Urbanczuk sp2014 pages

MOOD MOOD music//lifestyle//los angeles

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MUST HAVES FOR SUMMER

m a r g O t an

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O U D W E N T S E T T O H S ’ R SUMME

AVEDON: A PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST

THE BEST FOOD TRUCKS IN LA SUMMER

2014 // MOOD

summer 2014

music//lifestyle//los angeles

M

ood Magazine brings you monthly updates on the scene in Los Angeles.

Focused primarily on music, Mood brings you fashion, food, destinations, and more all inpsired by music.

We also feature artists every month as the cover story. We want to provide an intimate look into the lives of your favorite artists. Every artist has a story. Every issue focuses on a diferent genre, or “Mood.” Grab a copy of this month’s issue from a newstand or on your mobile device. Ipad version now available.

MOOD MOOD music//lifestyle//los angeles

gram PhantOSUMMER’S HOTTEST NEW DUO

MOOD magazine

CONTENTS 14

8 14 COVER STORY INSIDE PHANTOGRAMS INSTANT SUCCESS

8 WINDOW DRESSING

VISUAL COMMUNICATION STUDENT’S AT FIDM SHOW OFF THEIR SKILLS

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5

10 5 EDITORS LETTER AN ANNOUCEMENT IN THIS ISSUE...

10 1 DAY IN...

JOSHUA TREE FOR WHEN YOU’RE MISSING COACHELLA

22 7 FOOD TRUCK THROWDOWN YOUR GUIDE TO THE BEST FOOD TRUCKS IN LA

22 RICHARD AVEDON A PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST

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music//lifestyle//los angeles

MOOD

LETTER FROM THE

EDITOR m a e t e th

HEY EVERYONE!

editor in chief

Welcome to the Summer 2014 Issue of Mood Magazine. Summer is my favorite season for music, and that’s not just because of the abundance of music festivals. I feel carefree and healthy, just like summer releases, even when I’m sitting in the office.

In this Issue, we are featuring and up and coming band, Phantogram. They are playing just about every music festival in the US this summer, after playing Coachella earlier this year. I felt they were just what this summer Issue needed, a brand new, fresh sound with a female lead vocal. If you haven’t heard their sound already, check out their newly released album, Voices. It is the perfect album to add to your Summer playlist. Their sound is so unique in the fact that it can be played day through night. I had the pleasure of meeting with them for the cover story and got to hear their success story, as you will too.

We are very excited to announce that this issue is the starting point for our “Emerging Band Series” in which every month from now, we will feature an up and coming band from every part of the world, who is playing a show in Los Angeles. Mood has always been about storytelling, as has every genre music – and we’re excited to have a new world of stories to tell. We will treat these emerging bands the way we treat every other subject we cover: we will take it seriously, we will look beneath the surface, and we will always focus on what brought us here in the first place – the music. And with that, I will end with one of my favorite quotes:

“MUSIC IS THE SWEETEST ESCAPE ”

LILYAN URBANCZUK

executive editor JENNIFER HANLEY

creative director LAURA MARLING

fashion editor IGGY AZALEA

music editor

MARCUS MUMFORD

lifestyle editor MILEY CYRUS

advertising

DAN AUERBACH

contributing photographers BENSON LANG LILYAN URBANCZUK

contributing writers SHARON URBANCZUK PENN BADGLEY

-Lilyan urbanczuk

KELLY DAVID PAUL MCARTNEY

EDITOR IN CHIEF

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■ FOOD

E L A C O

5TH FLOOR

L

TRAVEL

FOOD TRUCK throwDOWN

YOUR GUIDE TO THE BEST FOOD TRUCKS IN EVERY CORNER OF LA

WAFFLES DE LIEGE

HEIRLOOM LA

KOBI BBQ

LOCATION: MONTABELLO WHAT TO ORDER:

LOCATION: HUNTINGTON PARK

CARAMEL NUTELLA WAFFLE A LA MODE

LOCATION: LOS FELIZ WHAT TO ORDER:

TACO SAMPLER WITH STUFFED MUSHROOMS

KOMODO

GRILLED CHEESE TRUCK

GREEN TRUCK

LOCATION: ALHAMBRA

LOCATION: CALABASAS WHAT TO ORDER:

WHAT TO ORDER:

WHAT TO ORDER:

SINGAPOREAN STYLE SHRIMP TACO

CREPES BONAPARTE LOCATION: LOS FELIZ WHAT TO ORDER:

