ASHLEY MOORE PORTFOLIO ARTICLES IN PRINT FOR DISORDER MAGAZINE JANUARY /FEBUARY ISSUE
instruments of by Ashley Moore photos by RONALD TIMEHIN artworks by michael burton and michiko nitta
the after life Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta are far future speculative artists who reside at Havelock Walk in Forest Hill, South London. They have spent their careers conceptualising how humans will evolve, what scientific research we might implement to further ourselves and what kind of technology we could merge with. From dystopian visions of governments controlling food sources, and using photosynthesising algae masks to feed, to banished artificial intelligent biorobots. Disorder is bridging the gap between these two speculative artists, and the scientists who are implementing groundbreaking research and artwork, to bring you an exclusive insight into the future.
They are paradoxical, the two of them. Michael Burton: an Englishman originally from the country, and Michiko Nitta: a city dwelling Tokyo-ite. Both of them have taken a different path to arrive at one parallel goal. “We are both interested in the future, exploring future technology,” explained Burton, and through this similar path they create their visions. The two main staples of their work are scientific research and speculation; speculation of mankind’s evolution through a multi-disciplinary approach to art, mostly in model making and prototyping. “It is coming up with these small changes that potentially, in the near future, will radically change everything in [the] far future. That’s when we feel we have come up with something exciting,” he explained, speaking hypothetically. As we sat in their small, unassuming studio on Havelock Walk they explained that they look at their work through “different lenses” and those lenses mirror the aforementioned paradoxes. Each has a different skill set yet their goal is the same: to create innovative, original artwork that challenges our perception of the future. Michael Burton started his practice in art through a sculpture degree from the Royal Academy of Art, but it’s the “cross over between science, technology and art” that really gets his gears moving. He graduated in the 2000s from the RA where both he and Nitta crossed paths and they began their partnership while enrolling on a design interactions course. Nitta initiated her path through product design and then switched to graphic design, but has always been interested in the “cross over between art and design.” They use stories to mount their work and build from there with the goal of creating an emotional attachment. “Whether that be outrage,
anger, disgust or love,” explained Nitta. Their process always has a “critical edge” explained Burton, “Both of us do a certain amount of making and thinking in the process—thinking through making.” Throughout the interview they both talked about near future and far future and their art delivers on both these levels. All of their work is speculation; it needs to have a veil of reality so that from a first glance you might perceive it as ‘real’. It may seem that they are looking for answers to problems but this is far from the truth, they made it abundantly clear that “[they] are not trying to find solutions, [they] are exploring different scenarios to test out different futures,” explained Burton. This caveat of reality to their work also has a philosophical inspiration taken from hyperrealism. “I love hyperreal, it means that it’s a copy of something that then becomes real,” explained Nitta, “That’s part of our inspiration,” she concluded. In this world where the status quo is to regurgitate or remix, Burton feels that, “It’s always hard to find something new, it’s always a reflection of something. It would be great for us to suggest something that changes the future, but we can’t say that it’s hyper-real conclusively.”
It is coming up with these small changes that potentially, in the near future, will radically change everything in the far future. Thats when we feel we have come up with something exciting. MichaelBurton The project entitled Algaculture (2010), which is connected to an umbrella term for a body of work called After-Agriculture, envisions a future where food sources start to decline. “By 2050 we face over population on this planet by 9 billion people; there will [be] a shortage of food on this planet,” Nitta illuminated. It begs the question: how might the human race adapt or evolve to prevent extinction? They suggest that we should radically change the way we feed—through photosynthesis and enhancing our biology. “We had this idea of photosynthesising people, based on an organism called Elysia Chlorotica, which is a sea slug that evolved to have a new algae vein. Scientists call it a plantaminal. They eat once a month and sunbathe to reproduce algae. We wanted to go to the end point; a human evolutionary step into where everyone could
We had this idea of photosynthesising people, based on an organism called Elysia Chlorotica, which is a sea slug that evolved to have a new algae vein. Scientists call it a plantaminal. They eat once a month and sunbathe to reproduce algae. michiko nitta
feed to a certain level despite where you were or social status,” explained Nitta.
want. With our work you can taste it, you can feel it, experience it and touch it; it is sensory work.”
It was from this concept and research that they created the Algaculture mask. If we fed through photosynthesis there would be huge compromises to our humanity. The way we look aesthetically might change, the body would need to evolve in order to deal with an all algae diet and food through sunlight. “It is a very utopian world. People would be sunbathing and eating algae. You would need to redesign your day to make the most of the sunlight. You would feed and not work. What would a restaurant be like? Is it just a sunbathing room? It’s an interesting dilemma of what do we want? It would be an amazing experience with benefits. It is also forming a new symbiotic relationship with this algae,” explained Burton. This is already partly the case, Nitta added, as the Japanese “apparently digest algae better because they eat a lot of raw algae in their culture since the beginning and have built up an immunity.”
They came to a point in their careers where the road forked and they gave themselves an ultimatum: “Do we go to science or do we go to art?” What they decided was to delve further into scientific research and increase their artistic output with their latest work The Instruments of the After Life (2015). This is a project that spans across the art world, science and technology. Each participant has their own project, the scientist’s name for it is Cleaning Land For Wealth (CL4W), the project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Core at Loughborough University. It consists of five universities that all specialise in one area: Edinburgh (synthetic biology – modifying bacteria to do something else), Birmingham (nanotechnology), Warwick (plant science, chemical processing, Cranfield (?) and synthetic biology) and Newcastle who are doing process intensification, they are responsible for making the research into a product—a useable product.
