Big thanks to everyone who came out to Machines That Feel Saturday night at CAID. Spectral Mornings and 800 Beloved both put on amazing live shows (I've never seen so much gear on one stage for only two bands!) Extra special thanks to one of my oldest conspirators, Michael McAdow. It was also wonderful to see such a great response to RELINE2. The biggest hits were Laptops and Martinis, Future Beauty, and Drawdown. The DVD will be released on September 25th, and can be pre-ordered from Microcinema now.

This Friday marks the third and final chapter of Dethlab's summer event series, which will undoubtedly be the loudest to date:



[large size poster here]

Plenty more on this monster throughout the week...

Animated GIF? NOT. Look twice, the only thing moving is your retina... :)

anyone as addicted to myspace as me must be thinking "has this beautifully crap way of existing come to an end?"

and - sadly - it has only been less than one day, but the question is still there; where to go from here? well, try this:

"lord , i have been bad but i need you right now...if you can get my myspace to work i will never ever do anything bad nor hurt animals nor nothing like that...i promise...cross my heart and all that shit"

(to work it must be said with a southern accent)

On the eve of Dethlab's first gallery event, we're making availiable a down-tempo mix (gasp!) called Music for Shopping*. It's hardly ambient by anyone else's standards, but was a major attempt at restraint on our part, and I think quite perfect for flipping through glossy lifestyle magazines at a museum store. download here [42MB Zipped MP3 file]

*with a nod to Columbus Ohio.

This Saturday!


[click for large view of the poster]

Machines That Feel: presented by DethLab in association with The Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit

Saturday, 7.29.06
CAID
5141 Rosa Parks Blvd., Detroit
midnight to 4am | $5

featuring:
* the Detroit debut screening of RELINE2
* the experimental sounds of Spectral Mornings
* the mad scientist creations of Elliott Earls
* the richly textured pop of 800 Beloved
* and late night dancing with DethLab and video by C-TRL labs

+ FREE BEER courtesey of Budweiser Select and Flavorpill Network!

Full information and artist bios can be found in the press release.

Next Tuesday I leave for BlackHat/DEFCON 14 in Las Vegas, the largest 'computer security conference' (read: hacker party) in the world. Come say hi to the nerd wearing all black with long hair. Oh, wait - that might not work.

Immediately upon my return, I'm hopping another flight to NYC; This time it's one-way. I'm leaving Detroit forever.



My going away party is tomorrow (Friday) at The Works ("Always a bad idea"). $5, 10-4, Michigan Ave at Rosa Parks, etc. I'm playing, along with Darkcube and some other cool cats.

Coincidentally enough, tomorrow is also Sysadmin Day, a day dedicated to the systems and network admins that make your life tick. Show some love to the nerds this Friday. I may even have some datavibe stickers available at the bar, if I can find the few that are left.

-j

Ive just arrived in Torino, Italy for a 7-week work project and am looking forward to investigating the Davinci Code-like shit happening in this town...

The Art of Pop

Pulp's Jarvis Cocker speaks about British art schools, their influence on pop music and pop culture as a whole. The three part BBC program includes interviews with musicians, teachers, students (including Faris Rotter of The Horrors,) and insightful observations about the role of art schools in society: listen here (RealPlayer required.)

Tonight: Reverend John E.L. Tenney presents a lecture on government conspiracies, secret societies, UFOs and other weird phenomenaria!

Wednesday, 7.26.06
at The Berkley Front
3087 W. 12 Mile, Berkley MI
doors at 8pm, show at 9pm | $5

Reline is on sale now!

You can now buy Reline on line from Microcinema.

