ColdCave

COLD CAVE

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Last year I was asking around for music recommendation when the name Wesley Eisold, the musician who records as Cold Cave, came up. I gave it a listen and then slowly started sinking into Eisold’s world. The songs seemed simultaneously familiar and new, the electronic sound that could be both melodic and harsh, and the dissatisfaction with the world in the lyrics that was set to just the right pitch.

Several months later news came out that Cold Cave will be opening for Nine Inch Nails on their European tour. This made total sense as both Eisold and Reznor have an auteur’s approach to their work, recording pretty much all of their music on their own, and obsessing over every detail not only in their music but in creating a complete aesthetic universe. For Eisold this also includes personal style and it was no surprise to find out that he sees kindred spirit in the likes of Ann Demeulemeester and Rick Owens.

DieHamletmaschine

Die Hamletmaschine

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This week in New York the model and actor Paul Boche, who has modeled for our magazine, will be starring in a new interpretation of Die Hamletmaschine, an experimental, postmodernist play by the German playwright Heiner Muller.

Loosely based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the play fuses German language, acting, and music into an intense, dynamic performance that puts the roles of Hamlet and Ophelia in a new light.

Tickets are available through the play’s website and we hope to see you there.

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Luke Powell – Afghan Gold

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It has taken years to produce Afghan Gold, the new photography tome from Steidl publishing, what with exacting natures of both Luke Powell, the photographer, and Gerhard Steidl, the publisher. But the result, an outstanding, slip-cased two-volume set, is a testament to the notion that some things are worth waiting for.

Powell had traveled extensively in Afghanistan in the 70s and 00s, documenting both the quotidian lives of its people and the magnificent nature in which those lives took place.

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Todd Hido, Excerpts from Silver Meadows

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We would like to bring to your attention Todd Hido, “Excerpts from Silver Meadows” at Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York.

Bruce Silverstein Gallery is mounting its third solo show of new works by Todd Hido.  According to the gallery, the show coincides with the publication of Hido’s latest book, “Excerpts from Silver Meadows,” (Nazraeli, 2013) and “the gallery will feature a selection of images from this highly personal yet fictionalized body of work that surrounds his return to the ‘architecture’ of his childhood and a particular street in suburban Ohio where the artist was raised. The works displayed introduce a new larger format for the artist and are printed in an edition of one.”

Grind

BLACK ASTEROID: GRIND

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“Grind” is the recent single from Black Asteroid that will be a part of his new album to be released later this year. For clothing in the video Bryan Black reached to Rick Owens, who asked his New York boutique to accommodate Black’s request. Rick Owens’s art work will also be featured on the cover of the album. We will keep you posted on its release with a feature on the making of the album.

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SZ MIX | BLACK ASTEROID

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Here is the newest SZ Mix by Black Asteroid, also knows as Bryan Black. He started his musical career as a sound engineer for Prince, and has remixed music for Depeche Mode.

Black has produced tracks for fashion shows of Rick Owens and Raf Simons, and is a die-hard fan of all things black.

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Lionel Maunz Deluge

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It’s often revelatory and requires a bit of self-discipline to step into a contemporary art gallery and take in the show without having first resorted to the gallery release to get one’s bearings. It’s revelatory because, every so often, the intellectual and emotional tenor of the art at hand is transparent and immediate without the guiding voice of the gallery release. It’s also somewhat unfair because it’s not saying anything new to note that the nature of the game in much contemporary art is the intellectual context in which the artwork was created and within which it was intended to be contemplated.

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Guillermo del Toro: Cabinet of Curiosities

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Recently there has been a surge of books about the macabre side of our world, particularly about cabinets of curiosities. Usually, they are mere collections of photographs of weird things that sit on dusty shelves in some corner of Europe we associate with aristocracy and adventure.

The new title, Guillermo del Toro Cabinet of Curiosities (Harper Design, $60), is an entirely different thing. It offers a rare glimpse into the mind of an auteur. By definition the mind of an auteur is a singular thing and del Toro is the poster boy for this notion. Anyone who has seen his Oscar-winning film, Pan’s Labyrinth, will understand what I’m talking about. The sheer level of fantasy that permeates just this one of his movies has made its mark on the history of cinema.

BURTYNSKY BOOK COVER

Burtynsky: WATER

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The Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky is known for his sweeping, panoramic photographs of human industry. And by industry I mean our antlike insistence on building things coupled with our desire to beat this planet into submission.

His new book, Water (Steidl/NoMa, $125), continues where his previous titles, Oil, Quarries, and China, left off. Burtynsky likes to tackle our complicated relationship with things we depend, that improve our quality of life and ensure our survival, often at the expense of everything else on earth, but he does it without any moralizing or sensationalism. He documents, we do the judging (and the lamenting). And, boy, does he know how to document.