http://www.heliomag.com Helio Collaborative Blog en Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:06:07 +0000 Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:06:07 +0000 http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification http://www.heliomag.com/helio-mag-6-fall-and-7-winter-now-available-as-pdf-downloads.html
Those of you unable to grab a physical copy can download the PDF version of both Fall and Winter 2007 here:




Helio Mag Fall 2007 (9MB PDF)




Helio Mag Winter 2007 (6MB PDF)


Huge thanks to our incredible staff:

Creative Director: Buff Monster,
Adverstising Director: Dr. Romanelli,
Production Manager (and Spiritual Advisor): Nate Hahn
Editor-in-Chief: Jessica Hundley

Thanks to all the amazing artists, authors and photographers who've contributed to Helio Mag over the last two years. Your work lives on in shiny electronic splendor right here.

Justin Ried
Helion-at-Large


Be sure to let us know what you think: info@heliomag.com.]]> Tue, 29 Jan 2008 21:56:04 +0000 http://www.heliomag.com/riccis-riches-the-evolution-of-christina-ricci.html

("Christina", Oil on Canvas, Mark Ryden, 1998. Courtesy of Porterhouse Fine Arts, Los Angeles)

There's no other actress who can bat an eyelash like Christina Ricci. Freely reigning between the coyly sexual and utterly innocent, Ricci has become a totally unique onscreen presence. Since her debut at age 10 in 1990's Mermaids, she has played a range of fascinating roles and, in the process, managed to create an enviably inimitable career for herself - a list of film projects that are as eccentric as they are exploratory.

With two films out this year, Ricci talks with Helio about paving your own way...


Helio: I think people are always intrigued by the choices you’ve made and how you’ve evolved. You’ve been in this business for a long time and yet you’re only 27 years old. Do you have some sort of set rules/philosophy at this point in the game?

Christina: In general, it is a very strange business and you don’t have a whole lot of control over your own choices as an actress. It’s been more luck than anything else. This isn’t a business that has tons of great parts or makes tons of great movies. I take what I can get.

One thing is I’ve been incredibly lucky with my costars. You have no control over that and I’ve really been fortunate to work with the best. With Black Snake Moan, I got to work with Sam Jackson, which was amazing. He knew the rules. I would call him whenever I had questions with anything. He demands respect, but gives as much respect as he demands. But in general, in terms of taking on roles, it’s a matter of personal taste, of understanding the language or not. I try to take parts that I feel have some value and are saying something, regardless of budget.

But sometimes the best intentions don’t always make the best movies. It’s difficult to find roles that really seem to resonate with something in yourself. And it’s also rare to find characters that are whole in and of themselves - that feel real, even on the page.

Helio: You’ve got two films out that are completely different: Penelope, which is a kind of young adult fairytale; and Black Snake Moan, where you play a trashy nymphomaniac. What drew you to each of those?

Christina: With Penelope, I liked what it was saying about being yourself and about self-worth as a woman. And Black Snake Moan… well, let me put it this way - there’s a lot of movies where I’ll say ‘the scene where I went…’ but with this I said ‘the scene where she does this, where she does that.’ She took over. She wasn’t the outline of a character. She didn’t need to be filled out in any way, in my mind at least. She was fascinating to me and such a child, too. The more someone tries to manipulate with their sexuality like that, the more you realize what a child they are. I felt so protective of her.

Helio: Do you find that it’s more difficult for you to find characters like that as an actress?

Christina: Don’t get me started on the industry and what’s happening in terms of parts for women and the way women are represented. I think the more we have these women characters with no substance, the more we’re going to have art exploring the psychology of behaving that way. Once again, in our hypocrisy, we’ve created this behavior. I don’t know what the answer to stopping it is, but it’s so in our face now. We’ve gone back to the 1950s in terms of the way women are viewed in the media. It’s going to have to be dealt with. It’s so strange. I think about it all the time and I haven’t come to any conclusions. It seems to me that once again we got too goal-oriented and we’ll do whatever it takes to get ahead. And in some ways, in a male-driven culture, what it takes to get ahead is compromising yourself, and if you really want to do something strong for yourself, you have to think about how you get there.

Helio: It seems like you’re in the hardest place to make those decisions.

Christina: Oh, of course. I’m constantly being pressured to change. It’s ridiculous. You’re not supposed to be intelligent. You’re supposed to pretend to be dumber than you are and I’m not the brightest already! It’s even threatening that my hair is this color, apparently. And yet the more people tell you this stuff, the more you’re like, ‘didn’t we take care of this crap a while ago?’ I don’t know what the answer is. I hate to sound like a crazy zealot on a crusade, but we’re living in the Dark Ages. I question myself all the time. Just like anything, you need to try to keep your perspective and bounce things off the right people. It’s a strange business and it’s so intangible, there are so many illusory goals. Who puts value on what you do? I know I want some roles because they’re saying something. Life isn’t usually so clear, though. You just have to make the best decisions you can.
]]> Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:24:13 +0000 http://www.heliomag.com/bloc-party-no-more-working-for-the-weekend.html


Bloc Party, our favorite British import, has finally released their long-awaited sophomore effort, Weekend in the City, and we couldn’t be happier. Moving away from the bass-heavy dance rock that became their trademark with Silent Alarm, the London-based four-piece take a guitar-driven experimental turn with their latest effort. Weekend deals with timely issues such as the London bombings, immigration, drug abuse and criticism of youth subculture.