It is difficult to not look at their work and see it as science fiction, but it is a thin line between their product and their vision. It is a dichotomy as they are both inspired by it and try to avoid it. “We don’t want to be science fiction film directors. All of our work has real scientific research,” explained Nitta, “the crew would be nice!” she joked. “We are not scientists, we can’t make it happen, we are artists, we are visionary,” Burton clarified. But of course, there are times where science fiction supersedes actual scientific advancements, “It is important to us because it guides our visions of what we want and what we don’t
The project stems from the environmental damage we have done to the planet. “Before the industrial revolution in the 1700s, people just inhabited the land, but after that we started contaminating the land through mining sites and nuclear power stations. This made it inhabitable. [The scientists] are looking at this land and are planting hyper accumulating plants (ferns, sunflowers, brassicas etc.) which suck up the contaminants and then recycle them to create nano-metals,” Nitta explained. In the process they harvest and dry out the contaminated plants and
feed them to “engineered bacteria. It is engineered to digest the metals and through the digestion process they excrete nano-metals, which are more precious than gold. It can become a fabric, catalyst for a hydrogen fuel cell, a cancer treatment and other types of medication,” she concluded.
said Nitta. They implement the research that has gone into CL4W, there are three instruments, one resembles a horn, an oboe and the other is some kind of mouth operated instrument, “each one will show one very important concept of this beautiful decay system,” explained Nitta.
The project focuses on transforming ‘toxic matter into valuable materials by employing plants and engineering bacteria’ (Burton & Nitta, online: 2015). They are envisioning a no waste civilisation where no longer are we able to sustain ourselves through “consuming the environment without little respect for anything or the future,” explained Burton. Looking at how the heavy consumption of fossil fuels have got us into a lot of problems. “This has built where we are now,” added Burton. “We are living on a dead body,” injected Nitta. “It’s dead life that we build the future and this process is looking at our near ancestors and the traces of their life they have left behind in the land,” he explained.
As you enter Havelock Walk there’s a blue plaque on the wall with BurtonNitta etched on it. It has a crest of cuddly toys that have no mouths and giant round eyes, in the middle of it is a pink creature in a white body suit, it has no mouth and has giant round eyes; this is The Abandoned Robot (2015). It is the first introduction of artificial intelligence into their work, however, unlike the AI that we know of, like HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey or the droids from Star Wars, nature, like all of their work, even in their most far removed notion of AI, is a massive influence. “We think of AI as digital,” said Burton, “—but it’s not, it’s becoming more biological,” Nitta chimed in. “It’s when technology becomes the same fabric as ourselves and integrates with ourselves, evolution through artificial advancement,” Burton concluded. Like the singularity, they believe that there will be a convergence, but they are dubious about merging with machine. The idea that we are all ready merging ourselves with synthetic biology is something that Burton
The instruments themselves are representative of synthetic biology, plant science and nanotechnology and disrupt “how we have used the land in the past and transform how we extract planetary resources in the future. They are a response to our misuse of resources,”
Before the industrial revolution in the 1700s, people just inhabited the land, but after that we started contaminating the land through mining sites and nuclear power stations. This made it inhabitable. The scientists are looking at this land and are planting hyper accumulating plants ferns, sunflowers, brassicas etc. which suck up the contaminants and then recycle them to create nanometals. MICHIKO NITTA
Its dead life that we build the future and this process is looking at our near ancestors and the traces of their life they have left behind in the land Michael Burton champions. “Our scientists are already modifying bacteria and modifying us,” he said, “We are 10% human the other 90% is fungus, bacteria and other microbes that live on and inside us. This is hugely compatible [us and the bacteria] and we can’t exist without them.” The idea behind The Abandoned Robot came from the “Japanese paro-robot from anthropomorphism,” Burton told us. “We call it a biobot. The Abandoned Robot is like kicking a dog out on the street,” explained Nitta. The idea was to create emotional attachment through “Its eyes; a suggestion of movement even if it didn’t move, an element of unpredictability and whether it assigned itself to a human agency or biological agency,” Burton explained. They created the story of the robot first and then created the story about the kind of people that would own it; one scenario is the son of an elderly woman throwing the robot out onto the street once the elderly lady had passed away. It then starts to degrade on the street getting “grubbier. It’s biological so it has needs—it might catch cats and pigeons to sustain itself, make things out of its feathers. We were
really thinking about it living in the street environment,” said Burton. Their visions are unsettling and at times bombastic but, like science fiction, you never know how close to the present these visions are until they are staring you in the face. For example wearable technology would have been laughed at twenty years ago, now it’s part of day to day life. The need to speculate and to dream is imperative, now more than than ever. With resources running out at an alarming rate and the volume of the global population ever rising, we need to come up with inventive ideas to allow ourselves breathing space. One day it’s an idea the next it’s tangible proof. Michael Burton and Michiko Nitta have just had The Instruments of the Afterlife showcased in the V&A and are getting well deserved recognition for their groundbreaking work from the art community. We come across a lot of artwork but can’t really think, on this level, of anyone who even comes close in originality.
BETWEEN TWO FIRES by Ashley Moore illustrations by benji roebuck On the morning of the 31st of July, I read an article about an ultraorthodox Jew who stabbed six marchers, badly injuring two, at a Gay Pride march in Jerusalem. It later came out that one of those injured Shira Banki - died of her wounds. This tension is manifested between the predominant secular majority and the ultra Orthodox Jewish minority on LGBT rights including public display of homosexuality in Israel.
best but prepared for the worst. On arrival passport control saw that his Canadian passport stated he was born in Jerusalem and those from Israel need to use their Israeli passport to pass in and out of the country. They quickly concluded that he hadn’t carried out his military service. He subsequently went to an incarceration center and in the morning, military prison.
This isolated story came after an interview I conducted with Political Science and Sexuality postgraduate, Jonathan Hadad. But this is a story of two issues: one being Jonathan’s attachment to the LGBT community and the other a complete loss of freedom carried out by the Nation of Israel’s military service. There is a sense of androgyny here also, mostly due to the fact that our window on Skype showed a young male with a shaved head, “My hair is buzzed because I was in prison and they cut it off. I had long hair before.” He then showed me a beautiful picture of his long locks flowing down his body. While Jonathan for political reasons classes himself as gay, he doesn’t define himself as transgender, “I guess I present myself as male because it is easier to navigate the world that way.”
