‘Los Angeles’ the LP is a landscape of empty streets; a city of broad buzzing highways, somnambulant, restless and eerie. Spread out across four short sides, the lp cracks and snaps with the obliterated sound of analogue space being torn. The beats are the cloistered thump of heartbeats and organs. These are the insular polyrhythms of the body; the molten pulse of an organism lost to it’s own cathartic thumping.

Flying Lotus is the name by which producer Steven Ellison goes and this, Ellison’s second full-length seems destined for more than a couple year-end ‘best of’ lists in a few months time. In many reviews, Ellison is being linked to J. Dilla and the similarities are real, the two do share the taste for a kind of over-saturated compression and a fabric of distorted sonics, but Los Angeles doesn’t share the wistful melancholy of Dilla’s Donuts.

Dilla used a surface of scratches and record pops to conjure the summery nostalgia of Sunday mornings. Everything Dilla did was informed by recollection. His tracks, with their overlapping samples and reconstructed soul cuts were multiple exposures of block-parties past. These were places warmly populated by family and friends. Flying Lotus’ Los Angeles by contrast is a much colder, much emptier space. It is a psychic territory informed not by memory but the presence of dreams and an inner-space characterized by the alienated desolation of a post-industrial urban environment. In this sense, Ellison might owe a debt, not to the roots of hip-hop, but to the electric and reverberated topology of Joy Division producer Martin Hannett’s universe.

Flying Lotus’ also shares a relation to label-mates Broadcast. At times it seems to me that ‘Los Angeles’ is a much more abstract, instrumental and beat-centric ˜Tender Buttons’ and when, in the closing moments, guest Laura Darlington begins to sing, the comparison seem inescapable. But this shouldn’t be overstated for, while Broadcast’s electro-psychedelia coalesces in a kind of deconstructed pop, Flying Lotus’ psychedelic touches resist crystallization. The beats and melodies stray off vaporous into deep pockets of static and noise.

This is a late-night album for headphones and long subway rides, it’s an album of slow revelations, and its impressions are startlingly original.

DOWNLOAD FLYING LOTUS FROM OTHER MUSIC HERE.

VISIT FLYING LOTUS WEBSITE here.

Aurelio- So, I had ANOTHER nightmare about Sarah Palin on the flight. She’s creeping into my dreams Jason. My dreams! Help me. Someone please. Help me!!!
Jason- I read it put well on salon, ‘She’s a “South Park” character. There was a mix-up. Mistakes were made.’ Slate also did this article: Your Dreams (And Nightmares) About Sarah Palin” so, you’re not alone!
Aurelio- This is hilarious. So strange. In one of my recurring nightmares, she is driving me out in some sort of Bronco to a secluded area somewhere in Alaska at night. I feel scared like I am being taken away to be murdered and all the while I’m being assured by this motherly lady who keeps telling me it’s all going to be ok, in a “Satan tempting Jesus” kinda way. I’m terrified and wake up in relief that it was just a dream, or is it!?
Jason- yeah, I’m starting to get the feeling the Mayan’s were right about 2012.
Aurelio- I was just going to say that!
Jason- So, wait, you’re in Germany? Why are you in Germany?
Aurelio- Yeah buddy, I thought I’d been telling you I’m scoring that film and the directors flew me out here for meetings.
Jason- Yeah, I remember you saying you were working on it, but I didn’t remember you saying you were going to Europe. What’s the deal? Are you in Berlin?
Aurelio- Here in Cologne. The last few days meeting with the directors and producers of this film I’m writing and scoring for called “Zarte Parasiten” or “Tender Parasites.” So far I’ve had meetings with them where we sit around and I play them the demos I’ve recorded for them. Huddled around me they listen and speak in German while the song is playing. I have no idea what they’re saying, so it tends to make me a bit uneasy. Then they say, “we are talking about where in the film this song would be great!” ‘Oh, gotcha.’
Jason- Uh, verstehe! Ja, dieses ist sehr interessant. How’s it going?
Aurelio-Everyone seems excited about the songs and the project. The actors are cool and apparently seem to be well known here in Germany. Yesterday they had some sort of pre-production party with a meet-and-greet before the shoot starts. The directors and producers are explaining the film and the inspiration for it in front of everyone. Keep hearing my name and Calla sprinkled throughout their speeches. They then reach over and pull me out of the small crowd so everyone can see who the hell they are talking about.
JASON- So, do you feel like this is a challenge or is it pretty much the same as working on a Calla album?
Aurelio- It’s completely different than a Calla record, well for one it’s my solo work.
Jason- It’s instrumental or songs?
Aurelio- I’ve written a couple of songs which will also be on my solo record and I’ll be doing the score for the film. Doing a cover of the Yello song “lost again” and another song I wrote will be sung by Nina Persson of The Cardigans. It’s so far been a great experience and very liberating to be able to break free and venture off in other directions.
Jason- Awesome. And a chance to get away from of the last gasps of Brooklyn’s summer.
Aurelio- Yeah, today I’ll be going out to the set out in a forest somewhere, should be cool. Looking forward to it.
Jason- The forest, aye? The black woods? That could be thee very forest where Goldilocks ate porridge. Careful you don’t run into any Palins under any bridges.
Aurelio- Yeah I’m hopin’ to see some gnomes or somethin’. Talk soon, pal.

