Liverpool four-piece Courting have shared their latest single, ‘We Look Good Together (Big Words)’, which features production from DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ. Listen to it below.
The new track is taken from the band’s upcoming album New Last Name, which arrives on January 26. “It’s a theatrical play within an album,” frontman Sean Murphy O’Neill explained in a statement. “There’s a lot going on. It can be simply enjoyed as an album, but there are characters, acts, stage directions etc. The listeners can decide on the narrative themselves, but we want them to get lost in it.”
“‘We Look Good Together’ is a love song, plain and simple,” Murphy O’Neill added. “It’s the opening part of the main theatrical narrative of ‘New Last Name’. Titles fall, the scene is set, and the band starts to play.”
Iasos, the Greek-American musician widely regarded as one of the pioneers of new age music, has died. Douglas Mcgowan of Numero Group, the label behind the 2013 compilation Celestial Soul Portrait, confirmed the news on Instagram. Iasos was 77.
Iasos and his family moved from Greece to the US when he was four, initially settling in Malone, New York. He began piano lessons at age eight and soon took up the flute, which he played in his high school band. After graduating from Cornell University with a degree in cultural anthropology in 1968, Iasos moved to California to pursue music. He began working on what he called “paradise music,” or inter-dimensional music, which he would hear in his mind.
“At a certain point in my life at Cornell I started hearing paradise music in my head, and then later I had an experience where I suddenly became aware of a higher dimensional being, and it ignited an aha moment,” Iasos said in 2014 interview. “I realised he and I had made an agreement together before I was born, and the agreement was that he was going to transmit music to me, and his visual ideas also, and my job was to receive them, manifest them, and get them out there to the public. The point of them wasn’t money or fame, it was to create music and visuals that will help people raise their vibrations, to go through the planetary upshift that our planet is going through anyway.”
Iasos released his first album, Inter-Dimensional Music, in 1975. That same year, he played electric flute on his friend and fellow musician Steven Halpern’s debut, Spectrum Suite. He issued 20 studio albums across his career, and his most recent piece, ‘The Garden of Salathooslia’, came out in September. Iasos’ music has been used by NASA, Lazaris, Encyclopedia Britannica, Laserium, and Hewlett Packard. A documentary about his work was released in 1979.
“Along with Steven Halpern, Iasos basically invented new age music,” Mcgowan’s message read. “This bears repeating – he created a genre of music … So many things he created were simply without comparison. He invented new tools to create new forms. He built incredible, immortal things from scratch.”
Carlos Niño, Iasos’ producer and friend, wrote: “Our Dearest Brother, Friend, Guide, Mentor, Inspiration, and Great Visionary of Celestial Paradise Music has transitioned from his Earth Body today, Saturday, January 6, 2024. We invite you to please explore the vastness of Iasos. He poured his heart and soul into his Music and fully intended for it to raise vibrations on Earth, that we all would live in higher harmonic realization of our unique potential, co-existing and co-creating together.”
Based out of Los Angeles, Ruby Roth is a writer, painter, and a former best-selling children’s author. Through her art, Roth explores the inner lives of women, the complexities of femininity, and the female form. To discuss Roth’s work and her journey into the art world, she joined us for an interview.
Firstly, how are you and what’s the latest project you’ve been working on?
This year has been a doozy. I secretly had a great time in 2020-2021. I loved being holed up and excused from social participation, though I must’ve had a delayed reaction because 2022-23 has been energetically nasty. But I’ve seen it as an assignment to clear the decks.
So I finished a book I’d been working on for seven years titled Boss Inside: A Reclamation of the Feminine. Pulled from detailed journals and sketchbooks, it’s a collection of writing, art, and photos that poured out of me as I started my life over again at age 34, leaving the 14-year identity-defining relationship that had shaped my entire adulthood. It was a monumental transition for me, from utter matrimonial dependence to sovereign singlehood. The book chronicles my path forward as I reclaimed my life, my art, my creativity, my sexuality, and my relationship to men and masculinity itself. It will be a story recognized by any woman who has ever given herself away, and a lantern in the dark for anyone finding their way back. The book and the process of releasing it was an unearthing for me, of my instincts, my intuition, and the feminine force I drew upon to heal and move forward.
Your art practice delves into the inner lives of women and the “wilderness” of femininity. Could you share more about the themes and emotions that inspire your work in this realm?
