JULYI AUGUST ISSUE 55

PRESENTED BY

2 8 t h e fader­ the fade r 29

 THE FADER MAGAZINE THE FADER MAGAZINE
JULY/AUGUST 2008 JULY/AUGUST 2008
55

55
SUMMER
55
SUMMER
MUSIC MUSIC

ESTELLE

NUMBER 55
• ••• • •••
THE
MAGNIFICENT
THE
WAKE
UP
MILES
BENJAMIN

• ••• • •••
ANTHONY
ROBINSON

JULY/AUGUST 08 thefader.com
CROOKERS’
PANTS
DOWN
PARTY
DAMAGE
A
CENTURY
THE OF
CUMBIA
WAKE
UP ABE
VIGODA’S
MILES YOUTH
BENJAMIN MAGIC
ANTHONY
BLUE CHEER

ROBINSON
I
ESTELLE THE MAGNIFICENT•SEAN C & LV•SEAN GARRETT•LINDSTROM•77KLASH
F
 B:11.125 in
T:10.875 in
S:10.375 in
©2008 Converse Inc. all rights reserved.
 LIVE MUSIC. ALL SUMMER. ON US.
"MM
ZPV
OFFE TO BRING JT
ZPVS
GSJFOET.

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 Fader 55
July/August 2008
Summer Music
Contents
55

Crookers in Ivrea, Turin, Italy, photographed by Peter Van Agtmael, April 2008.

28 FADE IN GREENPAGES

30 NWSPRNT Artists, authors, gadgets and gadflys 144 Vinyl Archeology Eastern Promises

44 STYLE The most crucial looks 146 Musics

150 Books

GEN/F 152 DVDs

52 Rye Rye 154 Jedi Mind Pix Favored tunes from favorite DJs

54 Drakkar Sauna 156 Sleeves Supermundane

56 Whalebones 158 Clerk Perks Foxy Production

58 77Klash 160 Reheaters Gal Costa

60 Sean Garrett 162 Beat Construction Jorge Ledezma

62 Lindstrøm 164 Dranks

64 Windsurf 166 Events

66 Ebony Bones 168 Stockists

170 The FADER.com Exclusives

172 Appendix

176 FADEOUT

1 4 T H E FA D E R
 Fader 55
July/August 2008
Summer Music
Contents

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson’s house, photographed by Lauren Fleishman, May 2008.

FEATURES

70 Estelle Wonder Woman

80 Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson The Morning After

88 Abe Vigoda Look In My Eyes, I Am Your Brother

96 Grind Music and Ryan Leslie Number One

Styles: RB2140/RB3342
104 Crookers Vita Futura

112 Cumbia Slow Burn

126 STYLE Salvador

1 8 T H E FA DE R
55
 FOUNDING PUBLISHERS VICE PRESIDENT & PUBLISHER
ROB STONE AND JON COHEN ANDY COHN

EXECUTIVE EDITOR DIRECTOR, ADVERTISING & BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

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DEPUTY EDITOR ACCOUNT MANAGERS

ERIC DUCKER GRAHAM HETH, DANA KROZEK

SENIOR EDITOR ADVERTISING ASSISTANT

JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD MARIA MAYORALGO

ASSOCIATE EDITOR PUBLICITY DIRECTOR

MATTHEW SCHNIPPER ED JAMES

ONLINE EDITOR MARKETING AND EVENTS DIRECTOR

PETER MACIA KAELA LAROSA

ASSOCIATE ONLINE EDITOR MARKETING, MEDIA AND EVENTS

SAM HOCKLEY-SMITH JEFF ANDERSON, MARLINA FLETCHER, EVAN FRANK, WILL
GRIGGS, CALVIN HWANG, LINDA LEE, KIM ROBINSON,
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HANLY BANKS
FARM DEPARTMENT
STYLE EDITOR KYLE ALLEN, ALEX ARCINIEGA, KEVIN HUNTE, SAM PETER,
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CONTRIBUTING STYLE EDITOR FARM TEAM SENIOR REPS

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2 0 T H E FA DE R
 Fader 55
July/Aug 2008
Summer Music

Contributors

DAVID BEVAN DOROTHY HONG JUSTIN SIMON ANNIE TRITT

Writer Photographer Writer Photographer

Assignment: Assignment: Assignment: Assignment:

“The Morning After,” pg 80 “Wonder Woman,” pg 70 “Eastern Promises,” pg 144 “Number One,” pg 96,
“77Klash,” pg 58
What happened: What happened: What happened:
Since ending his days as We gave photographer One half of NY’s trippy dance What happened:
an intern in our 23rd Street Dorothy Hong the tricky duo Invisible Conga People, Recording studios can
office, David Bevan’s been task of keeping up with Justin Simon thoroughly be really, really boring
grinding. For this issue, we cover artist Estelle during knows Japanese psychedelia. sometimes, especially when
sent him to uncover the a particularly grueling After living abroad in Japan you’re not in the band. But
secrets of Miles Benjamin week of US promo. “I shot as an exchange student in when first-time FADER
Anthony Robinson’s heart. a marathon thirteen hours 1996 and “constantly going photographer Annie Tritt
Bevan says they “listened to at the video shoot,” she to shows and record shops,” kicked it with Sean C and
records, ate cheeseburgers says. “Then a few days Simon moved back to Japan in LV in the studio, she had a
and pizza, went bowling later I caught up with her ’98 where he lived until 2003, blast watching the focused
and drank beers. So, I at a café in DUMBO, her playing in multiple projects tedium of making bangers,
guess you could say we neighborhood. She was still and crate-digging in his spare as the the two producers
had good dude times.” This recovering from it all—she time. “I spent six years in crafted “aspects of the song
is totally appropriate for fell asleep twice during Japan slouched over record over and over ’til they got
Bevan, maven of summery the shoot.” Her first cover bins, ruining my posture and it. I didn’t know music was
cardigans and pastel story last year for issue giving myself carpal tunnel made like that,” she says.
sunglasses. “I still wonder a #49 was somewhat of a while all my peers developed Tritt pulled triple-duty this
lot about how completely out parting shot as FADER’s social skills and enjoyed the issue, also shooting Ryan
of their minds Alex [Wagner, photo coordinator, and this company of the opposite Leslie and 77Klash around
former Editor In Chief ] and time around she threw in a sex,” he says. “There are so her home base of New York
Eric [Ducker, current Deputy couple of new techniques many record stores there, City. “I ran into 77Klash a
Editor] must have been when for a marvelous peekaboo it’s ridiculous.” He runs Mesh- few days ago at a bar near
they decided to assign me gatefold. While still very Key Records, which releases my house. He was in the
that Band of Horses story much part of the FADER the work of Yura Yura Teikoku, same shirt that I shot him in.”
and send me down to South extended family, her days among others, in the US.
Carolina. I still don’t get it.” are a wee bit more glamour- Where else you can see her
Us neither, but somehow it filled than they used to be. Where else you can see work: The New York Times,
worked out. At press time Hong was his work: mesh-key. annietritt.com
prepping for a trip to the com, myspace.com/
Where else you can see Biennale di Fotografia in invisiblecongapeople
his work: nymag.com, The Alessandria, Italy, where
Village Voice, davidbevan. she will be exhibiting this
net summer.

Where else you can see

her work: Monocle, Nylon,
Theme, dothong.com

EVERYTHING ABOUT MUSIC IS CHANGING

www.diesel-u-music.com
2 2 T H E FA D E R
 Fader 55
Jul/Aug 2008
Summer Music

Talk Talk

WE LOVE YOU, TOO IT IS

I FUCKING LOVE EVERY SINGLE PERSON The Get Em Mami [issue #53, Dranky Dranks]
WHO PLAYED A PART IN PUTTING AALIYAH is a fucking vodka gimlet! I hope these chicas’
ON THE COVER! (I’M WRITING IN ALL CAPS music is more creative than their drinking/drink
CAUSE IT’S THAT SERIOUS.) WHEN I FOUND naming.
OUT THAT SHE WAS GONNA BE A COVER Sam
GIRL AGAIN, IT TOOK ME BACK TO THE DAYS
WHEN I WAS FIFTEEN YEARS OLD, AND I
WOULD RUN TO THE MALL LIKE A MADMAN WITTY NARRATIVES/SUBTLE ATTITUDE
AND FIND WHATEVER MAGAZINE SHE WAS (SCORE!)
IN AND IMMEDIATELY START GIGGLING LIKE Dear FADER,
A SCHOOL GIRL WHEN I FOUND IT. I HAD ONE I am a skinny white kid living in a suburb of
OF THOSE MOMENTS TODAY WHEN I PICKED Phoenix called Ahwatukee. It mostly consists of
UP FADER. I WAS FILLED WITH SO MUCH teenagers from the local high schools buying
ANXIETY, ANXIOUSNESS, LAUGHTER, THAT pot and booze with their parents’ money every
I WAS SCARED OF MYSELF FOR A LITTLE BIT. weekend. The majority of them live in a bubble
NO ONE BUT NO ONE DESERVES TO BE ON THE and are under the impression that this is how
COVER MORE THAN AALIYAH. I DONT GIVE their lives will always be. I like to think of myself
A FUCK WHAT’S GOING ON IN MUSIC TODAY, as an exception to this norm. There’s a good
AALIYAH STILL DOMINATES IN ORIGINALITY amount of people with the right intention about
AND ESSENCE. YOU OFFICIALLY MADE A FAN providing decent art who reside in downtown
OUT OF ME TO YOUR MAGAZINE. IF I COULD South Phoenix and random places around
KISS YOU ALL ON THE MOUTH I WOULD! THATS Arizona. They give me hope and an outlet
REAL SPIT. MUCH LOVE TO FADER MAGAZINE. amidst my suburban lifestyle. Anyways, I picked
up an issue of The FADER while at the mall not
PS—PLEASE DONT MAKE THIS THE LAST WE too long ago. A picture of Devendra Banhart
SEE AALIYAH AS A COVER GIRL. on the cover was what initially caught my eye.
Since then, I have regarded your magazine
AARON as heaven sent and a liberator to my lack of
sources for good music (not to mention witty
narratives filled with subtle attitude). So thank
you, friends. I am most appreciative. Create for
the sake of CREATION.
Sincerely,
Daniel

Write us at letters@thefader.com or The FADER

Letters Department 71 W 23rd St. Floor 13,
New York, NY 10010

FREE LOVE
DOWNLOAD THE LATEST ISSUE OF THE FADER PLUS AN EXCLUSIVE MIX OF MUSIC
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24 T H E FA DE R
 Fader 55
July/Aug 2008
Summer Music

Editor’s Letter

P
arty scorchers, earbud melters, backyard breezers, road trip lifelines—call
them what you will. Summertime begets summerjams and The FADER
is here to celebrate the season’s finest in their infinite, miraculous
variations. Which is exactly what drew us to Estelle, whose multivalent
tunes dissolve the borders between rap, reggae, R&B, NYC, LDN, Motown
and your town. On the eve of her album’s release, we ventured into the
eye of her publicity hurricane and came back with a candid portrait
of the new pop star down the block. Once you’re done playing with
our Estelle cover gatefold, flip the mag over and meet Miles Benjamin
Anthony Robinson. Yes, the dude’s name is epic but we urge you to recite
it like scripture, make flash cards, name your pet hermit crab after him.
Just do whatever it takes to commit it to memory, because come fall
semester, everyone cutting class on the quad will be waxing about how
they spent their vacation under the spell of a Brooklyn troubadour with
a ten-syllable name and a soul-rattling songbook.
Also crammed between the covers of our summer-jamwich, you’ll find
Crookers, an Italian twosome on the cusp of throwing the international
dancefloor into convulsions. Julianne Shepherd followed the Milanese
house heroes to a gig in the itty-bitty village of Ivrea where the duo
dropped futuristic loony tunes and the crowd dropped trou. Meanwhile,
contributor Jace Clayton bounced to Buenos Aires to map-out the new
epicenter of cumbia, a timeworn Colombian folk music that’s metastasized
into a global phenomenon. Back in New York, we were busy scanning/
panning the airwaves for gold and found a few twenty-four karat
bangers in our own backyard: the neoclassical hip-hop of Grind Music
and the confectionary futurisms of Ryan Leslie. And for those who
prefer their music-makers sweaty, yelpy and dusted with flour, Matthew
Schnipper flew west to break bread (and ice cream) with young LA
punk magicians Abe Vigoda. All in all, it’s a wide-armed embrace of the
sounds that capture the energy of summer zero-eight—a season poised
to deliver crazy heat, fiery election chatter and a grip of sweltering anthems
that we’ll be pumping past Labor Day and into infinity.

CHRIS RICHARDS

Front cover: Estelle shot

by Dorothy Hong. Hair by
Dailey Greene. Makeup
by AJ Crimson.

Back Cover: Miles Benjamin

Anthony Robinson shot by
Lauren Fleishman.

NEW YORK • LOS ANGELES • NEWPORT BEACH • MIAMI • DALLAS • CHICAGO

shop at www.originalpenguin.com 27 T H E FA D E R T H E FADER 27
FADEIN

Estelle on the set of her video, New York City.

PHOTOGRAPHY DOROTHY HONG
 NWS
PRNT
• Patrik North of Summer • Hey YouTuber—check
Lovers Unlimited (who the opening sequence of
brought us the beloved Reading Rainbow lately?
Tough Alliance) and The theme music is so
his designer-pal Rory much better than your kid
ThemFinest have started brain remembers. Fluttery
Acéphale, a new boutique synths and disco croons—it
label focusing on limited sounds like Windsurf
7-inch releases and remixing Escort in heaven.
cassettes—though North The tune was penned in
says posters and jewelry 1981 by Steve Horelick, an
are not out of the question. electronic composer who
Their first release comes teamed up with some
from a band called Salem, songwriting buds and
an ultra weird three-piece New York disco singer Tina
making contemplative goth Fabrik to create what he
music that will also be the calls an “iconic little theme
basis for the aesthetic of the song.” We tracked Horelick
label, at least for awhile. down to nerd out about
“I’m thinking the goth thing his vintage Buchla 200
will fade out and be replaced synthesizer—the machine
by something entirely responsible for the theme’s
different,” North says. “But blissful intro—but quickly
when that happens the • You have got to be stupid • IRT Ryddimz is a sorta-quarterly DVD magazine focused learned we weren’t the only
entire aesthetic needs to to start a magazine in 2008. on “dancehall music culture and politics” in New York, ’80s babyfaces checking
change.” No matter the Or a weird pulp savant incorporating music videos and guerilla-style interviews for him. Turns out Wale’s
label’s identity, the goal who can’t help yourself. into a couple of features for every installment. Kinda like management recently
is that their bands go on I’m into either explanation. the cable access reggae show that exists in every urban came knocking in hopes
to bigger things. “Limited Dossier is calling itself a market, except the signal is way better. It’s good to see a of sampling the Reading
edition records don’t journal, but you can’t fool homegrown media outlet just hitting its stride as some of Rainbow theme. “Do you
have the best profit margin me. Maybe it’s because n+1 the corporate ventures into the Caribbean marketplace are know anything about him?”
right now,” says North. and all those art people threatening to turn to fairy dust (and lord knows badman Horelick asked us. Um, yes.
“It’s more about exposing keep saying “journal nuh inna fairy dust). Not only does IRT give NYC badmen CHRIS RICHARDS

new artists I’m passionate this” and “journal that,” like Fatz and Skerrit Bwoy a well-deserved bligh alongside stevehmusic.com
about and helping them find but this is a magazine! the stars (Mavado, Collie Buddz, et al) but it shines a light
opportunities beyond us.” Beyond semantics, though, on unsung innovators like the Black Blingaz dance crew,
SAM HOCKLEY-SMITH Dossier’s first issue is a deep who invented the “Tek Weh Yuhself” steps that powered Mr.
myspace.com/uacephaleu compendium of interviews Vegas’ hit of the same name. Which is good because how
with architects, flarf poetry, the hell else would you know that? EDWIN “STATS” HOUGHTON
old flash photography myspace.com/irtryddimzdvd
and Mark Ronson. Also,
Mario Batali wrote a haiku
about fiddlehead ferns
and somehow managed to
use the word “ejaculate.”
This is what Sean Young’s
character in Blade Runner
would read if she were real.
MATTHEW SCHNIPPER
dossierjournal.com

ZZZ(QMR\+HLQHNHQ5HVSRQVLEO\FRP
3 0 T HE FA DE R ‹+HLQHNHQ86$,QF:KLWH3ODLQV1<
 OLD WEIRD AMERICA GONZO AND THE BALLSY BALLAD OF HUNTER S. THOMPSON

NWS
PRNT
ILLUSTRATION HELLOVON

The new album available everywhere now!

featuring
“Everyone Nose (All The Girls Standing In The Line For The Bathroom)” and “Spaz”
• Growing up in the ’90s, Chicano power movement typewriter in front of him. to strippers with gazongas more time explaining that Produced by The Neptunes
I thought of Hunter S. than any cover story on Soul The film focuses on his mid- the size of Tom Wolfe’s ego Thompson’s wildstyle was
Thompson the same way Asylum (shocker, I know). ’60s to mid-’70s greatest and some footage of him grounded in actual, astute “The face of a new culture.” – The Source
I thought of PJ O’Rourke: Gonzo: The Life and Work hits period: the Hells Angels, lurking onstage as Jimmy reporting. More footage of
an old guy whose articles of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Vegas, his run to become Buffet sings “Margaritaville.” him spraying Jann Wenner
I skipped when reading Alex Gibney’s new bio- the sheriff of Aspen, the ’72 Gonzo is a solid introduction with a fire extinguisher
“Seeing Sounds leaps out of the speakers.” – Remix Magazine
Rolling Stone. Later I documentary, comes three presidential campaign, etc. to the mythology of would have been nice too.
For N*E*R*D ringtones, text NERD to 30303 Not available at all carriers. Standard text messaging and airtime rates apply.
realized that I could learn a years after the writer and His final “mediocre” decades Thompson, but it would ERIC DUCKER
lot more from Thompson’s instigator shot himself at are quickly summed up with be of better service to all magpictures.com
www.n-e-r-d.com
thirty-year-old take on the his kitchen table with his photos of him posing next aspiring writers had it spent
www.myspace.com/nerdofficial
www.everyonenose.com i
©2008 Star Trak LLC.
All rights reserved.
3 2 T HE FA D E R
 MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF NOTHING THE BEATIFUL LOSERS MOVE ON, LOOK BACK

NWS
PRNT A 305-horsepower
pledge pin.

• It comes as no surprise his garbage man dream belonged together, himself that can result from a just downright ridiculous! Swear your allegiance to torque. Commit to push it at every turn. The turbo-
that Aaron Rose, founder foreshadowed his ability a kid doing something combination of love and Man, those memories are charged Subaru Boxer engine and road-gripping Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive have
of the late Alleged Gallery to see greatness in the for the love of doing it. innocent screwing around. the best…love is the best.”
and co-founder of ANP overlooked and disparate In Beautiful Losers, “When I look back now at JAYSON MUSSON your back. Welcome to the brotherhood. It’s what makes a Subaru, a Subaru.
Quarterly, wanted to be a voices of the kooky kids Rose and co-director all the crazy cool things beautifullosers.com
garbage man as a kid. Not making art in America Joshua Leonard’s film we have made for no other
to say that Rose’s taste as during the ’90s. From documenting the artists reason than just because
gallery director indicated skaters to punks to oddball and scene surrounding we wanted to see it...” says
a favorable disposition filmmakers and musicians, Alleged, we’re reminded Rose. “Things that were The all-new 2008 Impreza® WRX STI at subaru.com
toward bad art, but rather Rose knew that these folks of the wonderful things unsellable, unpopular or

3 4 T HE FA DE R
Always obey the traffic laws and wear your seat belt.
NWS
PRNT
• When riots broke out • On composer Nico
in 1988 on the Lower Muhly’s new album
East Side between the Mothertongue, the third
Thompson Square Park part of the second piece,
tent community and the “Wonders” is entitled “A
NYPD, documentarian Complaint Against Thomas
Clayton Patterson was Weelkes.” We looked up
there filming the bloody Weelkes and he seemed
hysteria. After refusing to like a solid dude, writing
turn over his videotapes to some classic 17th century
the bigwigs, he was jailed madrigals. But tucked
for contempt. Initially, deep into his Wikipedia
Captured—Ben Soloman entry was a coda about
and Dan Levin’s resulting his drunkenness around
documentary about the children. Curious, we asked
riots, which uses much of Muhly about his Weelkes
Patterson’s footage—feels beef and its inspiration:
like a film about the Lower “I remember that
East Side’s bizarre art Weelkes was rumored to
community and Patterson’s have had a bad temper.
subsequent obsession In doing some reading-up
with recording its history. on him, I found that a lot of
But then the filming itself people had anonymously
becomes a revolutionary complained to the bishop
tool for him to articulate
not just his own voice, • In 1999, writer David • It’s weird that Iggy Scam is going by his real name, Erick
but the community’s as James wrote that old Lyle. I guess he’s gone legit for On the Lower Frequencies:
well. On August 6, the school fanzines “provided A Secret History of the City, a collection of his late ’90s/
20th anniversary of the a participatory forum, early ’00s writings. Before proper names and book deals,
riots, there will be an NYC necessary as a defense Lyle released the San Francisco based Scam zine (and,
screening of the film, which against misrepresentation of course, the Turd Filled Donut zine) about squatting,
follows Patterson from his in the establishment punk, drugs, stealing and the ins and outs of daily life in
arrival in the LES to his media.” Consider the the Mission District. Under the auspices of general low
immersion as its historian. PictureBox Departmental life-itude, Lyle created a breathing diary of a city upended
While gentrification Store the stronghold by gentrification and technology. “Everyone in town was
has exonerated what of that defense. The talking about our space and no one had a clue about the
Patterson calls “the outside Grammy Award-winning art, culture and affordable housing inside of it that was about him—cattiness about
edge” culture in the LES, (seriously) publishers of already hidden in plain sight,” he says. Or if they did, they church musicians is very
Captured is a relic of what all things weird, colorful didn’t care. Maybe it’s a different city now, but at least Lyle old, there are lots of letters
once thrived. ERIN HANSEN and in-print have opened has given it its due narration. MATTHEW SCHNIPPER
with people sass-talking
capturedmovie.com up a storefront in the softskull.com Bach, too, and vice versa.
Gowanus section of South “There is something
Brooklyn. It’s a small but about Weelkes’ music that
quaint establishment, reminds me of the manic
with shelves of colorful escapism we nowadays
knick knacks and printed would associate with an
works masking a large addictive and obsessive
inventory/work area in personality. I ended
the back. The store’s only ‘Wonders’ with this
open three days a week, complaint to try to show
so save your allowance that the traveller (in this
for the weekend. SAM DUKE case, Weelkes’ imagination,
pictureboxinc.com going to Iceland and
Portugal) returns home to
an unsure ground, mockery
and derision.”
MATTHEW SCHNIPPER
nicomuhly.com

©2008 Jack in the Box Inc. Sirloin Rules is a trademark of Jack in the Box Inc. Jack in the Box is a registered trademark of Jack in the Box Inc.

