I remember looking across the street at Mr. Chow’s restaurant from my local watering hole all the time, back when my office was near Tribeca and I’d pop over for an after-work drink. The place always looked so old – not in the sense of being rundown, but like it was a place out of time, colored by its past. My reaction to it was probably influenced by the fact that the only image I had in my head of Mr. Chow’s in New York was out of Basquiat – if I had ever wandered in, I would have half-expected to see Warhol himself, still surrounded by a cadre of the city’s art, film and fashion power elite.
Watching this Nowness clip featuring Mr. Chow himself brings it all back to Earth – in it, we see a man dedicated to the details, emphasizing that each detail should be a universe as he walks us through his kitchens, his workshops devoted to Chinese cuisine – a humble man unimpressed by celebrity, with a sharp sense of humor. This is why Mr. Chow’s restaurants remain as they are: not only monuments to their own history, but living, breathing institutions.
If you haven’t yet been introduced to King Krule through last year’s incredible single/video “Out Getting Ribs,” or this insightful joint-profile by Nitsuh Adebe on NY Mag that groups him together with the musically-likeminded Bradford Cox of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound, this video for “The Noose of Jah City” is as good an entry-point as any. Archy Marshall looks like a kid straight out of a London-based comic book, all gangly limbs, sunken cheeks and mournful glances – and that voice: raw, untrained, deeper and richer than you’d expect, all set over a drum machine and jazzy breaks that would fit on an old NYC hip-hop track. Interestingly enough, Marshall’s mom worked in Spike Lee’s shop in NY, as he recounts in this interview with Pitchfork, and good old mum handled wardrobe on P.M. Dawn’s classic Spandau Ballet-sampling “Set Adrift On Memory Bliss.” NYC-meets-East London, and it’s a beautiful thing in Marshall’s very capable hands.
I remember my first exposure to the Moog being The Rentals — the original Weezer bassist’s side project that was totally driven by the classic, New Wave-y synths. But there’s a lot more coming out of the Moog laboratories in Asheville, NC, and the Moog Sound Lab series aims to share that fact with the world. Take the Twin Shadow performance, for instance, where we see a couple Moog Guitars in action among a host of other gadgets as the group performs “Slow” from their debut album Forget.
Enjoy this lovely look back through Stanley Kubrick’s filmography, created from animated posters designed by Martin Woutisseth and set to a lilting score composed by Romain Trouillet. Do you have a favorite? I liked the way HAL’s red eye ominously comes into the picture in the design for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The Chromatic Typewriter is a creation of Tyree Callahan‘s, his entry into the 2012 West Prize competition. Callahan created a ‘painting device’ by modifying a vintage typewriter, replacing the keys with color pads and opening up our imaginations to new ways of creating beautiful art.
From The Creator’s Project, here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the Polish Girl video for Neon Indian. Directed by Tim Nackashi, the concept is described as a humanoid’s ‘endless digital daydream,’ and includes 3D renderings and what Nackashi calls ‘light-painting.’ Very interesting stuff!
The Girl Walk project was still in Kickstarter funding mode when we posted about it in February, but it’s now come to fruition and Gothamist has the premiere chapter of this 75-minute long film set to the entire Girl Talk album All Day. Wild Combination wisely decided to split up the release of this film into manageable segments, so look for a new installment each Tuesday and Friday until January.
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