mehan jayasuriya

"We started out really young — That Dog was the first music we had ever done, really. And every..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 11:10:44 -0400

“We started out really young — That Dog was the first music we had ever done, really. And every single detail we knew, every single part we felt because they were the first parts we had ever written and played. There was so much pressure toward the end that it got a little stressful. So to release ourselves from that felt freeing. I felt like I was on a different path — I didn’t want to do a lot of vocal harmonies or weird chords. I wanted to straighten things out. But after a while, I realized that that’s how my brain works. And all of us in That Dog, that’s how all of our brains work. We were really lucky to find each other in the first place and it’s amazing that after all these years, we still speak the same language.”

- Anna Waronker Says That Dog Are Real Musicians Now | MTV Hive

I interviewed Anna Waronker of That Dog, on the eve of the band’s first east coast shows in 15 years. If you missed last night’s set at the Music Hall of Williamsburg (which felt, for all intents and purposes, like an exuberant high school reunion for the indie-pop set), I’d highly recommend going to tonight’s show—it might be another 15 years before these guys play NYC again, if ever.

"They should have been chess players because they were always three steps ahead of the game, you..."

Fri, 25 May 2012 10:20:00 -0400

“They should have been chess players because they were always three steps ahead of the game, you know? When everyone was doing hardcore, they were doing this weird hardcore/thrash hybrid. Then, when everyone was doing that, they had moved onto this kind of darkwave thing. After that they had moved on to the kinda psychedelic REM-styled stuff. And then with Cement, it’s almost like everyone had finally caught up to them in a sense, as that record almost sounded contemporary.”

- Century Days: The Story of Die Kreuzen | ThirdCoast Digest

My brother Sahan wrote an incredibly thorough oral history of Die Kreuzen, featuring interviews with the band members as well as luminaries like Dale Crover and Corey Rusk. Die Kreuzen fans: this is the definitive profile you’ve been waiting for.

Via Advance Base’s Twitter account comes this early...

Thu, 24 May 2012 12:16:00 -0400

Via Advance Base’s Twitter account comes this early front-runner for the title of jam of the summer, 2012 edition. My Body is a four-piece from Portland, OR and “New Cat” is a delightfully slippery slice of electro-pop that brims with colorful details. What really grabs me, though, are the vocals, which are wistful and even a touch twangy but not the least bit coy. At a time when it’s de rigueur for electro-pop acts to submerge their vocals under layers of reverb and gauze, it’s refreshing to see a band that’s not afraid to let a strong vocalist shine. “New Cat” can be yours for the price of an email address over at My Body’s website. You can also follow them on Tumblr here.

anniewerner: We welcome all guests at Tumblr HQ. Meet Morris,...

Wed, 23 May 2012 15:08:45 -0400

anniewerner:

We welcome all guests at Tumblr HQ. Meet Morris, currently taking up residency in the 6th floor men’s room.

So upset that I’m missing this on my day off.

Humor Is an Online Activist’s Best Defense

Mon, 21 May 2012 10:25:16 -0400

Humor Is an Online Activist’s Best Defense:

I wrote a piece for GOOD about Kickstriker and lulzmaking as activism.

"A fancy word for terrorists these days is super-empowered non-state actors. The Internet offers..."

Thu, 17 May 2012 13:24:33 -0400

“A fancy word for terrorists these days is super-empowered non-state actors. The Internet offers tools that any organization can use to become ‘super-empowered.’ It has been generally accepted political theory since Max Weber that nations have a legitimate ‘monopoly on violence,’ but that monopoly is being broken up by a bunch of non-state upstarts, like Mexico’s narco-gangs, the Iraqi insurgency, and Blackwater private security. No one knows how a new balance of power will be struck, or how much violence will ensue before that equilibrium is found.”

- My boy James absolutely kills it in the latest piece on Kickstriker. Head over to Animal New York to read the whole thing.

My friend Garrett (the dude behind Imagine Awesome, Windoodles...

Wed, 16 May 2012 10:28:00 -0400

My friend Garrett (the dude behind Imagine Awesome, Windoodles and 1/3 of Doodle or Die) did this amazing drawing of my other friend Lara (the lady behind TrailMix) and I. Maybe I should start wearing bow ties?

