FREE 2015—Issue 1 #109
“Misery loves company.”
Glamcult Independent Style Paper
Issue 1 #109 Update
Visual Essays
Cult 4
Do you know... 26 Kiss the boot of... 32
Platform
Goof Kloosterman 8
Albums 38
Interviews
Plus
Update
Ashley Williams 10 Peter De Potter 16 Benjamin Clementine 20 Haerts 22 Joseph Marinetti 24
Stockists 39
Colophon Editor-in-Chief Joline Platje joline@glamcult.com
Art Director Marline Bakker marline@glamcultstudio.com
Creative Director Rogier Vlaming rogier@glamcultstudio.com
Graphic Design Glamcult Studio: Karen van de Kraats Rutger de Vries
Fashion Editor Leendert Sonnevelt leendert@glamcultstudio.com Copy Editor Megan Roberts Editorial Intern Iris Wenander iris@glamcult.com Sales Intern Daniël Heijl daniel@glamcult.com Sales sales@glamcult.com
Graphic Design Intern Yuki Kappes Contributors: Emily Vernon Fay Breeman Kelsey Lee Jones Maricke Nieuwdorp Matthijs van Burg Sander van Dalsum Sarah Johanna Eskens Sean Francis Burns Photographers: Lasse Dearman Lotte van Raalte LuLu McArdle Pablo Delfos William Baker
Cover Photography: William Baker Styling: Tom Eerebout Model: Alys Hale—IMG Models Hair: Maki Tanaka using Bumble and bumble. Make-up: Marina Keri using MAC Cosmetics Special thanks to Provision Studios Quotes Misery loves company. —John Ray Do you know where the wild roses grow? —Nick Cave Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather. —The Velvet Underground Publisher Rogier Vlaming / Glamcult Studio B.V. P.O. Box 14535, 1001 LA Amsterdam, The Netherlands T +31 (0)20 419 41 32
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www.marutifootwear.com
Cult
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Gallery view of the Anna Wintour Costume Center, Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch Gallery, © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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Untitled from the series Vedas, 2011
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Death Becomes Her Cope/Arnold
Red dress, 2014
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Anna Danilova S/S15 Collection, photography: KOWA Berlin
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Marina Hoermanseder Birdman 1
Nineteenth-century ladies of style mourned in style, as we see in Death Becomes Her: A Century of Mourning Attire, now showing at New York’s The Metropolitan Museum of Art. About 30 ensembles show how high-fashion standards influenced mourning fashions from 1815 to 1915. Dresses run the gamut from the tiny waisted to the more fluid and looser silhouettes of the later period. What widows wore was not only dictated by style, but also by societal mores. In the second half of the 19th century, for example, it was customary to wear black for up to two and a half years while grieving, and for each stage of mourning there was a new fashion code. Never understood gothic’s fashion sense? Well, these elegant veils, silks and sequins make a compelling argument that melancholy is chic and black never goes out of style. By Sarah Johanna Eskens Until 1 February 2015, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York www.metmuseum.org
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Just six years ago, 25-year-old Russian beauty Anna Danilova decided to pick up a brush and put it to canvas. Painting, she soon realized, was the best way of expressing the ideas running rampant in her head. As soon as she had the means to purchase her first camera, “these two passions began to develop in parallel, complementing each other,” she says. Besides a nod to the Italian painter Caravaggio—the master of light and dark—Danilova’s paintings/photographs also feature religious symbols such as snakes and flowers. The women she captures are often stripped of their clothing; in that way, Danilova says, “they become more organic, more truthful, and in art sincerity is an essential component.” In a country where art is used as propaganda more often than not, it’s hard for artists to remain honest. Danilova refuses to take part in this “obscurantism” and therefore mainly works abroad. “What could ever be more beautiful than the human body?” We have to agree, but we’re not sure Putin does… By Iris Wenander www.flowernudity.tumblr.com
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LA-based duo Nicholas Alan Cope and Dustin Edward Arnold—also known as Cope/Arnold—first joined forces back in 2009. Ever since, the two have conquered everything from physical and virtual sculpture to actual chemistry. Cope, a photographer who primarily focuses on architectural or graphic elements, and Arnold, a visual creative working in advertising (or, as he states on Instagram, an analyst/therapist), are without doubt sorcerers of the visual arts. By putting their gifted skulls together, Cope/Arnold are able to create eerie realms of supremacy. In their ongoing project Vedas—Sanskrit for “knowledge”—the spiritual world meets the strict and sterile world of science. Inspired by Nicolaus Copernicus’s text De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres), which questioned the prevailing view of man’s status on earth at the time, the duo set about constructing garments and sets of their own creation. In Vedas, black and white, good and evil and life and death are not just antitheses but symbols of the duality of knowledge. No matter your religion, we hope you dare to enter the temple of Cope/Arnold. By Iris Wenander
French-Austrian designer Marina Hoermanseder revealed her S/S15 collection at Berlin Fashion Week. To be frank, it was a horror story—though we do mean that in very good way. Welcome to the Asylum. It’s a collection that’s twisted both literally and figuratively, as Hoermanseder draws much of her inspiration from sources such as 17th-century orthopaedic equipment like neck braces, closures, body plates and supports, as well as medicinal and scientific illustrations. Hoermanseder manages to manipulate these bases into something verging on sexy; it screams bondage and S&M. In a bold juxtaposition with the fetish element and the idea of restraint, the designer unites soft, flowing, feminine contours, and red leather contrasts muted pastel and nudes tones. The subtle details are what make this collection so alluring, a unique use of leather straps, buckles, gatherings and rivets. Hoermanseder has ultimately created interplay between the avant-garde and readyto-wear with her own particular extravagant aesthetic, and as a former intern of Alexander McQueen, who could expect anything less? By Kelsey Lee Jones
www.cope-arnold.com
www.marina-hoermanseder.com
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Alejandro González Iñárritu (Biutiful, Babel) could very well end up on the Oscar stage with this pleasantly strange black comic drama: not often do we see such an intellectually challenging scenario with bizarre, supernatural elements come along. Also: Michael Keaton plays one of his best roles yet as middle-aged actor Riggan Thomson, who’s been struggling to shake off his image as the superhero Birdman (ironically, Keaton was once Batman blockbuster material himself). He tries to do so by debuting in a self-written Broadway play that should catapult him to the higher cultural echelons. Unfortunately, critics and some of his colleagues think otherwise. On the eve of the final rehearsals and the big premiere, stage fright begins to kick in. At the same time, familial issues backstage are blazing out of control. Will he manage to get his dreamed-of stage-acting career on track, or will he end up like a classic Hollywood has-been? By Maricke Nieuwdorp Release 22/1 (NL), 28/1 (BE), 29/1 [DE)
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Still from This Place is Every Place, 2014
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Everyday Propaganda
Wireframe, 2014
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Brian Vu
Still from The Normal Heart, 2014
S/S15 Collection
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Nicomede Talavera
IFFR short talents 6
Who hasn’t been California dreaming on winter days such as these? Let Orange County native and Brooklyn resident Brian Vu take you tripping through colourful and graphic, bleak yet sundrenched landscapes. Vu’s photographs often depict not-so-virgin Marys and crystal fairies seducing the lens with their sensual aura. In his series, New Guilt, Vu satisfies our OCD-like need for monochrome compositions and digital shrines. In True False, on the other hand, he hypnotizes us with psychedelic imagery featuring butterflies, bare breasts and all the colours of the rainbow. Whether it be still life, collage or portrait, Vu seems to consistently deal with the concepts of belief, power and love. His work may at times appear a little too conceptual or staged, but it always manages to please the eye and tickle our curiosity. By Iris Wenander www.brian-vu.com
