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Interview with Florian Gaag, Director of Graffiti Feature Film Wholetrain

Posted by Billyjam, November 23, 2010 06:15am | Post a Comment

WHOLETRAIN trailer

Today both the DVD and the soundtrack for the critically acclaimed, award-winning and Florian Gaag directed fictional graffiti-feature film WHOLETRAIN are being released via RykoDisc. The film was shot in Poland and is in German with subtitles in English and 13 other languages. The English language hip-hop soundtrack includes all original songs (over beats produced by the film's director) from all American artists including KRS-One, Freddie Foxxx, O.C., Planet Asia, Afu-Ra, Grand Agent, Akrobatik, Tame One, and El Da Sensei. Both the film and its soundtrack are highly recommended for anyone, not just graffiti fans.

The film's title, WHOLETRAIN, comes from the graffiti writers' goal of spraypainting every inch of an entire train. Although the film's young cast will be totally unknown to American audiences, it is dramatically gripping, with a solid story-line, plus a most impressive display of all new graffiti art. Colorfully shot on the trains and walls, throughout the film this graffiti was all tirelessly commissioned by the first time director himself, who is clearly a major graffiti fan. For these beautiful pieces he brought in such established graffiti artists as NEON, PURE, CIEL, WON, and CEMNOZ to do the art work.

Back in February, when the film screened in LA and San Francisco at the Goethe-Institut in each city, I reviewed it for the Amoeblog. I also interviewed the director at that time. He told me about the challenging process of making this film, including the overwhelming obstacles he faced due to making a film that includes an illegal art form, and how WHOLETRAIN turned into a six year project. That interview with director Florian Gaag follows below.

Amoeblog: WHOLETRAIN is a great film and what's most impressive is that it is your first full-length film. So had you done short films or videos before this?

Florian Gaag: Yes, I´ve done a couple of short films, mostly short documentaries though, because that´s where I´m coming from.

The Town Part III: Remedy Coffee, Oakland and Proud

Posted by Billyjam, August 3, 2010 02:11pm | Post a Comment

It may not even have been open a full two months yet but already Oakland's Remedy Coffee at 4316 Telegraph Avenue (between 43rd St & 44th St) in the ever evolving Temescal district has the warm & comfortable feel of a local cafe that has been there a lot longer than just seven weeks. The friendly and attentive Todd Spitzer is the owner of Remedy and I instantly knew I liked the guy and his new business when I first went in and saw him proudly sporting a T-shirt that read Live in Oakland. Love in Oakland. Love Oakland, and, between preparing individual servings of fresh coffee, he was changing the record on the turntable (yes, a vinyl player!) behind the counter.

That was about four weeks ago and in the short time since, business has quadrupled for Remedy -- and for good reason. It's a welcoming, very spacious, well lit environment with a variety of seating options (high stool counter, sofa level, & standard cafe table inside and out), excellent coffee (they specialize in light coffee), free Wi-Fi (unblocked under Remedy Hearts You), great music selection and nice bass-y speakers well positioned up high, excellent art on the wall (artist Cathy Lo currently), plus numerous cool curiosities such as a Pacific Bell phone booth right when you walk in the main door. The back patio is still to open, but it will soon. The clientele (many of whom arrive by bike) is a nice wide mix of people from The Town: musicians, DJs, artists, students, blue collar workers, OPD, young, old, straight and, gay. It's open Monday to Friday 7am to 6pm and weekends 8:30am to 6pm.

Before opening Remedy, which is right next door to Flying Yoga, round the corner from a cluster of Korean restaurants known to many as Little Korea, and down a block from Rent-A-Relic, Todd had a coffee cart set up right outside. With help from friends, he slowly but surely over a period of year worked on getting his business off the ground. He carefully crafted the interior of Remedy, which is modern without being cold or alienating. I recently caught up with Todd to ask him about going from cart to cafe, light roasted versus dark roasted., Oakland as a place to live & work, the meaning of the Remedy logo, and, of course, music -- inviting him and his staff to submit their all time Top Five Albums lists. The staffer descriptions are all Todd's.

