Kitsch Magazine

Fall, 2018

Q&A A wi Q& with th TH THE E RE REGR GRET ETTE TES’ S’

LYDIA NIGHT BLACK PUNK ROCKERS

FORGE THEIR WAY IN

ATLANTA UG H TA KING ACTIO N THRO

H ARD CORE

PUN K

NO REGRETTES

by Abby Jones Page 4

REPO THE GENETIC OPERA

by Julia Alexander Page 8

TAKING ACTION THOUGH HARDCORE PUNK!

by Bruce Logan Page 12

UNDERDOGS OF ATLANTA’S MUSIC SCENE

by Kimeno McCoy Page 16

DEATH GRIPS: THE ONLY PUNK BAND WE HAVE LEFT

by Ryan Bassil Page 24

REINVENTING COUNTERCULTURE IN THE AGE OF DONALD TRUMP

by Baynard Woods Page 28

SORRY TO BOTHER YOU: AFRO-PUNK FASHION

by Hannah Ongley Page 30

NO

REGRETTES: Lydia Night on Fe

stival Season,

Helping a Tra ns Fan,

& Getting Lin-M

anuel Miranda ’s Appproval

by Abby Jon es

Lydia Night admits she’s exhausted, and rightfully so.

Along with the rest of her band, The Regrettes, the pink-haired powerhouse is still riding the high of her first-ever Governors Ball performance while the riot grrrl ensemble simultaneously kicks off their headlining tour. The four-piece have seen a successful year so far, performing to packed crowds at Coachella and Bonnaroo while also looking forward to their forthcoming sets at Firefly and Lollapalooza.

The Regrettes -- also consisting of Genessa Gariano, Sage Chavis and Drew Thomsen -- rang in 2018 with the release of their second EP. Aptly titled Attention Seeker, the band’s latest collection of garagetinged jams is led by the gritty, tenacious single “Come Through” and comes chock-full of plenty of opportunities to jump, kick and clap along, as thoroughly exemplified by frontwoman Night onstage.

Aside from reigniting the punk scene in their hometown of Los Angeles, The Regrettes also prove age is only a number; Night is

17, although her talent and stage presence belie her youth. Below, she discusses with Billboard all the recent happenings in her budding -- yet immensely promising -- musical career.

You’ve been doing a ton of festivals between headlining shows. What are some pros and cons, in your opinion, to festival sets versus headlining concerts?

Well with festivals, it’s really nice, because you get to connect with people that may not know who you are at all, and that’s really exciting to have an opportunity to introduce new people to your music. With playing headline shows, you’re connecting with people who are there all for you, which is really special in its own way. They’re super different, but still both are super fun.

Just so different.

The Regrettes just covered “Helpless” from Hamilton as part of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamildrop series. How did that come about?

Our producer Mike Elizondo is 4

good friends with Alex [Lacamoire] who arranged Hamilton, and Lin. So he knows I’m a huge fan -- I’m a huge, huge fan of the soundtrack and the musical. So he was working with them on a different Hamildrop, and he presented the idea of having us do one, and everyone was super into it. So we did it. And I got to choose the song, and that one’s my favorite from the whole soundtrack.

So, you kind of have Lin-Manuel Miranda’s blessing now. How does that feel?

It’s insane. I remember reading the email after he heard it for the first time and he loved it. I didn’t even think it was real.

Speaking of covers, you guys have done a lot of them. You have a recording of “Back in Your Head” by Tegan and Sara, and you covered Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz” at your Brooklyn show. What made you want to cover those?

We’re all just really huge music lovers, so I’m constantly covering songs on my own in my bedroom.

Lydia Night performs at the Bootleg Theater in LA on 02/22/18 5

The Regrettes

With “Back In Your Head” -- Tegan and Sara are on our label. Our label was like, “hey, is there any band that you’d want to put out side-by-side with?” And I was like, “oh, Tegan & Sara, 100 percent.” That song was such a huge part of my middle school experience. And then with “Ballroom,” it was something that I remember hearing it and thinking “oh my god, live, this would be so fun. Everyone would love it.” I just love when I go see a band and there’s a song that they play and I know all the words to and I get to dance to, and it’s just a fun little thing.

What other covers do you perform, and what song do you want to try next?

We have a cover of “A Teenager in Love” [by Dion & The Belmonts] that’s on our EP. We’ll do that live sometimes. We’ve done “Psycho Killer” [Talking Heads], we’ve done some Ramones songs and some Misfits songs. If we’re really into a song, we’ll learn it and do it. I

really want to cover “Try a Little Tenderness” [Otis Redding] because I feel like we could do a really crazy different version of it and I think that’s really cool.

You’re so young, but you’re such a natural onstage. Did you always have a performer personality growing up?

