Written By: Emily Ballaine
Writing, like life, is about overcoming emptiness. What is more terrifying than the white space of a blank page, more frustrating than that slow click of a cursor ticking away like a clock? And yet it is this same blank page that can become a space for infinite combinations of words and letters and sounds. Without emptiness there is no room for creation. Continue reading
Written By: Jasmine Conrad
Necks crack, eyes twitch
So hungry for life,
light,
I can hardly stomach it
Each sunrise heats up a regret
Each full moon inspires a soul-based contract
Sign the line with blood red ink
Now your lunges are filled with sulfur
Its much easier to think
The road is hot
Orange stones burn your souls feet
In your head the name of your angel is on repeat
Written By: Claire Grossman
graphic by greer mcgettrick
Break up with your boyfriend. Cut off your hair and sell it to be made into a wig. Tell your friends that you donated your hair to cancer patients. Use the cash to buy one gold coin and one lipstick. Apply the lipstick and put on a blue silk shirt. Button the shirt all the way to the collar.
Go to the grocery store. Fill your basket with oatmeal, milk, onions, popsicles, and seltzer. Smile at the cashier whose nametag says NED. Say to the cashier, “Did you know Nancy Drew’s boyfriend was named Ned?” This Ned will laugh. Learn that Ned drives a Honda Accord and is fluent in Portuguese. Make this Ned your boyfriend. Ned’s nickname for you is “Nancy”. Continue reading
photo by nils laengner
It’s an honor to be able to share with you an exclusive look at 8MM Records/A Recordings Ltd. artists, The Blue Angel Lounge’s live session version of their song, Woods. This uniquely penetrating young band from Berlin, DE has been mesmerizing their fans since they were teenagers by bellowing their cavernous psychedelic music all over the world. Continue reading
Written By: Jordannah Elizabeth
You got the backwash of the elixir of life. – my homegirl, Sarah
I have been talking about a concept for an essay for a couple of days now. The short anecdote is a true and simple story, but I cannot consciously avoid beginning this piece without mentioning it, and furthermore making it the premise and foundation of a feeling I have been trying to uncover since it happened.
I woke in a puddle of someone else’s drool. Continue reading
Written By: Giovan Alonzi
As a goof, or jest, or in some sort of lampooning of something conventional—you, me, a “rock band,” a “main musical project”—Pink Mountaintops (often considered Stephen McBean’s side project next to Black Mountain) has not failed to, yet again, crank out a work of indulgence. Not indulgent like Dragon Force, or a math rock band, or that “noise band you’ve always wanted to destroy music with.” No, Pink Mountaintops’ indulgence lands inside something giant and wet and poppy. Take, for instance, the melting croon that opens, Sixteen:
As the people stood around and stared / we were racing passed the walls / outside the bars of innocence / we could steal it all Continue reading
Connan Mockasin and Blood Orange at Primavera Sound Festival last weekend.
(Photo credit: Tom Spray for Pitchfork)
Curated By: Guillermo M. Cerredo
Pakapi Records is an Argentinian record label that releases and promotes South American experimental and noise music. Our friend, and founder of Pakapi Records, Guillermo M. Cerredo has contributed a mixtape to Publik / Private, highlighting some new weird South American music.
We love when our old friends do weird stuff, so we’re sharing it with you. Continue reading
Written By: Jordannah Elizabeth
“Third Wave Anton Newcombe.”
It’s difficult to begin this review because I don’t want to be overzealous. I don’t want to blurt out that this is probably the best album Anton Newcombe has ever written. I’ve spent so many years fighting with my editors on the tiniest morsels of semantics and nuances of the full portrait of Newcombe’s work, and at the same time, I’ve been holding my breath through the “Post Brian Jonestown Massacre Era” waiting for Newcombe to wake up from his jet setting haze of manic soundscapes, and to return to the heart of the matter, and back to the root of the deepest layers of BJM’s artistic statement. The “Post Brian Jonestown Massacre Era” is a collection of the band’s work spanning from 2008’s My Bloody Underground to 2010’s Who Killed Sgt. Pepper and 2012’s Aufheben. Continue reading
Written By: Emily Ballaine
There is a picture of me. The only picture of myself I really like. I’m staring up at something out of the frame. My face is scrunched up: half serious, half comical. I am not even paying attention.
I am nineteen. I am wearing hiking boots and a western belt buckle and a shirt that keeps riding up, a shirt I was probably pulling at a second before that camera click. Continue reading
Publik / Private 