The Visionaire Gallery in SoHo, in New York, is holding a cool and curious exhibition that marries art and commerce in an oddly amusing way. The Dunny Show is a bit of a promotions conceit, but this a group show represents a rare and large sampling of designers and artists and is well worth the look.

The "Dunny" in the Dunny Show is a toy, a three-dimensional soft-vinyl figurine that at first glance looks like a futuristic cross between a teddy bear and a rabbit. The figure's shape suggests a character along the lines of those absurdly anthropamorphic creatures one sometimes sees in Japanese anime that manage to be both cute and alien at the same time.

Dunny was created by toy designer Tristan Eaton and entreprenuer Paul Budnitz . You may not know their names, but you may have heard of Budnitz's company, Kid Robot, which designs and sells similar collectible three-inch tall figures and toys at its two stores, one in of which is in New York City, a few blocks away from the Visionaire Gallery. (The other shop is in San Francisco's Haight District.)

The Kid Robot guys came up with the idea of using Dunny as a kind of blank canvas upon which any design can be thrown as a customized "skin." An unpainted and large-scale version (20 inches tall or about the size of a smallish fire-hydrant) of the Dunny was produced. Fifty of them were sent to 50 artists and designers who were assigned to turn their Dunny into an art piece or design a skin for it and given carte blanche.

A diverse group, the chosen fifty include people with backgrounds in both the fine arts and graffiti tagging, as well as talents from the worlds of industrial, graphic, fashion and furniture design. Some are famous in the underground, others firmly established superstars in their fields.

The list is eclectic and impressive: A sampling: street artist Shepard Fairey, the creator of the Obey/Andre the Giant street logo; Heatherette, a pair of East Village clothing stylists known for outfitting Paris Hilton; the London-based graphics and multimedia firm Designers Republic; graffiti artists Haze and Seen; fashion designer Diane von Furstenburg; and Japanese artist Eishu Yoshida.

The results of their efforts are fifty interpretations of Dunny that are either stark, playful, funny, forgettable or sublime. Whether these works are "art" or "design," is debateable. In any case, they stand individually and collectively as contemporary objet d'art, and they are selling at art gallery prices. The Dunny entry by Joel Smith (designing for Steuben Glass) is priced at $21,000. Most are going for between $2,000 and $3,500. The least-expensive Dunnies, like the one customized by New York-based cult clothing deigner SSUR, sell for $1,000.

--Micropundit

RELATED LINKS

The Dunny Show
Kid Robot

The Massive got an email yesterday from Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, those energetic afrobeat collectivists in Bushwick, Brooklyn, about the release next month of the band's new album and its upcoming tour dates.

That Antibalas is also touring to support the new disc is no surprise, because that's what bands do. But this group always seems to be touring anyway. If James Brown is the hardest working man in show business, then Antibalas is the hardest working afrobeat band in the Western world.

One week they're off to Switzerland, the next they're doing a week of shows up and down California and the Pacific Northwest, and then they're back in New York for a one-off show before heading back to Europe for some festival. This kind of peformance schedule hasn't stopped frontman Martin Perna and the orchestra from recording a new record.

They're first record in two years is called "Who is This America?" and will drop June 8 on the Ropadope Records label rather than Ninja Tune, which released the band's first two efforts.

The sprawling 16-member group (sometimes with a greater number of members performing, sometimes fewer) is planning a few gigs in New York and Washington D.C. to celebrate the arrival of the new disc. Two non-consecutive shows are planned for the Bowery Ballroom in New York on June 3 and 5. The Washington, D.C. show will be at the Black Cat on June 4.

Antibalas also will appear live on New York radio station WBAI 99.5FM on Wednesday May 26, 7:00 - 9:00pm EST (New York Time). If you're not in the NYC area, you can still tune to the radio show via Internet at the WBAI Web site (www.wbai.org).

Antibalas, which means "bulletproof" in Spanish, first came to attention in 2001 with the release of "Liberation Afro Beat Vol. 1," their wicked take on Nigerian afrobeat that, while a blatant immitation of the genre's legendary leader, Fela Kuti, was nevertheless an album of hypnotizing rhythms and blazing horns.

They followed up a year later with "Talkatif," which was a better, more original and varied disc than its predecessor. The Fela-afrobeat was less obviously derivative, while the massive horns and rhythms remained as white-hot as ever.

