Woods
Woodsist
(2010)

Woods is from Brooklyn, but from the sound of their music, you’d think they hailed from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Their distinct blend of lo-fi psychedelic rock and folk songwriting may make them the most rustic-sounding band to come from the city yet. For years, singer-guitarist Jeremy Earl and multi-instrumentalist Jarvis Taveniere have gained considerable respect in underground circles, putting out some of their most cohesive work to date and releasing the work of like-minded lo-fi bands like Vivian Girls and Wavves. →

Jack Stevenson Presents: Venom and Movies With Roots In Hell
The Cinefamily – Los Angeles, CA
5/16 to 5/17/10

Film collector and author Jack Stevenson (Fleshpot, Land of a Thousand Balconies: Discoveries and Confessions of a B-Movie Archaeologist) has presented programs of rare and cool vintage films throughout Europe and in America, at venues as diverse as the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Yerba Buena in SF and at his cinema in Copenhagen, Denmark. Stevenson will be back at The Cinefamily for another round of picks from his personal archive of 16mm and 35mm prints →

Hungry for Death: Destroy All Monsters
American Academy in Rome – Rome, Italy
5/15 to 6/10/10

Hungry for Death, an exhibition of ephemera culled from the archive of Destroy All Monsters (DAM), an influential Michigan artist collective/band that included Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, Niagara, and Jim Shaw, and others will be presented by the DEPART Foundation and NERO Magazine at the American Academy in Rome May 13- June 10, 2010. →

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Live in Royce Hall – Los Angeles, CA
5/20/10

Fresh off of this year’s Coachella Music Festival, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros bring their hippie rock revival to UCLA’s Royce Hall. The eclectic 10-piece ensemble comprises former Ima Robot frontman Alex Ebert and UCLA alumnae and “Dorm Life” star Nora Kirkpatrick. →

The question beckons if Technology is indeed the New Fashion. According to technology strategist Michael Gartenberg in his latest column, ‘Entelligence,’ it is now. There was once a time when people regarded function over looks, yet we know that today this is indeed the exact opposite, or is one the same.

8: The Mormon Proposition exposes the Mormon Church’s historic involvement in the promotion and passage of California’s Proposition 8 and the religion’s secretive, decades—long campaign against gay rights. The film takes place in California and Utah as Mormons, following their prophet’s call to action, wage spiritual warfare with money and misinformation against gay citizens, doing everything they can to deny them of marriage and the rights that come with it. 8: The Mormon Proposition opens in theaters on June 18th, 2010, two years after the first gay marriages took place in California (June 17th, 2008).

Interview with RJD2
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The past decade has been good to 33-year-old “RJ” Krohn. Most widely known as “RJD2,” producer and songwriter Krohn has a body of work that’s spanned funk-sampling hip-hop instrumentals and pop-accessible acoustic numbers. RJ’s Philadelphia home, packed tight with synthesizers, organs and other instruments, bursts with his tools of trade arranged just so for the kind of synthesizing and splicing that frequently make up his aesthetic: in one stroke, he can sample Scooby Doo and The Twilight Zone, or Elliott Smith and Betty Wright, to create seamless soundscapes with the feel of a futurist Hitchcock soundtrack. →

Interview with Mark Gergis
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I first learned about Omar Souleyman through friends of Mark Gergis. Once they told me about “Leh Jani”, the YouTube video dance hit from the album Highway, I became obsessed, and I’m not the only one. The video has gotten more than half a million hits. The song barrels into a call-and-response between an overdriven, high-pitched keyboard line and Souleyman’s reedy voice and trills. It’s berserk and giddy, as though it will spin out of control. In the video montage, Souleyman, cool in dark sunglasses, a leather jacket, and a red-and-white checked keffiyeh, is showered with money →