In the fall of 2020, Kenny Eshinlokun launched her creative agency, Taboo, to create world class projects that transcend audiences and industry borders. After working for a decade in the marketing and music industries, she saw the need for artists to build meaningful, long-term partnerships with brands that truly care about their creative endeavors. Through Taboo, she has built a global cohort of creatives and brands that are committed to giving back to their communities and building relationships that are rooted in genuinely shared visions. Autre caught up with the Eshinlokun to talk about the inspiration for starting her own agency, the meaning of true allyship, and the future of Taboo. Read more.
Drowning In Black Gold: Read Our Interview Of Evita Manji →
interview by Caroline Whiteley
photography by Matias Alfonzo
art direction and styling by Camille Pailler
set design by Matt Bianchi
casting by Alter Casting
hair by Tina Pachta
makeup by Nikolas Paroutis
nails by Camilla Inge
Evita Manji is an Athens-based artist and vocalist who implements their carefully constructed practice of sound design into live shows and productions. In addition to founding the independent music label, myxoxym, they have collaborated with numerous artists across various media. Their most recent release is a compilation of international artists with all proceeds going to ANIMA, a non-profit association active in the field of ecology, with its main activity being the nursing and rehabilitation of wild animals in their natural environment. One of their recent singles, OIL/TOO MUCH addresses the toxic effects of crude oil extraction on the planet and its inhabitants as well as the exploitation of its laborers. A process akin to drowning and being burned alive simultaneously. Read more.
Listen To Our New Playlist: Punk Is Undead
From proto, to post, an abridged ride on the periphery of punk.
Watch The Premiere Of Katie Schecter's "How Many Flowers" Directed By Buckley
Katie Schecter is a Nashville-based and New York City-bred singer and songwriter does not belong to any one genre or style. Her new album Bad for Business features Amy Winehouse’s legendary rhythm section, Homer Steinweiss (Holy Hive, Sharon Jones & The Dap-kings) and Nick Movshon (Menahan Street Band, Charles Bradley), a heavy combination that informs the record’s soulful core temperature. Recorded in New York City at The Diamond Mine, the LP shines with a dutiful sense of where Schecter has been while signaling to the new heights she is set to scale. Bad for Business will be available on vinyl via Soul Step Records this summer.
Rodrigo Amarante Presents New Single/Video, "I Can't Wait"
Rodrigo Amarante today releases a new single/video, “I Can’t Wait,” from his forthcoming record, Drama, out July 16th via Polyvinyl. The track opens with cascading melodies from a harpsichord and an eerie guitar, later unfurling with synthesizers and sparse syncopations as he ruminates on hope, freedom and urgency. The accompanying video, which was written by Amarante, is cinematic. It beautifully depicts a morning of a fleeting dream, as Amarante wakes up, gets dressed, and walks to send a letter.
"I wrote this song because Jesus is followed by traitors,” says Amarante. “I wrote it because Darwin's ideas are serving the purpose of turning ourselves against one another, because I believe freedom does not stem from independence, separation or disconnect as the dictionaries suggest, but rather from the acknowledgement of our interdependence, because freedom is belonging. I wrote this song because hope isn't enough. I wrote it after bumping into an entry at a Latin dictionary: Noster Nostri - 1: Our, Ours. 2: Our hearts beat as one. 3: That old dream of ours."
Global Fax Festival: A New Performance Film By David Hammons In Collaboration With Monday Evening Concerts
Hauser & Wirth’s digital art magazine Ursula presents ‘Global Fax Festival’ – a new performance film by David Hammons dedicated to composer/conductor Lawrence D. ‘Butch’ Morris and created in collaboration with Los Angeles’ venerated Monday Evening Concerts and virtuoso pianist Myra Melford.
The film documents Hammons’ first-ever restaging of his noted 2000 project ‘Global Fax Festival’ here conducted in the gallery’s outdoor courtyard in early May 2021. After more than a year of isolation during the pandemic, Hammons conceived this event as a gesture toward the reawakening of Los Angeles, set within the space that two years ago hosted the largest survey of his work ever organized.
The new ‘Global Fax Festival’ performance film features a solo improvisational piano performance by Myra Melford. A former Butch Morris collaborator, Melford plays in dialogue with projected footage of Morris, who passed away in 2013, performing Conductions®, his trademarked technique that merges conducting and improvisation.