THE WORK AND ARTISTS:
WRANGELSTR: JEFFERS EGAN AND JAKE MANDELL
FROM BROWN TO GREEN: SCOTT PAGANO WITH MUSIC BY TWERK
E3: ROBERT SIEDEL
DRAWDOWN: PHOENIX PERRY & ARNOLD STEINER & Brian Jackson
UNTITLED FOR TELEVISIONS: SCOTT ARFORD
LAPTOPS AND MARTINIS: MOTOMICHI WITH MUSIC BY OTTO VON SCHIRACH
REGRET: TRONIC STUDIO WITH MUSIC BY Q DEPARTMENT
3X6: MAGNETIC STRIPPER
MUSEE HOFSTDAT: C-TRL LABS WITH MUSIC BY ANON
DATA_FLOW: D-FUSE WITH MUSIC BY LUSINE ICL
CELLULOID: JUDE GREENAWAY
REGEN3RAT10N: BEN SHEPPEE WITH MUSIC BY SEWN
AN OPEN THOUGHT: OWLANDIA
FOR YOU: JARON ALBERTIN WITH MUSIC BY SOLVENT
STILL NOT STILL: SUE COSTABILE WITH MUSIC BY AGF
SPAN: CHRIS MUSGRAVE
ADITI: YOSHI WITH MUSIC BY THE KNOBS
LASER GRAFFITI WRITER: TENZIN WANGCHUCK WITH MUSIC BY VENETIAN SNARES

Come and get it!
The below post from Mike features the still from Drawdown off the disk.

This Saturday's Machines That Feel event is featured in the Metro Times:

In all its rusted splendor Detroit can still stoke the imagination - we're a city built of stone and chrome and sweat, a testament to the ultimate fusion of human and mechanical muscle that made the modern world. We are, after all, the city that created techno, so it's no real surprise that so many area artists over the years have been inspired by our industrial legacy.

That's the spirit that fuels DethLab's Machines That Feel, a one-night multimedia presentation at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit. As designed by co-curators Michael Doyle and Bethany Shorb (aka DethLab) the show combines film and live music performances that seek to underscore our relationship with the tools we create.

Doyle says the show is "using technology in different ways - fetishizing it to an extent - but all of these artists are using it as an enabler for exploring broader ideas or more human emotions."

For Doyle, the evening is also a sort of culmination of more than a decade of pushing boundaries as a graphic artist, lecturer, music promoter and vanguard of both the electronic Dorkwave Collective and the burnlab.net blog spot. The event can be viewed as a logical progression of the club-oriented events Dethlab has presented in the past (like the recent Sex and Sedition V at Oslo) by carrying them over into a gallery setting.

Zombie dance party participants arrested in Minneapolis.

Meanwhile, the United States speeds up bomb production to feed Israel's psychopathic, "we're totally nuts, so you better not fuck with us... or even look at us!" campaign against every man, woman, child and unlucky humanitarian worker or UN observer in Lebanon.

CTL-ALT-DEL.

Chronographic in the news. (I think Alex should wear those glasses all the time.)

Light boxes: Herzog & de Meuron unveil designs for the new Parrish Art Museum in Long Island, and a $400M expansion of the Tate Modern in London.

Huge congrats to Archinect.com founder Paul Petrunia and his wife Nicole on the birth of Ella Miette Petrunia! Another evil genius in making... ;)

Brainwaves Festival: three days of music and film celebrating 10 years of Brainwashed.com at the Regents Theatre in Arlington MA, November 17/18/19.

Brainwashed opened its doors on April 16, 1996, to host the websites for Meat Beat Manifesto and Greater Than One. Soon, Brainwashed had accumulated websites for bands Cabaret Voltaire, Coil, Current 93, Death In June, The Legendary Pink Dots, Nurse With Wound, Organum, and Throbbing Gristle, because these websites existed but were hosted at colleges and universities, where the webmasters of these websites were graduating and moving on, either losing their space or simply not updating the websites any longer. The premise remained: provide as much information as possible for these artists including compltete discographies, image archives, and the latest news available. In 1997, Brainwashed expanded to begin hosting websites for newer artists like Bowery Electric, Labradford, Tortoise, and Trans Am, and record labels including Kranky, Thrill Jockey, and World Serpent.

Brainwashed went on to establish a radio program, magazine, weekly video feature and record label in recent years, and is currently incorporating as a nonporfit organization. The Brainwaves Festival celebrates a decade of the Brainwashed community, with an impressive list of artists far too lengthy to post here - clicky for all the details. (I'm thinking road trip...)

