New York—get thee to the Domino Sugar refinery!

New Yorkers know the iconic building well by site but few beyond aspiring mobsters or graffiti artists have ever actually had reason to visit the long-abandoned factory. Now, renowned visual artist and most excellent namer of projects, Kara Walker, has made the site home to her first ever large scale art installation, entitled “A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant”.

Walker—best known for her early paper cuts that use elegant lines to tell the far-from-elegant story of exploitation of black saves in the antebellum South (below)—employs the refinery to tap into the social ramifications of the sugar industry through history and tell a story all too easily forgotten or little heard by us most. From Kara Walker + instigators of innovative art, NYC’s Creative Time:

“Creative Time is thrilled to announce that it will present the first large-scale public project by the internationally renowned Kara Walker, one of the most important artists of our era. Sited in the sprawling industrial relics of Brooklyn’s legendary Domino Sugar Factory, Walker’s physically and conceptually expansive work will respond to both the building and its history, exploring a radical range of subject matter and marking a major departure from her practice to date. The exhibition opens on May 10, 2014, and promises to be an eye-opening experience for both those who are familiar with Walker’s work and those who are new to it.”

The centerpiece of the show—the Sugar Baby, a gigantic, bright white, sphinx-like form—towers 35 feet above visitors as eerily wrought sculptures of children, made from dark, raw sugar, dot the floor around the huge ‘subtlety’ (the terms used to describe sugar sculptures in medieval times).

All in all, this sounds like a show not to be missed. “A Subtlety” is free and open to the public from 4-8PM Fridays and noon-6PM on weekends until the show closes, July 6.Walker will be in conversation with Radiolab‘s Had Abumrad at the New York Public Library at 7PM tomorrow night. The event’s sold out, but can be live-streamed via NYPL’s Web site. Read more about Walker’s work and the new installation in last week’s New York Times article and listen to a great piece on “A Subtlety” from NPR’s Audie Cornish.

Photo above, courtesy of NPR; all other photos, courtesy of The New York Times. Below, the Sugar Baby mid-construction; the refinery floor, pooled with molasses, which still leaks from the factory walls over a decade after it was shuttered; Walker’s paper cuts; and the artist with one of her sugar sculptures.

We’ve been enjoying the high-energy, politically charged noise pop of the Welsh band, Joanna Gruesome since we first heard them last summer. Just off enough to not be totally derivative of a strange riot grrrl-noisepop mashup of old-time favorites Huggybear + early My Bloody Valentine or Medicine, the youthful band crunches out songs that dive from boisterous, guitar-washy pop and screamy punk.

Give a listen to their track “Sugarcrush”, from the full-length, Weird Sister, below.

It seems the band has a less than average origin story too. From the band’s bio:

“They all met in an anger management counseling group. During the course they were told that writing, making music, dancing or painting could relieve tension and help reduce feelings of anger. One initiative involved a project where they were assigned a group to compose and perform a song in front of other members. Initially they found each other infuriating but gradually acknowledged their musical chemistry and decided to continue with the band outside the therapy group.”

The Cardiff-based band is set to revisit our shores for a short tour, dates below. They’ll also be part of the literally just announced lineup for FYF in LA this August. You can also stream the album via their Bandcamp page below to see what you think. It’s available in physical form via their label, Slumberland, and digitally via iTunes.

8/21 San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop *
8/27 Cambridge, MA – The Sinclair #
8/28 Philadelphia, PA – First Unitarian Church #
8/29 New York, NY – South Street Seaport ^
8/30 Washington, DC – Rock & Roll Hotel #

* = w/ Manatees & Popscene Resident DJs
# = w/ Perfect Pussy & Love of Everything
^ = w/ Big Ups

weird sister LP by joanna gruesome

Picking up and moving your life across the country is clearly a large undertaking. But, aside from the obvious hurdles like rebuilding your social network, finding a home, and physically getting the massive amount of things you’ve collected over the years from one coast to another, there’s a wealth of tiny challenges that tend to add up too—what’s my new go-to happy hour spot; where do I buy my exotic spices; how do I drive a car, again; where do I get my hair cut now?

On the latter challenge, at least, I was lucky enough to arrive in LA with a name in-hand—go straight to Brian Girgus, owner of The New California in Echo Park, do not pass Go, do not visit the Hair Cuttery. The shop puts a no frills spin on high-quality haircuts for men, occupying a light-filled, well-designed space just down from Mohawk Bend and across the street from the LA PETA headquarters.

