The Pope of Trash, John Waters, celebrates his 75th birthday today, April 22nd, 2021, by releasing “Prayer to Pasolini,” his tribute to the legendarily controversial Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini. The digital release, available now at all digital music services, includes John’s “Prayer to Pasolini,” John speaking in tongues, and 12 additional audio clips of John sharing his thoughts on Pasolini’s work. A 7” vinyl version of “Prayer to Pasolini” will be released later this year as part of the Sub Pop Singles Club Vol. 6; the 7” version is only available to current Singles Club subscribers, and will be limited to 1,000 copies (subscribe here!).
The single was recorded at a small park in the wetlands near Rome’s airport, where a monument stands in Pasolini’s honor. It was here that Pasolini was run over multiple times with his own car by a hustler, after having his testicles deliberately crushed by his murderer.
The recordings were made with Waters’ long-time colleague and friend, Grammy-winning producer and author, Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Zomba Prison Project, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott). That it happened in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis only made it more surreal.
Waters and company arrived to find the site fenced and seemingly padlocked. Fortuitously, Brennan had bought wire-cutting tools just for the occasion, but they were ultimately not needed.
As Brennan recorded industrial, wind, and bird sounds, John concentrated on the healing, nearly ironic religious experience of being there.
The area is industrialized, but remains potentially more primitive than during the Roman Empire era, when it acted as the main port. Some of its ruins still stand. During Pasolini’s neorealist heyday, prostitutes were drawn by the area’s remoteness. The prostitutes were nicknamed “fireflies,” for the image created as they puffed cigarettes in the dark.
Waters’ and Pasolini’s careers overlapped, with their most notorious films — Pink Flamingos and Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom, respectively — being released and banned in the first half of the 1970s, in large part for featuring scenes of actors eating shit. Waters says that the only difference was that in Pink Flamingos (which pre-dates Pasolini’s Salo by more than three-and-a-half years), Divine ate actual shit, while the Italian actors used chocolate.
“But I don’t hold it against them,” Waters quips.
John Waters Prayer To Pasolini
7” Single Tracklisting 1. Prayer to Pasolini 2. Onsite at Pasolini’s Memorial in Italy 3. Speaking in Tongues (featuring sounds from Pasolini’s murder site)
Digital Tracklisting: 1. Prayer to Pasolini 2. Onsite at Pasolini’s Memorial in Italy 3. Speaking in Tongues (featuring sounds from Pasolini’s murder site) 4. Conspiracy Theories 5. Openly Gay 6. Eating Shit 7. Drive-in Theaters 8. Political Correctness 9. Anna Magnani 10. Casting Methods 11. Pasolini’s Artistry 12. Influence of Pasolini 13. News of Pasolini’s Death 14. The Neorealists
On June 11th, 2021, Sub Pop will reissue The Shins Oh, Inverted World (20th Anniversary Remaster), the group’s much-beloved debut, for its 20th birthday.
Oh, Inverted World is the earth-shattering, indie-rock-redefining 2001 album from The Shins, and is presented here in its finest form. The classic tunes get new life with mastering by Bob Ludwig, under band leader James Mercer’s watchful eye. The new front cover of this edition of Oh, Inverted World features an ‘inverted’ color scheme, on a die-cut jacket, and includes a booklet filled with vintage photos, handwritten lyrics, liner notes, and more.
20 lucky fans who purchase the LP will receive the “Golden Ticket” edition of the album, which includes a 7”x7” classic photo of the band signed by Mercer, hidden in 10 Loser Edition and 10 standard black vinyl copies.
The music on Oh, Inverted World is obviously essential, and this remastering truly makes this the album Mercer always wanted it to be. Never quite satisfied with the sonics of the original, Mercer took the 20th anniversary of the album as his opportunity to finally set the (literal!) record straight. And the results sound stellar: great for new fans, and well worth the attention for those who fell in love with it in the first place.
