Here at Мишкa we love all of our out of town visitors, and this chilled out Aussie is no exception. Meet Neil, a pretty big Мишкa fan that made sure to stop into 350 Broadway while on his NY excursion before heading back Down Under. Much love to Neil for swinging by and if you’re ever in Aussie Land be sure to check out his store that carries a whole heap of Мишкa Fresh In.

DJ Fresh ft. Stamina MC – Hypercaine (Nero Dubstep Remix)

Breakage feat Newham Generals & David Rodigan – Hard

Switchdubs – Back With A Vengeance (Flux Pavilion Remix)

Digital Boy and Mc Rage – Face Down Ass Up

Bonus:
Dave P & JDH – TimeOut NY Mix

I have pretty idiosyncratic music taste, I guess. I used to listen to nothing but Hammerfall and Bolt Thrower, and before that, I was a bonafide Drum n Bass fiend. Like Ed Rush & Optical, Neurofunk stuff. Before that, it was all Gangsta Rap all the time, and before that, I guess, it was Soundgarden or dead. There have been a few constants throughout my listeners’ evolution (Nine Inch Nails and Metallica, for instance), but—I don’t know—it sems like I look up every year and find myself tunneled into some subgenre or another, never to re-emerge until the next time I look up and realize it’s Winter.

At least, that’s how it used to be…lately all I do is listen to Juno Dubstep and Phuture Frequency podcasts…over and over and over. It’s like a bad art gallery in my office; just loud enough to hear it and sort of enjoy it, but not so loud that it distracts me from whatever I’m doing or talking on the phone.

I should really look into finding out when ‘music’ became ‘background music’ for me. I guess it’s a problem.

ANYWAY. Iced Earth. They are a fantastic, um, All-Metal band from Florida. I say All-Metal because I was trying to figure out exactly WHAT they are…after about 5 minutes of that, I looked at their wiki page which said: “Iced Earth is an American heavy metal band from Tampa, Florida that combines influences from thrash metal, power metal, progressive metal, opera, speed metal and NWOBHM.”

Not very helpful. But then again, exactly accurate. Think Opeth meets Testament. But better than that.

BUT! What I’m most interested in right now is their absolutely bone-crushing 2004 release: The Glorious Burden. I am going to say something and I want you to listen: It’s not metal if it’s not about the Civil War. Sure, that’s probably only partly true, but what do you get when you take a metal band full of aging thrashers and set them to making a concept album about various stages of American History?

Pure Awesome. The second disc of the album—The Battle of Gettysburg (1863)—is too good for words, and simply must be experienced at high volume.

Here are parts 1, 2, and 3 of the Gettysburg trilogy. Listen, learn, and never forget.

For the second installment of this Canadian monthly the Faktory crew is bringin’ up Party Like Us member B. Rich along with Torro-Torro and DMT to the Social in Toronto on Saturday, November 14th.

One that will surely warm your blood and shake your bones!

Today kicks off the U.S. tour of Nightslugs. But before shipping off to Phoenix to rip their opening night L-Vis 1990 & Bok Bok stopped in to 350 Broadway to hang for a bit and gear up for Pacific to Atlantic bass rockin’ tour. The last night being back in NY to party out with our good friends T&B which should tear down Santos Party House. So make sure you check out Nightslug’s US Tour 2009 coming to a city near you.

Мишка
350 Broadway
Brooklyn, NY

J/M/Z to Marcy Ave.
G to Broadway
L to Lorimer

I know some of this is probably old news to car guys, but these are still pretty cool none-the-lees and I’m sure even the non-car guys who read the Bloglin can appreciate the beauty of these machines I have lined up.

First lets peep the 2009 Dodge Challenger Vapor.  It kind of looks like something Batman would design. The US Air Force and Galpin Auto Sports teamed up to build this as a recruitment tool to entice people into the Air Force.  This stealth-looking Dodge is best described as part muscle car and part fighter jet

The car’s paint job actually makes it invisible to radar, while it’s stealth exhaust system makes the car practically soundless.  Plus there is a camera on the roof that detects movement within a quarter mile distance. The car is stocked with a camera on the roof that detects movement within a quarter mile distance, GPS, Internet Access, gull wing doors (the ones that flip up), thermal version windshield and even a  a fingerprint reader to get inside!  To see more pics and info nf the car check out Geekologie. Now on to something slightly less accessible…

Initially released in 1952, this is the 2009 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing Panamerica Replica.  And it still uses the same instrumental panel from its original.  This Benz is equipped with a 5.5 liter Mercedes M-133-55 engine, which you find on the SLR and AMG models.