UPDATE: As it turns out, Garrett’s piece is a derivative work—the original image by Adam Ellis is here.

I photographed and reviewed Zola Jesus’ set at the...

Fri, 11 May 2012 16:29:18 -0400

I photographed and reviewed Zola Jesus’ set at the Guggenheim last night for MTV Hive.

first day on the job. (Taken with Instagram at Tumblr HQ)

Fri, 11 May 2012 11:40:00 -0400

first day on the job. (Taken with Instagram at Tumblr HQ)

"Pizza used to be a Weird Ethnic Food and now it is Death Culture Sustenance. Do you think when..."

Thu, 10 May 2012 18:39:00 -0400

“Pizza used to be a Weird Ethnic Food and now it is Death Culture Sustenance. Do you think when Indian Americans are ultimately absorbed into the amorphous Honky Culture Vacuum, dosas will be synonymous with the spectral remnants of your once vibrant culture?”

-
I clicked on this interview because it’s with my friend Hima and with Slice Harvester who is the shit, but as far as I’m concerned you don’t need to read more than the above question posed by Slice Harvester, which is the best question I have ever read in an interview not conducted with a head of state. Slice Harvester is the fuckin man. (via jawnita)

Pack it up, folks—Slice Harvester vs. Himanshu wins the internet today.

Arianna Huffington is down with Kickstriker, apparently.

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:55:03 -0400

Arianna Huffington is down with Kickstriker, apparently.

"Really nice work by Prof. Shirky’s students there. Making a wide variety of dystopian points in an..."

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:46:52 -0400

“Really nice work by Prof. Shirky’s students there. Making a wide variety of dystopian points in an elegant fashion.”

- Science fiction author, futurist and O.G. cyberpunk Bruce Sterling on Kickstriker.

"Check out the “MIT students” working on the drone project: “The three of us (Brandon McCartney,..."

Fri, 04 May 2012 17:56:00 -0400

“Check out the “MIT students” working on the drone project: “The three of us (Brandon McCartney, Natassia Zolot and Radric Davis) can spend the summer focusing on the Panopticopter.” That would be the real names of the rappers Lil B, Kreayshawn and Gucci Mane. (While I have no doubt about Gucci’s engineering prowess, I certainly doubt his ability to stay out of jail for an entire summer; and he seems to prefer working with Kreay’s awful co-conspirator V-Nasty.) “We laughed about it, but then we said this was an idea that’s just one step removed from reality,” says co-founder Mehan Jayasuriya, who put in the rappers’ government names “as a little Easter Egg” for fans. “It’s just believable enough that people might fall for it, or some percentage of people might actually think it’s a good idea, which would be horrifying.””

- Shoutout Spencer Ackerman for catching this subtle reference. I was actually kind of worried that no one would notice it.

evanfleischer: A Chat With Mehan Jayasuriya of Kickstriker

Fri, 04 May 2012 17:42:43 -0400

evanfleischer: A Chat With Mehan Jayasuriya of Kickstriker:

evanfleischer:

Kickstriker would make The Yes Men jealous.

Created by three NYU students — two of whom I spoke with — the website labels itself as “a funding platform for activists and engineers working to resolve global conflicts,” then goes on to suggest projects one might fund — Kony 2012, a DIY Drone Strike, arming Tibetan militas to fight back against China, and a mobile black site/interrogation van.

Thanks for this, Evan!

Josh Begley, James Borda and I just launched a website called...

Fri, 04 May 2012 17:36:00 -0400

Josh Begley, James Borda and I just launched a website called Kickstriker, a crowdfunding platform for activists and engineers working to resolve global conflicts. Here’s what some people are saying about it on the internet:

Wired: Kickstarter of Doom: Hoax Site ‘Funds’ Torture Bus, Death Drones
BetaBeat: NYU ITP Students Build a Nightmarish Kickstarter For Wartime
Evan Fleischer: “Kickstriker would make The Yes Men jealous.”
Buzzfeed: “Kickstriker Project Looking for $3,000,000 to Catch Kony”
Arianna Huffington: “Parody website of the day!”
Bruce Sterling: “Mak[es] a wide variety of dystopian points in an elegant fashion.”
The Verge: “[A] satirical but unnervingly prescient platform for crowd-funding wars”
Animal New York: Kickstriker: Crowdsourced Violence