The album is produced by Grammy Award-winning producer and former Compulsion guitarist, Jacknife Lee (U2, Snow Patrol), whose expertise adds to the more emphasized guitar sound of the album. With a new sound, a new producer and a long-anticipated second album, Bloc Party has a lot to look forward to.

Lucky for us, bassist Gordon Moakes found some time to speak with Helio about Weekend, Jacknife Lee and the state of the music industry.

Check out our interview after the jump!


Helio: Was the recording process for Weekend in the City any different than the process for Silent Alarm?

Moakes: The first record we were sort of novices and we just went in and did what we were told, but this time around we had much more of a sense of what we wanted to do and how to go about it and what sorts of sounds we were trying to conjure up. I think we were a bit more headstrong.

Helio: Would you say this album is more mature than your previous album?

Moakes: I think that’s kind of true in a number of ways. We’re older and we’ve had the experience of recording and playing. Also, just seeing how a record is consumed and how people react to a record. I think it is safe to say we were a bit more controlling about how we made this record. Less of it was left to chance.

Helio: How did you end up choosing Jacknife Lee to produce the album?

Moakes: We were trying out some people and we weren’t sure. Our manager suggested someone and then we suggested someone else, but finally we came up with Jacknife Lee, partly because we liked what he had done with Snow Patrol, but also because between us, we knew some of the stuff that he’d done. When we met him he was really easy to go home with.

Helio: I have read that the theme of the album has to do with the displacing effect of living in the city. What about city life has been displacing for you?

Moakes: I would say that the use and the theme of the city as a backdrop when you’re talking about the idea of being displaced. I mean that’s not necessarily unique to life in the city, but I guess our experiences, outside of touring, are how London has changed over the last five years and how in a city, you don’t always feel like you’re a part of what’s going on.

Helio: Weekend also feels a bit more cynical than your previous album.

Moakes: I think it’s more focused. With the first record you can say there’s cynicism about various things, but it’s less focused. With this I can say that it is specific things we are cynical about, whether that’s the work-day life or cycle of drinking and working and things like that. The fact that we live in dark times, it’s easy to say, but the state we live in, in the UK, is similar here with scaremongering and the idea that the enemy is amongst us. It’s almost like we’ve gone back five years and you’re supposed to be suspicious of everyone.

Helio: In the song “Uniform,” you talk about disliking the mass-produced nature of popular culture, yet you are a part of this very phenomenon. How do you deal with that?

Moakes: I think we just have an understanding that it’s part of the whole process, the media. I mean I’m in a bar with loud punk rock music blaring, which people used to view as revolutionary, but now it’s just sort of background music.


Helio Mag's own Erin Goodhart spotted Bloc Party at the LA Weekly Detour Festival on October 6th. She says the performance was "Awesome! Rad!" and snuck a shot with her Helio Ocean:

]]> Tue, 09 Oct 2007 02:00:14 +0000 http://www.heliomag.com/politics-and-devolution-devos-mark-mothersbaugh-and-beastly-bombings-julien-nitzberg-and-roger-neill-discuss-world-affairs-and-operettas.html the films of Wes Anderson.

For Helio Mag 4's Blind Date, Helio paired Mothersbaugh with composer Roger Neill and director Julien Nitzberg, the pair responsible for the utterly unexpected theatrical hit, The Beastly Bombing. A Gilbert and Sullivan-inspired comic opera, Neill and Nitzberg’s creation is
the hilarious and unholy union of political satire and musical theater dramatics. Taking on the wounds of 9/11 and the current crisis in Iraq, the two have managed to imbue serious critique with wry Vaudevillian humor, all while neatly resurrecting the dusty 19th century operetta for a whole new age.



Witnesses the meeting of three great minds, after the jump...


Mark: I’ve been to very few operas in my life, but I thought this opera was genius, that much I have to say. I came in not really knowing what to expect. We didn’t know what we were walking into. This was something I didn’t know about you Roger, that you had this proclivity.

Julien: You had no idea what the plot was?

Mark: No, I didn’t know anything about it.

Roger: I’ve known you for a while, so it was so nice to have you come to the show and it was really gratifying to have you like it. You’re not just a friend, you’re also someone whose music I have known for such a long time. I remember the first time I saw Devo was on SNL when you did “Satisfaction.” It just confounded all expectations of what a rock band should be doing; it was really confusing and sort of mind-boggling at the same time.