The engine pushes 370 HP and is a 6 speed.  It still has the old school and retro look, but I promise you there is nothing old about it.  This is a very classy car, and I’m sure there will only be only a few exclusive people who will actually own one of these.  For more info on this car check out this post on Wolrd Car Fans.

Probably the coolest car I’ve ever seen.  This it the BMW M1 ProCar, a concept car project that was co-produced by BMW and Lamborghini. I’m sure the Lamborghini influences are probably really screaming out at you just by looking at it.

The original M1 dates back to 1972 and was Turbo charged, but this redesigned and much improved version debuted in 2008.  It was hard to find more information about the car, but to look at some more details pics check the Supercars site.

next I present to you GM’s new approach on the concept car.  The Cadillac Converj – yup it’s a coupe. The car is gas powered, but also has an extended electric powered motor.

It can reaches up to 100 MPH and gets up to 40 MPG on the lithium-ion battery and it comes stock with 21” or 22” rims. GM wants the car available in 2011.

And finally there’s the 2010 Alfa Romeo Mito GTA Concept car.  This car only has a 1.8L engine, but pushes out 240 HP.  The engine was built by Fiat Powertrain Technologies, who also built the Twin Spark and Alfa V-6 road and race engines.

The car parts are mostly composed of carbon fiber and aluminum, which make the car very light weight. The car is only a concept car, but Alfa wants to bring the GTA to the public street market. For more info on this ride, head back again to Supercars.

It seems these tough economic times are even affecting successful, fictional plumbers. At least these goons were smart enough not to throw fireballs at a gas station.

via TrueCrimeReport

Twin Stumps – S/T (2009) [Dais] // Grade: B+

New York’s always been home to a wide array of music scenes, but none ever captured the urban blight quite as vividly the 80’s Pigfuck scene. It was abrasive, loud, noisy, unmelodic and forgoes simply being in-your-face to just punching you straight in it. Twin Stumps are deliciously masochistic throwback to one of my favorite and too often overlooked sounds that transplant that those seedier sounds of a long gone Lower East Side to their new urban wasteland here in Brooklyn.

Across it’s six songs, the album absolutely engulfs you in a suffocating clamor of distortion, feedback and anger while riding a caustic yet catchy rhythmic groove buried beneath all of the commotion. From the Pussy Galore at half-speed sound of “Beyond the Door” to the heavily Brainbombs influenced “Scar” or even how the plodding rhythm of “Painted in Blood” would sound just as comfortable smack in the middle of a Kilslug album as it does here.

Alessandro Kegan’s screams pierce deep into your noggin’ while the rest of the band keep your neck a-bob like a power drill trying to mainline your Carotid artery. Twin Stumps have really done their homework, but better yet do the material real justice. There’s zero posturing here, just the sole purpose of being abrasive and intimidating for which it is mission accomplished.

Long time supporters of the brand, Nightslugs are comprised of L-Vis 1990 and Bok Bok. Both very prolific London Based producers are also proud parents of a self titled heavy bass night.

L-vis is fresh off his worldwide Mad Decent banger, United Groove and well onto some Sound Pellegrino stuff; Bok Bok just dropped an exclusive remix of “Youth Blood” by Little Jinder (Trouble & Bass). Check’em out!

Make sure you catch their double east coast date with us in NYC and Philly featuring Joker & Nomad, Trouble & Bass, Subdivison, and the Mad Decent crew.

Check out this Nightslugs Rinse.fm session in the meantime… see you on the floor!

Pardon the random rant but this commercial caught me off guard late last night. The Gap’s new Holiday 09 commercial campaign features the chorus of “Go Christmas, Go Hanukkah, Go Kwanza, Go Solstice!” Go Solstice?

Is The Gap being super P.C. or has Wicca finally broken through to major holiday status? Did I miss a few heated courtroom battles about religious equality and Wiccan rights or is The Gap just that forward thinking in expanding their market? I really hope this eventually paves the way for a Michael Gondry directed Gap commercial featuring Pan the Goat-God in cashmere and boyfriend jeans.

Either way, here’s to a Pagan Holiday season!

Kid Sister – Ultraviolet (2009) [Dowtown] // Grade: B+

Early reviews of Kid Sister’s Ultraviolet have begun to pop up around the internet and some reviewers surprisingly seem dismissive of her long-awaited debut release. Those claiming it’s not a serious album, or the lyrics lack substance, are trying to force the young Chicago hip-hop starlet into the title of prolific female rapper, when she just wants to show everyone a good time.