40' Optimus Prime statue discovered in remote Chinese province.

For reals.

Chronographic was dedicated in Detroit this morning, to celebrate the city's 305th birthday. Chronographic is a public time keeping machine (read: clock) designed and fabricated by o2 Creative Solutions. Located in the front window of the historic Himelhoch Building, the hands of Detroit's newest pedestrian-scale landmark are tubes of light which track across two large photo-murals on custom designed robotic carts.

Solvent live at Oslo tonight!
w/ BMG of Ectomorph and DethLab
1456 Woodward, Detroit MI
10pm | 18+ | $7


+ Solvent's loving record label, Ghostly International grabs the cover of RE:UP. The magazine celebrates their latest issue with parties in three cities:

7.21: San Diego
Airport Lounge
w/ Morgan Geist, et al.
NO COVER | FREE DRINKS 8-9PM

7.22: Los Angeles
w/ James T. Cotton, Morgan Geist, et al.
RSVP required for location: rsvp@reupmag.com

7.25: New York City
APT
w/ Daedelus et al.
NO COVER | FREE DRINKS 9-10PM

Welcome our newest Burnlabber, Devan of C-TRL labs!

As well as participating in Machines that Feel, C-TRL is doing a live video performance in NYC next Tuesday called Roomiks Cube, with audio artist Zachary Mastoon a.k.a. Caural.

Roomiks Cube is a multichannel A/V performance, part of the ongoing MUX A/V series. This rare event is a collaborative effort between live video performance artists C-TRL Labs and NY based electronic composer Caural. Specially tailored to Monkey Town's minimalist cubic interior, C-TRL will utilize motion graphics, 3D and realtime software (Modul8 and Max/MSP Jitter) to create an environmental extension to the existing architectural space. Caural sets the tone w/ flowing abstract compositions in a rich sonic space. The audience will be immersed in a whirl of architectural landscapes and organic forms in both performers playfull experimental styles.

Tues July 25th 8:30 PM (One screening only)
MonkeyTown, Brooklyn
58 N. 3rd St. @ Kent
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY
RSVP: rsvp@monkeytownhq.com


P.S.: reminder to all B'labbers (Grant especially!) please, please, please keep Lab Report images to 360 pixel maximum width. As anyone viewing this page on a laptop knows, the big images make the page layout uber-wonky. Thanks!

A little Anna Svensson anyone?







Just ran across her work while looking up Chiho Aoshima.

Saturday, Aug. 26: Connect the Dots Festival celebrating 20 years of the Heidelberg Project. On Heidelberg Street in Detroit, between Gratiot and Mount Elliott.

A very happy birthday to Dorkwavers Mark Lazar [today] and Rob Theakston [tomorrow]! Hunter S. Thompson said this of Oscar Zeta Acosta, and it made me think of both:

"[He] was one of Gods own prototypes - a high-powered mutant of some kind who was never even considered for mass production. He was too weird to live and too rare to die..."

Speaking of...



LES INFANTS TERRIBLES prasentieren Die Piraten des Furstentum Liechtenstein mit der DORKWAVE Tonanlage: this Saturday at Corktown Tavern!

"Because our German is even worse than our French."

I've been so busy with other things and out of the loop on Dorkwave the past few months, I'm not even sure what to expect - but that is part of the beauty.

Start with the Cardigans breezy, genre-bending pop gem "Life", fast-forward 10 years, replace the sweetness of Sweden with the cynicism of London and you get Alright, Still by Lily Allen. This is pop the way Spektor and Gordy meant it to be: unashamedly self-absorbed teen angst wrapped tightly in glossy, 3-minute shells. Now if Brittney would just stick to popping out kids...

This Friday, Burnlab's favorite synth-pop-star Solvent performs live in Detroit, for the first time since Dorkfest '05. It's all the vocoder bliss you can handle, with DJ support from BMG of Ectomorph [above right] and DethLab.

