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See you in a couple of days/weeks on a brand new on-point (which for the moment is only running the default wordpress theme, sorry for that)
In case you didn’t know already, check the Summerbreak post to know what’ll be up in the ver near future!
cheers!
=lloyd=
I’m taking a break. Everybody seems to be taking breaks lately so I feel my time has come to take one too.
However, a new podcast will be up this week and expect some newsflashes every now and then too.
Saturday July 28th vic&lloyd are mixing an allnighter at Café St.Georges in our very hometown, Roeselare that is. Which might just be considered as somewhat of a come-back gig for us (yes, it’s been this long - over a year- so shame on you rsl promoters!) And we’ll bring a very special extra guest, by the name of Shimmy Timmy, our Brother on the Harmonica!
On-point tv will see some updates, maybe a stand-alone site too, stay tuned for that.
After Summer I’m joining a groupexpo in Antwerp which seems to be quite a big thing, more info will follow when I’m back, after my break.
VanWidderVoeGidder Tape2 is still in the making too, and should be finished end of August, fingers crossed.
The vinyl+poster packages of The Sedan Vault are selling fast, give me a yell at lloyd@on-point.be if you’d want to secure your copy (12 euro only, ltd. 330 copies edition!)
That being said I’m working on a major project to be launched in 2008, in order for me to focus on that, I need to take some distance from the blogosphere.
I hope you don’t mind… Hell, I hope you do mind, like I’m missing my commentors! Rest assured though, I’ll always be here, only now less frequently, definitely no four-posts-a-day style anymore.
Stay on-point and see you after the break!
About to lift off for another brilliant evening at BlueNoteRecordsFestival in Ghent. Wednesday was very nice, almost succeeded in convincing Shadow to do an interview, but the tour schedule was just too damn tight, too bad.
Thusfar I’ve only managed to properly arrange one interview, the rest of the bunch seems to be in superstarstatus. Which I can only respect.
However, I will still be knocking on management’s doors of the likes of Zap Mama, Guru and Sly Stone. Although chances to interview that last one are extremely small, but then again same went for Roy Ayers last year, when numerous attempts of setting up a meeting ended up in a nice long chat with Roy, about his sneakers, amongst many other topics - you’ll get the whole interview in one of the future podcasts, don’t you worry about that!
Anyway, I’m all into Sly & the Family Stone nowadays. Particularly this tune called “Babies making babies”, as featured on one of my favourite mixtapes, by Rob Swift.
And on that note, I’ll let Sly (on the photo to the right) himself do the rest of the talking. Read the Vanity Fair story on where he’s at nowadays, Or let’s go back, way back, back into the time:
There’s more Sly, here’s the man, the myth, living the life, basically:
Last month I joined Jan Peeters to interview Ben Westbeech, protégé of Gilles Peterson on his new label Brownswood Recordings.
A couple of hours before Ben Westbeech’s gig in Leuven, we join him for a beer and a relaxed chat in front of Leuven’s train station.
After having launched our joint criticism on the strange and not that well succeeded architectural combination of the neoclassical train station, its ultramodern canopy and the red brick bus station, our conversation takes of with Bristol, a safe haven for new electronical sounds coming from for instance Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead and Roni Size. Bristol seems to be quite a heavily bass-influenced town… (Read the rest of the interview.)
And/or tune in right here:
Ben is performing live in Kortrijk this Saturday the 14th of July, sharing the stage with Jimi Tenor, all for free, so go check that out!
He’s also playing at Dour Festival, which is sold out for the first time, apparently.
Previously on on-point tv:
Dave Decat - Carhartt feature
Martha Cooper Interview
Soul:ID - epk
Damn, what can I say, here’s Baloji with Amp Fiddler in the studio. And then the third killer steps in the spot, and he goes by the name of Peter Lesage! It’s brilliant!
Baloji Live at BlueNoteRecordsFestival this Friday, can’t wait to see that show!
More Baloji video material:
Congo Music Video
SozyOne Gonzalez on the Album Artwork of Hotel Impala
Don’t know how many of you have seen Ricky Gervais’ stand-up performance, but I hadn’t. But guess what, it’s put online for us to enjoy. Entirely:
The rest of the chapters are to be clicked through, or you’ll find them right here.
