Photography played an integral role in the formation of the national parks, providing the earliest glimpses into the geysers of Yellowstone and ... More

Picturing America’s National Parks

Book by Jamie M. Allen

Picturing America’s National Parks

Book by Jamie M. Allen

Photography played an integral role in the formation of the national parks, providing the earliest glimpses into the geysers of Yellowstone and granite behemoths of Yosemite. It revealed America as a nation of startling and sacred beauty. When the National Park Service was signed into creation by Woodrow Wilson in 1916, it was a radical idea that the natural wonders of the country should be available to everyone rather than the privileged few. Writer and historian Wallace Stegner called national parks “the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.”

George Eastman founded Kodak in 1888 and popularized the use of roll film in the following years. To celebrate the 2016 centennial of the National Park Service, George Eastman Museum presents Picturing America’s National Parks, a collection of the best landscape photography in America’s history. Included are nature photography pioneers Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, William Henry Jackson, Edward Weston and Minor White as well as contemporary photographers Lee Friedlander, Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfeld. An informative essay and commentary from curator Jamie M. Allen unfold the role of photography in promoting America’s national heritage, land conservation and wildlife preservation. With a focus on the extreme landscapes of the vast American West, this volume traces the historical decision to protect our national lands alongside images that unequivocally prove its value.

via Aperture/George Eastman Museum

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Big Thief’s Buck Meek (guitars) and Adrianne Lenker (vocals and guitar) have worked together for a number of years, releasing dual albums ... More

Big Thief

Album “Masterpiece”

Big Thief

Album “Masterpiece”

Big Thief’s Buck Meek (guitars) and Adrianne Lenker (vocals and guitar) have worked together for a number of years, releasing dual albums A-Sides and B-Sides in 2014. With the addition of Max Oleartchik on bass and James Krivchenia on drums, they’ve outfitted themselves as a powerhouse of a full band—at times raw and bluesy, then soft and serene, always charged with emotion. On their debut album, Masterpiece, Meek’s fuzzed guitar is paired with Lenker’s visceral lyrics and forlorn, honeyed vocals in what Sharon Van Etten describes as “some of the most compelling songs I’ve heard in a long time. Driving songs that take you on a real journey, with intelligent stories and twist-and-turn melodies.” Masterpiece was recorded over a summer on Vermont’s Lake Champlain and blended by producer Andrew Sarlo, alloying familiar rock territory with delightfully unpredictable melodies, tones and rhythm.

via Saddle Creek

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Mutual Benefit, Jordan Lee’s project featuring a fluid cast of musicians, follows 2013’s gorgeous Love’s Crushing Diamond with Skip a Sinking Stone. ... More

Mutual Benefit

Album “Skip a Sinking Stone”

Mutual Benefit

Album “Skip a Sinking Stone”

Mutual Benefit, Jordan Lee’s project featuring a fluid cast of musicians, follows 2013’s gorgeous Love’s Crushing Diamond with Skip a Sinking Stone. The album is an exercise in accepting impermanence—a landscape glimpsed from the window of a train, a good dream, lost love. The Boston-based Lee is still clearly influenced by Texas, where Mutual Benefit began, but his sound is really that of a man on the move, enjoying every mile of the journey. Recorded during Lee’s residency at the Silent Barn in Brooklyn, Skip a Sinking Stone was penned between touring his Love’s Crushing Diamond and settling down in New York, at least for a bit. From the slow-building orchestral opening—reminiscent of windchimes foretelling a storm—Lee uses sustained piano, woodwinds, horns, finger-picked guitars and vibraphones to wrap his falsetto in atmospheric bliss. It all works wonderfully. For the duration of the album, Lee shows us the world through his eyes, and it’s a pretty view indeed.

via Mom+Pop

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In 1968, Aretha Franklin said, “There are only three things happening in England: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Terry Reid.” Yet ... More

Terry Reid

Re-release “The Other Side of the River”

Terry Reid

Re-release “The Other Side of the River”

In 1968, Aretha Franklin said, “There are only three things happening in England: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Terry Reid.” Yet while the first two names are clearly legendary, the third is relatively unknown. Terry Reid’s voice was so strong it earned him the nickname “Superlungs,” but the British musician turned down offers to front both Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple in order to pursue his burgeoning solo career. Without the pressure of being a mainstream frontman, Reid was able to experiment, turning out songs in his own free-associative mix of folk, blues, rock, jazz, bossa-nova, soul, and samba—at times in the vein of Tim Buckley and Van Morrison. He also toured with Cream and Fleetwood Mac, wrote songs for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and opened for The Rolling Stones on their 1969 tour.

