Cuarumilla TED Retreat from Katia Morales on Vimeo.

Doug Freeman is a multi-talented Austin hero. The former Austin Chronicle writer, and current occasional columnist, has also co-authored the essential “The Austin Chronicle Music Anthology” which was released in March (much to the Gopher Editor’s musical benefit). Beyond his musical knowledge and journalistic prowess, it has also come to our attention that the one Doug Freeman is also a Tech Startup savant, world traveler and consumer of the best dive fare this city has to offer.

It should then be not at all surprising that we tripped all over ourselves when he agreed to choose a setlist to celebrate Volume 2. And he did not disappoint: the tunes have enjoyed a prominent spot in our rotation ever since.

And lest we gush too much about Doug, we leave you to judge for yourself. But not before adding one last, very important thing: he is also the nicest dude you’ll ever meet. We heart D.F.

The playlist:

01. Triveni – Rodrigo y Gabriela
02. Just Like Heaven – Kat Edmonson
03. Tonight The Streets Are Ours – Richard Hawley
04. Comeback Kid [ That’s My Dog ] – Brett Dennen
05. Pickin’ Up the Pieces – Fritz & the Tantrums
06. 100 Yard Dash – Raphael Saadiq
07. Detroit – The Bright Light Social Hour
08. Up Up Up – Givers
09. Take on Me [ A-ha ] – A. C. Newman
10. Words of Love [ Buddy Holly ] – Jessica lee Mayfield
11. You Can’t Buy a Gun – Holly Golighty
12. Cello Song – The Books feat. José González
13. Don’t Let Me Down – M. Ward

And the music:

Photo Credits: Max Marshall!

Photo Credit: Max Marshall

Anyways.

Desirée’s set is a change of pace from R-Berry’s beautiful playlist, and may coax some ill-advised moves out of the less graceful citizens of the world. But enough about us. Desirée ‘with an accent’ is a Venezuelan entrepreneurial soul. From a very early age, she was exposed to different cultures and cities around the world. These experiences helped her grow and shaped her as someone who always maintains an open mind and consistently seeks new opportunities. Presently, she works at one of the most creative ad agencies in Austin as a translator, copy editor and, since 2010, a successful event planner. Always innovating and coming up with new ideas, she of course has more than a few projects in mind, but her most current creative undertaking is Shoe-Gaze, a website dedicated to music and personal style that she and partner Rohin Bhalla developed. “Heavens, how?” you ask? The idea for the site was born while the two were standing in line during SXSW. Shoe-Gaze was launched in 2011 and is quickly gaining popularity as an international collection of street fashion that creates a new path for discovering music.

And now, la música.

1. Any Which Way – Scissor Sisters
2. Round Clocks – Pollyester
3. Going Out Again – Electrelane
4. The Bay – Metronomy
5. Into The Valley (feat. Karl Dixon) – Classixx
6. Never Heal Myself – Cults
7. 16th and Valencia Roxy Music – Devendra Banhart
8. I Walk Alone – Music Go Music
9. Glass Deers – Braids
10. Bury Us Alive – Startfucker
11. Escapee – Architecture In Helsinki

Download the entire playlist for more portable fun.

July in Texas is… hot. The temperature climbed up quickly in May and has been inching ever closer to skin-evaporating heights of the sun. But thankfully there is reprieve indoors, sticking our heads in the melting freezer and listening to the four sets (okay, okay, playlists) that our dear friends from all around Austin made for the launch party of the second volume of the Gopher!

And the love we got from these awesomely attuned folks, well, it’s just something that needs to be shared. Y’know?  So here’s what’s what. Every Monday, for the next four weeks, we will publish one of the setlists that each of the masters of the music chose for the release, in whe order in which they played at the event. Best of all, you can get to know these excellent folks and their excellent projects, and even download the set so you can listen to it as obsessively as we are.

Without further ado, we kick things off with the inimitable Ron Berry*, who is the founder and Artistic Director for the annual Fusebox Festival — a ten-day hybrid arts festival presenting genre-defying artists from all over the world, with a focus on the live event. Originally from Houston, Ron has called Austin home for the past fifteen years.

Image shamelessly borrowed from Tribeza.com, credit: Lauren Smith Ford

Ron is a maker of dreams and everything we hope to become when we grow up. In this year’s Fusebox Festival, Ron and the F.F. team took over an abandoned power plant as their late night venue, filling it to the brim with programs of sheer amazingness. There was a broadcast staring contest. There were a hundred violinists. An exquisite corpse artwork room. Pecha Kucha night. Seriously, man.

