Subbacultcha magazine – The Pilot Issue by Subbacultcha

The Pilot Issue

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The Chuck Taylor All Star

Made by Saša Ostoja

Made by you 2

Subbacultcha magazine

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By Floor Kortman i was to be a fighter pilot i was to fly so far i was to be an airborne legend wearing golden stars i was to be a fighter pilot i was to ascend i was to be a front line hero, to attack or to defend i was to be a fighter pilot i was to be a man i was to be a sex symbol and have lots of lady friends but then my momma told me no and mommaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s always right she said, my baby donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you dare to fly out in the night lets keep you here so nice and warm i can take care of you she told me how to drink my tea, what to say and what to do she told me how to cook my meal and keep myself composed she told me when to nod and smile like a lady is supposed she went on to dress me up, and style my hair in curls i was to be a fighter pilot but i became a pretty girl

The Chuck Taylor All Star

Made by Eduard de Leau

Made by you 4

Introduction

The Pilot Issue It’s one of the oldest tropes in the history of writing, isn’t it? Flying. Taking off, braving new heights, and soaring into the sun. Still, it’s that exhilarating feeling we wanted to share in the pages of this magazine. We dedicate it to audacious spirits so inspired they attempt lift off. They are up-and-coming musicians that put themselves out there, driven to start another band, to record another album, or simply to face the music. They are writers with a bird’seye view, who know how to dive into the heart of the matter, encouraging their subjects and readers to take the plunge with them. They are photographers who restore our sense of wonder by showing us the world from their unique vantage point. And so we take their lead. After 54 pocket-sized issues, we too are ready to spread our wings. This is The Pilot Issue of the reinvented Subbacultcha magazine. There will be no in-flight safety demonstration, and please waste no moments trying to locate your nearest exit. Sit back, relax, and enjoy. 5

Contents DIALOGUES

OBSERVATIOnS

Jana Hunter

Two Rants / Two Raves

Interview by Brenda Bosma Photos by Shane Smith 16

Text by Carly Blair 73 Lester Bangs

Printing IRL Photo Essay by Wessel Baarda 24

Text by Marc van der Holst Illustration by Wayne Horse 76

A conversation with Lotic and Holly Herndon

How a Person Learns to Love the Movies

Interview by Zofia Ciechowska Photos by Ériver Hijano + Zoe Hatziyannaki 32

Text by Basje Boer 79 Horoscopes Text by Brenda Bosma Illustration by Kazuma Eekman 82

Daniëlle van Ark Text by Floor Koortman 38

Firsts Killing Time with TR/ST

Texts by the editorial team 89

Photo Essay by Isolde Woudstra 46 A quick guide to starting a band Interview by Koen van Bommel Photos by Mariska Kerpel 54 Please Return to Highlighted Route Photo Essay by Lonneke van der Palen Poem by David Vassalotti 60 6

The Chuck Taylor All Star

Made by Dennis de Groot

Made by you

Colophon

Subbacultcha magazine The Pilot Issue, Spring 2015

Distribution: Patrick van der Klugt

On the cover: Jana Hunter photographed by Shane Smith in Baltimore, USA

This magazine was made possible with the kind support of GEWADRUPO.

Editors in chief: Leon Caren and Bas Morsch Editors: Andreea Breazu and Phil Krogt Copy editor: Megan Roberts Art director and designer: Marina Henao Art department: Floor Kortman Advertising: Agata Bar (agata@subbacultcha.nl) Partnerships: Loes Verputten (loes@subbacultcha.nl) Contributing writers: Carly Blair Basje Boer Koen van Bommel Brenda Bosma Zofia Ciechowska Marc van der Holst Floor Kortman David Vassalotti Contributing photographers: Wessel Baarda Zoe Hatziyannaki Ériver Hijano Mariska Kerpel Lonneke van der Palen Shane Smith Isolde Woudstra Contributing artists: Daniëlle van Ark Kazuma Eekman Wayne Horse Printer: Drukkerij GEWADRUPO, Arendonk, Belgium

Thank you Francesca Barban, Ida Blom, Jan Pier Brands, Manon Bridou-Koenig, Hannah Carpenter, Alex Christodoulou, Tom Coggins, Daniel Encisco, Saar Gerssen, Javier Gomez Martinez, Gisella Hagenaars, Bas Heijmans, Karolina Howorko, Maarten Huizing, Laura Huppertz, Anita Kalmane, Ilias Karakasidis, Keimpe Koldijk, niels Koster, Eduardo Leon Herrera, Crys Leung, Eva Maillé, Jacopo Manelli, Anna Marzec, Timo Militz, Zsuzsa nagy-Sàndor, Marlotte nugteren, Cathleen Owens, Bart Schiffer, Randy Schoempie, Emma Schouwenaar, Luke Silbey, Mirthe Poppering, Orla Tiffney, Aglaya Tomasi, Romee van Oers, Luuk van Son, Merinde Verbeek, Alessandro Viccaro, Valérie Vugteveen, Andrew Warfield, Marijn Westerlaken, Sandra Zegarra Patow, and Mohamed Ziani Subbacultcha Office Da Costakade 150 1053XC Amsterdam netherlands © photographers, illustrators, authors, Subbacultcha magazine, Amsterdam, March 2015

Subbacultcha We are an independent, Amsterdam-based music and art platform devoted to emerging artists. We organise progressive shows, make print publications and curate art exhibitions. We are supported by our members, who for €8 a month, have first-hand access to everything we do. Sign up online and we’ll love you forever subbacultcha.nl

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Editor’s note

Ten Years of Subbacultcha A letter from our founder Leon Caren The launch of this Pilot Issue coincides with a pretty special occasion, the ten-year anniversary of Subbacultcha. But what does that even mean? Ten years feels like forever. Like turning a corner. Or reaching a mountain top. It seems like a time to sit back, and enjoy the view. Pat ourselves on the back. Because we’ve come a long way. From playing in bands and organising our first shows to where we are now. But for this analogy to work, we need to come down the mountain at some point. I did that one time. In the south of Poland. Must have been 15 years ago. Some friends from university and I were on holiday, and we climbed a mountain. We started in the afternoon. With no water and no hiking gear. Just vodka and sneakers. There was a clear path to walk on. Elderly people were passing us by on their way back. We thought, If they can do this… And then we reached the top. And we took in the most spectacular sunset. It was amazing. We drank vodka. And then it hit us. IDIOTS. Guess what happens after sunset? That’s right: it gets dark. We made it down the mountain eventually. But only because this guy who had driven us to the foot of the mountain had become worried. He knew the area really well, realised we weren’t going to make it back and came after us. He led the way as we held each other’s hands in the dark. But this is nothing like that. We’re not heading back to where we came from. We’re taking everything we’ve learnt in the past decade and heading down the other side. It’s time for something new. To begin with, that little A6 magazine that has been the cornerstone of our identity for so long is out the door. Over and done with. We simply feel that all of those talented writers, photographers and artists we work with deserve more than a tiny booklet to present their work. Keep the last issue, the one from February ’15, and bury it in your backyard. new things will grow from it. We’ll find new ways and different formats to share the music and art we love. Like this larger magazine that you’re holding right now. And a host of other beautiful publications. Because we do love print. And for everything else, there’s the internet. We know how to reach you. So on to the next ten years. Let’s hold hands in the dark and discover new territory. And with a little luck, there’ll be a Polish guy ahead of us leading the way.

Rewire

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Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Holly Herndon, Evian Christ, Lorn, Mbongwana Star, The Bug, Grouper, Shabazz Palaces, Pearson Sound, Ron Morelli, Powell, TCF, Julianna Barwick, RSS B0YS, Oren Ambarchi, Svengalisghost, Blue Daisy, Jenny Hval & Susanna, Cliff Lothar, Bronze Teeth, Unit Moebius Anonymous and many more to be announced. 1 & 2 May â&#x20AC;&#x201C; The Hague rewirefestival.nl 12

Festival

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INCUBATE FESTIVAL

14 – 20 SEPTEMBER 2015 TILBURG, NETHERLANDS

ANNUAL CELEBRATION OF CUTTING–EDGE CULTURE

MORE INFO & TICKETS WWW.INCUBATE.ORG 13

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Subbacultcha magazine

Part 1

DIALOGUES

Jana Hunter — Brenda Bosma GEWADRUPO — Wessel Baarda Lotic + Holly Herndon — Zofia Ciechowska Daniëlle van Ark — Floor Kortman TR/ST — Isolde Woudstra TV Wonder — Koen van Bommel Lonneke van der Palen — David Vassalotti 15

Dialogues

Jana Hunter Interview by Brenda Bosma Photos shot by Shane Smith in Baltimore, USA

