Pat Graham
Music and media pop and move. We are digital and online. Genres slide into each other, constantly bounding forward. That’s why Pat Graham’s new photography book, Silent Pictures, is so important: it’s an anchor to link us to the past. Silent Pictures is his first book, showcasing underground rock at its finest through the past two decades. The collection features bands as diverse as Modest Mouse, Outkast, Elliot Smith, Fugazi, Thievery Corporation, Built To Spill and The Shins, on the road and backstage, in a mode that is raw, dirty, lonely, triumphant, gritty and real. Graham, a Milwaukee native, spoke to VITAL from his London gallery, 96 Gillespie, to discuss Silent Pictures, being on the road with Modest Mouse and future projects. For more information, visit 96gillespie.com or modestmouse.com/photoblog. Define Silent Pictures – what’s its attitude? It’s a photography book, plain and simple. It’s about the images, and hopefully it’ll help expose the road life of bands. We put a lot of thought into the editing, assembling the book like a record to balance quiet and explosive moments. We want to grab attention and get people to stop flipping, to really engage them and get them to inspect interesting photos. With digital photos, we flip to quick. With this book, we want you to stop in your tracks. Describe your evolution as a photographer in the rock world. I was born in Milwaukee and kicked around a bit. I started shooting photos at Café Voltaire in Milwaukee around age 17 and studied photography at UWM. Soon after school, I moved to Washington DC. I had a friend that was in bands out there. That’s what kickstarted my photography at shows. I really got into the scene. Shot a lot of Fugazi in ‘91-‘92. It was around that time I started touring with Modest Mouse. It was me with the three guys and a van. It was bare bones, man. I’d do merch, drive a lot, move gear in and out of shows; shooting the whole time. I still tour with them regularly and post photos on their tour blog. I’ve also had the good fortune to have work printed in major European and U.S. music publications like Rolling Stone. What is your greatest accomplishment as an artist? Doing exhibitions with my wife Melanie Standage – it’s the process of setting them up and seeing things on the wall. Our shows “Past Perfect” or “Wildebeest” were fun to do. The book is a great thing to do and have done but there’s something about showcasing the real prints that always exciting. Also, the Experience Music Project in Seattle purchased a number of my prints for their collection which is a great feeling, too. What’s up in the UK? I founded 96 Gillespie with my wife. It’s a London gallery that features a lot of American artists. It’s a place to start a dialogue between UK and US artists. Describe your evolution as a photographer in the rock music world. Where do […]
Jan 1st, 2008 by Howie Goldklang
Human Bell
Nathan Bell (Lungfish,Television Hill) and Dave Heumann (Arbouretum,Bonnie “Prince” Billy) could be the musical equivalent of Civil War re-enactors. Their conspired effort, Human Bell, creates an atmosphere akin to that of an organic battlefield – a dirge-y sweep of chaos, simultaneously cold as metal and mellow as a field of grass droning with insects. Recorded by Paul Oldham and mixed by John McEntire, the guitar strings sound as though they reverberate into a tin cup while the crash cymbals and brushes fight to be the main percussive attraction. Add lots of meandering fuzz to the steady progression of songs, and they grow and change just by standing still. Bell and Heumann give us a Tortoise-like bite to chew on – a veritable novel for an audience accustomed to short stories. Through wave after wave of this seemingly cathartic sonic expedition, songs alternate between the quiet, such as “Ephaphatha (Be Opened),” swaying in a brassy swaddling of horns, and the forceful, calculated twitchiness of “The Singing Trees.” Human Bell’s self-titled release is a test in endurance, but should be savored for its meditative qualities. The duo lives up to their name (an uncanny combination of the musician’s surnames), their music widely resonating even during their live shows, when two skeleton guitars must manipulate the body of their recorded music. (On their album, Bell and Heumann host guests such as Matt Riley, Michael Turner, Pete Townshend and Ryan Rapsys.) Human Bell encapsulates a quiet beauty that is at once reflective, progressive and sparklingly macabre.