Mark: We were confused. We thought we knew more than we really did.

Roger: Well, isn’t that the privilege of being young?

Mark: Yeah. Thinking you’re changing things.

Roger: Did you?

Mark: Maybe for a few people. I’m hoping someone somewhere thinks so, but that’s off this map anyhow. What made you want to do an operetta?

Julien: I had the idea for the basic story years ago when the first World Trade Center bombing happened. I saw it as a buddy comedy, like Midnight Rock—two Al-Qaeda terrorists and two white supremacists both show up at the World Trade Center to blow it up, but don’t do it and have to run from the police and become best friends. I never developed it because I knew it was kind of a crazy idea, but I would always pitch it to Hollywood friends and they would give me the 'get the hell out of my life and never call me again' look.

So what happened is I went to London for a script I was sent to research and luckily for me I tried to go see a Eugene O’Neil play and it was sold out. The only thing that they had half-price tickets for was this kind of mediocre version of Pirates of Penzance. I went to see it
anyway, and 20 minutes into it this light bulb went off in my head and this plot came back and it wasn’t commercially viable before. But here is what could make it less commercially viable 19th century operetta music.

I used to be in punk bands and I just feel like, God, rock and roll has kind of seen its day, and rock and roll is something from the 20th century and musicals are always doing music that is like 30 years behind the times. And if I'm going to go behind the times, I should go really behind the times, to 19th century music.

Mark: It’s amazing what you guys did. I don’t know when the last time was I went and saw a band. I can’t stand going to hear a band anymore; it’s so unpleasant and meaningless to go listen to almost any kind of pop music. But every now and then you see little fires burn where something would pop up, a little bit of theatre where something is kind of interesting. Then we just sink back into the world of all the desperate actors doing those things you don’t really want to see them do.

Roger: Can I ask you a Devo kind of question? You recently told me a story about the Kent State massacre and how you guys were all there and how that inspired you to put the band together and the absurdist nature of it to respond to something political happening at the time. Am I getting the story right?

Mark: Yeah, that’s pretty right. I didn’t really like school until I got into college. I went to small schools and I fought with everybody. I got to Kent State and it was giant, everybody was anonymous. All the people that were in fraternities, jocks and everything, they’d all be watching their watch when 3:30 hit and they would all head off to their events and I would just stay in the art department and print or whatever I was doing. So I had the whole place to myself, and then I really liked school.

I went to an SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. They did this thing where they were going to napalm a dog. They go, ‘OK, we’re napalming people in Vietnam every day; we want to show you what it looks like when you napalm something.’ Cops came up to arrest them and there was no dog in the box. So if you care about a dog, why not care about people. So I was like, ‘I’m signing up!’ So I signed up and I started marching in all the protests.
I didn’t have a very violent side to me, so I wasn’t involved in lighting fires or throwing rocks, but luckily I had my brother who was in high school still coming to rallies with me. I have a nice photo of him lighting an American flag when he was just a kid. So our school got shut down after the shooting because they killed students. And a guy I was in art school with was a bass player and we started playing together. We just tried to make sense of what was going on around us and we decided it wasn’t evolution it was ‘devolution,’ and that kind of became a vehicle to writing music and for something to talk about. So that’s a long version of how we got together.

Julien: But you guys never did anything overtly political, right? Like in terms of commenting on political events.

Mark: Well you know, we had much more vague and ironic humor, but it turned out ironic humor is exactly what people don’t get.

Roger: In some ways we are finding that we share something that you have like that. In early Devo, there’s always something to write about, like, ‘those are the guys with the crazy look that talk about devolution.’ We’re finding that journalists like the idea about writing about the show before they even see it, because it’s like, ‘oh, a musical about dancing terrorists, I can get into that,’ regardless of whether they think the show is good or not. It’s been quite beneficial to us.


("Godzilla Visits India", Mark Mothersbaugh, 2007)

Julien: Mark, now that you do mostly instrumental music, do you miss doing stuff with lyrical content?

Mark: Well, I still get to do some stuff depending on the project. Some movies I get to write stuff for and some TV shows, but it’s not the same thing as what you guys do. What you do is more pure because you guys created it, you conceptualized it. As Roger can tell you, it’s fun to write music for a film, and I don’t know if you have written lyrics for things, but you can imagine if it’s a Rugrats movie - it is what it is, so when you write lyrics, you’re writing about diapers and those kinds of things. So it’s not the same as when you’re in a band and you’re writing lyrics about whatever you want to write about. Are you guys going to do other things,
projects together?


("No Clown Can Save Our Nation", Mark Mothersbaugh, 2007)

Roger: Depends if there is a worldwide demand for us to do so.

Julien: Yeah, there is tons of stuff we would like to do.

Mark: What do you think you would like Beastly Bombing to ultimately go to? Just playing cabarets around the world?

Roger: We would like to get it to be like a real off-Broadway show or something.

