Hello everyone. I wanted to apologize for leaving for so long. I've been in the middle of moving a lot of things around, from my home to a new Boy Kings website—coming soon—and have found it necessary to take a break from blogging in the meantime. But I will be back soon and with a bang. I can't wait to show my new house and a lot of the projects I've been working on over the last few weeks. Anyways, hold tight and I'll be back from the beach soon. 

Last summer was all about dirty canvas Keds and Vans worn by artists and squatters all over Brooklyn. Now the designer world is catching on and making their own over-priced versions. I'm digging the above Acne 'Arch' Plimsole, I think mostly because it reminds me of a pair of jeans I had when I was six-years-old. The leather laces are a nice touch—nothing a $3 trip to the leather craftsman can't do. They come in washed out and black denim, so they're not canvas, but no one knows denim like the Swedes. 

Photos via: The Shoe Buff

Kid Color - Palette Two (Download)

Despite the 1979 Disco Demolition Night in Comiskey Park, mixes like Kid Color’s Palette Two pulls new and vintage dance tracks that prove disco lives. For his latest Palette series mix, Kid Color wanted to “[put] together 13 tracks that I found that all share a similar organic, fun vibe,” looking for songs that could potentially be played live with a band. And be sure to check out some of the original remixes by Kid Color that you can also grab as solo tracks on Hot Bizzies. But music snobbery aside, let’s not kid ourselves you’re supposed to put on Palette Two when you bring home someone special—optional—and getting your disco freak on. 

Here We Go Magic - "Fangela" (Download)

When I think of the current trend back toward washy acid rock and indie-folk, a few bands come to mind (Beach House being a front runner)and one that is sure to go to the top of the list is newly formed Brooklyn based quintet, Here We Go Magic. Led by singer songwriter Luke Temple, Here We Go Magic got a dizzying amount of attention from SXSW bloggers and music writers, and we were able to talk to Luke after the Austin madness, while he and the band prepared for their first American tour. We talked about Luke’s obsession with sound and repetition and a love for limiting musical mediums. And don't forget to check out Here We Go Magic open for White Rabbits this Sunday (April 25th) at The Metro.

Boy Kings: I know you guys just finished up your week at SXSW. So, where are you now?

Luke Temple: We’re actually at a swimming hole in Austin. We came down to play SXSW and our first US tour is starting in Virginia in about a week. So, we thought instead of going back to New York we’d stay down here and rent a house. 

BK: Moving from your solo career to Here We Go Magic, what did that allow you to do that your couldn’t do with your solo stuff?

Luke Temple: Get a lot louder. I get to be a part of something rather than the main focus, which I always felt sorta uncomfortable about. And it’s less narratives in terms of the song writing. It’s ensemble-based music and needs to have more participants. My solo stuff I could perform with just an acoustic guitar: clear lyrics, clear stories, more traditional song structure. 
This feels more like an exercise in repetition and sound-scapes. Where just getting a sound is more important than the song per say. I still write all the songs for this, but I keep them a lot simpler. 

 

BK: Why has sound been such a focus for you and Here We Go Magic?

Luke Temple: That’s always the stuff I respond to the most. I love Dylan via Highway 61 Revisited because of the way that band sounds. They captured this whole big rough stroke. Or the way the Velvet Underground records sound; everything is just part of the whole and they’re all smeared together, and it has a specific tonality to it. On top of that you get amazing songs. 
Regardless of if you know what they’re saying or not, the overall sound of a song, an album or the band has a specific color to it and has a consistency in that way. It’s really exciting. I find the singer songwriter stuff can be a lot more fractured and all over the place and every records different because you’re playing with different people. We’re actually becoming an organism from playing so much together and it’s becoming a sound. We’re not being overly conscious about trying to craft it…it’s just evolving naturally.

BK: So, what’s the color that’s coming out of all this?

Luke Temple: I don’t know. Other people would have a more objective view on it. We keep it pretty simple. Two electric guitars, bass, drums, things like that. We tend to not use many effects besides delay pedals, and everything is straight into our amps. We have a lot more vintage instruments so it has jingly sounds to it. It’s pretty dense, the way the guitars are constantly working together. There’s a lot of intersecting lines. Like they’re not playing chords as much as they’re playing these tiny little lines that together create this big tapestry. And there’s an emphasis in repetition.

UR: Everything about you mentions how you made a leap from focusing on painting to music. What sparked that change?

Luke Temple: There wasn’t really a transition to music…I’d always played music since I was 11. They (music and painting) had always existed together in some ways. It just came time to decide what my focus was going to be in terms of potentially making a living doing something. And then I found the music scene to be more agreeable than the art world. Obviously there is something more visceral and communal about music; you get to play in front of other people you get to work with other people. Art can be so solitary. I had to make a choice on what I’d like to spend my time doing more.