Friday, 7.21.06
OSLO
1456 Woodward, Detroit
10pm | $7 | 18+


Then, next Saturday:


[click for large view of the poster]

Machines That Feel: presented by DethLab in assiciation with The Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit

Saturday, 7.29.06
CAID
5141 Rosa Parks Blvd., Detroit
midnight to 4am | $5

As you know, we've been toiling away on this the past several months, and we're delighted with the artists involved, and how the program has (hopefully) come together as a cohesive, multi-layered treat for the senses: from the Detroit debut screening of RELINE2, to the experimental sounds of Spectral Mornings, to the mad scientist creations of Elliott Earls, the richly textured pop of 800 Beloved, evolving into late night dancing with record selections by my lovely co-curator and I, and video work by the mind blowing C-TRL labs.

Full information and artist bios can be found in the press release.

Chris Cunningham has directed a new video for The Horrors track Sheena Is a Parasite. High quality Quicktime clip here.

Pitchfork notes, "As if we needed more nightmare fodder from the man."

Busy studio night at the lab, but there's lots of good stuff going on in Detroit this evening to check out, including Dabrye live at Alvin's, The Dresden Dolls at the State Theater, and writer, meat model, and Detroit burlesque icon Sparkly Devil's 30th birthday at The Belmont.

(We may head out later - if we can put a sizable dent in writing three press releases, designing two record sleves, four posters, and an exhibition program...)

Saturday night though, no excuses for missing Sass at OSLO. Come wish Coitus Interruptus co-founder Nathan Rapport a very happy birthday. Nice mention in this week's Metro Times, including a photo caption sure to warrant curious calls from my family. ;) I do infact sleep next to the amazing girl that designs Sass' amazing flyers.

p.s.: if anyone has been trying to reach me, Burnlab mail has been down all day - please use mike@o2creatviesolutions.com

p.p.s. (for Chris): Robotnik is a certified genius, and amazing live.

I may be behind the times as a non-dj, but i just stumbled upon The Dark Side of The Spoon, a recently released track Alexander Robotnick did in -get this after you listen to it- 1982...1982 for god's sake. For Detroiters, this was the man responsible for the song WJLB used for it's "Strong Songs" ads in the 80"s, "Problemes d'amour"...The question lingers after listening: why isn't this man reguarded as a genious? This song absolutely destroys most of what is coming out today (Metro Area?) and it was recorded 24 f'ng years ago. Next question: if someone like this slipped thru the cracks then, who out there now is doing tracks that will sound this fresh in 20 odd years? And is that possible? Robotnick could be the father of minimal..without anyone knowing, even him. If anyone released this track today he would be hailed a superstar, and it's 24 years old. end of sermon (sorry)

Tom Waits begins his first tour of the american south and mid-west on August 1st in Atlanta, including some cities he hasn't performed in for two decades.

'We need to go to Tennessee to pick up some fireworks, and someone owes me money in Kentucky," says Waits about why he's chosen this particular time and route to tour.

His upcoming show at the Detroit Opera House sold out in a matter of minutes this morning. (We're not parting with our tickets, so please don't ask.)

all dates:
August 1 - Atlanta, GA, Tabernacle
August 2 - Asheville, NC, Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
August 4 - Memphis, TN, Orpheum Theatre
August 5 - Nashville, TN, Ryman Auditorium
August 7 - Louisville, KY, Palace Theatre
August 9 - Chicago, IL, Auditorium Theatre
August 11 - Detroit, MI, Opera House
August 13 - Akron, OH, Akron Civic



illustration by Eugene Smith

Don't miss the annual Fourth Street Fair on Saturday at the corner of Holden and Fourth streets in Detroit.

