issue three
EDitor’s letter Issue three, it’s fucking here. In your hand. On your screen. Rub it on your face a little bit. Enjoy this moment. Again, we added staff members and got rid of staff members, but that seems to be the way things go with Gigawatts. This is the third installment in the Gigawatts trilogy, so get ready for some fuzzy little bear aliens on speeder bikes (we don’t actually have that) because we’ve packed this issue full of cool shit. We have come to the end of the initial Gigawatts trilogy. After this, we don’t have a plan. Our original plan was to make these three issues and see what happens after that. Late last year when we conceived this project, I knew that this was going to be our third issue, I knew that I wanted OFF! on the cover, I knew that bands like Bleached and Lovely Bad Things would be inside the issue, and then we went out and made it happen. It was a long and arduous journey of dealing with lame ass publicists, flying to LA for shoots and interviews and generally just being a tiny bit insane. There have been so many fun times with this magazine, as well as stressful times, but I feel that we’re making something that people actually dig. And even though I didn’t know it was there, it seems like we’re filling some sort of hole in the music and art publishing world of our little Brooklyn bubble. We’ve had shows and we’ve had rooftop parties and we don’t want to stop doing any of that. I’m currently writing this in the middle of a hurricane, so rooftop parties seem completely unappealing right now but they will happen. In the summer. When it’s hot as balls. There will be beer. We’ll all get drunk together. We’ve added some new kids to the staff, and I think they totally slayed on this issue. We’ve got two new writers, a new illustrator and, for the first time ever, another photographer. Albert Roman, a good friend of mine in LA and a phenomenal photographer, swooped in and saved the day with our FIDLAR article. He shot the band at Origami Vinyl in Echo Park and totally captured their vibe. The locomotive has pushed the DeLorean to 88 and gotten us back from the west, but we’re gonna go back for more Back to the Future THE RIDE style. --Danny Krug
The Gigawatts Team Danny Krug
Editor in Chief/Photographer
Brandon Elijah Johnson Illustrator
Ariel Exposito Fashion Editor
Gabriela June Tully Claymore Writer
Nina Mashurova Writer
Ellie Fallon Writer
Sam Gallishaw Writer
Kevin Li Illustrator
Albert Roman Photographer
Chris Castellino Video
Sam Shea Live Sound
Bringing You Only The Best Art
4 Joe Frontel 6 Ada Blecher 8 Icy and sot 10 Kevin Li 12 Cassie Ramone
Music
Fashion
12 Lovely Bad Things 26 Punk confusion 13 audacity 14 Colleen Green 16 Trash Talk mixtape by 18 bleached burger records 20 fidlar 22 off!
I
nspired by bold 80s punk graphics, R. Crumb, and John Kricfalusi, Brooklyn-based artist Joe Frontel utilizes a wide range of media to create his intricate yet seemingly effortless works. Ink and gouache prevail as his choice of medium, but he has recently ventured into the realm of woodburning with a collaborative line of custom skateboards for a local skate shop. Often graphic, illustrative line drawings, his pieces instill a sort of grungy, old punk feel to them. Too complex to be a doodle, creepy imaginative compositions are characteristic of these pieces, paired with ever-so-slightly disfigured faces. Dismemberment, old people, and anguished expressions prove to be common themes in Frontel’s haunted works. With new boards on the way, look for Frontel’s woodburning genius at North Brooklyn Collective, 121 Knickerbocker Ave. Ellie Fallon joefrontel.com
JOE FRONTEL
5
ada blecher adablecher.com
A
da Blecher is based here in Brooklyn. We originally met her when we were setting up our issue one launch party. She then worked with us on our second issue on our Widowspeak article. While she seems to be primarily a painter and illustrator, Ada also works in mixed media, photography and sculpture. She’s exploring all different forms of art and usually the results are very intriguing. She continues to experiment and grow as an artist. It will be exciting to see where she goes next conceptually and what medium she uses to pull it off. Danny Krug
icy and sot
R
