FEMALE TRANCE

My friend Amy Yao recently sent to me a nice album, called First Nation. I already knew it from Paw Tracks releases but never really took the time to listen to it properly.
I'm always curious to know which kind of music my friends like or dislike, probably because I always think that I would understand them through the music more than words. Sometimes I feel like this is the best way for me to share something and get closer to them, especially when they live in another country.



Rings formerly known as First Nation, is Abby Portner, Kate Rosko, and Nina Mehta. They all sing and play keyboard, drum, and guitar.
Last January, they released an album called Black Habit.
These 3 girls will come and perform in Paris at La Fleche d'Or, in March the 31st.

Is the name First Nation related in some way to the Native Americans / Indians?
It is and it isn't. It was meant to represent a world or sound-cry in opposition to the macintosh world we live in. Same as the First Nation. But when we really started to become a band, it seemed like an inappropriate appropriation, since being in a band is different, and less important politically, than identifying as a racial and cultural group.

Why did you have to change the band name?
For the reason above, and the timing, with a new member and a new album.

Your first album has been released on Paw-Tracks Records, in 2006. How did you get in contact with them?
Dave from AC (Animal Collective) was at our first show, First Nation at lit 3 years ago. And he asked us to open for AC a few months later at the Bowery ballroom.

Melissa Livaudais from Telepathe, was initially part of the crew on your first album. Why did she leave the band?
Kate: Melissa and I used to fight a lot and she really wanted to work on a specific style of music. Her vision was maybe less collaborative or something. Telepathe is cool, do you listen to them?

Let's talk about your scene. Are you related to any scene in New York? For instance, artists such like Gang Gang Dance, Animal Collective, Ariel Pink, Black Dice are getting big in Europe. Do you feel part of that specific scene?
All those people in all those bands are our friends, and really inspiring!

It seems like in New York, since 9/11, there is a breeding-ground for an emergent arty scene of weird, psychedelic, and experimental music. Do you think that 9/11, in some way, has bound the underground and artistic culture arising inward strength into collectivity?
All of it existed before 9/11! but the impact of that event is very present in our subconsciousness, as a city and a people, for sure.

In my opinion, your music is really feminine, very airy and delicate.
"Female Trance" could be a feminist ode to women. Is there any politic positions in your art?
Yes, we are always making music for women. This is a very complicated question. I think we are trying to incorporate harder sounds, like drums and bass into what start out as very feminine and delicate compositions.

You said that you are influenced by r&b, hip hop and folk music.What's your favorite hip hop and r&b artists?
Warrior Queen, Icebox, Sensual Seduction.

What were your first impressions (political or/and artistic) about Europe, especially France, when you where there last year?
That people were more culturally oriented and listened to the music that was being played.

RINGS

Gas As Interface, soon As Platform

Gas As Interface is a Japanese graphic design agency, producing dvds, magazines, and in charge of a wide van of interesting projects. Moreover they have opened a space in Tokyo called Calm&Punk Gallery.

Interview with Shinjiro Nishino, Representative Director of Gas As Interface and Calm & Punk Gallery.



How did GASBOOK started?
The first GASBOOK was released in 1996, and it was the time when the environment surrounding creative jobs, including graphic design and art, changed dramatically with the emergence of Macintosh and personal computer. The new channel of ‘software distribution’ opened, and we felt that there would be increasing number of artists and designers who have totally new concepts, values and attitudes, using the new tools. To challenge that as a software maker, we wanted to create a new media that stimulates those people and made the new type of book, CD-ROM magazine, featuring the artists of the time. We distributed them to the software channels, and that is how we started.

What is the meaning of GASBOOK?
The word ‘GAS’ was always on the corner of my head, thinking that maybe one day I can use it as a name of some project. When the idea of CD-ROM magazine came up, as something that expresses new type of artists and creativity, I thought about words like ‘Liquid Bible’, ‘Unformed Bible’, or ‘Foggy Bible’. ‘Liquid’ wasn’t ambiguous enough, and ‘fog’ didn’t sound right neither. Then the word ‘Gas’ came to the centre of my head as we call fog ‘gas’ in Japan, and looking for alternative word for ‘bible’(I didn’t want the sound that implies something religious), I pronounced ‘GASBOOK’, and it all clicked.