MOTOR North American tour dates announced

headlining:
August 3rd - Hiro Ballroom, NYC
August 4th - Oslo, Detroit
August 5th - S.A.T., Montreal
August 8th - Cinespace, Los Angeles

supporting Nitzer Ebb:
September 12th - The Avalon, Hollywood, CA
September 13th - House of Blues, Anaheim, CA
September 14th - Slims, San Francisco, CA
September 15th - TBC
September 16th - Congress Theater, Chicago, IL
September 17th - Irving Plaza, New York, NY

Afrika Bambaataa & John Lydon - World Destruction

I was looking for a reason to post this somewhere, then I realized, look at it! I really don't a reason,

Johnny's down in the basement cutting off that angel's wings
Rusty scissors and wood glue...he's tying 'em on with wire and string
There's dried blood on the concrete and feathers caught in the drain
By the time they figure out what happened it's gonna be too late
And you know you're never gonna hide that scar
Well you know you're never gonna hide that scar

Curtis Eller at Lager House tomorrow (Thursday) night in Detroit, with a special schoolnight 'razor baldes and whiskey' set from Dethlab.

+ see Curtis' favorite records in Real Detroit Weekly. [scroll down]

Black Turtleneck's debut LP Musical Chairs is now availiable on iTunes: click.

Black Turtleneck is a new vocal electro-pop project from Jason Amm (a.k.a. Solvent) and Thomas Sinclair, taking Solvent's patented melodic electro sound one step closer to the classic synthpop stylings of Soft Cell, The Human League and Depeche Mode. "Musical Chairs contains 11 modern, complex synthesizer pop songs for the introspective black turtleneck set - working the day job in silent contempt with dreams of leaving, songs about clublife for people who don't like clubs, and window shopping melodies for those feeling spent..."

Nitzer Ebb released their first 'best of' collection, Body of Work on Mute last week. As any good fan already owns most if not all of the tracks included on Body of Work, what we're really interested in is Body Rework, a collection of remixes set to be released on July 31st.

Included are classics such as Thomas Heckmann's rendition of Join in the Chant, as well as a host of brand new remixes. Notable new work includes:
Let Your Body Learn by Terence Fixmer
Control I'm Here by The Hacker
Lightning Man by Motor
and not one, but two versions of Getting Closer by Black Strobe

The French may not have won the World Cup, but they currently dominate electronic body music.

The Invisible-5 audio project, which highlights environmental hazards along California's Interstate 5, is featured in the July issue of Metropolis: Not Just Another Roadside Attraction

"While commuters and truckers cruise along I-5 at high speeds, there is nothing tangible to alert them to the poisonous messes -- and the typically low-income minority communities fighting to have them removed -- just to the east and west all along the route. However, if you download the audio files and follow the cues (typically an exit sign or another prominent landmark) from the Invisible-5 Web site, the mundane landscape comes alive with the voices of resident activists articulating not only their struggles against major polluters but neighborhood histories, personal anecdotes, and compelling insights into what it is that makes a place home."

How about Invisible-75?

Discarded matresses make nice cassettes and synths.

Tomorrow at the Trumbullplex
4210 Trumbull, Detroit

7:00pm saturday, july 8, 2006

prurient (hospital records)
aaron dilloway (hanson records/wolf eyes)
withdrawal method
midlife vacation (viki/mammal)
metal dungeon (time stereo)
roxanne jean polise (xdiedentourey/apop)
haunted castle
our brother the native (fatcat records)
jason zeh

then (7/13)
moons
villa valley
siberia (hazmat/max cloud/anothony miller)
elijah church & will soderberg

all proceeds to benefit tarantula hill

Video story about the Packard Plant from the Detroit Free Press. The Packard Motor Company shut its doors fifty years ago this month, leaving the 47 building, 3 1/2 million square foot complex mostly unused for half a century, with the exception of a handful of small businesses, ravers, urban explorers, and graffiti artists. Oddly enough, in all the times I've explored the plant, I have not once seen as much as a rat or cockroach living there... (*coughs up mysterious black dust*)

The Coney Island Parachute Jump, called "the Eiffel Tower of Brooklyn," is to be illuminated by night starting tomorrow. Designed by Manhattan-based Lights Project LTD, the design will use a combination of floodlights and LEDs that can be seen from as far away as the Verrazano Bridge.