We got a chance to catch up with Brian recently—pictured above with his dog, Shelly Long—to talk about the inspiration behind barbershop, leaving the indie music world to open it, and cutting Lou Barlow’s hair.

raven + crow: So, first off, tell us a little bit about yourself. I know you’re local-ish, but you haven’t been in LA your whole life, right?

Brian Girgus: Local-ish…. I was born and raised out in the desert, the Coachella Valley; mostly Palm Desert and Indio. I grew up playing in bands and going to shows in LA, so I was here a lot. I moved to SF in 1996 and stayed there for 15 years. I lived in New York a couple times, once when I was a little kid and once right after I left SF and before I came back to California to live in LA. I definitely always felt a familiar sense of home in LA. My mom grew up here, so maybe I always felt it was my destiny to really live here at some point in my life….

What made you get into the world of hair cutting…or grooming in general? You guys do shaves too, after all.

It was a practical choice in some ways but I also felt it was something tangible and creative that I could do for money.  So far, it’s one of the few things modern technology has managed to not be able to outsource to the robots. I’ve always been a haircutter, whether it was my own or with some friends, but the harsh realization that I was about to work in retail for my whole life unless things changed was the instigator for me to go to barber school and learn the trade. It’s a good and social trade that I enjoyed as much as I expected to, so it’s become a very natural and enjoyable thing for me to do…and I get paid.

Nice. Wait, did you really find $6000 in a used coat you bought and use that to go to barber school? I heard that from someone, but that seems too good to be true.

Yep, that story is totally true. Just dumb luck. I paid the tuition in cash. It kept me out of debt and there isn’t much better than that in life.

Ah, awesome. So, what’s the idea behind The New California, generally speaking? Like, if you had to sum it up in a nice, succinct package…

The idea is that we kind of have to re-invent ourselves if we wanna go forward. Whether it’s me or the people, the state, the government…whatever. We have to look close and be what makes us special in the first place. Maybe we have to go all the way back to the beginning—we’ve dug ourselves a deep fucking hole. There is no emphasis on quality anywhere and when there is you have to call it “artisan” and pay a lot for it and it becomes marketed and cliché.  I just wanna do it well, keep it simple, and be true to myself. It’s a unique way of thinking, yet it’s so classic and traditional.

Yeah, I’m glad you’re not cutting my hair in suspenders + bow tie + extravagant mustache, man. And there definitely is a pretty laid-back vibe at the shop—did you opt out of offerings appointments just to give a more relaxed atmosphere?

Yeah, it keeps the line moving. People are always running late and I can’t sit around waiting for someone who is “gonna be here in ten minutes.” We wanna’ work. This way we don’t have to keep a schedule book or pay for some salon scheduling software. We keep it real simple. It’s for the best.

Nice. Where does the name come from—what’s the ‘old’ California that’s not this place?

There was a barbershop I worked at in San Francisco that was called the New Chicago #3. The place was a fucking pit. Just filthy and so poorly run. The name is the reminder of traditional standards of quality but actually executed, not just just paying it lip service. Plus, it sounded fucking cool.

So many years of naming bands paid off. I love your aesthetic in there—all of it—logotype, site look, and interior design. Who set all of that up for you?

Hahahaha…a commonly asked question. I paid an interior design and business marketing firm called Girgus, Girgus, & Girgus…. No, I DID IT ALL!!!!!! I am a fucking tyrant like that. A tyrant with a good eye.

Well it works. I especially love the porthole-winodws. Very nautical. Did you have any of that in-mind before you started things up? Like, did you have a ‘feel’ you wanted to put out there on first look?

I had a million ideas. It’s my blessing and curse. But you can have a million ideas and that’s nice, but a room will tell you exactly how it’s gonna be arranged. If you find one or two special things, those things will tell you exactly what other things will look awesome. I definitely wanted it to reflect my curiosities and interests. It all just laid it self out—I was the conduit.

Well-put. So, what made you leave San Francisco and set up shop here in LA in the first place?

The weather…and the price.

Fair. Okay, be totally honest here, man—I always feel like I’m walking a fine line between making conversation and just shutting the fuck up and letting a guy do his job—what do you think best etiquette is for those of us getting our hair cut? Let the barber take the lead and speak when spoken to? Fuck all and ask what you want to ask, personal questions included? Or maybe I’m being too New York about all of this and over-thinking it….

I always seem to appreciate people who can just be themselves. If you’re talkative, talk. If you’re the quiet type, well, be quiet. Generally that’s a little awkward though, so I try and talk to people. Maybe get them to relax a little bit. Somehow getting haircuts brings out something very interesting in almost everyone. It’s my job to roll with it so you just be yourself and we’ll find something that works…. Oh yeah, and keep your fingers outta the way and your head still.