ecent Brooklyn transplants, Icy and Sot have been making quite the name for themselves as international street artists over the past four years or so. Natives of Tabriz, Iran, the brothers have been involved in the underground art scene in Iran since their interest in skateboarding and its culture was spiked in 2005. From there they worked their way up from stickers and small stencils to the intricate, layered stencils they do today. Despite now being in the States and having quite a different audience in terms of freedom of expression and acceptance of art and culture, Icy and Sot don’t plan on changing the themes and messages of their politically based art. Their themes of oppression, freedom, poverty, and Iranian culture, as well as their polarized portrayal of love and hate, war and peace, and hope and despair prove to be somewhat universal, just in different extremes. Icy comments, “The worst thing in Iran is that when you get caught they will stick so many labels to you
that are not even related to it, such as Satanism, and you can be accused of political activities.” It must be strange coming from a place that has such a strong will against art, to New York, one of the great art hubs of the world where the hardest thing to do is set yourself apart from the long line of street artists that have established a similar style. Icy remarks on individuality in a Brooklyn Street Art interview, “Everyone borrows from the past…the important thing is that you’re creating your own ideas.” They draw inspiration from other street artists like Dolk, Banksy, Blu, and M-City, but generally less detailed than M-City and more realistic than Blu. They strike a medium between the two with their mostly black and white stencils with high contrast, lots of silhouette-like graphics, and pops of colors. Sot admits that Banksy is a strong influence, “the fact that our work combines Eastern and
9
Western cultures makes it a bit different.” Banksy’s influence can also be seen in their reinterpretation of his infamous Balloon Girl, where the little girl stares dejectedly at her deflated balloon. Common depictions in their works include shadows, blindfolds, and other hints at an inability to see, as well as children as a representation of innocence. Their layered stencils result in “ghostly, fading, multi-layered images”. They have their art on the streets of their home country Iran, as well as Paris, Sao Paolo, Turin, and now New York, and have had gallery shows in just as many countries. Look for their local pieces in Manhattan, Bushwick, and the Bronx.
by Ellie Fallon - Photo by Danny Krug
T
he Lovely Bad Things have a unique approach to getting their unpredictable sound: the members are constantly playing one another’s instruments, “Well you see, we have major ADD, all of us do and after like, a bunch of bands and music stuff playing the same instrument all of the time we just got really bored.” Although The Lovely Bad Things believe unconventional musicianship to be a major asset to their lo-fi collective sound, the logistics of Written by gabriela june tully claymore - Photos by Danny Krug - Illustrations by Brandon Elijah Johnson constant on-stage shuffling can get complicated, “If something breaks on his thing, it’s like I’ve gone completely retarded.” Although their live transitions are not always smooth, The Lovely Bad Things have managed to develop a distinct sound undergoing constant metamorphosis. Attention Deficit aside, The Lovely Bad Things finished recording a full-length with Volcom and Burger Records due out in February of next year. Recording their 12” New Ghost/Old Waves and full-length album with Volcom marked a turning point for The Lovely Bad Things, “Up until then we did everything by ourselves.” When asked if they have ever toured the United States, a universal “No” rang from the group, “There are a lot of scenes we’ve never explored yet.” Although The Lovely Bad Things look forward to investigating new music hubs, the one they champion in Southern California is thriving, “Every band here makes really good music and we’re all super in love with it and Burger
Records has cultivated a fantastic scene around everything.” When asked whether or not their scene could be classified as “punk”, The Lovely Bad Things agreed that punk ideology is present, enthusiastically adding that, “It’s just like this thing that’s bubbling and going to probably explode.” True to their diagnosis, The Lovely Bad Things are far from boring. Combining surf guitar riffs with pop vocals and a fast punk aesthetic, the band boasts a sound that is distinctly Californian. Tracks like “Cult Life” on their album “Shark Week” make you nostalgic for a coast that you might or might not have visited. Thankfully, a bit of the west coast is soon to travel east, as The Lovely Bad Things will abandon west coast garages to tour the country next year.