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With the ultimate Nazi propaganda film Der Ewige Jude (1940), director Fritz Hipper served us unadulterated antiSemitism in the name of “documentary”. Based on “facts”, this film shows how “inferior” Jews actually are—in the eyes of Nazis, that is (can’t be clear enough). Unfortunately, the film proved to be a strong and successful piece of propaganda. But how does propaganda work, anyway? The International Film Festival Rotterdam presents Everyday Propaganda, a special programme that examines how misleading images are working on our brains every day— in cinemas, on TV and in the blogosphere. The festival throws in a selection of archival material and new films, exhibitions, interactive installations and workshops, to shine an extensive light on deception through customized information. What to expect? Documentary filmmaker Anna Broinowski, who learned from the best, presents a workshop on how to make propaganda films. For her own “propaganda” documentary Aim High in Creation, she used North Korean propaganda film rules to help avoid planned fracking in her village. Furthermore, the festival programme includes various propaganda movies made by contemporary filmmakers. Titles include Ash and
Money (Tiit Ojasoo), a theatrical experiment about money, politics and elections; The Normal Heart (Ryan Murphy), about the anxiety surrounding the emergence of AIDS in New York in the early ’80s; No Country for Young Men (Oleg Marvromati), focusing on being gay in Russia today; This Is My Country (Tamara Erde), on the burning conflict between Israel and Palestine and shorts by Pacho Velez showing the carefully constructed image of former US President Ronald Reagan. Also catch The Dialogues, screened daily in the Rotterdamse Schouwburg, in which classical propaganda addresses contemporary issues. By Maricke Nieuwdorp Until February 1 IFFR, several locations, Rotterdam www.iffr.com
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While Rotterdam will be dominated by independent world cinema during IFFR, there are a few names to keep in mind if you’re into shorts (or if all the featurelengths you wanted to see are sold out within minutes). Ane Hjort Guttu, a Norwegian artist, author and filmmaker, deals with issues such as the Scandinavian post-welfare state, power and freedom. In her short This Place is Everyplace she filmed two sisters in the Stockholm district Tensta in a poetic portrayal of an existence in a place where the whole world comes together in courtship. Scott Cummings is an American who was selected as one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film last year. In his extremely static Buffalo Juggalos he shines a light on a remarkable subculture in Buffalo, New York. Anouk De Clercq, a Brussels-based art researcher and filmmaker who combines audiovisual media with computer language, presents the black-and-white film Black (35mm), which graphically explores new worlds in the virtual reality. By Maricke Nieuwdorp Until February 1 IFFR, several locations, Rotterdam www.iffr.com
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Somewhere between minimalism and surrealism you’ll find the work of Louise Bourgeois, the dame responsible/ famous for scaring the world with giant spiders. It was the oeuvre of this FrenchCanadian artist, also known as Spiderwoman, that inspired the S/S15 collection of Nicomede Talavera. Moving up from Fashion East and showing at Man for the first time during London Collections, Talavera enveloped his boys in heavily layered looks. His 17 tunicbased silhouettes come in contrasting colours and materials: black leather goes hand in hand with plissé skirts; oversized silky trousers with stiff shirts in pink, red, purple and white. Despite the heavy layering and patterning, Talavera’s young spirit and cheeky references to domestic detail keep his first Man collection playful. As proven by the Vans on their feet, Talavera’s boys are anything but static. Like rebellious romantic statues coming to life, they’re extravagant in a minimal kind of way—their feet on the ground, their collars crisp, their dress outspoken. By Leendert Sonnevelt www.nicomedetalavera.com
Gc Update
Cult
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Dark Space #8, 2014
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Ghostly International
Marilia Stagkouraki
14 Communion, 2014
13 April Dauscha
S/S15 Collection
Inherent Vice Yang Li 10
For 15 steady years, Ghostly International has been the home of artists who defy the laws of music. Founded by Sam Valenti IV, the label vowed to release forward-thinking electronica, introducing eccentric individuals such as Matthew Dear, Com Truise, HTRK and Shigeto. From mesmerizing ambient to Detroit techno and back to abstract pop jams and modern classical, the carefully curated selection never seizes to amaze. The Ghostly Store, however, is not just a hub for fresh music, but also the label’s core when it comes to art and design. The modern pieces you’ll find there go hand in hand with the beautiful cover art of Ghostly’s back catalogue. Last year, the label ventured into digital space, serving up the soundtrack for a video game named Hohokum. The bright colours and minimal landscapes on this PlayStation exclusive are a sight to behold, as the music of Ghostly kicks in whenever a button is pushed. The label’s had a good run so far, but being the futurists they are, it’s safe to say this was only the beginning. By Sander van Dalsum
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“I use the body to investigate ideas of morality, mourning and mortification,” says designer April Dauscha. Well, you had us at “hello”, then. According to the artist herself, she’s obsessed with transformation, reconciliation and communication through dress, and has a weak spot for costume history, traditional Catholic rituals and themes in 19th-century literature. Dauscha’s work focuses on feminine objects and materials: “They speak not only of womanhood, but also of the duality of human nature.” Lace, for instance, “speaks of purity and sexuality, it reveals and conceals, it is humble, yet gluttonous in its ornamental overindulgence; lace is the ultimate dichotomy.” Veils, undergarments and hair adornments also earn the attention of this conceptual craftswoman, each for its own meaningful signifiers. Dauscha flourishes as long as her hands can create beauty from burdens: “The repetitive and penitential process of stitching creates a metaphor for my longing towards perfection and purification.” Sanctifying. By Joline Platje
While browsing the many gifted Bloomberg New Contemporaries of 2014, Glamcult ran into the grim cosmos of Marilia Stagkouraki. Black ink and white paper form a large fraction of this young artist’s output, but in reality her work is much more than that. Stagkouraki’s most recent project, Dark Space #8, for instance, makes use of various media to question the relationship between man and power, dehumanization and nihilism. The artist herself, who studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts in Greece and recently completed a master’s degree at the Chelsea College of Art, describes her shadowy practice as “a game of chaos and order, opposites and questions”. She is deeply fascinated by human behaviour, including her very own. In 2013, Stagkouraki officially “invoked her demon hipster”—you fill in the blanks. And even though her view of human nature isn’t a remotely bright one, its violent questioning does make us curious for more. Long live the dark side. By Leendert Sonnevelt
www.aprildauscha.com
www.mariliastag.wordpress.com
www.ghostly.com
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Those sexy legs! The pretty neon lights and the great typography: the poster for this novel adaptation surely triggers the curiosity. But even more fun is the fact that the creator of this crime comedy is Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master! There Will Be Blood! Magnolia!). Again, the director casts Joaquin Phoenix as his protagonist, and that sounds great. In this psychedelic “surf noir”, Phoenix plays a detective on the hunt for a missing ex-girlfriend in the aftermath of the ever-so-psychedelic Sixties. Inherent Vice marks the first film adaptation of a novel by American writer Thomas Pynchon, a media-shy author who published this story in 2009. It appears to be the most accessible work by Pynchon so far. Expect stoned rockers, swindlers and extortionists from a time when leather waistcoats, bell-bottoms and huge sideburns were en vogue. By Maricke Nieuwdorp Release 29/1 (NL), 30/1 (UK), 12/2 (DE), 25/2 (BE)
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A dreamy ditty from Bruce Springsteen provided the soundtrack for designer Yang Li’s S/S15 show—though this collection is a far cry from leather and lumberjack, or anything remotely 1970s. The lyrics to Springsteen’s song do, however, lend a message, and a hint at the Yang Li philosophy: “Dream, baby, dream.” It’s for us romantics—a poetic mix of edgy silhouettes, plum pony-skin, glossy pants, raw hems and faux-fur T-shirts adorned with printed letters that spell out d-r-e-a-m-e-r. So you too can join club reverie. Beijing-born Li is most definitely doing something of his own here; he founded the label just two years ago and has made his impression in just a short space of time— already a favourite of some of the world’s most progressive fashion retailers including LN-CC, Hostem, 10 Corso Como and L’eclaireur. In the past Li shadowed Raf Simons as an intern after dropping out of design school Central Saint Martins, though he’s now set to follow a dream of his own. By Kelsey Lee Jones www.yangli.eu