You're currently working as an intermediary agency between graphic designers and Japanese brands. How do you manage to contact all the people from your virtual catalogue?
I think it is the gathering of all the communications with people in the past 10 years. Respect to the artists, leverage among ourselves, and sustainability within time make us manage everyday life and business, I think.

How many people are working inside Gas?
20 people are working in Gas As Interface now. It was 2.5 people when the first GASBOOK was released, and it was 3 when we spun off from the parenting company 4 years ago.

You have opened a gallery in Tokyo called Calm & Punk, can you tell us more about it, and how do you want to develop it in the future? What kind of artists or shows are presented in the gallery?
Inspiration for Calm & Punk Gallery and Gas As Interface comes from similar origin. There is a space called 'Grove of a village shrine' in Japan, which is often seen in the middle of field. There is a shrine inside and trees stand around it. It is a space where people do festival, funeral, and pray for rich harvest too: the space that embodies both aspects in life. Sometimes it is ritual, and sometimes it is playful. It also used to be a place for sneak dating, and my idea for Calm & Punk was a space where dark/sensual/primitive sits together with the opposites.



As for the relationship with Calm & Punk Gallery and Gas As Interface, because Gas takes more on the business side as a nature of a company, Calm & Punk Gallery tries to be a space of experimentation for art forms and medias such as contemporary dance, fine art, and workshop, that is a little hard to connect to business directly.

Calm & Punk Gallery hosts 5-6 exhibitions a year. I think the idea of ‘new and old’ in terms of artists and art expressions is boring and useless, so we are open to anybody, famous/up-coming or domestic/international, as long as they and their works embrace universality and a sense of crudity. I would like to develop the function as a curator under Calm & Punk, regardless of the actual space.

How do you make your research on graphic designers? Books, magazines?
Communication to and from communication. The communication and relationship bring another great encounters.

What is your graphic design Bible?
The Hidden Dimension by Edward T. Hall.

GASBOOK is changing Interface in Spring 2008, could you tell us more about it?
This is the second time that Gas is facing the change. The first change was in 2001 when we moved from CD-ROM magazine to wide-ranged project managements such as Gas book series, Gas DVDs, Atmosphere magazine, 20 million fragments (our fashion brand), distribution, licensing and coordination.
Thinking about the direction from now, we wanted to call each conversation and each project a ‘GASBOOK’. A telephone call with Event 10, for example, can be documented as the GASBOOK with Event 10 on 14th Feb, 2008 because GASBOOK and our network exist as a result of each communication.
The new concept of ‘GASBOOK’ is to compile the small and big bits and bobs of everyday and propose projects to our clients as a result of it. And by sharing such activities with society, we hope to create more opportunities and space for artists. The white GASBOOK (the details are not decided yet, so I cannot talk too much about this yet) can be symbolic to all of this, and the publication of GASBOOK Vision and People will present the direction, and GASBOOK.net will be the system to archive information and communication.

How do you distribute your books in Europe and USA? Are you happy with the ditribution? Do you want to develop it more?
The books and DVDs are distributed by Art Data in Europe, Ram in North America, and Via Alley in Australia. We would like to continue the releases as we want those publications to be loved and cherished in good hands around the world as they are now. We are very happy that people know us by GASBOOKS, GAS DVDs, and Atmosphere magazines, but I think we need to work on how to tell about other activities we do too.

In your opinion, what's the cultural and arty situation of Japan? What's in the air?
I feel that the discussion about the relationship between art/design and economy is being held more often in a positive aspect, thanks to the active careers and continuous works of people who have worked together through GASBOOKS (artists, business partners, readers, staff…). I think this is happening everywhere now, but the borderline among commercial, design, art, and business, which was once closed within each field, is melting, and the possibilities in new expressions and business chances have started to come out from there. It might take time until this becomes widespread, but the change in consciousness has already started within artists, designers, and whoever creates.

What's your next steps?
(after a very long pause…) Cultivating the ground to build a creative platform.
We want to move from being an interface to being a platform, which has various functions to offer to our dear artists.