Yes, 100 percent. I have been making my parents sit through me putting on dinner shows and whatnot since I could move and walk. So yes, I was that kid. I was that really obnoxious kid who’s always like, ‘look at me, look at me, look at me!’ And it’s funny, because that was my whole childhood. And then I hit double digits, and I was around 10 -- I started doing open mics and then I got more self-conscious and would just sit with my guitar. It’s really funny, because I’ll look at videos from then now, and I’m like, “oh my god, I was so scared.” And then I just naturally kept pushing myself more, and constantly taking risks. Now I’m here.

6

Your EP Attention Seeker came out last February. Any developments on the next album?

Looking forward, what else are you most excited for?

We’re definitely in the process currently. Around the beginning of next year is when I’m hoping for that. [I’m excited for] more touring and going to new places that we’ve never been. I really want to go to Asia and Australia and just literally everywhere, and just go to all these different places and meet people in these different cultures and communities.

In your career, what’s been your proudest moment so far?

I think my proudest moment was the time where someone after a show came up to us and told us that “A Living Human Girl,” our song, helped her get through her transition. And that was a moment that was really just so cool, and so inspiring. That was the fuel to the fire of “OK, we gotta keep doing this and have as many people hear this music as possible.”

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In 2004, director Darren Lynn Bousman sought to ride a wave of horror films focusing on grotesque, boundary pushing imagery with his script for what would become The Desperate.

Bousman tried to sell The Desperate to a couple of studios but was told his story was too grisly for a mainstream audience. The script got into the hands of Leigh Whannell and James Wan, who had become overnight celebrities in the horror world thanks to their film, Saw, and invited Bousman to direct the sequel.

Bousman would hang on to direct the second, third and fourth Saw films before handing it off to David Hackl, and although he loved working on the movies, there was always another pet project that he wanted to launch: a horror-musical set in a dystopian future based on a play he staged in both New York and Los Angeles.

Despite his success with the Saw franchise and his rapid rise to the top of the chain in the world of horror cinema, Bousman couldn’t get a studio to finance the musical.

By 2008, Bousman decided he didn’t need the support of Lionsgate, the same studio that distributed Saw, and financed 90 percent of the musical himself, taking it on a crosscountry trip and handing out flyers to college kids to get them to see the movie. The director spent two months self-marketing with very little help from Lionsgate, and even though the film only grossed $147,000, Bousman succeeded in creating a new, iconic horror rock opera that was just as angry and revenge-seeking as he felt at the time: Repo! The Genetic Opera.

Repo! The Genetic Opera was born out of passion, anger, reckless abandon and a DIY-punk attitude that would have made Sid Vicious proud. The result was a subpar horror musical that has earned an army of devoted fans who re-enact it live every Halloween.

The film takes place in a dystopian 8

future where surgeries are handed out like ice cream cones and personal debt is on the rise as people take out loans to pay for their cosmetic fixes.

GeneCo, run by Rotti Largo (Paul Sorvino) and his three children, is happy to give out loans to pay for the surgeries, but if you miss a payment, the Repo Man (Anthony Head) is sent to your house and either takes back the organ that you had transplanted or mutilates you.

At the same time, there’s a rise in addiction to a painkiller called Zydrate — which comes in a little glass bottle — as addicts scramble to find the Graverobber (Terrance Zdunich) and beg him for the tiniest sample. It’s a world where everyone is either entirely plastic, numb or both, and the Repo Man’s daughter, Shilo (Alexa Vega), is slowly learning this horrific truth.

There are three important aspects of Repo! The Genetic Opera that can be examined to see why it became the cult film that it has: the cast, the ambience and the music.

the

genetic

opera

by Julia Alexander

but worked because the cast ranged from the most prolific of actors to some of the most amateur who joined the project because they believed in the film.

It’s important to remember that Bousman didn’t receive much from Lionsgate to help finance the movie, and it’s pretty obvious when you’re watching it. The sets aren’t up to par with other horror films of the early aughts, the costumes are obviously cheap and the effects are more comical than they are scary.

Despite that, the cast of Repo! do a fantastic job of using what’s available to them to turn this dystopian future they’re living in into something truly petrifying. The film itself is pretty gory for a musical, but the actual horror is in the message of addiction and reliance on plastic surgery and huge financial loans that the cast is able to drive home.

In order for a film like Repo! The Genetic Opera to be taken seriously, it has to have a stellar cast, no ifs, ands or buts. Bousman, a director who likes to work both with classically trained actors and an array of interesting people, viewed Repo! as a way to work with some of the most talented people in the industry, including Sarah Brightman and Anthony Head, but also iconic figures at the time, like Paris Hilton and Skinny Puppy’s ohGr. Part of Repo!’s charm was its collection of misfits on screen. Much like The Rocky Horror Show, the other horror-based rock opera that attained cult status following its releas in 1975, Repo! didn’t emphasize one actor or musician being better than the rest, 9

L S G U R D O L B E V O D B U S D O O L S G U R O O L B E V R D B U S D UGSLOV

The second aspect of the film, and perhaps the most important, is its ambience and attitude. As a self-professed goth kid with a love of anything remotely macabre, there’s certain imagery that attracts me right away and Repo! The Genetic Opera is full of it. It’s got cyber-punk elements, but for the most part, Repo! feels like a film made by gothy art kids for other gothy art kids.