Last time we heard from Lower Dens, they were singing something about the end being the beginning. It was the closing track to their Nootropics album, and it left me wondering whether there is a certain truth to that. When I ask lead singer Jana Hunter about it off topic, she tells me about the phoenix rising from the ashes, victory matched with destruction. A dramatic interpretation, she explains. You have to hit rock bottom before you can embark on the road to recovery. She pulls out a quote she recently came across. ‘The human mind seldom arrives at truth upon a subject until it first reaches the extremity of error’. The word ‘error’ bugs her, but there is this tendency in human beings to bang their head against the wall and at some point realise it’s not doing them any favours. That’s probably what makes us so lovable, we conclude. As we continue on to the interview, Hunter’s words are considered. She’s a person thoughtful in her phrasing; someone who may have tried to evade, but does not shy away from vulnerability. For one thing, she called the new Lower Dens album Escape from Evil, and while first single, ‘To Die in LA’, may treat

us to an incredibly upbeat and contagious melody, it deals with confrontation. The brooding krautrock of the band’s previous two albums seems to have evolved into a more direct, warm and synth-heavy atmosphere on what Hunter describes as their most personal album to date. Having been called an autonomous wunderkind since her solo debut Blank Unstaring Heirs of Doom, Hunter has a way of closing in on you with her ghostly voice and introspective pop sensibilities. On the phone from her home in Baltimore, we talk some more about evil, humour and her jealousy of Madonna. Because who doesn’t want to be a virgin forever. I saw that you asked people on Facebook to translate your album title into every language possible, and then this incomprehensible thread appeared. Yeah! The thing that made the biggest impression on me was how many translations we got in some languages. Particularly in Portuguese, Spanish and German. In the thread there were discussions of what the different translations meant.

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Dialogues

Jana Hunter

‘Evil’ has many translations – even in one language, you mean?

cords in colder seasons, and never really had any substantial financial resources to work with, so it’s always been a bit of a struggle. But I don’t want to complain too much. I do Yes, and it really highlighted the fact that think that you can orient yourself in the face English is a more difficult language, because of struggle towards hope and living for others. a phrase in English can mean so many different things within a certain context, whereas in I would never preach it as a way of life for other languages there are different verbs that others, but for me it’s important. mean different things, which all group into Do you think musicians have the obligation to the same thing. lift the listener’s heart? Could you describe the moment it became clear that the album was going to be called I do think that’s a gift that you’re given as a Escape from Evil? musician, the ability to do that. One of the most rewarding things that you can have is to see and embrace that and to be able to We were at a friend’s place talking possido that for other people. In the past I got ble options for the title. We sat for three or a sense that it was happening, but I wasn’t four hours and just started going through books. This friend has a lot of books. There’s deliberately working towards that – not in the same conscious way, I mean. However much this one book with that title, and we started you bang your head against the wall hoping talking about it. It immediately evoked this sense of an action movie. I like that the book that the world will cater to you, eventually you realise that that’s not the point and you is about how us human beings are not just wouldn’t actually even like it if it did happen. suffering at the hands of nature, but are responsible for our own actions and for what The heavier use of synthesizers on the new we perceive as evil. record is uplifting. Evil moves in mysterious ways. Nootropics was my first time working with synths. It was fun. I definitely don’t feel like I Hope does too. [Laughs] had a knowledge of them texturally. After that record I learned a lot more. I felt I could write I read somewhere: ‘We didn’t want to try to through them, like there was a fluency. It’s write about being miserable while being misvery much like learning a language. I grew up erable any more.’ That could be interpreted playing the violin, then it took me a long time as a manic endeavour. to learn guitar. now, I can sing what I want to sing with a guitar, but it was only recently that It was taken a little bit out of context. We were talking about the first process where we I felt a similar sense with synths. I know what voice I want, what sound I want, where they brought the band together in a space in Balwill help contribute and where they need to timore, ’cause we wanted to write the record collaboratively. It was February and the space duck back, that sort of thing. That’s fun. wasn’t very well heated. Almost immediately You’ve co-produced the album, and that we had some interpersonal troubles. The brings with it the danger of distance. How was combination of those things made for a very stark and depressing environment. After a few it to hear your own voice over and over again? months we decided to reverse our approach At this point it feels like another instrument and find a new, rejuvenating way instead of to me. I’m hearing my own voice in context, suffering through it. We’ve always written re-

Jana Hunter

so it’s fairly easy to do. I’ve always recorded by myself, only now I got to work with more complex devices. I like the complexity of the technical side of things, creating sonic landscapes, putting everything together.

might feel like you’re the living tip of a nerve, but I think the older I get the less consumed I am with how that’s gonna be interpreted by other people. I feel I’m very lucky to have the feelings and sensitivities that I do and to know people in my life who have similar sensitivities. Even though they can be painful, they can be excruciatingly beautiful too. It feels more and more like a gift every day.

The more personal you are, the more universal you get. Is this something you think about when writing songs?

‘I think for a song to really mean anything for anybody, it has to mean something for the writer’

You can be really funny in your lyrics. What’s your view on humour in music?

Nootropics kind of only existed in a universal sense; there was very little personal lyrical content in it. There always had been in the past. What I was hoping to do with these lyrics is to not shy away from something personal. I think for a song to really mean anything for anybody, it has to mean something for the writer.

My sense of humour is very American and very dry and not always the easiest thing to detect. I forget that people don’t always get it. Sometimes it’s very crude and it must be very obvious – like, on our first record there are very obvious examples. I don’t really appreciate, for example, irony in a way that I used to as a kid. I think whereas humour is a powerful force for alleviating the mood, irony can be a way of really disrespecting what does need to be grave and important. I typically try to avoid it. If you can separate sarcasm from irony I’d be sarcastic.

You think about the listener in the sense that he sees himself reflected in the lyrics?

So it’s not coincidence that you open the album with ‘Sucker Shangri-lah’?

It’s more like a sense that that needs to happen, that there needs to be the possibility of connection.

To me that feels really flippant and pointed. That song is about a really serious subject for me. It’s a way of dealing with that serious thing, so as to not give it so much power.

In the end it’s always about relationships? Are we not all suckers? Yeah – sometimes to other people, and sometimes about relationships within oneself. Usually I like to write it as a relationship between myself and another person, even if it isn’t, just because it’s easier. The album breathes atmosphere and feeling. Do you ever wonder what these feelings mean? Well, nowadays I feel grateful for them. If you’re a feeling person and a person who lives in their own head, it can be difficult and

I don’t want to say that, but maybe I do think it. [Laughs] If only we were able to resist chocolate bingeeating sessions, then God will appear. It’s really counterintuitive. The source of all human suffering is desire, I definitely believe that, but you can’t just turn it off, like, ‘Okay, then I’m not gonna want chocolate.’ As someone who had her fair share of addictions,

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Dialogues

unfortunately more severe than chocolate, I think my version of what that means is that you learn to live with the desire and you learn to stop worrying about it. It’s not gonna go anywhere, but what I can do is stop worrying about it. It’s okay to want it and not have it.

and are able to transmit those things without falling into doubt. So is that arrogance then? [Laughs] Maybe it goes hand in hand. But then again, which of our favourite artists haven’t been arrogant?

The song ‘Dying in LA’ has one crazily contagious melody.

Did you ever forget about yourself while making this record?

Thanks. That was one of the first songs I worked on. The first version was a lot angrier and in a minor key; I put it in a major key, I came up with that keyboard melody and instantly it was extremely uplifting.

There’s a demo version of ‘Ondine’, it’s just the band playing in a practice space, where I later recorded vocals on top. It captures something that we couldn’t capture again even if we tried to; it’s one of the few songs where there isn’t anybody that I’m singing about, more just that feeling that communicates so strongly. When I was singing, I started to tear up. That’s when I knew it was perfect the way it was, because it was so far removed from my self-awareness. Does that make sense?

‘There are some people who become stars precisely because they have that lack of selfawareness and are able to transmit those things without falling into doubt’

Yes, that seems very precious. Will this album make for more dancing moves onstage?

What were you listening to while you were making this record? What I was looking for while making this record was people’s ability to take these complex emotions and render them into a pop song that others could relate to, feel them. Madonna is a good example of that. You can mistake her songs for being not bright, but her songs, especially the earlier ones, are just perfect. In fact, it makes me really jealous. That song ‘Holiday’, it doesn’t get any more perfect than that. It’s so simple and at the same time has a depth to it.

I do sometimes love to dance onstage. For me it’s fun, it’s just a matter of how much damage I evoke on the audience forcing them to watch me dance. We’ll see.

But hey, she was a virgin back then! Right. Also, that lack of self-awareness. There are some people who become stars precisely because they have that lack of self-awareness

— Writer, interviewer, soothsayer and stargazer, Brenda Bosma has been with us since The DIY Issue in February of 2009. A quiet confidante to all manner of stars, she’s the obvious choice for the most intimate and revealing of discussions.