3 6 T H E FA D E R
 ARCTIC HYSTERIA FINNISH ART MAKES IT STATESIDE

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PRNT

• This summer, while TranceStates, Visions, heritage of Finnish artists, Finnish natural history and symbol of the wild, pure and
Queens, New York is and Hallucinations in and thereby in our collective hunting museums ( Jylha pristine nature of the North,”
at its hot-stickiest, PS 1 Contemporary Finnish Art. visual memory,” says the emphasizes that no rabbits he says. The resulting
will present mythical “We Finns still have such a profoundly influential were harmed in the making installations have a quality
visions from subarctic short history of modernity Espoo-based artist Pekka of his art). “White hares are of being humanly untamed,
Finland, a collection of behind us and such a long Jylha. He will exhibit “I would found only in the northern of the land and, in an eerie
magical and challenging adventure with a rich and like to understand” and latitudes where winters are way, emotionally evolved.
multimedia installations diverse, but also harsh, “Trembling and honoring,” snowy, long and dark. Today JULIANNE SHEPHERD
and performances by nature. These factors are two works using steel even that is endangered. ps1.org
Finnish bands with reflected in the genetic and hares procured from The hare for me is a sensitive

3 8 T HE FA D E R
 GROWS IN BROOKLYN A HISTORY OF THE MARKET HOTEL

NWS
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1880s-1930s: 1989: 2008:

The current Market Hotel residents MH residents insist that the violent After almost two decades of inactivity,
believe the space, which is located climax from 1990’s Ghost was filmed The So So Glos find a home for their
in Brooklyn underneath the elevated in the Hotel. “Like any old building, vision while searching for new head-
train tracks at Broadway and Myrtle, those vibes are definitely present,” says quarters. And despite some police issues
originally opened as a bank years before resident Zach Berkowitz. “I’d say it’s stemming from questionable conduct, it

PHOTOGRAPHY BY AVIGAD BASUL, ALEX BARTH, TOM WALLACE, JENNA JULIET WIKLER, JIM KOST, J. NORDBERG, LAUREN FLEISCHMAN, MICHAEL SCHMELLING, AKIKINE (AKIKINE.BE).
the dawn of the 20th century. However, more of murdered prostitutes in the looks like the space is going to stick. “I
a librarian at the Brooklyn Historical Hotel.” want [the Market Hotel] to live on and
Society said the building went up in the I want it to thrive,” Berkowitz says. “I
1930s, when its cast-iron façade was first don’t know if I’ll be around to see that,
photographed. but other people will and I think that’s
the beauty of the space. The history is
actually in the making right now.”

1970s: 1991-1992:
In Red Hook just after the space’s rock & According to New York’s Department
roll renaissance this year, a MH resident of Buildings Archives, a toy company
spoke to a tattooed Puerto Rican bike named Baby Town was responsible for
shop owner named G who immediately Market Hotel’s last flurry of activity. This
recognized the Market address as the makes sense as the current residents
Bristol Rooms, a Dominican-owned club recall coming across a cache of leftover
he used to frequent. The Bristol Rooms baby strollers. Records indicate that a
is all but vapor in building records, but complaint was filed against Baby Town
it lives on in the décor: mirrored walls, a few years later because of a faulty air
shag carpet, walls riddled with security conditioning unit. Even more puzzling:
wiring and a single bullet hole. a piece of found luggage stuffed with
snowboarding equipment, whose owner,
judging from the tags, is believed to be a
local Hasidic Jew.

•venue
Early this year a new
was born in the
Todd P, it’s developed plays an integral role in
into a haven for all-ages broadcasting its allure.
wilds of Brooklyn. The performances and a scene Call it a product of urban
Market Hotel—named after of its own shape and stripe folklore as much as neglect.
a lyric by The So So Glos, the with shows by High Places, We tracked the Hotel’s
band that discovered and Soft Circle, No Age and storied history era by era.
now inhabits the space—is many others. As much an DAVID BEVAN
quickly becoming more than incubator for young ideas myspace.com/markethotelnyc
just a symbol of punk ethos. as a local time capsule, the
With the help of promoter Market Hotel’s recent history
© 2002-2008 Take-Two Interactive Software and its subsidiaries. Developed by 2K Boston, 2K Australia, 2K Marin and Digital Extremes. BioShock, 2K Games, 2K Boston, 2K Australia, 2K Marin, the 2K logo, the 2K Boston logo, 2K Australia logo, the 2K Marin logo and Take-Two Interactive Software are all trademarks
and/or registered trademarks of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. Digital Extremes and its logo are trademarks of Digital Extremes. All other marks and trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved. The content of this videogame is purely fictional, is not intended to represent or depict any
actual event, person, or entity, and any such similarities are purely coincidental. The makers and publishers of this videogame do not in any way endorse, condone or encourage engaging in any conduct depicted in this videogame. “PlayStation”, “PLAYSTATION” and “PS” Family logo are registered trademarks of Sony
Computer Entertainment Inc. The ratings icon is a registered trademark of the Entertainment Software Association.
4 0 T HE FA D E R
 FUCK THOSE ASSHOLES THE LOVE POETRY OF ARIANA REINES

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PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN FRANCIS PETERS

•Though she would have treat and on Mallarmé, de Lion does so without paradox of the book as an devices. If I can’t make
had no trouble finding a the 19th century French any ironic posturing object, a “concerted effort,” this feeling right now/ For
publisher (her first book of poet whose spatially or condescension; the which takes as its subject you more personal/ The
poetry, The Cow, was an experimental work, Reines book’s treatment of its something spontaneous, general consensus is going
award-winner published explains, is “full of white subjects is sincere. Equal immediate and transient— to/ Fucking kill me. Recall
on a reputable press), foam; the marshmallow consideration is given to namely, the experience of manual/ Figurations.
twenty-seven-year-old is his food,” and whose the likes of Mel Gibson and being in love: Recall metaphors/ Of
Ariana Reines chose to dandyism Reines finds Georges Bataille, Nabokov hands. Recall your hands./
release Coeur de Lion on politically subversive) gives and Stevie Wonder, “Fuck those assholes/ My total impotence/ As
the imprint she recently her the freedom to follow Leonard Cohen, Madame who think that there is an individual. My failure/
co-founded, mal-o-mar her instincts in pursuing Bovary, “that brat Arthur nothing/ To know about At freedom/ Of speech./
editions. “I didn’t want projects other than her own Rimbaud” and Sade. Reines love./ I’m nauseous/ Cos I’m already/ Forgetting
to have to wait a long writing (a translation of says she envisions Coeur of the possibility of us your face/ So maybe I was
time for it to come out, I Baudelaire is in the works). de Lion as “the intersection attacking Iran/ And the playing/ Myself more than
wanted to be able to move Unlike many recent of two extremes—an hot rain falling right now./ I thought/ About having
on,” she says. Moreover, books of poetry, which seek extreme of sincerity and an Manhattan is full of white more feelings than/ Most
mal-o-mar (the name is a to assimilate both pop and extreme of artifice.” That women with/ Businesslike assholes.” BRIAN KALKBRENNER
pun on the marshmallow academic cultures, Coeur intersection gives rise to the bodies. It’s all/ Handheld mal-o-mar.blogspot.com

“Manhattan is full of white women with / Businesslike bodies.”

substitute
RYAN CARLSON
©2008 Quantum Optics

www.anarchyeyewear.com
1-800-426-6396

4 2 T HE FADE R
 STYLE
• Perched at the corner of • Do you remember Far
ugly and awesome, brothel From Heaven? Never
creepers are a footwear has a movie about 1950s
curiosity we readily ride bigotry and hatred looked
for. Not because CDG or so seductive. If Julianne
Yohji might adore them, Moore really had been
nor because Chloë Sevigny able to move away and
made a pair lovingly start a relationship with
topped with fake fur for Dennis Haysbert I know
Opening Ceremony—it’s they would be out in the
just something about their yard eating fruit, wearing
jolie-laide chunkiness that scarves. He’d be gardening
we’ve always liked. This and grilling, and to keep
season Scandinavian his starched shirt from
vulcanized shoe wizards staining, he’d have a
Cheapo release the Brick, simple, elegant apron. Jack
a shoe that’s part creeper, Spade, throwback arbiter
part plimsoll (our other of class and taste, has
shoe obsession) and totally taken cues with a chocolate
brilliant. The Cheapo design brown BBQ smock, a stain
philosophy is built on what concealing outfit maker for
they call “technotopia”—“a the modern griller with a
moving border somewhere mind in the past.
between nature and MATTHEW SCHNIPPER
technology.” And yes dear jackspade.com
Swedes, we might just
be moving borders this
summer to cop a pair.
CHIOMA NNADI
• For Los Angeles label • As heaving, hustle-ready metropolises go, New York and
cheapo.se Brigid Catiis, recycled Lagos are perhaps kindred cities. “Lagos gives you a ‘can do’
fabric is the future. Before attitude,” says architect-turned-designer Tobi Adamolekun
the drawing board, of his hometown. “But it’s also a city where everything is
designer Raissa Gerona imported. We even import Ankara [a Nigerian fabric] from

PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN FRANCIS PETERS (BRIGID CATIIS, ATELIER OLU), MODEL JEANNE SCHWARTZ.
starts at the rag house, China as so many textile factories have shut down here.”
where she sifts through Assembled completely by hand using locally sourced
thousands of pounds of materials, his line of accessories, Atelier Olu, is a small but very
fabric in search of the important effort to redress some of the imbalance. Traditional
perfect prints for her fabrics like damask—more commonly used to make head
dresses. “The process is wraps—add unexpected made-in-Lagos swagger to caps and
crazy, but there’s value in belts, and soft leather duffle bags earn double style points with
having something that’s fully reversible African print capabilities. CHIOMA NNADI
one of a kind,” she says. atelierolu.net
For next season, she’s
created looks inspired
by Annie Hall prep while
maintaining a signature
bohemian simplicity,
letting the vintage fabrics
tell their own story.
ERIN HANSEN
brigidcatiis.com

4 4 T H E FA DE R
 TOTALLY HOOKED MINKA NEVER LOST HER THREAD

STYLE
PHOTOGRAPHY LEONIE PURCHAS

• As Jamaican designer of ten, decided to beam her start burning! Everybody to-order designs—from partying in her head-to-
Minka Francis will tell you, brand of tropicalism out to gonna want crochet,’” she itty bitty bikinis to floor- toe crochet ensembles.
STYLING MOBOLAJI DAWODU.

there are few things more the universe after her friend says. “It’s like he put a spell sweeping gowns—have “I guess you might call
intensely tropical than Buju Banton suggested she on me.” It’s been several reached a certain cult status me a celebrity designer.
a technicolor crocheted make her own line. “I made seasons, many moons and a in Kingston and beyond. “A Well I work hard, I think
maillot. Francis, who’s been a hat for him one day and string of fully-fledged Minka lot of things I sell right off I deserve it.”
busily crocheting her way he said, ‘You are gonna runway shows since that my back,” says Francis, who CHIOMA NNADI
through life since the age crochet ’til your hands hat. These days her made- is regularly photographed myspace.com/gominka

4 6 T HE FA DE R
 MAROON HUES THE UNCHARTED DESIGN TERRITORIES OF 21 MC

STYLE
PHOTOGRAPHY JUSTIN MAXON

• As dissimilar as they are wants us to design the

merchandise for her tour.
alike, childhood friends
Emeka Alams and Yego Dead Prez and Afrikan
Moravia, founders of Boy want us to design
precocious streetwear their CD covers. We want
label 21 MC, have built a to do videos and we
brand that’s anything but have mixtapes coming
run of the mill. Alams, who out. [The mixtapes will]
was raised by Nigerian feature a lot of artists
parents in the “ghetto” of that we feel are on the
Seattle, is the apparent same wavelength. Dante
hustler of the two—stealthy Fried Chicken is a big
in his interaction and quite supporter—we have a
the embellisher. Moravia, European tour coming
whose parents are Haitian, up with him this summer.
grew up in the Seattle Music is a huge part of
suburbs and is indubitably our design process and
the philosophical one. 21 so we’re trying to take
MC started after Alams artists that inspire us like
and Moravia both left the Emeka Alams (left) and Yego Moravia (right) of 21 MC in the Fillmore District of San Francisco, CA. Lee “Scratch” Perry, MIA,
US for a year to visit their Santogold, Afrikan Boy,
respective motherlands. slaves but still maintain it and they feel like that’s who wear it don’t remember Lil Wayne, 2Face, Nas and
Upon their return, they felt their individuality. But the representing Africa. Or they the ’80s and it has no lasting Black Uhuru.
it was time to turn their modern Maroon is not just put Jamaican colors power. Urban is dead
graphic design know-how only going to be black. on a tee. We just felt that and streetwear is dying. Uhuru!
toward the fashion game. We’re talking about a was corny and no one was However, I do like Rockers Alams: Yes, we did a
post-colonial, globalized really doing justice to the NYC and Cassette Playa. If poncho dedicated to one
Why the name 21 MC? world where the plantation rich history of textile design I had to compare anyone to of their songs.
Emeka Alams: 21 MC is short system has moved all over. and overall design that us, it’d be Cassette Playa. I
for 21st Century Maroon The Mexican immigrants originates in West Africa. can tell she does it because Which one?
Colony. The Maroons jumping the fence to get When we started designing she loves it. Moravia: “The Youth of
were about establishing into the US are an example our collection, it was almost Eglington.” This came
an autonomous lifestyle of the new Maroons. So like a research project. We So she transcends out at a time when all
where they could feel safe, what we’re doing is creating went back and we found streetwear? over London, blacks were
secure and protected. a new culture for the 21st textiles from hundreds of Alams: Yes. The problem rioting. We’re talking about
Yego Moravia: The Maroons century that is more than years ago that never lost with streetwear is that one of the first accounts
were also the first example just people of African their modern look and they think too young. Look of the post-colonial
of black adaptation in heritage. beauty. at labels like Gucci and migrations into Britain.
the Americas. As black YSL, they’ve been making “Youth of Eglington” is as
people, we’re survivalists How does that affect the What are your thoughts stuff forever and keep much an ’80s anthem as
and we’re creative with aesthetic of the line? on the streetwear scene at innovating. The streetwear The Smiths’ “How Soon
our adaptation. Not many Alams: When you think large? cats are always looking over is Now?” OMAR DUBOIS

cultures could have been about people in the Alams: The whole scene is their shoulder to see what 21maroons.com
West who do African- corny! Seventy percent of the next guy is doing.
inspired designs, they are
normally very bad or even
what’s out there is horribly
made to make a buck. What else do you have
Featuring“LET’S DANCE TO JOY DIVISION”,
depressing. You know, they
take a T-shirt and put a
sick-looking African kid on
Putting out ’80s-inspired
streetwear is stupid and
corny. Half of the people
cooking then?
Alams: MIA just reached
out to us yesterday, she
“MOVING TO NEW YORK” & “BACKFIRE AT THE DISCO”

“Urban is dead and streetwear is dying.”

 2008 ROADRUNNER RECORDS, INC.

4 8 T H E FA D E R
 NEW WAVES VINTAGE SURF COMES OUT OF THE CLOSET

STYLE
PHOTOGRAPHY LEONIE PURCHAS

STYLING MOBOLAJI DAWODU. SHIRT AND SHORTS BY VINTAGE GOTCHA, FLIP FLOPS BY GAP.

• Growing up in beaches. Next year marks for [Gotcha] in the mid- revamping classic logos easy, laidback attitude,”
California we surfed to the 30th anniversary of ’80s, as a kid,” he says. and expanding on the says Oak co-owner Louis
school. Kidding! But it legendary surf brand “So it’s neat to be able to Crazies tee series. Surf life Terline, whose latest
was enthusiastic surf Gotcha, and for creative come back and get with has even made its way line was inspired by surf
culture in the ’80s that director Chadd Godfrey, a brand I grew up with, to New York with vintage culture. Now the only
led people to believe launching a celebratory literally.” Set to drop early Maui and Sons pieces thing left to do is hit the
the wildest things were legacy line comes as next year, the line will on shelves at Oak. “Surf waves. ERIN HANSEN
happening on western second nature. “I surfed channel that nostalgia by seems so relevant with its gotcha.com

5 0 T H E FA DE R
 “SOMETIMES
I’M RUNNING
THROUGH THE
R ye Rye gets shy in the club. Sure, she dances
with complete disregard for both ligaments
and gravity, but when the teenage rapper hears
CLUB TRYING her own fireball rasp over the PA at Baltimore’s
TO HIDE.” Club Choices or The Paradox, she’s all butterflies.
“Sometimes [the DJs] be all on the mic like, Rye Rye,
where you at?” she says. “I’m running through the
club trying to hide.” It’s an impossible scenario
to imagine if you’ve seen Rye Rye stomp across
a stage in recent months. After touring with MIA
and Blaqstarr, she’s become unflappable—a
scratchy, scrappy voice booming out of a teeny-
tiny body, undaunted by the apocalyptic club
beats detonating around her.
She sounds a little timid on the phone, though.

GENF
She says she likes to hang out on her street after
school, and there are enough awkward gaps in
the conversation that you can hear birds, traffic
and kids laughing and know she’s telling the
truth. But it was on the phone that Rye Rye’s rap
career began two summers ago. “I was just
writing poetry and my sister knew Blaqstarr,”
she says. “He asked her if I knew how to rap, so
I called [his] phone and left him a voicemail,
rapping.” The club producer invited Rye Rye to
FLY CHILD the studio to cut “Shake It to the Ground,” a
minimal, speaker-thumping cut with a hook that
RYE RYE chopped her voice into dizzying, double-dutch
GROWS UP IN hiccups. It ended up getting spins on Baltimore
THE CLUB radio station 92Q, and now even her biology
teacher is a fan.
But Rye Rye is about to graduate and like any
other teenager on the verge of grabbing their
diploma and entering the ambiguity of adulthood,
she hasn’t made up her mind about what comes
next. By the end of the year, she hopes to pursue
a degree in childcare and release a debut album
full of “crazy songs.” She’s been working with a
young Philly producer named Zakee and recently
posted their first collaboration, “Gangsta Girl,”
on her MySpace. The track finds Rye Rye talking
tough over air raid sirens, squeaky lasers and
rickety digital handclaps, her flow more tenacious
than ever. On the final verse she breaks into a
sputtering cadence that evokes Rod Lee huffing
helium, then delivers the hook: I’m so damn
dangerous. It feels like a warning shot from a
young rapper about to step out of the club and
into the real world. CHRIS RICHARDS
thefader.com/ryerye

Rye Rye at her

grandmother’s house
in Baltimore, MD.

PHOTOGRAPHY GABRIELA BULISOVA

52 T H E FA D E R
 “CHARLIE LOUVIN
M y great-grandmother Myrtle was what are all about pining—for the girl who won’t Drakkar Sauna outside
STILL DRIVES A her fellow Oklahomans used to call a do you wrong, for a god who can hear your
The Family Wash in
BIG OLD CAR “real holy roller.” She played electric guitar in prayers, for an afterlife free of hardship—and
Nashville, TN.

AND SMOKES church and typically punctuated any bit of Drakkar Sauna play them as if their mortal
MARLBORO good news with a “Praise god!” She was also souls depend on it.
LIGHTS.”
fond of Depression-era gospel songs, which The making of Wars and Tornadoes
she sang at family gatherings in a sweet and brought the band’s fascination with the
warbly old lady style. It’s what I remember Louvins full circle in the most literal of ways.
most about her, which probably explains “We played in Nashville for National Record
why listening to Drakkar Sauna’s Wars and Store Day and Charlie Louvin turned up at
Tornadoes made tears fall from my eyes. the show,” says Cochran. “He’s in his eighties,
The album finds the Kansas duo covering but he still drives a big old car and smokes
the classic fire and brimstone country of the Marlboro Lights. We were scared to ask him,
Louvin Brothers, an Alabama twosome who but he was eager to get up and sing with us.

