Nathan Reusch is a wonderful human being that I had the privilege of going to high school with in Kansas. I’m glad I’ve always kept in touch with him. Nathan has managed to turn a small little record label (releasing mainly Kansas/Kansas City music) titled appropriately “The Record Machine”, into a power house and also releasing one of my favorite records of last year. (See: Capybara) If you’re going to SXSW you’ll have plenty of opportunities to see the bands on his label and heck you can even meet the man himself. You’ll be glad you did.

Name: Nathan Reusch
Location: Kansas City
Age: 30
Occupation: Owner of The Record Machine

Rubin: What are you currently working on or just finished that you’re excited about?

Reusch: I have a lot of new records coming out in the next few months on Record Machine. We just did our first 7″ with Cowboy Indian Bear and It’s True. We are also releasing an album with Motorboater that just came out last week. Right now we are doing a poster with a download but we are hoping to press it on vinyl in a couple months too.  We have a bunch of other great records this year with Saharan Gazelle Boy, State Bird, Max Justus, Cowboy Indian Bear, and still even have a few more things that I am working on for the second half of the year. I am basically just trying to do so much stuff my brain explodes.

Rubin: Where have you traveled this month or recently?

Reusch: I went out to New York City a few months ago with Max Justus. He played a few shows out there and we got to hang out and bum around New York for 6 days. I love being in that city. Every time I go I realize how much I love to visit but how the pacing of it would drive me nuts to live there. I am not sure how I would get anything done.

I am also getting pretty excited to get out of KC for SXSW next week. We have lots of bands playing multiple shows and last year we just had 1 playing 1 show so I am quite excited to get down there.

The Record Machine at SXSW
3/18 Thursday @ Jacklope (404 E 6th St) The Record Machine + Anodyne + Mushpot Showcase: Olympic Size Capybara, Cowboy Indian Bear, Little Brazil, Roman Numerals, and Open Hand  (2-7p,)
3/19 Friday
@ Casa De Gallo (2604 Diaz St) – Cowboy Indian Bear (3:00pm)
@ Canvas(105 E 5th) Midwasteland Takeover – Capybara (5:00pm)
@ Casa De Gallo(2604 Diaz St) – Perhapsy – (7:00pm)
@ Casa De Gallo(2604 Diaz St) – Capybara – (10:00pm)
3/20 Saturday
@ The Ghost Room(304 W 4th St)- Capybara  (1:00pm)
@ Lovey’s Loot(8650 Spicewood Springs Road)- It’s True (3:00pm)
@ Canvas (105 E 5th) Midwasteland Takeover – Cowboy Indian Bear (5:00pm)
@ Canvas (105 E 5th) Midwasteland Takeover – Perhapsy, Motorboater, and Max Justus (11-1:30 pm)

Rubin: What’s your favorite music right now?

Reusch: I really have been enjoying the new Beach House record. We have had tons of snow this year  in Kansas City (well tons of snow in terms of what Kansas City would normally get). And Beach House has been a perfect pairing for it. I also just heard this new band Cults that I cant’ get enough of. I also have been listening to Local Natives and Twin Sister quite a bit plus more the all of that I end up listening to my releases.

Rubin: Best food you’ve had in your neighborhood lately or while you were traveling?

Reusch: While I was in NY I had these really amazing pumpernickel everything bagels from Bagelsmith. I have been craving one ever since. In my neighborhood I had one of my favorite burgers in KC the other day from Max’s Auto Dinner in Waldo. And while it isn’t food I just tried Boulevard’s new Smokestack Series Beer which is an Imperial Pilsner and it was quite amazing.

Rubin: Anything else you want to mention?

Reusch: I am really glad you invited me to do this. I have been jealous and wanting to do one forever!

This is a great show you should go to this weekend if you’re in Los Angeles area that is March 13th in Laguna Beach, CA that I get show a photo at and even along side some great talented friends of mine like Mike Perry, Paul D’Elia, Scott Massey and Kelly Lynn Jones to name a few.

Find out more info over about the show over at http://www.nohawk.com and http://www.rrrproject.com.

Group Show & Zine Release 3/13, 6-10 p.m
A collaborative show between the artists from the RRR project, Surfrider Foundation & The Surf Gallery.
The Surf Gallery
911 S. Coast Hwy
Laguna Beach, CA 92651

Artists: Alex Krastev, Alex Weinstein, Andrew Holder, Art Brewer, Bradie Shemke, Brookes Reeder, Charles Adler, Chris Pfeil, Corey Brindley, Greg Comollo, Greg Lamarche, John Esguerra, Jonathan Sandridge, Julie Goldstein, Justin Krietemeyer, Kassia Meador, Kelly Jones, Keith Scharwath, Lynn Milosz, Mark Kane, Mark Tesi, Matt Lindauer, Matt Rubin, Matt Schwartz, Mike Afsa, Mike Perry, Michael Coleman, Paul D’Elia, Ryan Tatar, Scott Richards, Scott Massey, Steven Harrington, Stephanie Hosmer, Steph Walker, Urchin, William Morrisey, Zachary Gibson & You.

