Fabric

Buraka Som Sistema do it as well live — if not better — than in the studio. Taking the input of Angolan analog techno and modern Portuguese dance, and mixing it with the almost forgotten experimentation of kuduro, the Portuguese collective has created a ferocious new animal. This mixture is explored in-depth on its full-lengths From Buraka To The World and Black Diamond. Buraka’s installment in the FabricLive series showcases what it does live. Raging electro stabs and belching basslines race through this devastating mix. Skream’s “Fick” honks away as Zomby’s “Dynamite Sandwich” rubs and flutters its way to the declarations of Crime Mob’s “Rock Yo Hips” and the hiccups of DJ Malvado’s “Puto Mekie”. The best bits on FabricLive 49 are Buraka’s own compositions and remixes. These escalate the energy level to another place, crunching and smashing everything in their path. The mix moves rapidly, giving you only the choice parts of the selected cuts. This is done skillfully with tracks so appropriate, it propels you around the dance floor — the rapid shifts unfelt.

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Photography by Frédéric Sautereau Translation by Jason Bushman & Ernesto González-Giraldo

Three weeks since the earthquake devastated Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the suffering continues. French photojournalist Frédéric Sautereau spent a week in Port-au-Prince documenting the situation. Internationally recognized for his work dealing with the dual notions of border and divide, Sautereau has reported on places in turmoil – political, economic, or otherwise – including Kosovo, Gaza, Burma, North-Kivu, Hurricane Katrina, and 9/11. Shortly after returning from Haiti, PLANET° was fortunate enough to speak with Sautereau about his poignant photographs and just how far Haiti is from a full recovery.
     As with our previous coverage of the Haiti Earthquake, we urge you to donate to Oxfam or Doctors Without Borders. Please bear in mind that with Red Cross, ninety cents of every dollar goes to administrative expenses and only ten cents reach the people.

How do you view your role as a photojournalist in the wake of the disaster in Haiti?

I am a journalist, so my role is to present the images I see, what I perceive and understand from the situation. As for what’s happened in Haiti, it means trying my best to convey the situation of distress and chaos, which now rules in this region, and also for the purpose of representing the deaths. I try to do this with intellectual honesty.
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Photography courtesy of White Columns

Best known for his role in Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore has for the last ten years published a poetry journal featuring work by the likes of Gus Van Sant, Kathleen Hanna, Rick Moody, Lenny Bruce (posthumously, of course), and many others. Although primarily a side project — publishing approximately once per year — Moore’s journal has been successful at forging an intimate link between the art, music, and poetry worlds he inhabits. For the next month, famed New York art space White Columns will celebrate the latest issue, #10, with an exhibition and reading and performance series, highlighting some of the journal’s best work and influences.
     Ecstatic Peace is inspired by the mimeographed, post-war poetry magazines that proliferated in the 1960s and 70s. Moore began acquiring the mags with friend and co-editor Byron Coley when they hit a wall in record collecting, and the fruits of their obsession are on display here, along with the covers of the earlier issues of Ecstatic Peace.
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 Charlotte Gainsbourg was nervous. She had never toured before, and no one knew what to expect as she took to the stage last weekend, at what must have been the most crowded concert to date at the Hiro Ballroom. But as the show went on, Gainsbourg’s confidence grew, aided by cheers coming from the crowd, in both French and English. On IRM, Gainsbourg’s new album written and produced by Beck, her ethereal voice wafts and wanes over eerie melodies reminiscent of Beck’s own Sea Change. It’s no surprise then that Gainsbourg’s sold-out appearances at Manhattan’s Hiro Ballroom and Brooklyn’s Bell House drew such attention. She’s one of the most interesting artists working today — giving a heart-stopping performance in Lars von Trier’s film Antichrist and creating one of the most beautiful albums released in the last year. And to top it all off, she is simply one of the nicest, most gracious people we have ever interviewed.

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I never met J.D. Salinger. 
     I don’t really know a damn thing about him that would give me the right to stand up and eulogize the man and I’m okay with that. All I really know about Salinger is what I have read from him…. Or more accurately, all I really know about him is what I have felt about what I have read from him. And what I have felt leaves me now with a strangely beautiful sense of loss and gratitude in the wake of his passing. 
     I can’t pay homage to the man without feeling a bit “phony” but I can honor the literary evidence, that part of the man’s character and soul that lives with us still, without any experience of the vessel it was originally packaged in or the personality that he projected. And as I celebrate the love I have of the love he had for his brilliant, lonely characters, I also respect the fact that he had absolutely no desire whatsoever to know what I think about his work or what it meant to me growing up.
     I’m not saying I wouldn’t have liked to meet him. I’m a writer for Christ’s sake! I grew up in my dad’s bookstore surrounded by Salinger’s work and his legendary mythos, of course I wanted to meet him, but by the time I was old enough to read his work and understand it (circa 1977) it was already a well-established fact that if J.D. had anything to do with it, I would never come within a hundred miles of him. Nor would anyone who came along with another heartfelt profession of commiseration with Holden Caulfield, or yet another well-meaning inquiry about “the real Glass family”.  
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Ann Demeulemeester

