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“Free to choose, free to dream.” One of the best neighborhoods in Italy for flyers and graffiti. Rewind: make that Europe. Quartiere San Lorenzo, Rome. November, 2009.
These captured American aircraft have a particularly timeless quality to them. Some of them remain in daily use, such as the UH-1 Huey helicopter. The others, the F-5 Tiger and A-37 Dragonfly, though less familiar, still register, as both remain in service in several air forces. On display at Saigon’s War Remnants Museum, they’re relics of the last time the United States was officially defeated in combat. At least that’s the idea in showing them off, as reminders of the one-time limits of US power.
For the left-wing black metal lover, no act causes greater discomfort than Burzum. The influence of Varg Vikernes’ one-man band is profound. Burzum’s 1990s albums, particularly 1994’s Filosofem, demonstrated just what was possible in the Norwegian black metal scene. (More…)
“Israel can suck my dick, Arab leaders can lick my balls,” bellowed the Palestinian MC, with a wild look in his eyes. For as partisan an event as this gig was, the statement had a delightfully alienated quality to it. He couldn’t identify with anyone; except, that is, his own people. His words hung heavily in the room, contrasting sharply with those of the British rapper who had introduced his act, someone who, less than an hour before, had urged the largely Palestinian audience to oppose the allied attack on Libya. (More…)
I never thought much about race. Early in life, I learned that it was an untrustworthy category. (More…)
Although it’s been subsumed in the news by the more explosive revolts in the region, Iran’s Green movement provided its own blueprint for how to take it to the man—or imam—a couple of years ago. Its currently nebulous and undulant nature may provide the model for how to make a movement last until victory. (More…)
We are sitting in front of a large flat-screen watching video footage of the Japanese earthquake disaster. Jianhua is perched on the end of the bed, wearing the metallic fabric smock she wanted to protect her pregnant midriff. She is worried about fetal effects of EM from televisions, laptop computers, and cell-phones. (More…)
The Voltage Music label was started in 2000. I approached my boss at the time, XLR8R Magazine publisher Andrew Smith, about collaborating on a label. He and I had been producing music together at the time as Live & Direkt. We released a track on a Ubiquity Records comp called No Categories Volume 1 and did a few remixes for other labels. Separately, I had started recording my own broken beat and dub tracks using a first generation black PowerBook G3.
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Nobody produces stickers like the German left. The British school girl outfits are priceless. Friedrichshain, Berlin. July, 2010.
It was cold outside and pouring rain. The cafe was packed, upstairs and down. “It’s really a commune here, huh?” the woman next to me said as I sat down. I smiled, nodded, and asked if it would annoy her if I plugged my laptop in. The wire would run right behind her, grazing her back. “No problem,” she said. (More…)
“In My Time”, one of the sunnier numbers on Kurt Vile’s new album Smoke Ring For My Halo, begins with a curious couplet: “In my day I was young and crazy/Sure I didn’t know shit, but now I’m lazy.” While such introspection made sense for musicians who had been through the madness of the late 1960s and were keen to follow Voltaire’s advice and tend their own garden to recuperate, it sounds strange coming from someone like Vile. (More…)