From the Nest

Lunch—massaged raw collard green citrus salad with signed orange twists.  

No strict recipe, if you're interested, mainly just de-stem a bunch of collard greens, slice the leaves into one- or two-inch thick strips, place in a bowl and douse with juice form about one half orange + one lime, then massage vigorously to break down the toughness of the leaves. Once it's reduced in volume by about half, salt + pepper to taste, add about a tablespoon of olive oil (we used lemon infused), and two sliced scallions. The peel a handful of strips from the rind of an orange and singe over heavy heat in a heavy skillet. Chill and eat.

From the Nest

File this under 'Lives Up to the Hype'.  

Sure, we've seen the beautifully packaged, very expensive Mast Brothers chocolate around town, but I'll admit—we'd never had a bite of the stuff and had merely admired it from afar.     

Until now, thanks to our friend April, who was kind enough to give us a couple bars for our recent anniversary—based entirely on which wrapper she thought we'd appreciate more, mind you. She knows us so well. According to the Brothers' site:

"Mast Brothers Chocolate offers a variety of single estate and single origin chocolates as well as our first house blend. We have partnered with incredible farms and organizations such as Anderson Almonds, Freddy Guys Hazelnuts, Stumptown Coffee, Maine Sea Salt and Crown Maple Syrup to create chocolate pairings that blow minds!"

Consider out collective corvid mind blown.  

Brooklyn-based bean-to-bar chocolatiers and real-life brothers Michael + Rick create their chocolate in small batches, sourcing from small farms and hand-wrapping each bar in paper that's been printed on an in-house printing press. Yeah—these dudes are serious about chocolate. And beards, it seems.

Check out this brief, chocolate-porn-y video, directed by The Scout. You can also watch a short documentary on their site showing their relationship with one of their primary cacao suppliers, La Red de Guaconejo, a small organic cacao co-operative in the Dominican Republic.

And no. You can't have any. All ours!

The Find

A while back, our friend + neighbor, Lara, sent us an email with a subject that read "No more bacon after this video...." Said video (below) showed a woman leading a pig named Lucy through a series of fairly impressive tricks—from sitting on command, to playing a mean avant-garde keyboard riff with her snout, to a little guitar strumming with her hoof.     

Point well taken—pigs are smart. Smarter than dogs, some would say. Smarter—even—than cats, though our cat, Allister, would likely take offense to such a notion. But with hard science backing up such observations, most would be hard-pressed to argue the point. According to an article in the New York Times—

"(Researchers have) found that pigs are among the quickest of animals to learn a new routine, and pigs can do a circus’s worth of tricks: jump hoops, bow and stand, spin and make wordlike sounds on command, roll out rugs, herd sheep, close and open cages, play videogames with joysticks, and more. For better or worse, pigs are also slow to forget. 'They can learn something on the first try, but then it’s difficult for them to unlearn it,' said Suzanne Held of the University of Bristol. 'They may get scared once and then have trouble getting over it.'"

If you didn't at least silently give that last statement an "aw," you're totally a terrible jerk.  

Some would argue that an animal's intelligence isn't nearly as relevant as its sentience or the mere ability to register fear, pain, etc when considering moral issues with regards to them, and I'd wholeheartedly agree. But it does give many of us pause when considering, say, eating bacon or consuming any other product derived from pigs when we see how smart and seemingly cognizant they are.

And it raises serious questions, I think. Like, why do we eat some animals and not others? Is it just because some are furry + cute and look adorable when you superimpose the words "I CAN HAZ CHEEZBURGER?" overtop of a photo of them while others are kinda gross and smell like farm funk? Or is it just because it's been hard-wired into us that cats + dogs are our domesticated companions and pigs, cows, goats, etc are animals to be used for food regardless of their intelligence; regardless of their ability to feel pain when they're killed or branded or a tag's shot through their ear; regardless of the undeniable woe that a mother cow goes through when a calf is taken away from her immediately after birth so her milk can be used for us instead; regardless of the literal insanity that's brought about packing beak-less chickens into cages until their skin is featherless and rubbed raw?