More Ricky Gervais:
- Ricky Gervais on Letterman
- One Love - Ricky Gervais in Kenya
- Ricky Gervais leaked video for Microsoft
Last month I’ve made the EPK that’s accompanying the release of Soul:Id’s highly anticipated debut album ‘Sex, Love and Philosophy’
I’ve had some great times getting to know the band and I must say I’ve rarely seen such dedicated people, focussed on doing things the right way. Seeing things happen made me realise it actually is not so surprising they’re debuting on the infamous ABB Soul label in the States. (with releases in Japan and the UK following shortly after)
The album is a killer, it was featured in Billboard. Still, no press interest in Belgium, strange, isn’t it? I guess it’s the stereotypical story, you’ll have to succeed abroad before you get noticed. As you’ll see in the video though, the band has been touring internationally already.
ABB Soul made a nice e-card, in which the EPK is nicely featured, which is nice!
A video interview with tons of exclusive video material will be featured on on-point tv somewhere next month. Busy times on the editing tip, learning a lot of new tricks. Stay tuned for more tv, and needles to say, please spread the word. Because here’s what to expect:
- Graffiti Royal Video (ft. SozyoneGonzalez, Shake, Rekto, Olivier Stak, etc.)
- Ben Westbeech Interview
- Dave Decat Interview
- Soil&Pimp Sessions Interview
- BlueNoteRecordsFestival Interviews
- etc. etc.
And after that I’ve got another round of jobhunting to do.
Time for me to plug some more music. Live music. Funk music. Straight outta Brussels comes The Peas Project: an 11-piece live funk outfit, influenced by a dozen of genres and known for their strong live reputation.
I still have to edit the footage over their blazing gig at Jazzbreak just a while ago. I missed out on their Brussels Jazz Marathon show on the Grand Place but looking at the pictures on theirspace it looks like Brussels sure was put on fire that night!
Their debut album “This Is Our First Record” is in stores, I’ll hit you with some live footage later on, but for now, here’s their new clip: “Our Funk Process”.
For live dates, check their myspace, and to all bookers outside of Brussels, Book these cats!
Baloji is going strong. Another video was just uploaded. This time around a high-quality 9-minute feature. Listen and feel the vibe, it’s quite heavy if you ask me:
Love the camerawork and the editing too. More info on Baloji’s Hotel Impala album soon!
Lately I’ve been feeling the need to share some serious topics with you. About online and cultural trends, to be specific.
Some of you will probably find this quite boring, just know that these topics in fact àre all about you, so they do concern you. I’m sorry to say so but you won’t escape marketeers, you won’t escape the media, and since you’ve read this far already you’re damn far from escaping the web.
Introducing Andrew Keen, whose book “Cult of the Amateur - How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture” seems to be growing into becoming the hype of the year.
Basically the web2.0 revolution (read: blogs competing newssites, youtube killing traditional tv watching, etc.) has always been looked at as being the democratisation of content.
The user taking over, making his own decisions, therefor liberating himself from the big corporations, serving other users with what they really want, not with what is dictated by major companies.
Keen, however, believes this is all a bunch of crap. Amateurs have indeed partially taken over the content-monopoly once driven by professional journalists, tv-makers, designers, etc. But this hasn’t given us the cultural revolution so many had hoped for.
Web2.0 has given opportunities to certain talented people, but the really big successes are, for instance, webcam videos about nothing, blogs about nothing, etc. So how does this justify the demonisation of classic media?
Being an amateur myself, I must say I don’t feel offended. On-point is not a political blog and I don’t think I ever pretended holding the truth.
I think it’s good to finally see someone stand up and take a stance against the crowdsourcing trend, a trend that is nice, but isn’t holy, I think.
Anyway. Stay tuned and think about it, these are the times we’re living in!
Here’s a Andrew Keen speaking at ‘Authors@Google’. I’ve made you a small selection of quotes, just for you to think about:
- “If we’re going to use the internet as a self-publicating platform, we nééd to have something to say. Otherwise it degenerates into a state of digital narcicissm where everything simply becomes a reflection of ourselves. We Twitter ourselves to death and we use the internet to tell the world what we had for breakfast or what we watched on televsion and that’s not valuable for ourselve or for any type of collective conversation.”
- “We need middlemen. We need experts. Whether experts are in marketing or in creativity, whether they’re in finding talent and figuring out how to polish it and distribute it. These are the core players in every media system..
- “The flattening of culture, the idealised web 2.0 system, where the intermediarists go away has profoundly unfortunate and often dangerous consequenses.”
- “Media literacy is the thing we need to build now. We have this open system, the challenge is to read it critically. The challenge is not to believe everything that is posted up on Wikipedia. The challenge is not to think that this sort of idealised media system can deliver us truth. -…- Truth is even harder to find.”
