honeycombs of wood and old leaves flickering
issue #2 of cowan’s gap zine is almost done, and should be ready to ship and in stores in a couple of weeks! Also, a couple poems of mine are forthcoming in the next issue of the gnar-bar SoandSo Magazine, which i’m super hyped about!
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Sam Owen had three rad pieces in a local group show last month, including this one:
check our more new work at his website !
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all of the work from the recent show Needles and Pens curated in Sweden is online! here are a couple pieces by Nick Mann (Doodles) and Kevin E. Taylor:
the rest of the show is super sick too and has TONS of your bay area favorite artists. definitely worth checking out!
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also, i’m not sure if i blogged about this yet but the doodles show/installation at needles and pens earlier this year was like my favorite art show in history.
pics here! look at those structures built into the walls… waa.
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we also saw the final stop of Mark Warren Jacques and Seth Neefus ‘s huge Free Life Center installation/tour, also at Needles and Pens!
The work was super fun, especially exploring the little house, and we also got an awesome free photo zine of their project. Overall a great opening — thanks dudes!!
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books that i read:
cormac mccarthy – suttree. seems like every book i read by this dude (five or six titles now) becomes my new favorite book. true romantic in our own century. certainly my favorite living writer.
rodrigo fresan – kensington gardens. total madness / weird writing style / very cool/circuitous/knife-edged meditations on the relationship between art and not-growin’-up and telling stories (to whom and for whom) and believing in them. thanks alex for the book!!
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new albums:
howl – full of hell. “that new relapse band” everyone’s talking about. super riffy kinda-doomy ultra-heavy awesomeness — stream the whole record at stereogum!
sleeping peonies – rose curl, sea swirl . dreamy/uplifting/get-lost-in-it shoegazey black metal. for fans of alcest etc. thanks a million to aQuarius for the tip on this awesome record!!
jay reatard – watch me fall. super poppy, hooky garage-rock for the most part, but with lotsa other weird/awesome stuff on the album that sometimes even sounds like deerhunter/atlas sound. one of my favorite albums in recent memory — have been listening to it on repeat at work, while working at home, and generally all the time. rad piece of art — really wish this dude was still around…
wavves – king of the beach. been a big fan of this dude since about a year-and-a-half ago when i discovered his first two LP’s. at first i wanted to hate this new one because he “broke into the mainstream” or whatever, but i actually ended up totally loving it (duhh) and we went and saw him play live at the rickshaw stop (for the second time! at that same venue! weird!) and it was awesome. so yeah despite my initial reservations i love this record and listen to it all the time. super energizing pop-punk! wavves 4-ever!!
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alright! and that was definitely the longest blog post i’ve ever written. if you’ve made it all the way through mega thanks!! -nate