SOUTHWEST BREAKFAST CREPE

WHAT TO ORDER: KOBI BEEF BBQ TACO

LOCATION: CULVER CITY

BUFFALO CHICKEN GRILLED CHEESE W/ TOTS

ORGANIC BERRY PARFAIT

LOBOS TRUCK

BORDER GRILL

LOCATION: MONTEREY PARK WHAT TO ORDER: BUFFALO LOBSTER BITES

LOCATION: PLAYA DEL RAY WHAT TO ORDER: TZATZIKI GYRO

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E L A LOC ■ 5th FLOOR

WINDOW DRESSING

V IS UA L COMMUN IC AT ION S MA JO RS AT L A’ S F I D M

Each

semester at fashion school, FIDM, located in downtown Los Angeles, the 5th floor is host to a variety of window displays created by the Visual Communication students. Each semester they are given a theme and told to run with it.

The results, quite often, are spectacular. This semester’s theme is nature and instructor Katherine LoPresti instructed students to build their window displays with “as much organic materials as possible.”

The students work as teams to build everything from the dresses to creating the typography for the windows. The group effort pays off as the ten windows are often the center of attention for visiting parents and prospective students.

Photography by: Benson Lang

INSIDE FIDM ■ FIDM is also referred to as the

Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising

■ It is a specialized, private college, with 4

campuses across California, dedicated to educating students for the Fashion, Graphica, Interior Design, and Entertainment Industires

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■ Majors off ered: Fashion Design Visual Communcations Merchandise Marketing Interior Design Jewerly Design Beauty Industry Management Apparel Industry Management Entertainment Set Design Footwear Design Textile Design Graphic Design Digital Media

■ The 4 campuses are located in: Los Angeles, Orange County, San Diego, and San Francisco

FIDM Los Angeles Campus

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E L A LOC ■ TRAVEL

KEYS VIEW

CHOLLA CACTUS GARDEN

JUMBO ROCKS

one day in

JOSHUA TREE WHERE TO GO WHEN YOU’RE MISSING COACHELLA

Taking a page from a Dr Seuss book, the whimsical Joshua trees

(actually tree-sized yuccas) welcome visitors to this seven hundred ninety four thousand acre park at the convergence of the Colorado and Mojave Deserts. It was Mormon settlers who named the trees because the branches stretching up toward heaven reminded them of the biblical prophet Joshua pointing the way to the promised land. The park is especially lovely in springtime when the Joshua trees send up a huge single cream-colored flower and the octopus-like tentacles of the ocotillo cactus shoot out crimson flowers. The mystical quality of this stark, boulder-strewn landscape has inspired many artists, most famously the band U2, which named its 1987 album The Joshua Tree.

MUST SEES : KEYS VIEW This popular destination, perched on the crest of the Little San Bernardino Mountains, provides panoramic views of the Coachella Valley

CHOLLA CACTUS GARDEN Explore the many different types of cactus that live in Joshua tree. During the spring and summer, the cacti are in bloom, making for a spectacular site .

JUMBO ROCKS

Jumbo Rocks is aptly named, and is the biggest campground in Joshua Tree National Park. If you’re looking for a campground full of great sites, easy access to trails, and big huge boulders to climb when you step out of your tent, this is the place to be.

SKULL ROCK

Located in Jumbo Rocks, Skull Rock is a favorite stop for park visitors. It began long ago when rain drops accumulated in tiny depressions and started to erode the granite. As more rock eroded, more water accumulated, leading to more erosion until, as time passed, two hollowed-out eye sockets formed and the rock began to resemble a skull.

BARKER DAM Barker Dam, also known as the Big Horn Dam, is a water-storage facility located in Joshua Tree It was constructed in 1900

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s e v a h ust

R E M M U S .

A .

L T C E F R

E P E H FOR T

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BOOMBOX IHOME: 125.00 APPLE

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PADDLE BALL: 15.00 URBANOUTFITTERS

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RELAX TOWEL: 25.00 FRED

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WINSTON SHADES: 65.00 AMERICAN APPAREL

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FROM THE POOL

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DONUT FLOAT: 25.00 URBANOUTFITTERS

TO THE STREETS

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HERSCHEL CLASSIC: 65.00 URBANOUTFITTERS

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BEATS IN MINT: 265.00 BEATS BY DR DRE

3 4 5

TIE DYE BUCKET HAT: 35.00 URBANOUTFITTERS

SUPERGA CLASSIC: 75.00 SUPERGA.COM

SCULT THREE SHADES: 270.00 LURA EYEWEAR

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electro

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- rock

RETURNS ‘FALL IN LOVE’ WITH PHANTOGRAM

T

he New York electro rock duo , comprised of Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel, Phantogram is unlike anything we’ve ever heard before. They’ve got a Dilla-like sway to their beats with dreamy vocals and a vibrating low-end. On the heels of their self-titled EP, it looks like they’re gearing up for a new album, and if “Fall In Love” is any indication of what the LP, Voices, will sound like, we’re more than happy to see them pile on the new music.

