Baths is 21 year old Will Wiesenfeld of Chatsworth, CA.  His debut album Cerulean will be released on Anticon Records June 22.  Baths is one of the freshest things coming out of Los Angeles right now - part banging LA beats and part indie pop.  The songs utilize the ultra-limited kick and cracking snare combo that sets LA apart from the rest of the beat world, but atop this foundation Will adds delicate melodies, live bass, piano, guitar and other undefined instrumentation that really gives the music his own signature sound.  The vocal songs feature Will’s croon layered and stacked until it is one with the music and are definite highlights on the album.  His voice reminds me of a cross between Panda Bear and David Longstreth of Dirty Projectors.

Despite early beginnings as Post-Foetus, Will’s life was changed the night of September 12, 2009.  Beat wizard Daedelus invited WIll to open up the Destroy LA show happening at the Henry Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles.  After witnessing the sounds of Flying Lotus, Nosaj Thing, Daedelus, TOKiMONSTA and others from the LA scene, Will immediately began work on the Baths project and Cerulean was made in just a few weeks.  

To begin promoting Cerulean, Will began his weekly residency at Low End Theory this past Wednesday and did a bang up job.  If you are in the LA area, make sure to catch him this week with underground rap heroes Anti Pop Consortium.  Oh yeah, Stupor above is NOT on Cerulean but you can download it here.  Both the song and video, filmed and edited by Mario Luna & Will Wiesenfeld, were made the afternoon/evening of April 17th, 2010 as a little bonus for fans.  Down below is one his vocal tracks from Cerulean called Hall.
 

I am very sad to announce the passing of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s white Jack Russell Terrier mix, Big Boy. Those who have followed Gen’s work for the last several years will likely instantly recognize the white dog.

Having been put in charge of walking and looking after Big Boy many, many times, this is a sad day for me.

Dearest friends and One True TOPI Tribe

Today, after battling various symptoms courageously, our BELOVED and ADORED best friend and superbly loving being dropped his body. He had been suffering from mixed symptoms that were a result of lymph cancer that had spread throughout his body. All of which got more intense and debilitating until he chose to move on to another form of being.

“Biggie” was cradled in my arms as he let go of this form of existence and we told him to look for his “Mummy” Lady Jaye.  As we spoke those words he looked up to me, licked my left hand directly on the two wedding rings and then kissed my face looking directly into my eyes. We felt a shiver run through us as Lady Jaye and Big Boy connected with each other and then with my SELF….

In the two plus y-eras since Lady Jaye dropped her body that we have been almost lost and disabled by grief “BigBoy” a/k/a “Biggie” has been my solace, my constant source of love and consolation. Without his loyal and unconditional love we’d have been totally lost. He was rescued from being abandoned, tied to a fence on xmas eve. We count our SELF blessed by his arrival in our lives.

R.I.P.  “BIG BOY” BREYER P-ORRIDGE

(RIP Big Boy)

Samuel L. Jackson apparently just revealed that there’s going to be a Nick Fury movie. I’m hoping for a cross between Hasslehoff’s version and Danger: Diabolik, with proper Steranko sets.

Earlier this week Samuel L. Jackson appeared on what is surely the most annoying radio show in the history of the world, Radio Big Boy, and dropped a huge Marvel bomb. While talking about his nine picture deal with Marvel and confirming that he won’t be in Thor, he revealed this:

“The Avengers should start shooting some time next year, and then some time after that there’ll be a big S.H.I.E.L.D. movie.”

That’s right, Nick Fury’s secret organization will get its own solo movie. At least if Sam knows what he’s talking about. It’s worth noting, however, that during the interview Sam seemed confused about some of Marvel’s other movies. For instance he had no idea who was playing Captain America (even though he’ll be in the movie) and thought Chris Pine was playing Thor (it’s Chris Hemsworth). So it’s not exactly like he’s a Marvel insider. Still, if there’s one project you’d think he’d be clued in on it would be any potential S.H.I.E.L.D. movie since as Nick Fury, he’d be the star of it.

(Cinema Blend: S.H.I.E.L.D. movie coming)

In a development which will likely strike fear into the hearts of all Dangerous Minds readers, new software has been developed which can recognize sarcastic tweets. Presumably this is 90% of the content on Twitter. Via Slashdot:

“Even humans sometimes fail to recognize sarcasm and irony; can machines do better? An algorithm that identifies sarcastic tweets (PDF) on Twitter and sarcastic sentences in product reviews on Amazon will be presented next week in the International Conference for Weblogs and Social Media in Washington, DC, and in the Computational Natural Language Learning in Sweden in July. A team from the Hebrew University, Israel, has developed an algorithm that identifies sarcastic sentences by using a machine learning technique in which a small number of sarcastic sentences act as seeds for the software to learn and generalize upon. The algorithm can then identify sarcastic sentences that are nothing like the examples. The variety of recognized sarcastic sentences is impressive, though the results are not perfect. But again, we don’t do it so well ourselves, do we?”

(Slashdot: New software recognizes sarcastic tweets)

It’s been a while since anyone’s mined Letters of Note, but this one was too good to pass up: a 1990 letter from Frank Sinatra to George Michael urging the “reluctant pop star” to loosen up and “dust off those gossamer wings.” (!)

FRANK SINATRA

September 9, 1990

Dear Friends,

When I saw your Calendar cover today about George Michael, “the reluctant pop star,” my first reaction was he should thank the good Lord every morning when he wakes up to have all that he has., And that’ll make two of us thanking God every morning for all that we have.