If you’re in the Los Angeles (Santa Monica) area you should go see Never Stop the upcoming photography show by my buddy Andy Mueller March 11th at Conveyor LA/Fred Segal. You must RSVP to gshock@exposure.net. I wish I was able to attend and chug tons of Boxed Water that my wonderful friend Kevin is providing.

View his work over at http://www.andymueller.com.

(If they have a STAR by them, it means I’ve heard it and I like it. Album title links go to Amazon. If I miss any good releases, please add them in the comments.)

For all your MP3 needs purchase from iTunes or Amazon.

Music:
1986: Everybody Is Whatever I Think They Are
Aloha: Home Acres (2-LP vinyl) *
The Besnard Lakes: The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night (vinyl)
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Beat the Devil’s Tattoo (vinyl)
Broken Bells: Broken Bells (2-CD box set) (vinyl)
Daughters: Daughters
Demon Hunter: World Is a Thorn
Frightened Rabbit: The Winter of Mixed Drinks (vinyl)
Jason Collett: Rat A Tat Tat (vinyl)
JJ: No 3 (vinyl) (not as good as no 2 but I still like it) *
Josh Rouse: El Turista (vinyl)
The Knife: Tomorrow, In A Year
Liars: Sisterworld (CD & DVD)
Ludacris: Battle Of The Sexes
Method Actors: This Is Still It
The Morning Benders: Big Echo (vinyl) *
Nervous Curtains: Out of Sync With Time (vinyl)
Pavement: Brighten the Corners (vinyl reissue)
Pavement: Crooked Rain Crooked Rain (vinyl reissue)
Pavement: Quarantine the Past: The Best of Pavement (2-LP vinyl) *
Pavement: Slanted & Enchanted (vinyl reissue)
Pavement: Terror Twilight (vinyl reissue)
Pavement: Watery Domestic (vinyl reissue)
Pavement: Wowee Zowee (vinyl reissue)
The Pharmacy: Weekend
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: The Brutalist Bricks (vinyl)
Titus Andronicus: The Monitor (vinyl)
Via Audio: Animalore (vinyl)
White Hinterland: Kairos (vinyl) *
Woodpigeon: Die Stadt Muzikanten

DVD:
The Avon Barksdale Story: Legends of the Unwired
Precious
Tapeheads
The Who: The Kids Are Alright [Blu-ray]
Up in the Air

So this is something new I’m going to try on a weekly basis (I hope.) These are the songs I listened to on repeat all weekend. The weather was nice, it was a really great weekend.

So here’s a little mix:

Buy these tracks at: the iTunes Music Store.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
Stream above or Download the Mix MP3 here.

BRAHMS – Another Time (subscribe to their mailing list and get their 4 song demo EP free.)
Buffalo Tom – Mountains Of Your Head
Drake – Over (this is my new favorite Drake song.)
Cloud Nothings – Turning On
Dr Dog – Shadow People
Modern English – I Melt With You
Appleseed Cast - Innocent Vigilent Ordinary (I saw them play Low Level Owl Vol 1 & 2 this weekend. Go see it if you can.)
Seamonster -  Bearsuit

(The above graphic was made by my buddy Blake E. Marquis using his typeface Farnum that you can check out here.)

Jaimie Warren is one of those artists whose style feels so familiar because their aesthetic has basically become part of the  dominant Youth Culture marketing strategy. She has a style that is uniquely her own, but still resonates with the larger culture. Her work has appeared in Nylon, The Fader, Vanity Fair, XLR8R, Vice and a whole host of other publications here and abroad. You can check out here entirely impressive portfolio and resume at dontyoufeelbetter.com.

She also created and runs Whoop Dee Doo, which is easily the craziest live entertainment/kids weirdo show available on public access television. Truly insane things happen on Whoop Dee Doo. Quite naturally, she lives and works in Kansas City.

Lane: What are you currently working on or just finished that you’re excited about?

