NYC 5: The Big Oof / November 15, 2020 by a zugunruhe

Dude.

The last year started out hot. I came back from LA to a relaxed job opportunity only for it to flip into the most gainful employment of my life. Then, COVID-19.

At one point, I was working 80 hours, 7 days a week and still making it a few extra stops on the L every few nights to shoot a show. I feel like I hit on a good style in LA and wanted to explore it further in NYC, no matter the sleep lost, only for everything to shut down after a few months. I transitioned to work from home on March 10th, and NYC began shutting down on the 12th.

Initially, I didn’t go shoot that much. I very much tried to adhere to shut down rules, only going out for groceries and other essential things. While I brought my camera with me, I didn’t start shooting regularly until warm weather started coming around again in May. Even then, it was only a weekend thing.

Since I couldn’t shoot these amazing artists and scenes around the city, I did my best to turn that energy toward refining my composition skills. I started writing a piece of music every day and then sampling radio broadcasts covering the pandemic as well as the Black Lives Matters protests (The latter you can hear on the @_zugunruhe)

I’m a big believer in not wasting my time. This year I was given a lot of time, so I used that daily project to help me create a series of albums. The first two can be found here, and the third will be released at the end of the month.

So. I guess that’s all I have to say. Here’s some photos.

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201X - Bangers, Affirmations, and Masterpieces / January 10, 2020 by a zugunruhe

In the last decade, Kanye West finally released an album I liked, I discovered the incredible Icelandic music scene, and phased myself out of SXSW and my Austin-centric way of life and started exploring new scenes.

I’m also amazed at the amount of killer music that was released in 2009 that I couldn’t include.

Listed in the order I thought of them:

Top 10 Songs

Nick Hakim - The Light
Octopus Project - Sharpteeth
La Vida Boheme - Hornos Del Cal
Svper - El Final De La Noche
Grisalappalisa - ABC
Tyler, The Creator - See You Again
Plateaus - Do It For You
Islands - Carried Away
A Giant Dog - Sex and Drugs
Les Savy Fav - Let’s Get Out Of Here

Top 10 Albums

Black Lips - Arabia Mountain
Nick Hakim - Where Will We Go 1 & 2
Diet Cig - Over Easy
La Sera - Sees The Light
Fucked Up - David Comes To Life
Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will
Dan Deacon - America
Why? - Mumps, Etc.
Les Savy Fav - Road to Ruin
Die! Die! Die! - What Did You Expect

I love music. I love expression. I love new ways of approaching things. I love the questioning of conventional composition. I love everything about controlling vibrations to make us feel things.

So I made this list as a celebration of the last ten years. I wanted to remember what happened and I wanted to share. Because I love this stuff and I want y’all to hear something on this list and obsess over it.

The main criterion for these 70 or so songs is if they made me think of music in a different way. You know, those moments when you realize what you’re listening to is completely new and different. Ranging from “Oh, you can just do that” to “Oh, you can just do that.” Either the arrangement, the subject matter, or the delivery, something stood out about each song on this list.

Only one song per artist (the exception being St Vincent as she’s almost completely absent from Byrne’s “I Should Watch TV”) and no covers (honorable mention to Wanda’s Jackson’s “Thunder on the Mountain” and Cigarettes After . Sex’s “Neon Moon“).

Putting this list together gave me a chance to go through my photos to see who I was able to shoot over the last few years.

I’ve fallen in love with concert photography since the last decade started. I’ve slowly tried to not only get good shots of the artists, but to capture the environment they perform in. Seeing these performances adds such a wonderful dimension to the recorded tracks. Whether it’s being in a tiny venue at 20% capacity, shoved into the stage the front of a packed ballroom, or watching them open for Crazy Town for some reason, adding those environments to the experience is something I’m moving toward capturing.

All of the typical subjects are here. There are the tales of new love from the stalker vibes of Kitty’s Okay Cupid, the cool ecstasy of Plateau’s Do It For You, and the simple celebration of life that is Surfbort’s Les Be In Love.

Multiple takes on love that has ended. Gangly’s Fuck With Someone Else explores the depressive side of needing to let go to The Coathanger’s Squeeki Tiki sending a final fuck you.

The exploration of youth from the first steps of independence in Diet Cig’s Pool Boyz to prolonged adolescence in Grim Streaker’s Today New York.

The pieces that focused on looking back on life gave me my favorite lines of the decade. A Giant Dog’s amazing Sex & Drugs (“I’m too old to die young/ I can’t even remember being young”) and Why’s Strawberries. The latter contains one of my favorite clusters of lyrics

Your mom, she sits while her hair is in curlers,
Smokes weed and listens to that Garrison Keillor,
That’s how I’ll live when I quit my rap career,
Let her laughter hit the rafters and go out into the atmosphere

Both Island’s Carried Away and Robyn’s Call Your Girlfriend approached vocals in a way I hadn’t thought of before. I’m in love with how Nick Diamond sings into a harmonica to give the two titular words a washed, strained sense as if they were being carried away themselves. The producers of Call Your Girlfriend took Robyn’s last note of the second chorus and turned it in to a sampled solo that still makes me smile.