Apparent Communication From One Mind To Another

I can't stop listening to "Chromes on it"** from Telepathe, cracking my head with an obsessive intensity. Is that real telepathy?
I can hear that from the distance, experimental and psychedelic, mysterious, doomy, and provocatively sweet, spiritual and criminal.
Telepathe is comprised of Melissa Livaudais, Busy Gangnes and Ryan Lucero.
Melissa comes from New Orleans, Busy & Ryan from L.A, all now based in Brooklyn, NY.
Their first album is expected hopefully sometimes this mid-year. I got this rare exciting feeling: a kind of an imperceptible need to possess eagerly . Unmaterial things. ethe-REAL.
I've met both girls separately, hazardously and furtively during a trip to New York, visiting my friend Sophie. I admit having already noticed their delicate aura. Their music seems to precise this halo.

**see playlist



How did you start playing music?
Melissa: Busy and I started the band about 3 years ago; however, we have been playing together for about 5 ½ years. We used to be in a band called Wikkid together and that ended, and we really wanted to keep playing together, as well as make something new and totally different from our old sound in Wikkid.

Busy: We played with Allie Alvarado who played a sampler and did guitar work with Melissa, and I played a drum kit. The three of us made our Farewell Forest EP which was released on The Social Registry Label. All of those songs came mainly from improvising, recording our rehearsals, and then editing down the improvisations. Allie went on to do other things at which point Ryan Lucero started playing with us about 2 1/2 years ago. He plays guitar and has a really cool, melodic, minimal style. We made our Sinister Militia 12" with him, which was released on the Social Registry.
We also collaborate sometimes with Shannon Funchess (Durty Nanas, Tv On The Radio, !!!, Tkwebb), who is a great vocalist. Our friend Gloria Maximo has performed with us as well, contributing costume ideas, vocals, and sweet dance moves. Jessie Gold just started doing vocals and dances with us live as well.

You're currently working on an album, could you tell more about it?
Busy : We recently finished our first full-length album. We worked with producer Dave Sitek (Tv On The Radio), and engineer Chris Coady for about a month. It's a pop album. Dance music. We loaded the songs up with catchy hooks and melodies, and gave the new stuff a lot more structure than our older music.

Your artistic expectations? Your commercial expectations?
Melissa: The only expectation we really have is creative freedom. We have an insatiable appetite for learning new things and challenging ourselves artistically…so we never want to be stuck to the same process or the same way of making music, and we never want to be locked into a certain genre. I guess commercially speaking the only thing we want to do is take over the world, that’s not hoping for too much? Right? Actually, Busy and myself are producers, and we would like to be taken seriously as such. People have been asking us to do remixes for them and stuff, and we are so psyched about that stuff. We are doing an Effi Briest “Mirror Rim” remix and a Kills song “UR a Fever.”

What's your opinion on the New York music scene? Are you related to one of them?
Melissa: It is easy to forget how much music stuff is going on in Brooklyn, and it is a very exciting time here. Yes we do have a community of musicians and we love and respect our peeps dearly. For a long time we really rebelled against being a part of the “noise/psych” scene thing, because we are not a noise band, and just by living in Brooklyn we inevitably kept getting grouped into a certain “scene;” which was actually not our scene at all. We are a straight up pop band with a serious desire to write the catchiest hooks.

Busy: We have a lot of awesome friends that make music here. I feel like there's not really a cohesive scene though. Sometimes we'll read that we're being
compared to other bands that we don't know and have never heard their music. It seems to me that a scene should be a community, and to be honest most of our music friends make stuff that's really different from our sound. Anyway, my point is that I'm not really sure what the supposed scene is or how we fit in, but I'm psyched when our friends come to our shows, and vice versa.

What kind of music is influencing you?
Melissa: Honestly, the biggest influence, right now, is the local hip hop radio station in NYC and DJ Kingdom.



What are the important themes developped through your music / Lyrics?
Melissa: The usual themes, Crimes and Killings, Death and Destruction, and being in love. There is a joint for everyone on our record that is due out sometime in the future.

What's your point of view regarding digital music. For instance, do you think the digital is somehow killing the physical industry?
Melissa: I love the Internet. Besides live performance, the Internet is one of the only free mediums of expression left in the world…so I am all for file sharing, downloading etc… I don’t know if it's killing the industry, but I think its forcing the industry to shape up and catch up with the rest of the world…basically, the artist has control over her or his music more than ever before. That is so fucking exciting!

Busy: I wouldn't say killing the physical industry, but yes it's dramatically changing it, and replacing it. It's not necessary anymore to go to a record store to get music. I don't think it's a bad thing.