Julien: Or a cartoon, like a Yellow Submarine movie with weird animation.

Roger: As a feature it would work great with that kind of cartoon.

Mark: Then Oasis would come in and sing one of your songs.


("The Divining
Prophet Rode His Hairy Vegetable Beast Through the Bloody Streets Towards Bethlehem", Mark Mothersbaugh, 2007)

Julien: Right now we would like someone else to lose money over this besides us. It’s like being in an old punk-rock band. Maybe we will never make money on this, but it’s really fun and cool.

Mark: Let me ask you, what about something like going to an opera company? Is it too cool for that?

Roger: Opera companies have their own mandate I think they have to satisfy, and this is pretty racy stuff for an opera company, even opera companies that specialize in doing new work like Houston and San Francisco.


("Where There Were Weapons", Mark Mothersbaugh, 2007)

Julien: In the end it really is intended to be an operetta, but nothing would be more hilarious than a real opera singer singing all the terrorists in Al-Qaeda parts. Like Placido Domingo coming out and being like (sings).

Mark: How about Beastly Bombing: The Ballet? (all laughing).


For more info on Mark Mothersbaugh: mutato.com, mutatovisual.com
For more info on The Beastly Bombing: thebeastlybombing.com
]]> Tue, 09 Oct 2007 01:00:53 +0000 http://www.heliomag.com/helio-mag-4-spring-and-5-summer-now-available-as-pdf-downloads.html



Helio Mag Spring 2007 (7MB PDF)




Helio Mag Summer 2007 (8MB PDF)


Be sure to let us know what you think: info@heliomag.com.]]> Tue, 09 Oct 2007 00:56:04 +0000 http://www.heliomag.com/change-is-good-blonde-redhead-keeps-a-step-ahead.html Blonde Redhead's guitarist Amedeo Pace. "It shouldn't stay the same."

Pace, whose identical twin brother Simone plays drums in the New York-based band, is reacting to the Village Voice's preview of their August 5 concert at Brooklyn's McCarren Park Pool as part of the summer Pool Parties series presented by Helio and JellyNYC.

About Blonde Redhead's latest album, the Voice opined: "After trying" really trying" to get into BR's new uber-slick, swirly and (mostly likely) career-hoisting 23, the best we can say is that somewhere buried under the strobe lights and streamers are bona fide songs. Good luck searching."

23 is certainly more accessible than Blonde Redhead's previous six albums dating back to when the Italian Pace brothers and Japanese singer/guitarist Kazu Makino founded the group in 1993. (Japanese bassist Maki Takahashi left after the first album.) At times, like on the title track and single, Makino channels Debbie Harry, and the band's dissonant, noise-heavy sound, influenced by Sonic Youth, has been replaced by friendlier songs, which actually are pretty easy to find, thank you.

"It's very important for things to change, even if you change for the worse," Pace observes. "I don't like it when bands try to make the same record because [the last one] was successful. Transformation is good and change is good."



Helio's Steve Bloom speaks to Pace about the Pool Party, 23 and Radiohead after the jump!


Helio: How was the Brooklyn show for you?

Amedeo Pace: It was kind of really perfect. The sun went away and it wasn't so hot. It was windy, almost chilly. We had a whole bunch of friends on stage. It just felt really, really special" for some reason. It was different because it was during the day" we had no lights, only daylight. There was a very different feeling about it. Some of our shows just feel really good. Once in a while we all feel kind of connected and the energy's good. It doesn't happen very often. Other times it might feel more forced, not as spontaneous. You have to put a little more effort and thought into it. Sometimes you just come out and it feels good. I wish it was always like that.

Helio: Are you part of the Brooklyn band scene?

Pace: I live in Manhattan. Our practice space is in Brooklyn in Williamsburg. We've always practiced in Brooklyn. We're friends with TV on the Radio and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. We all know each other and respect each other, but I don't feel that we're part of a scene. I'm not sure what "scene" stands for. We've never really been part of a scene.

Helio: What's the deal with the number 23 anyway?

Pace: That number pops up everywhere for us, especially for Kazu in her life. We've always had really long names for albums [like 2000's Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons]. With this album we wanted to try something minimal and have a short name. It's Kazu's apartment number and she's always lived on 23 St. And she'd written a song about it. So we just decided to call it that.

Helio: The CD cover features a female tennis player with four legs on a blue background and there are no album or song titles anywhere to be found. It's surreal. Do you consider your music surreal?

Pace: When we write, things happen and it's kind of in the air and you have to catch it floating out there. So it is surreal. You look back and you remember, "Oh, how did you write that song?" You remember, but I also think you'll never know because it's very unconscious, like a dream. Until you're done with the album you never know what it's going to sound like or what it's going to be like. You have some sort of vague idea, but once you start recording in one studio it sounds different than it would've sounded in a different studio. You don't really have complete control over it.

Helio: You produced 23. Doesn't that give you more control?