First and foremost, Ultraviolet is not a hip-hop album, and those expecting that will be sorely let down. But if you ever played the board game Heart Throb, or knew all the dance moves to Bobby Brown’s “Every Little Step”, or soundtracked your formative years with SWV, MC Lyte and Soul For Real, then you already understand Kid Sister and will feel a strong kinship with the heavily 90s R&B, pop and house influenced Ultraviolet. As you might suspect from her previous one-off hits like “Beeper” and “Damn Girl”, Ultraviolet is a hook-filled party album aimed at the dancefloor, but it should not be lumped into soulless music to get drunk to. Kid Sister pulls in a roster of cameos that includes A-list musicians Kanye, Estelle and Cee-Lo on vocals, while remaining unconceited by drawing from a local pool of Chicago talent and introducing the greater world to the production force that is Gantman.

Kid Sister achieves with Ultraviolet what I think is often a difficult triumph for artists working under the loose umbrella of pop—personality and approachability. The Gantman-produced “Switchboard” pays homage to stylistic genre of juke native to Chicago. “54321″, a track with comparatively weak rhymes, becomes one of my album favorites with a nod to freestyle running throughout the chorus. “You Ain’t Really Down” culls from the same era, a wildly unexpected 90s R&B meets house diva vocal singalong.

At first “Right Hand Hi” and the Cee-Lo featured “Daydreaming” both felt too much like current MTV pop fodder, but then I took a second listen and got it. Ultraviolet is a personal journey through all the music that Melisa Young (Kid Sister) has ever loved, past, present and wrapped up in a package of 12 tracks, presented to listeners as the future. A title change and a comical number of release date pushbacks later, Kid Sister’s Ultraviolet is painfully fun, pleasantly refreshing and well worth the wait.

New Order – True Faith

Jemina Pearl – I Hate People

OOIOO – UMA

Paul Simon – You Can Call Me Al

I’m going back to Los Angeles tomorrow to shoot some of my favorite models for Stagg Street.  First there’s the lovely Charlotte Stokely who I’m really excited to shoot again.

And then there is Zoli, who I’ll be staying with and probably partying with when I land in LA.  Its going to be a great week! Check the NSFW shots after the break

As if the Snuggie wasn’t silly enough, Selk Bag has gone and done what no one ever asked for… reinvent the sleeping bag! The entire bag is shaped to allow freedom of movement for all of your limbs. Actually while this may look silly to me now, were I 12, on a camping trip and horsing around with my friends, I’m sure this thing would be pretty awesome.

You can jump rope in these, wrestle, fish and of course sleep. The only thing you can’t do is buy from the U.S. Unfortunately these “sleeping bags” are only available in the UK for the time being. So if you want to be the envy of your next camping trip expect to shell out for shipping and a proxy buyer  on top of an already shitty dollar-to-pound conversion rate.

Bear In Heaven – Beast Rest Forth Mouth (2009) [Hometapes] // Grade: A

If you’ve ever been on a road trip—or better yet, a tour—you know something of how wistful and haunted a long drive can get. Especially at night, when it’s all flashing lights and dark expanse—but hang on. That’s the second half of Beast Rest Forth Mouth. We’re not there yet. First, it’s epic and spacious; a hundred pastures melting into cities melting into pastures. Maybe it’s just that I’m on the road as I write this, but I’ve never heard an album that epitomizes the experience more.

You could call Beast Rest Forth Mouth art-rock, but that wouldn’t get to the heart of it. Honestly, no predetermined genre can get to the heart of Bear In Heaven, unless you combine indie-pop, new-wave, industrial, shoegaze and psych into a big mess that still won’t capture the sheer largeness of it (think 4AD by way of arena). It’s enough to know that the name Bear In Heaven does not suggest, even in the slightest, what the band sounds like, and that Beast Rest Forth Mouth—follow-up to 2007’s Red Bloom Of The Bloom—rambles forward like a cross-country drive, infinite and constantly changing. Stompy opener “Beast In Peace” (featuring a drum-circle climax that somehow doesn’t sound like Rusted Root) and the psych-disco “Wholehearted Mess” tumble through the album’s energetic first half, eventually settling into the Moroder-meets-Kraftwerk “Lovesick Teenagers”—the album’s twilight, if it has such a thing; a wistful, forlorn end to a too-long day of driving.