Jana Hunter

Dialogues

Photo Essay by Wessel Baarda

Printing IRL

The making of our magazine has always happened in a frenzy. A happy, foolish frenzy that keeps us going until every last piece of content falls right into place. An invigorating process that leaves us brimming with anticipation for the little white van from Belgium to pull up and dump a fresh batch of magazines on our doorstep. Opening the first box, carefully turning the pages of the first copy, and realizing that itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all in there and looking better than we could have imagined. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s something really magical about the world of print that still carries in the age of all things digital. But after all of these years of magazine making, not once were we privy to the actual printing process. And so, with the last of the little guys out the door, we thought it was high time we pay our mysterious GEWADRUPO friends a visit. What we found, was dizzying. Fortunately, we had brought fresh-faced Amsterdam photographer Wessel Baarda along to document the process. His keen eye, his splendid use of color, and his extraordinary attention to detail perfectly captured the pristine space and gleaming machinery before us. 24

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Printing IRL

Dialogues

Printing IRL

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A conversation with Lotic and Holly Herndon

Dialogues We live in a day and age that shortcircuits the meaning of relevance and longevity. An album, even just a song, can cause a sudden wave of attention when the artist least expects it. And then, without a moment’s notice, the signal is cut, and we’re dialed into the next connection. But what becomes of artists when we stop paying attention? For just this one time, we reject the right to decide who you should be listening to. So instead, we’ve asked our two interlocutors, who happen to be rising artists themselves, to share the music that stimulates them to evolve. The first, Holly Herndon is on the cusp of releasing Platform, an album that explores the idea of turning the one-way musical communication

channel on its head, using her voice to question the status quo of artistic escapism. The second, Lotic, puts his identity as a gay black producer at the helm of Heterocetera, warding off the oppressors who have notoriously marginalised difference within the club music scene. Lotic and Holly Herndon’s trails have crisscrossed as the two have moved between Berlin and the US, yet they’ve never met before. And so the phone rings – Holly dials in from Silicon Valley, Lotic picks up in Berlin. We make the worlds of these electronic kindred spirits collide with an asynchronous conversation about the curiosity that drives them, the agency they have to make change and the worries that cross their minds.

Interview by Zofia Ciechowska Lotic photos shot by Ériver Hijano in Berlin, Germany Holly Herndon photos shot by Zoe Hatziyannaki in Athens, Greece

So both of you have moved back and forth between Berlin and the US. How do you think your journeys have influenced you? Holly Herndon: Curious people gravitate towards newness that they can learn from. I was born in east Tennessee and knew very early on that I would not be staying. When I moved to Berlin I wanted to learn more about the art and culture there, and when I left I went to Mills College to learn more about composition, and now I’m in San Francisco, the heart of Silicon Valley. I think you can hear the journey in my music, the musical lineage that Berlin offers, but also this DIY tech com-

ponent that this area offers. There’s all this talk about how all artists are now influenced by the internet, but we’re very embedded in our local scenes and how music is made and experienced by people in them. For instance, I only started using a laptop in my composition when I moved to the Bay Area. I don’t consider this my final destination. Lotic: It’s been a long journey from Texas to Berlin. I started playing the sax in the school band, and I did that all the way through high school. Then I started getting more into composition, while at the same time I was downloading tons of stuff and

A conversation with Lotic and Holly Herndon

listening to pop music. I changed from traditional composition to electronic composition because I felt certain limitations when writing for instruments. not that I think they aren’t necessary or that we’ve moved past them, but it seemed counterintuitive to be working with these things that already have all of these limitations. Berlin has a lot to do with where I am musically. Within a few months of arriving I became a resident at Janus. By having a regular place to DJ on good equipment to a crowd, my production became more informed. In the past three years I’ve come to accept that I’m really doing this, which was hard for me at first.

though; sometimes I’m just not inspired. You have to plough through it. How do you contribute in a meaningful way?

HH: I could be a monkish composer if I wanted. But I choose to be involved in a global community. I prefer to have direct conversations about what’s happening on the planet right now. I think music has this tendency to be navel-gazing and escapist, but it’s not the right time now. We need music to wake the fuck up and start engaging in a bigger conversation about things. We as a music community don’t just have to roll over and accept the status quo. My album coming out this spring is called Platform, named after the work of ‘I wanted to discover how music the theorist and designer Ben Singleton can matter and not just be this who talks about the platform paradox. He escapist thing that middle-class says that instead of designing the perfect future, it’s better to design a platform for white people consume’ people to interact with in different ways. I’ve been very lucky to have been invited to play music around the world. One thing I noticed, though, as I toured was that they were all now that you’ve come to accept it, do you escapist, a one-way communication stream. I ever worry about getting stuck? wanted to discover how music can matter and L: I’ve had days where I’ve been unsatisfied not just be this escapist thing that middleclass white people consume. I collaborated with a track, but that’s only because of my standards. I haven’t been affected by outside with the Dutch group Metahaven on community building and the design approaches pressure. I’m constantly competing with mythey’ve taken to express their care for things self when I work. Many musicians don’t exist that matter. I brought them in to redesign for that reason, they just make generic club how we consume and perform music, how we music. I listen to a lot of stuff and question tour and interview to make it more meaningwhat the drive behind it is: are the people ful. Suhail Malik talks about designing an exit making it contributing in a meaningful way – (as opposed to an escape) from the current whatever that might mean? state in the arts. That’s a very uplifting way of HH: I think people can be innovative their looking at this problem, whether it’s politics or economics – how can we design an exit entire life, it’s a mindset. You can rest on from our current situation? your laurels and become boring and comfortable. There are different concepts of So, where do we head to find our exit? what we consider to be ‘new’. But if you’re focused on pursuing what is unknown and HH: We forget but there are many people new to you, there’s no chance of stagnation. involved in making a piece of music, it’s not Every artist gets writer’s block or feels selfabout the genius icon any more. doubt. For me it doesn’t come from fear,

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A conversation with Lotic and Holly Herndon

L: Absolutely. Because people can stream records online makes it feel, like, ‘Oh, this person made this yesterday, and then here it is today, ready to hear.’ Sometimes it takes a year just to release an EP, what with all of the time it takes to make the music, record it, master it, and so on. It makes less sense to release a record in the traditional sense.

music, like the British economist Guy Standing who writes about basic income, or Hannes Grassegger, a Swiss economist who writes about digital neofeudalism and the correlation between bits and atoms.

HH: The album is still so important to the music industry machine because it’s really the only time that people get behind something as an event. My single releases don’t have the same gravitas as my album release. It’s mind-boggling. We don’t need that distribution model any more, but somehow the album seems to be this baseline that makes the economics move forwards. I would love to figure out the album conundrum.

‘I have a lot of friends who send me their music, I put them in my DJ sets. I want them all to be heard and make a living from their art’ As you know, there are myriad of musicians out there who aren’t reaching their audiences. Care to name a few who you think are pushing boundaries? HH: I first came across Jlin on the Bangs & Works Vol. 2 compilation. We’ve become pen pals since and I’m working on a remix for her. She’s got a record out soon on Planet Mu. I hope this year is big for her. The people I collaborated with on Platform – Colin Self, an nYC composer who makes very interesting and beautiful composition and performance art. The Berlin-based, Finnish duo Amnesia Scanner who produced one of my tracks. They have a radio play coming up for one of the major German stations and it sounds amazing. I collaborate with people who work outside of

L: I have a lot of friends who send me their music, I put them in my DJ sets. I want them all to be heard and make a living from their art. Why B from Copenhagen is moving down to Berlin, he’s one of the sickest European DJs I’ve heard. Lexxi from London makes sounds that are very of the moment. We’ve booked the amazing Danish producer HVAD a lot at Janus. He’s got his own cult following, but I also think he’s been overlooked because he’s way outside of the music machine. Do you think about a reality in which you’ve been forgotten about? L: I’ve definitely imagined it. It doesn’t really matter; it just matters to me. I realise that I’m becoming a trendy DJ to talk about, which is fine, as long as I keep on focusing on my music. But if the trend is over maybe I wasn’t doing such great work after all? But then, I need only to succeed in my own eyes. HH: I never thought about it. I hope I can make engaging enough work that people will want to interact with me whilst I’m alive. Post-mortem, the question of the archive and who’s deemed to be important in it and control it, that’s a very interesting political conversation. I’m hoping that as we move forward, those who have been marginalised will be included in it.

— Writer, interviewer, internet miner and talent scout, Zofia Ciechowska’s pieces first appeared in the The Gift Issue in December of 2009. Always there to keep us relevant and on top of our game, Zofia’s keen eye can spot even the roughest gem, while her words cut right through to reveal a musician’s hidden potential.

