A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Psychedelia
Flavor Lab in New Orleans make some incredible
wallpaper designs. This Art Nouveau-inspired
‘Flower of Love‘ design almost demands that any
room it decorates be used solely for drinking
absinthe and smoking opium.
Flavor Lab
4213 Chartres Street
New Orleans LA 70117
The New York Times finally gets hip to the new folk/weird America thing.
Arthur receives a passing mention.
By WILL HERMES
Published: June 18, 2006
ASA IRONS of the Vermont musical collective Feathers is stroking his beard. It is formidable beard; a biblical beard. He and his band mates—who mainly operate out of a rural farmhouse without cellphones, Internet, manager or booking agent—are at WNYC radio to perform their enigmatic, pixie-ish folk-rock on the long-running show “Spinning on Air.” Today their instruments include a lap harp, a toy xylophone, a Middle Eastern hand drum and an acoustic guitar hand-painted with animals and rainbows.
Ruth Garbus, a dark-eyed 24-year-old whose T-shirt depicts tractors flying through space, is talking about conjuring mystery with music, “that whole psychedelic thing of letting your mind go where it will.” Mr. Irons, 24, his long hair tied up in a bun, chimes in with a story about working as a carpenter and about growing up with parents who were “woods hippies, not town hippies.”
“I’m all about the old world, man,” Mr. Irons says with a mischievous laugh.
Perhaps. But he and his band mates are also about a new world: one of the most creatively vigorous strains of underground music. Initially dubbed “freak folk,” it looked like a trend of the moment a couple of years ago, when two California artists, Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart, attracted attention with charmingly shaggy, deceptively whimsical, largely acoustic albums.
But the scene they spearheaded has grown steadily and expanded sonically, getting less folkie and more, well, freaky. It has also gone international. And this season—the Summer of Love 2.0—it comes into full, wild bloom with releases, tours and festival appearances that promise nothing less than a new age of Aquarius.
Os Mutantes: Back from Outer Space
Though rarely heard outside their Brazilian homeland (especially during their brief career), Os Mutantes were one of the most dynamic, talented, radical bands of the psychedelic era – quite an accomplishment during a period when most every rock band spent quality time exploring the outer limits of pop music. A trio of brash musical experimentalists, the group fiddled with distortion, feedback, musique concrète, and studio tricks of all kinds to create a lighthearted, playful version of extreme Brazilian pop.
The band was formed by the two Baptista brothers, Arnaldo (bass, keyboards) and Sérgio (guitar). In 1964, the pair (sons of a celebrated São Paulo concert pianist) formed a teenage band named the Wooden Faces. After they met Rita Lee, the three played together in the Six Sided Rockers before graduation broke up the band. Yet another name change (to O Conjunto) preceded the formation of Os Mutantes in 1965, the name coming from the science fiction novel O Planeta Dos Mutantes. With a third Baptista brother (Cláudio) helping out on electronics, the group played each week on a Brazilian TV show (O Pequeno Mundo de Ronnie Von) and became involved with the burgeoning tropicalia movement. Mutantes backed tropicalista hero Gilberto Gil at the third annual Festival of Brazilian Music in 1967, then appeared on the watershed 1968 LP Tropicalia: Ou Panis et Circenses, a compilation of songs from the movement’s major figures: Gil, Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Tom Zé, and Nara Leão.
By the end of 1968, Os Mutantes delivered their self-titled debut, a raucous, entertaining mess of a record featuring long passages of environmental sounds, tape music, and tortured guitar lines no self-respecting engineer would’ve allowed in the mix (especially at such a high volume). After time spent backing Veloso and recording a second LP of similarly crazed psychedelic pop, the band ventured to France and Europe for a few music conference shows. Returning to Brazil, they set up their own multimedia extravaganza – complete with film, actors, dancing, and audience participation. Despite distractions of all kinds, the group also managed to record LPs in 1970 (Divina Comedia Ou Ando Meio Desligado) and 1971 (Jardim Eletrico), both of which charted the band’s shifting interests from psychedelic to blues and hard rock.
After 1972’s E Seus Cometas No Pais Do Baurets, Rita Lee departed or was fired from the band (accounts vary), and resumed a solo career that ran concurrently with Os Mutantes (her debut, 1970’s Build Up, had been co-produced by the Baptistas). Later Mutantes LPs displayed influences from prog rock, and after Arnaldo Baptista left the fold as well, the band’s LPs included a succession of bandmembers – later-to-be-legendary producer Liminha, keyboard player Túlio, and drummer Rui Motta. Except for a 1976 live record, 1974’s Tudo Foi Feito Pelo Sol was the band’s final LP. Sérgio later moved to America, where he played with Phil Manzanera, among others. After recording a 1974 solo album, Arnaldo played with a new band (Space Patrol) during the late ’70s and spent time in a psychiatric hospital before emerging for his second solo work, 1982’s Singin’ Alone. Meanwhile, though Rita Lee’s solo career began sputtering near the end of the ’80s, the band turned down a request for a 1993 reunion show by Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. Six years later, the Omplatten label reissued the first three Mutantes records, and David Byrne assembled the Everything Is Possible compilation through Luaka Bop.
John Bush
ANNOUNCING THE AKASHIC RECORD DVD SERIES – A BASTET EXCLUSIVE
“THE INVASION OF THUNDERBOLT PAGODA” DVD FEATURING “BRAIN DAMAGE” & “FROM THE MYLAR CHAMBER” SLIDESHOW
BASTET, in collaboration with SATURNALIA and THE IRA COHEN AKASHIC PROJECT, is proud to announce the launch of THE AKASHIC RECORD DVD SERIES.
Celebrated internationally for more than 40 years, and screening this Friday, March 17 as part of the “Day for Night” program at the 2006 Whitney Biennial, Ira Cohen’s THE INVASION OF THUNDERBOLT PAGODA director’s cut DVD is now available for pre-order exclusively through BASTET / ARTHUR magazine.
Ira Cohen, director: “It was in 1968, the year before Woodstock, between the giant bottle of liquid mercury Tony Conrad found in a doorway on 42nd St. and the Mylar chamber, we experienced a shared voyage conceived in three parts: The Opium Dream, Shaman and Heavenly Blue Mylar Pavilions, an alchemical journey born of out common consciousness – culminating in the akashic bindu drop swirling in the sky’s reflected azure. No minimalism here, but a maximalist adventure…”