In fact, Bousman told Filmmaker Magazine in 2008 that the film was made specifically with that audience in mind.

“The movie appeals to the fringe, it appeals to the goth-y outsidethe-box [crowd], the gay crowd, the theater crowd,” Bousman said.

When you’re a teenager and looking for a piece of art that connects to how you’re feeling, what you’re going through or mirrors back the image you’re going for, there’s no better feeling than actually finding it. When Repo! The Genetic Opera came out, I was 15 and at my heaviest goth phase. With the exception of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and a few other independent movies, nothing in the realm of film featured a look that I was obsessing over until Repo! came out.

Looking at the cult status it has built for itself, I wasn’t the only one who felt like that, and soon there was a mass of teenagers and adults who had found what they were looking for during their era. We weren’t reliant on The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which while still the queen of horror rock operas, didn’t feel like ours. Repo! The Genetic Opera was what we were looking for and it came during the height of horror’s revamp following the bleak period of the ‘90s.

The last facet of the film that needs to be addressed, and what I return to time and time again, is the soundtrack. Repo! is less a horror movie than it is a musical, so naturally it’s important that the soundtrack reflects that. If the sets and costumes suffered from the financial setback Bousman faced from Lionsgate, the soundtrack more than made up for it.

Most of the songs, like any good

The “Grave Robber” sings about plastic surgery

musical, are tracks you can play on a car ride or just keep rotating in a playlist. Songs like “21st Century Cure,” “Zydrate Anatomy,” “Legal Assassin” and “Night Surgeon” are extravagant, heavy tracks that encompass the theme of the film and have a biting edge. They’re full of dismal, macabre references, but they don’t feel like songs from a horror movie. They exist on their own and each track is so enticing that the soundtrack sticks with you far after the movie ends.

There are moments when the songs are corny, but all of that ties into the trashy magic that Repo! The Genetic Opera is known for now. The songs perfectly fit the ambience of 10

the movie and while no one would ever argue that Repo! is a well-made movie, objectively, the soundtrack acts as the beating heart to the weird monster that Bousman created.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is an odd film that never should have been created. But as Halloween edges closer and I start planning out my marathon, I can’t help but search for my copy of the film.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is a trash fire of ideas and although someone probably should have stopped Bousman from financing it himself — especially considering the return on investment — I’m thankful every year that this magical, gothy trash fire exists.

D

R V 11

by Bruce Logan 12

Hardcore punk music is known for being kind of angry and full of disillusionment and contempt. If you think it stops there, you’ve seriously underestimated the genre, says Joe Mageary, an alumnus and adjunct in the graduate Counseling and Psychology Department.

Mageary’s recent research explores the intersection of social activism with the hardcore punk rock scene, as observed in the politically charged 2017 Now or Never music tour.

The two-week, 12-city music event brought together three bands, including Mageary’s own, to incite action in light of the post-election upheaval throughout the United States.

As Mageary describes it, 1970s punk rockers consciously separated themselves from societal norms, often with a focus simply on destroying the status quo. The emergence of the hardcore punk subgenre in the 1980s, however, was a move toward active creation of the world in which the punks want to live, through “everything from political activism to personal choices people make,” Mageary explains.

They are still fringy like punk rockers but might also be straight edge (abstaining from drugs and alcohol), vegan or staunch environmentalists.

This distinction attracted Mageary, who started listening to “loud music” as an 11-year-old. Growing up, he was angry and confused by the world, and the corresponding malcontent in punk music resonated with him.

“If you’re angry inside but the world is all smiles, things don’t feel right,” Mageary says, “but if you can have the outside world and the inside world match up a bit, it can help you make sense of your place and your situation.”

What he heard in the music was purposeful anger as well as social consciousness in musical acts such as Minor Threat, the Dead Kennedys and Have Heart.

“Pretty quickly I started stumbling onto bands and songs that were educating me about events in recent history, political ideas and causes, or to ways of living that I was not previously familiar with,” he says.

Joe Mageary

CHANNELING ANGER TO ACTIVISM That holds true for Mageary today. In addition to teaching at Lesley and serving as director of Clinical Services at New England Academy, Mageary, who earned his master’s degree at Lesley, is also part of Boston’s hardcore scene.

Counseling and music help him to understand clients’ feelings of rage and frustration and give him a map for how to channel those feelings into action. Both show him “how to be an active participant and creator in our world as opposed to a passive recipient.”