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Dialogues

Daniëlle van Ark Text by Floor Kortman

You may remember a sweaty portrait of Jay Reatard published in our May 2009 magazine. It was one in a series of sticky musicians photographed by Daniëlle van Ark (1974) immediately after their sets, a work known as After The Lights Go Out. We thought it was so good, we printed it as a monthly column. Featuring her work again after all these years, Van Ark generously revisits her archives from that time for us. The result is a juxtaposition of her past as the O.G. of punk photography and her present as a versatile visual artist and our role model in many things. Although already an accomplished photographer, Van Ark rejected the confines of a single medium, taking the opportunity of a residency at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam to evolve into a gutsy multidisciplinary artist. Ever since, she’s been producing works as varied as sand carpets, hand-written copies of art-historical literature, sculptural pieces, and collages, re-appropriating clichés about

art and her own status as an artist into hardcore visual statements. Guided by the theme of mortality, the problem of representation, and the issue of one’s status, the work presented here examines the elapsed period. By fitting modern elements into established art traditions, she relates past to present. Van Ark’s timeline does not comply to the hierarchy imposed by history, approaching both classical traditions and modern subcultures with the same careful consideration. And though we may not be able to always put our finger on what is going on in Van Ark’s work, that’s okay. Sometimes the only thing we know for certain is that what we perceive the work to be is everything it is, but as it appears to be a deception, it is also everything it’s not. daniellevanark.nl — Writer, curator, dark lord and unwitting ambassador, Floor Kortman’s first Subbacultcha words appeared in print in The Idealism Issue in the summer of 2013. From that opening Eye Candy to a meticulously curated Featured Artist selection, she’s pretty much become our Art Department in one.

Subbacultcha â&#x20AC;&#x201D; #1

Thomas van Linge

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Subbacultcha â&#x20AC;&#x201D; #1

Thomas van Linge

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Dialogues

Photo Essay by Isolde Woudstra

Killing Time with TR/ST

Few things are worse than waiting, particularly when touring. Waiting to get there, waiting to start, waiting to get out of there, and then waiting some more. It’s lonely, it’s boring, you have to kill your own time. As TR/ST, Robert Alfons has mastered the undertone of alone-in-a-crowd; his trademark is an infectious but dark sound that hits the walls. At the end of January, Alfons played two Dutch shows – one at Melkweg, Amsterdam, the other at WORM, Rotterdam. Joining him backstage was our trusted photographer and longtime contributor, Isolde Woudstra, who has a trained eye for capturing the many faces of the disaffected. Despite all of the challenges we’ve hurled at her over the years, she has never been one to back down from a dare. And so Woudstra too played the waiting game. Like two absurdist characters killing time, they went through the motions of pre-show exercises – movements, elevations, relaxations, elongations – to warm them up, to calm them down, all the while listening to Joni Mitchell. 46

Killing Time with TR/ST

Dialogues

Killing Time with TR/ST

Dialogues

Killing Time with TR/ST

Dialogues

Killing Time with TR/ST

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Dialogues

A quick guide to starting a band (ConVenIenTLY SeparaTeD In TWo parTS)

Interview by Koen van Bommel Photos shot by Mariska Kerpel in Amsterdam, the netherlands

PART ONE: How do you become a musician? To begin, this is a subject that should be approached with seriousness and openness. Making music can be fun, but the best results are yielded when you also put in some effort and some thought. That means that there are a lot of questions you have to ask yourself. Questions that could be, but are not limited to, the following: What is sound? What is music? Where is music? (In the air? Your ears? Your mind?) Who am I? Who do I want to be? Is there something, some feeling I want to get across? Which sounds resonate with me? Is it the black keys on a piano? The sullen voice of Leonard Cohen? The fiery bravado of Tony Bennett? Will I eventually grow tired of signing autographs or snorting cocaine from a stranger’s butt, or will it remain as thrilling as the first time, forever? What does it mean to be alive, at this particular point in time and space? There are no definitive answers to these questions, at least none that I can think of. But there is one thing you can take into account, music has to do with patterns, and your brain’s unique ability to recognise them.

So there is music in the beating of your heart, and in your breathing. It’s in your voice and in everyone else’s too. It’s the sound your fingers make on the keyboard, combined with the monotonous whizzing of your laptop. It’s in church bells, in forests, and in https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ. What I’m trying to say is that you don’t have to become a musician, but that in many ways you already are. PART TWO: Some well-deserved practical tips and genuine real life experience (obtained by interviewing TV Wonder, a band whose members have an abundance of both) I thought it would be a good idea if you started off by briefly introducing yourselves, since you’re such a brand new band and all. Teun: I’m Teun Heijmans, 26 years old. Originally from Rosmalen, moved to Amsterdam four years ago. I’ve got my own booking agency called Black Rice and I play in Those Foreign Kids.

Dialogues

Stefan: My name is Stefan Stasko, 30 years old and born in Hilversum. I studied history and now I work in customer service at nRC Handelsblad. Tibor: I’m Tibor Bijl, 24 years old and originally from Almere. I study music management and I’m currently unemployed. Marijn: I’m Marijn Westerlaken, and I’m also 26 years old and from Rosmalen. I run a guitar store, a label and a booking agency called Alles Los. Oh, and I also play in Those Foreign Kids.

Was the fact that you already knew you could get some shows decisive when you were thinking about forming TV Wonder? Marijn: no, the main reason for TV Wonder was that Tibor wanted to have a guitar band. And we all knew each other. The close relationship with Subbacultcha obviously made things a lot easier. Suppose you had to write a book on how to start a band and be successful. What’s the first chapter about?

‘The main reason for TV Wonder was that Tibor wanted to have a guitar band. and we all knew each other’

Marijn: The first is deciding what kind of music you’re going to play. In our case that was experimental guitar pop with a lot of chord and tempo changes and effects. We are heavily inspired by Women. And then I guess the second chapter would be finding people that want to be in your band. They wouldn’t even need to be musicians per se. You could start an experimental drone band and just fuck around with an oscillator. Stefan: The hardest thing is deciding what kind of music you’re going to play. It usually means doing a lot and also throwing a lot in the trash. Tibor: Yeah, and then you just play. It’s not that exciting really.

So except for Stefan, you guys are all involved in the music industry in one way or another. Isn’t it weird to be at both sides of the desk, so to speak? Teun: not really. I mean, it’s not difficult to combine those things. I think if anything, you’re even more conscious of keeping the two separate. But if you’re also running a booking agency, isn’t it tempting to book your own band for certain things?

So, what kind of person should you be, if you want to start a band?

Teun: no, that’s really just not done. Marijn: You could never justify doing that. So how do you get shows? I mean, there isn’t a single note of TV Wonder to be found on the internet, but you’ve still played a couple of shows, right? Tibor: Well, we know people at Subbacultcha so we just emailed Leon or Bas and said: ‘Hey, we’ve got a new band. Can we do some shows?’ And besides that, Teun and

Marijn have got a large network that we can use to our advantage.

Marijn: You shouldn’t do it just for the fun of it. If you have ambitions, you have to take it very seriously and put a lot of energy into it. Tibor: never do it because you want to make money. Teun: Or because you want to make it. But all that hard work pays off in… Tibor: Fucking girls, drinking beer. Recognition, that’s also good. The feeling of having

A quick guide to starting a band

something that’s lasting. Something that you can leave behind. Teun: It’s also a social thing. You’ll find yourself in places that you’re normally not supposed to be. Stefan: Creatively, it’s very satisfying. Marijn: I’ve heard playing music is also good for your brain, like, you won’t get Alzheimer’s or something. How important is having an image? Or something like a backstory? Stefan: We’re not really concerned with those things. We don’t talk about how we want to come across or how we want to be perceived. If anything, we mostly talk about what we’re not gonna do.

a big disadvantage compared to American bands, where there’s really no shortage of spaces to play. Teun: nah, a big part of America is just empty space, and if you played there every night, it would be for an audience of maybe three people. Stefan: What they do have in America is things like house shows. Because of the way that cities are laid out there with mostly detached houses. You have a lot more room to make noise. What about releasing music? How important is having a physical release nowadays? Tibor: I’d say it’s still pretty important. It’s good to have a physical release on a label. It means there’s other people that see something in your music, and they’re willing to back you. Teun: I just want to have my own record. It’s kind of like a souvenir, you know?

And what would that be? Tibor: To be associated with Those Foreign Kids. You really hate that band, huh? Tibor: no, but with this band we want to be much more serious. And musically, we have nothing in common. But apart from that, we’re not really concerned with having an image. It’s more based on our taste in music. We don’t have an interesting backstory or anything.

All things considered, how much time do you put into the band each week?