AWOL is typical within countries where military service is mandatory; to us in the West, we
Jonathan was born in Jerusalem in 1992. He lived in five different cities in the center of Israel including Tel Aviv and explained his upbringing as not “typical” of a common Israeli having a “Canadian mother and Yemenite father.” His early education like many other Israeli’s seemed to stem from the hangover of the Holocaust. “In order to prepare you for the military service,” he revealed, “They have to convince you that there is [an] imminent threat to the Jewish people and the holocaust hypothetically hasn’t ended yet.” After a long time of studying abroad from a young age, Jonathan still felt “connected to Israel” but the ominous figure of the military hung over him like a dark monolith; he was hoping for the
I GUESS I PRESENT MYSELF AS MALE BECAUSE ITS EASIER TO NAVIGATE THE WORLD THAT WAY
would be outraged at the thought of being jailed for abstaining. But the fact still stands, jailing someone against their will because they will not condone military action, active or inactive, pacifist or just refusing not to initiate themselves under political pressure, is fundamentally an issue with young people where this practice is the norm to typical citizens. Jonathan who moved across continents to better his life through education suddenly faced the prospects of prison, his freedom stripped from him like a common criminal He was sent to one of two prisons, Rishon LeZion in central Israel. “You won’t find it on a map or Google,” he explained. Jonathan spent 30 days there, during his stint. Prison culture consisted of making bracelets to lessen the monotony and could be traded for cigarettes. Most of the
time they sat around in their cell or yard reading and talking. They were fed three meals a day; he was only fed vegan food after ten days without protein. There was conditioning of inmates through lessons of obedience “where they make you stand in rows and shout orders” to get you in the “channel” of being in the military because most there were adverse to war. They escaped not necessarily from Israel but out of their base. “Most cases have economic issues at home,” Jonathan explained and they usually were the “main providers” and couldn’t support themselves and their families on the low national service wage. “There are also people that don’t work within national systems or institutions, so even if there was a way to assist them, they don’t know who to reach out to and they end up in prison,” he defended.
There are also people that dont work within national systems or institutions, so even if there was a way to assist them, they dont know who to reach out to and they end up in prison In terms of Jonathan’s personal case he first tried to get exemption from his hair being buzzed. That didn’t work; he carried out his 30 day stint. He then got exemption from military service for psychological reasons. “You get a paragraph for each exemption,” he explained, “One of them was general depression.” Those wishing to get an exemption have to see a psychiatrist or claim they are a contentious objector or 100% pacifist. “You have to claim you’re not violent in anyway, you have to be vegan, and not conscript in any other military service and likely be female,” he explained. When asked about homophobia in prison he responded that the most commonplace slur was “you faggot” from straight male inmates. There was never any physicality but when
it became too much, Jonathan would ask for help. He is rigid in his pacifism and was “never going to deal with people [himself] and be violent.” The reply from prison guards was disjointed and frank. “There is no homophobia here,” they said, when it was apparent to Jonathan that there was. The conclusion he drew from it was that they do not want it to be an issue, “They don’t want to have to deal with it systematically because it’s obviously not a one time case; it’s a general problem there [homophobia]. They’re in denial.” When talking generally about Israel he explained it is more nationalist than conservative because as a nation Israel is very tolerant of LGBT rights. The sexual practice between samesex couples was first legalised in 1988; however, same-sex marriage is still not performed in Israel, as there are still robust religious sanctions that stop the progression of revolutionary LGBT goals. In Jonathan’s own words, it is “unlikely” that there would be “civil marriage [between homosexuals] because marriage is organised through rabbis. But it does recognise same-sex marriages carried out in other countries, who then return. There is a multitude of other laws that have been passed in favour of LGBT rights, for example discrimination through sexual orientation was outlawed in 1992 and same-sex couples are allowed to adopt, which came about in 2008. Gay men and lesbians are also allowed to serve in the military. I asked him about the attitudes towards the LGBT community in Israel, “as long as you’re Jewish the country wants to defend you,” he replied. Homosexuality is extremely accepted in Tel Aviv but outside of this gay epicenter there are “extreme religious neighbourhoods” where there are the strictest of religious practices, like women covering their whole bodies for example. Jonathan states that Israel has tried to brand itself as “gay friendly” but deems the situation
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YOU GET A PARAGRAPH FOR EACH EXEMPTION, ONE OF THEM WAS GENERAL DEPRESSION a lot less black and white than that. He claims that the state of Israel “assimilates with a Western cultural political allegiance,” and it is known throughout the world that Israel is the most tolerant Arab nation “An open policy; a marketing strategy,” he added. In 2009 Jonathan moved to Cardiff, South Wales to study at UWC Atlantic College an international school with 350 students from 85 different countries. Here he became an advocate of LGBT rights and culture within his school through sexual and gender week, cross-dressing days and a same-sex couple prom. He also states there was “no dominant culture” which allowed it to be more “normal and free” as well as through weakened “social codes.” Even though there was no physical violence, the harassment was still there. Jonathan then moved to Canada where he studied Political Science and Sexuality at the University of Toronto. There he honed his craft after much autodidacticism on homosexuality back in the UK. Jonathan was shocked during his first semester at the amount of Jewish sexuality theorists there were, including Judith Butler, Freud, and Jack Halberstam. He found a “Western bias” in the syllabus, suggesting that, “A global perspective would
have been better.” Political Science was also a problem as it was very “conservative” as the tutor would bring up “Zionism” within a class of 2500, who would have no “clue” about Israel and the tutor would mutter “very, very incorrect statements. There was very little critical thinking,” he concluded. The common theme throughout this story is the lack of empathy toward the youth of civilisation who at times fall through the cracks. When they can’t be classified or simply refuse to conform they are classed as psychologically damaged. The current national service system in Israel clearly doesn’t work for the vulnerable and it disenfranchises a whole generation who will not and do not want to work against their will for an archaic and swollen military. In terms of a global view of the LGBT community, Jonathan believes that there isn’t a grand unification of queer people and the sudden ramping up of LGBT media and angry voices is certainly down to the use of social media. An example is the solidarity shown in the rainbow flags that people on Facebook are attaching to their photos. Is it a sign of solidarity? Or is it mass apathy?