Since then, Antibalas has spawned a following and a number of afrobeat immitators. And the group has almost singelhandedly brought the legacy of Fela Kuti back into the contemporary music scene from New York to London.

The group's summer North American tour leaps across the Atlantic to play the massive Glastonbury Festival in the U.K. June 26, followed by a week-long European leg that takes Antibalas to a half-dozen festivals and cities, including Amsterdam and Paris, through the first week of July.

Viva la liberation afrobeat! Power to the peeps!

--Micropundit

RELATED LINKS

Anitbalas Official Web Site
WBAI Radio
Ropeadope Records
Ninja Tune Records
Fela Kuti [The Fela Project]
Review: "Who is This America?" [Pitchfork Media]
Live Review: Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra [Miami New Times]

The first whiff of Wooooo came recently when the Massive brain trust were hanging out and sipping lattes at its regular neighborhood nosh-and-coffee chill spot, Brown Café on Hester St. in New York's Lower East Side.

Our usual energetic and friendly Aussie waiter suddenly thrust into our hands a copy of the new magazine, as well as an invite card to the mag's launch party at local Mex-tapas bar Barrio Chino (see photo of party, right). The card read "Kegger." Well, that definitely got our attention--the crew at Wooooo have got mad skillz on the promotions tip.

Wooooo is essentially a local hipster zine that's like a cross between Interview and Flyer magazines. Like the former all its features are raw Q-and-A style interviews with celebrated creative types. Unlike Interview, the creative types (musicians, artists, DJs) questioned in Woooooo are either obscure or mostly of minor celebrity (for now, at least).

These interviews are short (a bit too short sometimes), usually just a couple of pages. Among those who get the interview treatment are Vespa-loving Italian Simone Pace from seminal New York indie band Blonde Redhead and Brett Anderson, a.k.a. Donna A., who as lead singer of another New York rock outfit, the Donnas, has appeared frequently on MTV and VH1 and is probably the most "celebrity" of the bunch.

Like Flyer, Wooooo is small--about the size of a large post card and just 32 pages thick--and can almost fit in your pocket. Unlike Flyer, there are no listings or entertainment coverage. In fact there are no "departments" per se. The interviews are the only content.

Our favorite interview is a conversation with a woman named Fang who crafts "fake sharp teeth" out of dental enamel for goth kids. The Wooooo mag clan prove they won't hold back on asking a touchy question, as in this screwball they threw at Fang:

"What's up with the black folks going goth? Is that weird or is that just me? Are there a lot of black goths? Is this a stupid question?"

(Uh, No ... "stupid" is not the word we had in mind.)

By the way, it's pronounced "Wooooo" like a ghost's "Boo!" but with a "W" instead of the "B" and with five "O"s. Or if this works better for you, like the "Wu" in Wu-Tang Clan, but spelled with those five "O"s. Take your pick. At any rate, the magazine will be free and published quarterly.

Beside its size, what's most striking about Wooooo as you flip through it the first time is its overall design and layout, which is equal parts clever and cryptic. Printed on a quality matte-finish paper, the mag doesn't feel cheap to the touch like so many zines do.

The graphic design and illustrations are first-rate with an arty edge underscored by the two-color printing (black-and-white with a deep lavender) and photos that are rendered with a large dot-pixel effect like that of newspaper images when you look at them really close-up.

And also by the way, yes, we know, we know ... yet another magazine. As tiresome and unoriginal as the stream of new mag titles and one-off zines may be for some, the Massive loudly applaud all efforts to be culturally productive and to muster the energy and time it takes to produce a new entry into the info-saturated mediascape, especially when its local, independent and well-made.

And remember for all those zines that come and go, some of them are quite good and stick around and eventually grow up into great big magazines. Wooooo Magazine, welcome and big up to ya'!

--Instamatic + The Kid From Kyoto

RELATED LINKS

Wooooo Magazine Official Web Site
Lower East Side Tenement Museum Web Site
Barrio Chino [Citysearch]
Blonde Redhead Web Site at 4AD
The Donnas Web Site

It's not enough to have the hottest, hippest piece of killer digital hardware in the form of Apple's instant-classic iPod portable mp3 music player. Noooooooo! You've got to have a case for it, too! (Didn't you know?)

But not any case will do. That's the thinking behind a new iPod accessory designed by Paris-based style priest and German-born fashion legend, Karl Lagerfeld, who designs clothes for, among other labels, Italian fashion house Fendi.