Marijn: Well, every Monday we practice for about four hours. Then there’s also a lot of talking involved, about what we’re going to do and stuff like that. There’s always something to do. I’d say the band is something that is always there in the back of my head. But maybe When do you know it’s time to leave the it’s different for me, because I also write the rehearsal space and start performing for an lyrics. Things like that are always on my mind. audience? In that aspect, it really is more a way of life Marijn: Well, there’s two things you can do, than just another job. and they both have advantages. You can start playing live quickly, and then you’ll get better a lot faster. You gain a lot of experience from playing live. Stefan: Yes, but if you wait a while, you can really make a statement with what you’re doing. We waited for a while, and I’m glad we did. — Writer, interviewer, landscaper (see De Tuinen) and subtle Is it hard to find enough places to play live? I’ve always thought that Dutch bands have

rick-roller, Koen van Bommel’s bowlcut graced the cover of our Fashion Issue in February of 2012. never one to rely on his good looks, he started pushing a pen and published his first interview just a few months later.

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Dialogues

Photo Essay by Lonneke van der Palen Poem by David Vassalotti

Please Return to Highlighted Route

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Dialogues

With the seemingly motionless setting sun tracing the outlines of a distant landscape, The Hague photographer Lonneke van der Palen wanders into an uncanny world. Bright pink doors in the land of the Hopi people. Beware of snow signs amidst sweltering 45째C heat. A disfigured cactus on top of a mountain. These are the things that would go unnoticed to an ordinary traveller, but to Van der Palen, who specialises in revealing the vibrant aesthetic of even the most mundane, they are a source of renewed amazement. She sees a mirage of found objects waiting to be photographed. Where Van der Palen captures with the click of a button, Merchandise guitarist and lyricist David Vassalotti puts pen to paper. Verging offroad on many a Western states tour, he too is no stranger to the unbeaten path. The same shapes and forms assume different contours in his words: the Marlboro man, the wailing fadista, the poet, and the priest. Vassalotti is in pursuit of an active mirror. This is an intersecting diary of a photographer and a songwriter who have strayed from the highlighted route.

Please Return to Highlighted Route

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porched and planted as the evening approaches. all traces of individuality have been sacrificed to the whole. another tired american mind, massaged by half-dreams of tomorrowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work and yesterdayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s appraisal, starts to traverse the conscious terrain in pursuit of an active mirror in a desperate attempt to shake off the weight of assumptive oblivion and embrace some great complicity. a palpable thickness has set in and visibility has softened to a blur. The world looks new and what was once familiar no longer exists. Dizzy with a sense of potential I stand erect and advance in a repeating series of unsure steps informed solely by obscure shapes and soft light.

Please Return to Highlighted Route

Dialogues

Please Return to Highlighted Route

no clarity, just movement for the sake of movement. The fog begins to retreat and outlines assume familiar forms: The Marlboro man, the wailing fadista, the mafioso, the housewife, the farmer, the aborigine, the sheik, the politician, the hobo, the punk rocker the poet and the priest. Words come with difficulty in the face of such images of the brilliant, the beautiful, the diverse and the devastated. I see these shades and am able to think of nothing other than the complete uncertainty of every second. 67

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Subbacultcha magazine — The Pilot Issue

Part 2

Observations

Carly Blair Marc van der Holst — Wayne Horse Basje Boer Brenda Bosma — Kazuma Eekman 71

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Observations

Two Rants / Two Raves By Carly Blair “Kids these days” Over the six-plus years I’ve lived in the Netherlands, I’ve witnessed, hoisted and even been kicked in the head by my fair share of crowd surfers. Despite these gestures’ inherent presumptuousness (and the fact that I wear glasses), stage diving and crowd surfing never bothered me that much until the last year or so, when a minority of dumbasses started transforming this cathartic expression of solidarity into a pathetic exercise in vanity. Anyone who’s seen Ty Segall or Mac DeMarco live recently likely knows exactly what I mean: kids going up on stage, touching the musicians, touching their instruments, even taking selfies with the artists while they’re trying to perform, for the love of God, in some cases repeatedly. What the fuck?! I didn’t pay money to look at YOU, you douche, and I certainly didn’t pay money to watch you distract, frustrate or physically impede the musicians in my beloved bands. Sure, it’s unsurprising for Mac to at least act like he doesn’t mind, but what about his bandmate Andy literally kicking a guy offstage, or Ty bursting out laughing when a girl who had just flashed the crowd tried to stage dive and fell to the ground? These are not appreciative responses. It’s like the internet has convinced all these spoiled little monsters that they are entitled to attention and doing whatever they want regardless of how it affects the true focal points of the situation – the artists – and regardless of whether or not they have done anything to deserve it. Speaking of Mr DeMarco, while you’re in the process of upgrading your behaviour, can you please drop the whole normcore / Mac DeMarco rip-off style you’ve adopted of late as well? You know what I’m talking about: dumpy pants, plain T-shirts, oversized, shapeless outerwear, canvas shoes and perhaps most importantly, five-panel hats emblazoned with embroidered references to far-off locales. Clothing that was, until a year or so ago, rightly considered to be ugly and boring. Mac can pull off dressing like he found his clothes next to a dumpster because 1) he is a talented songwriter, so his ‘I don’t care what you think’ attitude is based in the reality that he does not in fact need approval from you nor anyone else in order to achieve something which is unquestionably valid; 2) he’s a true ‘original’ with a sparkling personality who people are going to want to copy no matter what he does; and 3) knowing him, he probably DID find his clothes next to a dumpster. Unlike you, who is probably just hoping to score some low-hanging pussy from girls naïve enough to think that because you dress like him, you too are probably set on a course towards worldwide success and you just might write the next ‘Together’ about them along the way, or you’re at least equally fun to party with (both near-unattainable dreams). Get your own style! And get off my lawn while you’re at it, goddamn whippersnappers!

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at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam

Two Rants / Two Raves

“Respect the artistry” Speaking of oddball musicians with penchants for distinctive headgear, original slacker king Beck just won his first Album of the Year Grammy 20 years after his only Billboard hit ‘Loser’ became the anthem of a generation. That he won over Beyoncé had many up in arms, including Kanye West, who rushed the stage in protest (again) as Beck walked up to accept the award, claimed ‘Beck needs to respect artistry and he should have given his award to Beyoncé’, then later admitted that he hadn’t even heard Beck’s album. ‘Who is Beck?’ trended on Twitter as disgruntled Queen B fans bemoaned the unexpected turn of events. So who is Beck? Rather than relate the various facts those Twitter folks apparently didn’t realise you can google, I’ll say that for me, he’s one of the most influential musicians ever. While I find his later work a bit boring, Beck released a ridiculous amount of terrific music in the ’90s, and not just on hits Mellow Gold or Odelay or the less famous Mutations and Midnite Vultures. All of those albums are amazingly eclectic and inventive and bursting with personality, but it was his more obscure early work which left the biggest impression on me when I discovered it as an alienated college freshman. Ranging from soul-crushingly somber (‘Goin’ Nowhere Fast’, ‘Cyanide Breath Mint’) to absurd (‘Steve Threw Up’, ‘Satan Gave Me a Taco’), it embodied an anarchic, unabashedly weird spirit which primed me for countless idiosyncratic artists to follow. Speaking of musicians with dark folk pasts, how about that Father John Misty, eh?! Before adopting his current moniker, Joshua ‘J’ Tillman drummed for Fleet Foxes and released several seriously serious albums under his own name. Despite modest success, he became depressed enough to hop in his van with ‘enough mushrooms to choke a horse’ and hit the highway headed to who-knows-where, and soon enough he was holed up in Laurel Canyon, writing a novel and reinventing himself as the considerably more fun-loving Father John Misty. He started gaining a lot more traction once he released the album written during this tumultuous period, 2012’s Fear Fun, and subsequent touring revealed him to be a performer with considerable stage presence and sex appeal. As if to thwart any expectations to follow some sort of drug-fueled party soundtrack trajectory, Tillman returned last fall with ‘Bored in the USA’, a bitterly comic piano ballad which is anything but bacchanalian. It offered the first taste of his new album, whose opening track proclaims, ‘Everything is doomed, and nothing will be spared, but I love you, Honeybear!’ as lush instrumentation swells in the background, nicely summing up the album’s juxtaposition of biting commentary with flowery declarations of love. While it does have its lighter-hearted moments, for the most part I Love You, Honeybear reflects a smart-assed, ‘horny manchild momma’s boy’ who realises exactly how lucky he is to have found someone to put up with him, namely his wife, and us listeners!

— Writer, critic, radio star and a real American firecracker, Carly Blair may have gotten off on the wrong foot (see the closing Firsts), but we’re all better for it. Making her first mark on The DIY Issue in February of 2009, she has been our resident indie expert ever since.