I
t could be said that Audacity formed in the prepubescent early years of middle school. Matt and Kyle first met in the second grade, and describe themselves as being, “Just buddies, you know? We’re sort of like, a friend rock band.” Few bands have the pleasure of listening to their junior high mix-tapes, but Audacity is all-too familiar with their former sound, “We started in 6th grade and we sucked… I think we sing too much like we’re in a play or something.” Audacity has come a long way and changed names several times since the days of Jack White influenced vocals and, “Dude, I can play ‘Date Rape’ on guitar, you should come over.” Now, the band boasts an LP and full-length album recently co-released through Burger and Recess Records as well as a significant following in the Los Angeles and Orange County music scene.
Burger Records “sort-of” met Audacity while they were still in high school. The band had lost two of it’s founding members when their bassist, “Left for religious kind of reasons. He was in another band that was a Christian rock band and you know, we went separate ways there.” Additionally, Audacity struggled to hold onto their drummer who, “Had a girlfriend that he really liked and he liked her more than he liked playing drums in our band.” Despite early setbacks, Audacity now excitedly brags about their latest full-length album, claiming that all it took to, “pound it out” was beer and pure motivation, “We recorded like, fifteen songs in a day and it sounded like we were recording fifteen songs in a day.” Sure enough, Audacity’s recordings are far from overproduced helping them maintain a spontaneous, live sound.
Reluctant to label their niche, Audacity considers the blossoming Southern California scene as homage to the past with a definitive desire to create a new
punk sound, “It’s good. It’s together. Collectively it’s a movement of punk... It’s like punk with 2012 stamped all over it.” Audacity is overwhelmingly enthusiastic about the scene developed around Burger Records and their future musical endeavors, “Right now things are like, exploding and it’s really cool.”
Written by gabriela june tully claymore Photos by Danny Krug Illustrations by Brandon Elijah Johnson
13
colleen
green
Written by ELLIE FALLON - Photos by Danny Krug - Illustration BY COLLEEN GREEN
C
olleen Green has her priorities straightened out. “I mostly smoke weed and watch TV at my house…but I play music sometimes too,” she told us in an interview. The Massachusetts native turned LA dweller makes music that results in a meld of garage, punk, and a bit of girl groups of yesteryear. Green claims the Descendants as a major influence, apparent in the title and album artwork of her most recent LP, Milo Goes to Compton. A play on the Descendants’ first album Milo Goes to College, she refers to it as “one of those records,” declaring it quite the influential milestone of a record. Featured as a simple line graphic on both her debut LP and her EP Cujo, Green graces the front of, as well as creates the art for her own album covers. Shown in a striped tank top, big sunglasses, and a sick bob, Green is surrounded by palm trees and little threes of buildings. Apparently classically depicted as stoned and tired, both Milo Goes to Compton and Cujo share similar Descendants-inspired album artwork. “I was just ripping off the Descendants really hard on everything,” she says of it. Previously released on a limited amount of cassette tapes in 2010, Art Fag reissued Milo Goes to
Compton on vinyl this past February. Strongly reminiscent of Best Coast, Dum Dum Girls, and the rest of the wave of noise-pop garage girl bands, Green transcends them with a more simplified, real sound that fills the eight track LP with covers of punk favorites, as well as songs of weed, love, and longing. Strongly standing by the old “less is more” attitude, she typically records all of her albums by herself with the help of only a drum machine. Part musician, part artist, Green also creates a mini comic that is included in (almost) all of her recordings. Called “Real Shit Daily”, it’s a strip about Green and her friends with random, humorous happenings featuring Robin Williams, crackheads, ghosts, smoking rainbows, and Donald Trump at Burger King. Green is currently finishing up her second LP, due out next year on Hardly Art.