bALMAIN X h&M Balmain’s Creative Director, Olivier Rousteing addressed his generation on May 17th with ‘this is my aim as a designer. H&M allows me the unique possibility of bringing everyone into the world of Balmain get a piece of the dream and create a global #HMBalmaination: a movement of togetherness, fuelled on a hashtag.’ ‘The collaboration felt extremely natural to me: H&M is the brand that everybody connects to. It calls for unity, and I am all for it.’ From the pinnacle of French luxury, Balmain has grown into a global pop culture phenomenon under Rousteing’s creative direction, with the likes of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West in affiliation. However, Rousteing has remained true to Balmain’s ethos along with its couture dynasty. He has stuck to its main staples: energy, fun, amusement and freedom as well as its craftsmanship. The natural decision
to collaborate with H&M, empowered by showbiz flair, highlighted the brand’s pop charm. “We are excited to have Balmain as our guest designer at H&M and create a truly involving experience for everybody. With it’s mix of courture spirit and streetwear attitude, Balmain owns a unique style, at once opulent and direct, sensual and energetic. It is also closely linked to the show business and music worlds, which adds another element of surprise”, says Ann-Sofie Johansson, Creative Advisor at H&M The collection will be available from November 5th in around 250 stores worldwide and online, and will feature clothing and accessories for both women and men.
Words Ashley Moore
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CUTE CIRCUIT Are you bored with block colours? Are pleats and polka dots a thing of the past? If so, welcome to CuteCircuit, your first stop in wearable technology of the future and world leader of interactive fashion. Cute Circuit is the brainchild of dynamic duo creative director Francesca Rosella and CEO Ryan Genz. Since it’s inception in 2004 it has been linked with Vogue Russia, TEDx, Silk Road, INK Conference and much more. Another major injection into fashion history stems from their Galaxy Dress, which is an exhibit in the permanent collection of the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago as well as the iMiniSkirt, part of the Digital Revolution exhibition for the Barbican Museum, which is currently travelling worldwide. Notably of late celebrity interest has peaked and Nicole Scherzinger debuted the world’s first haute couture dress
to feature Tweets, designed and created by CuteCircuit; the properties of the clothing are as high tech as the designs. They are made in the UK, Italy and the USA, and the products are patented and 100% RoHS compliant, meaning no hazardous substances are present in the products, as well as free of lead and mercury. Not only this but they are also designed to last longer and are easily recycled as the microelectronics are designed as a modular system. They also offer a ‘return for recycling’ option that allows for customers to get a discount on a new item. Join the Digital revolution today and discard your out of date clothes (responsibly) for wearable technology that will change your life. Words Ashley Moore
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Horror) – who formed in 2012 – last night condemned that famous stage to a high energy and down right weird, clusterfuck of a performance. The three-piece band (or anti-band) have been associated with a subculture called Afro Punk, which is a subculture or movement that has been around since the early 2000s. It is a large community where black people of all nations play in bands that are predominately guitar lead or punk bands. They build on the foundations that were set for rock and roll and hard rock laid by black musicians in the 60s and 70s. The renaissance in the 80s with bands like Bad Brains and Suicidal Tendencies seems to inform this movement more so than their former pioneers. There is also the Afro Punk festival that started in 2005 and was founded by James Spooner; Ho99o9 played the festival back in 2014.
Their sound is jarring, doom-laden and downright insidious. From lyrics about priests copulating with skeletons to political slurs rhyming ‘apocalypse’ with ‘fuck your politics’, they leave no stone unturned. There are no guitars here; their set-up is much the same as a hip-hop act might perform. TheOGM uses a drum machine and a sampler that is cased in plastic so as to not destroy it with their sweat induced performances. Eaddy, with his bright green hair, is very much the hardcore asset to the music acting as a hype man at the same time, and their drummer blasts the kit among large dubby booms. The two bounce off each other and flit between vocal styles from Rasta infused rap, metal screams, and punk gibbering to guttural vocal styles.
The Ho99o9 Show @ 100 Club BY ASHLEY MOORE SHARE THIS Tweet Disorder decided to head to the historic 100 Club on Oxford Street to witness something with serious magnitude: hip-hop, hardcore punk trio Ho99o9 were in town, to tear it a new one. First founded in 1946, The 100 is traditionally a jazz club, but in recent years has drastically changed its stance on what or who plays the venue. And it all started in 1976. Ron Watts – with the help of Malcolm McLaren (who managed the infamous Sex Pistols at the time) – hosted an event called the 100 Club Punk Special. The lineup consisted of The Damned, The Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the headlining Pistols. The show propelled punk from the underground into the mainstream, albeit not for its technical musical craftsmanship, but for violence. It is claimed that a female from the audience was partially blinded from the remnants of a pint glass that was thrown toward the stage when The Damned were playing; it hit a post and shattered everywhere. Apparently this act of violence was carried out by Sid Vicious, an act that lead, eventually, to punk being banned from the 100 Club. And that is exactly what we imagine it felt like, watching Ho9o99 play live: being smashed in the face with a pint glass.
