I’m back to claim my alter ego, psychological staging ground and bloggy blog. This new flow is emphasizing beauty and love and creation. I got this cushy job doing cushy shit so the least I can do now is go ham, 24/7.
Forever young. We in this bitch now.
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Nashy.
You were definitely not as psyched as I was about the Golf Wang Pop-up store. I mean granted these dudes are selling tees, button-downs and decks at the hate-to-buy-it price point but look at that store. Plastic shelving, tees in the manufactures’ sleeves, little to no design orientation- I love that. Simplistic, honest, representative of the grind. I’m looking at all these designer store openings and the fact is putting so much emphasis in creating lookbooks, storefronts, creative, etc. that bleed into a particular style don’t add anything to the brand anymore. There is no unique selling point so to speak. None of these kids are past 22 and they already know how to market themselves in a way that doesn’t involve constant site updates and shopping cart revamps. The Golf Wang Holiday 1991 collection is already off the chain, and they have kept the styling, modeling and crew consistent. That’s so dope, and it’s hella unique. This type of shit makes me want to throw my money in their direction. It works.
Not to mention I just love seeing kids going hard. Golf Wang.
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The homies over at our favorite neighborhood hip hop bloggy just dropped some blog dollars on a new site makeover. If you are like me and get about 100% of your music from clicking links after the word “new” and “dope” you need to get on the MJF band wagon. Outside of scoping new artists and new releases across the web, Marc and the funky bunch are just hella funny dudes. Big things coming in 2012 and you girlfriend’s at our next show.
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Remember the best thing about Christmas is taking those food comas. Also, take some time to think about what your thankful for. Ennui will be back with it normally broadcasted content on January 1st. In the meantime, happy holidays!
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The third and last Weeknd Installment, heralded by a new Weeknd site (that’s down already) completes the trilogy from the Toronto crooner. By many counts Thursday was the experimental one, so we’ll see what kind of return to basics or further deviants rise from this hot mess.
Drown yourself, it’s blastoff time. Download here.
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The lovely Saaret has been putting together a rough cut for her independent study/documentary film on urban living, graff and DC Metro’s Red Line entitled The Red Line DC Project. A really clear portrait from the perspective of commuters and writers rather than your typical documentarian process angle. Relevant, local and accessible across audiences. Check out the 13 minute intro cut and give her some feedback.
This is some seminal footage, and to be honest taking adopting a stance from the side of commuters and purveyors is fresh. If you didn’t know, the graff scene is like Bowser’s castle to penetrate, and shout outs to my girl for being on her grind over the past months working on her labor of love.
Anyway, enjoy and I’ll keep the words short.
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“The only horrible thing in the world is ennui, Dorian. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness.” – Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Grey)
After work today I hit up Durkl on Eye St. and talked to Malcolm about their new pop-up foyer, working with FUCT, and expanding into White Mountaineering, WTAPS and Visvim in a collaborative effort to expand their retail space. On top of hosting their $10 tee sale, the holiday collection was in full effect and the whole time I got to thinking about future expansion of Ennui.
Ennui is my little creative love-child and although I don’t put as much time as I can into it, it helps me to branch out and have a canvas I can reference and a little glass room I can work in. And honestly, Mr. Wilde, I’ve been sinning. The sin of ennui.
And it’s unforgivable. Actually, it’s not that bad, but for me I have this innate urge to learn and then go against what I just learned.
Take for example the millions of site redesigns and creative branding for Ennui. You should see my illustrator file for this blog, it’s literally flowing past the art boards. We as the young and industrious are taught about brand continuity, consistency blah blah blah and reinforce this idea on a daily basis. I see my homie Kenneth deal with this whilst engineering his design brand CULTMAGICK (more on that forthcoming). For me, Ennui is a personal space as much as it is a public brand. In the spirit of self-discovery, I see a million different re-designs as a million of different ways I try to conquer ennui on a daily basis.
Anyway this is a project I’m trying to flesh out and it’s been hella fun. The idea of there being multiple levels of boredom and complacency’s change into something more sinister…
Shout out to my homies in the corners of the world with their eyes open and their minds churning.
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It’s print time!