We're not the preachy types when it comes to being vegan, but it just doesn't parse to us. When it comes down to it, we've always thought it's been a simple matter of distancing oneself that's allowed so many of us to go on eating and abusing animals for so very, very long. 

But when you see a video like this—for us at least—it seems pretty hard to assert that this obviously intelligent animal would somehow be cool with us killing her simply because we think her meat tastes awesome when you fry it up. I'm sure it does—I remember that it does, in fact, and I miss it—but is it worth killing her and enslaving millions of animals just as smart and feeling as her? 

It isn't. It simply isn't, especially with all the amazing options out there for cruelty-free  foods. And especially when you consider the wildly effective health benefits that come with cutting meat + dairy and the impressively lessened ecological impact that results from adopting a plant-based diet.

Just in case you're not yet convinced though, we're throwing in another video Lara sent us recently. This second pig not only knows how to swim, but he's also clearly a moral superior to many of us, risking his tiny, tiny pig life to save...a drowning baby goat. What???

The Song

Reader, you know who sucks? THE MAN sucks. THE MAN likes to tell you what to do, because he thinks he knows better than you. Well, you know what we say to that? We say no way, Reader, not us. No. Way.

When THE MAN tells you to stop watching Groundhog Day because you've already seen it 217 times and you need to get some sleep so you don't look like Droopy Dog in that client meeting tomorrow, you tell THE MAN "Eff off, you don't rule my life—I'm gonna kill it in that meeting and I don't live by your rules ANYMORE!" When THE MAN tells you you're too old to be doing the crab dance late at night at weddings out of town because you might injure yourself, you tell THE MAN "Watch THIS bad-ass move, THE MAN, I bet you didn't EVEN KNOW my arm bent that way did you‽" And when THE MAN tells you to go prep school so you can be a hotshot doctor when all you want to do is ACT, for god's sake...you sneak down into his study in the middle of the night during this eerily calm slo-mo scene and shoot yourself in the head. ...too far?

Thankfully, Jayson Kramer didn't pull a Neil Perry, but he did give it to the man, as it were, jumping ship after taking his med school entrance exams—and, likely, after wowing his chums with his rendition of Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream—and starting a band. According to Kramer, "A weird thing happened when I finished my MCAT and all the studying stopped. I was completely honest with myself for the first time in my life and recognized that I had no desire to go on to medical school. This is when I took a more serious turn toward music, which is something I realized I should have been doing all along.”

Or he maybe he just really fucked up his MCAT. I don't know. Regardless, he didn't fuck up the music thing, which is good news for us. Instead, he returned to the keyboard (Kramer played classical piano from age 6 to 16, at which point I bet it became uncool) and moved back to Chicago, where he met drummer Joe O'Connor + bassist Dan Zima. The three started the band California Wives in 2009, rounding out the group in 2012 with guitarist Graham Masell and releasing their debut album, Art History, earlier this month. 

The result seems to be a pretty fine pop-rock album, easy on the ears with just enough new wave influence, catchy beats, and melodic hooks to keep you coming back for more. The songs' subject matter is familiar—loss of youth, love, reluctant yet undeniably healthy growth, Groundhog Day—and the sound is too, in the most reassuringly pleasant of ways. 

See what we mean with this week's Song, "Purple," and a few other tracks (below) from their SoundCloud page.

You can purchase the digital formats of Art History on iTunes + Amazon and the more traditional hardcopy versions should be out in early October from Vagrant Records. If you're in the south or out west, try to catch the band on tour with Stars + Diamond Rings—sure to be an awesome show. 

And remember to sound your barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world, Reader. 

Note: Music posted to this site is kept online for a limited period of time out of fairness to the artists and, you know, our server. So if this is now an older post, the links may well be dead.

The Song

We first started writing about the Danish band, Efterklang, way back in 2009 (excuse the formatting—we had a much slimmer site back then). Since then, our fascination with and love of this innovative band has only grown. In 2010, we interviewed frontman, Casper Clausen, at the release of their third full-length—Magic Chairs—and debut on venerable record label, 4AD.

