My childhood just died of joy, went to heaven, and was promptly resurrected just to enjoy this news all over again. Optimus Prime, leader of the Autobots, is now a real-life, 19″ robot toy!
Optimus comes to life thanks to the talented minds and hands at Robosen Robotics via license by Hasbro. This Optimus is based on the Generation 1 version, a.k.a. the BEST version, and features 80 different sound effects, 25 voice-activated commands, and TRANSFORMS like in the cartoon (maybe better?!). It also includes an app that is fully customizable to command the toy with.
“We are thrilled to collaborate with Hasbro and look forward to ushering in a new standard of robotics with the most advanced TRANSFORMERS robots for consumers ever created,” said Sean Tang, Director of Robosen USA. “The team is working hard to deliver an amazing user experience for fans of this esteemed franchise and produce TRANSFORMERS that will be a premium addition to their collection with its superior functionality.”
My latest piece for KCET Artbound is my interview with artist/activist Julio Salgado. His work took off nearly a decade ago when he created his series of portraits of queer, undocumented activists titled “Undocuqueer.”
An excerpt:
The purpose behind the series is to remind people that the bulk of the work in pushing the national conversation on immigrants’ rights, in planning and executing protests and all the other unglamorous, behind-the-scenes work was done by UndocuQueers. It’s also to expand the conversation behind the perceptions of who these immigrants affected by these laws and policies are.
On multiple occasions, Salgado has had to educate numerous people about the diversity of people who identify/are labeled as undocumented. In one such instance, he and others traveled by bus from California to Washington D.C. for a massive march on the capitol.
“A lot of them were faith-based groups,” recalls Salgado. “There were some immigrants who were very homophobic that would say homophobic things and, like, how do you navigate those spaces? You have to educate people, which I don’t have a problem with that. Working in kitchens with a lot of immigrant men and their machismo, you learn how to use humor.”
“That’s why I started making those pieces,” he continues. “It was for our communities to understand that if we’re talking about accepting people or creating policy that doesn’t criminalize us, we can think about other folks who are also part of our communities.”
We’re past the one-year mark of this horrid and frustrating pandemic. Those initial months filled with angst & fear from the (somewhat slightly still) unpredictable nature of the novel coronavirus forced me to make numerous changes in my life, including to my thesis, that set me back at least half a year but, hey: boats against the current and all that!
The good news is that it all appears to be coming to an end. I received the first dose of the two-dose Pfizer vaccine already. Many of my family members & dozens of friends (some of whom survived COVID though a few their loved ones, friends, & co-workers did not) have received their doses as well.
Music played a role in getting me through it all (as it did last year). There weren’t any live shows to enjoy but plenty of new releases to listen to! Here’s a shortlist of artists/music I’ve listened to recently. May it captivate you as it captivated me in this continually strange time!
Antifragile – Abraxas
Antifragile is the first “artist” and first release at Spirit Bomb, a record label whose founders want to build a roster of “digital” artists. In this case, Antifragile is a weird, goat-headed creature that bears a slight resemblance to the Icon Of Sin from the DOOM franchise whose music is composed by Eye Contakt (Autry Fulbright and Mark Pagly).
Costa Rican producer Barzo has been incredibly busy for more than a year now. He released an album with numerous singles & videos last year, many of which were collaborations with other Latin American artists: Nakury, La Dame Blanche, El Individuo, and Un Rojo Reggae Band, to name a few. His latest is also a collaboration: Bahía feat. Pahua a.k.a. Pau Sotomayor of Sotomayor. Their track is an electronic banger that is a hypnotic and psychedelic tropical banger for the hopefully mostly pandemic-free summer that awaits us.
Bomba Estéreo – Agua
“Agua” is the first single off Bomba Estéreo’s upcoming new album, Deja. The duo of Simón Mejía & Li Saumet. Check out the single on Spotify which comes with two additional tracks: “Deja” and “Soledad.”