That played out practically last 13

summer when Mageary’s band, along with two other socially-minded groups, organized a tour focused on social justice and direct action. As a clinical mental health counselor, researcher and hardcore insider, Mageary had a unique perspective.

His question for the summer was “how is this effort aligning with the intentions and values that people have for themselves and for their communities and for the world?”

Throughout the tour, Mageary collected data on everything: interviewing and observing the touring bands, local opening bands, audience members and vendors; evaluating the fliers posted at each venue and the pamphlets handed out; and keeping a tour journal.

527 528 529ATL 530 531 DEC 08 · HOMEBOY SANDMAN & EDAN DEC 10 · POST HUNK DEC 11 · ELIJAH JONES

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DEC 12 · SWEARIN’ DEC 13 · PATTERNS OF INTERACTION

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MATERIAL GIRLS

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MAY 06 · NIGHT BEATS

MAKING IT HAPPEN: THE DIY ETHOS According to Mageary, hardcore revolves around the do-it-yourself ethos.

“The DIY ethos is acknowledging that there are systems in play in the dominant culture that do not completely align with the way we want the world to be. By eschewing the financial incentive and finding ways of constructing both physical objects and community ourselves, we can do it on our terms,” he says.

“I’ve played in basements, I’ve played in cornfields, I’ve played in giant venues. It’s about just making it happen.”

For the Now or Never tour, the DIY ethos included booking venues, setting up benefits for causes important to the bands, providing tangible tips for how people could become active in social justice, soliciting the help of local acts in each city, and producing their own merchandise. Local contacts publicized concerts, housed the tour bands for free and arranged venues and food.

15

The bands also created “We Must Resist,” a zine in line with the tour theme. It featured an article on mindfulness and stress reduction techniques, politically charged images — some with anti-Trump themes, others pro-reproductive health — and a freshly pressed record with new songs from each band. Given that many punk rock venues themselves are DIY and lack proper fire safety, a New York City firefighter from one of the bands also contributed a list of recommendations for how to be safe when attending or organizing a DIY show.

“We’re acknowledging that we want to continue to have these spaces and cultivate community but also using what we have in terms of knowledge,” Mageary says.

The bands donated all proceeds from the zine sales to the ACLU and their T-shirt sales to Planned Parenthood. According to Mageary, the Now or Never tour was a rare confluence of the DIY ethos.

“We reveled in the fact that there was a large group of people working en masse together who had no previous connection other than this music and this culture,” says Mageary.

No one had an expectation of profit or of gaining social status or notoriety, he says; instead, a community grew stronger and people were empowered to engage in social justice.

To some degree, these DIY elements can be seen in every hardcore punk event. It also extends beyond the movement. Some members of the Boston hardcore community started Greenvans, an eco-friendly and affordable van rental company for touring bands.

Each van runs on vegetable oil instead of gasoline. Other people in Mageary’s circle transferred the skills they learned planning gigs into hosting a rally on Boston Common.

Still another man became an immigration lawyer.

“If folks can channel the things that got them angry in the first place then it’s not just chasing your tail, but it’s moving on and fomenting change,” says Mageary.

Un derdogs o f music

N.E.R.D’s “No One Ever Really Dies”

a t l an ta‘s scen e

by Kimeno McCoy

Buu’Ti Haus performs at Smith’s Olde Bar in Atlanta

Buu’Ti Haus looks an

d acts the part of a

punk rocker.

Wearing a loosely tie d kimono, complet heeled platform sn e with ea kers and a purple se she stands on stage qu ined flower in her ha at Atlanta’s Union EA ir, V bar and tosses a fistful of glitter into the faces of th e delirious crowd of about 60 people.

The audience is a po tpourri of black pe ople.

Some are dressed in button-up shirts an Others in ripped jea d loafers. ns, colored hair, ea r gauges and piercin gs.

One girl stands in fro nt of the stage swaying and flashing icy blue eyes winged with bl ack eyeliner.

Buu’Ti Haus, whose real name is Denitra turns her back on th Isler, e crowd to face he r band, Conkrete GO D. — large and shirtles The drummer s with star-shaped ta tto os ac ro ss his chest — provides the tempo, followed by the ba ss an d guitars, while Buu’Ti Haus wi nds her hips to the beat.

Buu’Ti Haus turns ba ck to face the crowd .

18

ARE YOU READY?!

Buu’Ti Haus performs at Smith’s Olde Bar in Atlanta The music picks up and at 11:34 p.m. on a wintry Thursday night, there’s a mosh pit raging in the middle of Atlanta.

In the hip-hop dominated landscape of Atlanta, meet the underdogs of the city’s music scene.

Bands like Conkrete GOD and collectives like Punk Black are fighting to gain traction in a genre of music that isn’t usually associated with black people — punk rock. The genre itself is on the fringes these days, but these groups are looking for a foothold.