Cult
Photography: Rebecca Thomas
Photography: Duilio Marconi / Now Fashion
By Kelsey Lee Jones
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Alan Crocetti
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Let us celebrate jewellery, in men’s sizes —jewellery for the modern man. Let us commend rising designer Allan Crocetti, who with his fashion-inspired bling is out to redefine notions of masculinity and push the art of jewellery-making into new territory. Pearls for the boys? Why not? Alan Crocetti fell into his profession by chance. He didn’t really set out with a career in jewellery-making in mind; his initial intentions lay in an exploration within womenswear, so he enrolled on a course at London design school Central Saint Martins. “I didn’t plan it. I had to design my final collection at CSM and wound up designing clothes and accessories. I had a few personal problems along the way and didn’t manage to finish my garments…. but I did finish the jewellery,” he says, shrugging. As sometimes happens, life is mysteriously mapping our way for us: things don’t work out the way we anticipated, but somehow turn out for the better any way. Such was the case for Crocetti: “I’m actually happy things didn’t work out for me at the time. I fell in love with the whole jewellery-making process.” Crocetti has surely found his calling. With his label going into its second year, he’s just showcased his work once
more at London Collections: Men with Lulu Kennedy’s Fashion East—alongside a line-up of rising stars including the likes of Grace Wales Bonner, Roxanne Farahmand, Edward Crutchley, Shaun Samson and Marques’Almeida. It’s exciting to see a jewellery brand in the mix. Mens’ jewellery, it would seem, is having a moment. Those with even a nominal interest in fashion may be familiar with Crocetti’s work already, thanks to a designer collaboration with Bobby Abley that garnered plenty of media attention. Maybe you remember those metal S&M braces that stretched the models’ mouths open wide, complimenting Abley’s Disney-gone-dark theme for A/W14? Crocetti talked Glamcult through his inspiration for that collaboration: “The mouthpiece came after I saw what he was inspired by and the mood he was setting for A/W14. He wanted a showpiece and I wanted something that could portray his vision, something in your face that would literally make jaws drop.” It was inspired by Edvard Munch’s The Scream, Crocetti says: “I didn’t want monsters, just frightening and screaming expressions.” When asked to define his own work, Crocetti calls it “bold and elegant”.
He continues: “I like impactful simplicity and a strong sense of character.” There’s an admirable softness of approach that contrasts with the harder edge. Silver and gold are his favoured materials. “I’m always a bit all over the place with the design process, from drawing on my own hands to sketching to wax carving. I try to explore the most during the initial process, which is the crucial one.” Crocetti’s latest collection for S/S15, FIXATION, explores the concepts of fixation and obsession, breakage and attachment, all envisaged through silver bandage-like pieces for the bridge of the nose and knuckle pieces that emulate boxer’s tape. “I was really inspired by reckless and passionate living, skateboard culture, emergency rooms and David Fincher’s Fight Club,” he says. His S/S14 debut collection, meanwhile, was inspired by two important female figures in his life: Celeste Crocetti (his mum) and the late fashion visionary Diana Vreeland. The collection captures strength, delicate sophistication and sensibility. It also travels through gravitational fields and the alignment of celestial bodies. “My mum always loved pearls and I used to look at them with so much fascination. I never really understood why men don’t really wear
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pearls… something so pure, beautiful and strong shouldn’t be classified or categorized by gender. So my first ever collection was all about them.” Crocetti’s family is a constant source of love and inspiration for his practice, he reveals, telling Glamcult about the first time he ever felt a connection with a piece of jewellery: “My grandfather was a lawyer, and back then professionals used to wear designated stones according to their occupations, so he always had his ruby ring with him. That was my first ever memory of menswear jewellery. That ring now belongs to me; it’s a big inspiration.” Crocetti also reveals that the one person he’d most like to see wearing an Alan Crocetti piece would be his father: “My dad’s pieces will be ready in the New Year, but still, I can’t wait to see him wearing them.” Ultimately, perhaps the most significant thing about the Alan Crocetti label is its philosophy: Crocetti is out to actively defy pre-existing notions of masculinity, and is pushing the art of menswear jewellery into new and exciting territory. “It’s not just about defying a perception of masculinity but somehow redefining it,” he says. “Men aren’t as strong and as simple
as they’re sometimes portrayed, and there’s a lack of sensitivity about it. We’re beyond cufflinks and it’s about time people start paying more attention to it.” www.alancrocetti.com
Gc Update
around observation. I constantly ask myself, How come I can see this?” he observes. The explanation can often be found in physics, but he knows little about that. “To be honest, I quite like this ignorance because it allows me to approach things in a more naïve way. You’re likely to overlook interesting things when you know them like the palm of your hands.” Kloosterman’s experiments are equally as interesting as they are good-looking. His signature: abstract, almost industrial, black-and-white works. Kloosterman nods: “When you work with colour it defines the product. Black and white are very formal, they let you focus on the actual thing being shown. They give you the feeling that you’re looking at a registration. Also, black and white are extremes: they’re opposites. Just like light and shadow. Zeros and ones. Yes or no. I really like the simplicity of these two things, which are undeniably related.” Kloosterman likes to call himself a media artist because he researches the ways messages are transmitted.
“I’m fascinated by the way things come across and by the transformations they undergo,” he says. “But I don’t like language so much. The difficult thing is that it was invented to express clear goals, but it can be interpreted in so many different ways. You can never say you know something for a fact, just after reading something,” he states. He prefers it when people try to experience things themselves. This is also something he likes to stimulate with his work. “I don’t really have something to say to the public. I’m not really engaged in the politics of my art. The good thing about working within the arts is the fact that I can do research in a current field of interest without having to justify myself. I just try and excite that same curiosity in people.” www.goofkloosterman.nl
“People expect to get the exact same outcome when they copy something. I noticed that every time I used the photocopier, it left a spot on the paper. I was a little annoyed by it, so I wanted to know what that was all about. I took a blank sheet of A4 to study the spot and just kept on copying it. This device often needs to focus on small things, such as letters; it therefore increases contrast that allowed the spot to grow. This spot arose from nothing and I wanted it to occupy the whole blank page, but after a while the machine was running out of ink. I then went on until it was completely finished. I love this coming and going of something but the most beautiful part of this work is the weird choices the device has made in this project: sometimes it inserted lines, but refused to see them the next time, only to make sure to put them in the following. I love these sort of human traits in machines.”
“This work is the result of an experiment that I started to study photography as a medium. The art form doesn’t do anything for me, but the technique is very interesting. So, I built a large shed to create a camera obscura. I projected the lamp in front of the lens directly on to photosensitive paper. It was a bit of a hassle to find the right exposure time; it proved to be only five seconds. I even had to use filters in front of the lens because the lamp shined so bright. I really love the fact that I used the photos in a headlight; I started and ended the project with a light source.”