Queen Ann is the last romantic left in fashion. In the 21st Century, she is the one designer who can speak of poetry in her work unselfconsciously. Perhaps this collection was Demeulemeester sensing that our world is becoming increasingly prosaic. Backstage after the show, Demeulemeester said, “I started this collection by imagining a duke. Left in his castle, cut off from the world, what would he wear?” The answer — long black coats, high-waist riding pants, and leather rope belts. The tall young men Demeulemeester sent down the runway were every bit uninvolved, lost in their own thoughts, lost in their own clothes, lost in their own world. These days, Demeulemeester likes to puncture her usual black and white palette with a choice of color. For this show her color of choice was olive-gray, which translated well into the capes and asymmetric, voluminous jackets.
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Image via drury.edu

Howard Zinn was one of the great humanitarians of the 20th Century. His work had a profound influence on me personally and was a factor in shaping this magazine when I was formulating it in the late 1990s. We consulted with him for our Peace Issue in 2003, and wrote a piece on him in our Voices section in 2008. Also, click here for a link to the New York Times obituary. I haven’t always agreed with all his views, but his central ideas — that history should be told from the viewpoint of those its events have most affected, and that society’s duty is to organize our resources to provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people — are important principles to keep in mind as we hurtle deeper into this Global Century. May his vision endure, and may he rest in peace.

Domino

Long ago, classical music ruled. Over centuries, musical iconoclasts found many ways to deviate from this sonic bedrock with jazz, rock and roll, hip-hop, reggae, and other popular flavors, relegating classical to something highfalutin, placed on a pedestal for anyone nerdy or old enough to pay attention. Foreshadowed by Anthony Burgess’ visionary novella A Clockwork Orange, a bastardized version of classical music has again become en vogue, ironically in hipster, cool-kid circles. Artists like Sufjan Stevens, Joanna Newsom, and Eric Matthews hybridized with “chamber pop”, making equal use of folk, rock, and classical instruments and song structures. Owen Pallett (née Final Fantasy) is another luminary of this genre, as evidenced by his latest full-length, Heartland, (not to mention his orchestral arrangements already heard with Arcade Fire). The song cycle is adorned with lush details: string flourishes, woodwinds, brass, and even bells. More than just ornamentation, these meticulous touches are the glue (and attraction) of this jigsawed sound. Heartland shows Pallett’s penchant for mixing bygone instruments with newfangled electronics, sometimes giving his songs a retro-futuristic feel. “Lewis Takes Action” (stream below) sounds like a ’60s girl-group classic interpolated by the hands of a philharmonic; the centerpiece “O Heartland, Up Yours!” surprises with its semi-soulful groove. Another example of the place classical music still holds in pop culture, in measured doses.

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Buy this at Other Music or iTunes.

Recently, on the website FFFFOUND, we came across this sketched reinterpretation of our famous Issue One cover which featured Vincent Gallo shrouded by soft white fog — for our AIR issue. Containing a special, and very revealing, “Gallo on Gallo” interview, this issue was a huge hit at the time it came out; even so, we were totally surprised to find this rendering of it posted on FFFFOUND nearly eight years later! Could it have been rendered and posted by Gallo himself? It bears the telltale signs: his autograph and an all-caps GALLO that he adds to old magazines for sale on his website (check out the image via the site on the next page). But then again, it may have simply been copied by a clever artist / interloper who poached it from his merchandise site. You decide. (By the way, if you’ve never been to vgmerchandise.com, Gallo’s own brilliantly narcissistic paradise, you owe yourself the trip. We recommend the Personal Services link for a classic dose of the best and the worst of Vinny Gallo.)
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We came across this on photographer and PLANET contributor James Chiang’s blog for his Ideation & Presentation course at the Academy of Art. And as great fans of both Björk and Arvo Pärt, we just had to share with you this clip from the BBC program Modern Minimalists, in which the Icelandic chanteuse interviews the Estonian classical composer.
     A pioneering force within the mystical school of minimalism, the septuagenarian Pärt experienced a slight renaissance in the past decade with last year’s premiere of Symphony No. 4, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, as well as with the inclusion of his work on the soundtracks to Fahrenheit 9/11 and There Will Be Blood. But his influence (and particularly his stark yet beautiful style, known as tintinnabulation) can also be felt on records by more mainstream, modern artists like Max Richter, Radiohead, and, indeed, Björk.
     Set to the lush and lamenting strings of Pärt’s 1977 composition, “Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten”, Björk begins the interview by declaring that his oeuvre “in a very sensitive way has got the whole battle of this century inside him.” Speaking in her signature sprite-like patter and sporting intergalactic chignons, the singer-turned-temporary-journalist also suggests a somewhat strange dialectic shaping Pärt’s aesthetic — that of “Pinocchio and the little cricket,” in which a postlapsarian human capable of so much pain confronts and consorts with another being bursting with compassion and the will to comfort.
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