Mercer says of Oh, Inverted World, “This record gave me the life that I never really dreamed I would have. It opened me up to the whole world and gave me validation. It’s also something that stands as a bit of a pinnacle for our band. You release that first record and it’s so well embraced, but you’re always trying to get that magic back, I think. We’ve done well, certainly, but the fervor that happened around Oh, Inverted World we never quite reached again. It’s a special moment when you’re a new band and you’ve got what was apparently kind of a new sound. This record symbolized a very special moment in my life, a watershed moment for sure.”
The Oh, Inverted World (20th Anniversary Remaster) is now available to pre-order through Sub Pop. LP pre-orders from megamart.subpop.com, The Shins merch store, select independent retailers in North America, the U.K., EU, Australia and New Zealand will receive the limited Loser edition on light blue with white marble vinyl (while supplies last).
The Shins Oh, Inverted World (20th Anniversary Remaster)
Tracklisting: 1. Caring Is Creepy 2. One by One All Day 3. Weird Divide 4. Know Your Onion! 5. Girl Inform Me 6. New Slang 7. The Celibate Life 8. Girl on the Wing 9. Your Algebra 10. Pressed in a Book 11. The Past and Pending
In this time of Coronavirus, virtual learning/remote everything, and with the world seemingly forever in flux, we truly welcome the uplift and reprieve provided by our impressive and inspirational winners of the 2021 Sub Pop Loser Scholarship! The Losers who won this year are an extraordinary bunch. Our Loser Chooser (TM) scholarship
committee spent hours reading through hundreds of applications, and at the end of a very difficult decision-making process, we’ve come up with
three ultramega-OK, life-affirming scholarship winners. Congratulations and
heartfelt thanks to all who took the time to apply, you have brightened up some weird days.
First
up is Ashadé, a wonderful performer at Nova High School. We were completely blown away by Ashadé’s mental toughness and ability to create truly beautiful poetry, creative writing and performance art in spite of difficult circumstances. The writing samples that Ashadé provided were truly breathtaking and her original songs were too good to be true. We couldn’t believe how much her cup of talent overfloweth! Ashadé is a truly wonderful Loser who we are happy to crown a winner.
Next
up: Jonah, from the great state of Oregon! Jonah is a bright, shining star bringing joy, energy and social awareness to spaces that need a bit of fresh air. Through his stunning visual artwork Jonah is working to bring awareness and energy to uplift trans youth and immigrant artists. The thoughtful application Jonah submitted really reflected what it means to be a Loser, and that is to stand up and be who you want to be in spite of all expectations and perceived limitations. Jonah is breaking down walls and we couldn’t be happier to support him. What. A. Loser!
Finally, we were completely won over
by Taylor from Issaquah. As a teenager, Taylor has found more ways to support artists in need than most adults. Through her non-profit arts program Student Art Spaces, Taylor has helped remove financial barriers for emerging artists and given them a platform to be seen. Through lived experience as an artist Taylor saw how BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people were excluded from galleries. With a fistful of fliers and an audacious idea, Taylor managed to change the narrative to help support emerging and underrepresented artists from around the world. (Jeez, that sounds familiar…) We are thrilled to call Taylor a Loser winner.
Thanks for playing to all who applied, you are all an inspiration! And we can’t wait to see what’s ahead for all of you.
Clipping has delivered an incredible at-home performance for NPR Music’s “Tiny Desk Meets SXSW” concert. The remote performance features, quite possibly, the tiniest desks to ever appear in the series, and includes highlights from the band’s acclaimed albums Visions of Bodies Being Burned (2020) and There Existed an Addiction to Blood (2019), along with their Wriggle EP (2016) and debut mixtape midcity (2013).
NPR Music says, “Leave it to Clipping to innovate around the central notion of the Tiny Desk; to take the series’ emphasis on close-up intimacy and transport it to new heights of, well, tininess. This is, after all, a band that contains multitudes. Producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes craft a bed of hip-hop, industrial music and noisy experimentalism, then set loose rapper Daveed Diggs, whose violent imagery summons ’90s horrorcore and a thousand bloody movies. The band’s last two album titles — There Existed an Addiction to Blood and Visions of Bodies Being Burned — offer up a sense of the vibe, but Diggs’ gift for rapid-fire wordplay also acts as a leavening agent (see NPR Music April 18th).”
