Starfield, Music Pick of the Week

Starfield by The New Division from California.

Forget Me Not, Music Pick of the Week

Forget Me Not by Thieves Like Us.

Time to Wander, Music Pick of the Week

Time to Wander by Gypsy & The Cat

Chinatown Fair / The King of Chinatown



Chinatown Fair in NYC used to serve as an East Coast mecca for fighting game fans as one of the last independently-owned video arcades in the country. It closed earlier this year, but through the work of two filmmakers the spirit of the scene lives on. Mark Hayes’ short film Chinatown Fair collects crowd-sourced footage and interviews with people intimately involved in the scene to paint a picture of this much-loved meeting place. And released a while ago, but recently made available on iTunes, documentary maker Calvin Theobald’s The King of Chinatown focuses on young Justin Wong’s rise to dominance in the fighting game community.

Mr. Chow’s Symphony



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.

King Krule – The Noose of Jah City



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.

Moog Sound Lab — Twin Shadow

Twin Shadow Moog Sound Lab Slow from Moog Music on Vimeo.

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.











Editors

Caleb, Lifestyle & Culture Writer
Paul, Tech Writer
Carolyn, Art Writer
Jing, Net Art Writer

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