In the tradition of notorious and vivacious performances from a wealth of artists spanning sixty years plus, New Jersey’s Ho9o99 (pronounced
Ho99o9 literally pulled the roof down, well some of it at least. Both TheOGM and Eaddy burst on stage. OGM wearing a bridal dress and a blue Mexican wrestlers mask with his natty dreads bursting out the top and Eaddy; with his bright green hair and t-shirt emblazoned with the death of Sid Vicious. Their drummer who sets up the stage before they come on wore a brown curly wig and changed into a Prince William mask he had bought off Oxford Street half way through the set. TheOGM convulses and growls intensely at breakneck speed with his offhand rap. Eaddy picks up the hardcore elements with his screams and punk gabble and treated us to a backflip at the end of the set. It would seem that their style consists of sample heavy hip hop drowning in occult imagery and hardcore punk. Every time they upped the tempo or heavy noise the crowd went berserk, they writhed in the pit being squashed against the tiny stage. There were girls with tiny frames at the front who looked like they might get crushed underneath the ever forwarding crowd. Daniel, our photographer, had to put his foot on the stage while pushing back into the audience just to get the shots. The crowd control guy didn’t know what the fuck to do, he just looked perplexed. From start to finish it was like watching two worlds collide in a hack and slash Ho99o9 movie. TheOGM changing out of his bridal dress into his boxing shorts, donning a weird black glove with feathers, fangs and his gold teeth illuminated by the crappy stage lights. At one stage he got everybody down on the floor and told everyone “when this shit drops I wanna see all of you get the fuck up!” The crowd impressed the trio as much as the trio impressed the crowd, “that’s the converted by Web2PDFConvert.com
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shit,” OGM announced. They played a plethora of material mostly from their newest release ‘Dead Bodies in the Lake’ as well as former material, with tracks like ‘Twisted Metal’, DeahKult Disciples (999 Anthem) and ‘Da Blue Nigga from Hellboy’. This show was the first venue in a string of dates across the UK. They have played with the likes of Cerebral Balzy, Body Count and Faith No More.
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Interview with Nikhil Shah from Mixcloud BY ASHLEY MOORE SHARE THIS Tweet
Philadelphia’s Nah was on first and supports Ho99o9 in more ways than one, the two acts are intrinsically linked, both collaborating with each other on Nah’s track ‘Creepin Worse’. Nah is a one-man noise machine and a force to be reckoned with. His performance is like watching a bloke smash his balls to bits with a meat tenderiser. He combines pre-made synth, a barrage of bass and harrowing samples that are triggered by a drum machine that he has in front of his drum kit. He too plays along to backtracks and samples; kicking the shit out of his kit like Animal from the Muppets on steroids. He came on stage drinking red wine, played a chilled out electronic composition, set his samples off and dived in to the crowd with the mic in hand. He then made it back to his kit and announced: “Guys I have royally fucked up,” when he missed his cue. Other parts of his set involved him puking and spitting it out at the crowd and his snare. He hit that drum so hard, it’s as if he was imagining destroying Donald Trumps face, with puke and spittle flying everywhere. We literally couldn’t believe his transformation. When we met him at the bar he was a normal dude, when he got on stage he was like something possessed. Serious energy, a DIY attitude and a fuck ton of anger. He reminded me of the drummer Berserker from Australia without the pinpoint precision, but made up for it in energy and innovation.
Disorder managed to bag an interview with the very sought-after Nikhil Shah, the co-founder of Mixcloud. The online radio, podcast and DJinfluenced sharing service started life in 2008 when the beta was built while the team lived in a large warehouse, what Shah calls the “lab”, through a “beg, borrow or steal” vibe. It started out with 100 private subscribers and today boasts 10 million users across the world. It is now transforming itself to be adaptable across platforms including Apple TV and Sonos. Shah is first and foremost a music lover. Hip-hop was his first musical entanglement and he bought his first set of turntables when he was 15. “When I was a teenager I was buying two copies of every record and putting little white stickers on the record so I could juggle the exact sentence on the same record and play it over and over again,” he explained. It was through this love of hip-hop that Mixcloud was born. He first met the cofounder, Nico Perez, in Cambridge while they were both studying. Shah was playing hip-hop in clubs and Perez was breakdancing. “Mixcloud was dreamt up because our interest in listening to great radio curators and music connoisseurs was a great way to discover music. We felt like the experience of that was broken online and in 2008-2009 we were talking about sharing DJ mixes online, the process was broken so we thought we could fix this,” he explained. Shah as a music enthusiast informs his interest in radio. He cites Giles Peterson, the Solid Seal Radio Show from Ninja Tune and “a little bit” of Tim Westwood as some of his favourites. Even though Mixcloud is heavily influenced by the DJ community, dance music, which dominates the DJ scene, isn’t necessarily the end all and be all; it is mostly about DJ led music. “The same DNA runs through all genres; there is a curator at the heart of the way you discover new music, whether that is jazz, world music or electronic, it’s really the same behaviour isn’t it? Someone that wants to share,” he queried In March 2009 Shah sent the Mixcloud team to SXSW festival in Austin, USA. Money was still an issue so they “bootstrapped” the whole thing. “We had five dudes staying in one hotel room, it was ridiculous; very, very stinky,” he explained. At the time they were part of the UK Trade Digital Mission. This exposed them to the media and they were subsequently picked up by the BBC, who reported on them during their trip. When they checked the next day Mixcloud was on the front page of the BBC news online. It was this point that Mixcloud became real to Shah and his team. “This is out in the world now, there’s no going back,” he said. It also meant that the world was interested in them. In terms of users Mixcloud is massively diverse. “You can cut it by every single lens, you can cut it by genre, geography, level of popularity, level of celebrity. By radio stations, independent DJ’s, festivals, clubs, magazines, there’s all different types of curators,” he explained. There’s a pyramid in terms of users. A third is the likes of DJ Carl Cox, Moby and Jazzy Jeff who are at the top, underneath them are companies that make another third and the final third are completely unknown. These are known as “Mixcloud celebrities – a dude in his bedroom in Brussels who has managed to build a channel that has resonated with his audience,” he said. Even the likes of Barack Obama has a podcast you can tune into. We wondered whether there was a DJ mix from Obama, “I would love to give the world that exclusive, we found out recently that Usain Bolt is a DJ and a Serato user so if we could convince Serato to get Usain Bolt to do a mix maybe we could get Obama next,” Shah Joked. Jokes aside, the core aspect of Mixcloud comes down to sharing. “We’ve had to rely on people sharing the product because they love it or because it entertains them. It’s really the nuts and bolts of the platform and the approach we have taken to succeed. We have built a service where the strategy is to give people a way to upload their content and share it, sharing is at the core,” Shah explained. Another aspect of Mixcloud’s converted by Web2PDFConvert.com identity is the bucking of the short form content trend, “We’re thinking less or less focused on the artist and their single track, everything we have built is about long form audio,” he said, “If you think about the world we live in – Instagram, Snapchat, Vine: 6 seconds, 15 seconds. I actually have a lot of respect for companies like Medium and ourselves because we really believe in the value of long form, but long form you’ve gotta get it right and two hours plus, you start to get into that mode where it is a bit too long.”
