< 23-25.7 > Freigest Music Festival with Brass Wood and Wires, DLC- Sudsound, Ganjaman, XLterrestrials + Media Decompression ( Sat.), Open Air + Big Tent Kino, Infostands, TV Coop, workshops, & Art resistance in many forms! all at YAAM, Berlin ( a bit subject to weather since most of Yaam is open air )

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< 24.7 > N.A.S.A. lands at Icon, Berlin

Some of the Hottest shit ( at least in the pop sector ) to hit these ears this year is NASA’s 1st release, The Spirit Of Apollo. How they managed to pack a dozen heavy-hitters ( Chuck D, KRS-1, M.I.A., Tom Waits, David Byrne, and the list goes on and on … ) onto this new vessel in such a short time is a mystery we hope to uncover when we attempt connecting with them 2morrw. And Gotta Love the foto from burnt out lunar-like landscape of L.A.’s Griffith park. No shame catchy tunes to put a fire under the industry’s pants and/or on yur nearest dancefloor. David Byrne’s odd and unmistakable croon with Chuck D., Raz Congo, and Seu Jorge on “Money” is phenomenal. And the track People Tree is also a work of art.

[ BUT Note: XLt has already expressed a particular beef with their video for Money using imagery from Shephard Fairey- commercial artist based in LA- who built his career on a graffiti art persona and subsequently lost all street art cred after repeatedly plundering great leftist agitprop for his own branding egofest and cashing-in … and Not attributing credit to the original work. Debates rage regarding the damage done to a primarily non-commerical art form and the serious contradictions in his work. So we won’t link the Money video here made by Syd Garon and Paul Griswald, whose work we have been fans of since Q’bert’s Wave Twister animations, but this collaboration just seems to be a bad call. And to push the pop deconstruction envelope further, XLt now uses the video in its psychomedia analysis education 1. to point out the above example of poor art practices (Fairey), and 2. to analyze the expression + lyric that “Money is the root of all evil”, which can be a very debilitating misconception in the leftist scenes. As the XLt believe positive social organization will make greater advances when accepting economic strategy as a critical factor in combating Assholes With Money, who are more specifically the root of all evil. ]

added: N.A.S.A.’s concert is ripe for analyzing. It was well-crafted audio-visual performance which at times came close to Meat Beat Manifesto guerrilla media, but dumbing down alot of what makes the high-art compositions on “Apollo” special into Frat-like party town remixes. And sorry, but sampling a number of embarrassing megolamania tributes from Jacko to Rolling Stones to AC/DC sorta contradicts collaborating with hiphoppers with meaningful content. So they seemed to be making the same errors as Shephard Fairey. Perhaps this text from one of our psychomedia analysts sums up the experience in one simple koan-sized plog:

“We have the distinct feeling that pop culture is the last pina colada on a raft adrift in a consensualized Bermuda Triangle.” ( we’ll have to continue that thought elsewhere )

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< 24.7- 7.8 > Signals Thru The Flames with the Praxis Label and many more.

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Upcoming:

< 15.8 > Nick Currie aka Momus reads from Solution 11-167. The Book of Scotlands at ProQM, Berlin

tbc