Got it. Best place you’ve ever gotten a cut and/or shave? New California excluded, of course.

There was a guy named Dave in San Francisco that I liked. He taught me how to be damn near perfect when it came to cutting hair. I’ll say him, but i’ve gotten some good ones…my friend Joe at Barbershop in New York…my co-worker Lizzy is really the best though, now that I think of it. And I mean that….

Oh, yeah, she’s great. I know you all generally focus on simple short/guy’s cuts—where would you recommend someone go for more-involved-yet-still-cool ladies’ dos?

Sunday Morning in Eagle Rock. Courtney is fucking great.

Ah! No shit—Courtney cuts Katie’s hair! She’s awesome. While we’re on the small world subject, though, we know each other loosely through friends in the whole indie music scene. Are you still doing music at all?

I am but I just don’t really put it first and foremost like I always did. I just recorded a new song of my own at a studio in burbank last week and I recently played drums with Love as Laughter and The Luxembourg Signal but I don’t have a band anymore…. I guess I got sick of having major commitments to mediocre music and bands so I figured “What’s the point? I’ll just do something else for awhile.”

Yeah, I guess you just do what you love, if you’re lucky, and that changes, whether it’s music or cutting hair or design or…I don’t know, watching Full House repeats. Back on music, what’s the story behind the video of you de-shagging Lou Barlow (below)?

I’ve known Lou for years. My first band, lowercase, toured with Sebadoh a few times, so we became friends. It’s the first installment of the “____ gets a haircut” series. (Comedian) Neil Hamburger is next.  I just put it up on the site.

Oh, awesome. You know, Questlove’s fro’s been looking a little out-of-sorts lately, to be honest.

I could definitely handle that dude’s fro.

Do it. Finally, any professional tips for straight razor shaves at home? Katie bought me one a ways back but I kind of fell out of the habit of using it. I loved it, but I always had a hard time keeping it sharp enough consistently to work well on my annoying combination of thin skin + dark hair. …or should I leave it to the professionals?

LEAVE IT TO THE PROFESSIONALS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The New California is located at 2203 West Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park and open 11AM-7PM Monday-Saturday; 11AM-5PM Sunday. Find out more and watch the hair cutting series videos mentioned above below and on TNC’s site.

Just back from time in the Virgin Islands spent with family, an inordinate amount of rainbows, and a wealth of tropical fauna and feeling wholly, creatively rejuvenated from the trip.

Plus this premature summer weather we’ve returned to in LA has us wanting to dive into the memory of that water up there.

Click the panorama below to see a full-screen version of the shot of Maho Bay, where Katie + I spent our honeymoon so long ago. Still shocked that such a dreamily beautiful place exists in the world.

Who’s got my back on this one—the new Godzilla movie is going to be awesome.

Not only does it star Bryan Cranston + Elizabeth Olsen…and a giant fire-breathing monster, it also boasts a pretty stellar print ad campaign, orchestrated by LA-based Ignition Creative. In addition to the traditional campaign based on movie stills + art, they’ve thrown together some really impressive retro ones that touch on multiple eras and design styles.

We shot these these the other day, posted at the corner of La Brea + Melrose.

It’s getting to be summer soon, right? It is in LA, at least—word on the street is that the high’s going to be up 101°F Wednesday. That calls for a pool party!

It also calls some summer chickpea salad—a nice, healthy, tasty vegan stand-in for chicken salad. You can find our recipe for it here. These days, we tend to eat it on its own, sans bread, and usually skip the nori mentioned in the previous recipe, though, if you’re looking for something more tuna-salad-like, you might want to keep it in.

Either way, it’s a go-to for this coming warmer weather. So go to it!

As you may have guessed from the subtitle above, this may well be the best cover song of all time—”Sexual Healing”, by the late, great Marvin Gaye, of course, as covered by New Orleans’ Grammy-nominated Hot 8 Brass Band.

Give it a listen and tell me a better take on someone else song, I dare you.

It’s featured on the soundtrack for the highly anticipated Jon Favreau film, Chef: “Chef Carl Casper (Jon Favreau) suddenly quits his job at a prominent Los Angeles restaurant after refusing to compromise his creative integrity for its controlling owner (Dustin Hoffman), he is left to figure out what’s next. Finding himself in Miami, he teams up with his ex-wife (Sofia Vergara), his friend (John Leguizamo) and his son to launch a food truck. Taking to the road, Chef Carl goes back to his roots to reignite his passion for the kitchen—and zest for life and love.”

