Renowned photographer Taryn Simon is reissuing her acclaimed photobook Taryn Simon: Contraband with a foreword by art curator and historian Hans Ulrich ... More

Contraband

Book by Taryn Simon

Contraband

Book by Taryn Simon

Renowned photographer Taryn Simon is reissuing her acclaimed photobook Taryn Simon: Contraband with a foreword by art curator and historian Hans Ulrich Obrist. Contraband contains over 1,000 on-site photographs taken during five days at the US Customs and Border Protection Federal Inspection Site and the US Postal Service International Mail Facility at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Simon’s subjects were items detained or seized from incoming passengers and express mail—a miscellanea including Botox, deer tongues, Cohiba cigars, Lidocaine, GBL date rape drug, pork, heroin, imitation Lipitor, syringes, locust tree seed, cow urine and Egyptian cigarettes. Simon is a Guggenheim Fellow and has exhibited in the likes of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, the Whitney Museum of American Art and MOCA Los Angeles.

via Hatje Cantz

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Girl Band, a raucous Irish all-male quartet, is releasing a self-produced debut album, Holding Hands With Jamie. Singer Dara Kiely, drummer Adam ... More

Girl Band

Album “Holding Hands With Jamie”

Girl Band

Album “Holding Hands With Jamie”

Girl Band, a raucous Irish all-male quartet, is releasing a self-produced debut album, Holding Hands With Jamie. Singer Dara Kiely, drummer Adam Faulkner, guitarist Alan Duggan and bassist Daniel Fox originally formed Girl Band under the name Harrows—a self-described bad Strokes ripoff band. Recorded in Dublin, Girl Band’s freshman album is a love child of punk rock and Irish angst. Shot through with drum tempos that hit the listener’s eardrums the way Sugar Ray Leonard beats on a speed bag, Holding Hands With Jamie delivers an adrenaline rush to whoever’s looking for one.

via Rough Trade Records

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It’s been a prolific year for Los Angeles psych-rock band Wand. Following last summer’s successful debut Ganglion Reef and their spring 2015 ... More

Wand

Album “1000 Days”

Wand

Album “1000 Days”

It’s been a prolific year for Los Angeles psych-rock band Wand. Following last summer’s successful debut Ganglion Reef and their spring 2015 release Golum, Wand is ready to close out this summer with their newest, 1000 Days. The band describes themselves as “an obese organ falsely organized as 4 overjoyous nerds,” and has a friend in Ty Segall, who they toured with last Fall. Wand recorded 1000 Days between LA and San Francisco, and the album is just as imaginative and alert as ever, with signature hi-fi texture and leisurely sing-song melodies.

via Drag City

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German photographer Chris von Wangenheim entered New York’s 1960s fashion scene with a unique penchant for shock value and an eye for ... More

Gloss

Book by Chris von Wangenheim

Gloss

Book by Mauricio & Roger Padilha

German photographer Chris von Wangenheim entered New York’s 1960s fashion scene with a unique penchant for shock value and an eye for excess and glamour that spread through his work well into the ’80s. Wangenheim’s photographs were iconic, dark and dangerous, symbolizing the sexual revolution and the underworld of punk and porn and drugs. His editorial work was featured in Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Esquire, Playboy and Interview, and he shot campaigns for Christian Dior, Calvin Klein and Valentino. Gloss is his first monograph, containing over two hundred provocative and iconic Wangenheim images. Never-before-seen outtakes include supermodels Christie Brinkley, Lisa Taylor and, of course, Gia Carangi.

via Rizzoli

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A quarter-century ago, Jersey rock band Yo La Tengo released their debut album Fakebook, which featured acoustic covers of Cat Stevens, The ... More

Yo La Tengo

Album “Stuff Like That There”

Yo La Tengo

Album “Stuff Like That There”

A quarter-century ago, Jersey rock band Yo La Tengo released their debut album Fakebook, which featured acoustic covers of Cat Stevens, The Kinks, etc. alongside a few of the fledgeling group’s original songs. In the wake of Fakebook’s silver jubilee, the band reunited with former member Dave Schramm to record Stuff Like That There, a new LP that covers the likes of The Cure and Hank Williams as well as Yo La Tengo’s own classics, and includes a few new tracks. “Rare is the band that can cover themselves. Rarer is the band that would even think of it, and rarer still is a band that would return to the conception and re-imagine its first breakthrough record,” remarks Kurt Wagner of Lambchop. The vibe is ’50s cafe meets Pacific island bar shack—“I Can Feel The Ice Melting” (Parliaments) and “Somebody’s In Love” (Sun Ra)—as classic doo-wop meets breezy chord progressions.