AURELIO VALLE is the lead-singer and guitarist for the band CALLA. Over the past decade, CALLA have released five albums and toured extensively with the likes of Interpol. As well doing soundtrack work for films, Aurelio is himself a photographer and currently working on a solo album.
Callamusic.com

Set to the watery strains of a backward voice and orchestra, a boarding school rebellion ends with this short-breath of a scene where, ”in a storm of burst pillows, a boy flips onto a chair being carried in a slow motion procession of anarchic students.
Jean Vigo’s 1933 film Zero For Conduct might be the first truly great movie about teenage angst. In it, the cruel and absurd demands of teachers are upended while the youth band in solidarity. But Vigo’s dreamlike war of feathers and tin cans were apparently too much for the French establishment who banned the film until 1945 for it’s anti-authoritarian message.

The French censors may have had cause to be so jumpy, the nineteen-thirties were of course an extremely volatile period in Europe, as a world economic crisis deepened, there was a real sense that the established order was collapsing. Fascism and communism had been battling violently to seize power from weakened democracies and monarchies since the end of the First World War. In Berlin, Rome and Madrid, this battle was won by the Fascists as Europe began to arm itself for an even more destructive conflict.

But Vigo isn’t interested in the justifications of any power structure. In his view, all authority is inherently corruptible and abusive and his youthful allegiance is to the those who are trapped beneath the larger systems of imposed discipline. After all, it’s the boys in his film hoisting their flag above the school who would soon fight and die on the nightmarish battlefields of World War II.

Together with his 1934 masterpiece L’Atalante, Vigo made his reputation as one of cinema’s transcendent artists. Both films are elegant, unsentimental and effortlessly simple.

The son of a militant radical murdered in prison, Vigo was tubercular from childhood and his life was lived under it’s shadow. His films were unsuccessful, butchered by inept studio bosses, nearly lost and soon after finishing L’Atalante, he died a tragically young 29.

watch the whole film here.
“To the rear grandfather
To the rear Father and Mother
To the rear grandfathers
To the rear old Soldiers
To the rear old chaplains
To the rear old bags
The performance is over
Now for the kids
The show’s about to begin.”
From the poem ‘HARD TIMES’ by Jaques Praveret

BACK IN AUGUST, MAX & MATT GATHERED US ALL TOGETHER, LACQUERED US IN BEER AND VODKA, DRESSED US IN WOWCH SHIRTS AND FLASHED BRIGHT AND REPETITIVE LIGHTS IN OUR EYES WHILE THEY TOOK PICTURES. IT WAS BRUTALLY HOT, JUST BRUTAL, AND I SERIOUSLY QUESTIONED THE TACOS I ATE EARLIER, A FACT THAT I THINK SHOWS ON MY BELEAGUERED AND SWEATY FACE. IN THE HUMID FUN, BOOKSHELVES WERE ALMOST OVERTURNED, I-POD DJ’s OVERRULED AND THINGS GENERALLY WENT WITH THE TYPE OF OVER-ENTHUSED AND SLOPPY DISREGARD THE WOWCH NAME HAS COME TO TYPIFY. THEN, IN A FINAL BURST OF BELLIGERENT ENERGY, A BOOZY VITO ROCCOFORTE DID PUSH-UPS AND BROUGHT THE DISORDERLY FESTIVITIES TO AN END. AH WOWCH.

