I’m super excited about the second installment of Ascended Drifts, my hip hop box set project.
Ascended Drifts 2: New Jersey
Jazzy tracks from New Jersey, 1991-1999. Most artists hail from Newark, Trenton, and Jersey City, which were also jazz epicenters at various points throughout the 20th century. Horns and pianos dominate the beats with a pleasant smoothness that intersects with ideas of mortality and ego, giving each track some real murky muscle. It’s big, and it’s grey, and it’s weird, and it’s New Jersey.
Featuring tracks by Artifacts, The Blunted Crew, Brick City Kids, Da Nuthouse, Flipside Magicians, Logic, N.F.L., Nautilus, Original Seeds, Real Live, Sick Lunatix, Visual Sound, 108 Dragons, and a bunch of others.
Where have I been? How has it been more than 2 months since I posted anything? But I’ve done so much in that time!
I made this thing in Photoshop one day to inspire myself to work more on a magazine idea. The inspiration didn’t come, but I like the picture. I took it at the largest underground lake in America.
I wrote an essay about a particular spambot Twitter for Title Magazine.
I published a book about Agnes Martin. Details coming soon. Here is a picture from it -
2-3 things that are on the very near horizon:
1. Another Ascended Drifts box set of New Jersey hip hop, 1991-1998. I haven’t decided on a theme yet but preliminary listens led me to the words “goofy” or “jazzy”.
2. A book of poetry.
3. An updated website, blog, CSS (or SASS), and an archive of Talking Pictures reading material.
I had heard aboutJust Another Asshole before as it made an appearance at X Initiative. Over the weekend I saw this cover image posted on a blog & decided to do a little more digging. Just Another Asshole was a sound art publication edited by Barbara Ess and Glenn Branca. I wasn’t able to find any information on anthologies #1, 2, or 4 (I don’t even know that they exist), but #5 is a 77-track long compilation released on LP in 1981. Here is the link for a covert download, or you can buy the cd on Amazon for $13.76. But be warned: the Amazon product only has 57 tracks and the only review is by “A Customer” who gave it 4 stars and said “This album is cool,except for track 8 which is sung by lead singer- James Hedstrom. He seems to be struggling in this album.” JAA #6 (title: “I find my mother, brim in the full udder of desire”) is a print anthology that includes work by Kathy Acker, Jenny Holzer, Richard Prince, Kiki Smith, Lynne Tillman, and many others. I was not able to find a free copy anywhere but I did find one copy selling for $240.
So that’s Just Another Asshole. From what I can find, it’s not quite the “hackjob” as one of my co-editors had imagined.
“Five Myths and a Menace” in Standpoint – on 5 economic myths that have saturated politics. And Adam Smith. And why Adam Smith is “the great authority on Anti-Protectionism — as the man who first told the world the truth so that the world could learn and believe it.” Yeeeaaah.
“What, Me Care?” in Scientific American – Young people are less empathetic than their 1980 counterparts. They are also more narcissistic. This has been scientifically verified by Scientific American.
“Brand States: Postmodern Power, Democratic Pluralism, and Design” in e-flux – “In its current stage, state branding has not yet seen critical, alternative, or counter-hegemonic approaches. We will conclude that the recognition of network power as a form of structural coercion provides the best starting position for the development of such alternative approaches to state branding.”
RT @christianbok: They attempt to explain the Flarf poems written by the machine called @horse_ebooks—(via @alienated…): http://t.co/EVs ... 2012/01/20