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Lightsource 001 , 2014
“I started this work to find out whether I could display a single spatial object in various forms. I wanted to alter it without actually changing it. I created a setup in a bay with the possibility to illuminate it from two ways. Every three minutes the right and the left lamp alternated, illuminating the object from a different point and changing the perspective. A lot of people think that it portrays a futuristic city, but it’s not really about that—even though I liked the idea that it is a landscape instead of one singular object. I placed three cameras on the inside and projected their output in a different room, one you enter before you actually see the installation. It shows that transformations, whether they’re consciously implemented or not, are inevitable when you try to duplicate reality.”
Quantizer 001, 2014
Goof Kloosterman welcomes us in his cute and chilly atelier on the outskirts of Utrecht. Two unfinished wooden constructions fill the place, a camera records a wall and projects it on to a TV screen, graphic sketches are laid out on his desk. Kloosterman graduated from the fine arts department at the HKU University of the Arts Utrecht in the summer of 2014 and has firmly stepped into the real world with his work, not only being selected for the TENT Academy Award, the Ron Mandos Young Blood Award and the Wim Bors Young Masters Award, but also winning the latter two. The artist is driven by a curiosity for the way things work. “Almost everything I do originates from an urge to understand techniques, a need to employ them myself,” he tells Glamcult. “I’ve always been curious about the working of things. When I was little, I loved pretending to be an inventor, mixing soaps, building haunted houses and discovering new games.” Unlike most people, Kloosterman’s eagerness to learn never faded. “It all revolves
Trial/Error 001 , 2014
By Joline Platje Portrait: Iris Wenander
Goof Kloosterman To start the year fresh, Glamcult took a sneak peek into the brain of rising talent Goof Kloosterman—an artistic researcher who’s not particularly fond of language, but loves to explore the ways messages are transmitted. We met the promising creative in his studio to discuss techniques and his perpetual curiosity in them.
Gc Platform
Interviews
10 Ashley Williams: “I like my life. I also like watching films at home.”
20 Benjamin Clementine: “I want people to put their fear in my shoes.”
24 Joseph Marinetti: “Gourmet kitchens and high-end restaurants don’t know how to make burgers.”
16 Moral artist Peter De Potter believes blog culture is doing important work.
22 Haerts go beyond the doctor’s definition and the cliché Valentine illustrations of the homophone.
By Leendert Sonnevelt Photography: William Baker
Styling: Tom Eerebout Model: Alys Hale—IMG Models Hair: Maki Tanaka using Bumble and bumble. Make-up: Marina Keri using MAC Cosmetics Special thanks to Provision Studios
Ashley Williams
Sending a gang of grungy schoolgirls on to the runway of her first solo show, Ashley Williams’s S/S15 collection underlined London’s status as fashion’s rebel stronghold. Capturing the hearts of Pixie Geldof, Rihanna and Glamcult alike, the designer infuses everything she touches with her typical “optimistic irony”. But don’t be fooled by neon, nostalgia, prints and glitter: it’s Williams’s irreverence that triumphs from underneath. 11
Gc Interview
Ashley Williams In a world where Google reigns supreme and Ashley Williams is first and foremost a celebrity name, it’s not always easy to find the British designer with the same autograph. But thank goodness, because the truly intriguing Williams has created a little online kingdom for herself. In Happy Ashleyland the fashion designer showcases all that floats her neo-romantic boat—from wistful graphics and colourful ’90s street wear to Asian skate references and dark goth imagery. Having grown up in the United Arab Emirates, Williams graduated from the University of Westminster in 2012, drawing a plethora of media attention when her good friends Pixie Geldof and Alice Dellal (the former face of Chanel) modelled her graduation designs. “Funkyoffish”—that’s how this emerging British designer distinguishes her signature. Glamcult would like to insert “light-hearted” and “much too cool for school”. Speaking to Williams and taking a closer look at her S/S15 collection, we discovered that there’s much more than meets the eye: “I think there is an obvious irony in the mood of my clothing. It’s not necessarily critical; it contains more of an optimistic irony.” As a teenager, Williams wasn’t into fashion at all. “I liked clothes and making clothes to go out in,” she tells Glamcult, “but I never read a fashion magazine until I was about 19!” Having interned with London’s master of blending street and high fashion, Nasir Mazhar, during her studies, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Williams is a forthright nonconformist. Moving up from Fashion East, her recent solo debut at London Fashion Week included heavy make-up and glittery bras worn over black scrunched tops, as well as Asian-inspired silhouettes and scribbled illustrations. “ZUBURBS”, declared the bright pink mini dress that opened the show, followed by nostalgic Coca-Cola prints, breast patches proclaiming, “HASSLE” and a skirt that read and portrayed “KICK ASS!” With a stiletto heel, that is. For her defiant graphics, Williams collaborated with Fergus Purcell, the artist best known for creating the triangular logo of PΔLΔCE Skateboards. “I’ve actually worked with him on my past four seasons, but no one knew. Fergus is the best! I met him through my boyfriend a few years ago and asked him if he would do some things for me. He’s really the best to work with.” Not only is Williams’s youthful work incredibly infectious, but so is her spontaneous and occasionally arbitrary chatter: “I spend most of my days in the studio, but I really enjoy it,” she confesses. “I like my life. I also like watching films at home. Last night I watched one called The Visitor by Giulio Paradisi, but I fell asleep so I’ll finish it tonight. I only fell asleep because it was late—the film was amazing.” Don’t be fooled by the unfiltered fun, however: Williams’s conceptual process is a sturdy one. Speaking to The Independent a little while ago, she stated: “I feel that people took previous collections too much at
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face value.” Behind her S/S15 collection there’s a nostalgic—tragic, even—story. “The collection shows the culture clash between the East and the West in the late 1960s. It illustrates how cultures interpret and misread each other by not understanding each other’s origin and influences. I started by looking at photos of Vietnamese prostitutes in the late ’60s, dressed as go-go dancers. They looked a bit off, as if they may have just copied their outfits from a photo and made the clothes themselves. But what was wrong about them, was actually the most beautiful bit.” Translating this idea into designs that are blunt but (commercially) also very ready-to-wear, it is as if a prickly sun and darkened moon shine hand in hand over Happy Ashleyland. Underscoring her show with the heartbroken Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me by The Smiths, Williams successfully brings light and dark territory together. “I don’t like very obvious catwalk music,” she elaborates. “The music formed a counterbalance to the clothes.” Boundaries are not necessarily a problem for Williams, the definition of fashion being anything but fixed, according to the designer. Pondering whether the current fashion system is too serious, she concludes: “I think it’s whatever you want it to be. You can take something from a ‘serious’ designer but wear it in a completely stupid way.” Asked to describe her profession, Williams contemplates aloud: “I would describe myself as a designer, but a designer is also an artist.” With stockists from all over the world picking up her pieces, many fine faces gracing her front rows and another NEWGEN sponsorship (awarded by the British Fashion Council and Topshop) in the pocket for this coming season, it’s not just London that should be expecting much more from our new favourite rebel. “This city is undeniably an important part of my identity,” Williams remarks. But just as her designs represent the girls that make their way out of the zuburbs to venture into unexplored territory, the borders of Ashleyland go far beyond geographic design. “No, no, I don’t want to be here for ever!” www.ashleywilliamslondon.com
Ashley Williams
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Gc Interview
Ashley Williams
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Egocentric Boy, 2014, project for Dust Magazine with the support of Dior Homme
By Sean Francis Burns
Young white thugs, countercultural icons, newspaper cuttings, drugs, barking dogs, sinking ships and dicks: all these divergent symbols might meet to comprise an image by Belgium artist and curator Peter De Potter. 17
Gc Interview