If punk in the 1970s changed how we perceive expression and crashed and burned in a glorious flash of studs, mohawks and leather jackets, then where does this leave us now? Who are the ones paving the way in expression and anger? If there’s one thing we took from that show, it’s that Ho99o9 are pushing the boundaries on both punk, hip-hop and electronic music to the very peak of their resilience. They are an incredible noise and force that we hope the shoppers of Oxford Street could feel through their cashmere sweaters, for the love of god, see these guys before they too burn out.
So what is too long? An hour? Two hours? And what is the best way to engage your listeners? “The first thing I learned is you start your show with a song and then you introduce yourself,” he explained. “An hour is very typical for a radio show for specialist music, a decent hour long show, keeps someone engaged, it’s a decent amount of time to tell a story and get it across.” Mixcloud also has an analytics package that comes with the pro membership, which is where you pay a premium for a much more in depth experience. You can see where listeners start to drop off at what point, this is especially handy when you’re creating your next show. The free version is still unlimited in uploading content and file size, something Shah feels strongly about and adds to Mixcloud’s ethos. However the pro version is for those who want more control over their mixes and simply “makes their lives easier.” So what is next for Mixcloud? They have all ready blitzed the young tech start-up scene and clearly have the stamina to keep going considering they started in 2008. Their ethos and direction hasn’t changed in the “last five to six years,” and when Shah and Perez had the idea in the pub that day to “launch a platform to connect listeners to the worlds best radio, to connect radio curators to their listeners in a really simple intuitive way,” it still remains their core vision. It’s now a case of appropriating it for the multitude of different platforms that are popping up all over the place. Mixcloud started with a “narrow focus on one specific community.” They wanted to be relevant to people in London who were into dance music and understand that scene, but now they are making themselves relevant to all music scenes and tastes, they are at the forefront of music sharing and are paving the way in how we discover and how we develop across mediums and new platforms.
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Foxing were meant to be the support act but had a following of their own. They are a five-piece from St Louis, Missouri; their lucid and atmospheric soundscapes gave me haunting nostalgia. They reminded me of the technical abilities of math rock bands such as This Town Needs Guns and the technical post hardcore masters Dance Gavin Dance, but they were also a phenomenon of their own. Fronted by the unassuming but definitely commanding Conor Murphy, the whole band’s movement was in time with one another. They were theatrical in the way they performed, all from the gut, swinging their guitars, with Murphy wrapping the mic lead round his neck like an umbilical chord in the womb.
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Tigers Jaw & Foxing @The Fighting Cocks 7/8/15 BY ASH MOORE, PHOTOGRAPHY: RUTH ROSSINEY SHARE THIS Tweet The hangover is still imminent from the drunken teenage emo years. It seems it was hijacked, pushed into the forefront and then gradually became more abhorrent as time went on like some angsty Jekyll and Hyde lurking in the shadows, crying. Nonetheless, the real grass-roots emo has always been here and has never really departed. The likes of Daylight, Sunny Day Real Estate, Pavement etc. were prominent college garage rock during the 90s through to the 00s. But there seems to be—more now than ever—a sense of a revival, a stripping back of eyeliner, skinny jeans and ridiculous haircuts, and a wealth of really great songwriting is emerging from the ashes. Friday 7th August saw gloom punk outfit Tigers Jaw, supported by Foxing and Great Cynics, grace the sweatshop basement of The Fighting Cocks in a sell-out show. It has been a turbulent couple of years for Tigers Jaw, whose inception was in 2005, they have seen a major line-up change with three members departing the band, leaving just two remaining; lead guitarist/ frontman Ben Walsh and organist/ frontwoman Brianna Collins. Murphy played a trumpet throughout the set like the bugle of a messenger and used a sampler with presets of sounds that were reminiscent of Burial and Flying Lotus, clicks and liquid sounds added to the atmosphere created by the rest of the band that you could cut with a knife. Murphy’s vocal range is vast—from very delicate to extremely brash, and the intricacy of the guitar work is very well rehearsed and put together. The songs themselves are big bold compositions and are beautifully arranged. Medic was a stand out track of the performance and is also the single released from their 2014 album The Albatross. Murphy told me at the start of the show that the landscape album artwork was an iPhone photograph taken by photographer Kevin Ross, which blew my mind as much as the music.
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Tigers Jaw have a humility about them that is warming—it’s as if you are watching your favourite hometown band in any city you happen to go to. They make a dynamic duo, Ben and Brianna. They look like binary opposites but have come together to create an album that is listenable from start to finish, which is a rarity these days and especially as this is their first album the two of them have co-created. They played a varied set with material from their newest release Charmer (2015) and delved into their discography to pull out a few gems. The set kicked off with 'Cool' from Charmer and Ben’s nonchalant style is prominent throughout his songwriting and his performance. Lyrically this song is poetical, but is summed up in one line: “It’s a cruel world, but it's cool”. His singing style is effortless and dragged out but it always makes me feel like I should be driving down a highway with the roof rolled down. They pulled some real home-based fans with people diving, chanting and thoroughly enjoying themselves. 'Between your Band and the Other Band' from the self-titled album (2008) was a highlight and really showcased the gelling of Ben and Brianna, her vocal harmonies accompanying his vocals with the added dimension of the organ adding to the fray.