Is the object of a cd or vinyl important for you?
Melissa: I love vinyl but honestly the format I listen to more than anything else is mp3. I don’t care for cds. I would have to say that I am a sucker for instant gratification and an ipod and an mp3 full fill that desire.
Busy: I think vinyl is still valid. It has a different sound quality than an mp3.

How do you start thinking of a cover/ booklet design of your cd?
Melissa: I’m totally ADD and I constantly think about art for our music, but its kind in the same way we make music, Chopped up and looped and all fucked up digital photoshop kind of stuff or something.
I don’t’care for the idea of” fine art” or “fine fidelity.” I’m a punk at heart and I want to destroy it. Those things remind me of “high brow” “low brow,” and “genius,” and I think the Internet is really blurring and killing the lines of those antiquated, ideas about art and music. And it’s inspiring more and more people to make stuff.

Busy: Our friend Elizabeth Bethea made a drawing for our farewell forest ep. For our 12" we took an image from a piece of fabric and then treated it in photoshop.

How do you see the future of independent music?
Melissa: The future of independent music, I have no idea because I can only understand the present. People are not going to stop making music in the future.

Reiko Underwater
Photo Credit: Elizabeth Bethea

More: Telepathe on the web

"WITH AN "S" ON MY CHEST"

Capricious Publishing owner, Sophie Mörner interview
www.becapricious.com

Sophie Mörner, is the founder of Capricious magazine, and therefore Capricious Publishing. She is based in New York, and has a nice chihuahua called Pirate.
Here is the story:

F-R: How did the whole Capricious thing start and when?
Sophie: I started Capricious Magazine in 2002 , and relased the first issue in Paris april 2003. I felt like there was a need for a journal for emerging photographers with a focus on fine art photography.

F-R:You're originally from Sweden, why did you end up in New York?
Sophie: I moved to NYC for school in 1998, and since then I never wanted to leave New York. I did leave though, I moved to Amsterdam in the end of 2003 for a little bit more than a year, which was a great experience. It was nice to be back in Europe after 5 years in America. But I knew I had to move back to nyc, and I did in 2005.

F-R:You're basically a photographer, what is your current work as photographer?
Sophie: I just had a solo show in Stockholm, with my Androgynous Portraits Series I have been working on for some years. It was a lot of fun.
And I also do some commercial photo projects here and there for money, which keeps me photographing. Other than that, I always photograph, I have an on going series around some of my closest friends, that I have been photographing since 1998. One day that will be a book, haha! Its kind of “melancholy spirits running free” feeling. Haha.

F-R:How do you manage to work both intense projects!
Sophie: I don’t know, it just works some how. I wish I had more time for my own photography though..

F-R: How do you want to develop Capricious Publishing?
Sophie: Capricious Publishing has grown a lot the last year, which has been really exiting. We now publish three journals, Capricious, GLU and Famous on a regular basis. But we also guest published an issue of LTTR, which was a great collaboration. And we are always open for proposal by new projects.
Oh, we are also giving out a DVD, Screen Capricious, which is a collection of video/film shorts from emerging video artists from all over the world. Screen capricious is guest curated by Amy von Harrington. It will be released right before Christmas.
Next year we are also publishing a couple of books.

F-R:It seems really important for you to keep this independent, almost hand-made, small editions. What do you think about the current monopolization of the big press media and publication group companies ?

Sophie: I think that we all have to survive, and in this world its really hard to resist. Resist a lot of things. I believe a lot in “take from the big and give to the small” and sometimes being on the “inside” of big cooperations can be helpful. I will never despise any independent journal that decided to get bought up by a big cooperation, because I know how hard it is to survive, and it’s a really rough world to try to function in the media world.
I don’t think I would personally ever let myself be bought up though. There is something lost in that transition, that I am not ready to loose.

F-R:Actually, all your publications are done by women, is it a political choice for you to support women? Is it one of the conditions to be part of Capricious world?
Sophie: I don’t think in those gender terms really, to follow the gender terms that are given to us, is to accept a gendered system, this we are against.. It just happens that there is a lot of powerful women that does the most excellent things, actually, I think women rule the world.

F-R: What or who is your leitmotiv?
Sophie: My inspiration? When I started capricious I was inspired by the “young” years of Purple. I loved what they did in the beginning. Now im inspired by nature. Smile..

F-R:What's your next steps?
Sophie: To let Capricious grow organically. To keep searching for new talents and make things possible for them!

Are you a Superwoman? Yes you are!