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of 50 and

untroubled by outside Interference

Phantogram’s decision to stick it out in the highly competitive world of indie music is paying off. New single Fall In Love has climbed to No. 8 on USA TODAY’s alternative airplay chart and No. 2 on music identification service Shazam’s national chart. They’ve played twice on Jimmy Kimmel Live and most recently on Late Show With David Letterman. They continue their relentless touring schedule and are set to perform at Firefly and Sasquatch! festivals. Phantogram also contributed a track (Lights) to the deluxe version of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire soundtrack, alongside songs

by Coldplay, Lorde and Imagine Dragons.

“

Carter and Sarah Barthel, both 31, have been friends for 18 years.

They met in middle school and remained friends until they graduated from high school. Then Barthel went off to study visual arts at Champlain College in Burlington, Vt., and Carter joined his older brother’s band, Grand Habit, in New York City. “I ended up quitting and came home to pursue a solo career,” Carter says. After graduation, Barthel returned, too, dissatisfied with her degree and uncertain of her next step. The friends picked up right where they left off, discovering they shared the same musical sensibilities. “My solo music was really the blueprint of our sound,” says Carter of his gritty hip-hop beats. “I’d play my stuff for her and it turns out she was super-good at singing and playing piano. It was like magic.”

We'Ve Played for crowds

Hearing Phantogram’s experimental pop — a blend of gritty beats and ethereal melodies — you’d imagine the duo working in someone’s living room in Brooklyn, thinking deep, sad thoughts. But the longtime friends found their unique sound in a barn-turned-pseudostudio near Saratoga Springs in upstate New York. “We were able to craft our music untroubled by outside interference,” says Josh Carter.

now we're playing HOllywood Palladium

“ As with most emerging bands, they had to juggle day jobs to keep the dream going. “We both waited tables” in touristy Saratoga Springs, says Barthel. “He worked at a restaurant across the street from me, where I worked at a jazz bistro pub. We’d meet up after work, drive to the country where Josh’s family has a farm and work on our music.”

The duo officially became Phantogram (an optical illusion that makes a two-dimensional image look three-dimensional) in 2007. “We’ve accomplished a lot since then,” says Carter. “We’ve released two albums. We’ve played for crowds of 50 and now we’re playing Hollywood Palladium.”

As the venues get nicer, so do the green rooms. “When we started out, we’d have to change in a public bathroom and it was disgusting,” says Barthel. “I’d have to balance myself on my shoes, hoping my feet didn’t touch the ground.”

The way the pair approach music reflects their relationship: always evolving. “It’s different every time.

Sometimes we take old ideas that we didn’t know what to do with,” says Carter. “Fall In Love was a beat I made five years ago and Sarah dug it out and wrote a very cool melody to it. She breathed new life into it. That’s how we work.”

“

We were able to craft our music

The music business is a tough world and most bands don’t make it, but they wouldn’t trade taking the risk for anything. “It’s fun to see

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“

“

It’s fun to see the world. We get to write and be artists. It’s a lot more exciting than waiting tables for tourists.

Carter and Barthel attracted the attention of the major record labels, which led to an all-out bidding war. They eventually signed with Republic.

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For a duo that came from a purely DIY background, signing to a major label could have proven jarring, if not disruptive, but Carter asserts that it did nothing to change the band’s approach to creating music. “It had no impact on the creative process with Voices at all,” he asserts.

“We just recorded music like we always do and wrote songs that we were feeling.”

What did have an impact on Voices, however, was working with a producer. Unlike with Eyelid Movies, which was produced by the band itself, Voices was recorded and produced with the assistance of John Hill. Like Phantogram, Hill’s musical background is diverse, his credits including artists ranging from Devo to Shakira to P!nk to Santigold. Carter and Barthel found Hill’s sprawling resume appealing.

