Harper’s Bazaar’s Greatest Hits by Glenda Bailey for Review 31

Harper’s Bazaar first hit the shelves in 1867 and has a unique place in history as America’s first fashion magazine. It is published in more than 25 countries and 15 languages and has achieved a level of fashion publishing domination that is perhaps rivalled only by Vogue. Harper’s Bazaar UK arrived in 1929 and in the years since then has consistently sought to deliver a sophisticated perspective on fashion, popular culture and life in general. A coffee table book with a couture pedigree, Harper’s Bazaar: Greatest Hits certainly ticks the boxes of fantasy, fashion and giving it lots of face. This hardbacked publication is full of gloriously lean limbed, fresh faced beings, glossily presenting a fictional universe where a woman can scale a heap of pastel-coloured cars in six inch heels without tumbling to an undignified death.

Of course the risk with this kind of high-shine glorious technicolour offering is that even a devoted disciple of America’s longest running fashion magazine might find 320 pages of front covers and photo shoots slightly numbing, no matter how iconic the images. This book, however, has been assembled by someone who clearly knows how to put together reading material for fashion fans and understands her audience well; step forward Glenda Bailey, Editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar. Bailey has held the top job at the magazine for more than ten years now, before which she was the former captain at Marie Claire, which was a ship she herself launched. With her guidance, this book goes much further than a collection of polished copies of the magazine’s best shoots and it is the elements that have been included in addition to the stylish photography that give it distinct collectability.

Greatest Hits is well-organised, divided into years for ease of reference, each one titled and tagged with the defining moments of those 12 months. 2004, for example, is entitled ‘Electing for Elegance’ with a foreword remembering the departure of Tom Ford from Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent and the popularity of airy chiffons, silk trenches and must-have handbags. The introduction to 2008 – ‘Chic You Can Believe In’ – covers themes of the election of American President Barack Obama, ethereal gowns, Harvard sweatshirts and investment dressing; and for 2011 – ‘Stepping Into The Future’ – the introduction is full of Upstairs Downstairs style, Louis Vuitton clad chambermaids and the role of China in the global fashion economy. This is, essentially, a chronological biography of fashion between the years of Bailey’s tenure (2001 to 2011), more akin to a fashion bible, or cultural reference book, than the magazine from which it descends.

In addition to the chronological function, the book contains all the high points of Bazaar, condensed down into a fragrant fashion jus. There is a snippet of an interview with Elizabeth Taylor conducted by Kim Kardashian for the March 2011 issue, where the aged starlet proves she did indeed have the luxury of never having to say she was sorry; a charming, fictional exchange from March 2003 between Coco Chanel and Karl Lagerfeld that is illustrated by Lagerfeld himself; and Sarah Jessica Parker’s ‘Why Don’t You’ for March 2009, where she suggests one of the secrets to happiness is maintaining ‘a bucket filled with candy’. There are of course plenty of photo shoots – Agyness Deyn channelling Michael Jackson through Yves Saint Laurent, Moschino and Stella McCartney in the ‘Thriller’ shoot from September 2009; the daring of ‘Industry Pull’, which features Marc Jacobs in a tutu, winching Naomi Campbell into the air in a ballet shoe and a thong and little else; and ‘Blown Away’ from March 2008 with model of the moment Freja Beha Erichsen posed in front of a wind machine in voluminous Lanvin and Versace.

Many of the photo shoots are inventive, daring, feature celebrities as well as models, and more than fulfil the desire for fabulous frocks and feline features: Kate Hudson in Burberry Prorsum in a diner, Emma Watson in Alexander McQueen in a Hogwarts style library, Kate Winslet carelessly hanging from the side of a building 1,000 feet over New York in Ralph Lauren. Alongside these there are photo stories that are a smart, funny and entertaining – Chloe Sevigny shot in a paparazzi style by Peter Lindbergh in September 2007 traversing ‘Best Intentions’ rehab centre in couture; Ellen Degeneres being sworn in as US president in November 2004; and the Simpsons in the August 2007 issue, rocking chic Karl Lagerfeld in Paris with the help of a yellow Linda Evangelista, Marc Jacobs and Jean Paul Gaultier. All of these add a dash of humour and beauty, as well as contextualizing the fashion of the year in which they appear.