Two years later, the band is poised to release the fourth album, Piramida, an eerily beautiful collection of songs inspired by a nine-day exploration of an abandoned mining settlement of the same name on the snowy island of Spitsbergen, just six-hundred-some miles south of the North Pole. Not only does the album take its name from the abandoned ghostly settlement, it also captures the frozen spirit of the place, translating it into atmospheric, icy sounds that slowly crystalize and break apart again as the bands erects well-constructed pop elements on top of them. From the 4AD write-up:

"When the band returned home, nine days later, they’'d accumulated just over 1,000 field recordings from the many and varied environments they explored in Piramida. The beginnings of this approach can be seen on the band’s 2010 film collaboration with Vincent Moon, An Island. Then the time came to transform these audio snapshots of abandonment, of isolation touched by unique beauty, into songs.... And it'’s this process, of taking sounds found organically in an alien landscape and using them to power ‘traditional’ progressions of notes, of rhythms and melodies, that forms the framework for so much of Piramida. The hollow tones of '‘Told To Be Fine'’ are sourced from ornate glass lamps, given new life long after their original use had become redundant. The very first sounds on the record, on opener ‘'Hollow Mountain'’, are metal spikes being struck, protruding from a bizarre-looking oil drum the band cheerily named Miss Piggy. The synth sounds of '‘Apples'’ are created from a microsecond of a wonky piano note – from the aforementioned grand. Throughout, the album contains sounds that quite simply have never been heard before. What you’re hearing is a very singular kind of sonic alchemy."

And "sonic alchemy" is a very apt term for the musical structures on Piramida. Clausen's drawn-out, wandering melodies are complemented by twinkling keys and toy-locamotive-like percussions throughout, and the three mainstays in the band (Clausen, vocals + various instruments; Mads Christian Brauer, electronics, programming, + other instruments; and bassist, Rasmus Stolberg) bring in a solid team of backup studio musicians including traditional pop instrumentalists, a full brass section, a very well-placed string orchestra, and a 70-piece girls choir to fill out the still sparsely beautiful sound. 

Hear for yourself on this week's Song, "Apple," and, courtesy of NPR Music's First Listen series, stream the album in its entirety below for the next week prior to it's official release, next Tuesday, stateside. You can also check out their video for the album opener below, made up of photos + video taken of their trip to the mining settlement and animated album artwork.

Pre-order the LP or CD via the band's site (don't be scared of the odd currency mark—it'll convert) or via iTunes if you prefer 1's + 0s.

The band is largely touring in Europe and overseas for the time being but will be giving a special performance as a six-piece at the Metropolitan Museum of Art this Saturday.

Photos by Rasmus Weng Karlsen; album art Hvass & Hannibal.     

Note: Music posted to this site is kept online for a limited period of time out of fairness to the artists and, you know, our server. So if this is now an older post, the links may well be dead.

Cloud Nine

Here's to the nine best years of my life. Love you dearly, Katie.

Photo by Sheppard Ferguson.

The Find

Back last fall, at the height of the Occupy movement, we blogged, not about sit-ins on Wall Street, but about another movement growing in New York. Though it also harkened back to calls to action of yore, this movement wasn't demanding economic change, per say, it was demanding access to vacant public land in the city, of which there is a lot. At one point, 596 acres, in fact. Which is where the organization we wrote up about  a year ago got their name.

596 Acres helps New Yorkers connect with vacant, public lots to create community gardens, active farming areas, and, more generally, a space in which to reconnect with one another in the midst of the City That Never Sleeps. According to their Web site:

"Hundreds of acres of vacant public land exist in New York City, hidden in plain sight behind chain-link fences in neighborhoods where green space and other public amenities are scarce. We are building the tools for communities to get the keys legally and unlock all these rusty gates—and the opportunities within them. These include:
• making municipal information available through an online interactive map;
• placing signs on vacant public land that explain each lot’s status and steps that the community can take in order to be able to use this land;
• visioning sessions for education about public land holdings by invitation from community groups;
• engaging the community when an interested potential leader reaches out; and
• direct advocacy with New York City agencies."

After first seeing the posters on various chain link fences around Brooklyn, we reached out to 596 Acres to see how we could help. As luck would have it, they needed a hand in the design department. 

We created the branding above for 596 Acres' very first fund-rasier, being held at one of our favorite vegan lunchtime spots, Sun in Bloom, on the evening of Saturday, October 6.

