Tag: living

Iceage

They'd hate me for saying it, but Danish four-piece Iceage are the sexiest thing to happen to punk in forever. The band play loud and fast, with the violent, trance-like body-flinging of frontman Elias Bender Rnnenfelt seeming the all the more vital when backed with the understated stage presence anddeft musicianshipof Johan Surrballe Wieth, Dan Kjr Nielsen and Jakob Tvilling Pless. Iceage's new albumYou're Nothingis a wildly diverse and unexpectedly catchy ride through post-punk, hardcore and experimental noise with strikingly imagistic lyrics that hit like a bullet. In the remarkable new track 'Awake', Elias launches from throbbing riffs into an unsettling deeply-intoned monologue:"The walls began to crack/ They launched the guns at their sons heads."

Much has been made of the supposedly fascist undertones the of the band's work:Wieth has a tattoo of equally controversial80s neofolk bandDeath In June's Whip-Handlogotheinterlocking letters of their ownband symbol form a cultish geometry.At Iceage gigs, collected fans pump their fists atRnnenfelt – as attendees of punk gigs have done at every show since1978.If Iceage's first albumNew Brigadewas their statement of intent in 2-minute throttling blasts, thenYou're Nothingis the sound of the band widening their view and finding just as much fear, hope, and lust. And while theirvision is often unpretty - even sinister - it's far from the F-word.

A lot of the time anger is directed inwards. But onYou're Nothing,for every lyric like"If I could/ leave my body then I would/ Bleed into a lake/Dashing away/ Disappear"there's an optimistic payoff, like in 'Ecstasy', where Rnnenfelt sings of being"adorned in carnal ecstasy… A mere blow of wind could turn me into light."There's an urgent and ever-quickening pulse beneath the bloody knuckles as they self-assuredly articulate their message. Iceage are a band to believe in - you can even buy the pinbadgeto declare it.

DD: Your new album's calledYou're Nothing. Who's that sentiment directed at?

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: Both the way you see other people sometimes, but also how things can feel like nothing in a certain light. It's written from a personal point of view. It's not pointed at a specific person, it's more of an emotion.

DD: My favourite track on the album is 'Morals'. The use of piano is new for the band.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: I don't know how conscious it was. There's not really any boundaries when you write, and sometimes it goes in unexpected places. That song is inspired by an old Italian singer called Mina. I can't remember how I found out about her, but I was listening to a lot of old Italian music, and I found a song of hers, and 'Morals' is kind of based on the piano that song.I think she might be singing "someone like you", which is a lyric in the song.

DD: Do you think there's a lack of morals in society, or in people you observe?

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: Yeah, just in surroundings. It's not necessarily written from a political view, but more of human view. It's more about self-respect, when people are insincere and stuff like that. I write most of the lyrics but we all contribute.

DD: I love the monologue in 'Awake' -"The fire broke out, we were running the night" -and then there's the sound of glass breaking.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: It's partly about society, but also that lyric is also very much about imagery. Those lyrics are quite theatrical. We were trying rock opera. [laughs] I guess it's our 'Bohemian Rapsody'.

DD: Is it tongue-in-cheek?

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: No.

Dan Kjr Nielsen: I guess the lyrics are a bit about the walls of society, however that may sound.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: Just the boundaries and stuff. Not actual walls. The state, and institutions in general.

Dan Kjr Nielsen: If we need to smash a glass to have a revolution…? It's a big question to answer. We're not really a political band.

DD: I read that you refer to your fans as victims. How come?

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: That's a thing that keeps getting misinterpreted again and again. We get asked about it a lot, but people don't really seem to get it. On a blog ages ago, there was a friend of ours who got pushed into a pit, and got seven stitches or something, and he had a picture there that said "Victim". It's not anything that we thought that much about. Obviously we don't see our fans as victims.

DD: Do you feel differently about this new album to your first,New Brigade(2011)?

Dan Kjr Nielsen: Yeah. I think there's more going on. We've tried to do more things, and not to be restricting ourselves.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: I think it's much better.

DD: Is it true that you took your name from the Warsaw song 'Living In The Ice Age'?

Dan Kjr Nielsen: No. We were brainstorming words.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: It sounded like a band name. We thought it was kind of stupid to call ourselves Ice Age, 'cause we don't wanna be associated with the Ice Age! So we spelled it in one word.

DD: Elias, your presence onstage seems quite trance-like. Does it feel that way to you?