GENF
wrote some of the most influential gospel- We did ‘The Family Who Prays’ and ‘Are You
tinged, barnthumpin’ music of the ’50s Afraid to Die?’ with him. Then he hung around
and ’60s. Jeff Stolz and Wallace Cochran to take pictures with all the girls at the show.”
of Drakkar Sauna aren’t brothers—or even I believe great-grandma Myrtle would surely
cousins, as often rumored—but they are best approve. T. COLE RACHEL
pals from Lawrence who’ve been making thefader.com/drakkarsauna
freaked-out, bluegrassy folk for the past
six years. They’ve been performing Louvin
OLD TIME Brothers songs since their earliest rehearsals,
RELIGION but were hesitant to go all the way. “We’ve
been playing their songs live for so long,“ says
DRAKKAR Cochran, “It took us a long time to get good
SAUNA HEED enough to actually record them. We wanted to
THE GOSPEL do it right.” With “The Family Who Prays” and
“The River Jordan,” Drakkar Sauna don’t so
much interpret the Louvin’s songs as actually
inhabit them—with guitars, mandolins and
vocal harmonies square dancing around tales
of lost love and spiritual yearning. The songs

PHOTOGRAPHY MATTHEW WILLIAMS

Get in touch with your dark side. YourOtherYou.com
Prototype shown with optional equip’t. ©2008 Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc.
5 4 T H E FA D E R
 “WE KNOW
S eattle’s Whalebones make slow burning drummer Jon Treneff) right now is some small Three members of
EXACTLY anthems dense with ideas and memories. West Coast tours, a couple festival dates and a
Whalebones at vocalist/
WHERE THE One listen to their thirty-minute Morning CD-R recording of “practice jams, outtakes and
guitarist Justin Deary’s
Central District home in
LAST STEP WAS Man EP captures an entire Sunday afternoon random shit.” There’s also a full length that is Seattle, WA.
AND WHERE listening session where you rediscover every still in its very nascent stages.
THE NEXT ONE
IS.” great rock record you forgot you even had. Deary seems confident that the band will
Their songs are usually compact bits of keep trucking, despite the fact that Blaschke
stabbing organ and heavy riffs, but sometimes recently moved to LA and that he’s not sure
they get spacey or approach quiet melancholy, the current lineup will be the permanent
like on Morning Man’s standout “Don’t You one (although he is hopeful). If anything,
Know.” The song comes midway through Whalebones are at the point that could push
the EP, and it sounds like an outtake from Neil them into stoner rock obscurity or into stoner
Young’s Zuma. Over some heartbreak guitar rock superstardom, if such a thing exists.
work they harmonize All that’s left of you is “We’ve agreed to keep going until we decide

GENF
pain over and over until it starts to become less to stop, but we’re doing it, so we’re definitely a
of a depressing idea and more of a comforting band,” says Deary. Then he pauses, sounding
fact. It’s simultaneously huge and personal, vaguely shocked by the idea that he’s in a
like they’re singing closely-guarded secrets to band that people are starting to care about.
a packed stadium. “We’re a band,” he says again. “We’re doing it.”
Right now though, Whalebones is a small SAM HOCKLEY-SMITH
band that can’t pin down a lineup, even as thefader.com/whalebones
they get booked to play big time festivals like
TRUCKIN Sasquatch and open for trailblazers Dead
Meadow. But they’re not sweating it. They
WHALEBONES have everything under control. “It never feels
ARE NOT like, Oh shit how did we get in this position?”
SATISFIED says guitarist and vocalist Justin Deary. “We
know exactly where the last step was and
where the next one is. I’d be lying if I said I was
content, but I guess you don’t want to be. You
want to keep on going.” What that means for
the four current members (Deary, keyboardist
Amy Blaschke, bassist Jonas Haskins and

PHOTOGRAPHY MATT LUTTON

5 6 T HE FA DE R
 I nside the tiny control room at BG studios bought an MPC, some keyboards and sat 77Klash at Flatbush’s BG
“EVERYTHING’S in Flatbush, Brooklyn, Gize Burrowes down to “figure out how to get out all of
Studio in Brooklyn, NY.
CHANGING. points toward the closet vocal booth and this music in my head.” His beats floated
POLAR BEARS
CAN’T EVEN says, “That’s where I did ‘Mad Again.’” It’s around until 2005, when his slow-burning,
FUCKING FIND not so surprising that Burrowes, bka 77Klash, crunk-infused Skallawa riddim found its way
ICE.” summoned his breakneck performance to number one in Jamaica for three weeks
for the song in such tight confines. Spitting straight as Turblence’s “Notorious.” “People
maniacally over the track’s radiating throb in the music industry, they bash that record
and minimal kicks (courtesy of producers ’til this day,” he says. “Cause it has digital
Team Shadetek), he sounds like a pinball distortion and it’s weird and the sounds
ricocheting off the bumpers, building crunch. And I was like, Watch, this record
energy like he’s racking up a high score. An is going to keep going like the Energizer
escalating synth line—like a digital tea kettle bunny.”
getting ready to blow—signals the chorus, The music 77Klash makes today, however,

GENF
the beat drops to half time and a Johnny is vastly different from the digital roots of
Osbourne sample wails away, offering “Notorious.” His upcoming Code For the
a fleeting groove before the verse starts Streets EP contains everything from fiery
pushing up your heart rate again. It’s sonic gunshot anthems to airy tracks that sound
claustrophobia, recorded in what used to like TV on the Radio and Faith No More
be a cramped corner bedroom. fucking with dancehall fancies. He isn’t
Raised in Kingston, 77Klash (pronounced abandoning his reggae heritage, he’s just
“two seven klash”) began playing percussion allowing it to absorb some electro damage
for Junior Reid at the age of ten, a gig he from the fringe. “It kind of represents what’s
claims had him performing for crowds of going on right now,” he says. “Music, the
ROCKERS
“ten to fifteen thousand.” But two years later sound, the world. Everything’s changing.
77KLASH,S his family left Jamaica for Washington DC, Polar bears can’t even fucking find ice.”
BIG BASH where he spent his teens hanging around SAM DUKE
the neighboring rehearsal studios at 5th thefader.com/77klash
and M streets, soaking up hip-hop, go-go,
punk and jazz and watching “some of the
sickest musicians I’ve ever seen in my life.”
After high school he bounced around, finally
settling in Brooklyn in 1997, where he later

PHOTOGRAPHY ANNIE TRITT

5 8 T H E FA D E R
 “YOU REALLY
N icknamed “The Pen” by Jay-Z because “uncool,” i.e. rocking a mini-mohawk, dubbing Sean Garrett rehearsing
THINK I WOULD he’s written basically every R&B hit himself “a young Lionel Richie,” and readily
at Dance 411 Studios in
RISK MY ENTIRE of the last four summers, Sean Garrett’s admitting that he loves bowling. As a military
Atlanta, GA.

CAREER BY discography is almost too ridiculous to fathom. brat in the 1980s, Garrett grew up overseas,
GOING OUT AS He bestowed Usher with club swag (“Yeah”), where he was exposed to Michael Jackson,
AN ARTIST AND
NOT BRINGING Ciara with sexy independence (“Goodies”), Sheena Easton, Gloria Estefan and all variants
THE FIRE? I’M Beyoncé with dimension (“Ring the Alarm”) of big room euro dance music. “I gravitated
BRINGING and Nelly with a grill (um, “Grillz”). But for to a lot of things that a kid in the hood did not
THE FUCKING his first solo album, Turbo 919, Garrett took on know of, and it made me fearless in creating
FIRESTONE.”
the titular persona based on both James Bond music,” he says.
and sports cars, and, as he says, is “like a force, Which is why Turbo 919 is packed with
it’s unstoppable, it’s a strong energy.” It’s as uptempo pop bangers (the requisite), electro
though Garrett assumed an alternate identity tracks, a couple of trance-influenced R&B
to get out from behind his own success. jams and, most importantly, astute storytelling

GENF
“What people don’t know is that I’m not just a and lyrical truth. So shout to a billion more
songwriter,” stresses the twenty-nine-year-old humid nights, sweating it out to songs The
Atlanta resident. “You really think I would risk Pen penned, feeling it so hard we forget a time
my entire career by going out as an artist and when his translations of everyday life weren’t
not bringing the fire? I’m bringing the fucking a part of our collective summer subconscious.
firestone with me. People gotta understand JULIANNE SHEPHERD
that there are so many sensibilities that go thefader.com/seangarrett
into being an incredible hitmaker.”
Hitmaking. As in, his oil massage-ready
single, “Grippin,” which depicts a night of
POP INFINITY passionate sextacy, rocks the best Ludacris
SEAN GARRETT verse in a minute and hinges on the kind of
MADE YOUR chorus that gestates inside your brain like that
FAVORITE little worm from The Wrath of Khan. But it
SONG should be noted Sean Garrett is not the enemy,
nor is he some corpo coke-sniffer greasing DJ
playlists with payola and continental breakfast
on the label AmEx. For a “hitmaker,” Garrett
is pretty OK with being kind of nerdy and

PHOTOGRAPHY THORNE ANDERSON

6 0 T HE FA D E R
 “WHAT I LIKE
S peaking on the phone from his Oslo home, “It was such a great thing to just work on a Lindstrøm at a café in
ABOUT OSLO Lindstrøm is working on emails, drinking big, ambitious track and just build and build
Oslo, Norway.
IS THAT IT’S coffee and preparing himself for a long night and never end,” he says. Where You Go I Go
FAR AWAY. in. Describing the city as “sort of lonely,” Oslo Too came together quickly, but that doesn’t
PEOPLE AREN’T is a good match for the modest Norwegian mean it’s any less impressive. With nods to
COMING
HERE ALL THE producer’s lifestyle. “It’s my favorite city. It’s Giorgio Moroder’s score for Midnight Express,
TIME AND not a very special city,” he says. “But what I like Kraftwerk’s “Tour de France” and Michael’s
WANTING TO about Oslo is that it’s far away. People aren’t Jackson’s “Thriller,” it’s equally adept at
HANG OUT.” coming here all the time and wanting to hang soundtracking midnight visions as lulling a
out. If I lived in London or New York or Berlin I child to sleep.
would probably not have time anymore to When asked if there is any story, literal
make music.” or emotional, that explains the trajectory of
Though he’s been one of the top cosmic Where You Go I Go Too, Lindstrøm nervously
travelers in the revitalized space disco scene laughs his way to an answer. “I think it’s some

GENF
for the past few years, Lindstrøm had never kind of journey,” he says, without elaboration
released an album of completely new material. on where to (Upstate New York? 2028?
So the fact that his new disc Where You Go Transcendence? Booyah City?). Then he
I Go Too is a fifty-five minute instrumental continues, “I don’t know, I don’t really like to
composition divided into three interconnected talk about my music.” But with its marathon
tracks provokes some not entirely ludicrous pulse and crescendos that resolve into
assumptions. It’s a challenge to the possibilities shimmering exhaustion, to me, Where You Go
NEW TRAVELS of his genre. It’s an attempt to reclaim the I Go Too tells the story of quiet victory.
album format. It’s a statement. Of course, the ERIC DUCKER

I ,S
LINDSTROM reality is much less grandiose. thefader.com/lindstrom
UNDERSTATED After making his name with delirious
DISCO DARING tributes to disco romanticism, Lindstrøm tried
to cut the songs he was working on down to
pop length, but he wasn’t satisfied with the
results. “I guess I wasn’t ready for that yet,”
he admits. So instead, he went the opposite
route and stretched his ideas further, pushing
build-ups past the thirteen-minute mark and
letting themes reappear like forgotten friends.

PHOTOGRAPHY ESPEN RASMUSSEN

6 2 T HE FA DE R
 “WE LIKE
W indsurf’s cosmic house tracks play at they want to keep Windsurf far away from Sam Grawe and Dan
GETTING an easy California speed—just right the careerist cycle of eat-sleep-record-tour,
Judd of Windsurf in
their studio in San
INSPIRATION for Sunday afternoon head nodding. Where and closer to their summer hobbies, like Francisco, CA.
FROM OUR most dance beats are designed to yank you scuba diving and surfing. “We like getting
VACATIONS IN onto the floor, the spacious pop made by San inspiration from our vacations in Mexico,”
MEXICO.”
Francisco duo Sam Grawe and Dan Judd are Judd says. “A lot of our ideas come from just
more suited for long walks on Ocean Beach, looking at the ocean and relaxing.”
and, according to them, reading a book on It’s not just talk. On their self-titled full-
BART. It’s all a part of a musical style they length, the tracks roll out like waves and open
call “pacifica.” Grawe describes it as a “West up like the summery firmament. Combining
Coast alternative to the Cologne sound—sort Judd’s Michael Jackson beats and R&B guitars
of an electronic, futuristic, sunset disco kind with Grawe’s epic prog synths, they liken
of vibe” that includes the work of fellow the results to “’80s montage music.” And
Californians The Beat Broker, Rollmottle, they’re right—cue up their twelve-minute opus

GENF
Project Sandro and Mardu. “There just wasn’t “Crystal Neon” and POOF! Andrew McCarthy
any kind of scene for what we we’re doing,” materializes, pondering his mistakes while
Judd says. “So we made one for ourselves.” pitching a rock into a lake. But for all of
Both Grawe and Judd talk a lot about Windsurf’s nostalgia there’s nothing overtly
getting into the right musical mindset, which, ironic about it. “We’re making music for
for them, means channeling German rockers ourselves,” Grawe says. “We just want some
Harmonia after they got all hippie and ran off cool music to listen to in the car while driving
to the countryside to immerse themselves in on Highway 1.” ROSS SIMONINI

BEACH MUSIC hermetic electronic jam sessions. So, at first, thefader.com/windsurf

it seems weird that the members of Windsurf
WINDSURF actually work for a living (Grawe edits Dwell
SAYS RELAX magazine, Judd designs websites), and
even weirder that they want to keep it that
way. For the past three years they’ve been
putting together Windsurf tracks, remixes
for LCD Soundsystem, plus their solo projects
Sorcerer ( Judd) and Hatchback (Grawe), with
no intention of reaching that increasingly
anachronistic goal of “making it.” Instead,

PHOTOGRAPHY THEO RIGBY

6 4 T HE FA DE R
 “I WAS AIMING
I n an American diner in East London, times. She was a widow at seventeen!” Ebony Bones at Rough
FOR THE Ebony Bones is deep into an anecdote Ebony started making demos in her
Trade record shop in
Shoreditch, London.
SOUNDTRACK about the time she met Grace Jones. “I was dressing room, then once the show was
TO THE fifteen in the front row of this private show, cancelled, she began recording with The
APPROACH screaming like it was a Michael Jackson
OF THE DEATH Damned’s drummer Rat Scabies after the
STAR VS. concert. Grace was singing ‘My Jamaican two got into a heated discussion at a pub
THE EWOKS Guy,’ but she changed the lyric to ‘girl’ and about the Holy Grail (as you do). Now she’s
HAVING A TEA she leaned over and snogged me,” she says. co-producing songs with UK queenmakers
PARTY.” “Full on the mouth! It was great!’” like Future Cut and Richard X for her debut
Not only did she get a kiss, but now years album. While her world town sounds
later, Jones has become a fan of Ebony’s sensationalize the ear, she is nearly as well
music. It’s an unsurprising development known for her wardrobe—built from thrift
when you hear the twenty-five-year-old’s store finds and self-sewn creations—that
kaleidoscopic mish-mash of post-punk, includes bright tights, neon wigs, carnival

GENF
tropical influences and electro. I tell her that headdresses and oversized chains. The effect
“We Know All About You,” her song about the surpasses her status as a future fashion icon
surveillance cameras that film the average and takes her into the realm of intergalactic
Londoner three hundred times a day, sounds sonic champion. “You don’t need someone
like the castle level in Super Mario Bros., but else to be a hero,” she says as she polishes
relocated to the Temple of Doom. “Exactly!” off her vanilla milkshake with a flick of her
she says. “I was aiming for the soundtrack to caramel-coloured hair. “I’m my own hero.”
BRIGHT TIGHTS, the approach of the Death Star vs. the Ewoks KIM TAYLOR BENNETT

BIG CITY having a tea party.” thefader.com/ebonybones

Born to Caribbean parents in Brixton,
EBONY BONES Ebony’s mother frequently jetted off to Milan,
IS ALL working for the likes of Missoni and YSL, and
EXCLAMATION her father sold music from a street market
POINTS stall. After a stint at drama and singing
school, she left at sixteen and got a part on
the trashy soap Family Affairs, where she
spent seven years playing a mouthy teen.
“My character almost got into prostitution!”
she says. “Then she got married about four

PHOTOGRAPHY AUBREY WADE

6 6 T H E FA D E R
G_fkf^iXg_\[YpK\iipI`Z_Xi[jfe
WONDER WOMAN
A BRITON
CONQUERS
AMERICA.
ESTELLE IS
THE SOUND
OF THE GIRL
NEXT DOOR
WINNING

STO RY T. COLE R ACHEL PHOTOGR APHY DOR OT HY HON G

 T
EST ELLE

he first time I see Estelle

in person, she looks like a superhero. I am standing awkwardly outside her
dressing room at a video shoot in New York City in late April, waiting for
someone to tell me where I should be. Even though I can’t actually see through
the small army of stylists, assistants, managers and publicists crowded around
the doorway, laughing and applauding, it’s clear this tiny room is the epicenter
of some huge production. Somewhere from behind the door, I hear a distinctly
British-sounding voice asking, “Are you sure? You sure this will stay on?
I don’t want them to come shooting out!” A few minutes later, the crowd parts
and Estelle emerges—smiling wide, she’s all long legs, impossibly huge eyes,
glistening lips and, I’m fairly certain, wearing a cape. “Are they ready for me?”
she asks, and before anyone can answer, she trots down the hallway and out
onto the perfectly illuminated soundstage.

“THERE WERE A MILLION GIRL SINGERS

AROUND ME AND NONE OF THEM WERE
GETTING SIGNED. I COULD WRITE A RAP
IN ABOUT TWENTY MINUTES AND THEN
GO SPIT IT.”
Two days later she will drop Shine, her major label debut, in America.
Released in the UK last March, the record has already yielded a couple of huge
singles abroad: the chart-topping “American Boy” featuring Kanye West, a
breezy ode to romantic tourism, in which a girl from London town explores the
mysteries of American men; and the will.i.am-produced “Wait A Minute (Just
a Touch),” a marriage of jitterbugging beats and a vocal hook that sounds like
it could have floated off a long-lost disco album and landed in the middle of
this R&B come-on. Both songs have generated a considerable amount of heat
stateside. Given the recent US fascination with British pop and soul singers
like Amy Winehouse, Duffy and Adele, the time seems right for an artist like
Estelle—a charismatic rapper/singer who channels a hybrid of classic Motown,
reggae and old school hip-hop. Her voice—soulful and, for the most part,
quietly understated—is in keeping with her girl from down the block image.
She might not be the kind of powerhouse belter doing crazy vocal runs on top
of every chorus, but her sultry, accented style switches gears effortlessly all
over Shine, going from diva-fied soul to I’m-bout-to-tell-you-what’s-up rapper,
often in the course of a single song.
If there were ever a time for black female singer from the UK to finally hit big
in the States, this would be it. One look at her upcoming schedule indicates

Estelle on set for her video

“No Substitue Love.”

72 T H E FA D E R
EST ELLE

that her record label believes it, too. In the following week Estelle will: finish Life was not always quite so chaotically glamorous for Estelle. Born Fanta
shooting the video, play a sold-out album release show on each coast, Estelle Swaray (yes, her first name is Fanta) in West London, she was one
perform live on almost every major late night and daytime talk show and of eight children raised in a very conservative household. Even though her
give approximately five thousand interviews. Everyone on Estelle’s team is parents were strict, they encouraged Estelle to sing, but only after they
friendly, helpful and quietly frantic. The notion that this is a make or break realized she was serious about doing so. “My mom was always just like, If
moment for the singer, as important as a summer blockbuster’s opening you’re gonna do this then really do it, don’t fuck around and do it halfway,”
weekend, seems to weigh heavily on everyone except, oddly enough, she recalls. “Don’t expect anyone to come walking through the door to
Estelle. She just seems stoked. hand it all to you.” It was the struggle of her childhood that provided the
“Whatevuh,” says Estelle. For our first interview, we are hiding in her fuel for much of Estelle’s best material, particularly her breakthrough single
dressing room during a midday break at the video shoot. She is wrapped “1980” which she released herself in 2004 through her own label, Stellar
in a fuzzy pink robe and picking at a piece of grilled salmon. “I mean, Ents. “I started rapping because everyone else was singing at that point.
why should I be stressed out?” she asks. “Look at all this makeup!” With There were a million girl singers around me and none of them were getting
huge artist palettes of every possible shade of gloss and eyeshadow signed,” explains Estelle. “I could write a rap in about twenty minutes
covering all available surfaces, we are surrounded by more cosmetics than and then go spit it. It was just about saying what I was feeling, so it felt
a Bloomingdale’s beauty counter. “I grew into doing all this,” she says, easy to me.”
gesturing around the room. “I was not a girly-girl when I was a kid. I was Despite a devoted following in the UK and world tours with Kardinal
a kid in a flowery jumpsuit wearing pinrolls and old Converse. When I hit Offishall’s Black Jays International, it would be her friendship with John
twenty-five and started writing this album, I went through a transformation. Legend that would ultimately take her career to the next level. After
I learned to accept my body and be happy with myself. Then all this stuff launching Homeschool Records, Estelle was the first person Legend signed.
actually became fun.” “John never told me what to do, but he really pushed me,” she says.
In person, there is a definite ease about Estelle, even if she does seem a “It was a battle between us in the studio. Who has the dopest lyric, who
little wary at first. I am told repeatedly by everyone in her circle that she is has the dopest melody? Is this shit bulletproof? Is this shit as ridiculous as
totally chill, super real and not shy about saying if she’s not feeling you. All it could be?” The resulting album, despite input from producers and
three things turn out to be true. Since she has already been put through her special guests, is purely Estelle’s vision—from the lyrics to the melodies
paces by the UK press, who have created fictional boyfriends for her and to the background vocals.
tried to generate beef between her and other female singers, Estelle seems While recording Shine, rather than spending all her time jumping
unfazed and unbothered by pretty much anything I bring up. The only between New York and London, Estelle opted to save money on airfare
subject that causes her to raise an eyebrow comes during a conversation and move to New York permanently. Despite a small amount of culture
about the gradual glamification of her style and media speculation that shock (“‘Oh, you’re black and from London? Let me hear your accent!’ It’s
she’s ramping up her look because of pressures from her label. so patronizing”), the city suits her. “It’s like London on crack,” she jokes.
“I think people aren’t used to seeing someone like me just totally going It’s ironic that just as Estelle’s fame in her own hometown was finally
for it,” she explains, “I enjoy getting to be a girl. I know that I’m not very blossoming, she was settling into life as a New Yorker. Like a growing
traditional looking, but I figure if you got good boobs, show them. If you number of black Britons who currently call NYC home, life in the States
got big lips, make them bigger. Why not? You gotta work with what you can be a welcome respite from the strictures of British classicism and, in
have. I look this way because I want to. Why should I apologize for wanting Estelle’s case, a place where racial divides aren’t as aggressively played out
to straighten my teeth? I’m not being true to myself unless my teeth are within the music industry. Mostly though, Estelle’s move was a pragmatic
crooked? Come on!” And with that, she flashes a big smile, exposing her one. “Everything I was doing in terms of recording, in terms of my work,
apparently controversial set of braces. was centered in New York,” she says, “and I got tired of being woken up
As it turns out, Estelle is not playing a superhero in her video. She is in the middle of the night in London every time I had to take a business
sporting a kind of tear-away make-up guard to protect the pink Kristian call. It was getting in the way of my sleep.”
Aadnevik dress that she will be wearing for much of the clip for “No The subject of Estelle’s accent comes up a lot when talking about her
Substitute Love.” The song—a love child of George Michael’s “Faith” music. While Americans appear to be suddenly fascinated with hearing
and Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)”—doesn’t get old, even after British accents from female singers, few actual rappers from the UK ever
approximately one hundred plays at the shoot. The video itself is a riff on manage the leap stateside (male or female). “Here’s the thing. I learned to
the classic “Faith” clip, with Estelle dancing around a jukebox and giving sing by listening to people like Mary J. Blige, so my accent doesn’t come
the kiss-off to a handsome boy with a guitar. At some point during the out as strongly when I’m just singing, but when I’m rapping… well, that has
filming, Project Runway winner Christian Siriano shows up and watches been the ongoing argument,” says Estelle. “People still view rap music
from the sidelines. A recent convert to Estelle’s music and, no doubt, a as being so specifically American, and it shouldn’t be. Rap is about telling
strong supporter of her fierceness, he is on hand to fit her into a dress he your story and talking about where you are from. I love the way British
has designed for her upcoming tour. As we stare at the video monitors, rap sounds, I love the way we say certain words. I feel like hiding your
I ask Siriano what he thinks makes Estelle so special. He answers simply, accent—literally, covering up where you are from—automatically cancels
“She’s so cool looking. I mean, those amazing lips!” out anything else that comes out your mouth. It’s false.”