I find being a woman to be pretty mystical. Through thousands of years of human spirituality and archetypes, femininity has been recognized as a force of intuition and instincts; an energy of creativity, sensuality, receptiveness, nurturing or healing, and cooperation with, or transmutation of, other energies. Nature, and our experience of it, is also closely tied to the feminine. I’m interested in the female body as a vessel of these forces, always reckoning with the energies of our inner and outer worlds and seeking a sacred balance. And I think because we have cellular memory of centuries of cultural heritages that came before us, those who identify with femininity also feel good when we’re practicing our version of ancient rituals or rites. We start to feel bad when we have cause to remember being suppressed or punished, scarlet-lettered, burned at the stake. So the women in my drawings and paintings are often alone, in vast landscapes communing with the moon, or alone where they can be free to exercise their deepest natures.
Your journey with scoliosis has been a significant part of your life. How has this experience influenced how you perceive and portray the human body in your art?
Distortion and asymmetry were bodily signatures before they were stylistic choices in my art. Art was an early outlet for pain as I started aggressive scoliosis treatment at age four. I ended up wearing a hard plastic back brace 20-plus hours a day for 13 years and it morphed my body to its form. It dented my hips, squared my ribs, and gave me permanent scars. Having studied my own body, and bones since I first saw them on an X-ray as a child, I became deeply interested in drawing bodies, especially from live models, and living vicariously through others. I exaggerated what I found interesting and beautiful, and through observational drawing, found a way to see the beauty in my scars and asymmetry. Distortion then just became natural to my drawing and painting style, and I use it to bring out whatever I see emotionally in my subjects.
Untitled Color Block, 2021
Your transition from being a best-selling children’s author to focusing on fine art is a significant shift. Can you discuss the factors or experiences that led to this transition? How has your background in children’s literature influenced your current artistic practice, if at all?
My personal work was always figurative, but I also wanted to make art with a purpose beyond self-expression. My college art was always rooted in social or political commentary, way more illustrative than the conceptual assignments the teachers pushed. My first paid job out of school was teaching art at an after-school program and when my students noticed my eating habits, their trillion questions inspired me to create the first non-fiction books of their kind in children’s literature about veganism. “Vegan” was just becoming a household term and the books took off as the demographic exploded and I became a spokesperson for the cause. It was a dream start, using art as a tool for change. The biggest influence this chapter had on the rest of my career was the discipline and production schedule involved. I really developed a full-fledged brand with a targeted following by first finding a hole in the market, making something unique, having a genuine origins story, and then networking my ass off, vending at every fest I could, and expanding the line of merch and services I offered, from prints to speaking engagements, blogging, social media content, etc. So from the jump of my career, I understood art as a real jobby-job that requires a 360º skillset beyond just the craft, and a long-term commitment to growth.
As an artist based in Los Angeles, how do you perceive the art scene influencing your work and vice versa? Are there specific aspects of the local or global art community that have shaped your artistic journey?
Because I was more focused on my children’s books and my ex’s career until I left that relationship at age 34, I didn’t start making rounds in the scene for myself until recently. I feel kind of lucky to have developed a strong sense of self before being influenced by anything going on out there. When I started showing up then, it was on my own terms and everything true about the scene that you hear before you’re in it—gallerists being inaccessible, pay-to-play schemes, the sleazy promises, broken promises—was just laughable instead of debilitating. It feels good not to be influenced; to drop into gallery shows or art fairs and be there because I truly want to be, because I believe I have something to bring to the table, because I genuinely support other artists and galleries, and because I want to know these folks and create community. I am not influenced creatively by the scene, but I do get hits of inspiration to keep developing my craft by being in a motivated, hard-working, skilled community of people.
If you could give one piece of advice to aspiring artists who are embarking on their journey into the art world, what would it be?
Prepare for peaks and valleys. Most likely, there will always be alternating periods of “feast and famine,” and if you recognize them both as temporary states and have faith in the chapters, you will just keep going no matter what and figure out ways to subsidize your art practice if necessary along the way. Entering the art world with a long-game strategy of persisting is key.
@ have dropped a new song called ‘Webrawler’. It will appear on their upcoming EP Are You There, God? It’s Me, @ alongside the previously released ‘Soul Hole’. Give it a listen below.
