Tricky

“I'D BEEN CHASING TRICKY FOR a number of weeks, diving down into the low bars of Bristol. "He don't live here no more," I'd be told. "He went to America". I wasn't going to buy that. He'd been spied by the Magpie girl only last Thursday, slipping in and out of the shadows down by the quay, drawing black lines on his own posters drenched in salty-sea splash, grinning synergy and singing swatches of malodorous song. The dark wisps of rumor trailed him like tow-ropes and now I was reeling him in.” - DAVID BOWIE.
Reading the new Tricky autobiography Hell Is Around the The Corner. Adrian Thaws is one of those artists whom I’ve been a loyal fan of for many years. I discovered him in ‘96 - two years after his first album Maxinquaye, which I think is a masterpiece. I have bought every recording he’s dropped since - sight (and sound) unseen. Just found out David Bowie was a huge fan and once wrote a mad article about him for Q magazine.

Nosferatu

Watched Nosferatu the Vampyre, a 1979 adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski. Quirky and strange, didn’t find the film completely successful, but was moved by a scene near the end where The Count attempts to seduce the heroine Lucy Westenra and is ensnared in a sensual trap.

Gustav Klimt

Thinking about the staggeringly popular Gustav Klimt, an artist whose work I recently checked out at the Neue Gallery. The visit was incredibly inspirational, and even though I’ve been very aware of the great Austrian painters’ work since High School, I became newly enamored and read everything I could find and bought a couple of books online - a fascinating, sexy, eccentric persona and exquisite output has currently has had me in his ecstatic, sensuous orbit this week.

Hester Sunshine

Sketchbook: One of the best reasons to watch the last season of Project Runway was the wacky & wonderful young designer Hester Sunshine! Her clothes were full of energy and color with loads of the coolest kitsch. It was super fun to see what this talented artist would come up with each week. Sure we’ll see much more from her in the future.

Skin

"Skin: Ephram" 1999 (unfinished watercolor) 

In the early 90's, I was briefly obsessed with the music of a young singer named Ephram Lewis. Lewis was one of those emotion - soaked soul crooners that seemed to drop out of another era.
But he never emulated the past or tried to repeat it. Sonically his sound was certainly modern - awash in waves of warm synthesizers and gently echoing vocals but his lyrics were sharper and more thoughtful than usual for a pop RB record of the time:

Searching for a way out of so much pain/ 
sometimes to hurt is better than nothing
Let's live again
I'm a public face with a private life
You wanna get close enough to touch
Weave your lies 'cos I can't hide
Never touch my soul, I need that much
Is my skin just a veil I'm wearing
Protect me from the world
So with this armour to cover me
From tortured skies
I'll burn the body - breathe poisoned wine
Only laughter and forgetting

Turns out though, Lewis is a sad case. A young boy brit born into a large religious family, the talented singer/songwriter left home at the age of 16. Soon after, he was picked up by Elektra Records and released a beautiful album, entitled Skin. Blessed with soaring voice and a penchant for transcendent lyrics, the album was critically acclaimed and sold respectfully well, powered by the lovely single, Drowning In Your Eyes. 
Work on his following album brought him to LA where his long - suppressed homosexuality was finally out in the open. For so long he was a victim of his strict parents' beliefs, and now he was free.
However, one fateful night, The LA police received a call of a "naked man going crazy" at 1710 Fuller Ave, where he was living at the time. When the police arrived, investigators said that Lewis had become parnaoid and began climbing outside balconies, leaping from "from balcony to balcony" until he reached the top floors where he smashes an apartment window and began stabbing himself with a piece of broken glass. Lewis was tased or by the LAPD and either fell or jumped from the building and landed onto the courtyard below. Lewis had been taking methamphetamines that night prior to his death and it was ruled by the coroner's office as a suicide. Now a gay icon, musically all that remains of Lewis' career is the single album he completed, Skin, which I think is a minor masterpiece. Despite its creator's tragic end, this small legacy deserves to be revisited.

Karen Carpenter

Recently saw a BBC documentary about the infamous Carpenters, a group reviled by some in their day. Yes, they were sometimes irredeemably schmaltzy, and got even schmatlzier as they went on, but they had a secret weapon that cut through even the worst their candy-coated sentimentality, The potent, emotional sound of Karen Carpenter’s voice. Cutting and direct, the melancholy tone of her singing stood out, even in the circus-like schizophrenia of 70’ pop music. With her brother Richard, a good arranger, (and who recorded and highlighted his sister’s voice brilliantly) the occasionally good song or two, (Burt Bacharach, Paul Williams, and Richard himself), The Carpenters’ music, most particularly Karen’s voice, could be soothingly affecting. Listening to her now, knowing the tragedy of a long, slow death from anorexia nervosa that led to finally succumbing the singer at age 36, the music now has a more powerful resonance.

Mary Halvorson

The Leopard was waiting for the C train and who do I see waiting on the platform near me with a huge guitar strapped to her back but the extraordinary young musician Mary Halvorson on her way to a gig. I don’t know Ms Halvorson personally, but I’m aware of some her beautiful, challenging, emotional music. I approached her and her colleague Rafiq Bhatia and she was incredibly friendly and genial. The meeting inspired me to go home & make a drawing as I listened to her latest record, Code Girl.