“HIDING YOUR ACCENT—LITERALLY, COVERING UP WHERE YOU ARE FROM— AUTOMATICALLY CANCELS OUT ANYTHING ELSE THAT COMES OUT YOUR MOUTH.”

76 T HE FA DE R
 E STE LLE

Watching Estelle perform at her album release show in New York, it’s
easy to see why she has often been touted as a sort of British Lauryn Hill.
Sassing about the stage in a feathery cocktail dress, she slays every song,
moving seamlessly from the reggae-flavored “Magnificent” to the bomp of
“Pretty Please” to the familiar flow of “1980.” When I tell Estelle that I could
imagine her music sounding equally at home at a club in London, a house
party in Queens or blasting out of the window of my mom’s car somewhere
in the American Midwest, she is genuinely pleased. “I love that idea,” she
says, “I don’t know anyone who listens only to rap music, or only to hip-
hop or only rock music. I went through ten years of trying to make music
that would just touch all of my friends. Guess what? My friends didn’t even
buy it. I figured I should just try and touch the whole world instead.”

A week after our first meeting, I see Estelle again. This time, I’m not even
certain she is awake. Sitting perfectly still between takes at a Saturday
morning photo shoot, the singer closes her eyes and waits for direction.
She has arrived from LA on a redeye flight and gone directly into hair and
makeup. Now, several hours into the shoot, the chaos of the past week
appears to have finally caught up with her. As a rule, such moments of
abject exhaustion are not the best times for an interview, but given that
she still has a late night recording session (a collaboration with Gym Class
Heroes, naturally) followed by an early morning flight to Switzerland in
front of her, this is our only chance. “I am such a cow when I get tired,” she
tells me. “This is the point when my mom would say, You’re tired, you’re
a cow, get to your room. Just ignore me.” Still, within a few minutes she’s

“I WENT THROUGH TEN YEARS OF TRYING

TO MAKE MUSIC THAT WOULD JUST
TOUCH ALL OF MY FRIENDS. GUESS WHAT?
MY FRIENDS DIDN’T EVEN BUY IT.”

laughing as she describes meeting Prince at his Grammy party. “I never

get starstruck, not ever, but for real…I was totally his bitch for about
ten seconds.”
Later that afternoon, she’s sitting on a puffy leather sofa in the New
York studio where much of Shine was recorded. It’s the first time that I’ve
actually seen her relax all week. “It’s really difficult to be in an industry
where you’re flooded with other people’s opinions about what you should
be doing. You’re constantly being judged and you’re supposed to be quiet
and accept it. Just trusting yourself and not really caring whether or not
someone else approves and knowing that you are proud of what you’ve
done…getting there is so hard.”
Watching the sun set over Lower Manhattan, it seems appropriate to ask
Estelle the obligatory, “Now what?” Having made her dream record and
assumed full control of her creative life, it’s unclear what she might want to
do next. “Let’s see, “ she says, “I want to sell lots of records and I wouldn’t
mind having a kid at some point, like before I turn thirty-five. Mostly I just
want to be really happy.”
“Aren’t you happy now?” I ask.
“Oh, I’m getting there,” she laughs. And with that, she picks up a cup of
tea and heads into the vocal booth, eager to get back to work. F

T H E FADER 79
STORY DAVID BEVAN PHOTOGRAPHY LAUREN FLEISHMAN

THE
MORNING
AFTER
After a lifetime of bad habits,
Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
talks himself down
MIL E S BENJAMIN AN T HON Y R OBI N SON

L
of rooftop exorcisms and twilight explosions is trite. But the tale wouldn’t matter as much
has laid dormant for two years, but it will finally if Robinson didn’t maintain the self-awareness
meet ears this summer after being delayed by to acknowledge its unmistakable clichés and,
label disinterest and endless Grizzly Bear tours. just as significantly, the talent to transcend
Its title is somewhat simply Miles Benjamin them. Because beyond the mythology and hazy
Anthony Robinson, the same ten syllables of retrospection, Robinson writes rock & roll songs
taffy Robinson uses when introducing himself. that trigger tiny earthquakes along your spine.
Speaking on the recording of Miles Benjamin Still, to understand the story of how Robinson
Anthony Robinson, Taylor sums it up with, made peace with his past, you have to hear
“When you dig up the dirt, things get dirty,” and more than the man’s sad-eyed songs. You need
that is unquestionably the reason it is such a to meet the kid.
startling debut. Robinson is willing to backtrack Robinson was born to a black father and a
wildly into the corners of his own psychic white mother who divorced just three years
geography, from the muddy forests of Oregon later. In an origin story worthy of a blues
ooking to the syringe-dappled beaches of Coney Island classic, on the night of his birth, Robinson’s
west out of Brooklyn, past the glass castles of to the NYU classrooms that saddled him with great-grandmother proclaimed him to be “the
Manhattan, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson can debt he’s still trying to escape. As dramatic and oldest soul in the room.” She died the same
see Oregon and every shade of green he used erratic as Robinson is, his songs never flirt with night. Robinson received lessons in stage
to know. He can feel the quiet he had all but histrionics, nor do they hide his shameless, training and misanthropy at an early age. His
lost. Until he found this spot in Williamsburg, troubling relationships with sex and drugs comedian father—a depressive named Miles
the one with a backyard just within earshot of and alcohol. His album is a mess of riffs and Terry Anthony Robinson with a deep love of
the water, he had been searching for something poetry you can get drunk on, in the bar or your Woody Allen—took him along on tour, often
like it. It was here that he felt surrounded by new bedroom. incorporating his son into his act and delivering
family—hosting BBQs, playing records, smoking “Buriedfed”—the album’s tightrope opener, show biz wisdom. “We were driving into Vegas
weed and dreaming up riffs in the sunlight. and what Robinson refers to as his “mission and he explained the marquee system to me,”
Standing in the lawn behind the house where statement”—is a cannonball tone poem in Robinson says, “how the bigger acts go up top
he no longer lives but still visits just to feel which he howls over a simple acoustic guitar and steak dinner is the biggest. I said, ‘Well one
that vibe, he looks down at his weathered Doc and a ramshackle drum beat about kicking open day, my name is going to be on the marquee
Martens. “I used to take such good care of this the door of his own casket. The song is new and bigger than yours.’ I was a wiseass, but he
grass,” he says with a sigh. “We put a lot of love anthem material, transforming Robinson from raised me to be.” Robinson claims that’s one of
into this yard.” tortured rock & roll caricature into a stand-in his father’s favorite stories to retell and it’s one
Every morning during the winter of 2006, for a generation that needs to be talked down of the few he offers when describing the “dark,
Chris Taylor of Brooklyn parlor experimentalists from the ledge. His words purge so forcefully funny motherfucker” that instilled in him the
Grizzly Bear and Robinson’s self-described “best that by the time the song reaches its climax desire to tell stories the way he does.
friend, producer and psychologist,” would show you’re little else but goosebumps and bones. Shortly before adolescence, Robinson moved
up here with two cups of coffee. After a high- But “Buriedfed” is so raw and promising that with his mother to the picturesque, if racially
protein breakfast of eggs, bacon and baked it becomes obvious that its first lines, This is monochromatic, wilds of Oregon. He had
beans, the two worked every day and late into my last song about myself, about my friends/ already discovered rock & roll under the
the night. They were recording the songs Taylor Found something else to sing, are a lie. tutelage of his father (who was also a former
and others had been trying to coax out of Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson’s backstory Zeppelin-touting disc jockey), but he was
Robinson for a while. The resulting collection of addiction and rock bottoms is as biblical as it coming of age in the ’90s to the angsty alt-rock

“ROCK & ROLL IS WEIRD FOR ME BECAUSE I CAN’T

HAVE MY FUCKING HAIR IN MY EYES. I DON’T LOOK
LIKE THE PEOPLE I’VE EMULATED TO SOME DEGREE.”

Miles Benjamin
Anthony Robinson
and one of a thousand
Parliaments.

8 2 T H E FA D E R
 MILE S BE NJAMIN ANTH ONY ROBINS ON

of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins and cliquish labyrinths of NYU, started bands,
Everclear. As he started inhaling rock biographies melted down, burned money, worked shitty jobs
and listening to Pavement and Sonic Youth, he and French kissed Julian Casablancas before
taught himself to play guitar, discovered four- The Strokes became The Strokes. He amassed
track recording and began writing songs when his stories. “I felt washed up by the time I was
friends weren’t looking. “Punk rock is about rules, twenty-two,” says Robinson, now twenty-five.
dude. I found that alienating,” Robinson explains As the summer following his sophomore
of his divergent tastes. “I was fourteen and trying year approached, Robinson didn’t make plans
to get into hardcore and I remember thinking, to go home nor did he secure a place to spend
Wait, this is like the fucking football team. So I his nights. All he knew was that he wanted
started smoking weed and listening to classic to write and record in New York. When a stay
rock.” on Long Island selling drugs to locals with a
In Oregon he became what he describes friend was cut short by his friend’s parents,
as the “token” black kid he wasn’t—a lock he came back to the city and began what he
to win African-American achievement awards describes casually as his “homeless vacation,”
he didn’t believe in (he says he has “never been splitting time between surfing friends’ couches
to Africa” and neither has anyone in his family) and Coney Island benches. “I’d wake up every
and the one teachers asked to share a few words morning and there would be crabs coming
every February when Black History Month came down the boardwalk,” Robinson says. When
around. “People’s conception of black culture is not writing pages of lyrics on said couches,
fucking hip-hop. I don’t feel white or black. I feel he spent his days asleep in Washington
equally rejected by every race,” says Robinson. Square Park or scamming recording time at
“Rock & roll is weird for me because I can’t have a now defunct NYU studio. The way he tells
my fucking hair in my eyes. I don’t look like the it, it sounds like he was backpacking through
people I’ve emulated to some degree. But I came Europe. “I was just rolling,” he says. “I was
to peace with that a while ago.” living an epic summer.” But when his already
Robinson juggled high school and very limited resources had disappeared,
psychedelics with relative ease, so in 1999 when Robinson finally called his mother to ask for
Yale and NYU came calling, the choice was clear: a plane ticket home. When his childhood best
go where songs are birthed and tramps like Bob friend picked him up at the airport in Portland
Dylan, Lou Reed and Jean-Michel Basquiat will a few days later, he told him, “You smell like a
themselves into legends. From the moment he homeless person.” To which Robinson replied,
got to New York, Robinson drank up and gulped “That’s because I am a homeless person.”
down the city that always ends up swallowing After he came back to New York that fall
you. He pogoed between the Bowery Ballroom, with new clothes and new songs, he settled
Irving Plaza and anywhere music was happening back into the NYU dorm life and met a girl. He
and class was not. He skated by, sold pot, shot copped to being an addict and got clean for
cocaine, downed diet speed, navigated the her, a condition that Robinson was asked to

“I WAS FOURTEEN AND TRYING

TO GET INTO HARDCORE AND
I REMEMBER THINKING, WAIT,
THIS IS LIKE THE FUCKING
FOOTBALL TEAM. SO I STARTED
SMOKING WEED AND LISTENING
TO CLASSIC ROCK.”

Miles Benjamin
Anthony Robinson
in Brooklyn.

T H E FADER 8 5
MIL E S BENJAMIN AN T HON Y R OBI N SON

respect as long as they stayed together. He is The Summer of Fear and is said to be a
began building the much-needed family of Fleetwood Mac-influenced adventure inspired
friends that still exists around him today. He by the months just after the idyllic Brooklyn
and his girlfriend got engaged and found that backyard slipped away and everything fell
spot on South 2nd Street in Williamsburg, but apart again. “I feel like he’s already a classic,”
three years and two albums’ worth of material says Malone. “One of my main motivations for
later, Robinson’s post-collegiate tranquility was working with him and helping him get his music
over. After he and Taylor finished recording his out there is because I want more records of his
self-titled debut, his engagement dissolved to listen to.”
for reasons he’s not comfortable discussing in Alongside The Black Boys, a band he
detail, but can be attributed to life changes that assembled just after the recording of his first
he says lead him back to “unfortunate habits.” album, Robinson has been touring Brooklyn for
He spent the summer of 2007 relapsing hard. the past two years. Their first national tour this
Now he says he’s clean, though he smokes summer, untethered from the familiarity of the
weed without pause. borough and away from much of his surrogate
But that moment at Portland International family, is sure to offer the tempting unfortunate
Airport—when Robinson came home for the habits he’s turned to so many times before. “I
first time, not as a music sensation, but as a can’t pretend like I don’t want to kill myself, but
man who put himself through the miseries of at least I can be honest about it. Because there
homelessness—should loom larger than any are people out there that don’t want you to
other part of his myth. It speaks to the way die,” he says. “I’m totally prepared for this to be
he looks at himself. There are few moments the happiest year of my life. I’ve spent a lot of
in conversation with Robinson when he time being bummed out.”
doesn’t point out with a laugh that he’s a
“pissy malcontent.” It’s an honest evaluation On a Sunday night at Cake Shop in Manhattan,
of himself that fits his manic depressive Robinson breaks three strings hacksawing the
tendencies and history of extreme behavior. neck of an acoustic guitar with his hands and no
And although he says the best way to look at pick. This is the fourth time I’ve seen him and
tragedy is to laugh it off, one hour with him The Black Boys play in nearly two weeks, and
is enough to either charm you, turn you off or it is without contest the most raucous and
test the depths of your personal empathy. “I terrifying. Between songs, Robinson makes
write songs every day and I always have,” says wisecracks about race relations in Kevin
Robinson. “I don’t think I will stop because I Costner’s The Bodyguard and drinks beers like
seem to be pretty good at generating my own circus gypsies swallow swords. And song after
angst and making the worst out of situations. song, he uncages epic screams without ever
I’ve passed that point in my life where I want breaking his smile or lunatic gaze. Before the
to die for my art. Maybe I’ll die because I’m show, making his way through the crowd and to
an idiot.” the stage, shots of whiskey and sweaty bottles
Robinson has already recorded a second of Budweiser in each of his hands, Robinson
album with Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio, slowed for a moment when he saw me. He
a friend who he describes as “the most leaned in closely and asked if people would
encouraging force” in his life. Its current title notice he was stoned. We did. F

“I’VE PASSED THAT POINT IN MY

LIFE WHERE I WANT TO DIE FOR MY
ART. MAYBE I’LL DIE BECAUSE I’M
AN IDIOT.”

8 6 T HE FA DE R
The Mini Magic Happy/Sadness of Abe Vigoda

LOOK IN
MY EYES,
I AM YOUR
BROTHER

STORY MATTHEW SCHNIPPER PHOTOGRAPHY TODD COLE

ABE V IGODA

J
“PEOPLE LISTEN TO MUSIC FOR TWO REASONS: TO DANCE OR TO THINK ABOUT THE IDEA OF DANCING. OR HEIGHTEN SOME EMOTIONAL FEELING. SOMETIMES THE BEST IS BOTH AT ONCE.” —MICHAEL VIDAL

ust off Avon Park Terrace, walking over a big hill in there is a clearing soon, but it never arrives. It is at least ninety-five leaning on each other like whales and barnacles. “I feel like people like, OK, and then we started talking again.” It’s a working, growing
Elysian Park, I see Abe Vigoda through branches and degrees out and no one is happy. listen to music for two reasons,” says Vidal. “To dance or to think relationship. It’s even a little romantic.
dust haze, crouched beside a mustard plant. They’re When they begin filming the ideas don’t come easy and everyone about the idea of dancing. Or heighten some emotional feeling. Abe Vigoda started when all four members were in high school in
draped in black fabric, filming a video for the song is frustrated but friendly. Drummer Reggie Guerrero’s girlfriend Clare Sometimes the best is both at once. Like those old ’90s trance songs Chino (Velasquez introduced himself to Vidal because he was wearing
“Skeleton.” They say they are going for a “ritualistic” Kelly and Thornhill dance in front of the band while they sit silently like ‘I See Through the Rain.’ That’s the fucking best. That’s kind of a Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt). Guerrero learned to play drums in this
look, mostly it just looks like they are wearing in their burqas. It’s like a creepy duck duck goose or a bizarre dance what the band is, in this weird way.” Except in no way is that what band; he’d literally never played a kit before their first practice. Until early
burqas. Underneath they’re all wearing short shorts competition. Vidal walks off into the woods shirtless and shoeless the band is. They’re so deep in it there’s no seeing the forest for the 2008, by which point they had all moved to LA, they drove Velasquez’s
and no shirts. Everyone is frowning and sweating. The with the big piece of purple fabric, covers a fallen tree to build a makeshift trees because for them, there is no forest and there are no trees. parents’ van to shows from the suburbs to the city and made friends
only water is hot. Guitarist Juan Velasquez is talking hobo hut. The director follows him. Vidal covers his face with flour, lip There is only Abe Vigoda. through The Smell. Dean Spunt, of No Age, released their first album, Sky
about goth. Bassist David Reichardt slept only an hour syncs against a pile of dead trees. He comes back, and everyone else gets After the video shoot, the rest of the day is dazed, a little cranky Route/Star Roof, as a vinyl-only record on his label Post Present Medium,
the night before and isn’t talking at all. Vocalist and flour in their faces. It sticks with the sweat (except to Guerrero, who has even, but not mad. “People expect us to make a video where we’re on and Jim Smith, The Smell’s owner, released their second full length, Kid
guitarist Michael Vidal keeps talking about trying “more concepts.” surreptitiously maneuvered his hood to entirely block his face). We hike out a beach with sunglasses,” says Velasquez. Today, they’re over being City, on his label olFactory Records. Despite larger offers, they’ve now
When their friend Jenna Thornhill, of the band Mika Miko, shows up, of the park in the heat, drive back to Vidal’s. They wash up and reassemble. peppy. “Last tour we were all really stressed out about everything returned to Spunt’s PPM to release their new album, Skeleton, amongst
we hike down a dirt path carrying a big boombox, yards and yards of They’ve all been friends forever. None of them has really played and we had a really big outburst over the smallest little thing,” he says. friends. “It’s just us working as a family together and trying to do this
purple fabric, a rack tom and a bag of white flour. Velasquez is sure music with anyone else, either. They’ve all gelled solid, symbiotically “And after that it was really quiet for a while in the van and then it was thing ourselves and make it really work out with no bullshit,” says Vidal.

Bassist David Reichardt. Guitarist Juan Velasquez.

9 0 T HE FA D E R T H E FADER 91
ABE V IGODA

“IT,S JUST US WORKING AS A FAMILY TOGETHER AND TRYING TO DO THIS THING OURSELVES AND MAKE IT REALLY WORK OUT WITH NO BULLSHIT.” —JUAN VELASQUEZ

Their early recordings, particularly Kid City, don’t sound unlike shortest on the album. (Four songs are under two minutes and none When I ask Vidal about his lyrics, he chokes up. Everyone else specific body nuances: the clipped ear, smooth footpads, tongue
the upcoming album; they’re as happily complex, though less are over four.) tries to change the subject, but he stammers along. “It’s a lot about with a black spot. There is an individual glimmer within a uniform
unboundingly pretty. “If you listen to our old records you can hear Vidal sings, not yells like he used to, small patches of words like family and friends living life,” he says. “What I want to present as far base. “We constantly write songs,” says Reichardt. “We would all be
a slow progression,” says Vidal. You can hear that transition not snaggable catchphrases. Now my, now my, now my heart aches, as feeling, is putting this really dark, deep thing inside on display. into one band for a little bit and be like, Let’s write a song kind of
just from song to song, but within a single song. At the beginning Hope is a white hand that moves through my body and Look in my It can be really ugly but it can be really great, but it’s totally secret like this, and we’d have the inspiration.” An album full of these songs
of “World Heart,” from Skeleton, Guerrero only pounds the hi-hat eyes for I am your brother among them, reflecting an oft-repeated and celebrating and showcasing it as what it is.” This confused, of slow growth and tiny change comes together like an impressionist
and bass drum four times a bar. Vidal’s voice is recorded so he’s theme of physicality and joy/broken joy. In conversation, Vidal is the conflicted dynamic is ever-present in their songs, in the mix of painting, beautiful in its entirety, but easily lovable as small pastel dots.
coming over a telephone over the radio. The intro spooks hard for kind of person who says the word “beautiful” a lot, whether talking circular guitar pop and sullen words, an eternal interweaving of pain When Guerrero recently broke his wrist skateboarding, the band
twenty-three seconds and then, after a two-second stairstep tinkle, about burritos or technology or his sister. He says it in such a pure, and pleasure. It’s necessary and automatic for them to make this barely practiced and cancelled most of their shows, including their
they basically start playing ska. Guerrero plinks a cowbell pattern nun-like way it’s difficult to disagree, even when he also seems to be music, goofy catharsis through young punk. first trip to South by Southwest. Without that creative energy flowing,
and Reichardt plumps the bass fat and round. That lasts for less overstating his case. It’s probably not an accident that the last word Many of Abe Vigoda’s songs sound similar, which I discovered they all got a frowny taste of what their lives without Abe Vigoda
than thirty seconds until the guitars play static for ten seconds and of the album is “celebration.” And while it might have been a mistake only after listening to Skeleton’s “Animal Ghosts” fifty times before would be like and “it tasted like metal,” says Guerrero. Towards the
Vidal half yelps. Then they turn the ska sideways into a pop waltz. that in the first line of the liner notes’ lyrics there is a fairly glaring hearing another song. This fact was initially disappointing, but the end of his healing period, Guerrero decided to play shows drumming
Vidal sings slow and tender, One and only little heart, before the grammatical error, both of those things come from the same earnest subtleties bubbled. It’s like the way most Golden Retrievers all look one-handed. He couldn’t resist playing with two. “Once I started
song folds calmly. It finishes at one minute, forty-one seconds, the spirit-place. like the same dog, but then when you raise your own you know his doing it,” he says, “it motivated me to do all the songs. I was only

Vocalist/guitarist Michael Vidal. Drummer Reggie Guerrero.

