EB OFFICE FAVOURITES - May 2010

31/05/2010 / EB Team

Summer hasn't really reached us but that won't stop us from offering great music. To hell with the rain - we have some sunny vibes running through this selection. So, sit back and relax and listen to some great tunes.

The EB Office team is: Carlos de Brito (CDB), Gareth Owen (GO), Kazim Rashid (KR), Ari Stein (AS) and Marc Zedler (MZ).

Ratatat - We Can't Be Stopped

(Taken from the album LP4 (2010) on XL Recordings)

A lovely short instrumental to get you in the mood for summer. Ratatat have been bubbling underneath the surface for quite some time, in fact for more than three albums. Only now, I think they have hot their charming stride. Jon Brion, eat your heart out.
(AS)

Soul Clap – Extravaganza

(Taken from the 12inch R&B Edits (2010) out on Wolf + Lamb Music)

The Wolf + Lamb camp has totally got me. In March I couldn't get Nicolas Jaar's ‘A Time For Us’ out my head, now it’s Soul Clap’s housed-up rework of Jamie Foxx’ ‘Extravaganza’ that totally got me. The Boston duo is on a roll, and all cuts on this genre-blurring 12inch R&B Edits are a corker and well worth hunting down.

Listen to 'Extravaganza' (starting at ca. 9:45 min) and other Soul Clap beauties in their top notch Boston Mix for XLR8R magazine. (CDB)

Grooveman Spot - Affection (feat. Ahu)

(Taken from the album Change Situations (2010) out on Planetgroove)

Here is another brand new tune from me for this month. New music is so good at the moment. This tune comes courtesy of Japan's Planetgroove, an offshot from the Jazzy Sport founders. Grooveman Spot features Ahu, who is a girl who can do no wrong in my opinion. (KR)

Kariya – Let Me Love You for Tonight (House Club Version)

(Taken from the 12inch Let me Love You For Tonight (1988) on Sleeping Bag)

Oooh my gosh. Probably one of my favourite early (ok anoraks, late period) house tracks. Laden with emotion and longing, I could dance to this all night long. (GO)

John Daly - This Is A Lonely Beat

(Taken from the album Sea & Sky (2009) out on Wave Music)

Irishman John Daly is a deep house artist based in the sleepy coastal town of Galway. Known for sublime mixes and intoxicating tracks, John is an artist who deserves much more attention. With so much emotion thrown in, 'This Is A Lonely Beat' resonates as the epitome of a good deep house track. Also, his song 'Sea And Sky' made it on our top tracks of 2009. (MZ)

Legendary Pop Group to reform

31/05/2010 / Gareth Owen

Legendary Bristol post-punk band the Pop Group are reforming. Cited as as an influence by a number of modern producers including LCD Soundsystem, the band have been credited with creating 'punk-funk'. Politically charged, abrasive, trailblazing - any number of adjectives could be used to describe the legacy of the seminal group who were led by Mark Stewart.

Stewart later went on to form cult band Mark Stewart and the Mafia with Skip McDonald and Doug Wimbash of the Sugar Hill Gang. Other members of the Pop Goup went on to form Pig Pag or be part of outfits such as PiL and African Head Charge.

The last time the band recorded together was in 1980 for For How Much Longer Do We Tolerate Mass Murder?, but their influence still resonates today. Disparate acts from Massive Attack to Tricky, Atari Teenage Riot to Nine Inch Nails all carry mutated influences that can be traced back to the Pop Group - arguably the first influential band to come out of the city of Bristol, and acknowledged 'godfathers' of the 'Bristol scene'. Punk funk, agit pop, industrial and noise music have all at various times been credited with being invented by the band.

In a typically oblique press release, the band state that they will be reforming to record a new project, The Alternate, and to play some secret shows. The press release also goes on to state their new manifesto : Deny The Politics of Envy. Taste is a form of personal censorship. Technique is the the refuge of the insecure. We are the new banalists.

The first two shows (according to Mark Stewart) are to take place in Italy, on September 18th in Bologna and 20th in Turin.

TODAY WE LIKE: MTV’s World Cup commercials

26/05/2010 / Marc Zedler

When I saw these new MTV commercials, I scratched my head in disbelief. Each of the quirky anti-World Cup spots are hilarious as they are peculiar.

It makes you wonder just what exactly does MTV have to do with the World Cup? Jose Molla, founder and creative director of MTV’s international agency, puts it in perspective: "It's such a huge event around the world, and people get so passionate about it, that it's good for MTV to address this incredible moment in an ironic way. It shows how people get totally into the World Cup, but from a different angle."

Highlighting obsessive fan behavior, each of the commercials concludes with “We understand why you aren’t watching MTV.” The three spots have already been broadcasted and we’re hoping more will follow. To underline the World Cup’s international appeal, Korean, Russian and Spanish commercials have all been released.

Our favorite spot has to be the Spanish-speaking hamster, “Spooky.” We don’t want to give away too much - so just imagine a giant hamster with a chainsaw. Watch all three spots below:

MTV - SPOOKY from Summer on Vimeo.

Claude Cahun - The Quiet Surrealist

26/05/2010 / Viktoria Pelles

Gegen Jede Vernunft (Against All Reason), a comprehensive Surrealist exhibition in the modest town of Ludwigshafen, recently devoted the Kunstverein Ludwigshafen exclusively to Surrealist photography from Paris and Prague. The photographic medium played a major role in this most momentous artistic movement of the twentieth century; up to that point photography primarily served to depict reality and Surrealists were the first to appropriate it for the exploration of life’s hidden mysteries, turning the everyday into something magical. In an extensive exhibition encompassing 180 works by artists like Dora Maar, Lee Miller and of course Man Ray, the images of one woman undeniably stand out.