Listen in, then take it with you!

1) Texas -  Scout Niblett
2) Feet & Hands -  Fannypack
3) Tumbling Dice -  The Rolling Stones
4) Sunsesame -  Caribou
5) I’m Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You – Silver Jews
6) I’m 9 Today -  Mum
7) Bizness – Tune-Yards
8) Stanley vs. Hannah – Alamo Race Track
9) Still Sound – Toro y Moi
10) You Gotta Know -  Fannypack
11) Living Things – Komeda
12) Real Live Flesh – Tune-Yards

*not to be confused with the other Ron Berry

Set for the Outside

Zarouhie was in town on an artistic mission back when there was still a need for sweaters. We met her at a the dusty bar that we favor, immediately impressed by two things: she was immune to the chilli evening, and her order of battered and deep fried chicken gizzards. Upon reviewing the artist’s multi-medium work, this gizzard-eating-sweaterless adventurousness came back to me as a perfect lens through which to examine it. For Abdalian, neither medium nor message seem to ground the work, which seems guided, rather, by a deep and pervasive curiosity. The artist’s creations are, in a sense, formulated in response to spaces, experiences and topics that catch her attention. The results vary from case to case, but they are united by the kind of considered responses that one would expect from a debater. Zarouhie let us grill her with questions about breakfasts, catastrophes and materials.

Tell us a little bit about yourself: Where are you from? What do you do? What is your favorite word? What did you have for breakfast?

I grew up in New Orleans but have lived in Oakland for the past few years. I make studio works, which right now include drawings, sculpture, and projections, and I do site-specific installations. I don’t have a favorite word. Breakfast is almost always three cups of coffee and toast.

Drift (Video Still)

How would you describe your work to someone unable to experience it?

My work moves between media and is not materially defined. Site-specific pieces take characteristics or materials preexisting at a site and alter them as a way of prompting a reviewing. Materials used, however, are quotidian and the alterations are quiet.   The focus of the work, however, bridges the media and stems from my interest in limits – of a system, an archive, a material, etc. Works may directly engage the limits of a particular medium such as a projector or of a device such as a digital camera; or works may describe or point to structural or perceptual limits.

When did you begin officially begin making art? For what reason?

I’m not sure I feel that there is anything very official about what I do. I decided very early on that I wanted to be an artist and have always had a relationship to materials. What I have meant by being an artist has changed over time, but the reason I continue to make work is that I am intensely challenged by the process.

Set for the Outside

Your work sometimes seems to reference mathematics or engineering. Do these topics interest you?

They do. In some of the work, I appropriate ideas from an empirical system and use them for non-empirical purposes, for the making of artwork. Often I use an idea from math or engineering and situate it in a different context. This may be referenced simply through the appropriation of terminology for the work’s title (i.e., Shock Response Spectra, 2009) or may be more explicit in the realizing and presentation of the work (i.e., Flutter, 2010). In general, I think that by borrowing from empirical disciplines, artists may broach the political by staging disruptions to these systems, to the prescribed “knowable”, through an examination of their premises. Rather than using the terms of the borrowed discipline, I hope to critique those terms and/or identify their histories.

Your work has been described as largely concerned with landscape. You’ve also moved cities a few times, once from New Orleans, your hometown, because of Hurricane Katrina. Does your location (be it New Orleans, San Francisco, or wherever you happen to be working on something) affect the work? Does it affect you?

When working on pieces for installation, I am influenced both by the location of the project and also and importantly by my particular experience of New Orleans and of catastrophe relative to that site. My site-specific works have focused on disintegrity or vulnerabilities of sites.

Rift (detail)

What is your relationship with New Orleans like today?

I visit home a few times a year and my family is still there. Being in a place that is quite literally sinking is grounding for me. I also make a lot of “sketches” and find these visits generative.

You work in a variety of media – drawing, painting, video, installation – which medium are you most comfortable with? Which, if any, do you find yourself drawn to these days?

This movement between media is consistent to my practice and informs my approach to the materials I choose. I broach the problems of one medium in another – the experience of a painting in space and time has informed my approach to projection; looking at the problems of video including sequence and montage informed my approach to a series of drawings. I reconsider the aims of a project that is materials-contingent in another medium. In other words, I change the focus by shifting materials. I don’t really have a general preference but choose materials when they make sense for the project or idea.

Drift (Video Still)

What are you working on right now?