Probably not the most vegan-friendly movie in the world, but, with a cast boasting roughly everyone in any good movie ever and a lot of hype, it’ll likely be worth a watch. Plus the soundtrack’s curated KCRW’s Mathieu Schreyer, meant to mirror the road trip taken by Favreau + co. in the movie.

If this track’s any indication as to the worth of the rest of the songs, it’s going to be a pretty stellar collection of songs. Listen to the Hot 8 Brass Band’s take on the classic below and then give the movie trailer a watch. Chef opens in select theaters today and the movie’s soundtrack is available on iTunes now; Hot 8 is in the midst of a summer tour now and soon to head across the pond—full tour dates on their site.

Someone once said that it’s highly egotistical to quote oneself. But I’m not sure who said that because they failed to quote themselves, so I’ll proceed—on first hearing the music of Kishi Bashi last year, we wrote:

“Kishi Bashi creates beautifully complex, layered, orchestral pop that sounds like it comes straight out of the beak of some magical bird you’re happy to be near but fear looking at straight-on. Or it comes from some really talented guy. One or the other.”

We stand by that statement—to this day, Kishi Bashi (the pen name for Kaoru Ishibashi’s solo work) continues to entice us with his deeply textured, highly accessible, inventively soaring music. So we were thrilled to speak with him yesterday as he embarked on a five week tour supporting his coming sophomore release, Lighght, out next Tuesday.

As the former member of Athens-based Elephant Six giants, Of Montreal drove through the bayou on his way to the first show of the tour in Baton Rouge, we talked about the new album, his many-layered writing process, and our mutual abandonment of New York City.

Read on and listen to the first single from the album, “Philosophize In It! Chemicalize With It!”, below

“I guess there’s a lot of pressure—my first album did pretty well, you know, in an “indie” kinda way, and a lot of people really like it,” Kaoru told me regarding his second solo album. “So there’s a lot of pressure to kinda recreate it…. I went a different direction. It’s still a lot of the same creativity, but I think it’s a little more aggressive—there’s a lot more experimentation going on, I tried to feature a lot of musicianship, and I focused on the song-writing and the lyrics.”

Listening to his first album, 151a, though, you’d never guess that he’d never not focused on the song-writing. Ishibashi’s music is highly orchestral, extremely layered, and musically complicated while still presenting itself as extremely accessible pop music.

“I think the approach, I think I got it from Of Montreal—(founder) Kevin Barnes is a good friend of mine and my neighbor and he’s a real inspiration. But I take an approach where I layer as much as I can on top of each other…when I’m writing a song, I put so much on there…like, any idea I have, I just put it on there to the point where it’s too much. And then, when I’m editing it, I’ll leave things and I’ll take things out; I really see what work.”

And the seemingly enigmatic title of the album—Lighght—comes from a poem that proved inspirational to the classically trained violinist. “The poem’s by Aram Saroyan,” Ishibashi explains. “He’s a minimalist poet. I studied minimilist composition—like Philip Glass, Terry Riley—and I didn’t realize there’s a parallel movement to minimalism in poetry…. Like, you don’t read it, it’s more like an instance. You just kinda see it and experience it…. That poem was really profound—it’s one word—”Lighght”; just how it felt, in the middle of the page. It was a pretty profound poem at the time in that it kind of broke a lot of conventions and inspired you to really think about words and the functionality of words. But the whole idea was that it breaks conventions and that’s something I can truly relate to. And that’s why I used it for my title. It’s a one-word experience…. I see the album as a burst of a general idea of being in one point in time…. I found out about his work, like, a year ago, and I was really excited about it. And I looked really hard for another word because I didn’t want to steal it—I thought maybe I could find another word with a silent ‘GH’ which I could double…but I couldn’t—this was the perfect one.”

In the past, Ishibashi performed solo, singing and playing violin live over drum loops and pedal-looped vocals to support his first release. He’s now recruited a full band to support Lighght for the next five weeks, enhancing live shows with performance visuals created by Athens-based artist, Dana Jo Cooley.

On what brought Ishibashi from New York to Athens, Georgia in the first place—”Of Montreal, I guess. I used to play them and I rehearsed with them and I really fell in love with the town. It’s a small city, but it’s got a lot pop culture, really lovely people, and it’s got a very vibrant live music scene. For the size of the city, it’s best I’ve seen on the east coast. There’s always a band playing and people will come to see you.”