Lagerfeld and Fendi have just put out an iPod case that's more like a suitcase. The bag is designed to carry--get this!--12 iPods!

Why? Well, naturally, because 40 gigabytes of mp3 files is nothing--YOU HEAR ME--NOTHING! Everyone in the know has got to have on their person or nearby at least--AT LEAST!--um ... let's see ... 12 x 40 GB ... um ... at least a whopping 480 GIGABYTES of music! That's an estimated 120,000 tunes.

Why would you need 480 gigs of mp3s? 'Cause, anytime, anywhere, ya' never know when you'll want to listen to more than one Stereolab album or even the band's entire back catalog or even all its output, including those compilations, rare unreleased demos, mash-ups and bootleg live recordings, or when you might also want to retrieve any remotely related groovy-electronic bachelor-pad music ever recorded between, say, 1964 and 2004. Ya' just never know, right?

So who would buy one of these haute-couture iPod cases? Well, for one, people (like us, admittedly) who have shopping pathologies and like to snap up these unique type of things. Hardcore couture collectors, too. And, of course, curators for certain design museums and costume institutes. And some insanely liquid Internet zillionaires, maybe, ya' know, the kind that run their own $400 bilion database technology corporation or are about to do an IPO for their search-engine business. Oh, and, of course, Paris Hilton.

Whoever buys Lagerfeld's iPod case, he or she is going to have to shell out $1,500.00.

Fendi and Lagerfeld aren't the only European fashion icons to have crafted an iPod case. Pucci, Chanel and the ineffably glamorous Gucci beat them to it a few weeks ago with the release of its own iPod case, a compact, elegant and well-designed (though thoroughly logoed in true Gucci style) case dubbed the iPod Sling that holds only one device. Price? A steal at $200.00, darling! :-)

--The Kid From Kyoto

RELATED LINKS

Fendi Web Site
Gucci Serves Up the Aple iPod a la Mode [News.com]
Gucci iPod case
iPod All the Rage in High Fashion [Wired News]
For the Ultimate iPod Addict [NY Post]
Hamish Bowles on Fendi's iPod Case [Style.com]

New York University teacher and games designer Frank Lantz has taken the classic 1980's videogame Pac-Man to the streets of Manhattan.

Lantz, who is director of games design at Gamelab, teaches a course at NYU called "Big Games." He teamed up with students in the university's Interactive Telecommunications graduate program to develop a large-scale, live-action version of the digital arcade game on New York's real-life street grid. Instead of Pac-Man, you've got Pac-Manhattan, which is what the big analog version is called.

The action centers around Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village, the heart of the NYU campus. The Pac-Manhattan games, which started in April, involve ten players. Five play the roles of Pac-Man and the four "ghosts": Inky (the light-blue one), Clyde (orange), Blinky (red), and Pinky (uh ... pink). Ghost players don orange, red, pink or light-blue ponchos, while the person playing the game's star, Pac Man, sports two halves of a yellow Pac Man-shaped disc, the half with the mouth is attached to the player's chest.

The remaining five players are "controllers," one for Pac-Man and one for each ghost, who communicate with their partners on the street with cell phones. Players also rely on a Wi-Fi system and tracking software custom-designed by Pac-Manhattan's creators. The system displays and updates the players' grid positions during the game.

The basic rules of Pac-Manhattan are like those of the videogame. Naturally, Pac Man has to collect all the "dots" before the ghosts catch him. Pac-man can also eat up "power pellets" and eat up ghosts. Games last anywhere between ten minutes and an hour.

--Micropundit and Instamatic

RELATED LINKS

Pac-Manhattan Official Web Site
NYU Interactive Telecommunications' Pac-Manhattan Site
Gamelab Company Web Site
The Pac-Page [ClassicGaming.com]
Namco Company Web Site
Manhattan Gets Pac-Man Fever [Wired News]
Interview with Frank Lantz [Gothamist Interview]

The Beasties Boys have finally given fans a taste of what the rap trio's long awaited new album will sound like when it released the new CD's first single on Apple's iTunes music download Web site last Thursday. The release coincided with the song's debut as part of the soundtrack to Thursday night's episode of the popular weekly Fox Television series "The O.C."

An audio clip and the full-length music video of the single, which is called "Ch-Check It Out," is available for free streaming on the Beastie Boys newly re-designed official Web site (www.beastieboys.com).