Friday Playlist: Talk Radio
Watch The Premiere Of John Carroll Kirby's Concert For One Featuring Lita Albuquerque
Music by John Carroll Kirby
Video by Ross Harris
Performance of the song “Walking Through a House Where a Family Has Lived” from the album Conflict, by John Carroll Kirby
Special thanks to Stones Throw
Friday Playlist: Dubble Stuff
As an aural clone to Autre's spring 21 doppelgänger issue, Dubble Stuff is a gamut-running exploration of musical genres that is everything and nothing at once; an avatar perpetually in search of itself.
Watch The Premiere Of "I Am Love" By ROOS
I Am Love is a new video by ROOS the ongoing musical project by the Los Angeles-based interdisciplinary artist, Ross Simonini The video is the second from ROOS’ debut album, Refrains and is a continuation of his previous video The Well. Simonini released Refrains in conjunction with an exhibition of new paintings at Et Al Gallery in January 2021. Both videos are collaborations with the artist, Rafael Delacruz and include documentation of Simonini’s mudlover performances, which have taken place annually, every winter, across California since 2018. In this video, Simonini performs in the attic of a former Odd Fellow’s Hall, in the town of Forestville, Sonoma County, where the artist formerly lived. The video’s release will be accompanied by two NFTs.
Watch The Music Video For serpentwithfeet's "Same Size Shoe"
Track and music video of the 2020s. Period.
Joe McKee Releases Ultra Letizia Album On Salmon Universe
Over his varied career Californian-based Australian Joe McKee has been an ever curious sound-traveller, from singer to field recordist and conceptual sound artist. Here he has created the other-worldly musical experience of ULTRA LETIZIA - a cargo ship, on which he crossed the North Pacific ocean from Japan to Vancouver, Washington.
As Joe says: "The sounds you are hearing were collected from me 'playing' the ship like a giant gamelan. I hit, scraped, listened and spoke to the strange industrial beast." Every sound collected is turned into a musically engaging and spiritually elevating piece, reflecting an experience of isolation but in turn revealing a connection to the vessel, it's workers, and the vastness of the ocean itself.
Ultra Letizia is available now on bandcamp and soundcloud. Watch an excerpt of the accompanying film below
Friday Playlist: Space Is The Place
A trip though the cosmos, one cloud, one star, one planet at a time. A collection of soul ballads, sonic love letters, and eccentric oddities.
Autre Exclusive Premiere: Cat Power "From Fur City" An Elegy To Benjamin Smoke
Autre presents an exclusive premiere of a never-before-seen live video of Cat Power (Chan Marshall) performing "From Fur City" at Tonic in NYC in 2003, a powerful elegy to radical and legendary musician and songwriter, Benjamin Smoke who died on January 29, 1999. The song "From Fur City" has never been on a proper studio album. Filmed by Scott Crary (Kill Your Idols, 2004).
Friday Playlist: Hipgnosis
A warm dive into a hipgnotic bath of repetitive grooves, atmospheric tracks and metallic vibrations. Back seat, leather upholstery, dark rooms, flashing lights. A meditation on forgetting who you are on a Saturday night. The dream of vanishing.
Friday Playlist: Counter Cortisol
Hang in there baby! 2021 is off to a rocky start, so here are some tracks to curb that cortisol rush. Because we all need a little calm after the storm.
Friday Playlist: Be Kind To Your Mind
Hit the ground dancing. A new year's playlist. A CDC reccomended mixtape.
Friday Playlist: No Exit
Hell is other people's playlists. Some ambient rarities. Shoegaze gems. Sound effects. A prick followed by numbness followed by blackness followed by infiniteness.
Friday Playlist: Ballad of Sexual Dependency
Tender, heartbreaking, beautiful, joyous, Nan Goldin's iconic Ballad Of Sexual Depency changed photography forever. Here is the soundtrack.
Watch The Music Video "Shiny High" By PAULLUS2089 From His Album The Dream Body
SHINY HIGH written by PAULLUS2089 from his album THE DREAM BODY. Music video made by Diffan Norman, a Kuala Lumpur-born, LA-based artist. Listen on Spotify. Listen on BandCamp.