Taylor King (Almost lead barista and art curator) Top Five:

1) Jethro Tull Thick as a Brick

Vinyl Confidential, 4.2 – The Damned Odd Order of Oblong Boxes

Posted by Whitmore, June 19, 2010 08:14pm | Comments (1)

“When I got home I mixed a tall stiff one and stood on my balcony, leaned heavy against the railing, looking over and down five stories. Standing, sipping, I listened to the groundswell of cars and trucks and the banshee cry of sirens blasting down Los Feliz Boulevard and beyond. The curve of the hills flushes the boulevard down onto Western, past Hollywood and Sunset Blvds. Twenty four hours a day, eight days a week, most everybody is running, gunning, trying to catch-up with the intangible, the impossible. Hollywood lives live. The traffic’s din drowns out the Ye-ye 45’s dropping and spinning on the turntable inside, that’s Okay, the taste of the Scotch lingers, deliciously with every gulp as I squint down at the glower of a pissed off population begging for a little traffic love, one more time on a Friday night.

Rock is dead, I read the other day. After being maimed by massive dog food/fast food/oily crude/pre-chewed corporations, new music has given up the ghost under the obese crassness of money theocracy. What is served up routinely by the big boys is about as gratifying as being beaten, robbed, strangled, drawn and quartered to a soundtrack of “We Built this City on Rock and Roll” as performed by Insane Clown Posse.

People are hungry for soul, for adventure, anything that doesn’t leave them sick and bored and desperate. People aren’t lonely; they just feel angry and cruel. In a city no worse than most, a city rich and vital and oddly beautiful, a love affair has been lost and scattered. A city sinks into the void. Well, I guess, it all depends on where you’re standing, and how high your balcony sits above the sidewalk. I claim I no longer care. I finished my drink, went inside and crawled under the covers.”

art, oblong boxes, outsider art, crap, modern art, collage, dada, the damned, thrash, soundtracks, the godfather, everything i like, everything i hate, noir, blather,

art, oblong boxes, outsider art, crap, modern art, collage, dada, the damned, thrash, soundtracks,alternative, tristan tzara, the godfather, everything i like, everything i hate, noir, blather,

Aux Catacombes: Documenting Art in the Belly of Paris

Posted by Kelly S. Osato, June 17, 2010 08:20pm | Post a Comment

Dead Space documentary catacombs paris psyckoze grafitti artist underground dvd

If it can be said that the freshest of the fresh artistic creations bubble up from "underground," then it should come as no surprise that the vast network of tunnels that comprise the coiled entrails of Paris' infamous catacombs has long served as a place where creative Parisians bent on escaping the trappings of society, hemmed in by signs and signifiers girding the city's surface, retreat to the "freedom" of the damp and hard-cut, cramped lawlessness that thrives beneath the streets, expressing themselves with dim-lit abandon. Veteran graffiti artist Psyckoze has spent more than 25 years traversing, tagging, sculpting and mapping the catacombs beneath Paris, a perilous proclivity that makes the documentary Dead Space infinitely watchable.

The Parisian catacombs have always held a certain fascination, whether it be a fear of the dark-generated late night creepshow vibe (must be because of all those skulls 'n' things down in there) or a more sensationalist ghost-hunters of "reality" television programming feel, the mere mention of the m dead space documentary dvd paris catacombs psychoze art artist graffiti underground

dead space documentary dvd paris catacombs psychoze art artist graffiti underground

ysterious, bone littered underworld beneath the French capitol always stirs the imagination. In following Psyckoze on several adventures throughout the underground maze, documentary film-makers Marielle Quesney and Jean Labourdette nearly destroy their camera (they claim it was held together by duct tape by the end of shooting) and find themselves lost on more than one occasion while Pyschoze, or Psy, encounters graffiti and scrawls of years (sometimes hundreds of years) gone by, often stopping to update his own tags with the fresh designs of his evolved artistic style, and discovers a myriad of threats and claims laid by dead space documentary paris catacombs feature psyckoze psy art artist graffiti sculpture relief freehand candles stone

dead space documentary paris catacombs feature psyckoze psy art artist graffiti sculpture relief freehand candles stone

various catacomb clans, gangs (like the Rats, who were prominent in the eighties) and wanderers who have at one time or another called the catacombs home. There is even a faction of preservationist catacombers who seek to stop taggers like Psy, arguing that the tunnels should be cleaned and restored to their natural sandstone tones (which is not unreasonable, really, when you consider the quarry origins of the catacombs, which were once used to mine and transport building materials as far back as 1000 years).