Also of note is their work on the documentary film Sonic Forest (which you can watch below), which “showcases the inspiring journey of Simón Mejía, founder of Latin music sensation Bomba Estéreo, as he travels deep into the jungles and mountains of the Colombian Pacific to discover the richness of Earth’s most megadiverse places through its local music and its people: indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities who work every day to preserve their territories.”
When I say that this album is heavy, I mean it both sonically and emotionally. It’s political, instrumental drone/doom metal courtesy of Takiaya Reed (Black & Tsalagi [Cherokee]) & Sylvie Nehill (Māori) that they create “to undermine and destroy the white supremacist colonial framework and to fight for Indigenous Sovereignty, Black and Indigenous Liberation, Water, Earth, and Indigenous land given back.”
There’s also a bit of spoken-word poetry on “Did You Have Something To Do With It” by Minori Sanchez-Fung that lays it all out on the table:
This is our time The legacy of greed has grown from its seed To infiltrate every place Every face
Releasing a suffering recorded in Stone And in bone So old that language can’t console it
This was the blow which we struck At first without knowing how deep it would grow. It would grow Into a frightening history that fractures hope
First, by attacking the body And then, by distorting the mind
It would grow And force us to question if we are a part Of this world or its affliction.
Whether our addiction to power will consume the beauty that was once our birthright
This is our time What is certain, is life Growing out of itself greater than the moment before Within us, around us, in spite of us.
Proving we can’t control The thing that brought us up from the cold and will press us back like flowers into the mold. We are tethered to a circuit that excludes nothing a song the dead can hear. Something resilient forming all Something that makes time small. So old, that language can’t dispose of it
Still gold over the violence. Don’t forget, this too, this too, is our time Our spirit is not weaker, it is waiting on us to decide What it is, that we will honour while we are alive.
Listen/watch the single “Denial” shot by Amber Beaton:
LASTMONDAY – YOUNOWUTÁMEAN
Another artist who hasn’t slowed down throughout the pandemic is the Bronx Dominican LASTMONDAY who stays killing the game with his beats, flow, and bilingual Spanglish rhymes! He released a slew of singles, videos, and a mixtape, Yo, Tigerito!, throughout the pandemic last year. This latest song/vid was shot in Atlanta a year after dude & his crew were stuck in Miami during the first lockdown.
La Vida Boheme – Fr€€$$r
Last year saw the quartet from Caracas (long since based in CDMX) release nearly a half-dozen tracks that were ultimately compiled into the EP titled Fr€€$$r. The album shows off the group’s range and the sonic territory they’ve covered since their debut. The album is also the first in a planned release of trilogy of EPs
The band also unveiled a 40-minute concert film titled Tiempo Compartido composed of live & alternate versions of seven songs from their repertoire:
Mexican Institute Of Sound – Distrito Federal
This latest work by Camilo Lara, head honcho creative of M.I.S., is an ode and soundtrack to Ciudad Mexico (Mexico City) formerly known as the Distrito Federal; hence the album title. Speaking of which, y’all ever eaten a pambazo? I recommend ’em!
Below is the lyric video to “Se Compran,” the opening track on the album:
I also recommend listening to the interview between Lara and Felix Contreras at Alt. Latino.
Miki Gonzalez – ZAP XXXX
a.k.a. Juan Manuel González Mascías. This guy has a long history recording and performing music that began in the rock scene in the 1980s. He started blending electronic music with Andean & Afro-Peruvian music in the mid-aughts & hasn’t stopped since (this track a case in point!).
Mogwai – As The Love Continues
The Scottish (mostly) instrumental rock band is back with As The Love Continues. The album arrives on the band’s 25th anniversary.
The best/easiest way to get acquiainted with the group (besides diving headfirst into their discography) is to read Andrew Parks’ retrospective piece on the band: A Guide to 25 Years of Mogwai.