via Matador Records

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Sea Change is a photo documentary about young Europeans in the aftermath of 2007’s global financial meltdown. In the spirit of the ... More

Sea Change

A Documentary Photobook

Sea Change

A Documentary Photobook

Sea Change is a photo documentary about young Europeans in the aftermath of 2007’s global financial meltdown. In the spirit of the idiom “a picture is worth a thousand words,” Project Sea Change enlisted some of today’s newly renowned photographers including Bénédicte Kurzen, Robin Maddock, Jocelyn Bain Hogg and Yannis Kontos to tell the story of European youth culture and their fears for the future. Will I get a job, buy a home and be able to support a family? Who will provide for me if I lose my job or health? What will happen to me when I’m elderly? Inspiration came from Great-Depression era photographers—most notably Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange—who were hired by the Roosevelt Administration’s FSA program to capture America in the wake of the Dust Bowl, documenting the crisis and culture of the era. Sea Change collects the best of their photographs so far and includes a foreword by Harald Birkevold, journalistic director of Project Sea Change. The book accompanies the ongoing exhibition as it travels worldwide and spurs the global conversation about Europe’s future.

via Forlage

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Hollywood’s favorite unlikely badass Jesse Eisenberg steals the show in American Ultra as Mike, a stoner gas station clerk and unwitting government ... More

American Ultra

Film by Nima Nourizadeh

American Ultra

Film by Nima Nourizadeh

Hollywood’s favorite unlikely badass Jesse Eisenberg steals the show in American Ultra as Mike, a stoner gas station clerk and unwitting government agent whose life is overturned when the government tries to exterminate him for liability reasons. The action-comedy, directed by Nima Nourizadeh (Project X), premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival and is reminiscent of TV-series Chuck (2007-2012), in which a less stoned but equally involuntarily normal dude discovers that he too has secret agent prowess. Kristen Stewart plays Mike’s girlfriend Phoebe, who is along for the bloody, boisterous ride. The rest of the star-studded cast includes Connie Britton, Topher Grace, John Leguizamo, Bill Pullman and Tony Hale.

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Film duo Sheena M. Joyce and Don Argott (The Last Days Here, The Atomic States of America) have teamed up once again ... More

Slow Learners

Film by Sheena M. Joyce and Don Argott

Slow Learners

Film by Sheena M. Joyce and Don Argott

Film duo Sheena M. Joyce and Don Argott (The Last Days Here, The Atomic States of America) have teamed up once again to direct Slow Learners, a romantic comedy about two coworkers in search of love and reckless fun. The film, acquired by Sundance Selects following its success at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, stars Adam Pally (The Mindy Project) and Sarah Burns (I Love You, Man) as the socially inept pair Jeff and Anne. Together they ditch their routine, gun-shy personas in favor of newfound alter-egos. Following an arc of frustration, plotting and revelry to an ultimate watershed about who-matters-most, Slow Learners is an easy summer watch that also co-stars the lovable faces of Reid Scott, Bobby Moynihan and Kate Flannery.

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Formed in Seattle as a four-piece female band, La Luz has an established quintessential surf rock brand. To record their sophomore album, ... More

La Luz

Album “Weirdo Shrine”

La Luz

Album Weirdo Shrine

Formed in Seattle as a four-piece female band, La Luz has an established quintessential surf rock brand. To record their sophomore album, Weirdo Shrine, La Luz retreated to a surf shop in San Dimas, California with producer and San Francisco garage rocker Ty Segall. Courtesy of Segall’s signature fuzz, the album is a lo-fi followup to their successful debut LP, It’s Alive. La Luz turned to poet Richard Brautigan for inspiration while writing the lyrics for Weirdo Shrine, alluding to his poems “Oranges” and “A Boat.” The result is ethereal four-part harmonies and guitarist Shana Cleveland’s fuzzy guitar solos imbedded in vibrant noir surf rock.

via Hardly Art

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