Pace: Yeah, it does, but we always produced [the music] even though we had a producer. We've always done it ourselves. He [Gary Picciotto, who produced their last four albums before 23] really was helpful making things happen for us, making us feel good about what we were doing, organizing the music and keeping sure that we weren't getting lost in it. But when it came to the idea and what we wanted, it's always been us. This time I think it was good we did it all ourselves, but it was more difficult because we had more responsibility. We had to focus a lot on the schedule and the times that we had available in the studio. Usually someone else is there to help us figure that out.

Helio: Rolling Stone wrote about 23:"shimmering Radiohead-style electronic soundscapes soaked in reverb." Are you a fan of Radiohead?

Pace: We don't listen to much Radiohead, although I think they're pretty brilliant, amazing musicians. However, I don't know why people say it feels like Radiohead. I don't think we're like Radiohead at all.

Helio: What's next on Blonde Redhead's schedule?

Pace: We're going to keep touring. We're going to probably do an Interpol tour in November. We're touring our own in September and in October. We'll be pretty busy until December.


]]> Fri, 24 Aug 2007 18:25:36 +0000 http://www.heliomag.com/aaron-rose-elevating-art-to-street-level.html ANP Quarterly, that his own interview slipped his mind. The move is indicative not just of Rose's overdone schedule but also of his humility: Rose is happier championing the work of others than engaging in self-promotion. His sincerity and enthusiasm quickly compensated for the lost time, and before long he had me talking about Burden too. "That guy, he's done so many different things," he lauded. The same can be said about Rose.

Now a writer and independent curator, Rose ran New York's influential Alleged Gallery from 1992 to 2002. During that time, he gave many of his friends in the skateboarding world their first shows, launching the careers of a host of underground artists, including Thomas Campbell, Ed Templeton and Phil Frost. After the gallery closed, Rose cocurated the traveling exhibition "Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture". A tireless promoter of the interesting, the overlooked and the everyday, Rose continues to share his obsessions through exhibitions, his magazine and even music (his band, The SADS, just released their first CD).



Helio's Andrea Richards gets artsy, after the jump!


Helio: You always have about a million interesting projects going on-what are you working on now?

Aaron Rose: I'm working on a big traveling exhibition for Nike shoes-it's more of a commercial project where we are having young contemporary artists interpret early-1970s footwear through art. We've built this giant, modular installation with super graphics; it's all supposed to look like '70s hippie/Topanga-alternative-lifestyle living. We opened it in New York in July with a concert by the Japanese band the Boredoms; they performed under the Brooklyn Bridge with 77 drummers. It opened in L.A. on August 10 in a redone abandoned theater in Chinatown. I grew up in Topanga Canyon, so I have a special soft spot for it. When Nike called me, I was like, "I'm totally doing this one; I know Topanga really well." I know real burnt-out hippies. Not the '60s, but the '70s hippies.

Helio: From your parents?

Rose: Sort of, but they had jobs and stuff. I was surrounded by the people left after the dream of the '60s had failed and all that was left was a bunch of people kind of lost, not knowing what to do but still clinging to their hippie identity. The Vietnam War was over, but they were still trying to fight something, so they fought themselves.

Helio: A lot of punk rock came out of that disillusionment, though, which makes me think of your Beautiful Losers show.

Rose: Totally.

Helio: How's the Beautiful Losers documentary coming along?

Rose: It's almost finished-we are just waiting on a final sound mix and some final graphics. Geoff McFetridge, one of the artists featured in the exhibit, is hand-animating all the titles. We did a little screening a few weeks ago for friends and family in New York. Money Mark did the film's score, and we are trying to hook up an outdoor screening in L.A. at the end of September where he plays it live.

Helio: You've talked and written about how street art has been mainstreamed. Most people get pretty upset by that, but you seem to be optimistic about it.

Rose: The art world in general is very closed. Barry McGee has this famous line about [how] the more he succeeds in the art world, the more his audience shrinks. " There's no other creative industry like that; usually the more success you have, the broader your audience. The art world is the opposite; the bigger you get, the more focused and exclusive your world, and your audience, becomes. For artists who come from the street, who work in a very public domain, it's all about getting the most people possible to see it. Interfacing with the mainstream-if it's done the right way-isn't a problem. It's actually preferred. Personally, I wouldn't mind if the art world were elevated to the same "status" -a funny word, depending on how you look at it-as feature films or pop music, where it just becomes a part of people's daily lives and not some exclusive little world that nobody sees unless you're into that stuff. I think a good majority of the artists [in Beautiful Losers] feel the same way. But it's always a tricky line; you can ruin it if you go too far. Take someone like Peter Max-you go too far and your message gets watered down and you're impotent as an artist.

Helio: Tell me a little about ANP Quarterly.