Mogwai also has a unique, often dark sense of humor—something they share with longtime friends and fellow countrymen Arab Strap. Seeing as how they’re a largely instrumental outfit, this mostly shows up in song titles along the lines of “I Am Not Batman,” and “I Love You, I’m Going To Blow Up Your School.”
“They aren’t always meant to be funny,” explains Braithwaite. “More random than anything else. I think being Scottish, we have a real aversion to pretentiousness, and it’s so easy to slip into that realm making instrumental music. We’ve always been wary of doing that. I think after a while people stop thinking about the words in song titles and just think of the song itself. I do anyway.”
Watch the video for single “Ritchie Sacramento” below:
Vudufa – South American Loa
Vudufa is the other musical project of Peruvian Hip-Hop duo Pounda & Nomodico who are continuing in the new tradition of Cumbia Darks aka Afro-Peruvian Dark Electronic Cumbia (a mouthful if there were ever one!) in the vein of Dengue Dengue Dengue, Animal Chuki, Deltratron, Tribilin Sound, & others.
Math-rock is back…or it never left? I honestly don’t know but I’m always happy to listen to some new math-rock. Such is the case with “Desierto,” the latest song by Peruvian group Wanderlust. It’s an uplifting anthem written specifically for these times. Listen & feel your anxiety float away!
I rarely endorse products in general but I have to say that my life was just made easier thanks to Authory. I realize this already sounds like an ad or sponsored post but bear with me and you’ll understand (or you probably won’t if you’re not a journalist, writer, etc. but I’ll try!) it isn’t & why I’m endorsing Authory.
One of the bane of every journalist’s existence is building an online portfolio. It can be long, tedious, frustrating, and far too time-consuming. This, unfortunately, is necessary (the former, not the latter) and grows increasingly maddening and difficult the larger your body of work grows. The alternative is worse though. A journo can’t rely on the publication source to contain their work forever. I have more than once lost published work online when a website has suddently and without warning pulled the plug on its website (they have no incentive to provide their employees/contributors any data). The solution is to do it oneself but, again, that process can be long, tedious, and time-consuming.
What I love about Authory is that it offers a solution to these problems. The website uses automation to crawl through a website and pull every article with your byline onto its website. It also creates a backup of each article. In the long list of “Things That Should Have Been Invented Sooner But We’re Ecstatic It Exists Now,” this ranks within the Top 5!
This is a gift for every journalist/writer out there that I can’t keep to myself!
I have a new article up at KCET about a collaborative music project that I also partook in. The project by Joshua-Michéle Ross is titled The Adjacent Possible: An Evolving Communal Orchestra and is a collaborative work of art between anonymous collaborators that, as I explain in the story, is an “experience [that] feels like equal doses of guided meditation, creative collaboration and a space for introspection and relaxation.”
From my article:
The project’s name comes from the work of Stuart Kauffman, a doctor, theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher, who coined the phrase “adjacent possible” in 2002. His theory is based on his work in biological evolution and is concerned with how organisms and biological systems, which he also refers to as “autonomous agents,” evolve into larger, more complex systems/organisms by seeking out numerous possibilities within their environment. His theory has been adapted in other fields, including the arts.
For Ross, the theory describes “how human beings, as parts of a very creative universe, are always pushing at the boundaries of what’s possible and how the aggregate choices that we make from that creates the kind of world we live in. It’s kind of how the future gets made and the idea of how the small choices that we make and bring to things, despite constraints, how those choices add up the reality we live in.”
Ross brings this theory to life through a communal orchestra. Up to 20 people gather to perform at each event. Ross serves as the event guide and conductor, speaking slowly, softly and deliberately as he shifts everyone away from the Zoom call where everyone first gathers and onto a website designed specifically for the experience.
Clouds Hill Notes announced today the acquisition of the catalogs and masters of musician Omar Rodriguez-López’ vast musical library. The acquisition includes the catalog of works published under Rodriguez-López Productions, including dozens of solo albums. Clouds Hill Notes, in partnership with Wise Music Group, will also handle the catalog publishing of The Mars Volta.
