Mapped Zine by Irena Azovsky

Mappedzine@yahoo.com www.mappedzine.weebly.com www.myspace.com/mappedzine Irena Azovsky

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X X X O B E C I U J + LO ADS ART OF FOR VIEW YOUR ING PLE ASU RE!

Baltimore 04.09.2010 8pm FREE

MappedZine.weebly.com Poster By Irena Azovsky

Christian Santiago

Shanon Weltman

Scot Bot

Irena Azovsky

“ I MAKE JUICEBOXXX MUSIC. IT’S ALL JUICEBOXXX MUSIC. WHEN I SIT DOWN, I KNOW I’M GONNA BE MAKING JUICEBOXXX MUSIC.” _ JUICEBOXXX

Mapped: How would you describe your music for the readers that may not be familiar with it? RAP MUSIC. DANCE MUSIC. HIGHWAY MUSIC. LYFE MUSIC. Mapped: How do you work on your music? Do you have an idea of what you want a track to sound like in advance or do you work it through as you go along? I MAKE JUICEBOXXX MUSIC. IT’S ALL JUICEBOXXX MUSIC. WHEN I SIT DOWN, I KNOW I’M GONNA BE MAKING JUICEBOXXX MUSIC. Mapped: You have a very distinct style. Would you say your style represents the artistic scene in Milwaukee? MY MUSIC WOULDN’T BE THE WAY IT IS IF I DIDN’T COME FROM THE HEARTLAND. I’M A RUSTBELT CREEP AND I’LL DIE THAT WAY. Mapped: What was it like to be young Juiceboxxx in Milwaukee? Did a lot of people underestimate you? Were a lot of others doing similar things in the scene? I’VE ALWAYS HAD TO FIGHT TO GET RESPECT. THAT IS NO JOKE. BUT FUCK IT MAN, MAYBE SOME DAY I’LL GET IT. Mapped: How does it feel to have started being Juiceboxxx at such a young age? I can definitely relate, since i started Mapped when i was 16 years old. Do you feel like it pays off twice as much because you can get more done by starting so young?

IT CAN BE GOOD AND BAD. SOMETIMES IT’S HARD TO ESCAPE WHAT PEOPLE THINK YOU ARE, OR WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO BE. MOTHERFUCKERS BE SAYING THAT YR WASHED UP WHEN YR FUCKIN 19. BUT YOU PUSH ON. THIS IS A MARATHON, NOT A SPRINT. I’M NOT FUCKING AROUND. Mapped: Your live shows are very energized, exciting and audience involving. Do you feel that a lot of music artists hold back when it comes to self expression in their performances these days? What do you want your audience to get out of attending your shows? WHEN I STARTED THIS SHIT IN LATE 2001 I NEVER PLAYED WITH ONE PERSON LIKE ME. NOW YOU CAN’T THROW A ROCK WITHOUT HITTING AN ART DAMAGED SPAZZ WITH AN IPOD. BUT I’M A RAPPER GODDAMNIT. THE NEXT STEP IS TO REIGN IT IN AND TAKE IT TO ANOTHER LEVEL OF TOTAL POP INTENSITY. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND ARE A TEMPLATE. Mapped: Do you ever listen to music opposite to yours (quiet and relaxing). Does the partying ever get old? OF COURSE MAN. I LISTEN TO EVERYTHING. CHILL OUT FAVS INCLUDE ARTHUR RUSSEL AND “NIGHT MOVES” BY SEGER. Mapped: What role does art currently play in your personal life? Do you create your own personal art? What do you feel is the line drawn, if any, between art and your music? I’M A RAPPER. I’M MAKING POP MUSIC HERE PEOPLE.