BK: How have you kept your painting alive through music?

Luke Temple: I try to bring it into the music by designing my album covers and stuff like that and I keep a sketchbook and shit like that.

BK: Looking at the aesthetic counterpart to your music, you have this fascination with raw art from Polaroid’s to recording on a 4-track tape player. Where does all that anti-digital come from?

Luke Temple: I find that I’m more creative when I’m faced with limitations, and for instance 4-track is a really limited medium and it can only take you so far. So, you have to be thinking about an arrangement that will make it sound as full as if you had 100 tracks to record on. You have to use your brain more, and trick it into sounding full with the least amount of information. And in that why it sparks more creative thought and that’s interesting to me.

With a lot of analog gear there are a bunch of imperfections about it. In recording, dealing with tape which is an actual physical item that bends and stretches and dealing with a motor that is playing the tape back and it’s always going to be playing at different speeds, it’s never going to be quite the same. It also has an interesting way of compressing music because there is only a finite amount of space that sound can fits. So, the more you add to it the more it compresses it and it has this crazy effect.

All that stuff is great because you can’t predict it, and that’s what’s fun about it. You throw a bunch of stuff together and then you put it in the oven and you go away and you don’t know what you’re going to get when you take it out. It’s much more exciting than the digital world where there are so many options and you can fix things infinity. Like pitch shift stuff so that all the vocals are perfectly in tune and quantize the drums so the rhythm is exactly perfect…life’s not like that.

The same goes for that “Tunnel Vision” video. We were inspired by Stan Brackech (sp?) who was this avant-garde filmmaker and he used all abstract images that he would take with Super-8 film and collage them together and do stuff like bake it in the oven to make it melted for certain frames. That video is a direct rip-off of his stuff. But the same principal applies to that. When we shot on Super-8 there was no way to see what we just captured, and not really sure what it was going to turn out like in the end. So, there was a lot left to chance.

BK: What are you hoping to get out of touring with the band?

Luke Temple: We’re hoping more and more people with come see us play and we just hope to get better as a band. There’s no way to do that other than playing. Rehearsal only goes so far because you can always stop and try it a different way or rethink it. But when you play live you have to commit to the moment…you can’t stop. It really gives you a sense of what’s working and what’s not.

BK: Because there’s five of you and that’s like the perfect sitcom size. If Here We Go Magic was a sitcom, which would it be?

Luke Temple: I guess it would be Three’s Company probably. Except there’s five of us so I don’t know how that would work…somebody’s got to be Mr. Roper and if I designate someone they’re going to get offended. I don’t want to say Friends either…that’s like exactly our band…five people. I don’t know man; I don’t know TV well enough. 

The other day I received a white paper package that only said, 'EarLove' on the front. At first I wondered what strange fetish company got a hold of the office address. But when I opened to my delight there were a pair of clear rubber earplugs that looked like they belonged in Avatar. I couldn’t wait to try them out at that night’s Life During Wartime, and was extremely happy with the result. Most cheap plugs muffle the sound, while these just lowered the volume and let you enjoy the bass. Honestly, not thinking about if seeing this show was going to make me go deaf let me enjoy it that much more.  For $15 these are a great value and it doesn’t hurt that the only way to buy them besides online is at Chicago’s Schubas and Lincoln Hall. EarLove touts themselves as the best ear plug you can get without having someone pour a wax mold into your auditory canal. So, they've got that going for them.

The Glitch Mob
Drink The Sea
Glass Air Records
Released May 25th
 

The Glitch Mob - "Drive It Like You Stole It" (Download)

When I think of the Midi and laptop L.A.-based trio, The Glitch Mob, I conjure up thoughts of spastic pop-rap remixes, heavy bass and reverb. That’s why the idea of a full album worried me, this is a group that is so fun to see live—imagine Justice if they didn’t simply press play—and would they really be able to translate that live sensation on their first full release, Drink the Sea? But edIT, Boreta and Ooah quelled my fears, making an album full of composition and depth you don’t normally get from the glitch genre. But what is most impressive is that with this album they’ve solidified their sound, and one truly all their own. 

Glitch Mob must take the “Mob” part of their name seriously because all the music they put out I imagine working as a mental sound track while walking into the ring of a fight. Drink the Sea is no different; all the songs lean to the darker side, taking out their aggression on the sub-woofers. I have to give this record a lot of credit for making the songs journeys—hey, when I saw 5 and 6 minute track times I was worried—that rise and fall through composition. Where as a lot of electronic music will find one good sound and loop the shit out of it. 