Right now, I’m spending some time playing with materials in my studio as I develop ideas for a couple of site-specific installations, including a piece for the Istanbul Biennial. I just finished a text and stroboscopic light piece for Altman Siegel, a San Francisco gallery. I am also working on a video piece that takes as a starting point footage I have collected of the Gulf Coast.

If you weren’t answering this interview, you would probably be…

Working in my studio, of course!

Early last year, as we strolled the streets of London, we decided to take the opportunity to sit down with a series of editors that are, in our young Gopher-peepers, some of our most admired peers. From these meetings a series of interviews, videos, print projects and – why hide it? – a bit of a taste for scotch resulted. Not all of these face-to-face encounters will end up here or in the pages of the print edition, but if there is one conversation that we wanted to share as the first on this series of meetings with the ink-and-paper glitterati, it is no other than the one we had with Tyler Brûlé, the founder of Monocle Magazine.

Monocle is without a doubt one of the most influential magazines of these past few years, both in terms of its design and the content it presents. Its business model has been a topic of frequent commentary in media gatherings and an example of a counter-current initiative that has shaken the publishing world with its successful implementation of a counterintuitive revenue structure. Brulé’s credentials include funding and directing Wallpaper* magazine for half a decade, and heading up Winkreative, a multi-pronged agency that focuses on branding, publishing, advertising and design producing high-quality material. We got together with Mr. Brûlé at their old Boston Place offices [ they’re now based out of the Midori House ] last summer and talked about the upcoming plans for the Monocle brand, his outlook on the publishing market nowadays and about why he doesn’t care all that much about twitter, facebook or all that social media that is social inasmuch as it is virtual.

Let’s begin with the boring question: digital, print, web, free… Would you give your two cents on the future of publishing, of magazines?

I think that the future belongs to the courageous, particularly if we’re talking about the print context. I don’t think that there are that many courageous people out there anymore. To put it in context, I don’t this should be a digital versus print discussion and I don’t say that for reasons of diplomacy, I don’t give a shit. I think that the problem with a lot of media companies predates the situation that we’re in today, which predates economic collapse and all of this predates the arrival of the iPad or the rise of the web.

I go back to perhaps the late 80’s and certainly through the 90’s when we saw a significant change, primarily in the United States – and of course the United States being the premier media market the other countries and other markets follow. Everything we saw in the United States then was the corporatization of the editorial floor. We saw the consolidation of a lot of magazine businesses and a lot of newspapers. Family publishing companies selling up to bigger corporations, bigger corporations of course worried about shareholder value and to bring in shareholder value you need to bring in more consultants, consultants suggests that we should replace editors with accountants and that’s where we are today. So I think that the situation we’re in is really one that started two decades ago. But the problem is [ the lack of ] courageous people running most of the world’s biggest media companies and even small media companies as well; so I think that’s really the issue here, not one about whether we’re going to be reading off of paper or whether we’ll be reading off backlit screens or whether we’re going to be reading on the moon. Is not about that.

We need to see a situation where there is power on the editorial floor – or tv control room, or radio studio or monthly women’s magazines. We need to see visionary and courageous people who are willing to go and have a fight, who are able to construct a persuasive and convincing argument and convince their management as to why there needs to be some significant serious changes made.

Beyond your editorial role, you have developed Monocle into a brand that has a wide-ranging series of spin-offs: shops, trousers, candles, furniture. Is this brand diversification something you planned when conceiving the Monocle brand or has it grown naturally since the success of the magazine?

I think that there was always a vision and we were always quite clear about, let’s say, what our core editorial strategies would be; so it wasn’t really much of a discussion if the magazine was going to be in one format or another. We already knew in the year 2005 when we were raising money to do the magazine that it was going to be collectible, something bookish, tactile. We knew that whatever we did on the website couldn’t be a re-hash of the magazine, it couldn’t repeat the magazine and that’s when we took a broadcast strategy and focused on video and audio. And I guess that the only area of surprise – which we never had in our business plan – was shops, or significant web sale business. So that’s the part that has been a positive surprise and positive evolution of the business. [ The shops ] allowed us to create a sense of community and clubiness around the brand which probably wouldn’t otherwise been there and that has manifested itself in a lot of different ways. It also became our response to social networking as well. A lot of people ask us “Oh, you know, you are not on twitter on facebook, you don’t do this, you don’t do that”. And we don’t need to because we have shops where our readers gather and meet each other, we have cocktail parties in those shops or adjacent venues where people can meet each other. We do do social networking, it just doesn’t have to be hosted or facilitated by MySpace, Facebook, Twitter or anybody else.

In one of your editorials you played with the idea of newsstands. Is this an area that Monocle plans to work in the future? Is retail another part of the publishing production chain that will be address by the Monocle team?