Self-dubbed “moral artist” Peter De Potter brings together existing and self-generated pictures, often with handwritten and typed words, combining different elements in the hopes of creating a new image with a more immediate impetus. He is, he says, engaged in the ways an image can communicate something “beautiful and meaningful and spiritual” —always with an awareness of how we consume and intuitively make connections among different information in a digital age. Having studied Fine Art at the Royal Academy in Antwerp—where he currently lives and works—De Potter came to prominence in 2001 through a collaboration with Raf Simons. Their partnership lasted for nine years, with De Potter consulting, art directing and contributing to publications and installations for the fashion designer. Fashion remains an obvious influence in his work. When Glamcult spoke to De Potter it soon became apparent that the image itself is his fundamental interest and subject matter: “I always say it’s the image that chooses the path to take, not me. My images are my little dictators.” Those images soon make their presence felt: scenes of sexual submission are interwoven with police brutality, religious symbolism and homosexual fetishism. De Potter believes the images are “real
toy soldiers” sent to battle in the world, fighting for the image and its power. Much of De Potter’s work contains references to a type of adolescent sensibility. As a teenager, De Potter confesses to having had an interest in those things kept under wraps: “Every teenager looks for something to annoy his parents with,” he says. From a young age he was excited by underground cinema, alternative music and banned literature—all things that were kept out of polite society and therefore made more appealing. Of particular influence were the films of cult British director Derek Jarman (Caravaggio, The Last of England) and American experimental novelist Kathy ‘Blood and Guts in High School’ Acker, both of whose works contain a power that appeals to a teenage energy. De Potter’s work seems to catch that energy and deploy it as arresting aesthetic. Earlier in his career De Potter launched three series of work online via Tumblr. The potency of the image seemed to chime with the immediacy of the format, where a stream of imagery passes across the screen in quick succession. “I think blog culture is doing important work, I really like the idea of an image being so attractive and meaningful to a person that they want to include it in their own visual world.” I Am An Image
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Christian Banner (Liberty), 2014, project for Dust Magazine with the support of Dior Homme
It's Affecting Me, 2013
Peter De Potter
Peter De Potter does matter is that the viewer experiences something carnal as a result of the image—whether that be a sexual stirring or violent energy. Angelic Starts consists of a series of black-and-white photographs overlaid with handwritten “virtues”: “I want the audience to feel the combined impact those elements have on their brain and their heart and their loins.” There’s a sexuality in the touch of the hand on the flat image. The bodies in the photographs reference historic statues, with the words functioning as a type of “conscious graffiti”. De Potter describes these images as “more of a mood piece than a think piece”. Glamcult is reminded of the work of Norwegian artist and writer Matias Falbakken, whose work
explores the margins and boundaries of civil society. Angelic Starts is not devoid of romance; indeed, it seems to direct viewers towards or champion a certain type of physical love. Images are emblazoned with sentiments including “Lovers Are Warriors” and “I fall in love while making love yet I only fall asleep while dreaming”, the words bringing dreamy narratives and ideas to the pictures they partially obscure. De Potter does not feel particularly aligned with artists working in the same vein as him, he says; his favourite artist is 17th-century Flemish painter Adriaen Brouwer: “He painted raw scenes to tenderly point out the universal humanity and much-needed bliss we are all
searching for,” De Potter says. This sentiment also rings true in De Potter’s own work, where the intention is to excite our most basic desires and fetishes. What De Potter has achieved is a synonymous and universal style that hangs together through an aggressive visual language. As one particular work from the Routine Routine series— containing four repeated photographs of a dance-floor smoke machine, overlaid with text declares: “What do you do? I make images with images. That’s it. It’s all you need.” Enough said. www.peterdepotter.com
On Love (Routine Poster 01), 2013
Anti-Ashes, 2013
Machine is a self-referential series in which different images are paired in sequence. The work draws from material “already laden with reference” and calls upon the viewers’ existing visual memory: sweaty torsos, burnt-out cars, sinking battleships and punk icon Sid Vicious. De Potter habitually directs our minds to the spaces between things. The eye willingly moves among different information and builds connections. By freely selecting historical material, he suggests a collapse of time, wherein images stand and fall alone. In this chaos, ideas of authorship and ownership deteriorate: “I am working hard to blur the lines between appropriation and self-made imagery,” he says, “because in the end, it just doesn’t matter.” What
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Gc Interview
By Joline Platje Photography: Lotte van Raalte
Benjamin Clementine The life of Benjamin Clementine reads like a contemporary fairy-tale. It wasn’t so long ago that this charming gentleman, glorious singersongwriter and self-taught multi-instrumentalist swapped the streets of Paris for the concert hall. With his just-released debut At Least For Now, he’s sending his condolences to fear and setting an example for his peers.
Sitting together on a red velvet couch in a little bar in Amsterdam, Glamcult had an intimate chat with the charming Benjamin Clementine, a tall, broadshouldered, straight-backed Londoner of Ghanaian ancestry with cheek bones as sharp as razors and a smile to die for. The singer-songwriter (and self-taught multi-instrumentalist) has just released his first album, the honest and intense debut At Least For Now. Clementine is a young man with an old soul. Or: a kid from a working-class family in Edmonton— long listed as one of the most crime- ridden areas of London—who found himself after running away and living on the streets of Paris. Some years ago he bought a one-way ticket to seek his fortune overseas, frustrated with the life he was leading in the UK. Although it was tough he found a way to survive: busking in the Paris Metro. All he had on arrival were the clothes he was wearing and a grey hat, which he put on the floor inside the subway station at Place de Clichy, to start singing a capella. To see Clementine perform live is to acknowledge his gift; he is a true musician. His touching performances have sent shivers down spines in both theatres and on the streets, where producers discovered him. Playing in front of people in the Parisian underground for nearly two years paved the way to build his voice, to freely express himself in words and chords; to perfect his art. Even though Clementine struggled during his first months in France, he always knew he was going to be all right. “There wasn’t a single moment that I felt like I was going to die. I don’t worry about things that other people care about. It felt like I was in a real film or something,” he explains calmly. Clementine realized that he was actually doing something he cared for very much: performing. “I really love it,” he admits and laughs shyly. In a soft voice he continues: “I just don’t know
why. It’s very, very difficult to explain, because it’s a mixture of many things… It’s weird, strange, triumphant, joyful, modest, kind… I had to learn to stand in front of an audience, though. Me moving to France was really helpful, because I stood in front of people I’d never seen before in my life. But when I sing I forget about everything. I don’t know how to describe it, but the minute I play it’s all about what I’m trying to project. I mean no harm.” The charismatic Clementine is humble but confident throughout our talk. He is not a composer, he thinks— the songs just come to him; he lets the piano take him where he wants to go— and his lyrics are written mostly in a matter of minutes. Neither is he a singer, considering himself instead an expressionist. “I can sing out of key and don’t give a toss about it. It’ll all be deliberate,” he states. “Some people do too much to let the people know that they can sing. And the funny thing is, I can’t do that. I can’t focus on that. I just express myself: I say what I want to say with my piano and my instruments. That’s it.” Clementine expresses his sensitivities with a total lack of compromise, and he will not let himself be hindered by fashionable trends. “For artists nowadays, in order to play the game they’ve got to do covers of current singers. Obviously, I’ve rejected that token. I could never do it; I’ve tried so many times. It can never sound like the actual song. I once did a very radical version of Nina Simone’s Ain’t Got No/I’ve Got Life, but people found it weird.” Even though Clementine’s lyrics are written in mere moments, they all mark important, formative events in his life. “My lyrics are biographical, all the experiences are real. It’s easier to write when you have something to say,” he says, pointing to the heartbreaks, solitude and family conflicts that fuelled his