92 T HE FA DE R T H E FADER 93
ABE VIGODA

going to do one or two and then I realized I could do it and I got

happy and kept going.”
The weekend I’m in LA is also the weekend of Coachella. The
festival comes up in conversation while sitting in Elysian Park eating
ice cream and it seems so foreign from anything they have anything
to do with, like it would be a punishment to attend. But more than
that, it just seems so unspecific. When you are a member of Abe
Vigoda, it is your life. “I put school on pause for a little bit to focus
on it,” says Velasquez. “It’s stressful with working full time. Working
in a record store’s fun and everything, but it’s not my passion to do
that. It’s a job. We don’t have any other creative outlet. We don’t
draw or anything.” Even as a listener, the music is so similarly
enveloping that it’s difficult to want to listen to anything else—or
imagine that anyone else would. It’s not myopia, either. It’s the
unebbable loose perfection of this band, made stronger by the fact
that they feel it too, and they don’t have any idea how or why. When
I ask Reichardt why he’s put the rest of his life on hold to play in a
band, he simply answers that “it’s fun.” When Velasquez has to go to
work while we all hang out, he says he feels like he has “a cast on when
you’re all going swimming.” Even though he doesn’t miss much—we just
go to a really long barbeque—it’s jarring to their unification.
So it’s unsurprising that an explanation of their young magic comes
from outside. “I loved being at the practices where you guys made
up all the songs for the albums,” says Clare Kelly. She’d sat in on
our interviews and spent time with us like she was a member of the
band—which, with the exception of playing music with them, she
is. That open inclusion and unwithholding care is what constitutes
Abe Vigoda: group hugs, actual and musical. “I was at most of the
practices in David’s backyard,” Kelly continues, “dancing with the
dogs for two hours listening to you guys. It was Chino, it was so
suburban, the sunset. Oh, it was amazing. There were roses and dogs
and dances. It was perfect. I was in heaven.” F

“WE DON’T HAVE ANY OTHER

CREATIVE OUTLET. WE DON’T F
DRAW OR ANYTHING.” —JUAN VELAQUEZ

94 T H E FA D E R
NUMBER ONE
Extended Bad Boy family members Grind Music and Ryan
Leslie aren’t just looking to crank up their careers—they want to
bring the hits back to New York

STORY BR EN DA N F R E DE R I CK PHOTOG R A PHY A N N I E T R I T T

NYC HITMEN

A
client. Busta Rhymes was looking for something, ’90s, New York hip-hop has struggled to stay
and the music that the two made for American relevant. East Coast artists with big enough
Gangster reminded him of something he heard a budgets and open minds tried to adapt, others
long time ago. “That hip-hop shit,” he called it. couldn’t, others wouldn’t. Coupled with the wider
When Busta and the duo, who produce under availability of synthesizers, session players and
the name Grind Music, linked up in New York in sophisticated recording equipment, making music
December, the rapper was transported back to his with an SP-1200 sampler and a dusty stack of
early ’90s origins after Sean C unleashed a frantic records became all but an archaic folk art.
sample of ’60s R&B group The Diplomats from his “We’re still crate diggers, to this day,” says
MPC. Its propulsive bongo beat and junkyard bass LV. Citing masters like Pete Rock and the RZA
lick would become the basis for Busta’s latest as influences, Grind Music are easily the most
application for summer jam superiority, the single unabashed followers of the retro Big Apple
“Don’t Touch Me (Throw the Water on ’Em).” The sound to emerge in the mainstream in the last
familiar, juiced-up feel conjured the energy and decade, with the possible exception of Chicago
delivery acrobatics Busta had in his earliest days, native Kanye West. But while West has ditched
manmade creation floating in Biscayne Bay, when he was still a member of the addled teenage his chipmunk soul for digitized arena anthems,
Miami’s Star Island is the type of neighborhood crew Leaders of the New School. “It felt like some Grind Music seem intent on not just imitating, but
where the cheapest house goes for eight million real MC shit at a block party,” Busta says. “We revamping rap’s basic production formula. In the
dollars and Rosie O’Donnell calls to complain was bouncin off the muthafuckin walls like we studio, they’ve developed a method of dueling on
about the noise. It was here last November, at was at a Giants Stadium rock concert.” MPCs until they work out a rhythm. Then they use
Diddy’s thirty-eighth, predictably over-the-top, In today’s hip-hop climate, the classic East an orchestra house of live instruments to flesh
birthday celebration that producers Sean C and Coast breakbeat style is a rarity against a radio out and interpolate their sampled loops. While
LV were having their own “The World Is Yours” backdrop of minimal 808 drums and ominous younger rappers have been slower to embrace
moment, despite being two of the party’s lesser- space tracks. Since 1992, when Biz Markie lost the sound, more weathered MCs have been
known guests. American Gangster, Jay-Z’s a landmark lawsuit to Gilbert O’Sullivan over his revitalized by it, seeing it as both a way to play
concept album thematically inspired by the film use of “Alone Again (Naturally),” the policing to their abilities and to give life to the New York
of the same name, had just debuted at number of sampling has become more stringent, and the rap scene without desecrating its history.
one with its sonic character defined by the six cost of it has become prohibitively expensive. Sean C learned how to DJ and use an MPC
lush, ’70s-inspired beats that the duo produced. With the commercial rise of more experimental, while growing up in Harlem in the ’80s, eventually
Amidst the revelry, they managed to secure a new electronic-influenced Southern rap in the late competing in turntable battles with the legendary

“WE WANT TO MAKE THE TYPES OF RECORDS THAT WILL REMIND PEOPLE WHY THEY
LOVE THE ARTIST.” —SEAN C

Sean C (left) and

LV (right) of
Grind Music in
their Manhattan
studio.

Ricky Blaze at his

grandmother’s house
in Brooklyn.

9 8 T HE FA DE R
 NYC H ITME N

X-Men and producing for underground upstarts. years in Miami working with Diddy on his Press While they still have some collaborations
By 1995, he had worked his way from intern to Play album, and during that time they made the with other East Coast vets like DMX and Nas on
head of A&R at Loud Records, where he oversaw eventual bonus track “Gett Off,” which features deck, they’re hoping to subvert the industry’s
albums like Mobb Deep’s Hell on Earth and Big spiraling horns and Puff doing his shriekiest James preconceptions with records like “Push,” a pop
Pun’s debut Capital Punishment. “I really got Brown impression. It’s the earliest semi-public cut on Cassie’s new album. Their chase of Top 40
into A&R to produce,” he confesses, and during document of what would become their signature dreams is all part of the perilous climb towards
his tenure he built a discography that included style. They went on to create five sinister, superproducer status, a journey many beatmakers
Cocoa Brovaz’s “Won on Won,” Big Pun’s “100%” polyester soul songs on Ghostface Killah’s The Big have attempted before them. Timbaland and
and Jay-Z’s “Can’t Knock the Hustle,” which Doe Rehab, including the gritty menace of “Toney The Neptunes have laid out the blueprint, all
he co-created with neighborhood friend and Sigel (aka the Barrel Brothers)” and the buoyant but abandoning hip-hop for pop paychecks.
producer Nobody. “We Celebrate” featuring adlibs from mixtape idol It’s a risky move that can pay off big, but one
Meanwhile, a teenage LV was making his Kid Capri. And after Jay-Z’s identity crisis with his has to wonder why, having already hooked up
name as a DJ. “Heavy in the high school joints,” post-retirement Kingdom Come, the Grind Music- hip-hop kings, would Grind Music ditch such a
he remembers. “I was getting it poppin every produced single “Roc Boys” was a celebratory unique and apparently successful sound
weekend.” After dropping out of his music nod to his 1996 debut Reasonable Doubt with its so quickly?
program at Five Towns College in Long Island, he bombastic flash of hustler arrogance. “We want to As a complement to Grind Music’s rap
got a call from Sean, who grew up three blocks make the types of records that will remind people traditionalism, Ryan Leslie is reflecting that sound
away, offering him the job as Big Pun’s DJ. The why they love the artist,” says Sean. through a convex mirror from his studio uptown.
eighteen-year-old left immediately to go on tour. Though their reputation for bringing an “Sean C and LV are probably where I was with
After Big Pun’s death in 2000, LV lost his mentor authentic New York feel to modern day hits has Puff maybe three years ago,” Leslie says. Under
and employer, while Sean lost one of his label’s given Grind Music a distinct identity, they now Diddy’s tutelage, Leslie produced and wrote
most profitable and beloved artists. Two years find themselves increasingly looking to wash songs for artists like Beyoncé, New Edition and
later, Loud folded. “I decided to concentrate back themselves of their “real hip-hop” label. “We’ve Britney Spears. “Being around Puff is all about the
on what I was here to do,” says Sean, who got the single bug,” says LV. “Some people are access, an opportunity,” he says. An R&B singer/
kept consulting for labels, but started making like, Eh, that’s just that hip-hop shit. They’re songwriter/producer, Leslie frequently worked
music regularly out of his apartment with LV. dope for doing that, but I got an Usher project with the Bad Boy family from 2003 to 2005. “I
In 2004 they came to Diddy’s Bad Boy imprint they probably couldn’t work on.” In retaliation, just started going at it,” he says. “I literally placed
with a Queens rapper and former Loud signee they produced Fat Joe’s infidelity anthem “I Won’t twenty-six records in 2003—that’s one every two
named Aasim. Though his project has sat Tell,” representing a softer, completely sample- weeks.” After founding his NextSelection imprint,
unreleased for the last four years, Grind Music free sound that feels more like a flossy night in he returned to the label with his own artist,
found themselves indoctrinated into Bad Boy’s a Miami club than something a frothing Kay Slay Cassie, crafting her self-titled debut album and
Hitmen producers stable. They spent two boozy would spin back five thousand times. the number one R&B single “Me & U.”

“I HAVE,TO TRY. THEN AT LEAST THE ,PEOPLE CAN GET THE CHANCE TO SAY, WE
DON T GET DOWN LIKE THAT, WE D RATHER HEAR CASSIE SING IT.” —RYAN LESLIE

Ryan Leslie
in his Harlem
studio/
brownstone.

T H E FADER 101
NYC HITMEN

Leslie was once managed by Diddy, but I could learn what it took.” Since then he’s
nowadays he’s more of an extended member been preparing a new solo album, but it’s
of The Hitmen. He likes to think of himself as already been hitting roadblocks. He shot an
being on his “own trajectory.” Aside from a few elaborate short film and photo campaign out
songs on the follow-up Cassie album, he hasn’t of his own pocket to accompany his first single
produced a track for the label since 2006, focusing “Diamond Girl”—a bubbling, complex radio
instead on his own solo career. His earnest, mid- jam showcasing some of Leslie’s best-ever
tempo love songs are rooted in the formula of beatmaking—but the label wasn’t interested. “I
accessible pop—but with hip-hop radio’s current created a bunch of non-traditional media, which
electro fetish, Leslie’s carefully layered future the record company literally did not know what
synths, rhythmic blips, digital tweets and other to do with,” he says. To make matters worse,
unexpected bursts could be his secret weapon. At 50 Cent re-recorded “Diamond Girl” as “Bottom
a time when every behind-the-scenes songwriter, Girl” and released it on G-Unit’s Return Of The
from Ne-Yo to The-Dream, seems to be stepping Bodysnatchers mixtape well before the original
into the spotlight, the door is open for the had a video or had even been pushed to radio.
transition. But many other writers, including Bad “If you like a beat and you like a melody, and
Boy’s own Mario Winans, have not found solo you can get it for free from an artist you know,
success, ultimately returning to the shadows to why would you pay for it from an artist you’ve
write for bigger artists. never heard of?” asks Leslie.
Today, Leslie is posted up in a three-story He is now looking towards alternative online
brownstone on a sunny block in Harlem, the same channels instead of a traditional album release
building he moved into in 2003 when he came to model. “If an artist like myself can find himself
the city to intern and play keyboards for Hitmen a captive audience of one thousand fans that
producer Younglord. Growing up, Leslie’s parents are willing to spend a hundred bucks a year to
were officers in the Salvation Army, bouncing support their craft, that’s $100,000. That’s a
around the US. When his mother took a job decent living,” he says. With a steady stream
in Belgium, the bored, intellectually advanced of YouTube videos documenting his recording
kid kept busy by teaching himself to play piano process, he hopes to build some notion of viral
by ear, learning to dance like MC Hammer and achievement. “Everyone agrees that ‘Diamond
mimicking Boyz II Men’s “It’s So Hard To Say Girl’ was not a success,” Leslie says frankly.
Goodbye to Yesterday” by layering a capella tapes He’s since moved on to “Addicted,” a new song
on a dual cassette recorder. featuring Fabolous and Cassie. “I have to try,”
After getting accepted to Harvard at the age of he says. “Then at least the people can get the
fifteen and gigging around the Boston talent show chance to say, We don’t get down like that, we’d
scene, he eventually cut a solo deal with Universal rather hear Cassie sing it.”
in 2003, and his internship with Younglord But what if Leslie had actually produced
developed into a full-fledged songwriting “Bottom Girl” for 50 Cent and gotten paid for it?
partnership with Diddy. But his ambitions for And why would Grind Music want to step into
performing his own material suffered when the pop world when they are New York rap’s best
Universal decided not to release his debut, Just hope for rediscovering itself and its strengths?
Right, in 2005. “There was just no demand,” This summer will be crucial for both parties in
Leslie admits. “The label can only be as serious as figuring out where their true talents lie. Perhaps
the numbers encourage them to be.” they all should devote themselves to teaming up
In 2006, Leslie had his production under The Hitmen umbrella. Then New York-
breakthrough with Cassie’s minimal pop-candy based black music (and Bad Boy) could have a
cut “Me & U.” He tagged along with her to see resurgence akin to the days of Biggie, 112, Total
the artist lifestyle firsthand. “I took a year off and Ma$e—a diverse collection of artists united
from producing and I went on the road with by the common goal of crafting hits. “No one
Cassie as her only unpaid employee,” he says. really knows where the music is going,” Sean C
“I’d carry bags, play hypeman, DJ, co-pilot on says. “For a producer, the best place you can be
interviews, anything and everything just so in 2008 is in the studio figuring that out.” F

“BEING AROUND PUFF IS ALL ABOUT THE ACCESS,

AN OPPORTUNITY.” —RYAN LESLIE

1 02 T H E FA DE R
VITA FUTURA
From a land of ateliers and medieval cathedrals, Crookers
fast forward Italian house into tomorrow

STORY JULIANNE SHEPHERD P H O T O G R A P H Y P E T E R VA N A G T M A E L

C RO OKERS

Phra (Left) and

Bot (Right) in
Phra’s studio.

1 06 T H E FA D E R T H E FADER 1 07
C RO OKERS

T
Over the past two years, through travels abroad
and internet anthems, the duo of Bot and Phra
have gained a worldwide reputation as the biggest
names in Italy’s house music scene. With a no
surrender schedule of international touring, a
disparate collection of remixes and their own music
released on a well-curated assortment of labels,
Crookers have been pegged to helm the next big
European dance movement—successors to Justice
for the title of “New Party Smashers the Whole
World Loves.” They make artfully colossal house
music fit for brave new world raves, their fingers
extra-twitchy on the pitchshifter. They pile car
horns atop choruses built purely on exclamations
he highway (“Yo!” “Wow!” “Shake it!”) to form cartoonish yet
from Milan to the village of Ivrea is dotted with beautiful real life manifestations of accelerating
remnants of military outposts from the Roman video game racecars, erupting volcanoes and a
Empire, but at midnight, the road is ink black with million alarm clocks going off all at the same time.
no sights to see. Ivrea was established in 100 BC It is the sound of two funny, astute dudes who
as a Cavalry station for the Roman Army and is want to hear everything at once—and who like to
not what you’d call the most cosmopolitan town watch people go bananas. But Crookers have
in Italy. (When the gas station attendant flashes created their empire largely in a bubble, working
me the “you’re not from around here” side-eye, against Milan’s played-out party scene, where
it’s somehow comforting to know that the sign clubhounds are only concerned with being seen
is international.) But in four hours, Ivrea—and and getting blitzed. “There was a very big, good
more specifically, Sugho, a boxy club awkwardly house scene here in the early ’90s, but it’s stuck
plopped behind the parking lot of a computer firm there. All the DJs from that period are still around,
called “GRUPPORGI”—may just be the buckest and now they’re all playing minimal music, which
place in the country. By 4AM, Central European is shit,” says Bot. “Everyone takes drugs. Outside
Summer Time, the Milan-based DJ and production Italy there are many drugs too, but here, in this
duo Crookers will have just dropped their synthed- kind of circle they come less to hear music and
out, cranked-up remix of The Chemical Brothers’ more to get fucked up.”
“Salmon Dance,” causing a crowd of five hundred Milan is one of the most fashionable and
extremely attractive freaks in tight white pants to beautiful cities in the world, a financial hub
lose their collective shit. Ladies will pound their where perfectly coiffed men don tailored Armanis
fists, fellas will scream “O!” (the Italian equivalent in the shadow of Il Duomo and women plod
of “Hayyyy!”) and a couple of visibly trashed guys down cobblestone streets to the supermercato
in the VIP will inexplicably drop their pants around in three-inch Prada pumps. Amid all the pomp
their ankles: a sign of total surrender to the music. and perfection are Crookers, clad in the style of
The frenzy is nothing new to Crookers. As their young American streetwear stunnas: New Eras,
powerhouse synth scrapes build and flip into big jeans and crispy white Nike Terminators. As
dramatic pauses, they create an energy that proves you’d expect, they seem a little out of place, a little
that maybe Italians really do do it better. But the unpretentious. Both Bot and Phra independently
Ivrea crowd is about half the size that Crookers mention they don’t feel like typical Italians, largely
are accustomed to, and even with partial nudity because they have zero interest in football. Neither
and, one presumes, après-club barfing, it’s much really likes to drink booze to the point of, well,
tamer. What will go down when they play, like, dropping their pants. Having come up on the
the Gatecrasher Summer Sound System power- mega-watt energy of hip-hop, they detest the soul-
festival? Fistfights? Heatstroke? Pregnancy? deadening, never-crescendoing ping-pong beats

Crookers in
Lago Magiorre.

“WE DON’T HAVE TO EXACTLY REFLECT THE WAY WE LIVE. I AM THE MUSIC THAT I MAKE, BUT THE MUSIC IS NOT ME.”—BOT

1 08 T HE FA D E R
 CROOK E RS

that overrun Milan’s clubs. But for two men in their Bot was renting a corner of the shop, where he Los Angeles, Sydney and Toronto. Switch, whose
late twenties who make such ramped-up house, sold leftfield electro and house records from the records Bot used to hawk to Phra at the shop,
Crookers are surprisingly low key. Bot is a semi- UK and US. Phra was one of his only customers. “I eventually became a mentor. Not only has the
introverted former graffiti writer who is still living liked more the experimental things, not the proper global exchange opened up touring possibilities,
with his mom in Milan until he has enough money house, so we started to speak about music and it’s created a kind of old world marketplace carried
to buy a house with his girlfriend of seven years. smoke weed,” he says. “We couldn’t smoke in the out over MySpace, a place where ideas, sounds
Phra is gregarious, an ex-rapper who’s shacked record shop so we’d go out in the car, where we and concepts are bartered, shared and flipped.
up with his lady and their Jack Russell terrier started playing each other our beats.” “Now, we are influenced by a lot of Bmore club, but
in Lago Magiorre, a village on a lake at the bottom After one night of solid brodeo time that also the Beatles.” says Phra, “Everything we listen
of the Alps. included getting really wasted and listening to to and like we try to put into it.”
Lago Magiorre is a half-hour drive from Milan, Dizzee Rascal’s first album, they started making You can hear everything they listen to at
and where I meet Crookers for the first time, the tracks together, splicing hip-hop with house. Phra Sugho, where Crookers spin electrified remixes
day before the Ivrea show. The village is a common says it took a lot of work to get to know Bot, who of the Ramones, AC/DC and Daft Punk in quick
spot for Swiss and Dutch vacationers to park their was much more shy before they started touring, succession, inspiring one of the pants-droppers
RVs on holiday, with surrounding snowcapped but after weeks of record-nerding and tree- to actually whip out his package. I try to run the
mountains dwarfing clusters of brick red alpine- smoking, he found not only a music partner, but a other way the second I see pubes, but there’s
roofed apartments. It’s ridiculously picturesque, BFF. “I met a lot of other DJs before I met Bot, and nowhere to go—all corners of the club are anchovy-
the kind of place that gets written about in a fiction I tried to do music with them, but I couldn’t,” says packed with sweaty Crookers megafans who
piece for the New Yorker that is later adapted into Phra. “It’s like when you go to buy a dog, and you have apparently memorized every meticulously
a sly romantic film starring Juliette Binoche reading see that dog you want, but some people think that produced bridge, every vocal sample, every beat
her lines in an Italian accent. It’s hard to imagine the dog will define you, not that you will define mutation. The duo pull out parts of their melodic
anyone working here at all, much less blowing the dog. It’s the same thing. You don’t choose it.” Knobbers EP and the dancefloor starts to
out their eyeballs making house music on the When Phra left Milan for his idyllic village home resemble a pre-school playground during recess.
computer for hours on end. But, as Bot says, “We two years ago, they switched their operations to Crookers themselves stay focused on their
don’t have to exactly reflect the way we live. I am iChat and a server, a set-up they find more effective computers, barring a few moments when Phra
the music that I make, but the music is not me.” than actually being in the same studio at the same stops DJing to Arsenio-pump his fist. When they
According to their manager Enrico Mutti, who also time. “Now we don’t have beef about the hi-hat,” throw on their Bmore-juiced remix of Kid Cudi’s
works with Italian electro duo Bloody Beetroots says Phra. “Day ’N’ Night,” people fling their arms around
and house DJ Congorock, Crookers are perhaps each other’s shoulders as if it were the anthem for
his most prolific clients. “I get like three loops a Internerd shut-ins have deemed Crookers’ sound the Inter Milan football club. Just as the Cudi track’s
day from them,” he says. Bot calls it neurosis. “fidget house” for its quick-edit attention span, descending-hammer bassline builds in tandem
“We are freaks, like twelve hours in front of the a term Bot considers meaningless. “I don’t with a triple-time breakbeat, the lights black out
monitor. I have to take an hour before I can speak understand. It’s just house music,” he says with and the music stops dead. The heat in the club
to humans again.” an eye roll. Also common is the “blog house” tag, has overloaded the system. Everyone groans with
which, strangely, is often used as a dis by people the shock and displeasure of danceus interruptus,
Crookers came together five years ago in the most who don’t leave their computers. But the term is but it’s almost too poetic. Even with their native
universal of music nerd scenarios: bonding over somewhat useful in that Crookers are part of a very Italy just catching on to their talent, Crookers are
obscure records no one else cared about. “I was specific cluster of DJs that have turned themselves way more major than this machine can handle. A
going to university, and after class I would go to the into an actual community. In lieu of scraping to minute later, club management flips the breaker.
record shop and drink Campari,” Phra explains. “To gain acceptance at home, Crookers have simply The turntables and disco lights flicker back on to
listen to five records, I’d take all afternoon. I would made internet friends with other DJs the world over. relieved cheers. The party keeps banging ’til long
listen to one record, maybe have beer, bullshit With a global community that includes Brodinski, after dawn. At that point, the vodka and Red Bulls
with all the people, have a piece of pizza. I’d stay Justice, MSTRKRFT, Soulwax and Busy P, it’s a catch up with me and I pass out in the backseat of
for hours doing nothing, just talking about music.” network that traverses Milan, Paris, New York, Bot’s Volkswagen. F

“I LIKED MORE THE EXPERIMENTAL THINGS, SO WE STARTED TO SPEAK ABOUT MUSIC AND SMOKE WEED. WE COULDN’T SMOKE IN THE RECORD SHOP SO WE’D GO OUT IN THE CAR,
WHERE WE STARTED PLAYING EACH OTHER OUR BEATS.”—PHRA

T H E FADER 1 1 1
 Buenos Aires to the Bay, 2008 is
experiencing the explosion of cumbia—
a bomb with a century-long fuse.