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: Sometimes. If it's a good show, I guess I sometimes forget about what I'm doing.

DD: There was a lot of body contact too, it seemed like an intimate experience

Dan Kjr Nielsen: We're working together. We have a brotherly relationship.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: We've known each other for a really long time. I started hanging out with these guys since I was 11 or 12 or something. We just grew up in the same neighbourhood.

Dan Kjr Nielsen: Johan was in my class since we were six years old.

DD: What were you listening to at six years old?

Dan Kjr Nielsen: Kids' music. Michael Jackson. Me and my mother shared a Spice Girls CD, but I would only listen to it when she put it on.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: I don't think I cared that much for music back then.

Dan Kjr Nielsen: My father taught me to like KISS, but I mostly just looked at them.

DD: Well, KISS put on a great show. Is it important to you to put on a great live experience?

Dan Kjr Nielsen: Well, if itisa great live experience! Sometimes it is pretty shit. We're not a band you can rely on. Sometimes everything falls apart and it's nothing, and sometimes it's like we're the greatest band in the world.

DD: Who's your dream band to play with.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: Ah, we like to play with our friends.

Dan Kjr Nielsen: (deadpans) KISS!

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: We decided one time to do support shows for Fucked Up, but we weren't really into it. We'd rather do our own thing and maybe play for less people, but at least we're playing forourpeople.

DD: Elias, what your influences in terms of literature?

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: I like writers like George Bataille, The Story of the Eye. There are a couple of references to that in our lyrics. I think I was reading it around these guys - we all took turns to read it.

Dan Kjr Nielsen: (grins) It's a pretty dirty book.

Elias Bender Rnnenfelt: Yukio Mishima, and Jean Genet is awesome. I've read The Thief's Journal and now I'm reading The Miracle of the Rose.

Former New York Times Editor Makes A ‘Liberal Case’ For The 2nd Amendment

Craig Whitney

C-SPAN

Craig Whitney on C-SPAN

As the debate over gun control in the United States rages on, self-described liberal Craig Whitney

is speaking out against fellow liberals' attacks

on the Second Amendment.

Whitney, a former New York Times editor, argues in his new book "Living With Guns: A Liberal 's Case for the Second Amendment" that Americans have a long-standing common-law right to have guns for self-defense.

That right goes back to colonial times, when Americans felt they had a civic duty to use firearms when called upon to protect the common good, Whitney said in a recent C-SPAN interview.

“If you could ask Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton or John Hancock after the adoption of the Bill of Rights whether they had an individual right to carry arms and use them for self-defense, or to hunt . . . they would have laughed at you,” Whitney writes, according to a review of his book in The New York Times.

“Of course they had that right, they would have said," Whitney adds, in his book. "The Second Amendment didn’t give it to them; it simply recognized a right Americans had always had in common law and protected it.”

But Whitney, a member of the NRA, isn't a Second Amendment absolutist. He told C-SPAN any responsible gun owner knows having a gun is a "huge responsibility," and that the United States needs to live safely with the guns that have become part of its culture.

The NRA has spread a lot of hysteria and fear about possible gun regulations, but the U.S. can start reducing gun violence by checking the backgrounds of everybody who buys a gun, Whitney says. (Currently, private sellers aren't required to conduct criminal background checks before selling guns.)

Whitney told C-SPAN, "How can the NRA oppose regulations aimed at keeping people like criminals and drug addicts from keeping guns?"

SEE ALSO: Here's Why Dianne Feinstein's Assault Weapons Ban Might Actually Work >

YES, IT’S A CRISIS: 1,000 Jobs Gone At Groupon And LivingSocial; Can The Daily Deal Sector Turn It Around? (GRPN)

Daily deals title image lifehacker

via Lifehacker

The daily deal world is in turmoil.

LivingSocial just announced the firing of 400 employees, which is about 8.9% of its total workforce.

What's more unnerving is that over the past six months, Groupon reduced its workforce by 648 positions.

More than 1,000 reductions across both businesses is a huge deal. Those reductions aren't all layoffs; some are through attrition.

To cap it all, Groupon CEO Andrew Mason's job was in question all week, and he only received his board of directors' seal of approval late Thursday.

If this was happening at Facebook or Twitter — or any other major tech brand — people would be freaking out.

So why isn't anyone freaking out yet?

Arguably, this is a recession in the daily deal business.

It's the industry's first, given that it didn't exist until about four years ago.