songwriting. Even the shortest verse on the album, St-Clementine-On-Tea-AndCroissants, came about when he was sitting down in a Paris café after he got arrested by three police officers for not carrying ID. When asked to elaborate on some of his other songs, the artist remains silent. “My parents never really… eh… I can’t… eh….” It’s clear that Clementine would rather not talk about the painful events that led to his departure from London. “It’s distracting. At least for now I want people to just listen to the music. One could ask why I sing such sad pieces. It brings a lot of questions into play. And if I say I’m not going to answer them I’m a hypocrite, because I’m telling people. But I’m not here to blame anyone. I wouldn’t compare my family to others but I certainly think that they could’ve done better. As could I; I could’ve been a respectful child. But I ought to say my part. So, yeah…” Clementine recorded his album over a period of a year in a studio in London with friend and producer Jonathan Quarmby (Mew, Daley). He played most of the instruments himself: piano, drums, bass—“but not the strings. No way, that was an orchestra of 15 people.” Even though he likes to keep things minimal when it comes to his music, Clementine’s looking forward to performing with a whole orchestra someday. Citing Antony Hegarty as one of his main musical inspirations, who knows what to expect, but for now Benjamin doesn’t want to overdue things: “I have to come out and show people who I am first: someone whose heart belongs to Edmonton, his blood to Africa, his spirit to Britain and his writing to France.” Those who have seen Clementine’s live shows know that a little drama will always be included in the show—if only when the artist appears barefoot behind his beloved instrument. But don’t mistake
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authenticity for eccentricity. “It’s nothing spiritual. I find it hard to even walk barefoot in my house—it’s bloody cold! It’s just a funny little story. A friend of mine gave me his shoes to wear. And when I sat to play the piano my shoes were very slippery, so I took ’em off. From then on I never wore shoes again while playing. It feels good. You’ve got to still be the person that was composing the song in the room, when no one was there. I’m not saying that wearing shoes would change me, but if I was putting on makeup and stuff it doesn’t become what it is any more. When you have these accessories on you, they eat your soul, they eat your heart. That’s also the reason why I want to stay very minimal; except for the orchestra, it’s just the people and me. If I changed that communication, I think it would kill me.” Although he loves to be heard, and feels honoured that people come and see him play in theatres, Clementine’s main drive to communicate with his audience is to help young people. He clarifies: “We’re always faced with the facts that we’re not experienced. We have no knowledge of life with its ups and downs. If I hadn’t lived the life that I led, I would understand nothing. Me singing it, I’m giving it to people.” To be honest, there are worse role models for young people. What is it exactly Clementine wants to tell them with his songs? “We’re born into fear: without fear death would be nothing,” he begins. “Fear is inevitable. We spend all our time in life trying to conquer fear. And I want people to put their fear in my shoes. Loads of beautiful things happened to me while living on the streets—it’s hard to even pick a single one. Just know there’s always going to be a way—and fight with respect.”
Gc Interview
By Emily Vernon
Haerts The evocative output of Brooklyn-based pop outfit Haerts provides the setting rather than the answers to a central paradox of knowing. “It’s not that I don’t want to give away any details,” lead singer Nini Fabi assures Glamcult, but her introspective lyrics shed little light on the band’s eponymous debut. Fabi takes us from studio evictions to the basement of CBGB in the band’s endeavours to profoundly express the now.
“I always felt I didn’t really have a choice,” Munich-born Nini Fabi admits, speaking of her vocation. “I always thought that if I did have a choice, I’d just stop at some point.” Pursuing music was never a conscious decision for the members of Haerts, Fabi’s Brooklynbased band some have described as a modern-day Fleetwood Mac. “It wasn’t really this thing where we woke up one day and said, ‘Let’s do music and let’s hope it’s going to be easy.’” Through stalled beginnings and growing acclaim, long-held self-belief kept Fabi and her fellow band members Ben Gebert (keyboard), Garrett Ienner (guitar) and Derek McWilliams (bass) on track. The band’s name, which came almost a year after its formation, thematically and visually embodies their work, according to Fabi. This homophone goes beyond the doctor’s definition and the cliché Valentine illustrations. To Fabi, it addresses the paradox of “something that everyone knows, but no one has really figured out”. The unpredictable and seemingly incomprehensible waxing and waning of such emotions inspired Wings, Hemiplegia and Be the One, stand-out tracks on Haerts’s new album. “Many times in many songs it’s about the confused heart or contradicted heart,” Fabi explains. “In a way, the heart is a symbol for how you feel.” Fabi would know. As a prolific writer who always carries a notebook, constantly recording ideas for melodies and lyrics, she can identify its phases.
“What you write when you’re a teenager and then what you write when you’re in your twenties is just a different subject matter,” she explains. “The things that you look at, the things you experience on a daily basis, the things you read, all the culture, it’s constantly changing.” Haerts’s subject matter evolves just as organically; they strive to make truthful work of a certain time and then move on to continue developing with their surroundings. At the heart of Haerts are longtime friends and founders Fabi and Gebert, who generated most of the album’s material. The co-writing process fascinates Fabi, who defines their work thus: “It’s almost like you have two people saying something.” However, she admits that neither actually knows a song’s message until the absolute end. “I write a lyric and I don’t even know exactly what the meaning is until I read it later,” she admits. This joining of lyrics and music, whether Fabi and Gebert completely understood the outcome or not, influenced the first phase of Haerts’s debut. “We didn’t care at all what it was going to sound like,” Fabi recollects of the dawn of Haerts. During those initial months the band worked with John-Philip Grobler, also known as synth-pop act St. Lucia, bringing as much material as possible to experiment with sound, arrangements and instrumentals in the hopes of “establishing ourselves,” Fabi explains. “We had a lot of songs that don’t sound a lot like what you hear on the record now.” Looking to continue
defining their music, Haerts, now fully formed and performing live, worked with Stockholm-based producer Patrick Berger, whose client list includes Lana Del Rey, Icona Pop and Robyn. The process leading up to the album’s completion, with the new members getting established and continuous song development, was met by an unfamiliar lyrical challenge with their last song. “We always wrote a lot of music, but that one, we really had the feeling we needed something to complete the album,” Fabi explains. “That was a little constraining because we kind of knew what we wanted.” Studioless after a recent eviction, Fabi and Gebert set up a microphone and keyboard in their apartment to start the album closer. After writing all day with no success, the duo went out that night and came back early the next morning. Be the One, which was quickly finished upon their return, contains a particular darkness that reflects its latenight completion. According to Fabi, “it’s mainly about the expectations in love; they can be very big and they can be answered—or not”. Though not the track expected as the album’s final note, it’s Fabi’s favourite song to perform. Haerts’s accessible current sound, which some describe as indie pop, others dream pop, isn’t indicative of a desire to find a wide audience, Fabi insists. The studio, especially during the initial stage of recording, was a purposefully closed-off environment, which allowed
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the band to block out all such considerations. “When we wrote the album we weren’t thinking about our audience at all. For us it was important to find our own voice and not consider how it would be perceived,” Fabi insists. “When you go on stage, that’s when you have to start thinking about the audience, because they become part of it.” Whether ten people stood in front of the stage or 1,000, the audience got the same commitment from Haerts. That connection—which “you’d have to be pretty blind not to see,” Fabi says—is what repeatedly brought the band members to the stage. But one show in particular stands out for Fabi, as it transcended the audience-band relationship. “We’d just had our private release show in New York two weeks before. It was in the old basement of CBGB in New York, which has a lot of history with the punk movement and Patti Smith,” Fabi recollects. “It was a really great place to be, a really great room. There were only 150 people, I think, but it was a really strong connection.” With Smith an obvious lyrical inspiration—“some of her songs made a real impact on me as a teenager,” says Fabi—from a list that includes Neil Young, The Velvet Underground, Johnny Cash and Fiona Apple, that venue and that night fashioned a lingering moment. It’s a moment their music would interpret to draw the audience closer to the emotional contractions that inspire Haerts. www.haertsmusic.com
Gc Interview
ADMIRE THE ORDINARY
EFFIO. MAKING MAGNIFICENT SOCKS SINCE 2007 WWW.EFFIO.EU
By Sander van Dalsum Photography: Lulu McArdle
Joseph Marinetti Energized by ’90s gabber and Scottish raves, Joseph Marinetti’s music is pure amphetamine, packed in brightly coloured candy wrappers. The Edinburgh resident recently released his PDA EP, a fast-paced time capsule referencing the club nights he witnessed in the capital as a youngster. While listening to tracks like 3D Hentai Stud and Ms Telesales, it’s hard not to imagine a stroboscope-lit warehouse swarming with drug-fuelled euphoria and cold sweat.