Then there are written pieces, including an article by Carrie Fisher on that courageously-shouldered Balmain jacket that defined a moment in fashion; and a short by Patti Smith on the return of the tie. Ali MacGraw writes from February 2002 of her experience as Diana Vreeland’s assistant, of the fashion legend’s lunches with Truman Capote, calls to Jackie Kennedy and demands for ‘more ostrich feathers!’ An extract from the May 2006 issue written by Rita Wilson – Tom Hanks’ wife – details her Da Vinci Code summer, spent in Paris. While her husband was occupied with filming the blockbusting movie Wilson spent her time trying to morph into a chic local – eventually resigning herself to the fact that a velvet beret alone does not a Frenchwoman make. While Harper’s Bazaar: Greatest Hits draws celebrity, politics, gossip and pop culture into its orbit, at its heart is pure fashion. The book is a fascinating overview of a decade of style, a glass against the wall to eavesdrop on couture conversations you otherwise wouldn’t get to hear, and a chance to remember iconic fashion moments from the last ten years. As Bailey herself puts it in her foreword: ‘What an adventure’.

Reviewed for Review 31 www.review31.co.uk.

Real Estate - Days

I recently heard someone describe the new Real Estate album - ‘Days’ - as 'wallpaper,' the glo-fi equivalent of a cheap beige flock from B&Q.  It’s an argument that’s often advanced against albums like this, that take more than one listen to filter in through the chaos of hangovers, deadlines and overdrafts.

Admittedly there is an element of background to Real Estate's dreamy motifs, but even so you can’t deny their effect. And this album will affect you. Like Real Estate’s other missives of hazy, languorous indie pop, it might not make you want to get on a chair and throw your hands in the air but you'll feel its warmth.  Take the track ‘Easy,’ the aural equivalent of a cashmere jumper and a mug of tea; whatever the kind of day you've had, put this on and suddenly everything feels brighter. “Round the fields we run with love for everyone,” they sing, and there it is right there, the essence of ‘Days’: hazy sunny summer recall, faded denim on lithe young limbs and smiling youthful, hopeful faces.

The ‘kids in summer’ theme is one that continues throughout the album - through the upbeat ‘It's Real’ (“I carved our names into a tree”) and into ‘Green Aisles,’ a slow, noodling track, whose gentle reprimand for a careless lifestyle isn’t really that at all – hey, you’re still young so it’s ok.  Even in ‘Wonder Years’ which seems to reek of unrequited or lost love, there’s no real bitterness: “I’m not ok but I guess I’m doing fine.”  The sepia wash of the Chillwave genre that Real Estate partially inhabits gives everything a sense of stoned contentedness that smacks of those years before you’ve had your heart broken for the first time, or realized just how much tax you’re going to have to pay.

Journey song ‘Out of Tune’ and the melodic ‘Municipality’ add their threads to the dreamy scenes of ‘Days,’ with the guitar taking centre stage, weaving its warm and fuzzy magic around the listener, in the same way as a Washed Out or Toro Y Moi album does.  Of the other tracks, ‘Kinder Blumen’ is the kind of entirely instrumental interlude that’s a bit of a risk for bands playing to an ADHD generation, but Real Estate have this jamming down to a tee – they’ve done it before with tracks like ‘Atlantic City’ and ‘Suburban Beverage’ on their self titled 2009 album - a lyric here and there but mostly endless landscapes of chords hypnotizing the listener into a state of extreme contemplativeness.

Real Estate seem quietly determined to do things their way, with genuine, handcrafted tracks that gorge on guitar. Although lyrically, this album might seem to have more in common with summer flings, you can tell from the continuity between ‘Real Estate’ and ‘Days’, as well as from the band’s other projects - Matthew Mondanile in Ducktails, Alex Bleeker in Alex Bleeker and the Freaks – how much commitment this band have to this sound.  Ok so ‘Days’ might not change your life, but at least you know that this Real Estate album won’t break your heart.

(Review for www.soundblab.com http://soundblab.com/content/content/view/id/4218)

Jessie Ware Interview for Dazed & Confused

Jessie Ware started out touring with schoolmates Jack Penate and The Maccabees, before finding underground fame providing the Jocelyn Brown-esque vocals over the SBTRKT produced 2010 club hit 'Nervous.’  Now working with everyone from Damon Dash and Sampha, to Oneman and The Invisible, the young Londoner will be putting out her next EP in April on Island Records’ new imprint PMR.

What's the Jessie Ware Sound?

Its not defined yet - but its somewhere between Chaka Khan, club music and RnB.

How did going to the same school as Jack Penate, Florence and some Maccabees influence you as a musician?

Jack and Felix are my bestest friends - they are totally inspiring.  They made me see that it was possible to go out and do music when no one else we know was doing it.  Jack gave me the chance to tour and sing to huge crowds, whilst doing it with my best mate.