As much as we can complain about and feel sorry for the state of print media it is not an area that is just down to “let’s blame it to a digital explosion or publishers”: it is also the distribution chain. I think that one of the biggest areas that is flawed at the moment, and not just flawed but collapsed, is our proper venues, [ we need ] passionate venues that sell magazines, so one area that we’re looking at is, as you rightly brought up, is kiosks. You know that we launched our stores, and occasionally we do sell our magazines, we sell books we like, but there are 200, 250 magazines that we buy every month in this company and that we like. Should we be featuring these magazines in a kiosk format? Why not? And should we have a wonderful environment to consume that media? Why not!

So, we’re looking right now at how the business plan is, to have our own Monocle Kiosks – not to be confused with our own stores, we don’t want a different Monocle Shop, it wouldn’t have wooden blocks or anything like that. We would have other things that you could find in a kiosk to buy, which would be designed by us or they would be curated by us but it would have a different price point, and yes, it would be aligned with the expression of our brand, so is something we’re looking at the moment.

Any release dates for this project?

No, it’s like when people ask us “when are you doing something in the iPad?” We’ll do it when we’re ready. We’re in no rush. When we’re ready to do something in the iPad we’ll do it, or any pad for that matter and likewise when the shop concept is ready to go. So it could be next spring, it could be this time next year.

The magazine’s subscription strategy is very different from most magazines, which lure readers with the offer of a discount. Monocle is the opposite – offering more content for more money. Has this worked? Have you achieved the expected subscription numbers?

Yes, it has been interesting how other media companies have wanted to know who the consultant was. But it was just common sense to us. Of course: why should you give a discount just because you’re solely loyal or something? We still have to mail it around the world in fact it costs more money. And people might think otherwise but I think we really deliver great content and it’s expensive content and it’s all original so why shouldn’t we charge a premium for that?

You’re not only the editor of Monocle but also the head of Winkreative. How close is your involvement with each edition of Monocle? Do you select designers, studio, illustrators, photographers?

Well, a shoot or a fashion shoot doesn’t happen without me seeing who the photographer is going to be. I don’t come up with the final selection, that’s up to the Photography Editor to do, but even the models we use, I see them all in advance. There is nothing – and I don’t want to sound arrogant – but there is nothing that you read or see in the magazine that I haven’t had a say in or approved. That’s my job and I’m always surprised by editors who don’t do that. You can say it’s great if you’re a huge magazine that you give autonomy to lots of people, and I kind of feel the same about a daily newspaper where you can’t read every word, but we’re only doing [ the magazine ] ten times a year plus Monocle Mediterráneo and Monocle Alpino. There are enough hours in my day and I think that I owe it to our readership that I should be looking at every page.

Finally, beyond the magazine, what specific project / collaboration are you most proud of?

I’m happy that in the period of time that we’ve been doing this, we have reached a level of influence or even political influence. If we say something about a city, about a government, a point of view about a policy, people take notice, and that’s a big change from what Wallpaper* was for example. Wallpaper* was certainly centered in design and fashion and maybe some travel circles but this has been a significant and surprising change in terms of how people take note of our opinion and what it means. I guess that’s one element that I’m very proud of. Also, just being able to actually create a media brand in a very difficult climate and have it grow and to be able to invest in bringing young talent. I think that you know that we tend not to work with predictable photographers, that the staff that works downstairs or in Tokyo or New York or Hong Kong are all in my opinion superstars in their own right, so we don’t have to go out with the big fat checkbook and just go and hire the best on the market or the most established in the market. It is great that we’ve been able to build a brand that invests in young talent and allows them to have a chance. And finally to create a very diverse environment, we’re we have around 80 staff today, 21 languages, 19 different passports, I think that’s sort of testimony of what we want to do.

- – -

For more information on Monocle Magazine you can visit monocle.com

Special thanks to Jerome Huffor at Bookpeople for production materials.

Hello! As some of you might know already, some months ago the Gopher team moved it’s headquarters to sunny Austin, TX. Here we found a new home, a profusion of amazing friendships and a place to continue this project for the promotion of talents in the arts. The Gopher’s projects also reach beyond this editorial endeavor. In the upcoming months we’ll be releasing a series of projects in partnership with some awesome institutions – but we’ll keep that for another post.