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Efialtis & The Greek Eurozone crisis BY ASHLEY MOORE SHARE THIS Tweet On a North London industrial estate, New River Studios, a warehouse turned café, bar and venue, we’re gearing up for a benefit DIY show in aid of supporting vulnerable migrants through the Praxis Community Projects. On the bill were Snob, Balistraria, Molloch, Cloud Rat and Efialtis. It is Efialtis in particular that Disorder Magazine chose to report, as today is especially significant for the band. Greece, after years of steep austerity and increasing sanctions initiated through a heavily influenced German European Union, decides whether they can hack the debilitating and humiliating sanctions, legal reform measures and a budget so tight you couldn’t drive a ten penny nail in with a sledge hammer. This is the preliminary issue, the underlying question is whether the country votes no. This could mean that it will be hard for negotiation on the Union’s side, there could be possible destabilisation of the global economy and could ultimately end in Greece leaving the Euro Zone, subsequently dropping the Euro and replacing it with its original currency, the Drachma.
One of my favourite songs from the album is ‘Frame You’. This kicked the crowd into frenzy. Again that organ gave it a down-tuned, lo-fi sound but the guitar work kicks in halfway through as does the chorus. It's hard hitting lyrics like ‘And I started this fire and I watched it burn to the ground’ that makes a crowd go wild. And to all us tormented souls, is very relatable. Another stand out song of the performance was 'Chemicals' from the self-titled album. This bought the pace down to a drone, it was a fan favourite and had everyone in the room singing the lyrics, “You are everything and I am nothing.” Brianna also did a solo piece halfway through the set that took the edge off; it was a good showcase of her organ musicianship that sometimes got lost in the sound as a whole.
What I love about this kind of music, and Tigers Jaw in particular, is that they are so talented yet almost don’t realise how talented they actually are. They played an 18 song set with an encore at the end. Most bands you will pay the Earth for and get 8 songs with no interaction with the converted by Web2PDFConvert.com crowd, it was an intimate personal gig with a sell-out crowd. They’re just good, honest-to-god songwriters, so let's have another album Ben and Brianna!
Efialtis are a South London based, all female, all feminist danger punk outfit lead by the bollocks of Greek National, Alex Smyrliadis. It’s essential to
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note that all the lyrics are written and screeched in her native tongue. It’s also key to note that the translation of Efialtis means nightmare. This could be interpreted as cliché, but in this instant, it is a true representation of the bleak situation in her homeland. Of all the images coming out of the country at the moment, one placard that struck the futility of the situation read: “If the parents don’t have jobs and cant look after themselves then what hope is there for the children?” And worse than that, the infirm, the elderly, and generally those who are vulnerable are feeling the pressure now more than ever.
The blue and red atmospheric lighting set the mood for a heavy and poignant show. The three piece, whose members also include Bryony Beynon on skins and cymbals, and Eva Georgiou on the thick strings, stood in the middle of a large practice room. Alex draped to the right. From her guitar hung an oneiropagida (dreamcatcher). It is from this imagery that Alex’s influence from the occult comes through. She was laden with motifs in the Greek alphabet drawn in permanent marker and lipstick over her body announcing: chaos, asphyxiation, paranoia, pain and blackmail. This is provocative language and some might say hyperbolic, but the situation is real and these are the projections that Alex has gleamed from her closebut-far stance. It is a real time struggle, a notion that the mainstream media mixes up either directly or indirectly.
The set was short and punchy, trademark of most DIY punk shows; the riffs were heavy and driving. There was a rare groove among the coagulated mess between the bass and the booming drums. Alex’s Greek lyrics were formidably served and were screeched to the beat. Halfway through the set Alex slowed it down and gave a moving and sincere speech about what was happening on the day and how it affected herself and her family. And their closing song, self-titled with the same name as the group, got my blood pumping and I felt the message coming through… nightmare. Alex has been skeptical about the Eurozone since its inception, something she believes was the “beginning of the end,” for Greece. The rise in debt was so severe that by the time Syriza was elected it had risen from 800 million to 8 billion, “the public had reached peak levels of fear and uncertainly.” She claims that it is a choice between a yes/NAI “profit now, suffer later” and a no/OXI “suffer now, profit later.” Bearing in mind that the Eurozone was built around countries with strong financial infrastructures, in Alex’s words, the “peripheral countries just couldn’t compete” with the “never-ending cycle of lending” and the dizzying interest rates, it is, with morbid intent “the single currency” that was the “bullet in the gun that shot Greece in the head.” In hindsight we know now that Greece voted OXI to more austerity by an outright majority. Alex expressed her thoughts on the outcome of the referendum and concluded that Tsipras “acted with a sense of urgency when no prior government had.” She is hugely—and rightly so—offended about “lazy Greek” stories that come out of the international media and expressed that the OXI vote meant that the public hadn’t rolled over and are “smarter than the international media thinks they are.” She gave an example of the Evening Standard who published a story about the OXI vote happened due to the anarchists voting, “which is ridiculous as it suggests that 60% of the public are anarchists.” She added, “This is just one example of how international media disrespects the freedom and opinions of the Greek People.”
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Interview With Greg Holden BY ASH MOORE SHARE THIS Tweet
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Disorder went along to meet Greg Holden, a fiercely independent singer-songwriter who was born in Aberdeen, raised in Lancashire and who now resides in New York, at the Warner Music office in Kensington. His largest success to date came in the form of the hit debut single ‘Home’ for American Idol winner Phillip Phillips, which Holden co-wrote with Drew Pearson. This song writing earned Holden an ASCAP Pop Award and it subsequently went on to sell five million tracks in the U.S, but was this the right type of success for his ambitions as an independent artist? “At the time it was the right success because it allowed me to watch what happens when a song blows up,” he explained, “It also allowed me some of the financial freedom to make Chase the Sun on my own and then find a good home for it. A lot of people ask me do you wish it had been you? Do you wish you’d kept the song? No, the answer’s no, it was definitely the right thing at the right time.”