I don’t understand a guy who lives “in hopes of reducing the strain of his celebrity status.” Here’s a kid who “wanted to be a pop star since I was about 7 years old.” And now that he’s a smash performer and songwriter at 27 he wants to quit doing what tons of gifted youngsters all over the world would shoot grandma for - just one crack at what he’s complaining about.

Come on George, Loosen up. Swing, man, Dust off those gossamer wings and fly yourself to the moon of your choice and be grateful to carry the baggage we’ve all had to carry since those lean nights of sleeping on buses and helping the driver unload the instruments

And no more of that talk about “the tragedy of fame.” The tragedy of fame is when no one shows up and you’re singing to the cleaning lady in some empty joint that hasn’t seen a paying customer since Saint Swithin’s day. And you’re nowhere near that; you’re top dog on the top rung of a tall ladder called Stardom, which in latin means thanks-to-the-fans who were there when it was lonely.

Talent must not be wasted. Those who have it - and you obviously do or today’s Calendar cover article would have been about Rudy Vallee - those who have talent must hug it, embrace it, nurture it and share it lest it be taken away from you as fast as it was loaned to you.

Trust me. I’ve been there.

(Signed, ‘Frank Sinatra’)

“Loosen up, man.” (Letters of Note)

This Spawnkill editorial hits the nail on the head: game manuals were often cooler than video games themselves. Like record covers, and even CD liners now, game manuals have become a dead art. For those of us who grew up in the Nintendo era, but who lacked the resources to actually get a Nintendo, game manuals borrowed from friends were the next best thing, like a way to pretend you were playing the game. I remember long hours spent in the back of school buses imagining what video games must be like from the manuals other kids showed me, which were invariably more interesting than the actual experience…

Throughout those shining years of my childhood, purchasing a new game often meant thumbing through the pages of a mammoth tome detailing impending gameplay down to the letter. If I were stuck on a long car trip with a recently-purchased title, digging into that precious parcel and retrieving the manual was the first thing on my mind.  It was a way to game vicariously through a few simple, innocent pages, and one of the first ties I established to any game I had my heart set on playing through. Unfortunately, it’s also a familiar constant that gamers new and old can kiss goodbye with the decision to downsize the distribution of manuals entirely, spearheaded by Ubisoft, and perhaps many more companies to follow.

Call me old-fashioned, but the feeling of thumbing through the crisp (sometimes colored) pages rife with back story, notes from the designers, and detailed instructions on how to play gave me a real sense of anticipation. It was genuinely difficult to wait those few short hours until the final journey home at the end of the day to eagerly devour the content on the disk (or cartridge) inside. In some cases, being treated with some delicious fiction related to the title was something to look forward to as well, especially if you needed a little extra hype to fully enjoy the adventure about to unfold.

And let’s not forget the lovely serial numbers or copy protection that would require you to find a certain line or word in the manual to be able to install the thing. Good luck if you threw it away! But even now, as illogical as it would be to require a simple word or pass phrase as DRM, it was part of the charm that came with buying a new game.

(Spawnkill: Lamenting the loss of manuals)

New Everything is Terrible spotlights what it takes to be a stuntman. Highlights: Choking yourself, taking punches, fighting like a guy but looking like a girl. Wait for the gang signs and the “pain and agony of being the hero.”

(Via Everything is Terrible)

In the fall of 1996 I joined KXLU 88.9 FM radio station, which transmitted from Loyola Marymount University, where I attended at the time.  I was a certified hip-hop kid who only knew KROQ rock as rock.  Nonetheless, I was hired and told to just go for it.  I had help in discovering new music through this mountain of bands I had never heard of, save for Sonic Youth who had “Diamond Sea” on the radio at the time.  A DJ at the station named Jimmy Tamborello had one of the best shows.  We quickly became friends and he made me a mix tape, which back then was actually on cassette!  This tape became my introduction to the rock I still love, which came to be labeled shoe gaze by the emo kids at the station.  Whatever.  I love this slow-and-somber-echo-laden-usually-female-vocal sort of stuff.  This song is a definite highlight of that tape.  I was fortunate to come across this 45 while working at Fingerprints in Long Beach.  Enjoy. 

Oh and the band!  Bernthøler is a Belgian avant garde pop band that was active from 1981 to 1985 featuring the core of Drita Kotaji (vocals), Simon Rigot (guitar, keyboard, sax) along with Manuel Poutte (keyboards, guitar), Pol Fourmois (bass) and Pierre Sorvil (drums).  My Suitor, featuring the lovely vocals of Drita, became a staple of John Peel’s BBC show and became a minor hit for them in 1983 much to their surprise.  Despite the promise, the band called it quits.  LTM recordings released their complete recordings as Merry Lines in the Sky in 2004.

In a fairly ghoulish move that’s sure to attract attention, Manchester now has a walking tour to the sites where the late Joy Division frontman Ian Curtis lived.

“It is unlikely to be the most lighthearted walking tour on offer this summer. But one taking in the places that helped shape lives of Joy Division and their frontman Ian Curtis is expected to attract hundreds of fans of the influential band to Macclesfield, the singer’s home town, this year.

A key stop will be 77 Barton Street where Curtis lived with his wife, Debbie, wrote many of his songs and, at 23, killed himself exactly 30 years ago tomorrow. The walk will continue to the town crematorium where a memorial –bearing the words of the song Love Will Tear Us Apart – has become a shrine for fans around the world”

(Via Feasting on Roadkill)

 
FANTASTIC short directed by Ashleigh Nankivell using an old public domain social guidance PSA that’s been re-animated using After Effects. This is amazing!