Rose: There's a clothing company called RVCA, an Orange County""based surf/skate brand, and they run the Artist Network Program, which is basically a sponsorship program for artists. They sponsor young contemporary artists by sending them a check every month-$500 or something-and then the artists give them three T-shirt designs in the year. It's like a stipend for a struggling artist. They approached Ed Templeton, Brendan Fowler and me about starting an RVCA magazine. Our concept was a free magazine with no advertising because you never have that-we're so bombarded by ads everywhere. We wanted to do something that deals with culture on an open-ended platform. There are a million magazines writing about what's hip and new. Let's avoid all that and just curate a magazine where a 12-year-old kid can be next to a 70-year-old punk, and they're all treated equal. They give us free reign to do what we want, for as long as we can. Ed is a professional skateboarder and always on tour and Brendan is in New York and I'm here [Los Angeles]. The three of us do a lot of phone and emails where we all pitch what we are into, and we have a policy that if all three of us don't like it it doesn't work. There's no two out of three. Everything in the magazine has to have group consensus. It makes it totally frustrating sometimes. " It's gnarly, but it's fair. Dreams are shattered in ANP Quarterly sometimes.

Helio: Are you ever tempted to open another gallery?

Rose: I did it already; I went through that phase in my life. " I do miss the direct access to the public. With the gallery, we could think of something the night before, make it, put it up and then have an audience for it the next morning, which was great. Now I don't have that-there's at least a three-month lag between the idea and people seeing it. When you have a gallery, it's a window to the world. I miss that, and, yes, in weak moments I think I should do it again.




]]> Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:14:41 +0000 http://www.heliomag.com/zoinks-talking-paintings-big-wigs-and-other-suspicious-art-by-justin-richel.html Justin Richel's art evokes all the best aspects of '70s-era Saturday-morning cartoons: dastardly villains, heroines in cat-eyed glasses, Schoolhouse Rock's colonial cavaliers, and the high-energy buzz of sickly sweet breakfast cereals. But with the Maine-based artist's series Amazing Talking Paintings and Incredibly Suspicious Paintings, you don't just look-the paintings contain levers that move the portraits' mouths or eyes, creating the sort of sinister effect that so often rattled the Scooby gang. The size of the one-of-a-kind works (at 3 inches by 4 inches, they fit easily in the hand) makes any menace less ominous. Odds are, you'll be maneuvering one to chastise "you meddling kids" in no time.

Created as a commercial endeavor to help fund his fine-art career, Richel's interactive paintings aren't the work he exhibits in galleries (he sells them on etsy.com), but even so, they reveal the artist's commitment to craft and penchant for absurdist humor. In his fine art, Richel's subject matter is often early American history; he is especially interested in exploring the underside of the nation's founding and less savory aspects of the American presidency. For a series of portraits of George Washington, Richel took the concept of forefathers quite literally-in each, Washington impregnates a colonial-style building (including a barn and a covered bridge).

In another series, Big Wigs, Richel mocks the haughtiness of the colonial upper class, filling their imposing wigs with birds (and bird poop), bees, chairs, branches and plumes of smoke. It's a droll take on the monumentality of history and biting critique on the indifference of the elite. Similarly, his Sweets series features delicately detailed cupcakes, pies, cookies and other desserts stacked in piles. The monstrous configurations form mountains and tsunamis. Is such decadence a threat to democracy, or is it the epitome of the American dream? Perhaps another bowl of Froot Loops will help you decide.

Gearing up for his first European solo show at Switzerland's Wings Projects Art Space, the American artist took time out to talk to Helio's Andrea Richards about his work.



Solve the mystery after the jump!

Helio: What inspired you to create your Talking Paintings?

Justin Richel: I was really inspired as a young boy by Byzantine art. On my mother's side my family is Russian, and as a boy I went to a Russian Orthodox church. The sermons were all in Russian, and I don't speak a word of it. I spent most of my time staring-the churches are very ornate and gilded, and there are icons everywhere. The icons are very stylistic, the brush strokes and everything-every one is rendered in the same way, with these simple lines that create a very beautiful image. Icons have always inspired me, and I think that's where the look of the paintings comes from.

Helio: Have you been surprised by how people have received them?

Richel: They immediately get it, picking them up and interacting with them. I've done some craft fairs, and people will come up with friends and start creating scenarios for the paintings and having a good time.

Helio: Do you like ventriloquism?

Richel: I never have-it's always been really creepy to me. I realize I'm making something almost like a puppet, but as a kid I really hated ventriloquists' puppets; they scared me. They still kinda do.

Helio: When you went to Maine College of Art (MECA), were many other students there interested in Byzantine art?

Richel: That surfaced later. " I took a class at a Franciscan monastery in Kennebunk, Maine, where I learned how to use egg tempera-at that time I was already using gouache-and it really hit a chord with me. That's around the time I started making the Talking Paintings.

Helio: How was studying at the monastery?

Richel: It was really great. It was a two-week course, every day from 9 to 5. The monks were Lithuanian and Italian. The whole course was done through translation-it was more of a visual learning experience. We were over their shoulders watching what they were doing, and then you'd have to wait for the time delay of the translation. I picked most of it up visually-it was a really interesting experience, which has still stuck with me.