Every track is production only except for “Between Two Points” feat. Swan. I wish they had vocals on more tracks, because it takes a little weight off the shoulders of the production. But it was clear they wanted the listener to focus on the beats and stepped up to the challenge and made songs that hold you from opening to close. And they all go so well together I found myself not realizing 2 tracks had gone by and I thought I was still on the first. 

This is a great album if you’re into electronic music and all you chest-pounding bass lovers with two 12”s in the back. And with a name like Glitch Mob you know a little about what to expect. Drink the Sea is a more than solid album that I have a feeling will make new glitch fans out of non-believers.

Be sure to catch The Glitch Mob at the Double Door May 1st. 

The Dirty Diamonds - The Right Direction

Last night at midnight Chicago’s vintage soul revival The Dirty Diamonds released their first EP ever for FREE on URChicago.com. Despite all my personal connections to this album and the people that created it—did I mention Curt Cameruci of Flosstradamus produced it—this is exactly what modern Mo-Town should sound like. All the classic musical elements and raw vocals are there, but with a clear Chicago dance scene touch with songs like “The Right Decision.” I mean with lyrics like, “Meet at The Hide Out//Drink with the lights out,” how could you not like this album?

The Dirty Diamonds hosted a record release party at the Only Children Le Compound loft last Friday night that was nothing short of a sweat lodge in the best way possible. It was the grimy loft party I needed to break up all this benign club time. People brought there own drinks, everyone smoked ciggs just because they could and a fun time was had by all especially yours truly. Thanks again to everyone involved and here are some of my photos from the party. 

Last Thursday The xx played a show at Lincoln Hall that backed up all the hype surrounding the English trio. They gave fans in that room their money’s worth, playing all the hits with slight remix variations that evoked the moment you first heard “Islands” or “Crystalised.” The opener, Swedish duo JJ, also had an emotional impact, but not necessarily the one they had intended, leaving Lincoln Hall feeling more awkward than an entire episode of The Office.

Lead singer of JJ, only known as Elin, came out by herself looking like a chubby Olsen twin during their homeless phase, with shawl over shawl. She sat on a lone wood stool, for a moment turning Lincoln Hall into a glorified coffee shop. Her uncomfortable-looking isolation on stage with nothing but a mic and acoustic guitar did however make her one in a million voice apparent to everyone in the sold out concert hall.

For the next song a quintessential Swedish blonde marijuana enthusiast joined her on stage and with him came the drama. It was rumored that JJ had the possibility of only being a one-person show in Chicago, yet there he was. Throughout the show he kept whispering in her ear while she was clearly trying to sing and focus. He could distract her considering 90% of the music coming out of the speakers was pre-recorded and they just pressed play when starting their projected video of South Africa, soccer and of course, weed smoking.

Twenty minutes before the end the guy—wish I had a name for you— wandered off the stage, only to come back at the very end—and here’s where it got weird. Elin was singing the final verse and the dude starts whispering something and lightly pulling on her forearm, all while she’s trying to sing and push him away. Elin then quickly says, “thank you,” to the crowd and walks off stage briskly before the audience even had time to clap. It felt like the crowd didn’t know if they should applaud or call in a domestic disturbance.

If you want my opinion, it looked like the two were dating for a long time and decided it would be good to go on tour together. Wrong! He then cheated on her (all assumptions) and now is trying to win her back in the one place she can freak out: on stage. But you know what, she’s not having it. Or maybe it was planed performance art.

The xx broke up any resonating uncomfortable feelings still resonating with “Intro” over blasts of light so blinding and overwhelming Lincoln Hall had to bring in an extra generator just to power them. Instantly, everyone was nodding in rhythm and the majority of the patrons singing along to the soft and ambiguous words of Oliver Sim and Romy Croft.

The live show is when the “drummer” really shows off his skills, working three MPCs and effects pedals. And almost nothing is pre-synced. The mixture of his drum variations and the perfect complimenting light display made the songs that are now in my iTunes “Top Played,” an entirely new experience. I can’t say enough good things about the light show, which felt like the fourth member of the band. Makes sense that their tour light guy is the Metro’s own Morgan Leek. What more can I say about a show they frequently gave me goose bumps and left me saying, “whoa,” after every song? Other than that if you get the chance to see The xx—possibly when they’re here with Hot Chip or Lollapalooza—TAKE IT!

Some call them go-to-hell pants, but if you grew up on the East Coast and had the usual boarding school pill addiction, then you know them as fuck-off pants. I've never been into the palm trees or anchor and yatch versions, because of all the D-bag connotations. But then I came across this vintage pair on MisterMort.com. They're about 30 years old and made by Mills-Touche in Tucson. 

The below short is Ralph Lauren's Rugby version of the 30+ year old print. I don't understand why all the new fuck-off prints are so spread out and patterned—the exact opposite of what the pant was based on. Still, it's step up from beach umbrellas on pre-worn colored khakis.