Monthly Archives: February 2010

By Dell Frost – MOG

Is there any better way to illustrate just how much misogynist hip-hop has bastardized R&B than the recent release of Sade’s Soldier Of Love? Sade’s style has remained more or less the same over the course of her 26-year career, but R&B has not. Her debut album Diamond Life didn’t stick out like a sore thumb in comparison to other R&B/Soul music at the time, yet Soldier Of Love is almost alien within the the class of 2010. [Read More]

By Paul Sexton – Billboard

The gaps between Massive Attack albums may widen as the enigmatic British act’s career span lengthens. But fans’ patience, however, has clearly kept pace.

Massive Attack’s much-delayed “Heligoland” (Virgin/EMI)-only the fifth studio album of a two-decade career, arriving seven years after its predecessor, “100th Window”-becomes the veteran group’s highest- charting album on the Billboard 200 this week. It debuts at No. 46 with sales of 18,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It also bows at No. 11 on Top Digital Albums and No. 4 on Top Electronic Albums. In the United Kingdom, “Heligoland” enters at No. 6 on the albums chart, selling more than 32,000 copies, according to the Official Charts Co. [Read More]

By Steve Delahoyde – Unbeige

An interesting DIY copyright battle has been going on since late last week between the stationary firmPaperchase and an artist named Hidden Eloise. The latter claims the former blatantly copied one of her illustrations she’d been selling on Etsy. [Read More]

By Steve Delahoyde – Unbeige

Want to be at the front of the line for one of theGuggenheim‘s fastest selling events ever? Well, you’re lucky you have us. The museum has just announced a special exhibit/concert on March 4th to celebrate their 50th anniversary (one of many, we’d expect), and will feature a new performance-based piece by the band Animal Collective and artistDanny Perez. Here are the details: [Read More]

By Ben Sisario – NewYork Times

After nearly a week of public protest over reports that Abbey Road Studios, the London recording complex made famous by the Beatles, had been put up for sale, its owner, the financially troubled British record company EMI, has finally spoken. In a statement issued Sunday morning, EMI denied that the studio was being put on the market but confirmed that it was seeking financial help to save it. [Read More]

By Roberta Smith – NY Times

Judging from a number of overbearing, obstreperous and generally large works by male artists that command gallery space right now, it seems to be bad-boy week on the New York art scene. Isn’t every week, you ask? Maybe, but some are more emphatically so than others.

It’s hard to say exactly what qualifies an artist for “bad boy” status. Is it a matter of social swagger and conspicuous display? Extroverted self-indulgence and a tendency to revel in unholy messiness? A penchant for extra-large sinister-looking objects that are the sculptural equivalent of long sideburns? All this and more, certainly, awaits your scrutiny in a few of these shows, which exemplify different stages of bad-boyness: beginner (there’s still time to turn back), over the top and over the hill. Others give hints of a change of tune or even redemption. They adopt the scale but not the macho; they add parodying overtones or elegiac undercurrents; or they exercise restraint, delicately explore touch and even broach maturity. [Read More]