Within each setting, hundreds of mini sequences transform the jump from a stagnant tower into a canvas for a crazed, kinetic light show that can simulate fireworks, mimic musical rhythms and visually chime out the hours. The result is very much in the character of Coney. "I think it captures the 21st-century Coney Island, where we recognize that an amusement park is important to the soul of New York City," says Dick Zigun, founder of Coney Island USA and spark plug behind much of the area's artistic revival.

Even more Dethlab news/LINK Festival update:

Just added to the Machines That Feel program, Spectral Mornings will be perfroming live, along with 800 Beloved. We are thrilled to have two exceptional, genre-defying live acts make their debuts at CAID. This will also be the Detroit debut screening of RELINE2, a collection of work by ten artists who "investigate modern mythology, examine environments, explode form, and play with similes between machine and body. From buildings ripping apart by unseen forces to characters on strange journeys in wild imagined spaces, these videos explore the integration of technology into every strata of our lives."

The LINK Festival is July 29-30 at the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit.

"New York City's angriest yodelling banjo player" Curtis Eller brings his tales of pigeon racing, Coney Island, performing elephants, Buster Keaton and snake handling back to Detroit's Lager House next Thursday, July 13th.

I say this every time Curtis rolls through town, but highly recommended for anyone who enjoys vaudeville antics (he started his career in the circus at age seven), and Weimar Revival and American Gothic music, such as Nick Cave, Dresden Dolls, American Mars, Blanche, 16 Horsepower, Devotchka, Thomas Truax, etc.

Additionally, Dethlab will be curating records in support with what may be perceived by some as a most unusual set. We're looking forward to putting aside the dancefloor rockers for an evening in favor of intricate, often melancholy selections from the likes of Cave, Waits, Costello, Casiotone For The Painfully Alone, Circlesquare and Joy Division. We will be exploring the same dark corners of contemporary culture, only without the constraints of the dance club setting.

In DethLab news: brand new bio, and upcoming events, incuding:

SOLVENT live, 7.21.06 at OSLO
800 BELOVED live, 7.29.06 at CAID
MOTOR live, 8.4.06 at OSLO
LOWFISH live 9.29.06 at OSLO

If you can't make it to AngloMania at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before it closes Sept. 4th, Style.com has some exhibit highlights from our favorite rebellious Brits, including Vivienne Westwood, Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy and John Galliano, put into context with historical British fashions in wonderfully decadent and witty vignettes.

Some of our favorites were Francomania, featuring a dress by Galliano for Dior and a raven headdress by Stephen Jones, Death Bed, including an aluminum spine corset by McQueen and Shaun Leane, and The Gentlemen's Club, featuring pieces from McClaren and Westwood's Sex and Seditionaries lines of the 1970s.

Gastronomic highlights of this past weekend's visit "home" included the wonderful Marlow & Sons, a gourmet grocery and intimate dining room featuring fresh oysters and a connoisseur's selection of dried meats, cheeses and other delights, adjacent to Williamsburg institution Diner, as well as Frank on 2nd Ave., where we dined on the best beef carpaccio and squid ink fettucini ever. Our new friends from Europe approved.

Also, 1,000 thanks to Cowboy Mark for his hospitality this weekend!

"Robot Sexie Time" is here...

There is something very fucking seriously wrong with Miami.



Friends With You

Friends are extracted from an unimaginably small microcosm. They are microbes that have been enlarged one billion times their original size. They live in your breath and under the part of your brain used for wishing. Lieutenant Captain Lee Karl discovered a world very much like ours. The only difference being that ours is made up of plants, animals, and humans, and this sub-amoebic world contains an unexplored realm of living organisms. The few strains of organisms that survived the
enlargemnet process have been carefully studied and tested. And we have concluded that these new "Friends," have actual life enhancing skills. The friends have magic powers never before seen, and are improving lives one person at a time. Share your wishes and desires with your new friends and watch as everything you ever dreamed of becomes a reality! Welcome friends into your heart and home and start living better TODAY!

Of course they associate with our friend Otto...