The event will feature vegetables from Brooklyn’s own FeedbackFarms (which is actually the lot we shot—pictured below—in the original blog post), and fresh produce from upstate farms Lucky Dog Organics and Conuco Farms; an auction, featuring work by the street artist Swoon (one of the pieces up for auction is pictured below as well), archival prints from 596 Acres print library, and the work of photographers who have documented the Acres; and Music by DJ Stylus.

Tickets are $50 and proceeds go to further 596 Acres' work to empower NYC residents to access and utilize the public land in the city. Find out more and purchase your ticket on the 596 site.

Hope to see you there!

The Song

Reader, we had the pleasure this past weekend of watching two of our favorite people in the world stand up in front of a bunch other people—many of whom also happened to be favorite people of ours—and tie the knot. Now, I know for a lot of people out there, the institution of marriage isn't necessarily something you can put your full weight behind. And, as a child of divorce, I'd have to agree on that it's not the best road for everyone. But, I have to tell you, when you're standing in a room surrounded by palpable, tangible, nearly visible-to-the-naked eye love—not just of these two people standing at an alter of electric lights and Japanese paper balloons, but of everyone around them—it's hard not to be believe in love. It's hard not to want to immediately set out and find that person who makes you sing inside and makes every moment one million times better than it'd be without them. And it's these kind of moments that make so very very happy I have and have had that with Katie for a very long time now.

All that's largely beside the point of a blog post on music—though it is our nine-year anniversary this week—but this week's band reminded me of a conversation from this past weekend that I had with a friend I see not nearly enough. Said friend was talking about this band in Richmond, Virginia that takes the idea of a cover band one step further, playing an entire album of any chosen artist from start-to-finish with each show. Now, that could be a pleasurable aural experience or a totally horrendous one depending on both the source material and the band doing the covering, but it raised a larger point—very few albums are great start-to-finish. Like, very few. Even if you prize listening to an album from beginning to end, there are usually one or two songs that you'd rather leave than take, when it comes down to it. Filler, let's say.

But I have to say, Reader—the debut album, An Awesome Wave, from this week's featured band, alt-J, has proved the exception to that rule. 

The British band—also known in writing as ∆, the delta symbol you get on a Mac keyboard when holding down the 'alt' and 'j' keys (*cough*nerds*cough*cough*)—formed in 2007 when the members met at Leeds University. Somehow moving along the bizarre nexus of folk, hip hop, pop, electro, and...something else, alt-J plays glitchy, deliberately plodding, churning songs that work their way into your heart like the poor kid at recess with puppy dog eyes who never gets picked to be on anyone's team...and then destroys all the other kids with a crazy awesome robot he built. Joe Newman's odd vocals conjure up some kind of strange clockwork cyborg of a hybrid Tricky and Nick Drake, giving the band an immediate air of individuality. And drummer, Thom Green, with his syncopated beats and cymbal-less rhythms, provides an equally oddly enticing, quirky base for the band's looping electronics, plunky piano lines, and intricate melodies. Kind of like what Hot Chip might sound like if they grew up in Appalachia and then went gangsta. 

Words fail me, clearly. So give this week's Song, "Fitzpleasure", a listen and hear for yourself. Then I strongly encourage you to give the entire album a listen through below, start-to-finish. It really is beautiful, in the most weirdly cool of ways.

Also be sure to watch their video for "Tessellate"—which kind of plays like a hip hop commercial for Armani—and, if you're in New York, sneak into their sold out show at the Bowery Ballroom this Wednesday as they kick off an American tour. Full tour dates can be found here. An Awesome Wave hits shelves stateside September 18, but you can pre-order the digital album via iTunes now.

Photos by Jory Cordy.     

Note: Music posted to this site is kept online for a limited period of time out of fairness to the artists and, you know, our server. So if this is now an older post, the links may well be dead.

End of Summer Blues, Reds, + Pinks

We'll be back shortly, Reader—we're still easing out of the easy-breezey island time feel of our extended trips out of town. So chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiill, man. In the meantime, please enjoy this shot we took of the sun setting over the Sanders Bay in Corolla, North Carolina.