This isn’t your father’s punk rock of the Ramones, the Misfits, Sex Pistols and the Clash.

“Of course, we all know the one rule, that it’s dominated and ruled by white people,” said Von Phoenix, the 27-year-old CEO of Punk Black and guitarist for the rock band Howling Star. “We know monetarily it is right now because they … stole it a long time ago. But it’s really dominated by us. And if it’s not really dominated by us, it’s about to be pretty soon.”

In the long shadow of hip-hop, rap and R&B, groups and artists like Cerebral Ballzy, Bad Brains and Big Joanie have been making headway in the genre.

And last week’s event showcasing Conkrete GOD, while not CBGB, might be a hint at the growing number of black and brown faces now embracing the music and culture.

“When you get into the essence of what rock ‘n’ roll really was, black people were always there,” said Georgia State University communications professor Christopher Daniel. “We can always say that rock ‘n’ roll was definitely a derivative of soul, blues or anything that we were doing.”

“THIS ISN’T YOUR FATHER’S PUNK ROCK.” One of the vanguards of the movement today is Phoenix’s Punk Black, a six-member organization birthed in 2015 to “fight for representation to ensure people see themselves in the music they listen to.”

19

Punk Black co-founder Kharis Ellison met Phoenix when she was learning how to play the guitar. They quickly discovered that the two had a shared affection for punk music. But they were disappointed in the lack of diversity.

“Punk Black is basically taking the people who have sat in the back this entire time and forcing them toward the front. Forcing them toward the place where they can be acknowledged,” Ellison said.

Back in 2015, Punk Black hosted its first event in Atlanta’s West End. More than 50 people showed up, leading Ellison and Phoenix to discover there were a lot more black punk rockers than they thought.

In the beginning, Punk Black operated under one simple motto: Come through. We’re having a party featuring local black bands.

“We were mainly just hanging out with our friends. We would just play at different band members’ houses — get a PA system, put it together, get a little bar set up and have a good time there. It was just mainly about music,” Ellison said. “When we saw how much people wanted to be there … it just sort of fell naturally into (more).”

Punk rock band KillerKroc perform during a Punk Black event at Union EAV

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20

WAITING FOR THEIR TURN GSU’s Daniel, who teaches journalism but writes extensively about music, said punk rock, like most genres of American music like rock and hip-hop, was born out of rebellion and a need to be different.

“It was just these guys in raggedy Chucks and skinny jeans playing in the places they could play,” Daniel said. “Literally playing from the heart.”

According to Daniel, there’s an umbrella of rock ’n’ roll, in which each rib represents a different subgenre, including punk rock.

Who has been holding the umbrella? Black people, Daniel said.

“You’re starting to see the pants slim down a little bit.

You start to see a little bit more chains as accessories, and you start to see more color, teased hair,” Daniel said. “People are starting to wear more piercings and tattoos … so it might not necessarily be the (punk rock) sound, but the whole image and personality from rock culture is really starting to come back to us, and what it’s really doing is starting to influence with mass culture again.”

Back at the Stone Mountain home, Howling Star is packing up and going their separate ways until the next rehearsal.

Phoenix unplugs his guitar from the amp and wraps up all of the cords.

To him, the future of punk rock may be intertwined with hiphop, but as with all things, it’s a cycle.

Taking it back to Elvis Presley, Daniel said a lot of what the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll” was known for was a product of black musicians such as Bo Diddley “shredding on guitar” and Chuck Berry “skipping on stage.”

“Hip-hop and pop are in the super mainstream forefront,” Phoenix said. “But Punk Black’s main mission is when the circle comes back around to rock music, which it should pretty soon, we’ll be the leaders of that to sort of usher in the new rock age.”

While hip-hop heavy hitters such as Migos, Lil Uzi Vert and Young Thug are what’s hot now, Daniel says if you look closely, it’s easy to see the punk rock influence from the dyed hair down to the Vans skater shoes.

Buu’Ti Haus

21

january 11 + 12, 2019 the masquerade atlanta, ga #wreckingballatl wreckingballatl.com

Death MC Ride

GrIps the only punk band we have left

by Ryan Bassil

Death Grips, scanned

An aging Black Flag have reformed under two separate entities, Lil Wayne is performing with Limp Bizkit, and Minor Threat t-shirts are being sold in Urban Outfitters for $28 a pop. But, Death Grips, a band who are more than just a band, are a kick in the face to a genre that has long been punch-drunk on its past ideals.

But, before we get into things, let’s re-cap. At some point over the past few years, Death Grips signed to Epic Records, which confused everyone, because Death Grips sound like the end of the world, and Epic, which is a subsidiary of Sony, are responsible for radio-friendly artists like Ciara and The Script.