It’s about the right time to announce the acquisition of the RLP catalog and The Mars Volta publishing now. After being Omar Rodríguez-López’s friend and business partner for such a long time, I am honoured and proud that he decided to also entrust me with this catalogue. Our HQ in Hamburg is now responsible to push this unique catalogue back into everyone’s minds.
Johann Scheerer, Music Producer, CEO/Founder of Clouds Hill Group
The acquisition comes months after Clouds Hill released a trio of albums ORL recorded with the label: The Clouds Hill Tapes I – III.
I hope this means that many of the albums/projects ORL worked on from 2004 – 2013 under various names (The Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Quintet, The Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Group, The Omar Rodriguez-Lopez Quartet, El Trio de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, El Grupo Nuevo de Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, etc.) will see the light of day once again via official streams and reprints of physical media. This man wants a copy of Mantra Hiroshima!!
Other groups that were part of the RLP imprint include De Facto (another project I hope gets republished asap!), the dub group before TMV, and Antemasque, the band that reunited ORL with long-time friend & collaborator Cedric Bixler Zavala following the dissolution of TMV. I also hope Zechs Marquise, the defunct group from El Paso that featured ORL’s siblings, is included in the catalog as well.
Clouds Hill Notes is the publishing arm of the Clouds Hill Group, a company that includes a record label, a recording studio, a film production company, and a boutique pedal company.
The first order of business following this announcement will be the release of TMV’s Tremulant EP on streaming platforms this Friday, Feb. 26th!
“We try our best to steer things in a direction that we think is positive for the community, but we also really want stuff to come from the community itself,” says Tirado. “We had an open call and did our best to pick out content that would benefit most people or would highlight communities that would not necessarily get as much shine.”
The first is about the Hola Mexico Film Festival. 2020 marks its 12th year and founder Samuel Douek had to make numerous changes to move the festival to an online format.
Next is my conversation with Adriana Astorga-Gainey and Jesenia Gardea of the Pacifico Dance Company. The Los Angeles-based non-profit company takes a serious approach to folklorico dance that centers on training professional dancers.
Captain Tsubasa, aka Oliver Atom, aka Los Super Campeones, made a long-awaited return to video game consoles last week with the release of Captain Tsubasa: Rise Of New Champions.
I haven’t gotten my hands on the game yet but I did take the time to dive into the history of the world beloved franchise featuring Japan’s most famous & fictional superstar athlete for Gamecrate.
Takahashi’s original manga series ended in 1988 with Tsubasa and the Nankatsu youth squad winning various youth tournaments, including the U-17 World Championship as a member of Japan’s national youth squad. The series ends with his decision to travel to Brazil to continue playing soccer.
Through various sequels, fans watch Tsubasa grow from aspiring pre-teen soccer hero to a globe-trotting professional adult soccer player. The first sequel, World Youth, featured Tsubasa joining Brazilian club Sao Paulo/F.C. Brancos and winning the FIFA World Youth Championship with Japan.
In Road To 2002, Tsubasa has moved to Spain to play for FC Barcelona/FC Catalunya, though he is temporarily relegated to the team’s B squad. He is reintegrated into the main team in time to help them defeat their eternal rivals, Real Madrid, in a thrilling 6 – 5 victory. The series continues with Golden 23 in which Tsubasa, still playing for Barcelona/Catalunya, also helps the Japan national team qualify for the Olympics.
The manga’s current run is titled Rising Sun and focuses on Tsubasa’s and Japan’s exploits in the Olympics where Japan has made it past the group stage and is facing off against Germany in the quarterfinals. One can assume that they’ll defeat Spain the semifinals and move on to win the final versus the winners of the quarterfinal matches between France, USA, Brazil, and Argentina.
Afroxander (aka Iván Fernández) 