Right now we want to talk about our much-beloved publication. The Gopher Magazine – Vol. 2: On City Limits explores what it means to be a dweller of a modern urban landscape, both from the perspective of what limits are set upon us and what boundaries disappear. The edition includes articles dealing with new perspectives in urbanism [ with jetpacks! ], the effects of cities on our biology, art that terrorizes curators, haikyo photography and even a game designed to convert your city into a board game. Our Features section presents a new edition of our series Two Takes On [ this time about animal history ], a tête à tête with Jeff Koons, Q&A with Hanif Kureishi, opinions from the brain behind the NY Times crosswords and more. Our portfolio features painter Jaime Gili, illustrator Puño and photographer Thobias Fäldt, author of our by-the-seaside cover image. We also continue our tradition of featuring two works of literature with the American Todd Zuniga, who is also the editor of Opium Magazine, and the Argentine Daniel Link, who is an all around bad-ass.

Lastly, the purpose of this post is not only to dish up an appetizer of what’s to come in our next edition, but also to remind readers and creators that as a growing project we’re always grateful for support that allows us to produce this mag. If you’re into the mag and want to secure a copy you can pre-buy the next edition of the magazine HERE, as well as the Vol.1 and Vol.2 as a combo here.

{ Pre-Order Vol. 2 Now }

If you’re feeling patron-of-the-artsy you can always contribute and forever carve a place in our hearts [ and in the magazine’s thank you notes! ]. We leave you with some sneak-peek images of our upcoming edition under these lines, and please don’t hesitate to send notes, ideas or comments this way: info@gopherillustrated.org !

Salud!

For more information on the next edition or anything Gopher-related, do follow us on Facebook or Twitter!

From top to bottom: cover of issue 002 with photograph by Thobias Fäldt, editorial of issue 002, theme cover, art by Gustav Dejert, infographic by Staff + MODO, original lettering by MODO, “Nailhouse” title by The Church of London, and photograph by Jiang Zhi, features cover, “Hanif Kureishi” title by Ryan Rhodes, Illustration by Anthony Garza, “Tea with Reverend Gomes” title typography by Daniel Hernández, fragment of Jaime Gili‘s portfolio, fragment of Thobias Fäldt‘s portfolio, fragment of Puño‘s portfolio, “Darwin” title by EMPK and illustration by Eleni Kalorkoti, “Jeff Koons” title by GIB, “Haikyo” photographs by Florian Seidel and Lee Chapman, “My City” spread by Staff + MODO.

Chilean wonder-duo Dënver (as they say, “the band, not the dinosaur”, whatever that means) claim that music comes naturally to them. Mariana claims she learned to play the guitar at the same time she learned to walk – and partner Milton supports this story, finding her jerky-dancing charming enough to approach her at a party some years ago. The duo have put out a number of incredibly catchy songs in this year’s release “Musica, Gramática, Gimnasia” and, unable to stop humming them, we invited them to talk shop, share some music, and tell us why there is no such thing as a “Chilean” sound.

Tell us a little bit about yourselves; who are you? how did you meet? where are you from? Where do you live? What’s the history of the band?
Milton:  Dënver is made up of Mariana Montenegro and I (Milton Mahan), we’re from San Felipe, a small town 150km north of Santiago, Chile. We started to play together a few years ago when we were still high school students there. We met each other because I had a band and we were searching for a keyboard player and then Mari started to collaborate with the band. Once the group disbanded, we started to create songs with keyboard and acoustic guitar only, and using that format we recorded our first EP, “Solenoide”.
Mariana: When we graduated from high school, we moved to Santiago because San Felipe doesn’t have any universities with art or music programs. We met and became friends with bands from Santiago via Internet and started to get some gigs with them there. After, we signed with a small indie label called “Neurotyka”, and with them we recorded our first album, “Totoral”. We played a lot in Santiago and other Chilean cities. In 2009 we recorded our second album, produced by Cristian Heyne (who is also the producer for Javiera Mena, Gepe, Supernova, etc.) though we had to wait until this year to launch it. The first single and video “Lo que quieras” won the Festival del Videoclip Chileno 2010 (the Chilean Videoclip Festival)

Dënver – Lo Que Quieras
Musica, Gramática, Gimnasia (2010)

Dënver – Estilo de Vida

How did you meet?
Milton: At a party, Mari was dancing, making really strange movements to the song Chop-Suey by System of a Down. She really caught my attention, so I started to dance with her and then we talked all night long and liked each other immediatelly.
Mariana: Hahahahaha, that’s true!