The album, titled "To the 5 Boroughs," will be released June 15 on Capitol Records and has been described, as the title suggests, as a tribute to the Beastie Boys' hometown, New York City. The new disc will be the first Beastie Boys album not released on the hip-hop group's Grand Royal label, which shut its doors in 2001 due to mounting financial difficulties.

We know what some of you are thinking: "It's about time! SIX YEARS! "

That's how long it's been since "Hello Nasty," the last full-length original Beastie Boys' CD, was released. The Massive had been wondering aloud for some time now what was going on with the Beastie Boys.

A few months ago, we looked up the rap trio's website and got only a placeholder site with little info or news. And last year we saw MCA (Adam Yauch) with backpack and skateboard in tow at the Tower Video store at Lafayette St. and 4th St. in NoHo, but resisted the temptation to ask him about when the next Beastie Boys album would drop.

Well, now we know.

The single "Ch-Check It Out" is full of the Beastie Boys trademark tongue-in-cheek rhymes and old-school hip hop bombast, with a big, rapid breakbeat. (We've heard that Mix Master Mike, who debuted with the Beasties on "Hello Nasty," is back and has cut up the beats for "To the 5 Boroughs.") The jam sounds great. The opening rhymes to "Ch-Check It Out" goofily play on a series of television show references starting with Star Trek...
All you Trekkies and TV addicts,
don't mean to dis don't mean to bring static.

Then checking the the now-obscure Wild Kingdom...

Like Mutual of Omaha,
got the ill boat you've never seen before.
Gliding in the glades, and like Lorne Greene
you know I get paid (Alpo, Bonanza, Battlestar Galactica ...)

On the Beastie Boys' Web site are the full lyrics to "Ch-Check It Out," the transcription of which includes "editor's notes" and footnotes.

The video for the single (see video still below) was mostly shot in New York City's Tribeca neigborhood not far from the Beastie Boys' recording studios in lower Manhattan.

In the clip, MCA, Mike D. (Michael Diamond) and Adrock (Adam Horovitz) appear on a deserted, graffiti-scrawled downtown street dressed as crew members of the U.S.S. Enterprise, wearing the well-known Star Trek uniform. "Appear," however, is not quite the right word--they are fittingly "beamed down" (by Scottie, naturally) in true Star Trek style.

What follows is an assemblage of goofy, campy and satirical piss-takes in typical Beastie Boys' style of not only Star Trek, but several other television shows from the 70's, including Barney Miller (or is it Fish?) and Wild Kingdom. The Beasties reference the iconic nature program by racing through the Florida Everglades on a fan-powered "glade" boat.

In other scenes the trio play it straight mugging down the street and rapping into the camera three-abreast while each wearing oversized headphones. Later, they get attacked on the New York streets by an elderly woman. The video was directed by Nathanial Hornblower, which is a pseudonym for Yauch.

Whether the Beastie Boys will tour this summer or later this year has yet to be officially announced, though we have it from sources in Japan that the Beasties will perform at both days and venues of the 2004 Summer Sonic music festival in Tokyo and Osaka, August 7 and 8, respectively.

The Beastie Boys will also make a "special guest" appearance at the WPLY Y100 FEZTIVAL June 18 at the Tweeter Center in Camden, New Jersey, along with The Strokes, The Darkness, Cypress Hill, Hoobastank, New Found Glory, Story of the Year, and Burning Brides. (Tickets go on sale Friday, May 7 at 4 p.m. through Ticketmaster.)

According to Beastie Boys' official website, the tracklisting for "To the 5 Boroughs" is as follows:

"Ch-Check It Out"

"Right Right Now Now"

"The Hard Way"

"Time To Build"

"Rhyme The Rhyme Well"

"Triple Trouble"

"Hey F*** You"

"Oh Word?"

"That It's That All"

"All Life Styles"

"Shazam!"

"An Open Letter To NYC"

"Crawl Space"

"The Brouhaha"

"We Got The"

--Rob "Check Your Head" Samra

RELATED LINKS

Beastie Boys Official Web Site (Redesigned!)

"Ch-Check It Out" Music Video--2.9 MB QuickTime Movie

Apple iTunes Web Site

Beastie Boys Salute NYC [Rolling Stone]

Ch-Check It Out The New Beasties Album! [NME]

Beastie Boys Return With '5 Boroughs' [Billboard]

"The O.C." Debuting New Beastie Boys Single [Launch Yahoo!]