Fang Island

Interview: Fang Island on laughter, positivity, and touring Japan

This interview appears in ALARM #40. Subscribe here to get your copy!

Fang Island: MajorFang Island: Major (Sargent House, 7/24/12)

“Seek It Out”

Fang Island: “Seek it Out”

Fang Island is laughing. Fang Island is constantly laughing. Jason Bartell and Chris Georges, the two primary songwriters for the Brooklyn-by-way-of-Rhode Island outfit, are sitting in the Greenpoint bar where they played their first show in New York. They sip Brooklyn Lagers on a muggy evening while wearing nearly identical jean jackets. The duo is discussing whether drummer Marc St. Sauveur would don the “Denim Daddy” attire on stage, ultimately deciding that he would refuse. Bartell and Georges giggle at the thought.

Andrew Schoultz: Fall Out

Exploding flags, Persian miniatures, and slave ships: Artist Andrew Schoultz’s Fall Out

Artist Andrew Schoultz has an idea of America. And it isn’t one you’ve seen before.

Inspired heavily by “German map-making from the 14th Century and Persian and Indian miniatures,” Schoultz’s work is a clash of collage, mixed media, and imperialistic intrigue; gilt-leaf drips down American flags and exploding brick walls are overrun by all-seeing eyes and stamping horses. It’s a whimsical, disturbing amalgamation of the modern and historical, captured in a time capsule for an era that hasn’t happened yet.

Check out some of the pieces below, and if you’re in Culver City, CA, head over to the Mark Moore Gallery to see Fall Out, up through February 9, 2013.

Motörheadphönes are a thing now

In a sentence that we never thought we’d be typing, Lemmy of Motörhead stopped by the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show to premiere his band’s new line of listening peripherals, the why-hasn’t-this-happened-before Motörheadphönes.

Aimed at “the rock/pop audience, a target group who are critical listeners,” the three headphones and six in-ear models will be more focused on the mid-range of sound than other “lifestyle” models such as Beats by Dre. Launched last fall in Europe, and with a pedigree including an engineer from Gothenburg, Sweden, Motörheadphönes will be hitting the US market towards the end of April 2013.

ALARM's 50 Favorite Songs of 2012

ALARM’s 50 (+5) Favorite Songs of 2012

Last month ALARM presented its 50 favorite albums of 2012, an eclectic, rock-heavy selection of discs that were in steady rotation in our downtown-Chicago premises. Now, to give some love to tunes that were left out, we have our 50 (+5) favorite songs of last year — singles, B-sides, EP standouts, soundtrack cuts, and more.