Fader

FADER 54 is an Aaliyahxtravaganza, as the world's beloved Baby Girl graced the cover of our fourth annual ICON issue. We made this issue with as much care and tenderness as we ever have and, accordingly, soon we will post an exclusive mix by DJ Caps to celebrate the very special Ms. Haughton. But! As ever, we also delved into the sparkling waters of newness: we explored Britain's burgeoning bassline scene, trampled Swedish snowcaps with soon-to-be-superstar Lykke Li, and linked up with woozy Tropicalian El Guincho on Barcelona time. We also went deep with dervishy princess Sahra Motalebi, clowned everyone with Chip tha Ripper, ate crepes with Jeremy Jay, and lost our minds just the way we like to with The War on Drugs. Get the essence of all these folks—and approximately 42,000 other heater-makers--on our Issue 54 download, which is totally totally freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee (that was a symbol of how free: totally free).

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Over the last several months we've noted the (RED) campaign calling in cultural heavyweights like Damien Hirst and Kim Gordon to raise money and awareness for the global AIDS crisis, but we've been wondering when they would get Eric Koston involved. That dude is God on ecstacy. Nah for real, he is pretty good with the skateboarding, and he and artist Andy Jenkins (holler Freestylin' magazine!) partnered to design a special edition Girl deck for the (RED) campaign, which you can peep above. Go the Girl's page on (RED) to see Eric do some tricks and Jenkins talk shop, then go buy the damn thing.

If you were to make a list of all the Ultimate Jams included in Issue 53 of the FADER (the real Issue 53), you'd have enough great songs to hold you over forever, or until the next issue of The FADER. We talked to Italians Do It Better flagship group Glass Candy in Portland, went to Baton Rouge to hang with Lil Boosie, drank beers in Vancouver with Ladyhawk, and hung in Brooklyn with the new guard of DFA, trancehall genius Ricky Blaze, and the dream poppers known as Telepathe. We also hit up star-in-the-making Estelle and next big thing Demarco to find out what they were up to. If that wasn't enough, we also talked to a billion more dudes and dudettes who are making some of the most exciting music around. Check out all that stuff and a bunch more now for zero dollars (free!) below.

Get Issue 53 now on iTunes,
subscribe via your favorite RSS reader here,
or download the individual F53 full-issue PDF here.

When you were little did your parents make you live in an old refrigerator for six months if you drew on the wall? No? Hmm. Anyway, Diesel has put together a new public art project they're calling the Diesel Wall, which gives artists the freedom to cover the side of a entire building with their work. They've already done one of these things in Zurich, Switzerland, secured other spaces in Manchester, Barcelona, and our beloved New York City, which is the next one to go up. You can find all of the pertinent info for the New York wall here, and don't even think about stealing our idea for a three-story stick figure dude walking an alligator.

Sometimes we wake up on the morning like Man what if today is the day when we figure out how to do everything ever and still be the raddest dudes while doing it? Cali Dewitt probably doesn't think about this at all, because he is a Rad Dude who, with David Kramer of Family Bookstore, has started a gallery called...Hope Gallery. The grand opening is in LA tonight, so if you are there soaking in the sunrays, stop by.

We do not think of lastnightsparty.com as a valley-deep bastion of discussion, but what the fuck do we know? Apparently very little (which is both disconcerting and strangely freeing). But the Merlin Bronques-mediated conversation between Chromeo's Dave 1 and an OK Magazine editor about Proust's In Search of Lost Time is so excited. Hey, we remember why we like reading, writing, and just the general use of words! "The thing about Proust is that people of our generation and our sensibilities can understand it," says Dave. "Even though, when you start it, the first hundred pages is about a kid that can't go to sleep until his mom kisses him goodnight." Then he talks about how they get a lot of gay press in the UK and Lindsey Hunter gets sort of sad. Maybe this is what happens in web2.0?

Dudes! FADER Japan dudes, hook this up. Coming to Nippon nerdhuts in July for only 50 bones, the Korg DS-10 turns your little Nintendo thing into a little grime/bloghouse/minimal studio and we want one. Ever since Boy In Da Corner we have been shocking the hell out of ourselves trying to make jams with our video games. So as soon as we get one of these in the mail, expect things to slow down on the blog for awhile and the magazine will only be 20 pages.

We never really know when it's going to show up, but every time it does we all huddle around and marvel at the latest issue of FADER Japan—the mag that is quickly inching away from ours and into its own territory. This issue, the cover is really thick and there is some weird Ninja Tune 10th anniversary feature. We think it's about downtempo. Do you, FADER Japan! In addition to that there's an entirely original Gen F section and mostly all new features. If you can find it and read it, we recommend it.

Picturebox is the kind of company that we will consistently check for because basically everything they put out is totally awesome. Thankfully, they've decided to open a store where you can spend lots of money on really colorful things. The store officially opens tomorrow (March 21st), and from now on is only open on the weekend, which we are totally into. Hit them up at 121 3rd street in BK.