You've covered some ground when it comes to careers - journalism, TV - why is singing the one?

Singing is the only one I know instinctively.  I feel the most comfortable when singing.  It lay dormant for a while as I was scared to give it a proper go and I think that's where all the other attempts at careers came from. I kept applying for a law conversion as a back up for if singing didn't work out…luckily the music keeps working out.

Apart from SBTRKT who else have you been working with?

Sampha, Oneman, Dave from The Invisible, Sam Frank, Jaz Rogers.  My label A&R also manages Jai Paul so I am hoping we are going to do something together soon too.

What's SBTRKT hiding behind the masks?

A handsome face!

Are you still close with Man Like Me?

Very.  In fact we have a date as soon as I get back from NY.  They have helped me so much with performance, as you can't hold back if you are on stage with them - you will just look like a party pooper.

2011 will see debut albums from James Blake, Katy B and Jamie Woon. What do you think of London's new musical culture?

I love it all!  It's such an exciting time for electronic music in London.  And I love that all of them can sing, beautifully.

www.myspace.com/jessiewaremusic

Twin Shadow - Forget

Twin Shadow is George Lewis Jnr “the troubled son of a hairdresser and a teacher who lived many lives.”  He was initially discovered by Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor (who also co-produced ‘Forget’) so he’s already got a pretty unshakeable pedigree. The lovely, uncomplicated debut album 'Forget' was released on 4AD on 15th November and the album’s cool, throwback style is the perfect antidote to all the musical gluttony of the end of 2010.

Style-wise, ‘Forget’ takes plenty from the 1970s/80s, although it seems influential rather than stolen in Lewis Jnr’s hands.  Some tracks like 'When We're Dancing' are very Bowie, vocals wise and in the synths, and ‘Slow’ does sound like the Smiths. But title track ‘Forget’ – and the album has a whole - has the contemporary feel of a more consistent, slightly less manic Ariel Pink (who also happens to be Twin Shadow’s labelmate) and because of this twisted, wonky popness the record never feels dated.

Although I have missed the release of this album by several months, you can catch Twin Shadow playing at the Lexington on 25th January.

www.twinshadow.net

Hype Williams - What Happens When People Stop Being Polite, and Start Getting Reel

Where to start with Hype Williams? Perhaps that they're not the US video director of the same name, although if you Google the name that's all you'll get. Or that they may, or may not, be a London-Berlin twosome, the latest incarnation of an "18-year relay project" where the musical baton is passed without ceremony from one member of the collective to the next. Maybe that they work in 'sound collages' or that much of their half-speed sound is very possibly influenced by Houston producer DJ Screw who made famous a woozy, hallucinogenic hip hop sound, heavily influenced by a serious painkiller addiction. Other than this, there's really not that much else to say - the only solid part of Hype Williams that exists in tangible form is the music.

The latest album - What Happens When People Stop Being Polite, and Start Getting Reel - is short and sweet, made up of 10 tracks that come in at about 20 minutes long in total. The album is a patchwork of samples and sounds that sometimes really works and sometimes leaves you cold. 'Blue Dream' is one of the musical highlights, a synth structured piece of laid-back chillwave with a warm but slightly gravely bass. 'The Throning's stuttering beat sounds like it should go somewhere but never does, which doesn't really matter as the vocal refix from Sade's 'The Sweetest Taboo' overlays it perfectly. Tracks like 'Jesus to a Child' and 'Rescue Dawn 3' seem to steal their samples from arcade games with beeps and lasers matched with incompressible, drugged out vocals and vintage sounding synths in simple patterns.

There are a couple of messed-up spoken word samples - 'Jesus to a Child Reprise' and 'Untitled (Andrea Lopez)' - that are not so much tracks as experiments and in a way sum up the whole album. You can give this sort of output all kinds of labels - it's pop culture sludge cut with distant disco, random ramblings and ethnic elements - but it escapes being boxed because it's all of these and, as a whole, it's none. There are no complete, properly structured songs and if that's what you're expecting it gives you little. But the fact that you can't pin it down and it doesn't really make sense - even that some of it seems a bit pointless or not very good - doesn't really matter because Hype Williams' rebellious tinkering sometimes borders on brilliant. And above all it flies the flag for outsider spirit, which is something modern music needs like an omelette needs eggs.