15
Written by danny krug - Photos by trash talk - Illustration by kevin li
O
riginally from Sacramento, Trash Talk moved into a warehouse in downtown LA and is on track to become the biggest hardcore band of all time. Last October the band released the “Awake EP” on True Panther Sounds, but earlier this year they signed a deal with Tyler, the Creator and his Odd Future Records making them the only non-hip hop act on the label. The band has recently toured with Odd Future and commonly use the phrase “Trash Wang” to describe the affair. The relationship with Odd Future isn’t totally out of character for Trash Talk though. In early 2011, the band released a split 7” with Wavves and played a release show at the Echoplex in LA with a lineup consisting of the two bands on the 7” and headlined by Andrew WK. Trash Talk has been making moves like this for their whole career which is why they are as big as they are now. For most hardcore bands the peak would be playing a small sweaty club or Warped Tour. Trash Talk is playing large festivals all over the world and continues to play larger and larger venues such as LA’s Club Nokia opening for Odd Future or Brooklyn’s 285 Kent, a show which almost started a riot in the middle of Kent Avenue. Trash Talk are kings of a scene that doesn’t have the fan base it once did, but that doesn’t affect them. They’re crossing over genres and gaining a large following as a result. Four years ago Trash Talk was a band that could be easily shrugged off if you weren’t a fan of hardcore. Now they’ve found a way to
make music fans pay attention even if they normally wouldn’t. Once you see kids climbing the walls in a venue and dropping into the crowd from the ceiling, it’s hard not to stop and look at what’s happening with this band. Singer, Lee Spielman, often eggs the crowd on, yelling at kids to fuck shit up or start a circle pit and he sometimes even jumps into the center of the pit while singing to keep the energy high and violent. The band’s sound is made up of loud, energetic, short bursts of aggression in musical form. Most Trash Talk tracks clock in between 30 seconds and 2 minutes making for rather short albums, but that doesn’t make them any less worthy of a place in your record collection. With the release of their latest album and Odd Future Records debut, 119, Trash Talk continues their legacy being loud, fast and in your face. The album includes an appearance by Tyler, the Creator on one track which actually works well with the album. Trash Talk is pretty much perpetually on tour, and always makes time to play small shows in basements and similar spots to keep that hardcore vibe real and alive. When Trash Talk becomes the biggest hardcore band on the planet, don’t be surprised. This has been a long time coming.
J
ennifer and Jessie Clavin aren’t your regular everyday girl band. Jennifer was arrested and thrown in the drunk tank in San Diego after a show and both of them got in a rum-fueled fight with fifteen bouncers at a Black Lips show in New York which resulted in Jessie putting a bouncer in a choke hold and Jennifer on the ground being kicked by the rest of the bouncers. “Fuck authority, fuck the pigs” says Jennifer of the club incident. The girls tell this story, not in a state of shock and awe, but rather laughing the whole way through. Bleached are about as punk as it gets nowadays. The music is friendlier and clearer sounding than punk music of the past, but you can hear the Misfits and Ramones influence in certain tracks such as Jennifer’s Danzig-esque voice in “Think of You.” The band runs the gamut of sounds across the six songs they’ve released. It ranges from garagey, Misfits style punk on the early songs to a strong Fleetwood Mac vibe on “Searching Through the Past” on their latest 7” but the B side of that release brings it right back to the garagey punk vibe. Loud, fast, distorted. Bleached maintain punk
roots while making music that is easily accesible to fans of other genres. Bleached rose from the ashes of LA punk band Mika Miko who broke up in 2010. Mika Miko was together from 2003-2010. They played all over LA, frequenting venues like The Smell. Following the split, Jennifer played briefly in Cold Cave. Even though Bleached is technically just Jennifer and Jessie, they bring on additional members for tour and play as a four piece on stage. After releasing three 7” singles over the course of the past year and a half, Bleached is entering the studio with producer Rob Barbato (Darker My Love, The Fall) to record their first full-length LP. Bleached is looking forward to working with Barbato because they are comfortable with him because they’ve worked with him on the last two 7” singles, “We know what he can do with our songs and we like it.” Aside from Bleached, Barbato has produced records for The Babies, Audacity, La Sera and others. For bands looking for a warm lo-fi garagey type sound, he is THE producer to work with, which will make him a perfect fit for the new Bleached record. The record should be out early 2013. The album won’t sound all the same from track to track. “The songs will have a different feel and sound from each other. I hate it when I’m listening to a record and it just seems like 12 tracks of one long song” says Jennifer. They plan on expanding and building on their current sound. It was limiting over the past year or so for the band to only have six songs released, they play new songs live but always get better reactions from the already released songs. They’re excited for the full-length so everyone can hear every song before coming to a show, “it makes the energy better, but that’s why we [currently] do a cover or two.” They play Ramones and Misfits covers during live sets which usually illicits insane reactions from the crowd. Bleached plans to tour next year around the release of the new record.
