Despite Berlin’s mild winter this 2014, the Nordic sun was not enough for Electronic Beats Magazine to stay put. So we packed our bags and flew to Rio de Janeiro to see how the city was coping with protests surrounding the preparation for year’s World Cup. In South America’s largest economy, various cultural protagonists, from Paulo Cézar and Caetano Veloso to artist Renata Lucas and leftist watchdogs Mídia Ninja, were eager to voice their opinions about gentrification in the country’s various favelas and the bigger picture of Brazil’s supposed social and political “progress”.
In another hemisphere which might as well have been another planet, the Sun Ra Arkestra’s band leader Marshall Allen spoke to editor-in-chief Max Dax and saxophonist Andre Vida about futurism and how their Philadelphia commune—formerly run by Sun Ra himself—encouraged a stringent but far-out approach to sound....
