me $1 for a tiny cup of OJ


E-bad and Doorknobs argue over who deserves more the opportunity to stab the singer of AIDS Wolf in the throat with a guitar string


Glitz and Glitter of the rooms of the Market Hotel

The main event: Deerhunter / Atlas Sound


Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox, a sight to behold.


Beginning the show with a Pylon cover

[camera change]










Covered in sweat, but wide awake at 3:15 am


That's it for photos, but here's also are a few tracks for you to check out:

Deerhunter - "Calvary Scars (Daytrotter session)"

Atlas Sound - "Activation" [I'm obsessed with this track]

Knyfe Hyts - Running Free (Iron Maiden cover)

Week 10/11: The Sun Also Rises

So I thought it over and decided I had better things to do than sit around feeling shitty about the rough turns life can have for you. Life isn't always sunshine but even rainy stormclouds go away after a while if you can just try to be patient and hold on. My friend B put it best when she wrote me last night and said:

"The thing about depression is that you can't block it out. You have to live with it/in it and deal with it in your own way, second by second until it quiets/retreats/dulls."


It was hot enough that I didn't even really need the jacket.

So a new day it is and onward I go. I'll be ok if I can weather the storm.

It's also just dawned on me that I have to go bed in seven and a half hours. Hmm.

Week 7, Day 7: Photography

I had a wonderful afternoon and evening today with good friend Spiffae aka Ben D, semi-official Hyperliving photographer.



Before the efforts of this year's Hyperliving endeavors, I had basically never attempted to do any photography (a fact certainly made clear by the middling non-Ben D images I've put on display). Like many things, taking better photographs is "always something I've wanted to learn how to do," but I've never really owned a camera before and I've also never felt focused enough to feel ready to do it right.

The decision to take photos today came from a suggestion from good friend Steve to do a week of Hyperliving of shooting a roll of film each day. A great week, i thought, but one that would probably be wasted if I didn't learn some basics of phototaking and camera use before getting started. I told Ben about the idea and he suggested I come by his place for a tutorial.

I arrived yesterday around 2:30 and Ben began to break photos down most simply: "90% of photography," he said, "is understanding light. And the main factor after that for people to take good photos is whether or not they know how to use their cameras."

Ben went on to explain to me by drawing on a piece of paper (photo of which to come later) the concept of a spectrum of light and demonstrating how in a total arbitrary spectrum of 0-100 light to dark, a camera will only take a slice of that light and that it is up to the photographer to figure out how to best utilize the camera to capture an image within that spectrum without having part of the shot bleed white or go dark. Continuing on these lines, he then explained that the three basic principles of a camera that a photographer should understand are the light settings, the aperture (f-hole), and the ISO (film speed). By understanding what each of these are, a photographer can assess her or his environment and figure out the best way to take a photo (without a flash, ideally).

We didn't have a film camera on hand to use, but to demonstrate, Ben set his DSLR (Canon EOS 20D) to manual and had me run through the apartment with some exercises. By taking one photo of him sitting in his chair, he explained, I would be able to get a light reading that I would be able to use for the entire room. I walked around testing it out and, sure enough, he was right. He explained that this is one of the ways that digital cameras fuck with people's understandings of photography, because the automatic settings of a digital will reset and change the light settings everytime you move the camera and take another photo. In one sense, this is an attempt to get the best photo each time out, but it also does a disservice to the photographer because it can mean that a series of photos in one room taken within seconds of each other may all look and feel completely differently, despite no desire for changes by the photographer her or himself.

Ben spent a while longer explaining this and other technical concepts to me before concluding his lesson with a review of some photo books by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Franks, and others. "Basically," he said, "these people know what they're doing."

We then went outside and shot some photos, with Ben along the way offering suggestions on good photos, landscapes and light settings:
"That'll never work."
"Right there. Yes."
"I will advise that smoking while attempting to learn photography on a nice camera is not a recipe for success."
"Ben, honestly, have you been listening to anything I'm saying?"

In all seriousness though, Ben is a great teacher and I think I came away with some solid photos (I shot about 60). Here are 12 I liked for different reasons--yes, they're all shitty too for one reason or another, but I'm ok with them. I will try to add a doctored route Google Map when I get a chance, but for now know that these were all taken in Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens.

[Some of these look kind of dark on my old Powerbook laptop screen, but they all looked bright enough on Ben's spiffy flatscreens, so I'll cross my fingers they're still ok now. Also, Ben spent some time showing me how to do Photoshop editing, but I haven't the time to do that now. Perhaps a later project for my photo week down the road.]


This is what you call the "cheap n' easy any-retard-can-win" postcard photo






Ah, Brooklyn. Old and new.


I originally centered this signpost, but Ben suggested lefting it and he was right.


I wish i lived inside of this cylinder.


Ben says people still buy chicken from here.