“John and I produced the record and it was awesome,” Carter says. “He’s such a good guy. He has a really good ear. He’s worked with a really diverse group of artists, so I think he was a perfect fit for us to be working with because we have such a wide palette within our sound.”

Phantogram’s palette is indeed wide, so wide that pinpointing the instrumentation and elements in any given song can prove futile. Even describing their music exposes the limitations of nouns and adjectives. Some of their songs are built around guitar riffs, others vocal loops.

Some around samples, others around drums. Some are ambient and ethereal, others propulsive and insistent.

Most, however, showcase Barthel’s breathy, seductive vocals, which can morph from a whisper to a wail in the space of a phrase.

“

Not surprisingly, when Carter started developing his own tastes in music, he went in a different direction.

“From there,” he notes, “my first love of music was hiphop. My first records, the first CDs I ever got, were Beastie Boys’ License to Ill and Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet.”As Carter got older, his tastes broadened to include indie rock and R&B, rounding out what would later become the foundation of his own music. “In my preteens and early teenage years I was still really into hip hop music, like Wu-Tang Clan. But I got into bands like the Flaming Lips, Beck, The Smashing Pumpkins, Guided by Voices, Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Sparklehorse, Elliot Smith ...

“

This curiosity to see how seemingly disparate elements intersect in interesting ways is, no doubt, partially due to the music Carter was exposed to as a child.

“Growing up, my dad was always playing the Beatles and Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin and David Bowie, T. Rex, stuff like that,” he recalls. “But especially the Beatles. I heard the Beatles every day in my house. And my mom was always listening to jazz and classical music.”

We have this kind of psychic enegy when we work and it’s easy to read each other. We have a very similar vision in what we do.

Carter and Barthel are able to incorporate electronic elements in their music without sacrificing soul. The electronic and sampled elements never sound plastic or brittle, nor do they clash with the instrumentation. Carter chalks it up to equilibrium. “I think it’s always been just a matter of balance,” he explains. “The way that we really achieve this soulful and organic sound with electronic elements is just balancing everything off, you know? I guess hip hop has been a big influence on us when it comes to that, because there’s so much soul in hip hop music and hip hop music is mostly electronic production.

And we’ve always enjoyed the idea of juxtaposition. What sounds don’t really go together but that we can put together and make things really interesting?”

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now I listen to a lot of Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Al Green. I don’t really have one particular style of music that’s like, ‘This is what I like to listen to.’”

Echoes of all of these influences are found throughout Voices. “Nothing but Trouble” features a tight drumbeat and walls of guitar distortion—as well as a shredding guitar solo. “Fall In Love” is built around a thick groove of bass and programmed drum arrangements. “Bill Murray” (so named after one of Carter and Barthel’s visual sketches, in which the actor is featured in the video to the song, looking forlorn) is all dreamy guitar and drum machine, Barthel oozing the lyrics on top. It all plays like an obscenely genius mashup of a dive bar jukebox.

This begs the question of how a Phantogram song takes shape. With such an unorthodox approach to music and a myriad of influences flowing into their songs, Phantogram’s songwriting process can’t be the same as, say, a folk singer, a matter of finding a chord progression on a guitar or stumbling upon a catchy melody. Or can it?

The answer is both yes and no.

ON THEIR CREATIVE PROCESS:

“It’s different every time,” Carter explains. “Sometimes the song starts on an acoustic guitar, sometimes on piano. Sometimes we’ll chop up an old soul sample or something and write a song in the key of what I’ve chopped up.”

Since Carter and Barthel have known each other since junior high, a fact that helps explain their artistic symbiosis. “It’s just a very collaborative process,” Carter muses. “We both write music. A lot of times we make beats—like every day—on the side. We’re just this great duo that works really well together. We have this kind of psychic energy when we work and it’s easy to read each other. We have a very similar vision in what we do.”

Inevitably, though, when Carter discusses the band’s songwriting process, the discussion somehow finds its way back to the connection between sound and vision. “Sometimes [a song] comes from a phrase that one of us may have heard somebody say on the subway,” he explains, “and then [we’ll] just end up writing lyrics or coming up with some kind of visual scheme between the two of us and then we write music based around what visual scenario we’re discussing.”

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Not surprisingly, Phantogram puts a lot of thought and planning into their live show, where sound and vision are inseparable. To help recreate their meticulously crafted sound in concert, Carter and Barthel have enlisted the support of additional musicians. “We have our good friends Chris Carhart on drums and Nick Shelestak on guitar, synths, and samples,” he says.