Bright Eyes: Fevers and Mirrors [Vinyl Reissue]

Tue, 01 May 2012 02:35:00 -0400

Bright Eyes: Fevers and Mirrors [Vinyl Reissue]:

I was pleasantly surprised today when I saw that not only did Pitchfork see fit to review Saddle-Creek’s reissue of Bright Eyes’ Fevers and Mirrors but that the reviewer also took the opportunity to reconsider the site’s previous valuation of the record and seemingly, Oberst’s entire oeuvre. I remember reading the original review that ran on the site 12 years ago and being a bit bewildered by how badly the reviewer seemed to have missed the mark; in particular I was amazed that anyone could listen to that staged “radio interview” and not recognize that it was intended to be read as self-parody. So while this vindication has been a long time coming in my mind, credit where it’s due: Ian Cohen does a fantastic job of unpacking and contextualizing the record in this review, which is near-definitive in its scope. It will be interesting to see if this kicks off a wave of reappraisals of Conor Oberst’s work, as has happened with Fiona Apple in recent years—I have often suspected that history will be much kinder to Oberst than his contemporaries were.

For whatever reason, I just can’t stop looking at this...

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 17:53:02 -0400

For whatever reason, I just can’t stop looking at this collection of ’90s “internet” stock images that I found via a tweet from Geeta Dayal. There’s something oddly mesmerizing about this aesthetic, which reminds me, variously, of Kraftwerk’s 3-D projections and the cartoon ReBoot. This sort of imagery is ripe for a nostalgia-fueled comeback, if you ask me.

The debut LP from my kid brother’s band, Good Night &...

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 17:06:03 -0400

The debut LP from my kid brother’s band, Good Night & Good Morning, is so good that it’s presenting me with a moral dilemma: just how much am I allowed to evangelize this thing? If you’re a fan of languid indie-pop, gentle drones and bands like the American Analog Set, Low and Grouper, you really should head over to GN&GM’s Bandcamp page and give Narrowing Type a listen.

My roommate (and all-around good dude) Johann built a pretty...

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:27:34 -0400

My roommate (and all-around good dude) Johann built a pretty amazing project called Strings last year, in collaboration with a few other sound artists at ITP. It’s essentially a giant, digital stringed instrument that can be played by one or more persons using bows. The piece was a huge hit at the 2011 ITP Winter Show and now Johann and his collaborators are trying to raise funds to take Strings to the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference in Ann Arbor next month. They’re currently running a Kickstarter campaign to this end—do please kick them a few bucks, if you can.

totalvibration: Either I wasn’t paying attention or I was too...

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 17:54:34 -0400

totalvibration:

Either I wasn’t paying attention or I was too far deep into my “OMG freshman year of college, I want to hear everything that isn’t hardcore!” phase, but I never got around to the Give Up the Ghost (also known as American Nightmare? I’m fuzzy on the particulars). The 11-minute (11 minutes?!) trailer for the Boston hardcore band’s reunion documentary makes me wish I had.

As I recall, they were originally called American Nightmare but had to change their name after another band with the same name threatened to take them to court. But yeah, easily one of the best hardcore bands of the last 10-15 years, though largely unappreciated in their own time. My sense is that they had the misfortune of coming into their own during a period of stagnation in the hardcore scene, when a lot of people like Lars and I weren’t paying attention (I also only just discovered GUTG during the last few years thanks to my brother, who has been an evangelist since the A.N. days). However, as much as I love this band, I can’t help but find the trailer for this film a little frustrating—must every documentary about a contemporary hardcore band feature effusive, hyperbolic praise? I found the Refused documentary difficult to watch for this same reason. Can someone please make a hardcore documentary that offers thoughtful, realistic appraisals of a band’s legacy and influence? Part of the problem here is perspective—hardcore culture tends to be pretty insular—but I’d like to think that these docs could offer up something more than just a validation of the viewer’s good taste.