Why did you decide to make music?
Milton: I have been in bands since I started to play guitar, at the age of 14. Since then, I had been writing songs, so, for me, it’s natural. Piano and guitar are really good anxiolytics and i think this is another reason to make music.
Mariana: I’ve been into music since I was a little girl, my father was a songwriter in his youth, and he made a record. There have always been musical instruments around my house (a piano, a guitar…) and I learned to play the piano and the guitar and to sing at the same time that I was learning to speak and read. I had a band with my sisters and cousins called “Montichicas” and we made a lot of songs inspired by the Spice Girls and Supernova. After that, I met Milton and with him I’ve listened to and found a lot more music.

How would you describe your sound?
Milton: To me it’s straight-up pop, without adjectives or surnames.

What dictates your musical aesthetic? What do you look for when composing?
Milton: I like the idea of creating an imaginary culture around dënver, in which the listener shares some feelings with the characters and feels empathy and compassion towards them. I think i had a simmilar experience when I was a teenager with some bands and that made me feel less lonely. For made the new record I was very influenced musically by Carly Simon and Abba. Also there’s a lot of literary influences, the world created by José Donoso, Adolfo Couve, Andrés Caicedo and Clarice Lispector have recently influenced me a lot. In a sense, I feel like a musician with frustrated literary aspirations.

Do you think there is such a thing as a “Chilean Sound”? If so, do you have it? Why or why not?
Milton: For the last few years, efforts with a pop sensibility have been emerging in Chile that maybe could be unified in some stream, but  think it’s more closely related to the intention of making pop as a genre than with any particular sound. I think it’s a different way to approach the songwriting that is maybe related with authorship and the choices of the author.
Mariana: I don’t think that a “Chilean sound” exists, music is too interconnected globally at this point.

Dënver – Diane Keaton
Musica, Gramática, Gimnasia (2010)

Dënver – Corazón de Andrés

What is your relationship with Neurotyka?
Milton: Neurotyka was our first record label but it dissapeared like eight months ago, now we working with Cazador, where we released our second LP “Musica, gramatica, gimnasia”

What do you do when you’re not making music?
Milton: I’m studying sound engineering, so I’m permanently tied to music, but in my leisure time I try to go to the movies as much as possible, to download as many movies as I can and recently I have been approaching the audiovisual world, so I made a few video-clips, like the one that promotes our first single “Lo que quieras”. I also like to make up ideas for new videos
Mariana: I’m studing Musicology, and I also work in the university library as a assistant.

Who do you dream of working with?
Milton: R. Stevie Moore!!!

In your opinion, what bands or musicians are creating the most exciting work today?
Milton: I’m very excited about a Chilean girl named Fakuta whose record I’m helping produce. She’s a great songwriter of sweet pop melodies with a touch of perversion. She’s great with lyrics. I think that 2011 will be her year. Another great recent discovery is a band from Uruguay called Carmen Sandiego, they make a really honest music, that is hugely expressive. Their record is one of my favorites this year and it can be downloaded for free here.

When we interviewed you for the first time, we asked you how you would describe your art to a blind person. Has that changed?
There is the famous line from the Little Prince (That Jose Saramago so brilliantly used in The Gospel According to Jesus Christ) “It is only with the heart that one can see”  That’s the great paradox of being a visual artist.  I guess my articulation has become sharper.  I’m more aware of how a painting of mine is built up in the conceptual realm.  I can say now that what interests me is what Susan Sontag called “an emotional situation”, sensuality, sexuality, feeling.  This is supported by the concept of the work, the linguistics of the work, and usually this adds layers and layers of meanings.  The best work excites me emotionally and intellectually.  Thats what I am striving for.

There are big differences between your previous work (Objects/Homages), which we featured in August 2009. Can you tell us why it changed? Was it something within you or extraneous circumstances shifting your artistic style?
I’m always trying to challenge myself, to put a leg out and make myself trip.  I am most comfortable when Im in discomfort. I don’t have a comfort zone of any kind. Everything is anxiety. Objects / Homages is from 2007. After two years of working abstract I wanted something more concrete to hold onto. These latest works are very large linens. I had just finished and shown a project of 42 small panels on wood, and wanted to do large work. If you look at the evolution of the work from 2007 to 2010 you see that it’s a slow one and might make more sense.

You have two beautiful children. Do you find it changes your art? In what way?
My children have had such a positive effect. Ava is still really small, but Romy has made me look at things in such a fresh way.  The questions he asked, and the way he sees the world really inspire me. I would like to be able to look at things in the same way with the knowledge that I have. Mainly, though, Romy tells me what to paint: a boat, a car, and airplane, animals etc. And I listen to him. I’m about to start a project of 10 large panels just on the questions he asks me. I think that there is the highest level of sophistication in these questions and I hope to be able to mirror that in the work. But yes, Ava and Romy have brought me a renewed sense of urgency and a greater hunger for work.