“The great seduction of the internet is to become a broadcaster ourselves, to use it as a platform to express ourselves. -…- I think we need to remind ourselves that there are many times where we need to remain silent, where we need to remain in the audience.”
Very much looking forward to hearing your opinion on these statements. I hope you still dare to comment after that last statement though.
Kind of lost touch with Good Magazine, my bad, I shouldn’t have. Not only did these people learn us about Object Orange, in Detroit, a while ago. By now they seem to have built a collection of, well, really Good Videos. Check all of them, or let’s just start with some favourites:
For my photographylovers: NYChildren.org:
For my recordlovers: Bob George - the Archive
For all lovers: Internet Porn:
Well I’ll be damned! Just today I asked him when the video was going to be uploaded, and guess what, there he is: SozyOne Gonzalez speaking upon the artwork he’s done for Baloji’s upcoming album.
From what I’ve heard the album is one master listening experience, haven’t heard anything but the intro yet, but I’m already hooked.
Saturday I’ll be in Ghent for the Citykingz graffitijam. Hope to see some of the visitors present, look at the line-up, there’s a whole lot of killers in there if you ask me!
Dave Decat will be one of the next people featured on on-point tv. Until then, check out this promovideo by Carhartt, for who he made several award-winning campaigns, which you’ll probably recognize.
Check out Dave’s myspace for more info and pictures of his work.
Having seen BBC Panorama’s “Scientology and Me” I’m not sure I should continue blogging about these freaks. Then again, they shouldn’t have stepped on my doorstep either:
Watch the legendary BBC episode right here. Must-see material it is!
“Mardi gras of the Sisypha”, the debut album of The Sedan Vault finally sees its limited edition vinyl re-release. And as you can tell, indeed it features a poster by yours truely, my first illustration work published actually.
Limited to 330 vinyls, this is obviously a collector’s item. Plus, the album is killer.
Drop a comment or mail me at lloyd@on-point.be if you want to secure your copy right away. Record stores are closing down, so I’ll do some sales myself, for the love of the game.
Price: 12 euros. Order now, I’ll sign some if you insist!
After the huge succes of Ame’s Shining Back mix, we decided to hit you with another J Dilla Samples Montage. This isn’t a new one though, ‘Donuts - The Blueprints’ actually hit the web a long time ago, well received on numerous prestigious forums and boards, but after that kind of vanished.
But the mix is a classic, so we had to share it with you again. JtotheC added some artwork and well yeah, there you have it.
AME - Donuts - The Blueprints (J. Dilla Samples Montage)
Don’t forget The CD Cover, for your printing pleasure!
As always with these cratedigging gems, don’t ask for the tracklist, there is no way we can share that with you, matter of fact, I don’t even have one, it’s all in the allmighty mastermind of Ame, who by now, you should know from numerous After Hours productions!
Previously on the On-Point Podcast:
- Ame - Shining Back (J Dilla Samples Montage)
- Vic&lloyd - VanWidderVoeGidder on De Hop
- SNS - Tribute to Dilla Mixtape Side A
- SNS - Tribute to Dilla Mixtape Side B
- BLA - OndaSonora Mix
- SNS - Nineties Hiphop Dedication
Furthermore, feel free to grab this banner below, plug it into your myspace, bloglay-out, or whatever
And also, if you haven’t done so already, do subscribe to the on-point podcast, plug it in your iTunes or rss reader children!
Last week’s interview with Martha Cooper was one of the nicest in a long time. So nice I forgot some of my questions, what can I say, I’m an amateur…
Martha Cooper gained international recognization for her pioneering photos of early hiphop culture, being the first ever to capture graffiti and breakdancing.
The final edit ended up being over 10 minutes of video, in which I didn’t want to cut, so take your time, watch, listen or in other words: check it out. And spread the word if you’re feeling it:
Check out her latest book Street Play, The Hiphop Files, We B* Girlz and Subway Art, for some classic material!
Special thanks to Incr1 for the illustrations (mail), digitalovers.net, mr.Ego, Eastpak and the FromHereToFame people, for publishing Martha’s work of course!
HitTheBooks. That’s where you’ll find me this Saturday. Probably all afternoon, looks like there’s gonna be a whole lotta checking to do, all about mags ‘n’ books ‘n’ independent publishing. Props to Ephameron and Hessenhuis to make this happen!
(Click the flyer for practical info.)
People who search using only Google, and nothing but Google miss out on 72.7% of the possible search results.
That’s basically the main conclusion two American universities drew in this here study.
I plaid guilty as well, the damn thing is imported in my browser, as with most of us by now, I imagine.