LivingSocial told Business Insider via email about the job cuts. "After two years of hyper-growth from 450 to more than 4500 employees, these moves will align our cost structure against our 2013 plans and will help us set the company on a path for long-term growth and profitability. Specifically, they will allow us to invest more in critical priorities like marketing, mobile, and the hiring of additional technology staff."

LivingSocial told CNNMoney that it is moving much of its customer service from its headquarters in D.C. to Tuscon, "so some job openings will be available in that area." Sales and editorial, however, have simply been "streamlined."

The job losses reflect the shaky economic underpinnings of the daily deal business, which Groupon and LivingSocial have yet to wrestle into control.

LivingSocial posted a net loss of $566 million in Q3 2012. $496 million of LivingSocial's loss stems from a huge writedown of some of its acquisitions from 2011, the Washington Business Journal reports. LivingSocial's revenue also fell to $124 million in the three-month period, down from $138 million in the second quarter.

As of market close today, Groupon's stock price is currently sitting at $4.54, according to Yahoo Finance. The 52-week range is shocking: it reached a high of $25.84. That followed six months' of shrinking total billings at the company. (Its American business is robust; the international arm less so.)

A Groupon spokesperson tells us that its layoffs were largely due to new technology the company invested in that made those jobs irrelevant. In fact, we're told, Groupon has 200 job vacancies open across North America right now.

And, of course, the job cuts don't mean that Groupon and LivingSocial are going to vanish tomorrow. They're huge businesses after all. But they are cause for concern as they illuminate potential weaknesses in the daily deal business model.

The main problem is operational scale.

Both companies are dependent on large salesforces. It is very difficult for them to leverage operation scale: To sell more, they need to employ more people. Groupon historically has prided itself on the long-term relationships its salesforce builds with its merchants. They have struggled to leverage self-serve, turnkey sales the way Facebook has.

In fact, Groupon and LivingSocial aren't even tech companies. Rather, they're email companies. Although email is here to stay for a long time, the tidal shift among consumers is away from email to instant messaging, social media messaging, and mobile phone messaging. They need to pivot into alternate methods.

Groupon is trying just that, with Groupon Goods, which so far has been a success. And both companies need to do what Groupon says it is trying to do, which is replace human-to-human selling with tech that can increase each individual worker's selling power.

Lastly, the downturn ask whether the daily deal business has hit one of its natural ceilings: new merchants. Both companies need a fresh supply of new merchants to offer more deals, or to re-up on repeated deals. It's an open question that both Groupon and LivingSocial now have to prove: Is there enough new merchants or incremental repeat business from merchants for the sector to continue to grow?

A thousand-plus layoffs suggest that, for now, the question lacks a satisfying answer.

Mihara Yasuhiro

You can always hear the call of the wild in a Miharayasuhiro collection. Since Yasuhiro added menswear to his sneaker empire eight years ago, the label’s eponymous(ish) founder has been roaming the great outdoors, producing collections that merge a romantic notion of nature with an urban sensibility. The richly textured silhouettes are rooted in English tailoring, but executed in spliced-and-diced fabrics printed with painterly motifs from his homeland, and often presented alongside live performances by Japanese artists. For spring/summer 2013, Yasuhiro turned his gaze upon American rockers, transforming hard-as-nails leathers into something altogether more poetic to create an anti-hero outlaw.

This year, Yasuhiro is gracing the UK with two major events: a place in Tate Britain’s Pre-Raphaelites Victorian Avant-Garde exhibition, where his spring/summer 2012 womenswear film Ophelia Has a Dream by Paolo Roversi will be shown alongside Sir John Everett Millais’ Ophelia, and a pop-up store at London boutique Browns’s menswear store, the scene of our interview.

How did you approach the design of your Browns installation?
I wanted the room to give an insight into the work that goes into my clothes. So I wallpapered the space with images from the shoe factory I use in Tokyo, and the chairs in here are inspired by the workers’ chairs in the factory. I like the look of the chipped paint – you can see it’s been in use. Each chair represents a different stage in the work process and the craftsmanship and hours that go into making the pieces, like the camouflage and Japanese motif suits from AW12.