Investigating your various social media channels, Glamcult came across a lot of tribal tattoos, hamburgers and gabber. How does this holy trinity influence your life? They’re extensions of three human senses: tribal tattoos are sight and vision—they expand on the beauty of the human physique, like our body’s contours and forms. Gabber is one of the most immediate music experiences. It triggers physical excitement and energy, and pushes the listener’s mind to its furthest limits. Fast food is related to this, in that the pace that we consume it is similar, and it has an immediate sensory effect. What’s the best burger you’ve ever had? And the worst? From a take-out in Leith. It was made up of two burgers deep-fried with melted cheese in between. Gourmet kitchens and high-end restaurants don’t know how to make burgers, serving them on a plate with a knife and fork, making people wait tens of minutes until they’re cooked. Who even are you?
H ow would you explain your music to the kids? I think the worst thing you can do is explain music to people. The fun is in naivety and ignorance. Everything should feel immediate, confusing and exciting; it should mean nothing and everything at the same time. Your music is said to “sum up the Scottish youth in the Noughties”. Have you played your music to that subculture? I’m an embodiment of a section of that culture through living it and I’ve tried to re-create everything I loved about the energy, whilst modernizing it and re-contextualizing it in sound. I imagine it wouldn’t make much sense because I’m looking at it, like, How would this feeling sound now? It’s not supposed to be something kids in, like, 2004 would enjoy or understand—it’s an expression of that energy.
There’s not really any other music similar to yours. Are there any artists you share aesthetics or sound with? I like a lot of old European dance music—Rotterdam in the ’90s: Ruffneck, Forze, artcore, gabber, hardstyle & trance… I listened to Loftgroover mixes, bonkers Wigan Pier compilations and drew from these to communicate the same sort of drive and vitality of those cultures. How do you come up with the visuals that complement your music? They’re related to repetition and consumption. Duchamp explored this over and over; it’s all like an advert. You know in commercial art galleries where work’s bought to sell, how it’s so transparent that the artist is making something to be bought rather than to solve a problem, explore or address something or whatever? It’s a self-contained advert for itself and points towards hyper-consumption.
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What gems are hidden in Edinburgh? The Living Mountain record store, Javits takeaway in Granton, Diane’s Pool Hall and Whiplash Trash tattoo parlour. What’s the best place to discover new music in Edinburgh? There’s not a lot of money in clubs in Edinburgh, and places are too expensive to hire. Clubs and warehouses have been demolished and turned into flats or commercial art galleries. But there’s some really hard-working and responsive artists, DJs and musicians I’ve ever met, but as a place it doesn’t allow many people to grow like that. I’d bank on some kid’s laptop at an after-party over any venue. What emoji are you missing in life? A Thunderdome wizard. www.josephmarinetti.com
Gc Interview
Visual Essays
26 Do you know where the wild roses grow? Photography: Pablo Delfos
32 Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather. Photography: Lasse Dearman
Coat Stills Atelier, crop top and latex top David Laport, gloves Avelon, earring H&M
Coat over shoulders Monki, jacket and shirt Tony Cohen, trousers Raf Simons, jewellery Maison the Faux, belt Kenzo, wig Balmain Hair
Do you know where the wild roses grow?
Coat Avelon, shirt SuperTrash, bra Bjรถrn Borg, skirt Dorhout Mees, gloves Avelon, collar necklace Gebr. Gerlach Utrecht, necklace Maison the Faux, wig Balmain Hair
Strap bra & Other Stories, lace bra Love Stories, dresses Diesel, playsuit ASOS
Trenchcoat Diesel Black Gold, turtleneck H&M, shorts Drykorn, earring H&M, wig Balmain Hair Dress Avelon, turtleneck Acne Studios, hat Monki, collar necklace Gebr. Gerlach Utrecht
Photography: Pablo Delfos—UNSPOKEN Styling: Alex van der Steen Hair: Hester Wernert-Rijn using Wella and Balmain Hair—UNSPOKEN Make-up: Kathinka Gernant for Chanel—UNSPOKEN Model: Jaelle—Dominique Models Assistant styling: Giedre Malinauskaite Assistant hair: Mandy Mijland
T-shirt Levi’s, jeans Versace, belt Moschino via Studio Travel
Suit Tiger of Sweden, shirt vintage
Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather.