Written by danny krug Photos by Danny Krug Illustration by Brandon Elijah Johnson 19
Written by nina mashurova - Photos by albert roman - Illustrations by Brandon Elijah Johnson - shot at origami vinyl
T
he number one thing people know about FIDLAR is that they know how to party.
The Los Angeles-based four-piece made a name for themselves playing house shows where the young, drunk, and punk could come rage. DIYDUI and Don’t Try, their two EPs, each consist of four short fast loud songs with straightforward titles like “Wake Bake Skate,” “Max Can’t Surf,” and “Black Out Stout.” Their latest single, “Cheap Beer,” is damn near anthemic for the IDGAF set. The surfer licks are blissful and the chorus, “I! Drink! Cheap! Beer! So! What! Fuck! You!” is easy to yell and easier to believe in, especially when you’re thrashing around an all-ages pit, forty in hand. Their bio for their artist page on the Mom + Pop Records site consists of a
one-line breakdown of their name, which is also a local skater mantra: Fuck It Dog, Life’s A Risk. It’s a personal brand in an unusually literal sense of the word – everyone in the band except Elvis now rocks a FIDLAR stick-n-poke, and they’re more than happy to update their Tumblr with photos sent in by fans who have been inspired to do the same. “I was at a bar by our house and some kid was like ‘hey man, I like your band and I did this last night,’” laughs drummer Max Kuehn, clearly stoked. “He had a super fresh stick n poke. It was all fucked up.”
says Carper. “I was living there even though they didnt know I was living there. We’d just go to the recording studio and get drunk and jam and record. We’re all pretty nerdy – we like recording and we like gear. We like figuring that shit out.” Elvis’s brother Max Kuehn and bassist Brandon Schwartzel joined up shortly afterwards and the band was set. Along with making it a point to record their own music, they made it a point to book their own shows. When they couldn’t get venue gigs at first, the guys started making their own shows happen and playing all over LA - at house shows, FMLY bike rides, and other DIY spaces.
All that considered, people don’t always stop to Now, the hustle is paying off as FIDLAR is think that FIDLAR works as hard as they party. starting to gain international attention. They recently made their way around the sum“People think we’re retarded sometimes” says Zac mer festival circuit, hitting up in main events Carper, FIDLAR’s guitarist and lead singer, “because like Reading, Lowlands, and FYF, and are now of this image of us being fucked up all the time. supporting the Hives on a major US tour. But the bottom line is that we work really hard at what we do. Because this is what we want to do.” “We get more free beer,” jokes Max. “The crowd’s a little different. You’re more separated than at a smaller show It’s not an exaggeration. The working hard at play- because there’s a barrier. But our stage show doesn’t ing hard ethic has been in everything FIDLAR does change. We still try to get the kids to go off and rage.” from the start. The band formed in 2009 when Carper met guitarist Elvis Kuehn at a recording After finishing the Hives tour, FIDLAR is playing a restudio. “I was living there and he was an intern,” cord release show on October 26 at the Echo in LA, doing a fall tour with Delta Spirit and Jeff the Brotherhood in November, and then heading back to Europe in December. Their full-length comes out everywhere in January. Despite moving up in the world and signing to a label, FIDLAR insist on maintaining full creative control and continue to champion all-ages raging, house shows, and the DIY ethic. “Labels help out a lot,” says Max, “but if you’re a band starting out, your initial plan doesn’t even need to be to find a label, it’s just to record and get your music out there. It’s so rad that you can just make a song in your room and put it out on the internet and a bunch of people can see it.” “It’s a lot of fucking work, man,” says Carper. He pauses and adds, “It’s super easy and anybody can do it. And that’s the whole message – that anybody can do this. Drop out of school and start a band.”