Noun’s Dogs was my first “Spotify find” where the algorithms and gods aligned to deliver the most fun, weird, amazing piece. The structure made me think of France’s Shiko Shiko, who were the first band I fell in love with at Iceland Airwaves, and whose “Let’s Go To Pyongyang And Kill A Bunch Of People” made me believe in a prog-pop punk future.

And some songs carry a personal weight. I remember studying in the UTEP library a few weeks out from graduating with honors in the twilight of being 31 and listening to Mikal Cronin‘s Piano Mantra. I would just imagine being able to walk across the stage and graduating something for the first time in my life. The sentimental, unsure, and hopeful mood of the music just resonated with me at that moment.

Then there are the eternal bangers in Black Lip’s Raw Meat, SVPER’s El Final De La Noche, and Fucked Up’s Queen of Hearts.

The affirmations that drive us to music with FM Belfast’s I Don’t Want To Go To Sleep Either, CHAI’s N.E.O., and DRAM’s Cash Machine

And what I consider to be absolute masterpieces in Nick Hakim’s The Light, Octopus Project’s Sharpteeth, and La Vida Boheme’s Hornos Del Cal

Everything on this list is something I treasure. Just wanted to share :)

I also made a playlist of my favorite videos from the last decade and it has everything:

1. lethargic and literal raps about exploiting i and p frames
2. an oiled up Icelandic man in long underwear dancing in front of rolling hills of bologna
3. the most joyous telephone game ever played
4. a love story told through dance in a James Bond guise
5. a wonderful summation of the best rock opera of the decade
6. ten seconds of footage turned into a three-minute story of regret
7. two Austinites doing acid at Disneyland
8. an adorable old man shooting his shot at karaoke night
9. an imbalanced bender around Brooklyn in a traditional Korean dress
10. gooey hateful stuff.

Dreamscapes 2 / December 19, 2019 by a zugunruhe

Overnight trains across the country travel through stretches of land that give voyeur-esque passage through the lights of distant homes, cars, and fires who are echoed in the sky by the few stars that come out.

Isolation can alter how we perceive our environment. Our minds fill in the negative space and create a fragile surreality that can be broken by a flash of light or any familiar, steady presence.

While the original Dreamscapes aimed to capture the the unreal environment of the midnight sun in the Arctic Circle, the aim of this set is to capture the negative space of rural America to find new unique shapes and patterns with the available light.

Also, these just look kind of cool.

NYC 4/LA 1: The ~BiCoAStaL~ Era / November 15, 2019 by a zugunruhe

Life is wild.

Getting back to NYC in January was bittersweet. Reconnecting at the Greenpoint Gallery is always a treat and Brooklyn is far from the worst place to be. But there was a general uneasiness in me being back in the city. I love taking chances and learning new topographies. Being surprised around every corner is something I live for. I had become addicted to being in situations where I understand nothing.

Many things conspired to me leaving for Los Angeles but it was a welcome change. Mostly because I was able to eat my own words about the city after speaking so poorly of the it while living in Austin. I used the opportunity to see things in a new light. Not only through photographing the insane sunlight in Southern California, but through the people I’ve met, the architecture I’ve stood in, and the general awareness I’ve gained through trying something new.

The last thing I expected was to photograph the poet laureate of Gucci and his lady during a choral arrangement of a Beatles song.

This year I whittled down my gear to one body and one lens. An all manual focus 40mm f/1.2 and very capable full-frame mirrorless. While this limits how I’m able to produce, it frees me from thinking in any other capacity. I can see most shots before I pull out my camera. Because of the sheer amount of shooting I did the last few months of 2018, I know exactly how certain parts of the day will look, how much contrasting sunlight I will need to create shapes with shadows, and where to stand in a DIY space to get the most dramatic shots from one florescent bulb on the wall.

I’m not huge on talking at length with the shots I take, but I believe the last year has allowed me to take serious steps towards much more dynamic photography than I have before. I’m beginning to feel proud of my work and I hope you guys dig it.

Also, how the fuck has it not rained in LA in three months?

NYC

LA

Echo Park Rising 2019 / August 23, 2019 by a zugunruhe

Echo Park Rising 2019 was like a small SXSW with no blatant corporate sponsoring or open bars. The line up was diverse, ranging from Thrash in a barbershop to Soundclound rappers doing acoustic sets on a patio. The majority of the party stretched along a mile of Sunset Boulevard and came out strong for four days straight.