When we caught the 2006 Whitney Biennial we zoned out to dark video installations featuring Japanther, stared into Buckets from Jonestown strapped to giant wooden carts and ogled at partially demolished walls surrounding giant rotating candle holders that were dripping wax. It was awesome (duh), we brought our moms (seriously), and we’ve been counting down the days til this year’s edition, which officially opened yesterday. Featuring 81 artists, the biennial actually extends beyond the museum’s walls and into the Park Avenue Armory, where F44 cover stars Gang Gang Dance will be playing on Sunday evening. New York Magazine says the whole thing has a “neo-hippie outlook”—referring to numerous collaborations and communal atmosphere—which we’re into so you’ll see us there trying to explain to mom (again) why this is important.

Back in December, we asked Jay Howell to submit a list for our Listmania and dude came super correct with Best Dogs of 2007. No joke, we have two separate but identical dog calendars in the FADER office. You see that post below this one about synergy? We are not joking. San Franciscans like him can feel his connective spiritual art moonbeams when his show, "Punks Git Cut" opens at 111 Minna Gallery tomorrow evening. PS the information about the show says "Painting, photos, animations and raw ass dudes jammin fuck all night." Real talk.

New York is so saturated with media that it sometimes seems like each of the city’s alleged eight million stories have been told eight million times. Then something like Ramin Bahrani’s 2006 film Man Push Cart comes and illuminates a facet of New York everyone here sees everyday but never thinks about. The story of a former Pakistani popstar resigned to life as a Midtown pushcart vendor, Bahrani’s directorial debut offered a jarring slice of Muslim immigrant life in post-9/11 New York. Chop Shop, opening at New York’s Film Forum today, is another compact yet epic portrait of unknown NYC, this time following 12-year-old Latino orphan Alejandro (Alejandro Polanco) and his teenage sister Isamar (Isamar Gonzales) as they eke out a third world existence literally in the shadow of Shea Stadium’s “Make Dreams Happen” banner.

While anyone who’s lived here long enough to have had their car windows smashed on a Sunday can point you to the teeming sea of scrap heaps and bodyshops known as Willets Point (aka “the Iron Triangle”), Bahrani scoops the tabloids by immersing us in the lives of pre-pubescent boys who sleep in the same garages they hustle cars into by day. We spoke with Bahrani about Chop Shop, which has gathered City of God comparisons since debuting at Cannes last June, over espressos earlier this month. See what he had to say after the jump. more...

For the 52nd issue of The FADER we flexed our journalistic muscles to find out what was happening with music in Africa right now—from Ghanaian hiplife to the South African Kwaito scene, to our cover features on Malawian singer/Radioclit protégé/current East London resident Esau Mwamwaya, and BLK JKS, a South African dub-metal-ska-everything quartet that we should all probably keep our eyes on in 2008. In addition, we have more of what you'd expect from the FADER, including profiles on underwater drum circle jammers High Places and a glimpse at bassline mega star in the making T2, among like a million other real exciting styles and musics and GOOD LOOKS.

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Holy shitstains on clean underwears! Our cerebral envisioning of the upcoming Pineapple Express already had us calling it the best film of 2008 (imagine: an Apatow comedy helmed by one our favorite young directors!), but now that we've actually seen a trailer of it, we're sure Pineapple Express is a lock for best stoner action comedy of our lifetime. Is it August yet? Does anyone know of any test screenings in Sherman Oaks that we can sneak into?

The FADER has never made it a secret that we aim to make our magazine one of the most visually compelling in the business. We reach out to some of the world's finest photographers to help us make our stories stick indelibly in your brain, and last week, two of those photographers were awarded prizes in the 51st Annual World Press Photo Contest, one of the (if not the) most prestigious juried competitions in photojournalism. Ariana Lindquist, who shot our Chinese Rock story in Issue 44, won the 1st Prize for a single image in the Arts & Entertainment category with another of her Chinese subjects, while Carolyn Drake, whose photos will appear in Issue 52, won 2nd Prize in the Daily Life stories category for her series of residents in the Ukrainian mining town of Torez. Congrats to both of them. And to the judges of World Press Photo, subscriptions to The FADER can be purchased here.

We've tried to keep up with multi-talented Mike Mills since talking to him and Roman Coppola in FADER 11 (Spring 2002) about their fledgling, now established, production company The Directors Bureau, of which Mills is no longer officially a part. Bureau officials assure us he's still family, but he's now working on personal projects like MAJOR MOTION PICTURES and tiny little art books like Fireworks, available for a pittance from Zurich publishers Nieves.

Where the Wild Things Are is going to be the best movie of 2009. Okay we're making this judgment based on a couple fuzzy pictures, but you know what, no one told your mom to calm down after the ultrasound, pal, so let it be. This most recent still shows young Max (Max Records) standing among the Wild Things (an earlier still is after the jump). Adapted by Jonze and Dave Eggers from Maurice Sendak's book, with a soundtrack supposedly involving Karen O, Wild Things is now in post-production, so expect more images to leak over the coming months. more...

Occasionally we just want to feel calm. Tomorrow night we will, thank you Karen Kilimnik for making that happen by having a show opening tomorrow evening at 303 Gallery in New York City. This show probably made a lot of people uncalm to organize but we don't have to know about that, just have to look at A Summer Day, 1763 (above) and unimagine. Thanks for taking care of that for us.

Once again, The FADER and its extended family present our version of the Best of the Year list type things, none of which have anything to do with anything that will help Mom and Dad buy you something cool. Sorry! Click more for the real talk. more...