Warren: Well, hmmmm, I am in a radical new Rizzoli publication called SHOOT: Photography of the Moment that released recently at the New Museum in New York and has an accompanying exhibition that is traveling to PARCO Factory in Tokyo, Galeria Yautepec in Mexico City, Colette in Paris and the Ullens Center in Beijing, which is rad! There are 26 photographers including Juergen Teller, Wolfgang Tillmans and Nan Goldin and I’m in there too!! OMG! Also, I have a new interview in Nylon Mag coming out in April. I recently closed my first solo museum exhibition at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and I’m doing lots of video and performance work. My DJ troupe “Booby Trap” is busy taking the country by storm, and I am really focusing on studying Roseanne Barr in my spare time. I am also desperately trying to figure out how to make it financially feasible for me to be in Brazil for a few months this time next year.

Lane: Where have you traveled this month or recently?

Warren: I just got back from India!! I got a grant to go there for a month, and I was working on a new series of my weirdo self-portraits, as well as a Bollywood edition of “Whoop Dee Doo”, which is a faux public access television show based in Kansas City lead by me and my good buddy Matt Roche (The Werewolf Host). We travel it all over to places like New York, Chicago, even Sweden!! It’s sort of like a totally crazy kids show for adults, where you’ll see professional drill teams, opera singers, break-dancers, Celtic bagpipers, Christian mimes, Civil War re-enactors, drag queens, punk bands, science teachers, tap dancers, R&B singers and dog trainers all in one room together dancing to the Notorious B.I.G. or something like that. It’s super weird and FUN! And we do kids programming for underserved youth, and we are currently on the hunt for a permanent space so that we can do shows on a regular basis.

Here is a cool show we just did – make sure to check out the end, where there is an amazing death metal head-bang-off between a 12 year old girl and a 43 year old man. Oh yeah! And Whoop Dee Doo will be in a new book project and exhibition through Deitch Projects called WILD FILE that will debut in NYC this summer.

Lane: What’s your favorite music right now?

Warren: Eek! I have absolutely no cool factor with music. You’ll find me only listening to Stevie Wonder, David Bowie and the Annie soundtrack. Ooopsies….

Lane: Best food you’ve had in your neighborhood lately or while you were traveling?

Warren: My favorites are Succotash (I work there!!), Genghis Khan Mongolian Barbeque, T-Rex in Legends mall and Vietnam Café. But most often I’ll be having a Lean Cuisine meal and a giant Diet Dr. Pepper. Gross, I know.

Lane: Anything else you want to mention?

Warren: Sure! We just did a little mini-video with Peaches you should check out really quick and, I want to say that you need to check out Peggy Noland’s radial clothes!! And Ari Fish’s radical clothes!! And I want to say I LOVE KANSAS CITY!!

View this amazingly beautiful work by artist Molly Dilworth.

“In the last year my practice has grown out of the studio in the form of large-scale rooftop paintings for Google Earth. This project uses materials from the waste stream (discarded house paint) to mark a physical presence in digital space.” (via Think Faesthetic!)

I’m very excited to post this after seeing it in the works and now come to life.

Here is artist Brion Nuda Rosch’s new book out now on Little Paper Planes Publishing. I was lucky enough to shoot the photos for the book. Please take a second to check it out.

“Brion Nuda Rosch’s works—consisting of collages, paintings, installations, social projects and video—are inviting yet unpredictable. Through basic maskings, removals, and additions, he plumbs the profundity of placing one idea upon another, producing results not unlike a warm, soft chuckle. Rosch’s works function as signposts and touchstones of his own investigation into his singular understanding of the world. (Foreword by Zachary Royer Scholz)”

8 x 9.5 in., 90 pages, Full-color offset printing / 100lb matte text / soft 120lb cover, Perfect-bound
Released March 2010 / Limited run of 1000

Find out more at http://littlepaperplanes.com/publishing or purchase it here!

For all your MP3 needs purchase from iTunes or Amazon.

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
MP3 >> The Ruby Suns – Cranberry
(I really loved the first Ruby Suns record. I still feel like this new one has to grow on me a little.)

Music:
Athlete: Black Swan
Golden Triangle: Double Jointer (vinyl)
Japanther: Rock N Roll Ice Cream (vinyl)
Little Boots: Hands
Peter Gabriel: Scratch My Back (2-CD deluxe edition)
Portugal. The Man: American Ghetto
Rogue Wave: Permalight (vinyl)
The Ruby Suns: Fight Softly (vinyl)
Seamonter: Two Birds
Shearwater: The Golden Archipelago (vinyl)
These New Puritans: Hidden * (Kurt said it’s good)

DVDS:
Tell Them Anything You Want
Where the Wild Things Are

Hidden

[Audio clip: view full post to listen]
MP3 >> These New Puritans – Orion

The record officially comes out on March 2nd in the US, but a full-album stream is available now.