SLOW
BURN

STORY JACE CLAYTON PHOTOGRAPHY GABRIELE STABILE

112_Fader55 112-113 6/9/08 10:37:48 AM

1 14 T H E FA DE R T H E FADER 1 1 5
CUMB I A

Previous Spread: The crowd at a Damas Gratis show. Clockwise: the Fantastico club, DJ Vampiros in his studio, the view from his roof, Vampiros and his son Anthony.
 W
CUMB I A

hat’s up? You

should put on your seatbelt.” So says Pablo Lescano as I climb inside his SUV, en
route to the first of two gigs his six-piece band Damas Gratis is headlining tonight
in Buenos Aires. The king of Argentine cumbia drives something like he plays the
keytar: twitchy, generous, impulsive. “Friday’s not the big night for parties,” he
explains, one hand on the wheel, the other flipping through CD-Rs so that the fat-
ass cumbia basslines announcing our presence to the block change every sixty
seconds or so. “Tomorrow we play nine different shows. We’ll have to drive fast.”
The downtown that slides past his tinted windows looks like a whiter version of
Paris, but Lescano hails from tropical northern Argentina, which never gave a damn
about Europe, much less the States. We screech to a halt, avoiding a fender-bender
by a few inches. “We play like a live DJ,” he explains. “When one song gets tired—
poom!—we rip into another. We don’t do set lists. We pull out anything.” Damas
Gratis—which means “Ladies Free”—could easily draw a crowd of fifteen thousand,
but here in Argentina, no venue wants that many cumbia fans—poor, young, from
the wrong barrios—gathered in one place. So they play fifteen separate thousand-
person shows in two days. Call it distributed stardom, as good a metaphor as any
for the global spread of cumbia, a category as wide as rock in Latin America.

According to one legend, cumbia is what happened when Colombian natives and
black slaves found accordions washed onshore from a German shipwreck. Some
view its tropical skank as the missing link between upbeat salsa flash and the
dubwise languor of reggae. The deceptively simple sound mutates everywhere it
goes, but its telltale hallmark is an unhurried 4/4 groove built around low drums
and raspy shakers in a distinctive slow train pattern. These days the classic minor
key accordion melodies are interchangeable with guitar, flutes or synths (cumbia’s
not dogmatic). Old and new singers love to shout “Cuuuuumbiiaaa,” distending
their syllables the way the genre stretches meaning.
The folk style crept into mainstream popularity in Colombia nearly one hundred
years ago and by mid-century, cumbia colombianas had swelled into dapper big
band orquestas. The only folks who still actively appreciate the tropical rhythm in
its homeland are grandparents (hooked on classics from Medellín powerhouse
label Discos Fuentes) and soccer hooligans (who blast Damas Gratis). But 20th
century currents of migration and chance spread cumbia from neighboring Panama
to distant Buenos Aires. 1960s brown-power Amazonian bands like Los Mirlos from
Peru swapped the lead accordion for ayahuasca-friendly swamp guitars and effects
pedals, renaming the sound chicha after the local firewater. A climb of the Andes
around the same time would find cumbia already there, played in pentatonic scales
on indigenous flutes.
In the ’80s, the same synth presets, androgynous hairspray and drum machines
that revolutionized global pop hit cumbia hard. Selena inadvertently christened the
electrified style “tecnocumbia” with her hit of the same name. In Mexico, its biggest
market, cumbia can mean everything from boy band cheese to Celso Piña’s dubby
anthem “Sobre el Rio” to the slo-mo psychedelia of cumbias rebajadas, whose
practitioners had been down-pitching cumbia tunes a good three decades before DJ

El Hijo de la
Cumbia on a
“THE VILLA IS IN A STATE OF EMERGENCY. A KID DIES IN THE VILLA AND IT DOESN’T MATTER. YOU SAY
local bus. ‘BLACK’ NOT FOR THE SKIN COLOR BUT FOR THE BARRIO YOU LIVE IN.”—PABLO LESCANO
1 18 T H E FA D E R
 CUMBIA

Screw brought the same lazy genius procedure to Houston rap. Tecnocumbia loves
its octopad drums, while the sampled beats of cumbia sonidera rule huge Mexican
parties from LA to outer-borough New York, with sonidero selectors who never stop
talking over their instrumentals. Meanwhile, bilingual Tejano DJs in Dallas have
started sampling cumbia, making what sounds like Miami bass with accordion riffs
and English language crunkapellas. For decades cumbia has subdivided, quietly
becoming one of the Latin America’s most popular styles, inspiring everyone from
Manu Chao to Voltio. But it wasn’t until a young Argentine with a squeaky voice
named Pablo Lescano emerged with acid keyboards and villa slang that cumbia
exploded into the 21st century with ruthless infectiousness.

“Todos los negros con las palmas arriba!” shouts Lescano. (All my blacks throw
your hands in the air!) On stage, the stocky Argentine resembles a stretched out
version of football legend Diego Maradona—stormy coke history and tracksuit
included. Never mind that Lescano and his fans are all white, “los negros”—the
thousand-plus kids gathered in north Buenos Aires’ Fantastico club—comply with a
roar. This isn’t a rock show—they are dancing to slow cumbia, moshing to century-
old Colombian folk. “It’s not like salsa or tango, where you need to learn the steps
or have a partner,” says a cumbiambera in the crowd. “With cumbia there are
no rules.”
When Lescano began as a keyboardist and arranger in the late ’90s, Argentine
cumbia was boring. The clean-cut presentation and romantic lyrics contained
zero traces of the Colombian fire that had propelled it so far. Lescano injected real
talk about drugs, girls and crime with the slang of the villa. At the same time, his
unsettling keyboard style—all edgy playing and multiple voice shifts per song—
captured the queasy excitement of a pibe’s night out. “Like a soundtrack for taking
cocktails of box wine and pills, his keyboard playing transmits something very acidic
and cheap in a certain sense,” says Sonido Martines, a DJ and record dealer from
Buenos Aires. Before long Lescano had single-handedly invented a new cumbia
style, the gangsta rap analog called cumbia villera. You could clock the skyrocketing
success of Damas Gratis by the number of overnight imitators.
Clothing thrown onstage reaches Lescano, but not the guitarist tucked behind
him who rushes through a thirty-second solo while Lescano takes a Pepsi break.
The audience doesn’t notice. In that instant it’s easy to see how cumbia can be so
divisive in a city as rockist as Buenos Aires—a city with a subculture of mulleted
girls called “rollingas,” after the Rolling Stones. Cumbia disregards the guitar hero
and celebrates the sweaty, swampy glory of all things tropical—exactly what “white”
Buenos Aires ignores by looking wistfully towards Europe. Cumbia draws a cultural
line. In Buenos Aires, you have to take sides.
I met Lescano the night before at Zizek, a safe club in the upscale Palermo Soho
district—a part of town where both “real” blacks like myself and “los negros” from
the villa receive nasty looks in restaurants. Like the holy trinity of porteño cuisine—
pizza, pasta, empanadas—the Zizek party is filling, but blandly international.
Internet buzz had my expectations up, but the pretty, polite cosmopolitans getting
loose to reggaeton, hip-hop and cumbia could be anywhere: Barcelona, Prague,
Amsterdam. You can’t discern Zizek’s magic until you step into the enormous
backstage room. Here a dozen producers sip Fernet-and-Cokes as they swap data
or plan collaborations, short-circuiting the segregationist logic of Buenos Aires.
The residents of Palermo Soho avoid the rougher bailantas where cumbia lives and
message boards flare up with comments like, “I can’t believe they’re letting these
blacks in the club!” whenever Lescano swings by to DJ. Zizek takes its name
and ethos from Slavoj Zizek, a bearish fifty-nine-year-old Slovenian philosopher/
iconoclast wedded to a twenty-something Argentine model named Analía.
“He’s kind of bastard,” explains Villa Diamante, one of the resident DJs,. “When
they ask me what type of music I play, I say bastard pop. It’s not hip-hop, not
electronica, not cumbia. It’s more of a way of dealing with the music.” Diamante
continues, “When we started [Zizek] a year and a half ago, we debated whether
or not to put ‘cumbia’ on the flyer.” He and the two other founders, a Texan
expat and an Argentine, knew cumbia’s bad rep—signifying either syrupy love
songs or villera’s thugged out alternative—would surely drive some audience
members away, but it had to be there.

Villa Diamante,
“WHEN THEY ASK ME WHAT TYPE OF MUSIC I PLAY, I SAY BASTARD POP. at home in his
IT’S NOT HIP-HOP, NOT CUMBIA. IT’S MORE OF A WAY OF DEALING WITH THE MUSIC”—VILLA DIAMANTE bedroom.
T H E FADER 1 21
CUMB I A

Clockwise: Fantastico, Pablo Lescano backstage at Fantastico, a young member of Fantasma, El Hijo de la Cumbia backstage at Zizek.
C UMBIA

Zizek’s hipsters aren’t likely to venture to the home turf of DJ Vampiros, a short
Bolivian in a leather jacket whose over-pronounced canines and nocturnal lifestyle
earned him the moniker. We sit in a tiny workshop on the second floor of his self-
built cinderblock house in one of Argentina’s most dangerous neighborhoods, Bajo
Flores. His wife comes in again. “But did they see you enter here?” This is the fifth
time she’s asked. She’s worried, with reason. Walking home with Vampiros and his
impish five-year-old son Anthony, two boys on a motorbike buzzed by us, staring
down FADER photographer Gabriele Stabile to make sure he saw their cocked nine-
millimeter: international sign language for Lose the camera. Uniformed police can’t
enter Bajo Flores. A web of young “soldiers” protect the stash house kitty-corner
from Vampiros. The boys returned, their motorbike’s diesel sputter temporarily
drowning out the two nearby bands in earshot. The camera was out of sight by now,
but the gun remained in view in case that changed. They drove away slow, the kid
on the back staring. Anthony held my hand, giggling. “This neighborhood used to be
real heavy,” says Vampiros. “Guys on the corner with a gun in each grip. Crazy things
happening. But it’s calmer these days. Because the insecurity has spread—it’s all
over Argentina now.”
The 2001 economic crisis saw the real value of the Argentine currency plummet
by seventy-five percent. Folks with $100,000 in the bank suddenly had $25,000.
The underclass hemorrhaged, rich turned poor. Who could stomach flowery love
songs after that? This nasty reality slap boosted cumbia villera’s popularity to
astronomical heights. “The villa is in a state of emergency,” says Lescano. “A kid
dies in the villa and it doesn’t matter. You say ‘black’ not for the skin color but
for the barrio you live in.” The lethal popularity of a cheap new drug called paco
(like crack, but worse—few addicts survive past six months) has made edge living
even more raw. But a bizarre umbilical connects freedom and neglect. Even though
cumbia has maintained incredible popularity across South America for decades, its
mala reputación meant that it never garnered much external interest. Cumbia kept
growing, with nobody to answer to but its fans and followers.
Off the radar, cumbiamberos keep their musical rules open enough to dance with
a delicious liberty. Between MySpace and endless mp3s, internet-savvy cumbia
fans are slowly getting a picture of how far and wide the sound has traveled.
Contemporary cumbias first edged into the English-speaking mainstream with the
inclusion of “Sobre el Rio” in the 2006 film Babel. In 2007 cumbia made further
inroads abroad when Swiss-Iranian club producer Samin sampled Alberto Pachero’s
version of the ultra-popular “Cumbia Cienaguera” for “Heater.” Simultaneously,
indie kids were learning about cumbia from the late ’60s guitar visionaries on the
reissue comp Roots of Chicha: Psychedelic Cumbias From Peru. Then came two
Bay Area expats living in Buenos Aires, DJs Oro11 and Disco Shawn. The duo came
from reggae and indie rock backgrounds respectively, but met over a love of cumbia
and launched their Bersa Discos label back in Cali in late 2007. “We just wanted
to help get this music out there, beyond the CD-R releases, mp3s and bootlegs
floating around Buenos Aires,” says Shawn. Their first 12-inch contains three songs
from cumbia genius El Hijo de la Cumbia, along with dubstep cumbiambero from
Dale Duro. Talking about their monthly San Francisco party, Tormenta Tropical,
Shawn says, “No one knew the songs and lots of people couldn’t even understand
the lyrics, but the dance floor was jumping.” Language barriers mean little to
cumbia and these unexpected migrations come as no surprise (remember those
shipwrecked accordions?). Now beat-scavenging bloggers and DJs sniffing
for roughneck world music are Soulseeking mp3s for their Serato crates and
crunk cumbia mixes thrown on YouTube are getting half a million views. Cumbia is
arriving from all directions. And leaving.
Many young Latinos still regard cumbia as casposa—“bad taste dandruff.” Calle
13 poked fun at the genre’s geriatric associations with “Cumbia de los Aburridos”
(“Bored Folks’ Cumbia”), on its 2007 album, but in Buenos Aires there’s no denying
the power of the phenomenon. “When you see Damas Gratis, you see the light,”
says Martin Roisi of Fantasma, a cumbia-rap hybrid act and one of many villera-
inspired artists operating in Lescano’s shadow. “You see god.” Roisi doesn’t smile,
he’s being serious. It’s hot, it’s not. It’s poetry, it’s crap. Accelerate and break, swerve
around oncoming traffic, squeeze into places where nobody thought it could fit.
Lescano’s vehicle operates like the genre itself. F

Mariana Yegros,
singer and friend “LIKE A SOUNDTRACK FOR TAKING COCKTAILS OF BOX WINE AND PILLS, LESCANO’S KEYBOARD PLAYING
of the Zizek crew. TRANSMITS SOMETHING VERY ACIDIC AND CHEAP IN A CERTAIN SENSE”—SONIDO MARTINES
1 24 T H E FA D E R
SWEATER BY ETRO.
SALVADOR

PH OTO G R A PH Y L EO NIE PUR CH AS ST YL ING MO BO L AJI DAWO DU

 TRACK JACKET BY ADIDAS, SNEAKERS BY CONVERSE.
T H E FADER 1 29
 VEST BY GIORGIO ARMANI, PANTS BY BOSS GREEN, BOOTS BY CLARKS. SWEATER BY ETRO, JEANS BY LEVI’S, BELT VINTAGE D&G.

1 3 0 T H E FA DE R T H E FADER 1 31
SWEATER BY ETRO.
T H E FADER 1 33
1 3 4 T H E FA D E R
SHIRT BY GIORGIO ARMANI, PANTS BY DUCKIE BROWN.
1 3 6 T HE FA D E R
ABOVE: TRACK JACKET BY ADIDAS, SNEAKERS BY CONVERSE, SUNGLASSES BY PAUL SMITH. SKIRT BY BOSS BLACK, TANK TOP BY GAP. BELOW: SHIRT BY FILA, HAT BY KANGOL.

ABOVE: SHIRT BY BOSS BLACK, PANTS BY CALVIN KLEIN, FLIP FLOPS BY HAVAIANAS. BELOW: SHIRT AND PANTS BY ORIGINAL PENGUIN, HAT BY MAKINS.

T H E FADER 137
 DRESS BY GALLIANO. SHIRT BY GIORGIO ARMANI, PANTS BY DUCKIE BROWN.
T H E FADER 139
 SHIRT BY MARC BY MARC JACOBS.

1 4 0 T H E FA D E R T H E FADER 141
 SHIRT BY ETRO, JEANS BY LEVI’S.

SPECIAL THANKS TO LEANDRO FREIRE OF AL SOLUCOES, CULTURAL LIASON AND MALIN FEZHAI.

1 4 2 T H E FA D E R
GP
VINYL ARCHEOLOGY
EASTERN PROMISES
FIELD TESTING WITH JAPANESE PSYCH

The Jacks Vacant World Tolerance Divin,

(Toshiba EMI 1968) Tolerance Divin
The antithesis to the costume- (Vanity 1981)
wearing “Group Sounds” bands This odd, difficult to find
Che-Shizu Glimmering who took Japan by storm in LP plays like a stream of
Star (Aleutian 1999) the ’60s with their imitations consciousness recording
On their previous six albums, of American and British pop, from inside the brain of a
Mukai Chie’s group Che-Shizu The Jacks were nihilistic, schizophrenic, broken analog
sweetened their melancholic operated outside of any scene synthesizer trapped in a
sound with more upbeat and refused to give interviews. cave with a half-singing, half-
tracks, but Glimmering Star, They also made one of the mumbling crazy person. The
their latest, is best listened to best psychedelic records ever. primitive compositions and
alone, in the dark, during bad Opening track “Marianne” gets intonations never get boring,
weather. Mukai’s sad, haunting right to the point, with rolling, though. Repeated listens
voice carries the album; the thundering toms, firecracker reveal a logic to the madness,
Phew Phew (Pass/Sky Yura Yura Teikoku 3x3x3 Les Rallizes Denudes Live
rhythm section’s contributions fuzz guitar and manic double- reminiscent of German math
Station CQ 1981) (MIDI 1998) ’77 (bootleg 2002)
are so sparse that at times bass competing with lead professor Konrad Becker’s
In 1996 a friend took me Led by an alien-esque man with The brainchild of singer/guitarist/
you forget it’s there, until the crooner Hayakawa Yoshio’s echo-laden drum machine and
to see Phew perform at a no eyebrows and an emaciated, legendary control freak Mizutani
sudden thwack of a drumstick booming vocals in a free-jazz-folk synth recordings as Monoton
club in a shopping mall in more feminine Haino Keiji Takashi, Rallizes appeared in
on a woodblock shakes you thunderstorm. in the early ’80s.
Osaka. I remember thinking doppelganger, the craziest Kyoto in the late ’60s with
briefly out of your trance.
there was no way this Phew looking band on this list might violently loud, feedback-
The stumbling, out-of-time
person could be worth the also be the best. [Full disclosure: drenched “total sensory assaults”
bass rumble keeps everything
four thousand, five-hundred I license some of their records complete with Exploding Plastic
brilliantly off-kilter, and by the
yen cover (like forty bucks!), for release in the US on my Inevitable-inspired, seizure-
end of the record you feel like
but from the first note I was label, though not this one.] YYT inducing strobes and projections.
you’ve emerged from tailing
spellbound. Phew started have spent the last twenty years The bass player’s role in the
a tired ghost through Tokyo’s
her musical career in short- releasing one flawless album Japanese Red Army’s 1970
backstreets at 3AM.
lived punk band Aunt Sally, after the next, but this, the hijacking of a Japan Airlines
whose energetic, charmingly record that propelled the group flight ostracized the group
amateurish debut now fetches into superstardom at home, is from its peers and earned it
hundreds of dollars. Her first the best gateway drug into their permanent CIA tags, but Takashi
single as a solo artist was J.A. Caesar Kokkyou catalog. Side two is particularly Tomokawa Kazuki Sakura persevered, leading a rotating
produced by Yellow Magic Junreika (Victor 1973) lethal. Barreling out the gates No Kuni No Chiru Naka O cast of characters identically
Orchestra’s Ryuichi Sakamoto From the late ’60s to the with opener “Hakkoutai,” bass (King 1980) attired in leather jackets and
and featured a more brooding early ’80s, Julius Arnest Caesar player Kamekawa’s death- A sort of shrieking poet, shades well into the ’90s. Live
sound. Her odd, percussion- (real name: Terahara Takaaki) defying walking bass spins Tomokawa Kazuki has ’77 features eight classic slow
“Japanese psych” gives us Westerners double palpitations of weirdness and obscurity—it’s the dream composed dozens of musical
heavy first full album as Phew circles around guitarist/singer released tens of albums of burners, all built around simple,
genre of both the music nerd and the record store clerk. Unfortunately, the language barrier can make was recorded in Conny Plank’s soundtracks for avant-garde Sakamoto’s scorching Hendrixy inspired, psychedelic avant-folk repetitive basslines over which
finding the real gems difficult. Popular American and British ’60s rock has had a profound influence on Cologne studio with musicians theater director Terayama leads, only to up the intensity since his start in the mid- Mizutani wails, shrieks and
from Can. Layers of sweeping Shuji. This LP compiles on the breakneck following ’70s, yet remains criminally unleashes a barrage of mind-
Japanese bands, and many so-called psychedelic groups are uninspired carbon copies of their Western
synths, phased-out ’80s guitars, some of the most intense track “Tsukinuketa.” On the unappreciated. On this early melting, overdriven guitar solos.
idols. But other artists have blessed the world with something less referential, and created some truly and metronomic drums examples of his over-the-top, other side of the spectrum, the masterpiece, Kazuki hurls himself
strange, life-affirming music. So instead of limiting it with the “Japanese Psych” tag—a loaded, imprecise combine with Phew’s operatic psychedelic joints, complete gorgeous, nine-minute ballad through his compositions,
singing/barking style for a with frantic chanting, distorted “Yurayura Ugoku” will have you attacking his acoustic guitar and
title—call this list a collection of classics by musical visionaries. JUSTIN SIMON
tripped-out dance party. organs, chaotic percussion crying your face off. For what destroying his vocal chords
and dueling fuzz guitar. it’s worth, this is my desert with his distinctive, cathartic
Justin Simon plays guitar in Invisible Conga People and runs Mesh-Key Records.
The sixth track—which starts island record. screech. Fully orchestrated
like a lullaby with soft female with violin, piano, shakuhachi
vocals and slowly morphs into and an assortment of other
a possessed runaway freight instruments, Sakura adds up to
train of crashing cymbals, a kind of unhinged, free jazz-
screams and fried guitar cum-Eastern folk hybrid.
lines—is particularly terrifying.