In addition to fleshing out the sound, Phantogram is busy planning the look of their live show. “We’re working with a new lighting designer,” says Carter. “It’s gonna be a whole new light show. We’re really excited.

It’s gonna be a real dynamic and fun set to play every night.”Lest anyone think that Phantogram’s show will devolve into sheer spectacle, Carter is quick to qualify himself. “I mean, I can’t promise that Sarah is gonna jump out in

“ WE KNOW

THAT WE HAVE NO BOUNDARIES ON WHAT WE DO a bubble across the audience or do any pyrotechnics,” he jokes, referring to the live show of their pals, the Flaming Lips. “But it’s gonna pretty cool.”

Phantogram will take the live show through the United States, across the pond, and back. Carter hopes that they can also play for audiences in places they have yet to perform. “All of April we’re gonna be doing the U.S. again, a full U.S. tour. May we’re going to the UK and Europe. And then some more U.S. touring in June. And I’m hoping that we can go to Australia and Japan sometime this year. I’m not sure if it’s gonna happen or not but I’d truly love to because we’ve never gotten to play out there.”

As for what Phantogram does after touring in support of Voices, that’s anyone’s guess. Barthel has stated that they left a lot of music off the album, hinting that it might surface on a future release. And Carter? Well, he’s ■ enticingly cryptic.“What’s exciting for us as a band is that we have this well of so many untapped ideas,” he says, but then declines to elaborate. “We know that we have no boundaries on what we do.”

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“

richard

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RICHARD

AVEDON A PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST SUMMER

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w

hat do Jean Genet, Jimmy Durante, Brigitte Bardot, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jacques Cousteau, Andy Warhol, and Lena Horne have in common? They were a few of the many personalities caught on film by photographer Richard Avedon. For more than fifty years, Richard Avedon’s portraits have filled the pages of the country’s finest magazines. His stark imagery and brilliant insight into his subjects’ characters has made him one of the premier American portrait photographers.

Born in New York in 1923, Richard Avedon dropped out of high school and joined the Merchant Marine’s photographic section. Upon his return in 1944, he found a job as a photographer in a department store. Within two years he had been “found” by an art director at Harper’s Bazaar and was producing work for them as well as Vogue, Look, and a number of other magazines. During the early years, Avedon made his living primarily through work in advertising. His real passion, however, was the portrait and its ability to express the essence of its subject.

As Avedon’s notoriety grew, so did the opportunities to meet and photograph celebrities from a broad range of disciplines. Avedon’s ability to present personal views of public figures, who were otherwise distant and inaccessible, was immediately recognized by the public and the celebrities themselves. Many sought out Avedon for their most public images. His artistic style brought a sense of sophistication and authority to the portraits. More than anything, it is Avedon’s ability to set his subjects at ease that helps him create true, intimate, and lasting photographs.

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“All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

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Throughout his career Avedon has maintained a unique style all his own. Famous for their minimalism, Avedon portraits are often well lit and in front of white backdrops. When printed, the images regularly contain the dark outline of the film in which the image was framed. Within the minimalism of his empty studio, Avedon’s subjects move freely, and it is this movement which brings a sense of spontaneity to the images. Often containing only a portion of the person being photographed, the images seem intimate in their imperfection. While many photographers are interested in either catching a moment in time or preparing a formal image, Avedon has found a way to do both.

Beyond his work in the magazine industry, Avedon has collaborated on a number of books of portraits. In 1959 he worked with Truman Capote on a book that documented some of the most famous and important people of the century. Observations included images of Buster Keaton, Gloria

Vanderbilt, Pablo Picasso, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mae West. Around this same time he began a series of images of patients in mental hospitals. Replacing the controlled environment of the studio with that of the hospital he was able to recreate the genius of his other portraits with non-celebrities. The brutal reality of the lives of the insane was a bold contrast to his other work. Years later he would again drift from his celebrity portraits with a series of studio images of drifters, carnival workers, and working class Americans.

Throughout the 1960s Avedon continued to work for Harper’s Bazaar and in 1974 he collaborated with James Baldwin on the book Nothing Personal. Having met in New York in 1943, Baldwin and Avedon were friends and collaborators for more than thirty years. For all of the 1970s and 1980s Avedon continued working for Vogue magazine, where he would take some of the most famous portraits of the decades. closer, more intimate view of the great and the famous.

Today, his pictures continue to bring us a closer, more intimate view of the great and the famous. • SUMMER

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THE FINAL ENCORE

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