Then, on October 1, 2012, after seemingly strained relations with their label, the band leaked their own record, No Love Deep Web. That made Epic angry, because they’d just lost a potential sum of money, and on the leaked version the record had a big cock splayed across the front of it.

Eventually, after a bunch of other stuff, like leaking record exec emails to their Facebook with the strapline “HAHAHAHAHAHAHA NOW FUCK OFF”, Death Grips were dropped.

Which, to anyone with an internet connection and a soundcloud account, doesn’t really mean anything.

That condensed version of the Death Grips saga takes us up to last weekend, when the band didn’t show up to their performances at an after party show and a headline slot at Lollapalooza. At the club show, they just projected a suicide note while playing a CDQ recording of the band’s material, ending in Zach Hill’s drum kit being destroyed. And at the latter, they were replaced by snowboarder Shaun White’s band.

Both of which are very bad things.

The band has since cancelled shows in Boston, New York, and Baltimore, without giving an official statement or reason as to why. I’m still trying to get my head around it all. Are Death Grips punk as fuck for doing whatever they want, regardless of consequence? Or are they just putting paying fans out of pocket, without being punk enough, or true enough, to offer up any kind of honest reasoning?

When the band first leaked No Love Deep Web, they proved their mastery of social media and their aptness at generating a huge cult following, by ticking all the boxes of anti-musical heroes. They had the phallic symbol album cover, the fuck-you-I-won’t-do-what-you-tell me mantra, and a self-shot music video featuring enough beer, cash, weed and pills to make even the most voyeuristic narcotic fiend sit up and 26

take notice. Everything that Death Grips did, or are doing, ticks all of the boxes that make disaffected youth lose their shit. Essentially, if Epic brushed aside the leaking of the record as a marketing experiment, then they would have one of the most progressively marketable bands sitting on their roster.

In my opinion, Death Grips are really, really fucking smart when it comes to the music industry. Why would a band that bases itself on originality and DIY ethos sign to the same label that fronts Cher Lloyd?

The answer, if a recent photo of the band and glitterati members Beyonce and R Patz is anything to go by, is money, and the chance to be enveloped by a concurrent of society much larger than anything contained within the independents.

The backing of Epic - who have also supported Rage Against The Machine - would have given the band the foundation, push, and scope to be a fully realised vision, capable of not just shocking the most die-hard of music seekers, but average YouTube users, and radio listeners. But, in the end it was Epic that couldn’t hold their nerve, giving too big a fuck when they clashed with the band, and Death Grips were handed their P45s.

Now, Death Grips own themselves.

Seemingly, they can play where they

mac hIne

want to play, record what they want to record, and shit where they want to shit, without anyone to answer to but Zach Hill or MC Ride’s stiff upper lip. It’s what they’ve always wanted.

So, why then, did the band cancel a bunch of shows? And, instead of not turning up, why did they broadcast a suicide note at the venue? Who were they railing against?

It would be easy for people to see Death Grips’ no-show as a twofinger insult to their fans, because generally, not showing up is a pretty bad look. As DNAinforeports, the stage set-up, projection and looped music was, itself, the Death Grips performance. If reports are to be believed, then this was to be the setup for the rest of the band’s tour, but after the initial riot, the rest of the shows were cancelled. So, it certainly seems as if they weren’t looking to put on a set of crowdpleasers.

But then, who wants that? Death Grips are more than a band, they’re a movement, and their fans know that. Right now they’re helming the mothership of the marketing genius that they’ve created, seemingly finding a way to slipstream themselves back into the headlines, amidst a well thought out antiagenda. From Malcolm McClaren’s meticulous string pulling to Crass’ Thatchergate tapes, punk has always been about making the news as much as making music.

Death Grips have got themselves in a position where they can market what was previously unmarketable.

Because, in a Catch 22 situation, both real and thought out publicity stunts all come across as the worlds No.1 no-fucks band, giving no-fucks, even though, deep down, they probably give a lot of fucks. The results pay off, too, with Death Grips topping the legally downloaded BitTorrent chart, clocking in at 34 million downloads, which is 8 million more than runner-up Counting Crows.

I’m not saying that Death Grips don’t make forward thinking progressive music. They’re fucking incredible, and are one of the best and most exciting artists around. But are Death Grips just a punk band doing whatever they want? Fuck, no.

theyre A machIne

MC Ride performs at Commodore Barry Park 27

by Baynard Woods

28

back to what was our nation’s moment of greatest division. And it fits him, because he is as much a

PART OF THE HISTORY

and everything else is in the service He has found some bit of inspiration in online activism and the nurturing of semi-socialist or socialist ideas, but he acknowledges “it’s really a terrible situation.

“I don’t have a lot of hope,” he says. “It’s like when they grow a sugar maple stand in New England.