Does anybody out here still remembers the glory days of Altavista - now called AlltheWeb? In tough competition with Yahoo for a while, when the third dog stepped into the game to basically flip the script and take over their business? It sounds almost nostalgic.
Anyway, here’s a top100 of alternative search engines, it’s amazing how many they are. Business blogs seem to be stuck on the question “Is Search still the big business opportunity for the web?”
And yes, it sure is, watch out for web3.0 coming at you, the semantic web. I might get a little deeper into that one of these days. It shouldn’t always be about style and music and design and stuff, now should it?
It’s a late pass, but by popular demand, here is the tracklist of the latest podcast, if you haven’t done so already, why not download it right away? I mean, look at that tracklist, there’s a fair share of exclusive unreleased and even some never-to-be-released material in there!
vic&lloyd at De Hop, Studio Brussel:
La Mescla - Days Like These (produced by Gusto)
Ugly Ducklin’ - Friday Nights
Slum Village ft. Q-Tip - Hold Tight
Isley Brothers - It’s Your Thing
45King - Put The Funk Out There
Bob Ballistic - 11 Juli (produced by Fonz)
The Stylistics - People Make The World Go Round
DJ Iron - Closer
JayLib - Unreleased Instrumental
INT - Do You Want It?
Jazzy Jeff ft. Slum Village - Are You Ready?
James Brown - Take Some Leave Some
William Devaughn - Be Thankful (vic on the robotic outro)
Audio Two - Top Billin’
Bob James - Nautilus
Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (lloyd edit)
Isaac Hayes - Good Love
Interlude - Toot Sweets, The Candies You Whistle
Lloyd’s Ill Herbie Hancock Mash-up ft. Mos Def, Q-Tip, Bilal, a.o.
Lootpack - Answers Instrumental
Craig Mack - Flava In Ya Ear
Theo Parrish - Ugly Edit (with an extra lloyd edit)
Al Jarreau - You Don’t See Me
James Brown - Funky Drummer
James Brown - Soul Power
Outro - Spread Love ft. DJ PatCa
After the downloading, burn it on a cd-r, print the cd-cover, and plug it in your car stereo system, make your trunk rattle!
I’ve very muched enjoyed the videos of the Google Zeitgeist 2007 conference. Most of them might not be as interesting to most of you so I’ve decided to pick just one for you trendwatchers out there: Josh Spear talking about the whole online community thing, commenting on various new services which I hadn’t heard of yet:
Josh Spear launched him self into online stardom by blogging over at joshspear.com. He’s running his own company now and the blog itself is run by eight (!) other people.
Here are some statements, who might not make any sense unless you see Josh speak upon it. I think the man is actually making sense spotting some trends, and I’ve found these to be very complimentary to my reading of Generation Me - I hope I’ll find some time to share my thoughts on that one, once I’ve finished reading.
“Universities are basically ignoring new media.”
“Ten dollars for a virtual red rose (…) Virtual gifting will be big!”
“…she’s a bit of a new media whore.”
“Dating is gaming. Dating has been gaming on tv for ages, but it hasn’t translated on the internet yet, until now.”
“Brands should integrate, not infiltrate.”
He also speaks upon the succes of Threadless, a t-shirt site selling limited edition t-shirts, designed by users and voted upon by the same community. A concept run by two dudes, who sold over a million t-shirts a year.
Which made me wonder if I were to upload some design, how many users would vote it into the actual printing phase (because just because you contribute a design doesn’t mean it will automatically be printed, you’ll need the community’s approval for that to happen)
There are more videos online, of course.
With another feature in ‘Brussel Deze Week’ and a dozen of blogs speculating on the who’s and how’s behind Bonom’s killer streetworks, our man seems to keep head cool and blesses us with another masterpiece:
Previously on Bonom:
Video: Bonom & Lork - Big Baby Piece the size of an office block, Brussels
Video: Bonom & Lork - Animated Streetart - Etterbeek Station
Photos: Bonom Flickr Photo Pool
We know you’ve been waiting for this to happen ever since we unplugged early in the morning some Sunday last month - yeah we saw you jumping on those tables - so we’re back on a go again: Tonight, All Night, at Le Tavernier, Free Entrance, Free Love, all of that. Come get down with the get-down!
We’ll be there from around 22h on.
But first, let’s meet and greet the one called Martha Cooper!
I’m a sucker for patterns. The idea that there’s virtually no start and no end to these repetitive aesthetics just makes me go round and round.
Which is brilliant, especially since I’m talking this Summer’s favourite fashion accessoire: The Pattern.