Jan 1st, 2008 by Erin Wolf
Open to interpretation
By Joe White “We’ll all have walkie talkies, and I’ll pretty much be like the quarterback,” says Kevin Stalheim. Such a statement might seem unusual coming from a member of a classical music ensemble, but when the ensemble in question is Present Music – a gaggle of adventurous virtuosi who have trained their fans to expect the unpredictable – the imagery seems in character. On January 12, Present Music stages “Art, Architecture and Music” at the Milwaukee Art Museum, using the entire Museum as a canvas for a concert. “We’ve been there for a long time, and we always go in there and do a concert where people sit down,” says Stalheim, who serves as the ensemble’s artistic director. “I thought that someday I’d like to do something where we’re moving around the galleries.” Before the performance, UWM students and professional video artists will display their work in Windhover Hall while models from Fashion Ninja pose around the museum. After a talk between Alex Mincek and MAM chief curator Joe Ketner about the dialogue between art and music, the action will move to Windhover for the world premiere of Mincek’s “Portraits and Repetitions,” as well as “In White” by longtime Present Music collaborator Kamran Ince and “Women at an Exhibition” by Randall Woolf. After the performance, concertgoers will split into groups and disperse to different sections of the Museum for music and recontextualized art. Roughly every 20 minutes, the groups will switch places. “What I’m imagining is people walking around in these groups [in] a very quiet way, in a contemplative way, the way someone might in a cathedral or a library,” says Stalheim. “The music will be happening, but people can feel free to move around.” Afterward, guests can enjoy an after-party with access to the Martin Ramirez exhibition, an impromptu runway show by Fashion Ninja and a presentation by multimedia ensemble donebestdone. While the works of Randall Woolf, Alex Mincek and Kamran Ince comprise the traditional sit-down-and-listen section of the evening, they are anything but stereotypical “serious” musicians. Those imagining composers of classical music to be crusty, gray and near-death will have their prejudices particularly challenged by Randall Woolf, who played in garage rock bands in high school and did not have an interest in classical music until college. “I do modern classical music – modern in the sense that it has sounds, ideas, videos and other elements that you would be familiar with in our world, like electric guitar, turntables and drum machines,” Woolf says. His resume includes Harvard and Tanglewood (perhaps conforming more to the “I don’t own a television and never smile” stereotype of serious composers), but his MySpace page includes PJ Harvey and Bubba Sparxx, and his music reflects as wide a range of styles. Woolf wrote “Women at an Exhibition” on commission from the Akron Symphony Orchestra and the Akron Art Museum and premiered the work in 2004. The piece incorporates recordings of women speaking and singing and is played in tandem with […]
Jan 1st, 2008 by Vital Archives
Bullet For My Valentine
In the 1980s, it was demanded that metalheads swear allegiance to one subgenre and stick with it. Thrashers risked ridicule for owning a Poison album, and hairmetal kids couldn’t fathom the appeal of music so heavy that Aqua Net girls didn’t like it. So it’s amusing to listen to metal in the 21st century and hear Maiden-esque power metal, Sebastian Bach-caliber vocals and death metal growls in one band. Perhaps the emergence of grunge and indie in the ’90s convinced the metalheads that they’d better stick together. If that’s the case, then Bullet For My Valentine is tailor-made to appeal to every last one of them, be they clad in denim, leather or spandex. Scream Aim Fire, the band’s second album, is a nonstop barrage of British riffage, music school-bred twin guitar leads, and all-attack-no-decay double-kick percussion, held together with sugary power-pop vocals that could have been lifted from Skid Row’s debut (note: this is not a bad thing, indie rockers, and no, this isn’t irony talking), were it not for the occasional, and unfortunate, dive into cliché Cookie Monster metalcore. It feels like a calculated choice that will definitely sell records, but hearing Matthew Tuck’s voice soar into Rob Halford terrain would have been much more satisfying. Still, while they may be hurting in the originality department, Bullet For My Valentine is a breath of fresh harmony and — what’s this? Songwriting? — in a musical climate where headbangers seem content with mindless guitar wankery and tuneless vocals. Take the standout “Hearts Burst Into Fire,” a not-quite power ballad about (get this) life on the road, of all things. The riffage may be all Iron Maiden, but the lyrics are vintage Jovi Crüe. VS
Jan 1st, 2008 by DJ Hostettler