And then it’s night. Haunted, manic, sleepless night. “Drug A Wheel” and “Deafening Love”—my absolute favorites and by far the most psychedelic—slow down to a series of shifty-eyed glitches, with Jon Philpot’s voice moving from possessed, cultish chants to an almost Bjork-like yowl. It’s a perfect contrast to (and seamless transition from) the bright, open space of the first five-or-so songs, and ultimately what makes them all the more stunning on a second listen. Plus, with the entire thing clocking in at just under 41 minutes, there’s never a moment where all the expanse gets to be too much; it ends just when you need it to, unlike those particularly rough tours that, peaceful or not, seem to go on forever. Hands down one of the best albums of the year.

Nag Nag Nag (named after the Cabaret Voltaire song) has produced one of the most desirable pieces of Kaiju of 2009 with their Violent Caveman.  We recently worked with them on a Мишка Varient colorway of the Siamese Caveman (see he has two faces). the coloring on these is phenomenal and depending on if you look up at or down at them their color totally changes.

This head shot above is actually of the original proto of this Violent Siamese Caveman who is chilling on my desk right now. I really love the more simplistic eyes of the proto, they makes the Caveman look like he’s just a blank killing machine which I personally like more.

Lamour Supreme and Twerps! worked together on creating the header card artwork for this Caveman release. As you can see they really tried to be as disgusting as possible, with the Violent Cavemen splitting a women in half with his toxic turds.

So how you can get one of these? Well you can’t because they sold out. Granted only 10 of these were made, but still. They were released to our super secret Cave of the Bloody Ghost mailing list a day or so ago and were gone in a flash. So why am I showing you a toy that you can’t get? I don’t know… just to show it because it’s so freaking cool. And hey you never know… one may one day show up at 350 Broadway for sale.

Our friend and local hardcore promoter Ian Dickson passed this benefit info along to us. Ian’s been putting together some of the finest Hardcore show’s you’ll ever go to in NYC and this one is no different except it goes to benefit a stricken friends medical bills.

Nick Poot who plays in Absurd System and recently, Attake is unfortunately very sick. Nick has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which is a form of cancer. He is one of the most Punk dudes you’ll ever meet and unfortunately doesn’t have the kind of money or insurance to help with his treatment. He has been in the hospital for a few weeks now and has recently started chemo.

Nick’s brother Jeff plays in Brain Killer and Witches With Dicks, and has put together a benefit show for Nick at 538 Johnson in Brooklyn NY w/ Brain Killer, Witches with Dicks, State of Decline & Nomos on Friday November 13th @ 8pm at 538 Johnson. There will be another benefit show held in Boston on December 19th as well.

Friday, November 13th 8pm
538 Johnson
538 Johnson Ave.
Brooklyn, NY
$10 Cover

F.K.Ü. - Where Moshers Dwell (2009) [Metal on Metal] // Grade:B+

Third time’s a charm. Swedish horror mosh thrash metal extravaganza F.K.Ü.’s third album Where Moshers Dwell is easily hailed as the band’s best work. The packaging alone should be graded. A lot of time and effort went into the presentation. Hell, this album comes with a comic book by Jeff Zornow and guest-narration by Robert Englund. Any thrash band who gets fucking Freddy Kreuger to narrate their album means serious business. They even dress in the iconic green and red shirts during their shows.

All this hoopla about Where Moshers Dwell is well worth it. The album’s laced with 17 tracks of horror-mosh thrash metal. It’s worlds better than Metal Moshing Mad, their previous album. It seems to rehash the sound of Sometimes They Come Back… To Mosh from 2005, which also had 17 tracks. Along with the production and overall execution, it’s easily one of the better thrash albums of 2009.

“Faster Than The Shark” has a cameo by Ryan Sorensen. Sorensen really is faster than a shark with his blistering riffs. Other tracks of note are “Bedilia – Back For Cake” which features Jörgen Sandström on vocals and “The Pit And The Poser”. It’s a pure circle pit anthem; a sing and stomp along if you will.

The most distinguishing element of Where Moshers Dwell is by far Lethal Larry’s vocal presence. He’s one of those singers who conveys serious personality through the entire album. It’s almost like you can see his facial expressions through the steamy and dark circle pit. He’s lightning fast when he needs to be. “Almost Metal” and “Worms” are both seconds long.

Where Moshers Dwell is a mosher’s must-have. F.K.Ü. continues to celebrate their #1 fans, the pit-dwelling maniacs that get their kicks by laying it down in the pit. Complete with the packaging and cameos, it’s a must have for any thrash fan.

Tha Dogg Pound – New York, New York


Raekwon – Live From New York

Prodigy – New York Shit

Gangstarr – New York Strait Talk