I don’t know if we’re supposed to look at this as another revival of the retro lifestyle or whatever, I for one see it as a counterreaction to the minimal styles we’ve been witnessing over these last couple of years, notably in music and graphic design (last Spring wearing white bermudas was quite minimalminded too).
Speaking of which, I actually pointed this out to brother vic a couple of months ago, how each and every graphic design seemed to be amped up by some extra plantlike curly forms and styles, simply for the sake of filling things up. I didn’t quite like that, however, in fashion it does get my groove on.
And don’t give me that “lloyd, old school retro styles have been in fashion for years now“. Obviously you’ve got point, but it’s going mainstream now, it’s not only the trendy highschoolgirls rocking patterns, it’s everyone nowadays. Either that or I’m just focussing too much, then again, prove me wrong.
Note to self: start second blog: on-patterns.net
This is too good to be true: Martha Cooper is coming to town, Brussels that is this very Friday even!
Miss Cooper having earned near cult status with her legendary photos of the New York ghettos will sign her latest book: “Street Play”
If you want to check her work, “The Hiphop Files” is probably the best starting point. Or watch On-Point TV’s Martha Cooper Interview:
As for Friday, click the flyer below for more info:
Again, news from the man called Above.
It was only yesterday that I sit down with one half of the infamous digitalovers to prepare our questions for what is bound to be an indepth interview on the life and works of streetartist ABOVE and guess what. Today the Brussels video of his European tour has been uploaded to his youtube channel. Ain’t that something?
Above is all about arrows basically. That and putting his name up. Up in the sky.
By now our charming local authorities seem to have removed all of the arrows, very much to our disappointment. So for now we can only watch the video, that actually shows only a small part of his work, and unfortunately doesn’t reveal any secrets.
I mean, how did he put up all them signs, on cables above some of the busiest and crowdiest places of the city. (read: Manneken Pis, Boulevard Anspach, Place St.Gery, etc. etc.)
Check this video to see the man at work.
I told you I read my fanmail! This just came in at on-point headquarters:
From June 15th til September 2nd our current favourite French photographer JR is showing his Face 2 Face project in Amsterdam. (check for info)
Be sure to check out JR’s 28Millimetres video if you haven’t done so already.
Gives me yet another reason to go for a little Holland trip this summer. On top of that here’s some videomaterial of the project:
Ow and, his youtubechannel, can’ t do without nowadays.
Thanks a bunch a fan a.k.a. katrien!
You thought stacking chairs was impressive as a public art installation? Check this crazy rotating wall. Next thing you know we’ll be flipping buildings inside-out, with a big old canon bouncing on top! Lovin’ this:
From Gizmodo:
The UK city of Liverpool is playing host to a rather kooky piece of artwork for the next 18 months. Called Turning The Place Over by Richard Wilson, it consists of a rotating wall that turns 360º.
Cut in the wall of an old Yates’s Wine Lodge, the installation sits opposite one of the city’s train stations and is costing almost $900,000 - that’s $50,000 for each month of its existence.
What can I say, this stacked chairs installation is just utter brilliance!
“…This amazing art installation was made by Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo for the International Instanbul Biennale in 2003. She used over 1,550 chairs stacked on an empty lot between two buildings!”
(via woostercollective.com)
In a day or ten Balo - of Starflam fame - will bless us with a sneak preview of his highly anticipated solo album “Hotel Impala”.
My interest in proper marketing is still present and I must say I was pleasantly suprised to see Balo’s myspace tweaked to the max ànd announcing a series of six promo videos which will be put online from June 11th on on his now empty youtube channel.
On top of that the videos feature some all-time killer on-point stars, such as Sozy.One Gonzalez, Amp Fiddler, Peter Lesage and Urbanus, amongst many many others. Needless to say I’m looking very much forward to this!
Balo will be playing at BlueNoteRecordsFestival, July 13th, in Ghent.
The first two of the following clips are playing, for the first one click play on the myspacepage, check it out and look for the surprise guest in there!
A lot of beatheads out there know about the infamous Dustbusters interview with JayDee. One long indepth talk about the whole of his career, by Y’skid and I.N.T. Thusfar the interview was only up for mp3 downloads, but what you didn’t know is that all of it was actually filmed!
I heard rumours of this getting a proper release or deal or whatever, none of that was confirmed so for now all I can say is check out this superb preview:
Related links:
Video: La Melodia - Time
Podcast: Ame - Shining Back
Video: J Dilla Interviews (Common, Bilal, ?uestlove, J Rocc, etc.)
Podcast: SNS - J Dilla Tribute Part One
Podcast: SNS - J Dilla Tribute Part Two