And it sounds like there’s no looking back or romanticizing the ten years he and his wife spent in New York City. “We started okay, before we had kids,” Ishibashi says “We were in Brooklyn, in Park Slope…and then we were in Queens…and then we ended up in Jersey. And we were just like ‘What are we doing here?’…I’m so glad I don’t live there any more…the quality of living was just getting really bad.” What to do with all that newly discovered disposable income? “I live in Athens, which is like, the middle of nowhere, so I got a lot,” he say with a laugh. “You know, I bought a house. I have a grill.”

Living the dream.

You can listen to the rest of Kishi Bashi’s new album below and pre-order it on yellow or black vinyl, CD, and/or digitally via Ishibashi’s label, Joyful Noise, and directly from Kishi Bashi’s bandcamp page. You can also get it via iTunes. Catch the band on tour too—they hit New Orleans tonight, Austin tomorrow, and will be in LA next Friday as they play the Fonda. Full tour dates on Kishi Bahsi’s Web site.

To the right, the album cover for Lighght and the two winning designs from Kishi Bashi’s recent t-shirt design contest, created by Yiming Qin + Paige Bowman, respectively.

Lighght by Kishi Bashi

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We just got a chance to update the portfolio with some branding, packaging, and Web work we did for our friend Paul Singh’s new creative collective, Pel.

Pel is a group of like-minded professionals, hand-picked by Paul, who share a passion for crafting inventive, creative digital media solutions in the form of Web sites, mobile applications, and digital video projects, all emphasizing usability and easy-to-use navigation. He’s brought together film producers, photographers, copy writers, developers, front-end specialists, and graphic designers—ourselves included—to form a diverse, flexible team of creatives for design-forward, intuitive visual communication projects.

We actually started our work with Paul by helping to come up with the company name—Pel is a trade term that’s short for Picture Element; essentially synonymous with a pixel, the basic building block of everything we see in the digital world. After establishing the conceptual identity for the company, we moved on to the visual identity, running various multi-version drafts of a company logo by Paul in our branding process before landing on the mark you see here—a logo that features clean, bold typography and stacked array of three pixel shapes that change their color palette to fit the product. For instance, above, the logo takes on the colors of the Brazilian + Kenyan flags for this promotional coffee packaging we designed to announce Pel to the world.

The standard logo—which you can see on the site—brings in colors that represent Paul’s initial forays into these various realms of the digital world in which Pel now works—a computer beige from his first computer (a Tandy 1000EX); a blue-grey for  his first cell phone (Motorola v8160); and a silver-grey for his first camera (Canon AE1).

After establishing the brand and doing the coffee packaging, we moved on to less delectable…but nonetheless essential + exciting projects like Pel’s business cards, Web site, and letter line, which you can check out below.

Visit the Pel site to find out more, find out about the rest of the team, and look at some of the projects Pel has done already—some of which we worked on, and one of which is this very site you’re on now.

Last week, when we up in Sonoma for some work meetings, we got a strange recommendation during an end-of-the-day happy hour:

“You have GOT to check out the Seed Bank in Petaluma!”

I’ve never been on Family Feud, but if I were, and if whoever hosts it these days requested that I name one of the top five must-see sights of California wine country, I would certainly not say “Visit the Petaluma Seed Bank, sir!”

But, it turns out, we were not at all led astray by that friendly, slightly bewildering recommendation. The Petaluma Seed Bank was established in 2009 as western outpost for the Missouri-based botanical behemoth, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Set in the historic Sonoma County Bank building—built in the 1920s—the Seed Bank is nothing short of impressive, be your thumb green or not. Acting as both a retail store and a kind of archival repository for obscure + nuanced flora, the massive depth of their seed collection matches the interior of the vast, high-ceilinged building.

The call the Bank “a beacon for gardeners, foodies, shoppers, and tourists alike.” They continue on their site—”We offer over 1,500 varieties of heirloom seeds, garlic, tools, books, and hundreds of local hand-made gifts and food items. Remember—everything we offer is pure, natural, and non-GMO!” Writing that out now I realized I somehow missed the heirloom garlic. I have no idea what heirloom garlic is…BUT I WANT IT.

Pair that enthusiasm for heirloom seeds with the “did I just step onto the set of Frontier House“, homemade garb of company founders and store workers, and…I have no idea what you get, but it’s excitingly weird. In a great way. As long as they don’t sit me down to talk about ‘the great lord’s bounty’ or anything.

You can read Christine Muhlke’s 2010 New York Times article to find out more about Baker Creek and the quelling of that writer’s curiosity on the company.

Visit the Petaluma Seed Bank for all your seed-buying needs next time you’re in the area, located smack in the middle of historic downtown at 199 Petaluma Blvd. It really is worth the trip. You can shop Baker Creek’s online store as well.