What Happens When People Stop Being Polite, and Start Getting Reel is released this week on De Stijl

Falty DL - A Veritable Fountain of Electronica

If you’re a bit OCD about the neatness of your musical labels, you could find Drew Lustman (aka Falty DL) a little unnerving.  In a relatively short space of time the New Yorker has released tracks that straddle an impressive range of genres.  You might identify 'Mother Beam' on his 'Bravery' EP with a dusty, bolder kind of Burial, the title play from ‘Phreqaflex’ with vintage garage and the track ‘Endeavour’ as classic house through a kaleidoscope.  What you won’t be able to do to his musical output is pigeonhole it.  Not that he’d care if you did: “It doesn’t matter, as long as people aren't being mislead.  At the end of the day, it's all music.  It's all good.  It's all justifiable."

Appropriately for someone who has such a wide horizon he can do much more than just music.  There's the often reported fact that he was a sushi chef – he carved fish for just one year, but the kitchen skills remain: “my stir fry is dangerous" - and then there's film. "I love film. I really truly do. I get lost in films as much as I do in music.”  He is pretty enthusiastic about French New Wave producer Eric Rohmer, a contemporary of Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Goddard, “his films are amazing because I don’t actually think the acting is very good, or the direction at times, but they capture conversations and relationships that we can all relate to, but mostly fantasize about.”

Can he connect the love of these films to the drive to make music?  "Those are very stylized movies, and the idea of a visual style as represents a lifestyle is an important thing. This is an inspiration for me, as an album is an attempt to maybe do something along the same lines." His appreciation of visual style is there too in the carefully selected artwork for his releases, from the vintage black and white women of ‘Love Is A Liability’, to the graphic patterns and block colour of the ‘Bravery’ EP. “My first album was a bunch of images that I really liked because they portrayed a certain period and a certain idea of beauty.  Fashion images reveal an aspect of life that no one really leads – it’s a fiction.  Those beautiful women bleed, cry and all that jazz too.”

Lustman has also made a cautious foray into videos - the bloody YouTube offering for ‘Phreqaflex’ is taken from one of the Japanese film and TV Zatoichi series starring a blind and dangerous masseur and plenty of spurting jugulars. “It fits well I think,” he says, “I’m just beginning to make preview videos for my releases.  I hope to get better at it.  The Endeavour video is footage I shot myself on the train over the Manhattan Bridge.”

Despite being a bona fide New Yorker, Lustman’s releases have so far appeared on British labels (Ramp and Planet Mu), something he sees as the result of his "making British sounding music.”  Wouldn’t he like to be releasing on home turf?  “There aren't many US labels really on it at the moment, none that I know at least.  I do love DFA Records. I talk to them sometimes.”  Over the next few months the UK will be treated to more Falty magic with two 12”s due, one on Planet Mu and the other on UK imprint Swamp81, as well as a new Planet Mu album being readied for early next year.  He's also making a trip over to the pond to DJ at the launch of Dollop this Wednesday (27th October) at Heaven.

Although it might seem a little risky for someone with a relatively new profile to be spreading themselves so thin over so many different genres, there's something exciting about such a mercurial approach. Lustman isn't desperate to gain recognition as a certain type of producer, he doesn’t seem to care about 'scenes' and he certainly has no time for journalists' labels. Such disregard for the status quo could get him a reputation as a shady revolutionary.  It could also inspire other young producers to follow his lead and create their own brand new beatmaking rules.  So, Vive La Revolution...

www.myspace.com/faltydl

Dry The River

 History Book by Dry the River


If it’s something cosy you’re after on these chilly autumn days then plug your auditory nerves into Dry The River's sepia coloured tunes.   Warm and folky, with a Grizzly Bear ring to both the instrumentals and the harmonized vocals, this is a band with a talent for that fuzzy feeling. The fivesome hail from London and have an easy comfort to their songs that is nicely offset against the wordy lyrics and some pretty impressive vocal ranges.  You can download a free three-track EP from www.myspace.com/drytherivermusic which is full of nod along tracks to keep you from taking your SAD out on your fellow commuters as the mornings get darker.  ‘Coast’ is sweet and tuneful, swinging to a brushed country-esque beat and overlaid some lovely harmonies, whilst ‘Shaker Hymns’ is structured around its clever storytelling lyrics and ‘History Book’ is a delicate acoustic guitar and weaving vocal.

The band have had well deserved attention from BBC Introducing and appear to be taking the first steps of that upward climb to basecamp on the mountain of success. Part of their expedition is the exhaustion-inducing touring schedule recently posted on their myspace that declares you can catch these easy folksters at venues around the country including The Nest in Dalston on 15th Dec.