Jacket and shirt Liam Hodges, jeans model’s own
Top Versace, jeans Saint Laurent, necklace and earrings model’s own
Harness Hampus Berggren, trousers Marco Storm Braskov
Shirt Meadham Kirchhoff, jeans Levi’s, harness Hampus Berggren, boots Tiger of Sweden, necklace and earrings model’s own
Jacket Dior Homme, top and belt Helmut Lang, trousers Fendi via Studio Travel
Photography: Lasse Dearman Styling: Lu Philippe Guilmette Models: Daniel S.—Tomorrow Is Another Day, Mads and Martin Rehof, Wyatt Shears Thanks to Studio Travel Copenhagen
Susanne Sundfør
Roland Tings
Albums Michna
All We Are
Roland Tings
Ten Love Songs
Thousand Thursday
All We Are
Internasjonal
EMI
Ghostly International
Double Six / Domino
Even though Roland Ting’s debut record comes out during the dreariest month of the year, the Melbourne resident’s eponymous LP still manages to turn any day into a tropical journey. The neonglistened dance floor productions of Rohan Newman are like one of those cocktails served with extravagant accessories (think drinking straw decorated with a natty foil palm tree, a flowery umbrella and a slice of organic lemon to keep things semi-healthy). The exotic breeze he sprinkles on to the jacking house influences we hear on tracks like Coming Up for Air and Devotion makes this one of those rare birds: an intriguing dance-music fulllength. It’s just a matter of time before Roland Corporation offers him an endorsement deal, providing Newman with numerous drum computers and synthesizers, in exchange for YouTube tutorials by the man himself. God knows he’d give in to that… By Sander van Dalsum
When the author of some of Glamcult’s most cherished but also most complex (and dark) albums announced a compilation of love songs, we were somewhat surprised. Pleasantly, that is. Yes, there are undeniably ten love songs on Ten Love Songs, Susanne Sundfør’s fifth (!) full-length album. That being said, love is anything but happy endings in the Norwegian artist’s universe. A disillusioned album opener named Darlings (“We wanted to believe that love could lift us to the skies and above, but they wouldn’t fall”) is followed by the sinister and sex-driven Accelerate, including a completely over-the-top JS Bach reference. Sonically, Sundfør’s portrayal of l’amour is equally as bendable: whereas a pulsating disco beat drives the romantic Fade Away, the self-destructive Kamikaze builds up to a Tiësto-like trance chorus, and album closer Insects explores the deepest corners of our hearts and minds through pitch-black techno. If we really had to sum up these outstanding Ten Love Songs in words, which is pretty much impossible, a cliché would probably come closest to the truth. Love is a battlefield! By Leendert Sonnevelt
Don’t call it a comeback, Michna’s biography on Ghostly International’s website seems to implore. The label renowned for releasing mind-boggling electronics presents Thousand Thursday, the first album in seven years from the DJ and producer. The man has been busy composing music for video games and other media, and that occupation subtly slips in between the horns and vocal samples like a much-desired power-up. Yet this sophomore album never really takes off. Tracks like Nuroq Legacy and Cherry 2000 are decently produced but linger mostly in the background and refuse to mess with your head even slightly. The artist’s portfolio does include sound design for commercials and film, and with that insight the accessible nature of this album makes sense. The result, however, is a short collection of chilled-out electro songs compromised of clichéd break beats, shallow arpeggios and vocals that are there just because they have to be. Without the interaction of games or the subliminal messages of commercials, Thousand Thursday will be forgotten before it casually pops up on your radar. By Sander van Dalsum
All We Are, a Liverpool-based inter national trio formed by Irish drummer/ singer Richard O’Flynn, Norwegian singer/bassist Guro Gikling and Brazilian guitarist/singer Luis Santos, recorded their self-titled debut in their self-built studio in an abandoned school. In a room that used to be a nursery, they taped their celestial community singing, their laid-back midnight grooves, their catchy melodies, their swarming sounds, their dreams.
Natalie Prass
Viet Cong
RONiiA
Afterpartees
What’s the perfect dance move for your psychedelic boogie? You know when you let yourself go and just feel? Let your arms and legs flow and just sway around without even knowing. Do you have nicknames for each other? We usually just shout, “Hey you— and you—and you!” What feeling best describes what you feel when you sing in harmony? When all three of us lock in and we blend into one voice it feels like home.
We’re wondering, what keeps All We Are alive? Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. If there were a mental state to describe your music, what would it be? Pure bliss. Where should one listen to All We Are? We try to make music you can move, groove, space out and dream to. We’re true believers that you can do this anywhere: on a dance floor, while you’re shopping, when you’re smooching with your girl/boy or just having a moment by yourself. In your music we hear Brazil, Norway and Ireland. What did each country bring to the table? There’s often whiskey, aquavit and cachaca knocking around our writing sessions. That’s culture right there. By Joline Platje
Ibeyi
Natalie Prass
Viet Cong
Fool’s Game
Glitter Lizard
Ibeyi
Spacebomb / Caroline Benelux
Jagjaguwar
Totally Gross National Product
Excelsior Recordings
XL Recordings
A fully orchestrated sing-along pop album with songs about love and a final track that could’ve appeared on a classic Disney soundtrack. On paper that might not immediately read like a fresh buy for the beginning of 2015—let alone a release highly anticipated by the likes of Pitchfork, The Hype Machine and The Guardian. Yet Natalie Prass’s eponymous debut is all of the above. Recorded with Matthew E White and Trey Pollard at their Spacebomb Studios in Virginia, together they’ve crafted a record with a cinematic quality, due to the brass and strings that make a pretty frequent appearance. At the same time, Prass’s girly but soulful voice has a sense immediacy to it, and the album contains some real pop gems (Bird of Prey, Christy). While the aforementioned album closer, It Is You, might have a tad too much candy-floss for some—“The sun will sing its song”? Oh, come on!— it will be a deliciously sweet (not-so-)guilty pleasure for others. By Fay Breeman
Viet Cong are a four-piece band from Canada comprising former members of the acclaimed art-rock band Women. Never heard of them? Never mind! Because Viet Cong are the ones you need to know about. Why? Viet Cong is a sensational sound explosion, full of post-punk darkness, art-rock tension and wave elements. Viet Cong is gloomy and frightening, but also melodic and even has hints of pop. For example, hidden under layers of dust, Continental Shelf is a wonderful pop gem including sing-a-long potential. Silhouettes throws you back to grimy nightclubs in the times of Thatcher and ’80s eyeliner escapism. Death (yeah, dark indeed) is an 11+ minute lo-fi noise trip; picture Thurston Moore jamming with Television. March Of Progress echoes Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd, psych-style. In these post-HolidaySeason times, full of grey days and long cold nights, Viet Cong is a perfect musical companion. By Matthijs van Burg
Although the nights are starting to grow shorter again, the dark days of the year are still far from over. So can we please have some sombre, unpolished new tunes to accompany our increasingly grim winter moods? Here’s RONiiA, a trio from Minneapolis formed by Mark McGee, Fletcher Barnhill and singer Nona Marie Invie. You may know the latter as that melancholic voice of gypsy-folk outfit Dark Dark Dark, which would actually also be a very appropriate name for this new musical undertaking, because RONiiA’s sound is very gloomy indeed: the deep tones of echoing synthesizers are accompanied by soundscapey noise and Invie’s mumbling, haunting and monotonous voice. Standard song structures have been left behind, and it all sounds very lo-fi. This album could almost have qualified as a collection of coarse, eerie lullabies if Invie hadn’t sounded so, well, bored. Fool’s Game is a piece of innovative music-making that piques the interest, and then leaves us slightly underwhelmed. By Fay Breeman
Excelsior Recordings is a fine, fine Dutch record label, which only releases music by artists the staff really, really likes. And this love for music pays off: Excelsior artists are welcome guests at festivals and on national television, and they often grace end-of-year lists compiled by both critics and audiences alike. Some releases are pearls before swine (Royal Parks, Hospital Bombers); others hit the jackpot (Triggerfinger, The Kik) or become (cult) classics (Daryll-Ann, Johan). In which category Afterpartees will eventually end up, only time will tell. These charming lads from the south of the Netherlands have been buzzin’ for more than a year now. Their catchy songs are highly influenced by late ’70s punk and early ’80s pop played by ex-punks. Their sound is appealing, and they’re an extra-special treat live. Song-wise, their love of cliché (lyrics, hooks, harmonies) can occasionally be a little too obvious—but heck, it’s just teenage kicks! By Matthijs van Burg
Ibeyi’s story starts with a bit of family history. Nineteen-year-old Naomi and Lisa-Kainde Díaz grew up under the wings of world-famous percussionist Miguel ‘Angá’ Díaz, who seems to have passed on the magic to his talented twin daughters. With Naomi taking on percussion and Lisa playing the piano, as well as producing gorgeous vocal harmonies together, this young twosome currently seems headed straight for gold. Ibeyi’s self-titled debut LP is a slow-paced mix of progressive pop, emotive hip hop and electronic ballads. What makes the music of these young women stand out, however, is the constant influence of traditional Yorùbán influences, expressed—aside from a track list consisting of intriguing, indecipherable titles—through complex rhythms and stunning chant-like vocals. From Damon Albarn to Jools Holland and Richard Russell, Ibeyi is steadily enchanting one after the other. Glamcult gladly volunteers to be up next. By Leendert Sonnevelt
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