Shoe Finds

Confession. I stumbled upon these insanely amazing Surface to Air boots last week and have been unable to stop thinking about them. Yes, they are $425 (not including the shipping from who knows where!) but never before have I felt such intense longing for a pair of shoes. They perfectly capture a mix of tough girlyness and street chic style, plus they have this ’90s Na Na/pretty grunge vibe that I am really loving right now. I would pair them with everything from  a tshirt and skinny gray jeans to poufy skirts and cardigans.  Forever 21 has a  similar style I’m still dreaming of those buckle platform babies.

Tim Burton @ MoMA

Fact: I love Tim Burton and his whimsical, melancholic worldview. I secretly wanted to be Winona Ryder in both Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands, the former for her teenage gothic wardrobe and sarcastic demeanor and the latter for her place in Johnny Depp’s innocent heart. I was one of five people in my local theater when Mars Attacks! came out when I was 15. Big Fish’s ending still makes me cry.

So when I saw that MoMA was set to open a career retrospective of Burton’s work I got as excited as PeeWee reuniting with his beloved bike. Opening on November 22 and running through April 2010, there’ll be previously hidden away artwork and films from his days as a student at Cal Arts and copious amounts of drawings, puppets, costumes and sketches from throughout his career.

Tim Burton MoMA retrospective

It was bound to happen

Lady Gaga has finally won me over. It’s not that I’ve resisted her charming hair bows or bubble dresses, or been outraged by her penchant for S&M style leather facemasks and underwear as outerwear. The truth is, she’s always been in my peripheral vision  but never in its targets. My musical tastes are more on the underground dance end of the aural  spectrum, and my MTV days were numbered after the cancellation of Amp and 120 Minutes in  the early 2000’s, so it’s been with detached curiosity that I’ve followed her meteoric ascension  to the top of the pop heap.

There’s really nothing new or shocking about what Gaga does–she owes as much to 90’s  performance artist Leigh Bowery and clubkid demi-god Michael Alig as she does to glam  rockers David Bowie and Freddie Mercury. Every generation needs a performer that’s  outrageous, creative, and bold and Gaga has stepped into that role with panache. While I find  her musical offerings to be generic club fodder that reminds me of the pounding eurotechno I  grew up listening to on Long Island, I admire and appreciate the contrast between her bland  beats and her aggressively adventurous style. Part of me wonders if that is not also part of her  appeal and a secret to her success. Musicians who pursue sonic adventures are generally met  with resistance and derision (see: Bob Dylan’s plugged in performance at the Newport Folk  Festival; Stravinsky’s riot-inducing performance of the ‘Rites of Spring’) while Cher can wear  a gothic, midriff-bearing spiked dress to the Oscars and be lauded for her idiosyncratic style.  Maybe innovative style is simply easier for us to process and understand.

Still, after watching the video for ‘Bad Romance’ I can no longer deny the creative force that drives Gaga to ever higher and stranger heights. When I turn the sound down I’m completely engrossed in the sheer spectacle of it all: the eyeless latex crowned bodysuits; the gleaming metal body sphere harness; the bejeweled Alexander McQueen spacesuit (replete with hoof shoes!). Once I set aside my jealousy over her access to some of the most forward-thinking fashion designers around I can’t help but smile. She wears the unwearable effortlessly and gracefully and asks us to admire the beauty in the strange and unusual.

Hello again!

A few years ago, a dear friend made me watch Shaye St. John’s ‘Broken Neck Doll’ video on Youtube. I was horrified. After I recovered from the sight of Shaye, bandaged and disheveled and announcing her medication requirements in a sped-up, helium inflected voice, I demanded to see it again. And again. Since that fateful night I’ve spent countless hours watching Shaye’s grainy, low budget videos, or ‘triggers,’ laughing, screaming, and wondering who unleashed this prescription powered psychopath on us.

While the origins of Shaye may be as murky as the details of Daft Punk’s true identities, there’s no denying the terrible beauty of Shaye herself. Her Old Hollywood glamour ruined by a tragic car accident (or so the myth goes), her arms and legs have been replaced by puppet marionette limbs that mysteriously function without any strings. Sometimes she wheels herself around in a wheelchair, other times she walks around in a caftan and matching headscarf, dramatically waving her doll hands and tossing her curly brown hair. I always found her face to be the most disturbing sight of all, sometimes bandaged, sometimes covered in a generic facemask cut apart at the jaw for easier movement. There’s something about the sight of a real mouth topped with dead plastic eyes that really spooked me.

Shaye plays with burnt baby-dolls, rummages in garbage heaps , goes on the Internet 24/7 and indulges in wire therapy because, well, that’s what Shaye does. Some of the videos have a narrative arc but mostly they’re vignettes of a deranged nature, full of dated, repetitive visual graphics and Shaye’s high pitched ramblings. In terms of it’s absurdity and total illogical point of view, the only thing that even comes close are some of the more random hypercolored cutscenes in the free-associative cult Adult Swim show, ‘Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!’

Shaye’s website, is not for the faint of heart but worth exploring. If you’re really daring, get his Triggers DVD . It’a funhouse mirror of a compilation that’s almost impossible to navigate, so just close your eyes, pick a trigger and let Shaye tell you all about her friends.

Skweee spotlight, October ‘09

Skweee is silly. Skweee makes me smile. Skweee is a quickly rising electronic hip-hop funk style out of Scandanavia that served as subject for my second post for Lost in Bass. Turns out Lost In Bass boasts Stickem, owner of the Skweeeelicious blog, as a resident DJ, and that Boston is home to the first US skweee label. Even though I don’t live there anymore, Boston is such a small world!

Get caught up on skweee at Lost in Bass

Nightslugs spotlight, October ‘09

A friend of mine from Boston started an underground dance music blog this fall and knowing my love for dance music that hides in the shadows, asked me to contribute on anything that struck my fancy. My first post for Lost In Bass is a spotlight on the British heavy bass/global gutter house crew known as Nightslugs.

Read up on the Nightslugs crew at Lost in Bass

Boys Noize Power album review, October ‘09

Boys Noize is one of my favorite producers so I jumped at the chance to review his new album, Power, for Joonbug. While retaining much of the electro bombast that made Oi Oi Oi one of my favorite albums of 2007, I found his follow up to be sparser, more tightly focused and packed with subtle nods to Detroit and acid techno, power industrial and even Boards of Canada style melodies.

The full review at Frequency

Rise of the Remix Contest, October ‘09

My first post as a contributing music editor for the NYC nightlife blog Frequency outlines the rise in popularity of remix contests offered by such artists as Radiohead, Depeche Mode and Passion Pit. I attributed this to a growing acceptance of artists in embracing nontraditional means of promotion amidst the social media revolution.

The full article at Frequency

GBH 10 Year Anniversary @ Webster Hall, May ‘08

I followed up the Cut Copy article with a review of the GBH 10 year anniversary party that took place in NYC later that month. MSTRKRFT headlined an all-out rager that included LA Riots and Does It Offend You, Yeah?

The full article of the GBH 10 year party at TheRetrospective

Cut Copy @ The Paradise, May ‘08

Back in May 2008 I wrote a review of a Cut Copy concert for TheRetrospective, a music, arts and culture blog based out of Boston and San Francisco. A mutual friend had introduced me to Gitamba, owner of the site, a few weeks earlier and he encouraged me to send along any music reviews and articles I wrote.

The full article at TheRetrospective