Trami Nguyen

Ronin Wood

Mapped: Whats the story behind the band? How did you guys get together and what were you all doing before Dark Dark Dark? Nona: Jonathan, Marshall and I knew each other from Minneapolis. Jonathan played in one of my favorite bands. I was working at a pizza collective. Marshall found the Miss Rockaway Armada, a fleet of homemade rafts, and found himself a new home. It was there that he and Todd shared the same pair of pants while each playing a banjo. We managed to catch up with each other in New York, make a little demo, and start touring as a quartet. Jonathan: That’s the truest way to tell it. When we were doing a radio interview in France they asked us the same question, and Marshall said, “We met at a pizza restaurant, and on boats.” They seemed confused. I have no idea why... Mapped: Your music has a very unique sound. How would you classify that sound and where do you find the inspiration for your songs, in terms of lyrics and music? Nona: This is one task we’ve never completed, categorizing our music. Can we say it’s new? New music? Our songwriting process is always evolving. We’re definitely inspired by a lot of older, more traditional kinds of music, but are also into the music of the future. It is fun to explore the sounds our instruments can make, the places they can take us. Jonathan: We’ve always had trouble figuring out what to say when people ask us what kind of music we play. It’s easy for people to classify us as folk because we play acoustic instruments and we often practice in a living room with no amplifiers. I think it’s a misleading label, though -- some people may think of folk as being focused on preserving tradition, others may imagine confessional acoustic guitar strummers, and we don’t fit either of those stereotypes. When we write music, we’re all trying to use our instruments and our voices in ways that seem personal to us -- we’re trying to make the sounds we want to hear, whether they’re familiar sounds or not. We really like putting together elements that are a little unexpected together, if we think it sounds good. We all listen to a wide variety of music, and we’re inspired by so many things -- hip hop, marching bands, Persian classical music, pop... We pay attention when we hear music that uses the same instruments that we use, so of course we’ve gotten interested in older musical traditions from Appalachia and Europe. But we’re focused on the present -we’re especially inspired to be surrounded by a community of musicians and makers -- whether in Minneapolis, New Orleans, or New York. We are always excited to exchange ideas with our friends.

Photo by Santiago Mostyn

Photo by Tim Piotrowski

Mapped: How do you work on your music? do you have an idea of what you want a track to sound like in advance or do you work it through as you go along? Nona: We are in the middle of a two-month break from performing, to spend time writing new songs. Usually I just try to stay open to the song-writing process. I am often taken by surprise when working on a song, and if I am too set in my ideas about what the song should/needs to be, then good ideas can get lost. Mapped: If you guys are stuck while working on a track, how do you resolve that issue? What gets you immediately inspired? Nona: Sometimes we trade with each other. Marshall will write the words and I’ll write the music. Usually I just need quiet time to finish something. A few hours of uninterrupted quiet time. It’s actually pretty hard to come by. It is always inspiring to listen to and watch other musicians who are doing their own thing. An accordion player using distortion pedals, a banjo player hammering out dixieland solos, a bass player holding down the low end amidst a 9-person brass section. People exploring the ends of their instruments encourages me to do the same. Mapped: What do you feel is the line drawn, if any, between art and music when it comes to your band? Jonathan: Would that help us to keep track of our crazy schedules? Hmm, maybe we should draw some lines... Just kidding.

We are all performers, and we’re also involved in projects that relate to the visual art world. But so much of what we do is interrelated. Our music plays a big role in the film (Flood) that Todd is directing, and that we all acted in. We’re working on the soundtrack right now. Also, when we’ve built installation work at galleries or museums, we usually perform music in the space also. It’s all part of a process of travelling around, communicating with our friends and getting excited about ideas, and then working together to make them happen. There’s definitely a difference between building an installation out of scrap lumber, writing a song, and making a film... but it’s all so interrelated at this point that there’s no point in trying to separate it out. Sometimes we work on individual projects rather than collaborating with each other, but we have a really strong working relationship and it’s fun. Mapped: What role does art currently play in your personal lives? Jonathan: This is another one of those answers about not knowing where the lines are. Just like a lot of musicians, we tour a lot -- so when we’re traveling to play music, our art is dictating the conditions of our everyday lives. When we helped to build a bunch of rafts and then we lived on them and performed on them almost every night, as we did for a project organized by our friend Swoon (Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea), the lines between art / music / life go from blurry to nonexistent pretty fast. It can be a little confusing, honestly. But I think we all made the decision a long time ago that we want to spend our days doing the things we love to do.

David Cogdill

Polina Dadakova

Antonina Clarke

Mapped: How would you describe your music for the readers that may not be familiar with it?

Todosantos is from Venezuela, is an awesome band to dance to, and their shows would blow your mind. They got together in 2002 and broke up in 2009. This is one of the last interviews that they did as a band.