Observations

Lester bangs By Marc van der Holst Illustrated by Wayne Horse The ghost of Lester Bangs is very tired. Ever since posthumously publishing two collections of old stuff (Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung (1988) and Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste (2003)), he’s been working on new stuff. He’s been keeping up with music, of course (hell has an excellent sound system). Got into metal for a while. Slayer’s Reign In Blood was a big one. ‘Metal Machine Music [see: Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, “The Greatest Album Ever Made”] on speed. Deranged, atonal, insane. Makes you feel good to be alive, or, er, undead.’ The original wigger also held an admiration for early hip hop: Schoolly D (‘Smoke Some Kill just makes me totally identify with this rap thing, you know?’), Run DMC, the first Beastie Boys album, n.W.A… Went through a slightly misguided Lezzy-L phase. Typically Lester. Disliked house with a passion though – one summer of lurve had been quite enough, thank you (see: almost everything he wrote.) Loved gabber though. You should’ve seen him hakken. Grunge, not so much. Wrote a review on the ‘disappointing, lifeless’ Nevermind. He was wrong, of course – though he still prefers Bleach – arguably as wrong as his inaugural Rolling Stone review on MC5’s Kick Out The Jams (Main Lines, Blood Feasts, etc.). History repeating, but somewhere around that moment in time music started to seem like history repeating, ‘to this old, dead fart, anyway.’ Grunge was Black Sabbath (Main Lines, etc.) gone punk (the chapter ‘Slaying the Children, Burying the Dead, Signs of Life’ from Psychotic). Madchester: more hippy shit, though Lester reportedly haunted Happy Mondays’ Yes Please! sessions. But when reviewer Simon Reynolds summoned Lester up using Morrissey’s (‘[except for Your Arsenal] I only read his lyric sheets’) ouija board, he

spelled out the perfect, two-word review for it: ‘nO THAnKS.’ The aesthetics of lo-fi did appeal to Lester, for the duration of a few poorly copied cassettes, anyway: ‘Can’t make out the words. Can’t make out the melodies. It’s mostly just static. Love it.’ Wrote a song for the reunited Lester Bangs and the Delinquents (Jook Savages on the Brazos, 1980) about how Pavement ripped him off, disregarded it. After the nineties, it all became a bit of a blur. First everything went retro, and then retro went retro… Chill wave, witch house, rape gaze et al. were inspiring, but just the genre names, really, leading to a good old all-nite writing frenzy inventing more of those. At 30+ pages, it’s a bit long, but it’s a fun read, if you’re into that kind of thing. Tried to do for hair-metal bands what he did for Sixties garage bands (Psychotic’s title piece, plus ‘James Taylor Marked For Death’), convincing nobody, not even himself. The writing’s solid, but… tired. The ghost of Lester Bangs is very tired. He just needs to finish this piece on Taylor Swift, focusing mainly on the merits of ‘Track 3’, and then the book (working title: HE-L-L is a Four-Letter Word) is done. Lester is done. Done with music, done with being done with music. His next book will be about golfing. Hell has excellent golf courses, too.

— Writer, reader, captivating frontman and perplexing humorist, Marc van der Holst made his Subbacultcha debut in The One Liners Issue in June of 2009, piggybacking his way on a cartoon. An intricate word-weaver to say the least, he has helmed his own idiosyncratic book column for around 30 issues, we lost track.

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Obvservations

How a Person Learns to Love the Movies By Basje Boer There is something I’ve noticed. When interviewing musicians for Subbacultcha, I always – always – ask them about their childhood. How gimmicky of me, I thought. Then another thought occurred. It’s a thing, I thought. It’s my thing. I grew up in the Eighties and like everyone back then, I watched whatever movies were at hand: Desperately Seeking Susan, starring a shockingly cool Madonna; Annie, a movie I watched from the hospital bed after an unfortunate fall from the window, the circumstances undoubtedly influencing my movie experience and subsequent obsession with the musical.

Betty Boop bending her knees to the music, her wide eyes conveying innocence but her body telling you otherwise. A random, inanimate object comes to life to communicate with bigheaded Betty, dancing alongside her to the rhythm of the music. Betty Boop stands up straight in an upside-down world.

gia in and of themselves. I spent my allowance xeroxing my impressive collection of Marilyn Monroe books, pasting the black-and-white pictures on my bedroom walls. I liked old-man comedies: Mel Brooks, Gene Wilder. I remember watching Young Frankenstein through a slit in my sleeping bag, pretending to be asleep on the couch as my father watched it on TV.

Christian Bale lifting American Psycho Patrick Bateman off of Bret Easton Ellis’s pages, becoming all too real. This is capitalist Manhattan in the Eighties, where hard bodies and ‘Les Miz’ meet; where you breathe cocaine while dancing to Huey Lewis and Whitney Houston; where an axe-wielding sociopath goes unnoticed because everyone is too wrapped up in their own business – and anyway, who cares about dead hookers? Just don’t get any blood on the carpet and remember to moisturise.

During the first years of high school, that brief period when Vanessa and I played R Kelly’s 12 Play on repeat, I dressed my bedMy taste got more and more distinct as I grew older. nostalgic for a time I never experienced, room walls in movie posters. I remember I listened to my uncle’s rock’n’roll records – Bill Dracula, Death Becomes Her and The Pelican Brief. My mother and I would watch thrillers Haley & The Comets, Elvis Presley, Brenda Lee – and watched musicals from the Fifties, which on Friday nights, selecting titles at random from the TV guide. as I would later find out were works of nostal-

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How a Person Learns to Love the Movies

Frances Ha euphorically sprints along city streets, dancing her routines as she dodges oncoming pedestrians. Weighed down by nothing more than a backpack, she must be the lightest thing ever to exist.

vote on it. Closing time was optional in the notorious bar downstairs. I started writing for their monthly folder, a job that turned my obsession with cinema semi-professional. I remember trying to envision a possible career and conjuring up a I discovered indie movies, just as I had discov- blank future. I wanted to write, but that was it. I couldn’t have dreamt up a future entwined ered Pavement, Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. I remember watching Pulp Fiction for the first with cinema – writing about it, analysing it, pushing it like a drug dealer – or me looktime, and Chungking Express the night Shaning into a webcam, all straight-faced, going: non Hoon died. Karin and I were obsessed with Hal Hartley’s Simple Men, endlessly quot- ‘What was it like for you, growing up?’ ing ‘There’s nothing but trouble and desire.’ I remember ransacking the small arthouse section at a nearby video store. I remember Naked, Killing Zoe and La Haine – raw yet stylish visions that link the private to the existential. After watching Trainspotting I remember going out into the night air exhilarated, an echo of my mother and her friends leaving the movie theatre after West Side Story. It was the Sixties and they were dancing in the streets. It’s Alien jumping on the bed – metaphorically, that is – shouting: ‘This is the fucking American dream. This is my fucking dream, y’all!’ It’s Alien doing a Gatsby, showering us with his shirts – metaphorically – going: ‘All this sheeyit, look at my sheeyit!’ He’s got designer T-shirts, he’s got gold bullets, he’s got Calvin Klein Escape (‘Mix it up with Calvin Klein Be. I smell nice!’), he’s got nun-chucks, blades, machine guns – of course he’s got Scarface on repeat. ‘This ain’t nothing. I got rooms of this shit!’ Scarlett Johansson, immaterial in Her, is once again nothing more than a voice in the opening sequence of Under the Skin. The sounds she makes aren’t words, they’re not even meant to communicate. She simply tries on her voice as she does her skin. Like Ryan Gosling in Drive, she drives. Like Gosling, she remains unnamed. He is ‘driver’, she ‘the female’. There isn’t much more to their identity. I remember the local arthouse theatre stemmed from Seventies idealism and Eighties punk attitude. We’d smoke during screenings whenever the audience was small enough to

— Writer, critic, dirty deejay and cinema junkie, Basje Boer was first spotted as an artist, and featured in our new Years Revolutions Issue in January of 2009. Plying that trade for the first few issues, she gradually evolved into our chief film critic and free screenings genie.

Observations

Horoscopes By Brenda Bosma Illustrated by Kazuma Eekman thing sticks behind a nail, something feels so soft to the touch. You orgasm faintly. You don’t look down on the deeds you do.

PISCES (20 February-20 March) Looking at the willow outside, its branches swaying in the wind, like they used to, you cannot help but wish you could give love so effortlessly, make a song every day, find the perfect chords, the perfect colours, be pulled apart and hurled into the air, into millions of the littlest pieces, falling upwards, downwards, across someplace else, like a shower, bursting in a fiery heat. A shiver goes up and down your spine, while your conscience explodes.