Helio: Can you tell me about Black Abe?

Richel: A lot of the history pieces are taken literally from textbooks, where I'll just pull a sentence out. Lincoln's most celebrated act was the Emancipation Proclamation, and I read that he always went through bouts of "black depression." So that image came to mind.

Helio: Do you have a collection of old textbooks?

Richel: I just go to the library or research something quickly online. I try not to delve too deep into the research because then I start to feel a commitment to the truth. I like to glance at a thing and get a little bit from it and let my imagination run with it so I can get that other read on it instead of a factual one. So much of history is just one side of the story anyway-the side that won.


]]> Mon, 13 Aug 2007 23:00:59 +0000 http://www.heliomag.com/on-fire-the-liars-keep-it-hot.html Liars' kin to a pack of wild chimpanzees, with their drum pounding and vocal howling, it's refreshing to hear a less aggressive Liars on the new self-titled album.

Four albums in, they once again challenge an oversimplified public assumption that Liars is second generation No Wave, a band that couldn't have existed before Sonic Youth. Their first two albums, They Threw Us In A Trench and Stuck A Monument On Top and They Were Wrong So We Drowned, helped define the Williamsburg electroclash sound-discordant, harsh, pulsating-during a time when so many noise bands, like Animal Collective, Wolf Eyes, and Black Dice were coming of age.

But just as they were being pigeonholed, Liars lead singer, Angus Andrews, and guitarist Aaron Hemphill relocated to Berlin to participate in the experimentalism of European festivals and to renew their creative energy.



Helio's Trini Dalton gets the word from Germany, after the jump!


"Every day is an adventure," Andrews said over the phone, of life in Germany. "Even going to get the milk in the morning is a whole process, a game. It makes me feel like I'm from another planet. People get down on me because I don't speak German, but that's one of the best parts. I can sit on a train and not hear anything. I think it's really hard to make music [in Williamsburg] now. There's all this pressure. When we were there, it was open and free."

On Liars, the band achieves an interesting reversal, for which they imposed the pop song-structure challenge upon themselves to make a collection that eclectically references a multitude of bands they listened to as teens, from Nirvana, to Flaming Lips and Jesus and Mary Chain. Some tracks, like "Houseclouds," are outright danceable, reminiscent of Primal Scream or Odelay-era Beck.

"It feels completely natural," Andrew said. "I'm in awe of people who make and follow a formula. We made a record about drums, and we were dying to do something that wails in a more melodic way. I never thought I could do it. It was an epiphany to realize it was possible to sound like someone else. It became more experimental to sound normal. We always made music that was so outside the box, that it was exciting to make something that fit into musical history."

This is not to say that Liars lacks the intense drumming that's integral to the band's sound. Drummer, Julian Gross, solidified the drums' primary position on their last album, Drums Not Dead, a double-disc, conceptual rock opera about two characters Drums, aka creativity, and Mt. Heart Attack, fear, duking it out.

"We start songs with drums," Andrew said. "Laying out the drums can define the landscape of the song, the contours and the hills. Then I find it easier to color it in. Obviously, we're not the best drummers, so it's going to fall apart a bit. That's what makes the songs interesting."

This notion of collapse makes sense during a Liars concert. When I caught Liars in Berlin two summers ago, double billing with Wolf Eyes at Fest�?al Kreutzberg, I thought the roof might cave in. Gross sat on a pedestal so drums could dominate guitar and vocals, while Andrews barked, screeched, and shouted into the mic. They were even wolfier than their lupine cohorts.

Asking whether Andrews considered Liars a live band, he answered, "Totally. But [playing live versus studio recording] are kind of different mediums, like photography and film. When you listen to a record, you're looking for something other than a live show. One of the best things about music is getting chance to express ideas in these different ways. To understand us, it's important to see us live, though that sounds funny because we only perform live in front of people. We're not a band who stands in a room together to write songs. You understand our intentions more when you see us live, because we really just want to be part of the crowd."

That craving to be part of a crowd recalls adolescence, those formative years that Liars' new album thematically refers to. From the first insistent track, "Plaster Cast of Everything," starring a narrator who wants to run away with his loved one, to the harmonic last tune, "Protection," about the romance in sharing drinks, Liars encapsulates the confused passions of youth.

"It feels like a young person's album," said Andrews. "I would have loved it when I was young. It doesn't talk about themes specific to witches or weird characters. It's more universal. Melodrama is so huge when you're young. You don't have too much to worry about, yet everything is dramatic. You develop identity through the music you associate with."

Liars' evident musical references, in this context, take on new meaning, as the listener detects what the band listened to in their early days. But Angus Andrews is far from retreating into nostalgic, bubble gum pop.