1 4 4 T HE FA D E R T H E FADER 1 45
 THE EXPLORERS CLUB
“[They] have done the near-impossible, turning an

GP
obsession with everything Beach Boys into an
utterly beguiling pop album...

FREEDOM WIND
the group recasts
MIXTAPE these magical
MUSICS sounds for the
COMPILED BY EDWIN “STATS” HOUGHTON, PETER MACIA, CHRIS NELSON,
21st century.”
T. COLE RACHEL, SAM HOCKLEY-SMITH, MATTHEW SCHNIPPER, JULIANNE SHEPHERD BBBBB
UNCUT

Mayor Bloomberg sent a tiny reel to reel from

storm troopers raiding scratch to play it. But it
down Canal Street, would be worth it, and it
counter-intuitively would still be less labor
turning the tourists’ than tracking down all
favorite bootleg strip these obscure freestyle
into a ghost town. 2 G’s and synthpop 12-inch
Blazin Ent, RIP. So I was dub mixes and then
Various Artists Jazzie walking down 5th Ave blending them seamlessly
B Presents School in Brooklyn one Sunday together yourself and
Days: Life Changing and there was a street then assembling the best
Tracks From the fair, with Mexican corn takes in Logic. Which is ALSO AVAILABLE FROM DEAD OCEANS:
Trojan Archives and miraculously acquired what Foo Young did. ESH
(Trojan) carnival games and people
Jazzie B was recently given selling dog collars with
the Order of the British the Jamaican flag on them.
Empire by Prince Charles, This dude was in a booth
making him the first dread with a boom box blasting
to receive such an honor. “Hot Music,” one of my
Jazzie and his twelve-year- favorite songs of all time; CD/LP 7” SINGLE
old son wore matching you could hear a crackle
leather jackets to his where the needle dragged
investiture at Buckingham when he was mixing. He
presided over a gigantic Karen Dalton BOWERBIRDS WHITE HINTERLAND EVANGELICALS
Palace. Chuck wore a tux 1499 WEST 2ND STREET BLOOMINGTON, IN 47403
Green Rocky Road HYMNS FOR A DARK HORSE PHYLACTERY FACTORY THE EVENING DESCENDS
and looked uncomfortable. spread of reeeeeally WWW.DEADOCEANS.COM CD/LP CD/LP CD/LP
bootleg mixtapes, one (Delmore)
Considering Jazzie is now
for five dollars or five for Karen Dalton grew up in
forty-five, recorded Soul
twenty, just like the olden a small town in Oklahoma
II Soul’s classics when he
days. I also bought Los just about thirty minutes
was twenty-six, and was
Various Artists Disco Italia: Essential Italo Disco Classics Mejores Cumbiamberos, away from the little
presumably listening to

BODIES OF WATER
House Headz parts one map speck that I grew
1977-1985 (Strut) the songs selected on this
up in. Like me, she had
compilation when he was and two, and Latinos
With all the lip service currently paid to the relative chic-ness of in the House, but this enough of living on the
a teen, that’s a pretty solid
Italo disco (including by me in FADER, what up Glass Candy!), run of being really fucking one was the best: classic plains to last a lifetime
and packed her bags and A CERTAIN FEELING
it’s nice to see some people finally coming out of the woodwork to
shine a little light on the real deal. It’s arguable just how essential
cool. Like I just started
wearing tight pants and
beats in a heater mix
format that will never be headed to New York DAVID VANDERVELDE
or classic any of the artists on Disco Italia actually are, but it’s a
wearing neat sunglasses squashed as long as there
are people who won’t
City. Dalton quickly made
a name for herself in the WAITING FOR THE SUNRISE
last year. What is that all
burgeoning NYC folk CD/LP OUT AUGUST 5
nice way for the casually curious listener to dip their toes into about? If I’m lucky I will get lower themselves for
scene of the early ’60s,
a pat on the back from album filler. It made me
the genre pool. I am partial to Red Dragon Band’s “Let Me Be recording two albums
some kid in Williamsburg happy. Keep it going. JS
Your Radio” (ok, sure!) and Revanche’s “1979 It’s Dancing Time,” for not being a total dick
before disappearing into
mostly because it’s fun to imagine myself traveling back in time while Jazzie B sits over
obscurity and eventually CD/LP
dying homeless on the OUT JULY 22
THE WAR ON DRUGS
and actually hearing this stuff at a European disco, preferably there throwing a couple I-
city streets. This collection
Roy songs on a record and
while wearing a Halston original as cocaine rains down from the of nine recently unearthed
rafters. TCR
winning medals. PM
home recordings from WAGONWHEEL BLUES
1963 are a glimpse into CD/LP
Dalton’s private world—
banjo and twelve-string
folk tales haunted by her
Egg Foo Young Super soaring Billie Holiday-
Crispy Mega Ultra Fly of-the-plains voice and
(mixtape)
WINDSOR FOR THE DERBY
the echo of an empty
This three hundred- apartment. This record
Various Artists Old
School Sessions by DJ
copy collector’s item
may be the only
makes me want to go
back home and walk
HOW WE LOST
Disciple (mixtape) actual, factual mixtape around in the woods for CD/LP
DJ Drama’s 2007 Federal reviewed in Mixtape a really long time. TCR
glamour shots all but Musics in a millennium.
deaded the mixtape I mean as in cassette, as ALSO AVAILABLE:
(and, one could argue, a in you and Dr. Google
generation of rappers), might have to look up THE IMPOSSIBLE SHAPES
and more recently, NYC the schematics and build THE IMPOSSIBLE SHAPES CD
MUSIC GO MUSIC 1499 WEST 2ND STREET, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA 47403 USA
1 4 6 T H E FA DE R LIGHT OF LOVE 12” WWW.SECRETLYCANADIAN.COM
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MIXTAPE

AL GREEN IT
LAY
MUSICS

DOWN
inflection alone goes a
long way toward indicating
her mood. Then the
boilerplate baile beat
locks in and Deize really
R&B/soul legend Al Green delivers his highly-anticipated new album Lay It Down,
gives chicks something
to fear, vowing porrada
featuring The Dap-Kings Horns, Corinne Bailey Rae, Anthony Hamilton, and
(“smackdown,” basically) John Legend. Co-produced by Green with Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson
on any “lady thief” she and keyboardist James Poyser, this album is truly classic with a modern twist,
Love Out Here Watussi “Purple
(Collector’s Choice)
catches sniffing around her
Moon”/“If All We Had
expressing the best of the history and future of R&B/soul.
man. A funk star after my
Every time I go to LA I Was Love” 12-inch
own heart! CN
listen to Forever Changes (Sticky Disc)
because it perfectly After I played “Keep On AVAILABLE ON CD AND
captures what LA is to Move,” by Babytalk (aka LIMITED-EDITION VINYL
me: a weirdly compelling Eric Broucek, one half of
place drenched in an eerie Watussi) to my friend
sun-smog that fucks me Simon, he noticed that the
up and makes me want song had been out since

©2008 Blue Note Records

to settle down there November. “Eight months
at the same time. Out I have lived without this,” www.algreenmusic.com
Here lacks the orchestral he said. Eight months www.bluenote.com
David Bowie Live
instrumentation to back it’s been in my life. And
in Santa Monica ’72
the paranoid lyrics about now, eight months later,
(Virgin/EMI)
death that made Forever I have Watussi. I listened
Santa Monica ’72 was
Changes the document to this once and went to
the first time America
of late-’60s LA that the bathroom singing the
experienced the androgy
it was, but it works hook: “something something
fabulosity of Bowie in
as a counterpoint— under the purple moon”
person. You may now
straightforward and more Children of the Sixth Root Race Songs from the Source know him as the dude
and someone was in the
obviously tortured, Arthur stall so I shut up. Then I
Lee howling his voice to
(Drag City) in the third row at your
went to lunch and sang it
OK, to keep it short: Father Yod was a hippie who owned a favorite indie concerts
shreds over messy drums in the wind tunnel between
and/or phoning your
and garage rock riffs while vegetarian restaurant in Laurel Canyon in the ’70s. He came band’s manager to hop on
6th and 7th Aves. Now I
trying to escape from the am listening to “If All We
up with his own religion that promoted vegetarianism and the remix real quick, but
city that was as much a Had Was Love” and I’m
natural birth, and a lot of people got into it and they all lived before he willfully became
part of the band as he wondering what happens
a commoner, Bowie
was. SHS together in a mansion that was supported by the restaurant was a forceful glammish
if they lose everything else
except love. Can they
(see also: they were a cult). It just so happened that a bunch mensch, pushing gender
still tinker out melancholy
of the people living there were really, really good at making boundaries and inventing
homemade disco anthems?
spaceman epics. Gather
improvisational jazzy psych-funk. It would be easy to write round the fire, kiddies. This
Is that love? I hope so. MS
this record off as a too-positive “Age of Aquarius” novelty, but live performance captures
it holds up really well (with the exception of the drum- and- what it was like to hear
him right at the cusp,
flute-backed spoken word part on “Go With the Flow”). The
phenomenal even if you’ve
highlight is “Godmen,” which features an impossibly tight heard Ziggy Stardust a
Deize Tigrona rhythm section full of skittering drums and meaty organ runs. million times under varying
degrees of intox: his voice
“Bandida” 7-inch All things considered, these dudes were living pretty well. SHS
at its rawest, his energy
(Man Recordings)
so newly mined you can
More than any other
nearly hear the boundaries
carioca MC, Deize
shattering. Music history
Tigrona’s tracks make me
and cultural shifts are all
wish I spoke Portuguese.
about moments and this
The first minute of
was one. JS
“Bandida”—when Diplo
pushes Deize’s fierce
multi-tracked rasp right
up front in the mix,
assaulting a jacked Devo
bassline that almost
seems to fear her—is
exactly why, though her

1 4 8 T HE FA DE R
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MIXTAPE
BOOKS
COMPILED BY PETER MACIA, T. COLE RACHEL,
JULIANNE SHEPHERD

Andrew Sean Greer ideas (the idealized, feminine

The Story of a Marriage “women’s world” of popular
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux) culture) from which it is, quite
Do not let the unfortunate literally, made. It also makes my
title fool you: this book is not 11th grade decoupage attacks
written for the Redbook set on late ’80s fashion seem pretty
and Andrew Sean Greer is lame. TCR
actually a gifted author, not so
much a stylist but nice with
the metaphors and textural
with detail. “How hollow,
to have no secrets left; you
shake yourself and nothing
rattles. You’re boneless as
an anemone.” A tangled
relationship story set in 1953,
the first few chapters of
this book set up the perfect
Christopher D. Salyers
scene for an ill noir mystery.
Face Food: The Visual
Unfortunately, Greer doesn’t
Creativity of Japanese
really go for it and spoils
Bento Boxes (Mark Batty
the set-up before the book
Publisher)
is half-through, turning it
Back in the ’90s, my mom
into a softbaked meditation
had (but never used) all
on identity in pre-liberated
these vintage Betty Crocker
America. The writing is nice,
entertaining books that taught
but Greer, yo, save the climax
you how to artfully craft your
for the end, smell me? JS
hors d’oeuvres into delightful
little bunny rabbits or, like,
a clown parade. It went far
beyond “ants on a log” (celery
with raisin-lined peanut butter)
into “this obviously takes a
whole day” territory. I am a
full-force women’s libber and
I know the ’50s blew chunks
for “homemakers,” but I also
dreamt of how awesome it
Graham Rawle Woman’s
would be just to stay home all
World: A Novel
day and make stupid leisurely
(Counterpoint/Soft Skull
decorative food. Face Food
Press)
revisits these questions with
I was never any good at
photos of the Japanese art of
drawing pictures or painting,
but throughout my high school
North Korean Posters: The David Heather Collection (Prestel) charaben and interviews with
years (most of which were The oddest thing about this book is not that it presents a completist’s horde of its practicioners, except the
spent hiding in the art room to fairly rare Pyongyang propaganda posters, but that its opening salvo, by Korean food is far nerdier. And seeing
scholar Koen de Ceuster, makes Kim Jong Il sound like a gentle gallerist who Spiderman’s face sculpted out
avoid the terrors of gym class),
happens to run the DPRK. “Respectful of the revolutionary tradition of his of sushi rice and nori or Super
I fancied myself something of
Mario made from fish cakes
a collage artist, making big, father, Kim Jong Il is crafting new policies in response to the domestic and
reminded me that even if you’re
unwieldy poster-sized gluings of international challenges the country faces,” writes the Dutchman. It’s weird to not sculpting taro Pokemons
ironic magazine clippings. Never read him written about so objectively and generously. But the magnanimous there is an art to being a mom,
in my wildest dreams could I tone perfectly sets up the dizzying and otherizing imagery on the following shout to mine. JS
have conceived of a project
two-hundred-seventy-five pages, which travels from posters declaring Let’s
like Woman’s World—a four-
hundred-thirty-seven-page novel
extensively raise goats in all families! to near innumerable invocations to nuke
that is literally made up entirely the United States. PM
of magazine clippings. Assembled
from forty thousand fragments
of text clipped out of 1960s
women’s magazines, the novel is
giant patchwork of mysterious
metafiction that attacks the very

1 5 0 T HE FA D E R
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MIXTAPE
DVDS
COMPILED BY ERIC DUCKER, PETER MACIA, JULIANNE SHEPHERD

The Thief of Bagdad Joy Division (Genius Weeds Season 3

(Criterion Collection) Products) (Lions Gate)
The Thief of Bagdad One benefit Grant Gee’s Last night, while watching
documents Dick Cheney’s Joy Division documentary Harold & Kumar Escape
first scouting trip to has over Anton Corbijn’s From Guantanamo Bay and
Iraq in 1976. Not really, Control biopic is that it indulging my Kal Penn fetish
but it is just as absurd has considerably less (he is nearly perfect, OK),
in retrospect—a 1940 affectations. (Don’t worry, I found myself pondering
Technicolor eruption of there are still affectations, the unexpected longevity of
luxuriant turbans and false this is Joy Divison we are weed humor. Are herb jokes
fortresses surrounding talking about.) But more funny because their prime
the artificially browned importantly, everyone patrons are lifted out their
and dubiously haired featured in Joy Division acts minds? FLAWED THEORY!
faces of white actors so thoroughly like they’ve I spend ninety-nine percent
playing sultans who ride been stereotyped in the of my time NOT-high,
flying toy horses. Thief’s past that to dramatize and I have a Cheech &
theme is less important them in a narrative film Chong (and Method Man &
than its spectacle—it won seems kind of redundant. Redman) DVD collection to
a bevy of Oscars for Art Tony Wilson is a rival any NYC bike dealer
Direction, Cinematography pretentious genius. Peter and/or State University
and Special Effects—and Hook is kind of a cretin. freshman. And so, as The
this rehab is gorgeous and Bernard Sumner doesn’t Wire for white suburban
nonsensical in the same seem entirely comfortable moms drops its third
way Agnes Montgomery’s with where life has taken season on DVD, I call for an
Panda Bear covers are, him. Stephen Morris is expansion of weed humor’s
except the musical skittish and probably boundaries, a way to look at
numbers within aren’t shouldn’t give interviews. potheads in a broader and
nearly as great as “Bros.” Annik Honore is foreign. more multiplistic sense, to
But it did introduce the Deborah Curtis is basically break the chains of pothead
world to Indian actor Sabu silent. And Ian Curtis is vilification. Weeds embodies
(later, Mowgli in Jungle dead—the one fact about this concept, but not in the
Book), who, in a twist of him that people seem obvious way (um, white
blinding creativity, plays most interested in. ED suburban mom as weed
Abu. Abu, in addition to dealer, hardy har har): its
being a part-time cat and humor is dry, sometimes
nice with the groin wrap, flat, and lurks in unexpected
tames a seventy-foot corners. A little like the
mohawked flying genie and cops. JS
rides him to the rescue.
Need I say more? PM

Ghost Ride the Whip: The Story of the Hyphy Movement

(Image Entertainment)
If you ever wondered how a bunch of dudes transformed
parking lot donut spinning into an actual cool pastime, Ghost
Ride the Whip is thorough in answering your question. But this
documentary, directed and co-written by the venerated DJ Vlad,
sits in striking contrast to all those “Oh hyphy is all ‘yadadamean’
and stunna shades” articles that dropped when “Tell Me When
to Go” came out, ninety-eight percent of which seemed like
they were written by people who think Mac Dre is a new type
of hamburger. It casts a sharp sociopolitical eye on the scene,
detailing Bay Area hood history and connecting the eventual
wildstyle of hyphy to the self-motivation and determination of
the Panthers and, beyond that, the black diaspora in America. Not
that it’s all textbooky—we also learn that Hammer, long miscast
as solely baggy-pantsted and catchphrasy, could put a serious
beatdown on some snitches if warranted, and get good interviews
with important players ($hort!) plus rare Mac Dre footage. JS

1 52 T HE FA DE R
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JEDI MIND PIX
RECOMMENDED LISTENING
FAVORED TUNES FROM FAVORITE DJS

MR. MARTELO J. PERIOD MIXHELL

You could try to call him on his landline in Brooklyn mixtape king J. Period mixes all his Avowed fans of Brazilian metal titans Sepultura
London this summer, but he wouldn’t answer; Jedi Mind Pixes together and distributes them might be surprised that original drummer Igor
Mr. Martelo’s iCal is booked through fall as on wax and plastic, so whatever he drops in the Cavalera started an electro project with his wife,
Santogold’s worldwide touring DJ. We’d hire him, club has likely already been sliced into one of his Laima Leyton. As MIXHELL, the couple has been
too, after hearing his mega-’naners productions signature joints. He mostly sticks to classic rap rocking dancefloors from São Paulo to Prague,
of house, breakbeats, bassline and extra creative and soul. But—fact—his first mixtape in 2002 shooting mixer meters into the red with their
refixes (Rick Ross reimagined as heavy, foggy was called Warr uv da Worldz: Drum n Bass vs. pummeling edits and originals. Set to release a
dubstep, oh hell yeahs). Experience his fierceness Hip-Hop. “Now, because of Serato, it’s easer to debut EP this summer, MIXHELL will follow it up
at any euro Santogold show this summer, or make remixes,” he says. “Before, I could only do with more, extensive touring around the world,
endear your bad self to his MySpace, myspace. that if I pressed them up on vinyl.” Cop ’em at proving its not just the Euros who can get down
com/mrmartelo. jperiod.com. maximally. Get it shorty: myspace.com/mixhell.

Rusko “Cockney Wideboys “Project Notorious BIG “Last Lauryn Hill “Lost Ones Turbo Trio Siriusmo “Mein
Thug” (Sub Soldiers) Bassline” (white) Breath (Intro)” March (J. Period Soundclash “Terremoto” / Neues Fahrrad
This song is number one, Wideboys aren’t brand 9: Collectors Edition Remix)” The Best of Buraka Som Sistema (Boys Noize Edit)”
but at the minute I’m new but they’re so, so (mixtape) Lauryn Hill (mixtape) “Yah (MIXHELL’S (Boysnoize Records)
playing Drums of Death’s amazing. The bassline scene This joint, from my Biggie This uses the beat from Edit)” (White) Boys Noize sent us this
“Baltimore Thug” mix and is still new and sometimes tribute, uses the Biggie Pharoahe Monch’s “Simon We edit most of the stuff and that’s how we got
the Scratch Perverts mix. it’s unfair that Wideboys “Juicy” a cappella over Says” and also flips to we play so it gets Mixhell’s to know Siriusmo from
These are both insane; seem to be getting a lot of Kanye’s “Flashing Lights.” a reggae version of it. style. Turbo Trio are really Germany. The track
people go off their nut remix work over maybe “Flashing Lights” is such an Every verse, it will flip to good friends of ours from sounds even better
when they hear them. some of the less well- incredibly good beat, but a different beat, and the Rio de Janeiro and when because it’s a Boys Noize
Rusko is making the biggest known new kids like TS7, it’s played to death, and last one is the Black Star we got their tracks, Buraka edit. We really like this
jump-up dubstep tunes out Dub Militia, TRC, JTJ and flipping it with the Biggie “Definition” beat cause matched perfectly. We play one as an intro to our
right now and this is still a them (Wideboys were lyrics that everyone knows people know the lyrics this when we want to bring set; it builds a really lovely
heavy hitter. big back in the day when and loves gets people really front to back—so whether some Latin groove into vibe, people melting on
UK Garage was huge), but excited. they know it not, they our set and there’s always the dance floor. Above all,
when you pull out shit like respond do it. booty shakin’ madness. a track has to have a vibe,
this you see why. it has to turn you crazy.

Toddla T “Sound Tape

Killin” (1965 Records) The Roots “Come
This is my man. Toddla T Together” Best of The Justice “Phantom Pt.
is the future, one of the Drums of Death Roots (mixtape) II (Soulwax Remix)”
nicest dudes you could “Breathe (Curses! I actually produced this for (Ed Banger/Because
meet, making the biggest Remix)” (Greco- my Roots mixtape, which Music)
tunes. I play fast most of Roman) featured Zion I. It sampled We listened to this while
the time—fast tunes, fast This guy is amazing. On the Beatles’ “Come Soulwax was working on
mixing—this guy makes this tune he uses these old Together” which gives it it and since they’ve sent
the only slower tunes I evil rave piano stabs and a wide appeal and turns it us the track we can’t stop
can play. Every tune he crazy drums that sound into something new. There playing it. The synths are
does, party vibes always. like they’re being sucked are issues with sample simply amazing in the
Dancehall running through backwards. Wow. And clearances in the industry, middle of the set—they
all of it, and it’s never people love the intro, but in the club you can play make people go crazy—
cheesy. this goes offffff everytime, anything. and then the break is
whether it’s at Fabric or insane, people always think
some shitty low-ceiling we did something wrong
sweatbox. Straight banger. with the equipment.

