Music

Blackout Film Festival: Breaking From Routine

When Austin Chu, 25, was laid off from a Bay Area Internet startup in December of 2008, he did what many Californians might do: he went surfing every day, made plans to travel across the country to film a documentary, and diligently sent out a flurry of applications for PR and marketing positions.

As Chu discussed documentary plans with his 23-year-old brother Brian — what if they made something different from all the dark, disaster- oriented coverage? — companies started calling him for interviews. One offered him a job.

“If there’s a window of opportunity, you have to jump through,” Austin says. “It’s like, you see a girl in a bar and you make eye contact. If you don’t go then, it’s over. You won’t get another chance.”

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Gallery Spotlight: The Soap Factory

It’s not often that a soap factory slated for demolition can be bought for one dollar and converted into a cutting-edge art space. Yet that’s exactly how Minneapolis’ most comprehensive contemporary art space — appropriately named The Soap Factory — came to be.

The organization began in 1988 and was initially called No Name Exhibitions by the group of artists that founded it in order to emphasize creating innovative art that wasn’t being shown in Minneapolis’ more conventional art establishments. “There were not many independent, scrappy, non-institutionalized art venues. There was the Walker Art Center. There was the Minneapolis Art Institute,” says Katherine Rochester, the Soap Factory’s Program Manager. “But The Soap Factory was committed to the fact that they called themselves ‘no name’ because they were interested in having a different kind of artist for a different kind of space.”

Constants to release If Tomorrow the War on limited-edition vinyl

Post-rock shoegazers Constants are set to release their third full-length album, If Tomorrow The War, on September 7 via Science of Silence. Justin K. Broadrick (Jesu/Godflesh) produced the record, and much of the recording was done at guitarist/vocalist Will Benoit’s barn turned solar-powered recording studio. The new album features guest appearances from Andrew Neufeld (Comeback Kid, Sights & Sounds) and Mike Hill (Tombs).

Nails joins Southern Lord Records

Freshly signed to a new label, Nails joins the likes of Sunn O))), Pelican, and Goatsnake under heavy metal giant Southern Lord Records with the re-release of their album, Unsilent Death. Comparable to a cross between Amrep bands of the nineties and Cro-Mags Age of Quarrel riffage, Nails’ severe sound is brutal, vicious, and raw, hurtling at hypersonic speeds.

A new release is in the works under the new label for early 2011, but in the meantime Nails is taking to the road with fellow label-mates in the Southern Lord-sponsored The Power of the Riff Festival in LA on August 8. A cross-country tour is also scheduled for early September.

Art invades Chicago’s public transit

The third annual installation of the world’s largest mobile art gallery, Art on Track, will make its way to the Chicago Loop on August 7. Passengers will have the opportunity to board the eight-car train at the Adams and Wabash platform from 5-10 p.m. Participating artists were handpicked based on their control of new artistic methods in their fields. They will have six hours to produce captivating and provocative work to be experienced by the public.

J.Tillman on tour with Phosphorescent

The tour between Seattle folk artist J. Tillman — a recent-ish addition to Fleet Foxes — and alt-country/folk group Phosphorescent started earlier this week, with their first stop in LA on Tuesday.

Tillman’s 7th full-length record, Singing Ax, was recorded in three days in February of this year. On the album, simplistic and contemplative, third-person narratives float over acoustic guitar mainly without accompaniment, with the exception of a few tracks including mellotron and drum machine.

J.Tillman: “Three Sisters”

J. Tillman: \”Three Sisters\”