Shot on a shoestring budget over the course of two years, Dead Space follows Psy as he conducts a surprisingly cohesive tour of the catacombs below Paris (clad in his habitual rubber boots and mining helmet catacomb gear), stopping here and there to highlight several of the more famous subterranean hang-outs like "the Beach" (a large, sandy chamber with a huge painting of a wave --- styled after Hokusai's famous woodblock print --- where parties often rage underground for days) and revealing Psy's personal secret hideaways, including his "castle" --- a sprawling freehand relief sculpture of breasts, faces, battlements and turrets comprising what has to be Psy's ultimate psychedelic masterpiece, laden with personal significance (example: Psy carved a turret in the castle for paris catacombs dead space documentary psyckoze psy bones candle graffiti art

paris catacombs dead space documentary psyckoze psy bones candle graffiti art

every year his good friend and fellow catacomber spent locked up in a Thai jail, nine altogether). However, it is clear that most folks who venture down into the catacombs have something other than artistic creation and personal reflection in mind.

It would seem that those crazy enough to descend to navigate the dank and muddy tunnels of the catacombs have serious partying in mind and, apparently, those who do go down there to indulge in dark and lawless soirees get so completely wrecked that they usually lose track of when and where they are. In one room Psy laughs gleefully when he discovers a block of severely dried hash, speculating, while he makes ready to smoke it, how completely high and disoriented the owner who left it behind must have been. After all, there are but a few maps of the catacombs and it would seem that the ones that exist aren't that reliable. Perhaps that accounts for Psy creating his own map, or Plan des Catacombes. Even still, Psy himself often gets turned around and has, in his longest stint underground, spent over 72 hours in the maze.
dead space documentary paris catacombs psyckoze art artist graffiti bones candles

dead space documentary paris catacombs psyckoze art artist graffiti bones candles

It was really lucky for Psy to find a thick, if aged, stash of weed in his underground haunt, because there are so many more unsavory things to be found in the vast blackness of the Parisian catacombs. The makers of Dead Space discovered and captured on film Psy encountering all manner of human elements from lost, sleeping and partying catacombers (and subsequent piles of puke) to tunnels riddled with the tea-stained remains of Parisians of years gone by. The "bone room" sequences of Dead Space are so jaw-dropping that this viewer could barely keep her trap shut. The image of Psy as he crawls carefully, stopping every six feet or so to light a candle and plant it in a skull or fixture of bones, through a tunnel way so stacked with human remains that he can barely fit though the open spaces is burned into my brain forever. This may look like Goonies, kids, but this is the real shit.

Vinyl Confidential, 4.1 – The Odd Order of Oblong Boxes Returns

Posted by Whitmore, June 8, 2010 04:54pm | Post a Comment

“Because, you know how it is, in this business you can't sleep for trying to imagine all the great records you’re missing out on out there somewhere at a yard sale or a thrift store or at the other end of Amoeba ... And then, you're also the guy behind the turntable, watching the people dancing, getting laid, every night. And then one night, you get to thinking, how do I get laid out there? But to do it smart. That’s the question. You've got those wheels spinning right under your hands, but not necessarily the wheels gyrating in your head.

gin, vodka, brandy, martini, bars, booze, tequila, demon alcohol, all things good

You may know every groove of every record by heart, but try and figure out the mystery of seduction. And then suddenly last call, closing time. Looking out into the darkness and the whole setup is right there in the room for you. Look, I'm not trying to whitewash anything, paint a pretty picture of decorum or anything. I fought it, only I guess I didn't fight it hard enough. The stakes were too high, and yet not high enough. I’d never done dirt except now; now I’m knee high in mud and muck.”

experimental music, odd, outsider art, amoeba, 45's, rock rock rock, roll roll roll

old time religion, got jesus, got buddha, got allah, got records, 45's, gospel, god, godhead

blondie, debbie harry, chris stein, 1980's, pop music, newwave, diva, skinny ties, 45's, reagan, punk, rock, queen

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