After the flurry of seven SXSW shows and two amazing performances with Tinariwen in New York City, Fool’s Gold are ready to kick it up a notch, announcing an April European tour, followed by select dates on the west coast of the continent, including a performance at Sasquatch! Music Festival and a blowout at the Hollywood Bowl in June. →

San Francisco,

We love your neighborhoods, your people and your hills. Mayer Hawthorne covers Tony Bennet in this tribute to the Bay. →

Quantic – “Addis to Axum”

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In conjunction with the release of Mochilla’s Timeless DVD series, DJ Quantic has released an exclusive mix of his record finds in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, where he met legendary jazz composer Mulatu Astatke. →

British pirate radio was given a comedic retelling in the 2009 film The Boat That Rocked (Pirate Radio in the U.S.), but VBS TV explores the real-life pirate DJs of the London underground in this episode of Uneven Terrain. →

Sage Francis – “Slow Man”

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Rapper, producer and label head Sage Francis has been recording music for a little over a decade now. Like Slug (from Atmosphere), he has always been a backpacker’s favorite, rapping intelligently and skillfully about heavy-hitting topics without the gangster materialist attitude. →

Ascending Dragon: Contemporary Vietnamese Artists
Armory Center for the Arts – Pasadena, CA
4/10 to 6/13/10

Opening Saturday, April 10, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., the Armory Center for the Arts will present Ascending Dragon: Contemporary Vietnamese Artists, a group exhibition featuring the artwork of Vietnamese-born or –based artists, and artists of Vietnamese descent living and working in the United States. →

Genre Hound
Film Opinion

The story of an Asian American family living in Diablo Valley of Northern California and struggling to keep from falling apart despite the continuous threat of apocalypse in various forms — environmental, emotional, psychological, spiritual — in a film described by the Hollywood Reporter as such “an imaginative and deeply effecting effort” that even the fabric of reality seems to be subject to disintegration.

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Downtown Independent – Los Angeles, CA
Live Review: 4/3/10

There was a time when I’d walk down Main St. on my way to The Smell and notice the sleek, modernist facade of the Downtown Independent and think, “Goddamn, the yuppies are infiltrating.” →

Acclaimed Grammy-Award winning British Director, Don Letts gets the spotlight this year in the North by Northeast (NXNE) Film program where he premieres Carnival!, Superstonic Sound: The Rebel Dread and Strummerville. The NXNE Film brings the best of music-centric films from documentary to drama, and screens 40 films from June 16-20 during NXNE around the city of Toronto. Letts brings his most recent film, Carnival!, which presents the world of colour and →

Jeff Staple or jeffstaple (as he likes to be called) is part designer, part businessman and utilizes both his left and right brain, creativity and business. His fondness and amusement for pigeons is evident when you see his shoes, cameras and even his mini fridge branded with the feathered fella. And if you haven’t heard, Jeff recently designed an exclusive collaboration “This is Not A T-shirt” sticker for Hearty Magazine. You can get yours now at the hearty store or Jeff’s Reed Space located in NY, Japan and soon to be in Hawaii. Overall, this guy is pretty much amazing, as he shares with Hearty Magazine his thoughts on the popular clean aesthetic style and →