You plant the sugar maple tree not for your own children, but your

corporate culture. “Always spend study, to read books and read articles and always take a lot of notes and create files, create alphabetical

I am stunned by the power of that “And start figuring out what other people are doing. And then, if you’re young, to do what Allen Ginsberg said—‘I saw the best minds of my generation’—and that is to link up with the very best minds in all the subjects you’re interested in. Poetry, music, engineering, rocket science, find the best minds,” he says. “Hang out.”

Since Sanders was the face of the ’60s counterculture, I ask what he makes of the claim by members of the alt-right, like Infowars’ Paul Joseph Watson, that they are the new counterculture.

“I don’t know what to say to them,” he says. “I don’t read them. I

Ed Sanders 29

at the performance, and I wonder who will create our new cultural forms. Even Antifa, among the most politically radical factions on the left, seems culturally retro, mimicking the political punk of the ’80s.

But later the same night, when I am about to go to bed, Trump tweets, “Despite the constant negative press covfefe.” Maybe it worked after all, and the demon Covfefe was exorcised.

AFRO - PUNK

by Hannah Ongley

FASHION

Tessa Thomspon in Sorry to Bother You

Boots Riley’s outrageous debut feature is everything you might expect from the rapper who’s spent years skewering political and social issues as frontman of The Coup, a “goddamn band from muthafuckin Oakland, CA,” according to the collective’s Twitter account. Sorry to Bother You is set in an Oakland future not far from now, where black characters speak in “white voice” to telemarket slave labor for a nefarious CEO (Armie Hammer) who dresses like Julian Assange on Ayahuasca.

Costume designer Deirdra Elizabeth Govan was attending Pratt and Parsons in early 90s Brooklyn, when she first heard Boots spit revolutionary lyrics about capitalism and class disparities. Her richly layered costumes for Sorry to Bother You were more heavily inspired by those college years than by anything in the sci-fi dystopian film canon. Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson, who play upstart telemarketer Cassius Green and his freewheeling artist girlfriend Detroit respectively, are as punk as they are hip-hop. Detroit rocks all manner of flamboyant paintstreaked coats, equally colorful curly hair, and the oversized earrings

featuring ominous slogans: MURDER MURDER MURDER / KILL KILL KILL. Cassius looks like a momma’s boy whose mom has an affinity for argyle sweater vests and ties swiped from her brother’s wardrobe — eventually complemented by a white bandana soaked with his own blood.

Govan came to Sorry to Bother You after working with producer Nina Yang Bongiovi on Netflix’s Roxanne Roxanne, about teen battle rap champ Roxanne Shanté. “She presented the script to me and I absolutely fell in love,” Govan tells i-D. “I loved the aspect of black and brown people doing something with magical realism, and taking it to a whole new level.” We talked to the designer about bringing Boots’s unsettling, surrealist world to life.

Why was the magical realism element so immediately appealing to you as a costume designer?

The characters are people that I went to art design school with [at Parsons and Pratt]. People experimented with their own individual style, they played with clothing, they played with looks.

The thing I really appreciated about designing this movie was that I

had the ability to come up with ideas, and they really weren’t off the wall. They were in tune with the characters. It looks like [Cassius’s] mother might have dressed him — he’s not part of that arts crowd.

There are old sweaters, khaki pants, three-quarter t-shirts, funny-colored ties that look vintage — that are vintage, actually. Detroit, as an artist, she is the the designer of her own style. She was very true to her spirit as a fine artist. The earrings were a part of her look but they could not trump her look. You have to find a balance.

Those earrings are completely outrageous. Did you design them yourself?

The earrings are called out in the script. So in Boots’s mind, he had this idea of a woman who’s an artist, and had these earrings. As costume designers, our job is to come up with ideas for how to get that message across. We went to different artisans and craftspeople to create the pieces. We called in a graphic designer and I had him draw out some earrings, then I went out and had them fabricated. Everything about the earrings is a marriage of big ideas and my ability to take those ideas, distill them down, and come up with something very powerful that make sense for the characters.

One of Detroit’s other memorable statement pieces is a t-shirt reading, “The Future is Female Ejaculation.” It’s kind of Instagram-famous already.

[Laughs]. Yes. It’s from a store in New York called Otherwild.

They have a lot of graphic and memorabilia shirts. I was shown a couple of them and I just thought they were so appropriate for the character. They really spoke to Detroit’s look and what we wanted to portray. That was it. It was just dumb luck, in a way, to find something that was so perfect and appropriate. With Tessa it was just an all-out love fest.

She and I both have such creative centers and we love experimenting with clothing. She has a great sense of style period.

Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson 32

Tessa has quite a wild sense of style in real life. So does Lakeith, actually. Tell me about creating costumes with Armie Hammer, who is mostly known for adidas tracksuits.