Reid’s well-loved 1973 album, River, is now receiving a special re-release through Future Days Recordings as The Other Side of the River. The album compiles previously-unreleased material from the River sessions that received a near-mythological status throughout the years as the album went in and out of print. The entire album was recorded twice: once with British producer Eddy Offord and again with the legendary Tom Dowd. The Other Side of The River features tracks that even Reid had forgotten, and includes guests Gilberto Gil on percussion, Ike & Tina Turner’s Ikettes on vocals and David Lindley, of psych band Kaleidoscope, on violin. In conjunction with the album, Reid will be touring the UK and the East Coast of the US.

via Future Days Recordings

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Curated by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National, Day of the Dead is a compilation album featuring covers of Grateful Dead ... More

Day of the Dead

Charitable Compilation Album by The National

Day of the Dead

Charitable Compilation Album by The National

Curated by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National, Day of the Dead is a compilation album featuring covers of Grateful Dead songs to benefit the Red Hot Organization, a charity raising funds and awareness for HIV and AIDs. The compilation is a wide-ranging tribute to the songwriting and experimentalism of the Dead and features over 60 artists from varied musical backgrounds performing 59 tracks. It took almost four years to record and is nearly six hours long. Day of the Dead was produced by John Carlin, the founder of Red Hot Organization, and is a follow-up to 2009’s Dark Was the Night, the first compilation album by the Dessner brothers for Red Hot.

Day of the Dead’s extensive list of musicians notably includes: Jenny Lewis, Ed Droste of Grizzly Bear, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Perfume Genius, The War on Drugs, Kurt Vile, Courtney Barnett, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen, Wilco and Bob Weir, Matt Berninger of the National, Bon Iver, Tunde Adebimpe of TV on the Radio, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, The Walkmen, Real Estate, Lucinda Williams and The Flaming Lips.

Will Oldham states of the compilation, “I have worked with a few people whose minds are brilliant and complicated, musically. There’s something about the Dead that allows these big-brained pickers to just chill the fuck out and feel good about it. There’s basic types of song forms and melodies that I have an affinity for, and the Grateful Dead have helped other people find their ways into these musics. So it isn’t as hard to establish connections with folks out there that might not otherwise share some of what I am digging into.”

A Day of the Dead live performance will take place at the Eaux Claires Festival in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, curated by Justin Vernon of Bon Iver.

via 4AD

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In 1991, Jefferson Hack founded fashion and culture magazine Dazed & Confused with photographer Rankin while studying at the London College of ... More

We Can’t Do This Alone

Book by Jefferson Hack

We Can’t Do This Alone

Book by Jefferson Hack

In 1991, Jefferson Hack founded fashion and culture magazine Dazed & Confused with photographer Rankin while studying at the London College of Printing. Dazed & Confused captured the zeitgeist of the ’90s through fashion, art and culture—collaborative, uncompromising and DIY. Hack has since established an empire including AnOther Magazine, AnOther Man and Dazed Digital. We Can’t Do This Alone is Hack’s newest manifesto: a combined retrospective, ode to alternative publishing and triumph of the creative collaboration that has fueled his work.

