Flying Nun Records: The Chills

Haling from Dunedin, The Chills are a 80’s and 90’s band with aural stories that recall childlike wonder and a free-wheeling and expansive youth in the South Island of New Zealand. There’s a happy-go-lucky psychadelic pop and folk sound that (possibly) found its way into the sound of Split Enz and Crowded House later on.

The Chills came to prominence in 1982 in the Dunedin Double compilation which featured four acts (The Chills, The Verlaines, Sneaky Feelings and The Stones) who all hailed from this dark and stormy corner of New Zealand, a city in the deep south.

The Chills along with the other bands all embodied the distinctly lo-fi and DIY ethic at the heart of the burgeoning Flying Nun label. Flying Nun Records became legendary for championing the indie and experimental music scene in Dunedin during the 80’s and 90’s that was centred around the the creative hotbed of the Univerity of Otago. As a result, we can thank Flying Nun for a plethora amazing and often little known musical treasures. Many of these bands are still going strong and touring today with collectors edition vinyl by these artists still in hot demand.

The most well known track by The Chills and probably my favourite is Pink Frost, a haunting and eerie sounding track with a hint of desolation and a yearning for connection to the wider world. It was Flying Nun Records’ ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ moment and is one of the most well-known songs to come out of Flying Nun Records over the years.

 

Fast-forward 30 years and the music of The Chills still sounds full of jazzy kookiness and oozes excitement and melancholy. 

Flying Nun have re-released LP ‘Kaleidoscopic World’ on vinyl.

The Chills play in Auckland tonight 

 

Grandscale Beauty: The Overview Effect: Cyanobacterial Bloom in the Baltic Sea

Grandscale Beauty: The Overview Effect: Cyanobacterial Bloom in the Baltic Sea
In August 2015 a massive bloom of cyanobacteria – more than 100 square kilometers, was seen in the Baltic Sea. Cyanobacteria are a type of marine bacteria that capture and store solar energy through photosynthesis. While some are toxic to humans and animals, large blooms can cause an oxygen-depleted dead zone where other organisms cannot survive. Scientists believe that blooms are more likely to form in the presence agricultural and industrial run-off or from cruise ships that provide excessive nutrients for the bacteria through the dumping of sewage. Image courtesy of NASA.

Map makers, Google Earth developers, astronauts and those who gaze at the earth and universe for a living are already convinced of the tremendous beauty of large places seen from space. For most of us mere mortals we won’t ever get the chance to see the earth from space. 

The ‘Overview Effect’ was a term coined by astronauts in the 1980’s, who, after orbiting around our pale blue dot were overcome by an overwhelming sense of beauty, harmony and fragility of our planetary home. 

From our largely horizontal access to the world’s surface, we don’t really clock the magnitude of the beauty, symmetry and intricacy of both man-made and natural structures. It’s only when we’re aloft in a plane and gazing down do we experience this fleeting sense of wonder. The website and new book the Overview Effect seeks to rectify this imbalance by providing a steady stream of harmonious and aesthetically-beautiful geo-locations on the pale blue dot to whet your appetite for cartographic wonder and travel.   

Not only that, with side-by-side comparisons over time, we can see quite starkly and clearly, the devastating impact of human civilisation on jungles, deltas, icebergs and reefs. Vibrant colours bleeding into each other, harmonious confluences of lines and shapes and sacred geometry all unfold here on a meta-level and will leave you breathless with wonder.

Part 1: Cyanobacterial Bloom in the Baltic Sea

In August 2015 a massive bloom of cyanobacteria – more than 100 square kilometers, was seen in the Baltic Sea. Cyanobacteria are a type of marine bacteria that capture and store solar energy through photosynthesis. While some are toxic to humans and animals, large blooms can cause an oxygen-depleted dead zone where other organisms cannot survive. Scientists believe that blooms are more likely to form in the presence agricultural and industrial run-off or from cruise ships that provide excessive nutrients for the bacteria through the dumping of sewage. Image courtesy of NASA.

 

 

Thibaut Kinder’s exhumed photographs from abandoned SD cards

What happened to reels of photos from old Kodak cameras of the 80’s and 90’s? They very well may end up in an Internet K-Hole, I’ve written about that strange website before. It’s a repository of old photos from people’s personal and public collections that squashed together and left to coexist in a creepy digital graveyard. It’s fascinating in that ‘I can’t look away’ compulsive kind of way.

Following the digital revolution, there’s still a glut of unloved and unclaimed photos. These are found on old SD cards at charity shops and garage sales. Photographer Thibault Kinder has been recovering data from these SD cards and compiling them together for his blog.

Thibaut Kinder's exhumed photographs from abandoned SD cards

Just like the Internet K-Hole, these post-digital relics together form a fascinating juxtaposition. There is no meaning and narrative attached to them individually or as a group.

They could be photos taken from the same SD card, or several different ones. In the same place and time or in different parts of the world over several decades.

Your mind will play tricks on you though as you try and unravel a mystery within a mystery. Who are these people and these locations? When were these photos taken, why and by whom?

It’s the modern version of a dusty box of keepsakes or toys found in the attic of an old house. Enjoy here!  

In case you’re curious, here’s another internet wormhole which you can travel through. A clever door company has created a piece of software which allows you into a random shop, room or abode extracted at random from Google Maps, somewhere in the world. Another one to occupy you for several hours. Discover the Cellar Door. 

Emerging Genius: Görkem Şen – Yaybahar

The Yaybahar is an electric-free, totally acoustic instrument designed by Gorkem Sen. The vibrations from the strings are transmitted via the coiled springs to the frame drums. These vibrations are turned into sound by the membranes which echo back and forth on the coiled springs. This results in an unique listening experience with an hypnotic surround sound that is reminiscent of ice crackling in a lake on a quiet night or the slightly hypnotic and faint sound of electricity pinging through a power station.  Görkem Şen has created this performance without any additional effects and with no post audio processing. It’s a remarkable feat and it’s not every day that you get the encounter a brand new instrument, the Yaybahar, with an utterly unique sound.