“‘Webcrawler’ is highly influenced by computer programming and the process of automated tools (which can be conceived of as invisible robots) scraping data from websites, also known as crawling the web,” @’s Stone Filipczak shared in a statement. “It’s also influenced by the first successful search engine which had the same name.”
@’s debut album, Mind Palace Music, was originally released in 2021 and reissued by Carpark last year. Check our Artist Spotlight interview with @.
The Chisel have released a new single, ‘Those Days’, from their recently announced LP What a Fucking Nightmare. They’ve already previewed it with the songs ‘Cry Your Eyes Out’ and ‘Fuck ‘Em’. Listen to ‘Those Days’ below.
What a Fucking Nightmare will arrive on February 9 through Pure Noise Records.
Many fear the rise of AI as it threatens jobs, art, and even a sense of belonging. Well, it doesn’t look like it will stop. According to a report by Stocklytics.com, the generative AI market will hit 1 trillion by 2031, with an astounding CAGR of 48.05%. Silicon Valley giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google anticipate the most significant gains from this forthcoming growth.
Edith Reads, the financial analyst for Stocklytics stated, “In the wake of the development of new AI tools, there’s been an escalated interest and demand in the technology. The growing curiosity about how they operate and how much they can help has propelled its immense success. With new innovative tech designs set in motion, we can expect the domain to garner an impressive trajectory in the coming years.”
The hype of Midjourney and other generative AI tools has taken over the art world, primarily due to plagiarism claims that have left heads scratching. In hopes of improvement shortly, AI companies will only improve their moral stance when creating content or “art.
Future Islands have released ‘Say Goodbye’, the latest single from their upcoming album People Who Aren’t There Anymore. It follows hte previously unveiled cuts ‘The Fight’, ‘Deep in the Night’, ‘King of Sweden’, and ‘Peach’. Listen to it below.
Future Island’s new LP, their first since 2020’s As Long As You Are, is due out January 26 on 4AD.
Ty Segall has previewed his forthcoming record Three Bells with a new track, ‘My Best Friend’. It follows previous entries ‘My Room’, ‘Void’, and ‘Eggman’. Check out a music video for it below.
Three Bells, the follow-up to last year’s “Hello, Hi”, is due for release on January 26 via Drag City.
Pissed Jeans have announced their first LP since 2017’s Why Love Now. Half Divorced lands on March 1 via Sub Pop, and today, the Philadelphia band is previewing with the new single ‘Moving On’. Check it out below, and scroll down for the album’s cover art and tracklist.
Half Divorced was produced and mixed by the band and Don Godwin and engineered by Mike Petillo at Tonal Park in Takoma Park, Maryland. It was mastered by co-producer Arthur Rizk. “Half Divorced has an aggression within it, in terms of saying, I don’t want this reality,” frontman Matt Korvette explained in a statement. “There’s a power in being able to say, I realize you want me to pay attention to these things, but I’m telling you that they don’t matter. I’m already looking elsewhere.”
“We’re not the kind of band that bangs out a new record every two years,” Korvette added. “Pissed Jeans is truly like an art project for us, which is what makes it so fun.”
Half Divorced Cover Artwork:
Half Divorced Tracklist:
1. Killing All the Wrong People
2. Anti-Sapio
3. Helicopter Parent
4. Cling to a Poisoned Dream
5. Sixty-Two Thousand Dollars in Debt
6. Everywhere Is Bad
7. Junktime
8. Alive With Hate
9. Seatbelt Alarm Silencer
10. (Stolen) Catalytic Converter
11. Monsters
12. Moving On
Danielle Durack has unveiled a new single, ‘Good Dog’, alongside an accompanying Jamee Lind-directed video. It’s set to appear on her forthcoming album Escape Artist, which is out February 16. Check it out below.
“This was written from the perspective of my dog, who has separation anxiety,” Durack said of the track in a statement. “Only after finishing thesong did I make the connection that it was actually, of course, about me and my own abandonmentissues. Turns out my dog and I have the same attachment style, so basically we’re in acodependent relationship.”
“The idea was inspired by a short-form video by Jamee, ‘hot dog orchestra’,” Durack added of the visual. “I love how it turned out, I think the silly concept offers some nice comedic relief to the heartbreaking song.”
