Hooray for National Record Store Day! I went by Aquarius Records and picked up the new Pantha du Prince album, Black Noise, on vinyl. It’s every bit as good as This Bliss (2007), and includes pop-infused tracks produced with Panda Bear (Animal Collective) and Tyler Pope (!!!, LCD Soundsystem). There’s even a nod toward the Durutti Column’s “Hilary.” It was nice to see the store bustling with people who enjoyed free beer and snacks as they shopped.
The folks at AQ were also nice to order two albums which had sold out earlier: Etienne Jaumet’s Night Music and Jan Jelinek + Masayoshi Fujita’s Bird, Lake, Objects. If you haven’t supported your local record shop in some time, go and refresh your ears by picking up some new music! It’s good for the economy and your soul.
I can’t wait to catch Thomas Fehlmann‘s live ambient set this Thursday evening! Come out and experience him and the super chill vibes of the Ambi-Sonic crew. Live visuals will be provided by Ty Humphrey of the Los Angeles Video Artists.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted back here — amidst holiday travels, I’ve been mostly blogging at Logos Graphics. For friends who have been patient with me, a very happy belated new year!
There are works from some of the best known names of the era — El Lissitzky (see his Soviet poster, below), Malevich, Kamensky, even Lenin and Trotsky — though to my great delight, I learned of seemingly countless other groups and their often humorous counter groups:
El Lissitzky, “Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” (1919)
The somewhat staid Ego-Futurists, mostly in the literary camp, were later superceded by the Imaginists who indulged in long, deeply metaphoric poetry; there were also the painterly Cubo-Futurists, who counted Malevich and Mayakovsky as primary leaders. Then there were the Acmeists, the Suprematists (Malevich at his finest), the Neo-Primitivists, the Rayonists, the Bicosmists, the Luminists, the Electroorganists, the Constructivists and the Productivists.
The funniest groups were the Eggists, who formed as a joke in a newspaper article; the Everythingists, who embraced all styles of expression; and the Nothingists, whose slogan was “Write nothing! Read nothing! Say nothing! Print nothing!”
But these groups seem disappointingly shallow when compared to artists like Iakov Chernikhov, who is worth mentioning here as one of the most imaginative minds in modern architecture — even if his perspective is missing from Baku. Though best known for the Flying City, his body of work (especially his collection of Architectural Fantasies) is well worth a peek.
Iakov Chernikhov, Fundamentals of Modern Architecture (1925-30)
One of the album’s highlights is About Two Squares – A Suprematist Story by El Lissitzky (1920-22), a children’s tale about a red square and a black square. They travel toward a red circle (Earth) and smash into each other, creating abstract forms on Earth.
El Lissitzky, About Two Squares (1920-22)
It’s a futuristic narrative that combines experimental typography with the fun of reading aloud “colour-blocks of Word”… a synesthetic experience from one of the Russian greats! View the entire story here.