The “Tiny Desk” concert was recorded, edited, and mixed by Clipping. It was directed and edited by Cristina Bercovitz, who also fabricated the tiny furniture for the performance. The footage was filmed by Bercovitz, Erin Bates, and Daveed Diggs, and also features additional drums by Chukwudi Hodge.
New York Times says of the performance, “The avant-hip-hop group led by the “Hamilton” star Daveed Diggs appeared in a showcase selected by NPR’s Tiny Desk Concerts, and took “tiny” as a video mandate. As Diggs rapped into a thumbnail-size microphone, his collaborators, Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson, pretended (on split screens) to play miniature versions of (among other things) a laptop, guitar pedals and a windup music box, as the music warped itself from pink noise to music-box tinkle to industrial distortion to techno beats. No simulation was involved in the tour de force that was Diggs’s breakneck, virtually nonstop rapping, with rhymes that raced from free-associative wordplay to nightmare imagery to a grimly prescient 2019 song, ‘Nothing Is Safe.’ (see March 22nd Critics Notebook)”
Clipping’s Visions of Bodies Being Burned, There Existed an Addiction to Blood and Wriggle, are available now worldwide from Sub Pop. The self-released midcity is also available at all DSPs.
What people are saying about Clipping’s Visions of Bodies Being Burned: “If Run the Jewels are the polemicist poets facing America’s racial reckoning with six-foot-high spray-painted lettering, Clipping’s members are the academics connecting the horrors of the country’s past with thumbtacks and string…There Existed an Addiction to Blood” from 2019 and Visions of Bodies Being Burned — sew the group’s socially conscious threads through the gory narratives of ’90s “horrorcore” rap artists like Brotha Lynch Hung and Ganksta N-I-P.” - New York Times
“In the group’s ambitious new horror-themed album, Visions of Bodies Being Burned’ each song plays into one of the genre’s tropes, occasionally as an expression of radical politics. Nowhere is this overlap more effective than on “Pain Everyday,” which calls on the ghosts of lynching victims to haunt the descendants of their killers.” - The New Yorker
“Clipping’s finest refinement yet of their abrasive horror-rap.” ★★★★- MOJO
“Like a mind-melting experimental audiobook, fitting as comfortably in the club as it does in the headphones.” -The Wire
“Throughout, Clipping stun and shock with their most complete work to date, and Visions of Bodies Being Burned proves the group to be as dynamic as they are devastating (9/10).” - Loud & Quiet
“This is a once-in-a-generation band reaching their peak.” ★★★★ - DIY
“Few listening experiences this year are as gripping, visceral, and vivid as Visions of Bodies Being Burned (8.5./10).”- Under the Radar
“Visions of Bodies Being Burned is an album that will cement clipping.’s reputation as one of the most exciting and visionary groups working in music today (8/10).” - CLASH
“Not many acts find the midway point between Wolf Eyes and Three 6 Mafia, but by the time Visions reaches its apex at the brutal centerpiece “Looking Like Meat,” that’s exactly what clipping. sounds like. It’s a particularly threatening chapter of horrorcore that renders even some of the more severe acts that came before almost cartoonish by comparison.” ★★★★ - All Music
“Visions of Bodies Being Burned demands you wake up to the full horror – of clipping.’s fictional world, and the real world behind it.” ★★★★ - The Forty Five
“Visions of Bodies Being Burned reveals the records to be a kind of Frankenstein’s monster — assembled from many unlike parts and reanimated through three mad scientists’ passion. The result is a long anthology of love letters to the genre: raps to match a modern Poe, beats to leave the blood curdled, and a pair of back-to-back albums bisected, but with a still-beating heart.” - SF Weekly
“Clipping. delivers a series of captivating songs that are equally unsettling (8/10).” - RIFF Magazine