Imagine yourself as one branch in a “family tree” of artists. Who makes up other branches?  Who is part of the trunk?*
I do see myself in that way, a part of the big family of art. The trunk is made of (and this not diminish the hundreds of artist and painters that I absolutely love) Piero della Francesca and Henri Mattise. These are two people who I think of every day. Really a backbone, and creators of such profound work that I go back to thousands of times. The branches are filled and are dense with many green green leaves. Tal R, Philip Guston, Willem de Kooning, Wolfgang Tillmans, Olivier Zahm, Walker Evans, Nicole Eisenman, Dana Schutz, Picasso, Masaccio, Titian, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, Jonas Wood, Mark Grotjahn, Cezanne, just to name a few of MANY that came to my head. But most of my inspiration in the past years has come from films, fashion, photography, architecture, design. Charles and Ray Eames absolutely make me go crazy. Herzog and de Meuron are in my mind, the best architectural practices working today; every solution is particular and local. The three pillars to my thinking though are: John Zorn, Jean Luc Godard, and Paul Celan. A composer, A film maker, and a poet.  I’ve been utterly obsessed with all three of these for so long.  John Zorn taught me thats its possible to choose any ‘style’ you want.  That we can go in and out of styles and make them or own, that to choose one way of working (and it is a choice) is a lie. That each project can have its own lexicon and rules.  J.L Godard’s work is constantly changing, still today. The first time I watched Histoire du Cinema I cried. The density of information is brilliant. He sort of an editor of film and art, something that resonates highly with me. Paul Celan wrote in a language (German) that most of audience wouldn’t read in. Years ago, I sat with the person who was organizing the Hebrew translation from the Israel Foreign office. He told me that Celan wanted each poem in German beside the Hebrew and the Israel Foreign Office was not allowed to that in the 60’s because of the sensitivity around the German language then. The way Celan constructed, de-constructed, and re-constructed language has an immense affect on how I think pictorially.

What do you consider your personal place in society to be? Do you even believe in the concept of a ‘society’? Does it affect your art?
Society is complex, with many people having multitudes of associations, identities, and ideologies. National and religious identities have, in the west, become almost secondary in importance. I can understand why Margaret Thatcher said “There is no society, there are only individuals”, but I disagree with her. And having said that, most of the time, I feel rather removed from society, a sort of distant observer. This is true of Israeli society, and its true of American society, and definitely true of European society. Because of this distance (that is not self-forced) I can take, steal, use, render, interpret, and do whatever I want with all of the informations that come from all societies. It gives me a freedom to become a grand editor. The price is loneliness.

* this question courtesy of this site

Penguin – Something

How and when did you start as a record label? Where are you guys located?

Growing up together we’d always dreamed of starting a record label but always thought of it as a kind of pipe dream that maybe we’d have a go at after university, but then the summer after our sophomore year we found Passion Pit on myspace and realized it was the kind of thing we had to just jump in and do right then and there. They’re just the kind of band you don’t pass up the opportunity to get involved with and we’re glad we did because we wouldn’t be where we are today without them. We spent the rest of that summer figuring out a business plan and developing the name and identity of the label, and we launched that September with Passion Pit’s debut single. At that point we were both at different colleges in Poughkeepsie and New York City, but since graduating in May we both live in the City working on Neon Gold full time.

What musical genre or style do you particularly / most often work with?

We work with a variety of styles of music, but above anything else we’re a pop label. That can mean a number of different things, but we like how much cool and credible pop music there is around at the moment. Pop is no longer a dirty word muttered behind closed doors.

What is a defining aspect of the artists you represent?

The unifying characteristic of our artists is a strong pop sensibility and accessibility that lends itself to mass appreciation, but unlike the recycled ideas that often pervade throughout the mainstream pop climate we like to think our artists bring a unique and creative – often more alternative – perspective to the pop genre.

The Knocks – When you got music

What records should we listen to, to understand what Neon Gold Records is about?

Of our own releases, Passion Pit’s “Sleepyhead” is obviously the record that started everything and thus a good point of entry for the Neon Gold sound, and Marina & The Diamonds and Ellie Goulding are very much the flagship artists that introduced us to a wider array of listeners. More recently it’s Penguin Prison who’s come to exemplify the quintessential Neon Gold sound – a cool, credible pop artist who writes music that’s truly unique unto himself but also massively accessible at the same time.

