Kyle Craft wrote his debut LP Dolls of Highland in a period of upheaval, including the end of a long relationship and ... More

Kyle Craft

Album “Dolls of Highland”

Kyle Craft

Album “Dolls of Highland”

Kyle Craft wrote his debut LP Dolls of Highland in a period of upheaval, including the end of a long relationship and a move away from his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana on the banks of the Mississippi. Dolls finds Kyle at a sonic crossroads exploring his deep regional and musical connections while fielding an uncertain future. The album integrates Southern barroom bombast, ragtime pianos and Dylanesque guitar work, together with Craft’s insistent, nostalgic tenor. His voice is likely to provoke a ‘love it or hate it’ spot in listeners—a certainty not lost on Kyle: “I’m fully aware that I have a very abrasive, very loud voice, but Bob Dylan is the one that taught me to embrace that,” Craft says. “I stray away from him from time to time but always come back. I don’t want to come off as antique, but I also don’t want to be afraid of paying homage to the stuff I’ve always loved.” This statement forms the backbone of Dolls of Highland as an apt distillation of its mood and sound.

via Sub Pop

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With the Baudrillard epigraph “photography is our exorcism,” Argentine photographer Mariela Sancari presents Moisés, a moving volume of portraits featuring men in ... More

Moisés

Book by Mariela Sancari

Moisés

Book by Mariela Sancari

With the Baudrillard epigraph “photography is our exorcism,” Argentine photographer Mariela Sancari presents Moisés, a moving volume of portraits featuring men in their 70s, the age her deceased father would be today. Sancari was not allowed to see the body of her father before his burial due to reasons she’s unsure of—his suicide, their Jewish beliefs or both. According to thanatology, the scientific study of death, contemplating the body of the deceased is key to overcoming one of the most complex stages of grief: denial. “Not seeing him has made us doubt his death in many ways,” states Sancari. To obtain the closure she needed, Sancari posted an ad featuring an old portrait of her father and asked men of the same age to contact her should they notice a resemblance. While those who responded do not bear any striking similarity to one another, collectively Sancari’s portraits assemble the idea of another, unseen man, especially as each stranger wears her father’s woolen sweater. Moisés is a limited edition of 1000 copies and combines two booklets which fold out over one another to create an intimate, interactive environment for Sancari’s work.

via La Fábrica

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Renowned artist Carrie Mae Weems described the scenes in her 1990 Kitchen Table Series as “the battle around the family…monogamy…and between the ... More

Kitchen Table Series

Book by Carrie Mae Weems

Kitchen Table Series

Book by Carrie Mae Weems

Renowned artist Carrie Mae Weems described the scenes in her 1990 Kitchen Table Series as “the battle around the family…monogamy…and between the sexes.” The 20 photographs and 14 text panels in Kitchen Table Series tell a story of one woman’s relationships with her lovers, friends, children and self. Now collected in book form with text by author Sarah Lewis and curator Adrienne Edwards, Carrie Mae Weems: Kitchen Table Series renders a page-by-page account of a woman’s life within the intimate setting of her kitchen—a stage for female individuality, intricacy and strength. According to Weems, “unrequited love” is a cornerstone of the story, as are fortitude, vulnerability, aloofness, tenderness and solitude. Weems’ art is presented in public and private collections worldwide, including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, and Los Angeles’ MOCA.

via Damiani/Matsumoto Editions

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One of the preeminent female photographers of our time, Nan Goldin integrates her love for artwork from the past with her most ... More

Diving For Pearls

Book by Nan Goldin

Diving For Pearls

Book by Nan Goldin

One of the preeminent female photographers of our time, Nan Goldin integrates her love for artwork from the past with her most personal relationships in Diving For Pearls. Upon invitation from the Louvre, Goldin photographed artworks of her choice and paired them with early photographs of friends and lovers via aesthetic and associative analysis. The resulting pairs are at times elusive, at times striking in their comparison. Diving For Pearls is comprised of over 400 photos and was exhibited for the first time at the Kestnergesellschaft in Hannover, Germany. Conceived in book form for the occasion, the artbook contains text by Nan Goldin, curator Lotte Dinse and author Glenn O’Brien. Diving For Pearls is truly an engrossing lesson in art history and a compelling insight into the life and associative comprehension of a distinguished artist.