We went through many manifestations of what we wanted Steve Lift to look like. We drew on people that we knew. He was superficially Steve Jobs, Julian Assange… But instead of being a great mind for good, he created a nefarious sensibility about himself. His persona was all about entitlement and borrowing other cultures. He has kaftans, skirts, and equestrian elements. Then we thought, since we know these people, we don’t want to recreate the man-bun. So let’s do something different. We talked about doing the hair a la Julian Assange, with the white, but decided against a direct callout to Julian Assange. So we went with something different, and we painted his beard, and we gave him one blue eye and one green eye.

Then the whole evolution of his style was the fact that he borrows from other cultures. It was just a really layered process, and something Armie had not before in that way. It was really enjoyable.

Going to Parsons and Pratt really taught me how to see things in many ways, and how to problem solve. I think as designers we are problem solvers. Design is design, but at the end of the day, I like creating a world. I love creating it through space, clothing, form, and all those details.

Tell me more about art school in early 90s Brooklyn. How did that shape you as a designer?

How much does traveling influence what you bring back to films that are so specifically set in America?

Immensely. I’m so glad you asked that question because travel is everything to me. I personally don’t feel I would be able to tell the story that I tell had I not traveled. I think I’ve been to around 27 countries, and my ability to see, my ability to take different perspectives, to see culture and then translate that as a designer, it has helped me immensely. I did a fellowship in Tibet, so I was in China and Tibet for three months. Traveling through that region and going to the Dalai Lama’s palace, seeing the paintings and tapestries and the colors… Living in France on and off for seven years has also influenced me a great deal, especially in terms of how I see fashion. I try to leave the country as much as I can — not because I want to get out, but

That’s one of the things that was really exciting about working with Boots. I knew about The Coop in college, so it was very familiar to me. I went to school with a guy who dressed like Detroit, I went to school with a guy who had this really interesting visual style about experimenting with hip-hop looks and then manifesting them into punk looks. I was able to use that information and those resources to build on this. I studied fashion design knowing that I was going to go into costume design, and then I came back to fashion design before studying architecture and design.

I believe in the holistic picture of telling a story. Narratives are my passion — I love telling stories through clothing, through space.

I saw on your website that you actually created this experiential environment art piece about mass incarceration. Sorry to Bother You also feels like a complete immersive world.

I think the background that I had really supported [the creation of] that. I was able to have conversations with the production designer — we were very close in terms of how we wanted all our visual touch points to marry and work well together.

It was the same thing with the cinematographer. It was really a true creative relationship that the three of us were forming, to make sure that none of our work was out of balance.

I think my background and education in interior design and architecture supported my understanding of what I needed to do as a costume designer because of my education and my profession.

33

Tessa Thompson because I have a desire to explore and broaden my mind. It just makes me a better designer when I have the ability to do that.

Were you familiar with Oakland were you before working on Sorry to Bother You? I had family members in San Francisco, so I knew the history of Oakland, and the political movements in Oakland, the riots in Oakland — there were a lot of things I drew on politically and historically that made me be able to bring that language to screen. Especially in terms of the arts movement and gentrification. It was happening right here in New York, in Brooklyn, in Harlem. And in a lot of urban cities across the United States. Artists and people with money can come in and change the dynamic of a neighborhood, and consequently affect culture — sometimes positively, sometimes negatively.

Oakland is so rich just in its history and also what’s happening with the whole change of the economic structure of properly buying, and who’s living where in neighborhoods.

It’s fascinating because you can go to some boutiques that are very different to the mom and pop shop are the corner. I was leveraging every resource I could find as a costume designer, like the vintage shops and Haight Street, so I could really tell a true story on screen. I just wanted to be true.

x

PUBLICATION: Designed by Ben Thornburgh in December 2018.

Copyedited by C Bolding.

Edited by Rebekah Kanipe, Kristen Adkinson, and Tyler Mann.

WRITING: No Regrets: Abby Jones, 2018 Repo the Genetic Opera: Julia Alexander, 2016 Taking Action Through Hardcore Punk: Bruce Logan, 2018 Underdogs of Atlanta’s Music Scene: Kimeno McCoy, 2017 Death Grips: Ryan Bassil, 2013 Reinventing Counterculture: Baynard Woods, 2017 Sorry to Bother You Afro-Punk Fashion: Hannah Ongley, 2018

PHOTOGRAPHY: Cover: Alan McCarthy Page 03: Stephanie Keith Page 05: Derrick K. Lee Page 06: Chade Kamenshine Page 12: Bruce Logan Page 13: Michael Nigro Page 14: Bethan Miller Page 18: Erika Johnson Page 19: Erika Johnson Page 20: Kimeko McCoy Page 21: Sam Teague Page 24: Carter Scott Page 26: Zach Hill Page 27: Maclyn Bean Page 29: Miriam Sanders

-Clement Greenburg

kitsch.com