Beyond our own records we grew up listening to acts like Eurythmics and Garbage and 90’s UK pop radio, Ace of Base, The Cardigans and big pop stuff like that. There’s always been a place in our heart for Motown as well. More recently it was kind of mid-2000’s British guitar bands like Bloc Party and Doves, and more left field pop fare like Guillemots, Outkast and The Go! Team. We’re kind of both still fully in love with Destiny’s Child too, but don’t use that as a pull quote or anything.

Word on the street is that Neon Gold started while you were both college students in New York. Can you tell us a little bit more about the beginnings of the label, and how it was dealing with college life and the newborn project?

We launched the label in the autumn of our junior year when we were at different schools about 90 miles apart, so that was difficult. We balanced our workload by effectively utilizing all of our vacation time off school for business trips, and it helped that for the most part our professors appreciated what we were doing and sympathized with business-related absences so long as we ultimately got our work turned in. The fact that there were two of us is what really made everything work though, in that we had a support system in place and could always count on one another to pick up the slack if one of us was bogged down with coursework.

Your first ever GOLD001 release was Passion Pit’s Sleepyhead + Better Things. How do you feel now knowing that you were, in a way, the initial trampoline for one of today’s greatest American speaker-melting bands?

Working with Passion Pit was an amazing opportunity and really a product of being in the right place at the right time, and we’re just lucky that they were such cool guys and willing to put out their first ever official release with a brand new label with no track record to speak of. It’s a great feeling seeing them play to thousands of adoring fans whenever they’re back in town, knowing we were somehow a part of how it all began, and they’re still all such great guys – they deserve every ounce of the success they have.

Yadi – Guillotine

What are some upcoming releases and projects to watch out for?

We’ve got amazing new singles coming from Penguin Prison and Mr. Little Jeans next month, as well as singles from a grip of talented new artists – Spark, Yadi and Strange Talk to name a few – and the long-awaited debut solo single from Starsmith, whose risen to fame over the last year in the UK having produced over half of Ellie Goulding’s debut album, as well as tracks for Kylie Minogue and Cheryl Cole. It’s an exciting time here at the Neon Gold HQ!

What about concerts and festivals? Does Neon Gold Records organize or plan to organize any?

We’ve promoted a number of shows in both the US and UK, as well as showcases at festivals like SXSW, CMJ and The Great Escape that we’re definitely planning to keep up in the years to come. We’re also about to launch a monthly club night in NYC in the new year, which we haven’t done before so that’s exciting. This month we’ve got a massive showcase booked in at CMJ that we’re co-promoting with our friends at Chess Club Records. There’s more information available on our blog, but we’ve got over 20 bands lined up – including Penguin Prison, The Sound of Arrows, The Knocks and The Postelles – and it’s going to be the biggest event we’ve ever done. Much further down the line we hope to someday put on our own festival, but that’s a dream that’s on hold for the time being. You never know though.

Ellie Goulding – Under the Sheets (Jakwob Remix)

How do you see today’s music industry? In your opinion, what is the role of independent labels today?

We know everyone says the music industry is dying, and while it’s certainly come a long way from its 90’s heyday of cocaine expense accounts and private jets, if anything we think it’s a more exciting time to be in music. Reduced sales put a greater pressure on artists (and labels) to increase the quality of their output – you can’t just record two hit singles and sell an album of filler tracks anymore – and it really feels like the bar has been raised in terms of the standards albums are held to now. Furthermore, with the evolution of home recording technology and the increased exposure of independent artists through the internet, it feels as if the independents have every bit the opportunity for success that the majors once had, and I think the rise in independent record sales reflects that.

What are your methods to discover new bands or artists? What do you look for?

We go to as many shows as possible and are constantly scanning the internet for new talent, sitting in our office just playing new tracks back and forth for one another. The internet has really fostered an increased globality in the international music scene, and it no longer requires a metric ton of frequent flyer miles to properly scout international talent. Thanks to the internet we can come across the next big thing in Sweden from our desks in New York.

Please complete this sentence: “If we weren’t answering this interview, right now we’d be…”

Tandem parasailing.

And to finish: what other independent record labels would you recommend?

XL has always been and continues to be the gold standard for independent labels. They’re seriously in a league of their own. On a smaller scale, NYC’s Frenchkiss Records (Les Savy Fav, Passion Pit, Local Natives, The Dodos) have also been killing it in recent years. And then there’s our contemporaries Chess Club and Young & Lost Club based out of London, two amazing singles labels who were really the labels that inspired us to start Neon Gold in the first place.