Could you explain your thoughts behind this idea of weaving in camouflage with traditional Japanese clouds and cherry blossoms?
My collection is called Inside Out, and plays on different aspects of that notion. There’s a Japanese expression that says your outside shows your inside, but I wanted to challenge this idea by creating pieces that show both – pieces where you don’t know which is which. The needlepoint prints are part of this idea and were done at an old obi factory in Tokyo. The flowers and waves are traditional patterns from the kimono, blended with camouflage to contrast the ancient and pure with the military connotations of modern amouflage. It’s also about what’s hidden. Camouflage is about hiding among the trees and flowers, but this camouflage clearly displays itself. So I was playing with the hidden meanings of an outfit.

Is the idea of man versus nature something you think about?
I find the contrast very beautiful. Tokyo especially is a very grey city – all concrete and asphalt – and the reality is that most fashion today is seen in a grey cityscape environment, so people become the nature element. I like to draw on nature themes in my work, but I also like to then do them in an all-grey medium, like the Japanese obi prints.

How much of your work process is an intellectual response and how much is an emotional one?
Good question. I think I’m more of a realist than a dreamer. At art college I was very caught up in the emotional side, and a lot of artists probably maintain that way of working. But as a designer, the practical can overtake the emotional. Patternmaking and production are quite unemotional. Everything for me starts with an emotional response, but I have to intellectualise my feelings. The point where I’m most emotional is when I have to explain a piece to the craftsman who’s going to make it. Then I tend to get very passionate. But a lot of the time it’s a hidden emotion.

Is there an idea or concept that you always return to?
The idea of ‘sublime meets ridiculous’ really fascinates me. For example, these two contrasting tartans on the jacket I’m wearing might seem ridiculous to some, but at the same time the expression is also very noble. I’m always looking at the clash between the two, and how things might change depending on the viewer.

You’ve collaborated with samurai guitarist Miyavi and Japanese design studio WOW for your shows. What is your secret to a successful show?
A show is such a fleeting moment. When you’ve worked on something for six months, day and night, you want that moment to make an impact. I’m interested in giving people something unexpected. I want them to leave with a story to tell.

Jun Inoue’s live calligraphy at your SS13 men’s show was striking.
Previously, I’ve been a bit against using certain aspects of Japanese culture in my work, and there was a time when I thought something like shodo calligraphy was too Japanese. I’ve had similar feelings towards the kimono. Living in Japan, you can feel very removed from all that nowadays. It’s like a costume from a bygone age that you can’t relate to, and it’s become almost a clich. But I’m seeing all this in a new light now.

So what do you think of non-Japanese designers working with the kimono?
It may look Japanese, but it’s not. But then, tailoring came from the west, and (Rei) Kawakubo and that generation of designers became famous for destroying tailoring. So I think about what western designers think of my tailoring. They might feel I’m destroying the concept of it, but I hope people can see I’m trying to retain the structure while making something new. Which is also why I’m now rethinking my views on aspects of traditional Japanese culture. There’s always more than one side to everything.

What part of Japanese pop culture inspires you the most?
Manga. I love it. I buy manga magazines every week, and my collection keeps growing. Manga is a very immediate and often critical reaction to what’s going on in culture and society right now, and a medium that reaches a huge amount of people. What do you hope to convey with your work? It’s quite simple, really. I want to see people happy. It might be impossible to change the world or the economy, but at least you can change how people feel.

Text by Susanne Madsen
Photography by Gareth McConnell

Taken from the December issue of Dazed & Confused

The beauty spot: modern home fragrance

postpoo drops

Telling it how it is: Aesop's Post-Poo Drops

The joy of living with people who stink is that yours is the privilege of choosing a perfume with which to de-stink them. That's it. That's the only benefit. Apols if you were expecting a list. First time I saw Aesop's Post-Poo Drops (21, aesop.com), I won't lie, I thought it was an April Fool. But it makes perfect sense. I mean, every home fragrance is basically a "post-poo" perfume, isn't it? Incense, room sprays – they're all expensive variations on "lighting a match", but it's for this that I love them. The classiest modern home fragrances bypass delicate rose scents and really fight the fight, with citric, sour, Haribo-type smells. Ones that don't pretend to be a vase of elegant flowers – instead proudly stating their aim. We're here, we're covering the smell of toilets, get used to it.

Jo Malone Lime, Basil and Mandarin Drawer Liners 30, jomalone.com Frederic Malle Rubber Incence Sheets 68, lessenteurs.com Total Wardrobe Care Anti-Moth Spray 21, wardrobemistress.co.uk Miller Harris Fleur Oriental Incence 30, selfridges.com

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