 YOU CAN SEE THE WHOLE SHOOT AND THEIR NEW LINE ON THEIR SITE.
LOOK TO WOWCH HERE

JASON- HI, buddy, how’s China? Smoggy? Good noodles? Read any good red-books lately?
PETE- As you might imagine it’s very, very different here than touring in America or Europe or anywhere else I can think of.
As far as I can tell the organizing of shows is driven by money and power, I mean, yes there are people who are into music, but the D.I.Y. ethos we know and love and grew up with and take for granted is completely non-existent here. I guess because it’s just not possible for musicians to play any shows on their own. There are no venues for them. No “indie” or “underground.” no support whatsoever. The tour we’re on is sponsored by Hennessy. And I mean SPONSORED. Logos fucking everywhere. It’s the only way an unknown American band can come here, apparently. We’re actually handed glasses of Hennessy on stage and we’re expected to cheers the crowd. To what extent is one willing to feel like a douchebag sellout tool? This is the ultimate test probably. Oh and if I mention anything remotely political, especially concerning freedom or Tibet or Taiwan, I’m in trouble. I’m not sure what kind of trouble. The chance to see china for free, play a bunch of shows here, interact with a ton of Chinese people, gather stories, some cash…is that worth pretending I bathe in Hennessy? I guess so, I don’t know.
JASON- Well, I don’t think you’re douchebags. We’ve all done worse. Anyway, these days it hardly seems to matter. You can’t type two words online without shilling for somebody.
What kind of bands are you playing with? Are they kids? Do young Chinese bands sound like 1982 like they do here? Or is this an all-American revue you’re on?
PETE- We’re not even playing with bands… I don’t know if bands (as we know them) even exist in these cities. Both shows we’ve played so far, Shenzen and Guangzhou, are in like weird “nightclubs.” the headliner both times was a Chinese pop star. Just a 20-something dude with funny hair alone on a tiny stage singing karaoke style (most vocals on the backing track too) while Chinese girls stare in awe. No one really cheers or even claps. Half the crowd video records the whole show on their phones. The music is straight-up Asian pop, like melodic rock-ish ballads. Sometimes, a rap is thrown in the bridge. At the clubs we’re ushered around with the promoter’s hand on our backs like the entire time. 
We’re not allowed to be anywhere but backstage, other than when we’re performing. And we have to leave the second we’re done playing. I learned last night this is because the places we played are owned and populated by “gangsters.” the promoter said if a girl talks to us, it’s possible she’s “friends” with a gangster, putting us in a very bad situation. Oh, and we can’t drink anything at the show other than Hennessey.
Jason- Holy Cow! Bizarre. It’s like the worst possible combination of Free-Markets and Authoritarianism. But, Judging by the sheer god-awful-tackiness of the Olympic Opening Cermony, I guess it doesn’t surprise me that the music in the clubs would be pretty terrible. So, basically, you’re not allowed to see anything, touch anything, talk about anything and you have to survive on a steady diet of Irish whisky? I think you should woo a gangster’s girl, escape your handlers and run off into a Hard Day’s Night-like adventure of stolen diamonds, kung-fu fights and international intrigue. How bad could Chinese prison be?
PETE CAFARELLA is the lead singer and in-charge of the synths for SHY CHILD. Their second full-length, ‘Noise Won’t Stop’ featured a guest collaboration from SPANK ROCK, was released in the UK by WALL OF SOUND in 2007 and stateside by KILL ROCK STARS in 2008. Their remix of THE BOGGS‘ ‘Arm In Arm’ was used in the trailer for GTA4.
Download Shy Child at NY’s best record store, Other Music HERE.
shychild.com

This 1980’s chinese poster comes from the days when China began to transition away from Maoism toward a more relaxed position with a softer stance toward western culture.
It would seem that this openness included a sudden and immense love of disco dancing.
To see more Chinese posters, check out this site.