But the main outlet is the music, and a culmination of DIY punk, feminism, gothic and the occult added to the foundation of Efialtis. She explained why she chose to write in Greek, suggesting that it gave an air of “primal mystery to the songs.” As the crisis heightened, Alex realised that as she wrote more and more songs they were “essentially conversations between [herself] and an opposing entity that had somehow wronged [her].” The furious riffs instigated release of frustration with “political developments” and the anger had “embedded itself into [her] consciousness.” by Web2PDFConvert.com The ugly head of right wing extremism revealed itself in a nosferatu-esque manner when the ulterior problems of Greece, converted whose economic turmoil and exasperation of political choices became prevalent. This is a historical trait that we have witnessed the world over and is demonstrable in the “rise of the Golden Dawn” Alex explains, who are a right-wing party in Greece that some have likened to the Nazi’s. However, she explained Syriza’s strong voice exposed the debt for what it really was to the public and was a good lesson in proving to the “powerful conservative nations that they should be less secure in position over poorer nations.”
Alex has done her research of course, anyone would. She quotes acclaimed French economist Thomas Piketty on the crises, ‘Germany has no standing to lecture other nations when it comes to repaying creditors’ and criticised Germany over its ‘shocking ignorance of history’ referring to reparations from the First and Second World War, which Greece at the time pardoned. She continued to explain that the affected nations “recognised” that after “large crises,” which created huge debt loads, “people need to look toward the future” and should not “pay for the mistakes of their parents.” This is reinforced through Piketty, “The younger generation of Greeks carries no more responsibility for the mistakes of its elders than the younger generation of Germans did in the 1950s and 1960s.”
Chase the Sun is Holden’s third album, first on a major label. It was recorded in Los Angeles with producer Greg Wells. It was paid for in full with Holden’s own money and once completed he took it around labels in America “to see who had the right plan for it,” he said. As he understood it, a lot of labels are singles driven and about how many of those singles they can sell. But it was Warner Brothers that Gregg eventually landed a deal with, both on their terms and his own, “[Warner] are a career driven label, so as soon as I sat down with the president of that company, all the things he said were exactly the way I felt. It was an easy choice to go to Warner.”
The catalyst for this album came from a trip that Holden took to India and Nepal after the release of his 2011 album I Don’t Believe You. He decided to travel through one of the poorest states in India, Bihar, which is in the North West of the country. It was the destitution and extreme poverty that gave him a “new realisation”, a message he couldn’t keep to himself, and he “had to share it.” There he saw horrendous conditions; children with disabilities living on the street. So he took it upon himself to write songs about the injustices that were part of his life and how he might be able to change people’s opinions, “It put everything into perspective for me… thank God. It would be weird if you saw those things and it didn’t affect you. I wanted to translate what I’d learned into songs that make people feel good.”
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Even though Greg seems to have played his cards right so far and is a credit to concerned, as making your own isinaatough gig at thehousehold, best of times. “Everybody ‘Boys in the Street’ is the latest video and single released from that record. It deals with growing up asitaon homosexual heterosexual out of money and you don't know if you can keep doing it. Itbeing taught me that you and the prejudice and acceptance that comes with that type of conflict. “I didn't have a great relationship with my stepfather. I was constantly There even a time when Holden to borrow money from his d told that I wasn't going to amount to anything, go anywhere. When I tried to be aexplained. musician that waswas shutdown,” he explained, whenhad prompted about the idea of being outcasted. “I have a lot of friends who are gay and have knownHolland. the problems that happen when you're young and gay in a part of
the country that doesn't accept it, and I wanted to write about it because I think it's important. The song isn't necessarily just about that; it was a song that was supposed to be about acceptance.” It is, however, the next couple of years that is going to make or break Greg Holden its honeymoon period. “I am very far away from being a household name,” he sa as I can to also listenthrough to my music – a perspectives, lot of artists don't evenand have their first albu third person and different “I watch There are strong narratives to Holden’s writing. He switches between first and people while.” If you your music a message read about people, it leaks into my songwriting, I don’t specifically write every fact about thatlike person.” Thiswith is also the caseand withyou hiswant 2011someone hit ‘The you think is gen Lost Boy’ which was inspired by a Dave Eggers novel about a Sudanese refugee, “I was so affected by that book that I sat down and that song came out,” he explained. It is apparent that empathy and understanding are implicit throughout his songwriting, a fact which both his new single ‘Boys in the Street’ and ‘The Lost Boy’ – which raised over $50,000 for the Red Cross – attest to. “I think we're living in a very self-obsessed world Share about 123 it. I think it’s time to stop doing – we live in the selfie nation. It’s very easy to look at something that is not happening youTweet and just forget SHARE to THIS that. It's time we started realising that there are starving people – people who die every day. You can't just switch that off and pretend that it’s not happening because it fucking is.” COMMENTS
Greg is first and foremost a storyteller. He’s a huge Bob Dylan fan and cites Tom Waits and Tom Petty as influences, but states that Dave Eggers “is the ultimate storyteller.” When asked what his favourite Dylan song was he replied, “‘Who Killed Davey Moore’”, which is a social commentary and protest song about the death of the famous boxer Davey Moore. “It sort of sums up what he’s so good at. He writes those biting lyrics, sometimes not too to the point – just enough that you know it hurt whoever it was about.”
Even though Greg seems to have played his cards right so far and is a credit to himself, he has been through turbulent times where finance is concerned, as making it on your own is a tough gig at the best of times. “Everybody who is trying to live their dream has that moment when you run out of money and you don't know if you can keep doing it. It taught me that you can get to a really low low and it can still work itself out,” he explained. There was even a time when Holden had to borrow money from his drummer just so they could drive to get to a sold out show in Holland.
It is, however, the next couple of years that is going to make or break Greg Holden. His album Chase the Sun only came out in April so it is still in its honeymoon period. “I am very far away from being a household name,” he said, “I’ve just got to keep going, keep touring and get as many people as I can to listen to my music – a lot of artists don't even have their first album on a major – it takes a year and a half to break, so I have a while.” If you like your music with a message and you want someone you think is genuine then betting on Greg Holden would be a safe one.
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