21
I
magine if your parents decided to start a punk band, play SXSW, put out a box set of EPs, sign to a super hip label and tour the world with bands like Trash Talk and Refused inciting mosh pits everywhere along the way. If you can imagine all of that you’ve got a pretty good concept of OFF! They’re old enough to not be doing this anymore, but they don’t really give a fuck so they keep playing, keep having fun and continue to release loud and poignant punk records.
veritable maelstrom of information. I could tell you that they formed in 2009, an event characterized by bassist Steven McDonald, as “a gigantic cloud of dust and gasses” brought into solid form by “this gravity force, also known as Keith Morris”. I could tell you that aside from Morris and Coats, the band includes drummer Mario Rubalcaba and bassist Steven McDonald, further I could tell you that the good men mentioned just sentences prior have participated in such projects as Black Flag, Hot Snakes, Burning Brides, Circle Jerks, Rocket from the Crypt and Red Kross. “Everyone needs to speak up and say who they are and Fuck that, I could even tell you which one was in which. astrological signs, and favorite color underwear, and if you were trapped in an elevator...what domestic farm animal I have two problems with this approach: firstly, the inwould you wanna be trapped in the elevator with for ternet is an ocean of cold hard facts in which you can like 24 hours? My answer to that would be Arnold Ziffel, drown whenever you want to. If you wish to sort out the pig from Green Acres.” That’s how OFF!’s Keith Mor- past projects and middle names, look up astrological ris asks the rest of the band to introduce themselves. signs and find out what they’ve named their kids, go right ahead, but I refuse to participate, and secondly, the only There is a litany of things I could tell you about OFF!, a thing you need to know about OFF! is that their music
23
is the only logical reaction to the modern world, a fact easily verifiable upon intake of their recorded output to date. If it turns out that you listen to OFF! and you don’t enjoy the experience, you probably keep up with the Kardashians, and for that, I pity you.
“This band, we’re, like, 2 years old. We’re getting ready to, like, prop ourselves up and walk along the edges. We’re…we’re no longer crawling, we’re no longer having to be lifted up and carried to where we need to go.”
And hate you. It’s mostly hate.
“There’s 800 million bands, and there’s 80 people that’s listening to all of the music.”
Contrarily, if you are fed up, then you most likely are into OFF!, which is why you are currently reading this article. So for you, I present a small collection of quotes from OFF!’s Keith Morris. After nearly 40 years playing punk rock, Morris is both a legend and a sort of punk rock prophet. These quotes come from Morris’ unique view on the punk world and the Los Angeles music scene:
“Raymond [Pettibon] got really drunk, picked up some chick and was dryhumping her in the middle of the floor, to a crowd of about 40 people...you should have been there.”
“Its all about hatred, its all about the bad vibe, its all about night time and shadows.”
“The thing with the Troubadour was always like folkier, or like Lynda Rondstadt, or Elton John…”
“So there you go with those plans, the best, most well layed out plans, sometimes, aren’t what they’re supposed to be, or aren’t what they be. “
Written by sam gallishaw - Photos by danny krug - Illustration by brandon elijah johnson
gigawatts party pics We like to party. We take pictures when we party. These are some of those pictures. Maybe you’re in one of them.
Mixtape volume 3 by burger records download your copy at gigawattsmag.com for free
Thanks for the support, you dashing earthling.
Stuff we’re listening to and we think you’ll dig.
audacity - mellow cruisers
Life Size Maps - Excavate
Want your band or art featured in 1.21 gigs? wanna say what’s up to the people of the mag? shoot us an e-mail at gigawattsmag@gmail.com add us on facebook.com/gigawattsmag Follow us on instagram @gigawattsmag
Trash Talk - 119
Lovely bad things - new ghost/old waves