To hear more, visit his website

Drew Leshko’s dollhouse replicas of vanishing Philadelphia streets

Drew Leshko is a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based artist who creates micro, 1:12 anatomically correct architectural pieces of his own neighbourhood, replete with grime and imperfections. This is the rarely glimpsed side of Philadelphia, one that is slowly dissappearing as economic progress spurs forth more modern streetscapes, agreeable to modern design conventions.

Drew Leshko's dollhouse replicas of vanishing Philadelphia streets
Image and model by Drew Leshko http://www.drewleshko.com/

Leshko’s three dimensional archive of places and locations examines gentrification and history, how historical relevance is determined, and most importantly, what is worth preserving.

Leshko works from personal observation and photographs and provides a unique dollhouse view onto the treatment of buildings, sheds, caravans, bins, iceboxes and other seemingly ‘ugly’ artifacts of modern society.

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His art asks why it may (or may not) be necessary to ameliorate or rejuvenate certain places to bring them up to speed with modern styling and aesthetic values. Typically overlooked details like rust, caked mud, dirt, oil and general decay in his hands, become beautiful adornments and objects of remarkable and unexpected joy.

We live in a society that is constantly upgrading and disposing of the past, something Philadelphia based artist Drew Leshko aims to preserve. With a skilled attention to detail, Leshko miniaturizes the places, vehicles, and machines he encounters into paper sculptures. Recent subjects have included a local strip bar, his grandfather’s 80s camper, iceboxes, and even dumpsters, all replicated to 1:12 standard dollhouse scale with accuracy in cut archival paper and wood. He highlights these symbols of urban life in hopes others can begin to appreciate their every day surroundings. Buildings that are in a state of decay or on the cusp of redevelopment are the ones that catch his eye the most, which he describes as architectural “relics”.   -Hi Fructose Magazine.

 

The dissapearance of working class neighbourhoods to gentrification happens all over the world. I documented this on Content Catnip last year, where I talked about the Westographer Warren Kirk. A photographer who has spent decades documenting the rapidly dissapearing world of mid-century shops, signage architecture in the old oil-refinery district of Melbourne – Altona, Westona, Laverton and Footscray. This area is coincidentally the home of Australia’s first female PM, Julia Gillard.  Read the post here on Melbourne’s Rapidly Vanishing World.

Drew Leshko's dollhouse replicas of vanishing Philadelphia streets

Emerging genius: Tengger Cavalry – Warhorse

Over the coming weeks I will share an eclectic lucky dip of music that I discovered and loved via subreddit /r/listentothis, Here is no.10 on the jukebox, a dark metal gem from Mongolian metal band Tengger Cavalry. 

Warhorse by Tengger Cavalry is an exciting aural assault that embodies the nomadic warrior spirit of the Mongolian Steppe. Their sound rocks harder than a lot of other conventional metal bands and involves a heady mix of throat singing, Mongolian fiddle and Central Asian instruments. A few years ago the band sold out concert at Carnegie Hall and were featured in CNN, New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Since then they are have attracted a legion of metal fans throughout the world.

Emerging genius: Lav & Purl – Absorbed in Serenity

Over the coming weeks I will share an eclectic lucky dip of music that I discovered and loved via subreddit /r/listentothis, Here is no.8 on the jukebox, a gorgeous new age ambient track called Absorbed in Serenity from the album A State of Becoming, by producers Lav (Christopher Landin) and Purl (Ludvig Cimbrelius). 

These are the kinds of sounds that nurture a quiet awareness and a gentle feeling of the interconnectedness of all things. This is the soundscape of Mother Nature’s fertile bosom and flower bed’s in full blush.

Lav & Purl have managed to capture a spacey, open meadow feeling with big skies, chirping birds and babbling rivers in among the symphony of piano and carefully measured beats. Just like nature itself, the album slowly unfolds in several phases, unrestricted, free flowing and patiently awakening as a sunrise over remote mountains. The exquisite design on the record sleeve makes it a collectable and beautiful addition to any ambient lover’s collection.

 

Emerging genius: Wolf People – Ninth Night (2016)

Over the coming weeks I will share an eclectic lucky dip of music that I discovered and loved via subreddit /r/listentothis, Here is no.8 on the jukebox, from the English prog/pagan rock band Wolf People it’s the single Ninth Night from the new album Ruin.  

Pagan witchy rock from the woodlands, riverbanks and the dales of England. It’s prog rock at its finest and loudest. Ruins is the new album by Wolf People and has a narrative that’s all about nature reclaiming the land. Wolf People are the custodians and supremely electrified sages of the land. Their tools are mythology, mixology, pagan rites, big riffs and swirling electric guitars.

I can hear disparate influences from early Black Sabbath to Zeppelin and also Pink Floyd. Consider Wolf People as aural archaeologists of an English sound that’s as much medieval as it is 60’s psychadelia.

Hear more Wolf People

Music Review: Hidden Spheres by Beachy

Over the coming weeks I will share an eclectic lucky dip of music that I discovered and loved via subreddit /r/listentothis, Here is no.7 on the jukebox, from the Lobster Theremin label it’s producer Hidden Sphere’s single Beachy. 

Imagine silky sunsets and waving palms, rollerblades and a real 90’s acid house/ chicago house bar vibes. Hidden Spheres come from Manchester via Detroit and have produced a luscious beachy organic percussion with a bass that keeps on giving and giving.

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