via Steidl

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Departing from her usual documentary style, California street photographer Deanna Templeton presents The Swimming Pool, a series of eloquent black-and-white and polaroid ... More

The Swimming Pool

Book by Deanna Templeton

The Swimming Pool

Book by Deanna Templeton

Departing from her usual documentary style, California street photographer Deanna Templeton presents The Swimming Pool, a series of eloquent black-and-white and polaroid images of the human form in water. Inspired by a nude swimming shoot with husband and fellow artist Ed Templeton, The Swimming Pool explores the cool and enigmatic nature of water: it’s light, patterns and distortion. The images feature Templeton’s close friends and acquaintances instead of her usual subjects of strangers on the street, and carry this intimate energy in their study of the human form—expressive and quiet, the models vulnerable and at ease.

via Um Yeah Arts

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Presenting over 600 works from every stage of artist Raymond Pettibon’s career, Homo Americanus charts the appearance and development of the themes ... More

Homo Americanus

Book by Raymond Pettibon

Homo Americanus

Book by Raymond Pettibon

Presenting over 600 works from every stage of artist Raymond Pettibon’s career, Homo Americanus charts the appearance and development of the themes that have defined his oeuvre. Pettibon gained recognition in the 1980s Southern California punk rock scene, and has done iconic art for bands such as Black Flag and Sonic Youth. With subject matter that at times tends toward violent and anarchist, he is best known for his comic-like drawings paired with ironic or ambiguous text. Homo Americanus is the first overview of his work as a whole and notably features text accompaniment by Pettibon, acquainting readers with his depth and complexity of process.

via David Zwirner Books/Deichtorhallen Hamburg-Sammlung Falckenberg

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Hold/Still is the enigmatic third LP from Canada’s Suuns, recorded in Dallas over three weeks with Grammy-winning producer John Congleton. Following from ... More

Suuns

Album “Hold/Still”

Suuns

Album “Hold/Still”

Hold/Still is the enigmatic third LP from Canada’s Suuns, recorded in Dallas over three weeks with Grammy-winning producer John Congleton. Following from 2010’s debut Zeroes QC and 2013’s Images du Futur, as well as a 2015 collaborative LP with Jerusalem in My Heart, Hold/Still uses all-live analog instruments to create its electronic landscape. The result seems to inhabit contradiction: “simultaneously psychedelic, but austere; sensual, but cold; organic, but electronic; tense sometimes to the brink of mania, but always retaining perfect poise and control.”

via Secretly Canadian

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Woods has released nearly a record a year since their 2005 origin in Brooklyn, NY. City Sun Eater in the River of ... More

Woods

Album “City Sun Eater in the River of Light”

Woods

Album “City Sun Eater in the River of Light”

Woods has released nearly a record a year since their 2005 origin in Brooklyn, NY. City Sun Eater in the River of Light, their ninth full-length release, is now out on singer, guitarist and founder Jeremy Earl’s record label, Woodsist. Though their sound has evolved past its early pastoral folk-rock influences, Woods is still recognizable by Earl’s signature vocals. According the the press release, City Sun Eater in the River of Light finds the band, “dabbling in zonked out Ethiopian jazz, pulling influence from the low key simmer of Brown Rice, and tapping into the weird dichotomy of making a home in a claustrophobic city that feels full of possibility even as it closes in on you.”

via Woodsist

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Brooklyn’s Parquet Courts releases Human Performance, a follow-up to 2014’s widely acclaimed Sunbathing Animal and last year’s Monastic Living EP. In true ... More

Parquet Courts

Album “Human Performance”

Parquet Courts

Album “Human Performance”

Brooklyn’s Parquet Courts releases Human Performance, a follow-up to 2014’s widely acclaimed Sunbathing Animal and last year’s Monastic Living EP. In true Parquet Courts form, Human Performance probes modern existence and anxiety, but surpasses the purely cerebral to strike at an emotional core. “The unavoidable noise of NYC that can be maddening, the impossible struggle against clutter, whether it’s physical or mental or social,” says singer and guitarist Austin Brown, who also produced and mixed the record. Co-vocalist and guitarist Andrew Savage adds, “I began to question my humanity, and if it was always as sincere as I thought, or if it was a performance. I felt like a sort of malfunctioning apparatus. Like a machine programmed to be human showing signs of defect.”

via Rough Trade

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