Some thoughts from Marcus Joons, via Oki-Ni:
I know, I know, I know that you should try to be in the moment, in the now, and that you should not always go for what’s around the corner or use witchcraft to see what is in the future. Anyway, this is not what’s now, this is where we will head next: into rave, into trance.
Check out more from Korallareven, including another exclusive mixtape, here.
Photo by Samantha Casolari
As we continue to look back at the year that was, we’d like to take a moment to memorialize 40 records we haven’t already highlighted in our editors’ lists (available here, here and here) or album spotlights, starting with a stunner that soothed our caffeine-wracked nerves every time we had to deliver an issue on deadline…
Photos by Elizabeth Weinberg
A lot’s happened since the last time self-titled spent an afternoon with Das Racist, exploring the Queens neighborhood where MC Heems and hypeman Dapwell grew up. For one thing, the Brooklyn trio—rounded out by Kool A.D., possibly the only rapper we’ve ever seen rocking a pair of Zubaz pants—finally released its first proper album, Relax, a record that rightfully earned the group a Spin cover and the tagline “hip-hop’s smartest smartasses.” Relax has also kept Das Racist on the road for the past few months.
So rather than grill them about their role in underground rap or what it was like working with members of Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer and El-P, we asked the group about 25 of 2011’s most talked-about tracks…
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It’s easy to forget given the unseasonably warm weather we’ve been enjoying here in New York lately, but winter is a little more than a month away. And with that usually comes our need for bleak but beautiful music—steely synths, melodramatic drones, frosted folk…that sort of thing. On the other side of the spectrum are sun-stroked artists like Korallreven, a Swedish duo who delves into a soothing, deeply spiritual eternal summer sound on An Album By Korallreven (available now through Acephale). Inspired in part by Marcus Joons’ trip to Samoa, it’s the kind of thing that melts your melancholy away, and at the same time, revels in it.
In the following exclusive, we share Korallreven’s latest mixtape and speak to Joons about smoothie stands, working with Julianna Barwick and Victoria Bergsman, and “fun fun fun”…
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[Photo via FADER]
Words by Mitch Strashnov
Hell froze over; after four aborted appearances in New York City, Zomby finally showed up and played a private after-party for (capsule) at the Angel Orensanz Foundation. The Lower East Side setting—a former synagogue that looks like it hosted raves in the early ’90s—was relatively strange, yet it made perfect sense for the reclusive producer to make his long-awaited debut among pockets of people who didn’t have the slightest idea who he is or how monumental the occasion was for anyone remotely into electronic music. (One girl actually asked self-titled who tonight’s “special guest” was. When we said Zomby, she just stared back at us blankly.)
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Words by Andrew Parks
When self-titled confirmed a rare Zomby interview for our current issue, I expected some eccentricities—the elusive producer shields his face in photos and prefers lucid iChat exchanges over in-person interviews. What I didn’t anticipate was brutally honest quotes like this: “I thought we were all gonna live forever. I was in a dream world—never broke a bone in my body; never saw my dad ill; never took a day off work. It sounds stupid now, but that’s life, isn’t it?”
Indeed. And the brute force of how it all usually unfolds really hit home this past year, as Zomby dealt with his father’s death and tried to process all the personal and creative pointers the fellow musician had given him over the years. While the melancholic, mercurial shades of Zomby’s long-awaited new LP (Dedication, available July 12th through 4AD) weren’t directly influenced by his father’s passing—its shape-shifting songs came first—the entire thing is true to its title, a literal tribute to the unspoken connection many fathers and sons have.
The following is an extended version of the Zomby interview that premiered in the our magazine yesterday. It’s not the entire conversation, though; that’s more than 10,000 words and three hours of iChat transcripts that’re both revealing and rambling in all the right ways…
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Memory Tapes (Photo: Travis Huggett)
Good news for anyone who misses reading actual magazines: our new issue is now available in its standard Web edition here. The iPad pressing is imminent as well, but for now, here’s what you’re getting for free:
Stay tuned to our Twitter account and Facebook page for more info, including details on how to score a hand-numbered LP and a pair of concert tickets from our cover star!
Well this is a little unexpected: Zomby has signed to 4AD and will release a limited 10” single through the label on May 10th, with a proper LP on the way by the end of the year. You can check out a radio rip of “Natalia’s Song”—taken from Kode9 and Burial’s special Mary Anne Hobbs set last year—after the jump…
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More details about Animal Collective‘s All Tomorrow’s Parties bill are available here. Check out a killer two-hour mix that starts with Orthrelm and ends with Zomby below…
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