Bob Log III plays distorted trash grimey blues slide guitar with his hands, he drawls through a telephone attached to the bubble face of the motorcycle helmet he wears, and he drums with his feet. He is known to ask women to stir his scotch on stage with their breasts, which is sadly Not currently Safe for Work. Sometimes he asks them to sit on his knee, bouncing up and down on the blue glittery jump suit he wears whenever he plays.
posted on Oct 11, 2007 - View this thread

Inner City Youth, London "In 2002, Simon Wheatley began photographing London's publich housing developments...and was able to obtain a level of intimacy with his subjects that provides a true picture of the daunting project of growing up in the intimate confines of drug use, societal neglect, and poverty." This (Flash-based) narrated slideshow features Wheatley's work, and is a look at the culture...and also the music (grime) "as an artistic response to the place and circumstance, an expression of the violence, bleakness, and neglect..." (via Future Feeder)
posted on Jul 20, 2006 - View this thread

Banned in D.C., not to mention the rest of the U. S. A. --British-Sri Lankan rapper M. I. A. (myspace page, with music), aka Maya Arulpragasam, has apparently been denied entry into the United States to record her next album, a follow-up to the surprise success of her first major release, "Arular." Could it have been this album that pricked the ears of immigration officials? Or maybe these lyrics ("Sunshowers," available at myspace)?
posted on May 22, 2006 - View this thread

Galang-alang-alang-a. (insane, 18MB QuickTime music video)
[MusicFilter] Cranking out music somewhere between hip-hop, electronica, Nintendo cartridges, and reggae, 27-year-old Maya Arulpragasam is getting a lot of attention for the results of tinkering with one box. M.I.A. (her stage name) dresses in garish flourescents like it's 1983, dances like no one's watching, and is making waves all around the critic-o-sphere. [RS|NYT|Eye|pm|pfm|New Yorker|CBC] Want a sample? The video for "Galang" takes her grattifi-esque art, animates it, and mashes it all together with her, um, unusual style of dance, for a music+video experience that is hard to forget. Is M.I.A. redefining the world of 21st century global pop... or is it just crap?   (via WG)
posted on Mar 12, 2005 - View this thread