Tuna of the Day!

..guess could be of the week too.

Three dimensional art.

See No Evil

During the course of seven days 72 different artists turned Nelson Str in Bristol into an outdoor gallery

Call it freedom.

The Rhymesayers story

The year was 1995 when Atmosphere’s Slug and Ant, along with Saddiq and Musab Saad aka Beyond, formed a small label in their hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota. That was the birth of Rhymesayers Entertainment. The people behind this small indie label were initially a local crew called Headshots consisting of musicians, producers, graffiti artists etc which began to expand its activities eventually forming Rhymesayers. Seeing the growth of hip hop and the turn things had taken since the early 90’s when certain people tried to take advantage of the situation looking for an opportunity to capitalize from it, the Rhymesayers founders decided to take their artistic endeavors in their own hands following the path of others such as the Wu Tang Clan that had already done so before them. Still up to this day they are dedicated, to a level of almost blind faith, to the concept of one being entirely responsible for their own work, and self-empowerment in every step of the process is the key in all the activities that shape the label’s image worldwide. The first Rhymesayers release was Beyond’s “Comparison” in 1996. One year later Atmosphere released their first album named Overcast which dropped like an atom bomb not only inside their hometown’s hip hop community, but also helping the duo to make a name for itself all around the United States after they began touring, quickly becoming one of underground hip hop’s most promising new asset at the time. Atmosphere moved on to record some of the label’s most notable releases including “God Loves Ugly” and one of my personal favorites “You can’t imagine how much fun we’re having”. The label started to grow as fast as no one could ever anticipate by “drafting” artists from all over the country such as Dj Abilities in 1997 and Brother Ali in 2000 among others, building up a solid roster. In 1999, the Rhymesayers Entertainment record store opened in Minneapolis under the name of Fifth Element carrying a wide range of hip hop artists both indie and commercial but also helping out local hip hop heroes by promoting their material. All the efforts that the label’s people put into this were finally rewarded in 2007 when Rhymesayers signed a contract with Warner Music Group's Independent Label Group in order for them to promote and distribute the label’s music on a much larger scale. Artists that are currently or have been part of the Rhymesayers family include Grayskul, MF Doom, the super duo Felt (a collaboration between Murs of the Living Legends and Slug), Evidence of the Dilated Peoples who released his latest album just a couple of weeks ago, and Soul Position that just like Atmosphere consists of RJD2 on the beats and Blueprint on the mic

Venice Beach shaper (Guy Okazaki)

Tuna of the night!

A bit of an electro/disco sound to sharpen your ears. Goodmorning!

It's just a book. (Preview)

The last 2 months I've been spending most of my time editing my new creation. This little book will be based on photography and the aesthetic observations behind the images. With just a few simple words "a book including photos and words" all connected together to explain the feel behind every shot. 

The book will probably be out in the beginning of February 2012.

Here is just a small preview of the book.

An interview with Jore.

I met Jore last Christmas eve in a house gathering, as due to the weather conditions I had to stick in Oxford for a little while. Yes I missed the Shoubilicious Christmas bash. However I'd say that my night was rather interesting as I sat down, had lots of amazing "traditional" octopus for dinner and lots of good (truly amazing) mulled wine.

Jore is a great guy and as I've realised later, a really interesting artist. Following both artistic and professional manners to create successful results. Nuff of my talking let Jore say everything about his work..

Name & age?

jore / 28

Where are you based?
London

What are your main influences?

We live in very dynamic times. The visual culture out there is so extremely rich that is quite hard to point out things that influenced my thinking. Everything and nothing.

Do you consider your self a designer or an artist?

Depends... I love to think of myself as an artist sometimes, but some other times (when you have to pay the bills for example) you got to act as a designer which has to perform a certain task. Artists make pieces of art which have no particular purpose but the piece itself. "Esthetic" purpose. Designers usually have to convey particular message and that requires different mind set.

Who is your favourite artist/designer?

Tough one. So many of them: Picasso, Mondrian, Klee, Rothko, Modigliani, Derain, Corneliu Baba, Moor, Calder, Guayasamin, Rousseau, Klimt, Schiele, Ivan Milev, Repin, Jan van Eyck... Hate this question! If I don't mention any, it will appear that I don't know anyone. If I keep dropping names I will look snobbish...
Designers: Sagmaister, HORT, TROIKA, John Maeda, Ji Lee, Irma Boom, Richard Niessen, Joost Grootens... whatever, so many great designer out there :)

Digital or paper work?

Both! Digital is growing huge now. Keep pushing the digital but never forget where it all started... It depends also on the audience you are trying to reach and the feeling you would like to create. You need a certain task within a certain context in order to choose the "right" medium.

click here for more of his work. www.thejore.com

Welcome to Dogtown

Near the Santa Monica and Venice areas in the 70’s a team of surfers later switching to skateboarding known as the Z-Boys emerged. The crew would ride the waves and hang out at a spot called Dogtown in Pacific Ocean Park. While spending time at the Zephyr shop, the local surf shop where they got their name from, by skating more and more every day they soon realized that it eventually became as equally important as surfing for them. That’s when one of the owners of the 'Jeff Ho Surfboards and Zephyr Productions' , Skip Engblom, decided to set up a skate team that would end up being 12-member strong. Among the team’s members where skateboard legends Tony Alva and Stacy Peralta. By incorporating their surf moves while riding the concrete, the way the Z-Boys skated came real close to the way they surfed. The Z-Boys first gained their status at a competition held in 1975 where they left pretty much everyone with their mouths wide open introducing a new style of freestyle skateboarding that included surf moves and had a much more aggressive tone to it. Consequently this new style took America by storm and in the years that followed everyone was skating like the Z-Boys were. The crew is also responsible for the birth of what is known as vert when they started to raid the streets of their hometown breaking into houses looking for empty swimming pools which they could skate in. It was in one of these pools when Tony Alva completed the first aerial in skateboarding history. It is pretty fair to say that all tricks in most of today’s extreme sports, whether on water or land that take place above the ground have originated from that trick. Nonetheless the money they were offered by other companies and the attention the team were starting to get would eventually tear them apart since Ho and Engblom’s budget was not big enough to keep them all under the Zephyr Productions roof. Eventually all of them parted ways and did their own thing with Alva and Peralta becoming two of the biggest names that skateboarding has ever witnessed reaching up to cult status, while Ho revived the Zephyr Shop in Hawaii after being closed down at the end of 1976. Peralta also wrote the script for the 2005 movie called “Lords of Dogtown” breaking down the story of the Dogtown crew and features some of the original Z-Boys in minor roles

Kid Robot teams up with Swatch

With artists such as Tara Mcpherson, Jeremyville and Frank Kozik on board this new collaboration between Swatch and vinyl art pioneers Kid Robot is set to win without a single doubt. Each watch comes along with a Dunny of its own, Kid Robot’s trademark vinyl bunny, plus a special and very limited edition of just 300 box sets worldwide