"It's not all roses," he said. "I almost felt uncomfortable that I liked music so poppy, so fun. It made me unsure of myself. Why does this feel so good? It probably shouldn't. There's a skepticism that underlies the idea of a fun song."

Look for the new Liars album - out this August!



]]> Wed, 08 Aug 2007 19:23:41 +0000 http://www.heliomag.com/all-species-welcome-comic-con-2007.html Comic-Con," my party-crashing associate groused between nibbles of spicy vegetable empanada. "What we just saw, those Klingons, THAT was Comic-Con!"

We had found ourselves enjoying complimentary after-hours hors d'oeuvres and cocktails at the expense of a major production company's animation department. The banquet room was dressed in a stark white elegance, at all kinds of odds with the A.D.D.-inducing patchwork vistas on the San Diego Convention Center's main floor. Here a DJ tastefully spun soul classics to set a mood of nothing less than insouciance. There, every sense was assaulted simultaneously; a vortex of brightness, volume, oddity and amazement.



Helio's Matt Olsen gives us the Comic-Con breakdown, after the jump...


These two worlds should not coexist under the same aegis, much less in such proximity. And yet, in the San Diego Comic-Con's 38th year, an unlikely balance has formed between the interests of big business and the business of marginalized interests. It wouldn't be fair to say that Comic-Con has been mainstreamed - two seconds spent caught within its shuffling masses would disintegrate that notion" but has the purity of the turf been compromised by commercialism, and, if so, does it even matter?

The answer is no. The character of this annual event is solely determined by its attendees, not its presenters. To survive, you must succumb.

I left the hotel room I was sharing with two friends and boarded the trolley downtown. Accompanying us en route was Attack of the Clones bounty hunter, Jango Fett, in full Mandalorian Armor, or whatever material passes for it on this plane of existence. He rode with two teenage, uncostumed handlers who aided him in the retrieval of his SDCC badge, which had become lodged somewhere behind his jet pack.

We spilled out of the car, were herded over crosswalks, up stairs and into the Convention Center. At eleven a.m. the place was already crowded beyond all comfort. Last year's total attendance was 138,000 and this year's was expected to be no less. Our party split to attend various panels and forums; I escalated to the upper level meeting rooms.

11:30" 12:30 "Spotlight on Joe Matt"

Since 1992, Joe Matt has created the comic book Peepshow, an autobiographical account of sloth, miserliness and self-loathing. The interview was conducted in a loose, friendly fashion and, in the spirit of Joe's work, the questions were fairly direct and probing. It gave the effect of a very low-impact intervention. Much of the discussion centered around his slowed output" the last two Peepshow issues were released four years apart. Joe managed to respond with bald-faced honesty and kept the audience at ease with a lightly grim sense of humor.

12:45" 1:45 "Spectacular Spider-Man"

A friend and I stumbled into a hall previewing a new Spider-Man animated series. I wasn't very impressed with the anime influenced character design and even less so with the voice talents of "Peter Parker". He read each line as if his entire direction was, "Be as much of a pompous brat as you can with this." We exited, unmoved.

2:00" 3:30 "Marvel in the 60's and 70's"

The Marvel Comics of the 1970's have always been a tremendous influence and security blanket to me, particularly the woozy monster and mystic books such as Man-Thing, Dr. Strange and Tomb of Dracula. This panel featured four Marvel legends from that era, including writer Roy Thomas and artist Mike Ploog, co-creators of Ghost Rider. This was a perfect Comic-Con confluence, hopelessly esoteric and wholly rewarding.

3:30" 7:30 Lunch, gawking, browsing, wandering around.

7:30" 8:30 "Klingon Lifestyle Presentation"

Goaded to attend by my griping friend, I sat in one of the numberless rows of folding chairs surrounded by costumes and civilians. Behind a dimly lit stage, a fierce emblem hung. I assumed Klingon.

I wasn't sure what to expect outside of the catalog's description, "All species are welcome to experience the ongoing voyage and adventure of life aboard a Klingon vessel." Even that was vague enough to include any number of imagined possibilities. Would there be a wedding ceremony?

I'm a casual fan of Star Trek (I can tell a Gorn from a Horta) but I felt immediately d̩class̩ once the show began and several spectators shouted Klingon language battle cries. A troop of amateur actors assembled on stage and, with no fanfare, began a self-produced and written play featuring" with two exceptions" exclusively Klingons. Generously, they spoke in English.

Adults in strange latex forehead pieces tossed vicious verbal barbs back and forth. Every line of dialogue seemed rich with a history that I would never understand. To be honest, the performance was not good. Most of the heretofore-energized audience members displayed undisguised boredom. Yet, as my friend suggested later: Regardless of the quality, THIS was Comic-Con. Strange people coming together to participate in something unique and generally unreasonable. All species are welcome.


Check out Matt's breakdown of old school video gaming in the new Summer print edition of Helio Mag!

Dr. Romanelli reps Helio Mag at Comic-Con 2007, as seen on Justin Ried's Flickr stream.
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