The Unsound Festival New York kicked off Thursday and will continue to dominate a variety of venues in Manhattan and Brooklyn through Valentine’s Day. This stateside version of the renowned Polish event seeks to move beyond the bounds of techno, drum ‘n bass, and house, to expose an electronic music world that’s more than computer-generated beats for dark, strobe-lit rooms.

The festival has brought together a global community of DJs, producers, promoters, composers, and music collectives to present an adventurous program of panels, film screenings, multimedia performances, and, of course, plenty of good parties. The lengthy list of artists scheduled to appear includes Carl Craig, Moritz von Oswald, nsi.,  Lillevan, and others, many of whom are making their US debuts.

In the spirit of Unsound’s devotion to talent and creativity, we asked eight of the festival’s most innovative artists the question: “What do you envision as the future of electronic music?” Check out their inspiring responses after the jump.

Read More »

South California rockers Cold War Kids are set to tour this winter in support of their recently released Behave Yourself EP, an up-tempo, psychedelic, raw, and sexy follow-up to their second album, Loyalty to Loyalty. Everyone knows their hooks are masterpieces, but not everyone knows that CWK bassist Matt Maust is an accomplished visual artist as well. Flavorpill’s Shana Nys Dambrot caught up with him on the eve of the Behave Yourself tour to talk, art, music, touring — and how these diverse areas of his life inform one another.

Read More »

View the slideshow now>>

[Editor's note: We're reposting this feature from last year due to popular demand and the fact that we're wondering if most of you got to see it the first time around. Enjoy!]

On a recent holiday shopping trip uptown, in order to escape the hordes cascading down 5th Avenue, I ducked into one of New York’s contemporary art museums. While sauntering through the maze of galleries I came upon a certain photograph that gave me pause. I studied the slap-dash camera angle and the basic lighting, and thought to myself: “Really? This is what it takes? I can do that!”

And then it hit me like a bolt of lightning: Not only can I do that, I will do that, and then I will pawn off the results on all of my unsuspecting relatives. Why give a Richard Avedon poster, when I can make an original Adda Birnir knock-off? Thus I enlisted the help of my trusty co-conspirator Tom Starkweather and together we picked five masters of photography (Cindy Sherman, Steve McCurry, Philip Lorca Dicorcia, Richard Avedon, and Ryan McGinley) whose work we felt was just begging to be re-created.

Detailed instructions and the results, after the jump.

Read More »

Along with creating music together for more than fifteen years with The Bad Seeds, Grinderman, and The Dirty Three, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have collaborated on soundtracks for films like The Proposition and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. On January 12, 2010 the pair will release their soundtrack to The Road, John Hillcoat’s post-apocalyptic family drama based on Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name. It opens in theaters tomorrow.

Read More »

Jonathan Evison’s irresistible debut tale of step-sibling obsession, All About Lulu, tap-danced between humor and melancholy whilst exploring family function and dysfunction from a fresh vantage point. The author’s much anticipated sophomore book, West of Here, is due out next fall. From his home base on Bainbridge Island, Washington, Evison — who’s one of the bloggers behind Three Guys One Book — caught up with Flavorpill via e-mail to share some early poetry, his ideal time travel destination, and a packing list for the next book tour.

Read More »

Recently, when a friend mentioned that her boyfriend was going through a David Bowie phase, we had to laugh. You, see we went through a Bowie phase of our own, beginning sometime in high school. Ten years later, while we no longer solely date guys who wear makeup or pore over the collected works of Nietzsche, that “phase” shows no sign of subsiding. Such is the nature of Bowie fandom.

Marc Spitz, author of the new biography Bowie, knows this first-hand. Scattered throughout his absorbing, thorough and exuberant book are instances from his own life as a Bowie fanatic: for example, the moment when a college-aged Spitz bragged to his extended family that he’d kissed a man. In writing the book, he wanted his admiration of Bowie to be clear. “I think all these British [biographers] really pretend they’re not a fan, but they would shit their pants if they got to have a beer with him,” he says. “I just wanted to throw it out there that I would shit my pants if I got to have a beer with him.

Of course, there are hundreds of thousands of people who feel the same way. And perhaps that helps to explain why Bowie has had such a massive influence on pop culture. After the jump, we talk with Spitz about the erstwhile Ziggy Stardust’s lasting impact within the musical realm and beyond.

Read More »

The streets of Cairo are mad with cabs and cars and trucks packed to the gills with livestock. They jockey for position along wide avenues, sans lanes. Old Fiats belch diesel. Pedestrians dart between vehicles. Policemen direct traffic at intersections. And a constant chorus of honking runs through it all. But directly off main thoroughfares are coffeehouses or ahwas where patrons drink Turkish coffee, play backgammon, and smoke shisha, escaping the din. Ahwas are everywhere, if sometimes hidden, an integral part of the city’s life.

Read More »

New York-based singer Joe Hurley collaborated with National Book Award winner Colum McCann to write “The House that Horse Built” (Let the Great World Spin), a 12-minute track inspired by a chapter in McCann’s novel about 1970s New York, Let the Great World Spin. The limited edition EP was produced by Don Fleming (Sonic Youth, Pete Yorn, Nancy Sinatra, Hunter S. Thompson) and is currently available for download here.

While this song is told from the point of view of Tilly, a black prostitute who loses her daughter, rumor is that the pair is working on nine additional tracks inspired by other characters from the book for a full-length album that would coincide with the release of the paperback version in the UK.

If you live in New York, check out the album release party on December 8th at Joe’s Pub. Hurley will perform “The House that Horse Built” live for the first time with the full band, and McCann is scheduled to appear as well.

Download an excerpt from the book here.

Asobi Seksu’s woozy, sugar-sweet pop songs sound as if they were built with a microscope, their lushness a product of singer/keyboardist Yuki Chikudate and guitarist James Hanna’s extreme attention to detail. When their UK label asked them to record acoustic versions of some of their best songs at the legendary Olympic Studios, the offer was equally frightening and fun. “Because it was such a short time frame, there wasn’t enough time for fear or doubt to kick in. We knew we had to move in order to get it done, and that turned out in our favor, really,” explains Chikudate. “If we’re given more time, it can easily become a perfectionist nightmare.”

Yet the result, Rewolf, sounds just as lush, with a quiet intimacy and effortlessness that brings Chikudate’s voice and the band’s melodies into greater focus. Chikudate talks to Flavorpill about Rewolf, performing “naked,” and the artists that inspired the album’s arrangements.

Read More »

Two twenty-something, upper class, educated, Jewish girls traipse around the United States looking for the feminism of a new generation, and once they find it, one of them kills herself. That’s not exactly what the back cover of Girldrive: Criss-Crossing America, Redefining Feminism reads, but that’s one version of what happened. Best friends since 1997, Nona Willis Aronowitz and Emma Bee Bernstein decided to take a road trip and talk to a cross section of young women about the F-word. They met 127 women — including a sex shop clerk, a Bible college student, a witch, a future nun, a former Air Force worker, a 28-year-old mother of six, and an anarchist — to find out why some woman love feminism with a fierceness and why others don’t relate to it at all.

Read More »