Coinciding with the 25th anniversary of Dazed & Confused, the volume compiles features from cultural visionaries: Thom Yorke interviewing himself, David Bowie interviewing Alexander McQueen, and Hack talking with Ai Weiwei, Tilda Swinton and Björk. According to Hack, “The independent way is a way of keeping the magic alive… As soon as publishing becomes solely in the aid of commerce and power, then its creativity and decision-making becomes about the formulas of success and not invention. The process becomes a means to an end.” In keeping with its message, We Can’t Do This Alone has been produced in a run of 5000 copies, each featuring a unique cover collaged with interior spreads and printed on a Kodak inkjet computer.

via Rizzoli

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Still Life is the dynamic new album from Young Magic, the electronic duo of Jakarta-born Melati Malay and Sydney-born Isaac Emmanuel who ... More

Young Magic

Album “Still Life”

Young Magic

Album “Still Life”

Still Life is the dynamic new album from Young Magic, the electronic duo of Jakarta-born Melati Malay and Sydney-born Isaac Emmanuel who began collaborating in Brooklyn in 2010. Known for incorporating field recordings from worldwide travels into their albums, Young Magic has released Melt (2012) and Breathing Statues (2014) and the charitable album Remix Vol.1 (2015). Last year, Malay went on a journey of self-discovery through her birthplace of Java, Indonesia and returned with the storied, winding lyricism for Still Life. Culling recordings from Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Iceland, Australia and elsewhere, Emmanuel then wove together contributions from cellist and composer Kelsey Lu McJunkins, Detroit producer Erin Rioux and Bolivian percussionist Daniel Alejandro Siles Mendoza.

Still Life contains a world of catchy, pneumatic rhythms (akin to Four Tet and Gold Panda) against expansive sonic landscapes and ethereal vocal melodies that call to mind Purity Ring and Odesza. Young Magic’s genius is that they avoid a single musical impulse—rather than building to chorus over and over again, their songs are restrained and fluid, a brilliant pastiche of influences and origins.

via Carpark Records

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Filmed on the remote Italian island of Pantelleria, director Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash takes on all the beauty, isolation, languor and ... More

A Bigger Splash

Film by Luca Guadagnino

A Bigger Splash

Film by Luca Guadagnino

Filmed on the remote Italian island of Pantelleria, director Luca Guadagnino’s A Bigger Splash takes on all the beauty, isolation, languor and heat of its Mediterranean setting. The film begins with famous rock star Marianne Lane (Tilda Swinton) and her boyfriend (Matthias Schoenaerts), a documentary filmmaker, on hiatus to recover her failing voice. When their raucous friend, who is also Lane’s ex-boyfriend and manager, (Ralph Fiennes) arrives with his daughter (Dakota Johnson), the quiet recedes into old jealousies and competition. This unease and history underpins all—sensual, long shots of bodies, landscape and architecture are intercut with intentionally frenetic, abrupt camera work and flashbacks to earlier days of cocaine and rock ‘n’ roll.

The storyline is adapted from Jaques Deray’s 1969 La Piscine, which stars Alain Delon and Romy Schneider in a similar love triangle with an old friend and his daughter (Maurice Ronet and then-newcomer Jane Birkin). The name A Bigger Splash is also repurposed from the 1967 David Hockney painting featuring a stark, calm California pool scene with the single white splash of a diver. With standout performances, especially from whispering Swinton and boorish Fiennes, A Bigger Splash came away from the Venice Film Festival with the soundtrack award and a nod for the top prize, the Golden Bear.

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With two critically-acclaimed, low-budget films, A Prophet (2009) and The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005), Jacques Audiard established his place among ... More

Dheepan

Film by Jacques Audiard

Dheepan

Film by Jacques Audiard

With two critically-acclaimed, low-budget films, A Prophet (2009) and The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005), Jacques Audiard established his place among the most talented French filmmakers today. Dheepan was last year’s Palme d’Or winner at Cannes, following Audiard’s more commercial Rust and Bone (2012) with a relatively unknown cast and compelling outsider’s story. The titular character Dheepan (Jesuthasan Antonythasan), a Sri Lankan Tamil freedom fighter, must escape his country as the Civil War reaches its end and defeat is inevitable. He manages to flee with two strangers—a woman and girl (Kalieaswari Srinivasan and Claudine Vinasithamby)—who hope to claim asylum by appearing as a family. But in the banlieues of Paris, Dheepan is again confronted by violence that triggers his past in Sri Lanka and must reprise his role as warrior to protect this new, accidental ‘family.’ A score from electronic artist Nicolas Jaar and strong acting from on-screen newcomers carry this complex story of love, compassion and the ultimate paradox of trading one war for another.

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