If you’ve followed Ennui for a while you might be familiar with ONI, a series of illustrations and stickers that depict the traditional Asian ghosts and demons, the oni. A major figure in a lot of popular and traditional folklore, oni are traditionally malevolent club-wielding beings. Traditionally, eastern cultures are extremely superstitious and have a variety of cultural references that have extremely diverse but historically relevant connotations. ONI was a series that was the beginning of an exploration of kami and anima, or symbolic dieties that existed within different naturalistic realms. To me they symbolized a way of exploring cultural manifestation through my own depictions and artistic style.
When I was sifting through some older work tonight I came across some later iterations of my oni designs, some of which I blew up to poster size and pasted outdoors. The Oni series was one of the first vector designs I took some serious time in creating and this particular version is much later in the iterations. Anyway, I’m currently toying with the idea of starting a web store and selling these designs screenprinted with a hand watercolored back swirl.
Reminding me of the Ennui art collective days, old buddies, and a need to return to making art for fun rather than profit. On a less nostalgic note, going through folders of artwork is keeping me occupied while I procrastinate from doing my infrastructure of art infographic.
Ok, Ok, back to work. In the meantime, keep an eye out for the web store popping up soon.
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I love the dmv/ I love go go/ I love rappin/ love da drums/ I love congos
This dude Larry that frequents the Georgetown area is also spittin’ fire as DC’s own K@O$. In preparation for his full length release Blood is Thicker than Water he dropped off an 6 track demo that spans slow jams to west coast inspired bangers. I’m going to be talking with him and trying to produce some collaborative efforts in the near future, but in the meantime I’m keeping these tracks to myself…
Ill flow. Talented cat. More to come.
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[Click the last pic for a panoramic]
This year in Miami the goal was to find a long enough wall to try a new concept, treating bunched characters like a repeated series of throw ups. I wanted to create something that had a similar feel to what writers of the 70′s & 80′s would paint end to end across subway cars.
I’ve been off my graff tip for a second but this “50 characters” from JerseyJoe is bringing me back to life. The versatility and style is one thing, but the consistency of every character is what keeps this piece fresh. Catch the process post from Jersey’s site. Apparently the dude drew out only 13 of the characters and freestyled the other 37. So dope.
via Revok.
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Ok, so Pitchfork gave Childish Gambino’s debut Camp a 1.6/10. Besides trying to fit as many convoluted allusions to hipster rappers, surburban roots and race relations as they can into one review, Pitchfork loves to play games. Yes, Gambino is only flirting with some of the issues in his life and as a rapper, his “ums” and “likes” are filled with nonsequitar metaphors. Yes it’s highly repetitive. And finally, it might not deserve a “Best New Music.”
Pigeons + Planes got their staff together for a little round robin e-mail chain that they posted a few days ago. In my temporarily blinding rage, I totally forgot to plug it but you should definitely read it.
To be honest, Pitchfork is getting big. Real big. With its website revamp and its sudden liability of covering every aspect of new music, they have more capital to work with but more mouths to feed also. As a result, I surmise that this is a highly political review. Suddenly the most assuredly embraced “new rapper” is getting one of the lowest ratings I’ve seen outside of Mac Miller. The argument for Mac Miller’s Blue Slide Park is loose, but the dude has no affiliation with Pitchfork. Might as well give a it 0, because honestly his target audience could give two shits about the Indie review powerhouse.
Look at Pitchfork’s top read reviews, Miller’s indie record doesn’t even rank in the top 10 most viewed in the past 7 days. On the other hand, Camp is the forth most read review in the past month. On the other hand, Gambino’s association with that “Best New Music” moniker was almost too expected. In an effort to alert the fringe music scene, the organization purposely throws up this attention-grabbing headline of a number.
In many ways, this Ennui blog post was pre-calculated by these stealthy manipulators. Pitchfork has a lot of power in generating fervent discussion because as much as people blather on about agenda-pushing, they are often right. Pitchfork has a very set agenda and a lot of it is based on consumer followership and flipping the formula once in a while. The result is a a talented artist getting treaded on by a system that reminds us to open our eyes once in a while.
Again, read the P+P analysis and wait for the Ah-ha.
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