GEMINI (22 May-21 June) The only words you’ll say this month are ‘okidoki’ and, ‘Ehm, I don’t know.’ You get sentimental and wish you knew. At the same time a peculiar sensation is growing inside you that you like to call your ostrich egg. When you slice an orange in small chunks and the juice gets on to the keyboard and you encounter the stuckkey problem, a mighty fire starts flaming in your head. It crackles long after, but somewhere during the crackling you hear a crack. A furred thought has entered the space. Something tickles in your throat.

ARIES (21 March-20 April) Once upon a time a chicken breast lay before you on a plate. now on that exact same spot it lies again. A few hairs perk out of its flesh, a carrot made into a flower next to it. Little elysian fields, the waiter says smilingly. He hands you a leaflet that talks about the chicken’s past life on an organic farm; the wide roaming spaces, high quality grains. ‘That is so nice,’ you think. As you start to feel the proteins strengthening your muscles, you crush the paper into a ball and throw it at someone’s head.

CANCER (22 June-22 July) On Sunday you sprinkle some sugar over your porridge. It’s just in the blink of an eye that the granules liquify into tiny islands of sweetness. Moments like this, you say, raise you high above the bowl. After a cup of soup you unwrap a chocolate bar with both hands and bite off a part. Immediately you spit it back out in the sink. The tap water’s mysterious ways unfold before your eyes. The brain only needs a suggestion of a nibble, you think to yourself, as you barf up pinkish goo.

TAURUS (21 April-21 May) You haven’t forgotten – not even the little things, not where the sky touches the tree tops and the Milky Way, nor the races that went on inside you. All these memories make you mushy inside. You press a finger against your flesh, you press deeper, stir around, soon another finger slips in there, a whole arm, a leg. You hesitate for a second, caught offguard like this. As soon as you wiggle your big toe, a choice has been made. Some-

LEO (23 July-23 August) You wake up. An early light. Something bubbles to the surface. Mornings never seem to roll on the mechanism of forgetting. By now you’re farting a Charlie Parker theme. Something from The Genius of Charlie Parker #4. It sets off a whole new imagery in your head, one

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Horoscopes

SAGITTARIUS (22 November-21 December) Sucking up the air deep down in the bottom parts of your lungs, you hold the balloon close so as to seal your lips around the opening. To exhale is the sweetest thing. Spots of light start dancing on your retina. The child pulls at your pants. You hand over the balloon. It was never yours to begin with, the balloon, nor the air inside it. You watch the dot grow smaller and smaller. This may not end well.

where saxophones have no holes, where Charlie’s cheeks are always full. You leap out of bed. Sticky secretions fall from the corners of your eyes. Dust particles and eye discharge never looked so right for each other. VIRGO (24 August-22 September) As you try to convert .lnk files into something your Mac can read, you curse your younger self for ever buying a PC. In the end you curse your older self for not getting it right. Is it ten out of ten times already? The mistakes aren’t getting any better, damn it! Once again you ask someone else to do it for you, but they all seem to have lost interest. Maybe it’s just lack of respect for your software problems. Who knows? ‘.lnk files will be .lnk files,’ you hear your mother say.

CAPRICORN (22 December-20 January) After your third break-up you consciously decide to loathe people in general and three persons in particular. Retreated in your cabin in the woods you are visited by a vulture, a hyena and a grizzly bear. One by one they show up at your door. A strange feeling goes through you while stroking those furry jerks. Their cans only momentarily full. In the evening they snuggle up where once ten toes were. You are not entirely sure if the hot throbbing in your veins has to do with the heat of their bodies or some other fire finding its way through.

LIBRA (23 September-22 October) Waiting in front of the traffic light for it to turn green, it seems like the perfect occasion, so you consciously let a long and noisy fart escape the asylum of your ass. What a wonderful world, you think, for this immodest fart to be dissolved into its arms, and turn to smile at the driver in the car next to you. You give him the thumbs up as you flap your butt cheeks. From now on you’ll eat less simple carbs. You nod at the driver to seal the deal. He honks and leaves you alone with your intentions.

AQUARIUS (21 January-19 February) Finding yourself in an empty room of an empty building that for whatever reason you stepped into, as it is the second time you find yourself here, you’re afraid it will happen to you all over again. You sense the solving emptiness of the place, it floats under you like a current. You hurry towards the exit and reflect it wasn’t all that much. There wasn’t even Wi-Fi. Somewhere this architect must have known; the amazingness is always where the connection is. You trip over pinkish goo.

SCORPIO (23 October-21 November) You enter and soon enough flashbulbs go off in the dark. A mammoth in a Pleistocene grassland! The sound of snapping vertebrae! A pandemonium of eye floaters! In reality you are tangled up in the exquisiteness of someone’s skin. How you managed to end up here from being hungry and tired is such a curious yet glorious thing. The jury’s verdict appears to be unanimous: you are given the grand prize. It shines as if newly polished. You hope you could be rubbing it for ever.

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a CaMPingFLigHT To LowLands Paradise / aUgUsT 21 + 22 + 23 / 2015 eveneMenTenTerrein waLiBi HoLLand BiddingHUizen / THe neTHerLands

Ben Howard RMajor Lazer R THe CHeMiCaL BroTHers BasTiLLeRPassengerRUnderworLdRMark ronson (DJ-set) inTerPoLR TaMe iMPaLa Rjoey Bada$$ ConCerTgeBoUworkesTRBoys noize b2b BaaUer enTer sHikariRaLL TiMe LowRkodaLineRjosé gonzáLez CariBoUR sBTrkTR years & yearsReCHosMiTH django djangoR TwenTy one PiLoTsRBear’s den rooTs ManUvaRFoUr TeTR HUdson MoHawke (live) MØR Todd Terje & THe oLsensRiMeLda May BenjaMin CLeMenTineRaLLaH-LasRLa roUx MarCeL deTTMann RMax CooPer presents eMergenCe jaCk garraTTRFaTHer joHn MisTy RCUrTis Harding THe disTriCTs RMigHTy oaksRCoUrTney BarneTT seinaBo seyRaLesTorM Rskinny LisTer RoUgHT vieT CongRPondR wHaT so noTRsHUra Bad Breeding RsLavesRjP CooPerR THe BoHiCas wHiLe sHe sLeePs R and + 100 aCTs To CoMe Check www.lowlands.nl for tickets and updates 87

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12 Hour PROM

The end

HAAg, Multiple voiCeS, e.v.A.

wereldfenomeen Hatsune Miku.

Met AnnA CAlvi, SlAgwerk Den

eendaags minifestival met o.a. de

tegendraadse songs van Anna Calvi

(met band & orkest), muziek van Boulez

keiiCHiro SHiBuyA + HAtSune Miku eerste vocaloid-popopera met virtueel 4 – 5 juni, Nationale Opera en Ballet Taal: Japans met Nederlandse en Engelse boventiteling

en Xenakis door radio Filharmonisch orkest en installatie-uitvoering door

internationaal podiumkunsten amsterdam 30 mei – 23 juni

The LooM of Mind MugiSon, pétur Ben,

BAroque orCHeStrAtion X rauwe iJslandse songs gegoten in vlaamse indie-barok. 19 juni, Bimhuis

ReSonating univeRSeS

Multiple voices. entree € 10 per concert. 20 juni, Het Concertgebouw

erDeM HelvACioğlu, Şirin pAnCAroğlu

Mix van traditionele turkse muziek en

eigentijds experiment leidt tot complexe soundscapes.

10 juni, Bimhuis

urbo kune YesteRdaY tomoRROw klAngForuM wien, netzzeit,

M.U.R.S.

ForuM eXperiMentelle ArCHitektur, Arnon grunBerg, e.v.A.

lA FurA DelS BAuS

25 uur lang verandert Muziekgebouw

Met een app laat het roemruchte

europa. Met concerten, symposia, films,

Catalaanse theatergezelschap je participeren in de stad van de toekomst. 31 mei – 1 juni,

Westergasfabriek, Gashouder

Annie DorSen

aan ’t iJ in de utopische hoofdstad van

Yesterday van the Beatles evolueert

installaties en een onderzoekslaborato-

algoritmisch gestuurde voorstelling.

rium. Het publiek mag komen en gaan,

kan eten, drinken en zelfs blijven slapen.

naar Tomorrow uit musical Annie in 4 juni, Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ

6 juni, Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ

volledig programma en tickets: hollandfestival.nl

Observations

Firsts In a salute to the pilot theme, and as a way of celebrating the people behind this magazine, we’ve invited our contributors to share a Subbacultcha first. Leon Caren The first time I thought of Subbacultcha I was sitting in my student room on the Paramaribostraat in Amsterdam. I was organising a festival with local bands in Paradiso. The festival needed a name. The working title was ‘Amsterdam is a Graveyard’, referring to a poem by Dutch writer and musician Pfaff. But then Theo van Gogh got murdered, and the name didn’t seem appropriate. There was little time. I was staring at my record collection for inspiration. I played Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr., The Velvet Underground, that kind of stuff. Then Trompe le Monde by Pixies. Subbacultcha came on. That’s it, I thought. Perfect. Didn’t give it much thought after that, just needed a quick fix. never considered that this name would stick with me for such a long time. Funny how some small decisions can carry so much weight. But that’s life, I guess. Bas Morsch It is August 2008 and we are planning a big party to celebrate the launch of the very first Subbacultcha Magazine ever. Issue 1. September 2008. The L.A. Issue. 5000 copies with 48 pages of 135 grams semi-glossy paper, to be delivered the day before the launch by some German online printer. It is 03 September 2008. The day before the launch. And – yes, you guessed it right – no magazine. We call. We get Stefanie on the phone. Stefanie says: “We’re very sorry but something went wrong. We are not delivering today… and we are not delivering tomorrow”. And Stefanie was not even nice about it. Our

solution? We printed flyers at the copyshop around the corner: on one side, the cover of the magazine, and on the other side, “Wondering why there is no magazine? Call Stefanie,” and we added her direct number. It got everyone talking. not having the magazine there actually made the magazine more present.

after they’d played their first Dutch show at the Paradiso. not many people were there, though many would later claim they were (me, for example). The Pixies later wrote a song about the afterparty, about there being ‘something there’. Turned out there was. Yes, there was something about that song.

Carly Blair

Floor Kortman

I attended my first Subbacultcha show within a month of moving to Amsterdam, and it turned out to be quite the fateful evening. The Moi non Plus played, so Subba owners Bas and Leon were in attendance, and I ended up chatting with Bas, not realising who he was. I started drunkenly ranting about the cover art of the latest issue, and Bas very charitably let me go on for a few minutes before admitting, ‘I’m the art director of the magazine. I chose this cover art because I think it’s good.’ I was mortified and started apologising profusely, but Bas reassured me that he appreciated the honest feedback and encouraged me to email him a list of everything I hated about the magazine. I sent him a massive list of everything I hated as well as everything I loved, and he replied very positively, asking to publish the email in our now-defunct Letters to the Editor section and – much to my surprise – offering me a job, thus beginning an adventure that’s lasted 6.5 glorious years and counting!

The first time I made a cover for our magazine I decided on a beautiful image by photographer Florian Braakman. The picture was of a naked lady on a bed, not showing her face, but focusing on her neatly polished fingernails and the burning cigarette in her hand. I was really excited with this cover. Unfortunately it almost killed our Facebook, as someone decided to call us out like the perverts that we revealed ourselves to be. You can still only see this issue online if you can prove you’re over 18. I think it was perfect.

Marc van der Holst I remember my first Subbacultcha show – the first Subbacultcha show, actually. It was a Pixies afterparty

Basje Boer So yeah, there was the first time I played Ace of Base during a DJ set. When the Swedes scored a massive hit with ‘All that She Wants’ in 1992, I really didn’t like or even understood the song, not even within the context of Europop. This is going to be a one-hit wonder for sure, I remember thinking. Instead, I was in for a whole decade of Jonas, Jenny, Ulf and Linn, those little rays of sunshine on our MTVs. Flash forward to last year, when Brenda Bosma hosted an Age of Aquariums party for Subbacultcha members at De nieuwe Anita, an occasion for which I changed my DJ

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Firsts

alter-ego from Dirty Shirt to Dirty Gemini. In an attempt to come up with some horoscope-themed tunes, I finally landed on Ace of Base’s ‘The Sign’. Yes, I played ‘The Sign’. And yes, it got me some whoops and a happy dancefloor. In fact, I might’ve played it during another DJ set after that. Don’t you hate it when you change your mind? Koen van Bommel I can’t remember exactly how or why, but four years ago I was asked to play a show at a Subbacultcha expo. It was on this fateful day that I met a boy named Sander. We became friends right away, and two months later we travelled to the Czech Republic together to attend a festival, where three nights of dirtcheap mojitos and sleeping on the floor of a run-down school building proved to be a solid foundation for our friendship <3 Brenda Bosma

police didn’t appreciate this, Subbacultcha always did. Isolde Woudstra Sometime towards the end of 2009, Subbacultcha asked me if I was up for shooting a Skype call. A Skype call. I imagined a person sitting at a computer in one of those tiny backlit office spaces and shuddered. But reality exceeded my expectations: there was also a huge mirror glued to the wall in the worst possible spot. Oh boy, have things gotten better since then!

Sander van Dalsum The first time I had to take care of a band at a Subbacultcha show during my internship, we ended up doing an all-nighter with Friendo and Cold Pumas. The next day I had to attend the office all by myself. Upon arrival, I dozed off on the couch with a huge hangover, slept the whole day and never told Bas and Leon about my little secret. Zofia Ciechowska

You move to a new city and find yourself to be one more immigrant. You run into exploitation and cross paths with social isolation. Then you head to your first Subbacultcha show and it’s like you’re part of something greater. Two years later you’re the Subbacultcha editorial intern. Ain’t life great sometimes?

I saw King Khan jiggle his gigantic bare belly on the Melkweg stage at a Subbacultcha show in 2010. It was as if he’d swallowed an entire water-melon by accident and couldn’t get it out no matter how hard he wiggled and swayed. Inspired by his perfect pot belly, perhaps slightly sloshed, I cycled furiously to the nearest FEBO, crammed all my change in the slot and inhaled my first bami kroket. The second and third followed within seconds.

Javi Gomez Martinez

What’s definitely not a first is making the deadline on time. To me it seems there never was enough time for properly finishing up the text. Somehow that didn’t matter when all was printed. As I write this now and recall it shouldn’t be over 50 words, I realise it’s 51.

Kazuma Eekman

Megan Roberts

I was really excited when I first received an email from Floor Kortman asking me if I wanted to be featured artist for the month of november. In that moment I secretly felt like a rockstar. So I did a little dance.

Lonneke van der Palen

Deva Rao

I remember my first experience with Subbacultcha like it was yesterday. It all happened in the studio of Jaap Scheeren. Five photographers waiting to be captured in a photo. One with a pineapple on his head, another one wrapped in plastic like a cater-pillar in a cocoon. Me sitting under a lampshade in a white suit with a Venetian mask on my face. Isolde Woudstra came in and recorded this bizarre moment for ‘Suck on my hobby’. My first appearance in Subbacultcha magazine together with my great heroes. Years later it was my turn to make photos. Books cut up. Books on fire. Books in trees. Books on cars. Even when the

My first day working at Subbacultcha HQ was one of emotional extremes. During the tram ride over, I felt my initial elation at being taken on by the most enlightened publication in the Benelux/world give way to crippling self-doubt (despite my hunky exterior and captivating charm) – was I competent, informed and sophisticated enough? By the time I arrived, it was pouring with rain, I was wracked with apprehension and, as it turned out, an hour early. Yet somehow, when the hallowed gates finally opened for me, all anxiety turned to euphoria as I was bathed in the celestial glow of the Subba offices. I was home.

Way back when I was fresh off the boat in Amsterdam, proof-reading the dearly-departed Amsterdam Weekly for free in a desperate attempt to both integrate and ingratiate myself, I overheard a conversation between two people who would go on to become dear friends of mine. The first name-checked Subbacultcha thus: ‘I don’t suppose it’s technically possible for two people to resurrect an entire music scene—’ And the second guy interjected: ‘—but that’s exactly what they’ve done.’ Ever since, I’ve hovered on the peripheral, eventually editing google docs and marking up PDFs at weird times in ever-weirder places – from a glacier in new Zealand to my pa-rents’ house in the south of England via a dial-up internet connection. needless to say, it’s been a blast. And now, on to the next one...

JAMES VINCENT MCMORROW POKEY LAFARGE GAVIN JAMES CAUSES

06 juni 2015 MUZIEKGEBOUW EINDHOVEN

EMIL LANDMAN * THE WOOD BROTHERS * WENDY MCNEILL AIDAN KNIGHT * THE DUSTBOWL REVIVAL CHRIS SMITHER * ERIKSSON DELCROIX * LUKE JACKSON WINK BURCHAM * BROCK & THE BROCKETTES ROB HERON & THE TEA PAD ORCHESTRA

INFO & TICKETS WWW.NAKEDSONG.NL

TodaysArt.NL Festival 2015 25 - 26 September The Hague / Scheveningen todaysart.nl For more information about all our activities including the upcoming edition of TodaysArt.JP in Tokyo (August 2015) visit www.todaysart.org

XXX Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia & Effenaar Present

Moon Duo Earth The Soft Moon Trouble in Mind Stage Morgan Delt Jacco Gardner The Limi単anas Doug Tuttle The Soft Walls Ultimate Painting Klaus Johann Grobe

2015mg

5-6 June

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