1 5 4 T HE FA DE R
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SLEEVES
TRAGICOMICS
SUPERMUNDANE ILLUSTRATES HIS OWN BLUE CHEER

T he way I design is fairly instinctive. With album

covers, it’s always best to listen to the music
first because you’ll get something from it straight
away. It should always be like that but sometimes
the recording artists just haven’t got things ready, so
I’ll meet with them and discuss it. With Juliette and
the Licks, Juliette Lewis came with various sleeves
that she liked and wanted something quite simple
and iconic. She showed me Patti Smith’s Horses—all
very simple photograph-and-type covers.
When I was younger it was all gatefold vinyl so
there was more fun to be had. I was into things like
ELO—that Out of the Blue album where you got
the Wurlitzer UFO on the front and you’d open it
up and there’s a massive painting inside. You could
actually make the UFO out of the cutouts. It’s things
like that that you can’t do anymore, although they
say that vinyl is coming back. The last job I did, The
Accidental album with the big ghost on the front, is
only being produced for vinyl in America. That was
actually a piece I already had. I thought that image
had something quite dark but also something quite
vulnerable about it. Outwardly, there is optimism to
my work, but underneath, there’s a slight darkness
to it as well.
With the Dream Brother compilation, I probably
came up with four or five different covers. Almost
all of them had this watercolor feel to them, that was
the approach that felt right with the music. I really
like it. It has a good, pure design. I’m not one of these
people who does lots of research beforehand or goes
off to find a bunch of reference points. I take from
my influences and try to produce stuff that’s very
unique. I think it’s good to do things fairly quickly
and get things over to the bands. With The Ripps
cover, that was actually a pitch. The photographs
weren’t amazing so I just messed around with them
to give it a lo-fi, punky feel. We didn’t have to change
anything.
It doesn’t feel like I’m being influenced by other
people, but there’s a lot of music that I like. If you
listen to someone like Robert Wyatt, his work is fairly
experimental but also humorous. It can be sad at
places. I think something about that way of working
resonates with me. I’d love to design a Robert Wyatt
album cover, but I think his wife does all of his stuff.
Generally, I’m trying to produce well-crafted,
beautiful work that makes people enjoy owning these
things. If you’re buying a CD, one of the nice things
is getting the packaging and reading the lyrics, and
if that’s done in a well-produced manner, I think
people appreciate it more. Everybody deserves a little
bit of good design.

Rob Lowe—better known as Supermundane—is a designer,

artist, illustrator, typographer and art director residing in
London.

1 5 6 T H E FA DE R
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CLERK PERKS
ANSWERS FROM BEHIND
THE COUNTER T H E F A D E R P R E S E N T S
PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN FRANCIS PETERS

FOXY PRODUCTION around here at the gallery. It

Art Gallery: New York, was an installation piece that
NY was actually very intricate
and beautiful, but it was also
The great thing about calling very raw—pounds of mud
an organization “Foxy and dirt, stuff like that. It
Production” is that it could be was a big important show
almost anything. A basement for us. We also have had big
record label specializing in shows with Sterling Ruby
obscure soul records from and David Noonan.
Guatemala? Sure. A shoebox
company producing ’70s- Do people ever wander
inspired adult video? Possibly. in off the street and just

.com
In reality, Foxy Production is seem totally confused by
an art gallery in New York what they are seeing?
City. One day I went there to Oh yeah. When Hany’s show
look at some art and talk to was up—which was very
gallery co-owner and director dark and had the look of
Michael Gillespie. The gallery someone’s messy workshop
space may be small, but or something—people would
the works are meticulously sometimes come in and
displayed and nicely represent think they were lost or not
the changing face of the You’re famous for We get a fair amount of collectors, relationships with know if this was a gallery
NYC art world—namely, knowing what’s next with traffic, but it’s a lot different the press. It can be such a or not. I actually love that.
a variety of international, video art and mixed- than, say, one of the galleries delicate thing at times. Those kinds of questions are
often-young artists working media installations. How on 24th Street. I’d say that more fun to deal with than,
in difficult-to-define media: do you choose the artists most of our visitors are Is there something that say, sneering art people
conceptual neon lights, digital that are represented pretty focused. They’ve heard Foxy Production does who approach everything
installations echoing Nintendo here? of us and they are generally better than anyone else? with disdain.
games, heaping clumps of We started off working with coming here to see something Don’t be modest.
mud (more on that later). artists who were all very specific. New York is great We are known for showing Where does the name
Gillespie, who I mistook for interdisciplinary and did work for artists because so many great video art, which is Foxy Production come
a fellow gallery patron for that was very interactive… people actually come in and something that is often from?
about fifteen minutes because like, the kind of interactive see your work…that doesn’t hard to deal with in terms We wanted something that
he was actually walking work that involved an happen in other cities as of collecting and archiving. was kind of cheeky and not
around looking at the art, audience. I’d say that we’re much. For a very young gallery, we too cool. We also wanted
and fellow gallery owner John drawn to artists who are very are very international. We a name that could be sort
Thomson have made a name much about specific ideas, as New York is great for only represent one artist of timeless and that, if you
for themselves by taking risks, expressed through materials. art, but the art world who actually lives here in heard it, you might not know
courting unusual artists, and, here is known for being New York. I think for most exactly what it is.
as far as I can tell, actually What does that even notoriously treacherous young galleries it’s usually
being really nice. T. COLE RACHEL mean? and difficult to navigate. the opposite. Also, I’m really foxyproduction.com
We like artists who are What are the biggest proud of the diversity of
comfortable working in a challenges to opening and what we show here.
variety of different media. running a gallery here?
We don’t really focus on one Well, financially it’s pretty What have been some of
specific aesthetic too much. difficult. To be honest, one the most notorious shows
of the hardest things is you’ve had here?
The gallery is technically
in Chelsea, but a little
just finding the right artists
to work with and then
We recently had a show
with an Egyptian artist called TOTAL SOUL
higher up. What kind of
traffic do you get through
keeping them. It’s all about
relationships—relationships
Hany Armanious called
“Year of the Pig Sty” that
COMING THIS FALL
here on a typical day? with artists, relationships with was very tough to work

1 5 8 T HE FA DE R T H E FADER 159
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REHEATERS
BATTLES
GAL COSTA’S MOMENT OF BOSSA NOVA REVOLUTION

A s 1968 waned, Brazil’s

military dictatorship
snatched up Bahian Gal Costa’s
percussion and the seams of samba
(and its scion bossa) were burst and
the hems left hanging. This was
longhaired mentors, Caetano Tropicália concentrate.
Veloso and Gilberto Gil. Acolytes But Gal’s tattered fray was front
of the nontraditional who were and center, a quality that young
galvanized by the short-lived jazz vocalist Gretchen Parlato
Tropicália arts movement, Veloso lauds. “She allowed her emotions
and Gil were encouraged by the to come right to the surface of her
ruling regime to cross the Atlantic voice,” notes the Brazilophile, who
for a spell. Costa, then twenty-four joined Costa in a 2005 Hollywood
and moved by her friends’ forced Bowl tribute to Antonio Carlos
exile, followed up her eponymous Jobim. “She immediately got to the
debut with a sharp bossa nova and heart of the song, the heart of the
psychedelic rock response, simply note, the heart of the lyric.” Gil,
titled Gal. whose three contributions slashed
In and out of print, primarily and warbled with electric guitar
as an import, for the past four and vocal effects, challenged Costa
decades, specialty record store and to pierce through the fuzz. She
new label, Dusty Groove, pounced inhabited them well: rambling
on the opportunity to again make as if intoxicated on “Cultura e
the distinctive recording available. Civilização,” siren-esque on “Com
“She was really at that point Medo, com Pedro,” smooth and
one the strongest forces of the stir-crazy on “Objeto Sim, Objeto
Tropicália movement,” label co- Não.”
owner Rick Wojcik says, “and But for the sixty-two-year-old
this record was really one of the Costa, who ascended to star status
boldest statements that movement in Brazil and has an enduring
ever made.” global allure, smoothness is now
“Meu Nome É Gal” bisected the most prominent element of
the album, and began with the her music. Neither Costa nor her
bossa nova languor initiated musical kin have attempted such
by João Gilberto and others in a sound in any of their recordings
Costa’s adolescence. Luxe and since. Gal is then “a dream gone
swinging with gauzy strings and wrong,” to borrow from Veloso’s
triumphant horns, her cool coo bluesy “The Empty Boat,” the
remained unfettered—the better to album’s only English language
course through the intricate guitar song. The reverie of bossa nova is
strumming and bottom swishing a salve to an inhibited populace,
bass—until it morphed into a but Gal’s fierce, fused sonics were
screechy caw. Enter a wanton a nightmarish battle cry.
electric guitar and breakspeed JALYLAH BURRELL

1 6 0 T H E FA D E R
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BEAT CONSTRUCTION
EL MOVIMIENTO
JORGE LEDEZMA’S ELECTRIC GARDENS

PHOTOGRAPHY BETH ROONEY

T hough Jorge Ledezma in his broken English, was tireless dedication. It also so nurtured that it almost Everything was built up
is the producer, like, You understand! You cost fifty thousand dollars loves you back. Taking piece by piece, session by
multi-instrumentalist and understand! The whole out of his own pocket, cues from the psychedelic session. When we did ‘Un
braintrust behind Latin improvisational spirit of cash he earned during the spontaneity and “instant Pedazo,’ it had one hundred
psych-pop provocateurs it, he just accepted me fourteen-plus years he composing” championed fourteen tracks.”
Allá, he perfected his immediately.” After the worked at a Chicago Whole by Suzuki, Allá has another Ledezma and Suzuki
tropicalia while playing show, the Japanese legend Foods. “I had this mentality side, one that resides reunited in October of 2007
German post-rock. Around enlisted Ledezma to play like, If this record is gonna in the electric gardens to play music and kick it
six years ago, Ledezma and record with Network, get picked up and get of tropicália, musique after Es Tiempo was finally
emailed former Can his international consortium attention, it’s gotta sound concrète, Residents-style finished. “I hadn’t seen him
frontman Damo Suzuki and of musicians. great,” Ledezma says. “I layering, Beatles-esque in a few years. I told him
asked if his now-defunct Proof of Suzuki’s didn’t want, You know, it experimentation and the about the record. He knows
band Defender could open influence can be found in sounds great but I think we innovations of Café Tacuba. I’m this experimenter, but
for Suzuki at his Chicago Allá’s debut Es Tiempo, a need to re-record it. I didn’t “That’s the duality of what he knows I’m trying to make
show. Suzuki said yes. “We meticulously handcrafted want any of that bullshit.” I do,” he says. “I really something else happen,”
had a pretty crazy set. I mosaic that gestated in With the additional get into the way that Phil says Ledezma. “I played it
threw my guitar at my Ledezma’s studio for four core of Ledezma’s field- Spector works, Frank Zappa, to him and he just kind of
brother Angel, who was and a half years. To make it sampling brother Angel Conny Plank. I immediately smiles. He’s like, Jorge…
playing the drums,” says he enlisted an ever-evolving and hypno-chanteuse Lupe had the big picture of what always trying to be pop star.”
Ledezma. “Afterwards, troupe of stumbled-upon Martinez, Allá’s music is I wanted from a song. I ANGELA BRUNO
Damo pulled me aside, and musicians, recorded in simultaneously dreamy, wanted a timpani and myspace.com/estiempo
Sweden, and drew on sea-breezy and structured, these songs would not be
incredible patience and and Es Tiempo is an album finished until I found one.

1 6 2 T H E FA D E R
GP
MIXTAPE
DRANKY DRANKS
COMPILED BY PETER MACIA, CHIOMA NNADI,
ROSEMARY SIMON

PHOTOGRAPHY SAMANTHA PARK

Zyr Vodka don’t want medicine, we

When it comes to food I want candy. And this shit
pride myself on cutting out comes through in a blaze of
the middle man—which glory. It doesn’t put hair on
means the pasta in my pantry our chests, it keeps them
is generally made in Italy, the androgynously smooth. It
port from Portugal and so doesn’t kill innocent potatoes,
on and so forth. Zyr vodka it draws its water from
is made in Russia, which to Teton aquifers and borrows
my understanding is where responsibly from corn-fed
vodka originated. I think it Idaho rye grass. And you
would also be fair to say that
Russians know what the hell
know what else? We drink
it all day because we love THANK YOU SUB POP FOR TWENTY YEARS OF MUSIC
they are doing when they
label a bottle “ultra smooth.”
America and love should
make you permanently blind.
THAT MADE US FEEL GOOD WHEN IT WASN'T BUMMING US OUT!
It’s no disrespect to other PM
vodka-producing nations at
all. I mean I’ve had some great Bud Light Lime
Scandinavian vodkas in my I don’t drink beer. I’m just
time and I even hear that folk not that into it. I worked in
in Idaho have figured out the a Belgian restaurant once,
whole vodka-making process. surrounded by one-hundred
But for now I’m sticking with of the finest Belgian beers
the Russians (FIVE distillations known to man and there
bitches!) CN was literally only one beer
(Floris Ninkeberry beer if
DeuS (Brut de Flanders) you care to google it) that I
DeuS is literally the champagne would drink, on those rare
of beers; it begins its “team building” occasions
fermentation process in Belgium that it was necessary for me
before traveling to Champagne, to down a pint. That’s why
France where it spends nine the whole Bud Light Lime
months in caves, undergoing thing is so weird to me. I
the “methode champenoise.” can’t even remember tasting
Yesterday I rolled out the it for the first time now, but
drawer underneath my captain’s all I can say is that this new
bed and pulled out a 75cl one sitting on my desk tastes
stock of DeuS I’ve been saving really good—fruity, summery,
for drinking in the shower. sparkly and all that. And also
(If you’re poor, squint your (oh lord I’m such a girl) no
eyes, and wish hard enough, a empty calories! CN

bottle of DeuS can easily pass five percent alcohol in this History has brainwashed the
for a bottle of Dom Pérignon.) bottle? Drinking DeuS in the world to think this Russkie
I popped the bottle in my shower is like the equivalent swill is superior to all others,
bathtub and the lacy, cascading of seventy-two hours of REM but I’m here to tell you
bubbles rushed out and overran sleep! RS America is the new vodka
my chalice glass. Before I knew don dada. Americans don’t
it, suds were everywhere and Square One Organic Vodka need to be kept warm by
I was floating in a homemade Look elsewhere on this liquor, we want to get drunk
sensory deprivation tank. Did page and you’ll see a snooty, and celebrate shopping and
I mention there’s eleven-point- modern Russian vodka. the last episode of Lost. We

DRINK SOUTHERN COMFORT RESPONSIBLY.

1 6 4 T H E FA DE R
Liqueur, 21-50% Alc. By Volume, Southern Comfort Company, Louisville, KY ©2008 www.southerncomfort.com
GP
EVENTS
CALIFORNIA LOVE
FADER 53 ISSUE RELEASE PARTY

A BASS ALE EVENT

ALWAYS ENJOY RESPONSIBLY.

• We decided to celebrate the release

of FADER 53 with Abe Vigoda in LA
because that place is weird (and also
because it is warm and we have an
office there). After enjoying the sun, we
hit up the Warehouse District to drink
complimentary Bass Ale and watch Abe
Vigoda play a sloppy, exuberant set of
songs from their upcoming album in
the middle of a half-pipe. Some of us
ate grilled cheese and milled around
in the backyard while the rest of us
chilled inside and enjoyed the sweet
DJ selections of man-about-LA Cali
Dewitt and Mika Miko’s Jenna Thornhill.
Unfortunately we didn’t see anyone
actually skate the pipe, but we did see
Abe Vigoda and a whole lot of smiling
faces and that was enough for us.

PHOTOGRAPHY MALLORY DITCHEY

GP
STOCKISTS
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY LEONIE PURCHAS. STYLING MOBOLAJI DAWODU. (LEFT) PANTS BY DUCKIE BROWN (RIGHT) SHIRT BY GIORGIO ARMANI, PANTS BY DUCKIE BROWN.

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY LAUREN FLEISCHMAN (MILES BENJAMIN ANTHONY ROBINSON), GABRIELE STABILE (CUMBIA), PETER VAN AGTMAEL (CROOKERS), DOROTHY HONG (ESTELLE).
No Age likes hats Open Bar with BLK JKS Andrew WK gets weird Christian Joy video interview Open Bar with The Last Shadow
Puppets

T H I S I SS U E ’ S O N L I N E E XC LUS IV E S

The Morning After: Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson on tour Slow Burn: Behind the scenes in Argentina

Vita Futura: Getting down with Crookers Wonder Woman: Bonuses from our Estelle feature

CO LU M N S

Stylee Fridays: Slept On: Ghetto Palms: Dollars to Pounds: Prancehall’s Bass Odyssey:
Listen to Chioma, you will Schnipper’s underrated gems New riddims from Edwin “Stats” Rock and pop from across What’s good in grime and bassline
look better Hougton the pond

1 70 T H E FA DE R
GP
SUBSCRIBE!
APPENDIX
REAL LIVE MUSIC!
UNSTOPPABLE COPPABLES FROM ABOVE AND BEYOND THIS ISSUE’S PAGES.
COMPILED BY JACE CLAYTON, BRENDAN FREDERICK, JULIANNE SHEPHERD

GRIND MUSIC AND RYAN LESLIE CROOKERS CUMBIA

“NUMBER ONE” “VITA FUTURA” “SLOW BURN”
pg 96 pg 104 pg 112

Fat Joe “Damn” Me Myself & I “Voglio Solo Limonare (f. La Pisa Los Mirlos Cumbias Amazonicas
(Virgin 2006) & M.O.L.)” Crookers Mixtape (self- Vol. 2 (Microfon Argentina 1980)
Producer LV, Grind Music’s younger half, released 2006) When 1960s surf rock washed up in rural
came into his own on this street anthem, Back when Crookers’ now-house sound Peru, it infected an emergent cumbia
one of his three tracks on Me, Myself & I. was nascently cloaked in crunk-dwelling sound already feverish with electric guitars
The adrenaline rush beat beefs up Swedish hip-hop, Phra’s name was preceded by and high jungle melodies. This pioneering
rocker Bo Hannson’s psychedelic1974 “MC.” And rap he did—a bit like if Guru group remains out of print, but if second-
track “Excursions With Compications,” flowed in Italian—on nigh every track of hand record shop searches don’t yield a
with metronome drums and a double-time their mixtape, a presumed sleeper that Mirlos gem, check 2007’s Roots of Chicha
bassline. The song’s organ swells, dramatic actually blew up enough to become an compilation with tunes by them and their
cymbals and scuzzy guitars were ripe for insert in an issue of Italian Groove magazine, trippy pals. JC
street drama, giving Crack his hardest- gratis. “Limonare” was the single (YouTube
hitting lyrical performance in forever. BF the vid for a good time). Its cosmopolitan Damas Gratis Para Los Pibes (DBN
electro-hop foreshadowed the club 2003)
LATIF “It’s Alright” Love in the earthquakes they’d conjure once Phra Don’t be distracted by the anemic synth
First (Universal 2003) dropped the lyrical alchemy. JS leads, the repetive guitar skank or lyrics like
Ryan Leslie got in the door at Universal Laura, your thong is showing. Cumbia villera
after producing a song for Philly singer Adam Sky vs. Mark Stewart “We Are inventor Pablo Lescano’s songwriting skills
LATIF, which won a Teen People’s “Who’s All Prostitutes (Crookers Remix)” reveal true pop genius, all deep hooks and

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANNIE TRITT (RYAN LESLIE), PETER VAN AGTMAEL (CROOKERS), GABRIELE STABILE (CUMBIA).
Next” contest. His debut Love in the First (Exploited 2007) street-slang poetry that’s often brilliant but
not only included some of Leslie’s first Crookers have this thing for crescendos. never too clever. In a genre dominated
work, but also featured early chops from Listening to their music is sort of like by cover versions, Damas Gratis make
Sean Garrett, Johnta Austin and Adonis. watching a balloon inflate: starts out rubbery originality look easy, yet still deliver quick
Even with the competition, “It’s Alright” and full of potential, expands into a gigantic two bar references to classic Colombian
stood out, with clean live drums, bare ball that you can tie up and bat around cumbias, adding a sip of fine old wine to
bones guitar plucks and reassuringly earnest with the palms of your hands. “We Are Lescano’s addictively synthetic cocktails. JC
harmonies. BF All Prostitutes” shows this perfectly; it
jumps off with some digi-handclaps, synths Chancha Via Circuito Kumbias
Pharoahe Monch “Welcome To ramp up into electro toms until they’re Gauchito (self-released 2007) #45 ISSUE APRIL 2007: FEATURING BILL CALLAHAN, POLOW DA DON, PANDA BEAR, BLACK LIPS, GYPTIAN AND PRODIGY.
The Terrordome” Desire (Universal in full overdrive and some presumably You wouldn’t guess that the unassuming
Motown 2007) goateed manhunk grouses, “WE ARE guy selling CDs in the back of Buenos
PROSTITUTES!” Maybe not prostitutes, but

1 Y EA R / 8 I S S U ES FO R $ 1 9 . 9 5
When it came time to cover Public Aires’ Zizek club is one of the scene’s
Enemy’s incendiary anthem on his 2007 gluttons for sure. JS most respected producers. The first sound
album Desire, ex-Organized Konfusion MC on his electronic cumbia EP is a Damas
Monch called Sean C and LV to revamp Don Rimini “Let Me Back Up Gratis keyboard sample, but Chancha dubs
the Bomb Squad’s layered production. It (Crookers Remix)” Absolutely Rad the street reference into contemplative
THEFADER.COM/SUBSCRIBE
was the perfect assignment for a couple (Mental Groove 2008) space alongside cricket sounds and gun-
of golden era rap junkies—they added HEY I’M A CHARACTER ON MARIO cock shakers. Other Zizek producers craft
signature Grind Music details, like a warm KART! I JUST TOOK THE INVINCIBILITY new school cumbia beats for dancefloor
horn section cherry picked from The 3rd PILL AND I’M FLASHING AND GOING whomp; Chancha takes the mystical/
Avenue Blues Band’s 1970 cut “Come SUPERFAST! Oh wait, no, I’m just Don tropical route, emulating both Martin
On and Get It.” Despite the complete Rimini, French dude, and the Crookers Denny and hip-hop’s pursuit of the perfect
reformation, they retained the essence have taken my kinda ill techno jam and my loop. JC
of PE’s 1991 version with the same quick chorus of “Let me back up” and chopped
vocal bursts and urgent energy. BF it up and turned it into a spiraling fight
anthem with about forty-five beat changes
that, eventually, becomes so epic you
think “Eye of the Tiger” is gonna cut in.
SURVIVE! JS

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OUT

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