On first coming across the work of Claude Cahun you can’t help but be struck with disbelief. Disbelief that an artist with so much expressive, original work (as a photographer, writer and activist) can go largely unnoticed for close to fifty years. It’s astonishing to think that her photos with their quirky cast of characters – a sailor, two-headed Siamese twins, a puppet, a pilot, an Egyptian queen – precede by more than 50 years the work of modern female photographers, perhaps most notably Cindy Sherman, also well-known for her elaborately staged ‘self-portraits’.

Claude Cahun, Self Portrait, ©2009 By Chr. Belser AG fur Verlagsgeschafte & co.kg, Stuttgart 61

As the first encounter with her arresting expression will assure you, Lucy Schwob (1894-1954), who settled on the sexually ambiguous ‘Claude Cahun’ as her artist pseudonym around 1919, is one of the most fascinating creatures of the avant-garde movement. With an aesthetic quality entirely comparable to Man Ray or Germaine Krull, Cahun’s work offers another level of complexity through the impact of her own piercing stare as well as the progressive – even by contemporary standards – commentary it offers on gender and identity as a whole.

Being a woman, a lesbian, a Jew and an artist would generally impose some societal confines. Cahun manages to transcend all of these by manipulating her appearance in her art. While her photos essentially revolve around her own face and body, she eschews the obsession with the female image ‘l’amour fou’ of her surrealist colleagues. As a context, consider the perfectly staged and stylized Hollywood diva portraits so popular and prevalent in the day to understand the subversive brilliance of the portraits.

Cahun’s direct and piercing look – a genuine rarity in any female portraits – displays an unforced confidence that dissolves the convention of the female figure as an erotic symbol to be marvelled at, and simultaneously dismisses any notion of cross-dressing, transvestism or problematic sexuality that such ‘subject matter’ might otherwise suggest.

Jewish Museum/New York, CHR. Belser AG fur Verlagsgeschafte & Co.KG

The intensely focused and confident gaze also manages to demolish our ritual of voyeurism – or indeed exhibitionism on part of the model. Not nearly enough is known about the way in which Cahun worked and why her work didn’t receive the acclaim it warranted until the early nineties. The systematic disregard of women in art history and the male-dominated Surrealist movement is partly to blame of course, but it’s also possible that Cahun made the majority of her photographic work as an exploration of herself and the ideas of her life-partner, Marcel Moore (née Suzanne Malherbe), never really intending it to be publicly viewed.

In 1937, Cahun and Moore settled in Jersey where, after German occupation in the war, they were active as resistance workers and propagandists, always using an artistic slant to undermine the enemy. In many ways, Cahun’s life and work was all focused on undermining a certain authority.

While the exhibition in Ludwigshafen will have finished by the time of publishing, we recommend the official exhibition catalogue, which ranks as a new standard work on Surrealism. The book is richly illustrated and contains essays by Reinhard Spieler, Didier Ottinger, Barbara Auer and others. Published by Belser Verlag.

Claude Cahun, Aveux Non Avenus, PL. I, 1929/1930, GElatinepapier, Neuabzug

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WOMEN IN SURREALISM WE RECOMMEND:

Gegen Jede Vernunft. Surrealismus Paris - Prag, EDT by Barbara Auer ETC., CHR. Belser AG Verlagsgeschafte & Co. KG, Stuttgart 2009

Kunstlerinnen im Surrealismus, EDT. By Karoline Hille, CHR. Belser AG Berlagsgeschafte & Co. KG, Stuttgart, 2009

Disavowals: or Cancelled Confessions, MIT Press, By Claude Cahun.

ONES TO WATCH - Blondes

19/05/2010 / Ari Stein

The Big Apple hasn’t had anything to shout about for a while; instead it has been following the long tailcoats of London’s constantly evolving scene for the last few years.

But a new duo called Blondes has emerged through the cracks of the city’s steamy subways and overcrowded streets looking to change all that. New to most but surely not for long, the two make hedonistic, gothic disco if one can call it that.

In the space of twelve months, Blondes have not only scored a deal with Merok (the label behind Crystal Castles & Esser initial success) but have also caught the deep intense gaze of arty-disco lovers everywhere. Both Zach Steinman and Sam Haar have crisscrossed across the world, meeting in Ohio at Oberlin College where Tortoise and Beach House first met, then temporarily living in Berlin and then finally setting up shop in New York.

The music Blondes make seems quite improvisational and spontaneous, which is why it sounds quite refreshing. Their lead single Spanish Fly (an intense medieval poison) roams around the cosmic underground similar to London’s Hounds of Hate and New York’s Gavin Russom - subtle keys, long drawn out melodies of epic proportion, ending on a more comfortable ambient note. Songs like ‘Moondance’ meander for over 10 minutes or so, but I enjoy the zone out quality to it, quite like I embraced the brilliance of White Rainbow.

Pitchfork described them as “Giorgio Moroder synth workouts and Boards of Canada wispiness”. I’d rather call it Orchestral Manoeuvres In the Dark raiding Todd Terje’s vinyl collection.

There really isn’t that much Blondes music out there, but they seem to have already caught the attention of the bewildering chameleon superstar Tiesto. Yes, they are opening for him on one of his U.S. dates. Amongst that, they also have done a great remix for John Talabot.

Blondes debut EP Touched will be out on Big Pink’s Milo Cordell run label on the 28th of June. You can download Spanish Fly right here.