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That was a fun night.
We grabbed a camera, tossed some cheap lights and extension cords
into a box, and sped off to Grand Forks with the idea of making a
video. Along the way we chatted up everything except
the video, stopped at Culver's for dinner, and then made our way to
the arts & humanities department at UND, where we met Donald Renner
and some friends from his sculpture III class who were hosting an
installation that night entitled COEXIST, designed to heighten awareness
of the movement towards peace and solidarity between Christians, Muslims,
and Jews.
We arrived as they were setting up, and it was really something to
behold: a maze of shoes, strewn newspapers, and plastic figurines,
all shrouded in canopy and drenched in melodic feedback, winding to
a makeshift shrine at its pulsing core. The rambling layout took us
by surprise and we decided to scrap our original plan and improvise
the shoot, which turned out to be chaotic fun or, "Follow the
guy with the camera!" ...hand-held lights bobbing around in the
dark, a Leviathan of cords in our wake; total X-Files. And we hopelessly
disturbed the scene (a shoe flies across the screen in one shot) and
intermittently passed out flyers to bemused guests. Afterward, we
partied at Lola's downtown and Donnie indulged us with some skateboarding,
including a fantastic, planned wipeout that we decided to film for
the video's intro, though poor lighting would later prove the stunt
unusable. I guess you could say lighting was something we learned
a lot about that night, or actually Nathan did while weeding through
the murky footage in the days that followed. In the end, we had our
first video. And it shows. But here is a glimpse of that night in
Schizoidal Grove's, "Sidewalks Again." |
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Grove |
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Watch:
Sidewalks Again
video
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It took us by surprise,
too: Overwhelming response to last month's announced collaboration
between Austin rapper Checkmate,
and Source
Award winning producer, Fantom
Of The Beats, had us scrambling to keep up over the holidays,
shipping hundreds of advance copies of the album to promotional
outlets across the country. Now, in another surprise move, we
will actually release the record on time: beginning Tuesday,
January 18th, "Empire
Builder" will be available through the Coach
and 6 catalog as a limited release with issue #4
of Dying In Style!
including a full length interview with the Texas phenom.
Also to announce: the launch of Above
All Radio. If your only exposure to Austin has come through
the lens of Richard Linklater or a trip to SXSW, take a listen
to the raw, grimy sounds originating from this scene by tuning
in here
from 3pm - midnight.
CHECKMATE ~
Listen: Come And Find Us mp3
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