It’s that time of year again. The year is coming to an end, the galaxies are aligning like never before, human beings all over are going through a 50,000 year evolutionary cycle, and what better to help us through the transition than the next volume of Merry Synthmas. Ahh, Cosmic D’Alessandro aka Summer Recreation Camp, always thinking of us, creating the perfect mix of pulsing oscillations as we sit in front of our electronic fireplaces, microwaving plastic chestnuts. Lay down for some small talk with Siri and Hal, drift off into a halogen lit sleep, let Merry Synthmas Vol. III guide the way. Thanks Cristian!

Merry Synthmas Vol.3

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Recently we received a submission from Claudio Parentela, a man of multiple talents from the South of Italy. We were super excited to receive such awesome work and knew that it was something we would want to post. Claudio sent us a vast amount of work, so for this post we decided to present a selection from the batch with plans for a future post. Thanks to Claudio for sending these over. It’s very cool to get a transatlantic messages full of awesome collages. If you want to see more work or contact him, you can visit his site here.

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Reid Bingham, “We Can Make Him Better Than He Was Before.. Better.. Stronger.. Faster”

Reid Bingham, “We Can Make Him Better Than He Was Before.. Better.. Stronger.. Faster”

I was recently invited to an art opening Brookyln at which I happily found out included a number of my friends. “One Hundred Dollars“, a group show, was curated by Andrew Smenos and Sergio Barrale and required all works to use the dollar as the medium. With this limitation, people were forced to keep there works small and portable, allowing many of them to be mailed in. Altogether 100 pieces (I think) each selling for 100 dollars, a pretty decent price for some of the works that were really great. A pretty awesome display on the amount of variation that could happen within set limitations. Check out some of these works, and go visit the show while it’s up Little Field!

One Hundred Dollars Show

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I met Robert last year when looking at some books at Strand Bookstore and since then we have been following each other’s blogs. A professor at the School of Visual Arts and former photo editor at Time, in his blog, Robert is a “paseante”, a browser, or as he calls himself: a flaneur in the streets of New York. His blog is a collection of those things that call his attention in the streets of the city that never sleeps, although sometimes the flaneur travels to Paris too. Things that sometimes pass unnoticed by most walkers: A paint brush on a wall, ->

A few months ago we put up a post about a compilation that was put together by John Terry from I Love to Hate Records and featured some great music. Recently he sent me over a new release on his by a band called Mock, and I am always excited to get packages be it digital/analog. Based in Berlin, Mock’s Debut LP time bending rock calculated on the spot with roots in 90′s hardcore rock scene in Berlin. They set out on tour with Victor Villareal from Cap’n Jazz and Joan of Arc to promote the LP, and here are some samples of what you might here. To hear more, be sure to visit their Bandcamp site.

Mock LP

Untitled

Since I discovered my friend Suzie Ham’s blog I have wanted to share her photos on Sociotree. Her work conveys some of the qualities I find essential to photography. Suzie’s photographs draw our attention to glimpses of reality that usually get ignored, making the most simple things interesting. I thought it would be great to interview her and we exchanged a few e-mails in the last weeks. You can also visit her website and blog. To view larger images click in each picture.

How did you get started in photography and how long have you been taking pictures?

I started photographing approx. 6-7 years ago while getting my undergrad degree at Rutgers. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to major in English so I started taking classes at Mason Gross, and I’ve been taking photos ever since!
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Julia recently sent me a really awesome and I’ve been eager to put it up. Put together on tape, I actually had to hunt down a tape player and had a pretty hard time finding one, but always so much more fun that digital mixes. Never forget physical media!

Featuring 2 sides of thought-out picks, speckled with folk, miniature dance parties and local legends. Put this mix on in your room with a black light and lean back in your lazy boy.

Winter of the Sea Onion Mixtape - Side A

Winter of the Sea Onion Mixtape - Side B

[Update] Right after finishing this post, my friend Jamie sent me over this poster he made for his show at Zebulon last night. I really like it’s simplicity, but also the hand painted font is really awesome as well. Check out his band AOI. Thanks Jamie!

I was having a conversation with my brother at one of his recent shows that gave me the idea for this post. His band Happy People was playing a show at Piano’s bar in the Lower East Side, a section of wall was patched with an array of concert posters, each fighting for their own space. The question we were discussing was, Do posters still have an affect on you seeing a new/unheard band? If you see a really cool poster, which I did that night, are you going to come to check them out or at least search online for their site? Perhaps in the pre-facebook/myspace days, but what effect does really cool poster work have on our perception of a bands music. I feel like I couldn’t really answer this question without any feedback, so I thought I would put it out there for an audience. What do you guys think? Does  a really crummy band with good accompanied art sound better? Does a really good band with crummy art sound worse? If the poster used to play the role that Facebook and Twitter now play as an announcement tool, what role do they have now? Here is a compilation of some really cool posters from past and present, including the one I picked up at Pianos that night.

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A little late, but I have been meaning to write about an event in Bushwick, Brooklyn I went to a couple of weeks ago. Centotto, a gallery run in the apartment of Paul D’Agostino. Paul has been running this gallery for a number of years but this was the first show I made it to, and it definitely caught my interest. Paul invited curators and artists to participate by submitting a work of art or something they considered art to the show. However, the works were not to be revealed until the night of the opening, and everyone (including Paul) was completely unaware of what we were in for. As the unveiling took place, dramatic classical music was played on speakers to heighten the anticipation.

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Mireia Villa is an artist from Barcelona who I met in New York during one of her stays in Brooklyn. Last December, a few days before leaving New York, she held an intimate exhibition in an apartment in Brooklyn with the portraits she had made of her friends in New York. She called it “See You,” as if she was trying to grasp those last moments in this city by capturing her friendships that she made here. The event was a farewell, and so I wandered around the apartment where the drawings were hanging from the walls and ceiling feeling a bit sad another friend was leaving. I felt bad I did not find the time to write a post about it, and I thought it was never late to show some of those drawings. Using just watercolors, Mireia works spontaneously playing with the mystery that involves trying to find in the paper someone you know. As she told me, it is as if with each brushstroke you get closer or further from the subject. When I asked her about the differences between making a portrait of a friend and a unknown person, she said with friends she is more free to distort the subject and gives them a more grotesque aspect. Thanks Mireia and we miss you!

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