Todosantos: We are an audiovisual band from Caracas venezuela and we make fun stuff... some tag us electro, some tag us rave... we prefer to call it “tukky bass” or simply “Tukky”, Tukky comes from a Venezuelan Ghetto Rave scene that took over the country, and bass cause we mix it with anything from Bmore to Dubstep. We are a crossover of many many things. We pay NO attention to limitations... Mapped: What were you guys doing before Todosanto’s was created? Who’s idea was it to get together? Todosantos: We were in high school in Caracas Venezuela when we decided to start the band, our common love for daft punk, dub & 8bit set us apart from the other kids we were hanging out with, so, we knew that we had to start making beats together. Every day we would just come to the studio and blow each others heads with new music that we’d discover here and there, so that triggered a bunch of ideas of our own. Then the visuals came as an extension of our artistic needs, and that took the whole project to another level... ever since we became audiovisual we’ve been going beyond making songs, trying to generate art that hits your senses in a deeper way... if it has video, music, lights, colors, flavors etc then its better for us.

Besides us I would like to give props for a couple of venezuelan producers/bands that are kicking it and killing it abroad: Cardopusher (dubstep), Pacheko (dubstep), Jovenes y Sexys (dreamy indie), nuuro (electropop) and if you dig you’ll find a ton more. Mapped: What’s the difference between performing in Venezuela and Brooklyn? Where do you prefer? Todosantos: Venezuela is our home, when we perform there we speak our language and the crowd is full of familiar faces, even if its a big show, we’ve probably met 50% of the people at some point of our lives. Its like trenchtown for Bob, haha. Brooklyn is exciting in the other hand, because we face people from all around the world that we’ve never met, and that gives you a bigger thrill. Also, in Venezuela we are seen as an “art-dance” kind of thing, its not unusual for us to perform in artspaces or galleries where people is there enjoying the show in a more analytic way, while in the US people get smashed and dance their ass off when we perform haha. Both are good, just different. Mapped: Your music videos are very vivid and colorful, who does them for you?What the idea behind the color scheme?

Mapped: How do you work on your music? is difficult not to be repetitive with the tunes when working with electro? What gets you inspired? Todosantos: We try to alternate the process on a regular basis, sometimes we start by sampling a video and making an audiovisual beat out of that, sometimes we grab an acoustic guitar and build things the “traditional” way, anyhow, there’s no formula, if it feels good we give it a go. We are very open minded with music, everything is allowed in terms of sound, so it could be merengue, indie or electro, if its good its good. Mapped: What’s the Venezuelan music scene like? Todosantos: There’s no such thing as an organized indie music industry in Venezuela, so all the parties in the scene remain on a very diy level almost without exception... there are thousands of enthusiastic kids though, I think the more fucked up the country gets in terms of poverty and social tension, the more ideas pop and the more people want to find a scape thru art.. it might be fun but not so profitable so you gotta try to release your music in other countries and scape the local limitations.

Todosantos: Every single song is generated with a visual concept and a video, it all comes together in our heads... we generate it all together, and we perform it all together as part of the same experience, thats why we use DVD turntables, the colors enhance the raw energy we are trying to deliver. Some promoters get confused when we say “No projections No show”, but we are a visual project as much as we are a musical project. Mapped: Your live shows are very visually exciting. What were your intentions when you first started performing? What do you expect from your audience? Todosantos: The Idea is to make people forget about rent, work, school, ugliness, unhappiness, depression etc etc etc. We just expect to share a special moment of joy with this room full of people, hopefully by the end of the show we’ll all have something in common or something to talk about. :) Mapped: What role does art currently play in your personal life? Do you create your own personal art? What do you feel is the line drawn, if any, between art and your music? Todosantos: Art is our daily bread, and we definitely consider ourselves artists before plain musicians.

Issue3Credits:

Art: Christian Santiago (Brooklyn) - djluckypierre@aim.com Shanon Weltman (Brooklyn) - shanonduffey@gmail.com Scot Bot (Baltimore) - distortandrender@gmail.com Irena Azovsky (Brooklyn/Baltimore) - irenazov@yahoo.com Trami Nguyen (Baltimore) - traaaami@gmail.com Ronin Wood (Baltimore) - roninwood@gmail.com Polina Dadakova (Rhode Island) - pdadakova@gmail.com David Cogdill (Baltimore) - davidlawcogdill@gmail.com Antonina Clarke (Baltimore) - antonina.clarke@gmail.com

Music: Juiceboxxx -

http://www.myspace.com/officialjuiceboxxx

http://www.juiceboxxx.com/

Dark Dark Dark -

http://www.myspace.com/darkdarkdarkband

https://brightbrightbright.com/

Todosantos -

http://www.myspace.com/todosantos

All backgrounds and interviews by Irena. Hand lettered Dark Dark Dark by Polina and end photos by Polina and Irena.