The sound of tomorrow



Avant- garde hip hop the new movement? Naturally it is as every culture evolves in its own way.
Hip hop experienced its golden age with the straight up boom bap sound of the nineties.
The heroes from back in those days were DJ Premier, DJ Babu, Gangstar , Wu-tang clan , Mos def and Talib Kweli … There is a whole list of names which could be added to the history of hip hop in the nineties.

The beats had grooving strong kicks and snares, yet somehow the music pieces remained simplistic in a fashionable way. Cut up samples in addition to mixed in vocals of old records spiced up the track’s appealing sound. Some of those artists are still in the game continuing their work.

For sure these musicians had their idols and examples from the eighties, such as DJ E3 and Afrika Bambaataa who produced a very electronic sound at the time.
Nowadays we notice an evolution towards a worldwide mixture of strong boom bap sounds and the electronic sounds of the eighties. In other words... our world has changed, provoking a compatible sound.

The new kids on the block have so many new techniques and synthesizers at their disposal, that the variety of sounds has virtually become inexhaustible. The moods and vibes they are unleashing upon the world’s eager ears are now easy to discover through media like Youtube and Wimeo.

Even though music labels struggle to make profit from record sales, these hip hop musicians keep on doing it, pushing boundaries in search of a new type of quality music.

The Dorian concept, Mike Slott, Delic, El Producto, Flying Lotus, Prefuse73 and Dynooo are merely a fraction of the future sound.


Crews like Antipop Consortium, Def-Jux and Cannibal Ox have found a way to communicate a poetic message through skillful wordplay on the new sounds of hip hop. In the UK scene rap became grime, where verses were spit on heavy bass lines and slow beats of dub step and grime.
The youth and veterans out there are searching for new ways to create an innovative sound and approach to hip hop music. We can only sit back and enjoy the new cultural hypes…
So if u ask me, bring on the avant-garde hip hop sounds!


Article written by Geert Van Laethem

Links:



Streets ahead of the ordinary

Faile, work on wood


FAILE(1999) is the Brooklyn-based artistic collaboration between Patrick McNeil (b. 1975, Edmonton, CA) and Patrick Miller (b. 1976, Minneapolis, MN). The two friends met in high school and later on kept in touch whilst attending art school.


The duo created A Life in collaboration with Japanese filmmaker Aiko Nakagawa who left FAILE in 2006. A Life expresses the interaction with its environment, the deterioration of artwork caused by exposure to the elements. The detritus of the city wall was a constant inspiration …


They changed their artist name into Faile, an anagram of A Life. The trio started focusing on street art by means of large-scale screen prints, wheat pasting and stenciling recognizable pop culture images. During the early years of their career Faile’s artwork was marked by assemblage and dynamic experiments in public urban spaces.


Street art was only featured in a few galleries in New York, in spite of its history of graffiti and its status of the city of contemporary art.


Faile’s style and characteristic culture-driven iconographical language make their work very recognizable. Socio-political themes, criticism on society, consumerism and mass culture in addition to both sacred and profane cultural influences (the use of religious artifacts) are depicted in their projects.


FAILE’s recent work is marked by the consistent juxtaposition of dualities (love/hate, violence/beauty, peace/war), recurring themes which are represented by recognizable visual elements.


Their work is characterized by a certain ambiguity which allows the viewer’s open interpretation in order to be able to relate to the work. Their creations’ meaning is open and emphasizes the audience’s interactive experience.


In addition to the common street art media, they chose a wide array of media ea sculpture, architecture, multimedia, music, design and books in limited edition.


Faile and twenty one other internationally renowned artists such as Banksy, Shepard Fairey and Takashi Murakami were invited to show their work at the Spank the Monkey exhibition (2007, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art). This show was crucial contribution towards the institutional acceptance of street art.


A year later Street Art(Tate Modern, 2008), a group exhibition featuring street artists Blu, Sixeart, JR, Nunca and Os Gomeos included Faile’s work. Thanks to this exhibition Faile was able to reach a large public. Their work increasingly received more media attention.


Street art embraces hip-hop aesthetics, fixes its eye upon to the masses expression in an attempt to regain and embellish the urban environment. Contemporary art shouldn’t be restricted to museums and galleries but be available on every corner of the street.



Article written by Ann Timmermans

More information and pics:
faile@faile.net


http://www.faile.net/