“In this diptych, I love both parts of the equation equally (get it?). I’ll pick up There Existed an Addiction To Blood if I want to feel mad and emboldened in my anger, set against the injustice of the world and our tiny piece of it. But it’s Visions that I’ll pick up if I want to feel that ghostly chill or just that indescribable feeling you get when faced with real fear, with the uncanny. Guttural fear. Visceral fear of the strange world you thought was familiar to you but turns out: you were wrong.” - Heavy Blog is Heavy
“Clipping. are the best, always outdoing themselves at every pass and that’s all you need to do to succeed in this life. Bra-fucking-vo.” - Everything is Noise
Clipping Visions of Bodies Being Burned
Tracklisting: 1. Intro 2. Say the Name 3. Wytchboard (Interlude)* 4. ‘96 Neve Campbell (feat. Cam & China) 5. Something Underneath 6. Make Them Dead 7. She Bad 8. Invocation (Interlude) (with Greg Stuart)* 9. Pain Everyday (with Michael Esposito) 10. Check the Lock 11. Looking Like Meat (feat. Ho99o9) 12. Drove (Interlude)* 13. Eaten Alive (with Jeff Parker & Ted Byrnes) 14. Body for the Pile (with Sickness) 15. Enlacing 16. Secret Piece *CD/digital/cassette-only tracks
On April 30th, 2021, Sub Pop will release Indian Yard, the debut record from Sitka, Alaska project Ya Tseen. Indian Yard is an intense illumination of feeling and interconnectedness. Following the group’s debut offerings, “Close the Distance”, and “Knives” (feat. John Baldwin Gourley of Portugal. The Man), comes their latest single “Synthetic Gods.” Hinging on verses from Shabazz Palaces and Stas THEE Boss, “Synthetic Gods” is sonically seductive, a tense reflection on crisis that summons the pressure needed to ensure Indigenous sovereignty and power to the people.
Photo Credit: Desert X 2021 installation view of Nicholas Galanin, Never Forget, photo by Lance Geber, courtesy of Desert X.https://www.gofundme.com/f/landback.
Ya Tseen’s Nicholas Galanin is one of the most vital voices in contemporary art. His work spans sculpture, video, installation, photography, jewelry, and music; advocating for Indigenous sovereignty, racial, social, and environmental justice, for present, and future generations. For Galanin, memory and land are inevitably entwined. His most recent installation for Desert X 2021, on view through May 16, 2021, entitled Never Forget has garnered international media acclaim including from outlets such as The New York Times, TheLos Angeles Times, The Desert Sun, Galerie Magazine, and Time Out. The 45-foot letters of Never Forget reference the Hollywood sign, which initially spelled out HOLLYWOODLAND and was erected to promote a whites-only development. Its timing coincided with a development in Palm Springs that also connected to the film industry: Studio contracts limited actors’ travel, contributing to the city’s rise as a playground and refuge of the stars. Meanwhile, the white settler mythology of America as the land of the free, home of the brave was promoted in the West, and the landscape was cinematized through the same lens. Never Forget asks settler landowners to participate in the work by transferring land titles and management to local Indigenous communities. The work is a call to action and a reminder that land acknowledgments become only performative when they do not explicitly support the land back movement. Not only does the work transmit a shockwave of historical correction, but also promises to do so globally through social media. In connection with this installation, Galanin has organized a Go Fund Me account to benefit the Native American Land Conservancy (NALC.) You can contribute here.
The North American deluxe edition on clear vinyl is now available for preorder. The deluxe packaging will include a 24-page hardcover LP-sized book with covers featuring a sci-fi landscape populated by a toddler-wearing artist Merritt Johnson’s sculpture Mindset, a VR headset woven from sweetgrass. The interior art was designed by Galanin. This deluxe edition will be available while supplies last.
Tracklisting: 1. Knives (feat. Portugal. The Man) 2. Light the Torch 3. Born into Rain (feat. rum.gold and tunia) 4. At Tugáni 5. Get Yourself Together 6. Close the Distance 7. We Just Sit and Smile Here in Silence 8. A Feeling Undefined (feat. Nick Hakim and Iska Dhaaf) 9. Synthetic Gods (feat. Shabazz Palaces and Stas THEE Boss) 10. Gently to the Sun (feat. Tay Sean) 11. Back in That Time (feat. Qacung)
