For the Wild Seduction Gallery, lackluster material has never been a problem. Keeping in their tradition of housing some of the most shocking and interactive art, their latest show, Violent Art, features a diverse collection of artists’ takes on old-school violence including Robert Preston, Adan Hernandez, Charles Krafft, Herman Makkink, and a special showing from William Cordova.
Charles Krafft’s talent as a painter and his trip to war-torn Yugoslavia in 1995 left him wanting to bring home the true terror he had experienced there. He acquired weapons while abroad and made molds of them, which were later formed into white porcelain models of the originals. Krafft’s hand-painted Delft porcelain seems too delicate for the forms in which it has been so lovingly shaped. Almost perverted by the weaponry it has become, his pieces lay gently in red velvet boxes decked out with pseudo-Dutch scenes of country landscapes in blue porcelain. Krafft’s pieces seem less blatantly violent as others in the show, and serve more to give the viewer a taste of what has passed and what will never be forgotten.
Images of crime scenes and crash sites are touchy subjects for most these days. Robert Preston recreated ’50s and ’60s crime scene photographs of his late father onto oil canvases. Colors strangely authentic to the time had to be created by Preston to convey the period and feeling of the photos. As a self-proclaimed “narrative painter,” his pieces offer a taste of history like Krafft’s, but these images are more deliberate.
“Electra Crash, 1960,” a photo of the Lockheed Electra plane crash which lost 63 lives is a perfect example of the kind of feeling or remembrance the artist conveys with these paintings. Still strapped into their airplane seats, passengers’ limbs fall limp onto the shores of a beach at dusk, the skin at the top of their heads seemingly peeled back as one onlooker smokes a cigarette and gazes over the tragedy that befell those people.
Arguably one of the most deceptively violent pieces of the exhibit is Herman Makkink’s “The Rocking Machine,” best remembered from the movie A Clockwork Orange. To accompany (and explain) Makkink’s work, the WSG plays a short 7-10 minute vignette from the movie showing two of the artist’s most famous pieces. The movie serves as a means to show how the giant fiberglass penis (29″(l) x 18″(w) x 16″(h)) and female ass was used to bludgeon an annoying British bourgeois to death in her home. The definitive answer to the taboo question: “Is bigger really better?”
Capturing the everyday struggles of the San Antonio barrio he grew up in, Adan Hernandez has given the lives of impoverished Hispanics a new light. His artwork captured media attention back in 91′ when La Bomba director Taylor Heckford asked him to create artwork for his movie Blood In…Blood Out.
Since then, a close eye has been kept on the artist as his painting of gang violence, murders, and revenge have echoed the voices of a powerful people. Hernandez’s merciless passion to bring the voices of Hispanics to the forefront of an art-world ignorant to them leaves the paintings offering something deeper than just subterranean blues and cinematic poses.
Violent Art is at the Wild Seduction Gallery, 2762 NW 22nd St., Miami, through June 14. Call 305-633-8951 for more info.

Thousands of people gathered at the Bayfront Park in Downtown Miami for the fifth annual Ultra Music Festival on Saturday. Promoters made sure that everyone new that this was the biggest and best to date with 14 solid hours of music and dancing. Ten music arenas were spaced out across the park with tons of vendors in between.

Mother Nature served up a challenge to the electronica festival with pouring rain in the afternoon. Fortunately, by the time the Streets hit the main stage at 4:30 p.m. the skies were clear, the air was humid, and the people were dancing.

The Streets, traveling all the way from the United Kingdom brought to the festival their unique flavor of garage/hip-hop flavored music. To many attendees surprise, the Streets (Mike Skinner) and another MC were backed by a live band, complete bass guitar, keyboard, and percussion, and contributed a very energetic set.

The massive main stage featured towers of speakers and three large screens for visual aesthetic pleasure. Skinner has a unique stage presence and a sexy cockney accent that makes him fun to watch, even in such an overwhelming environment.

Each of the ten arenas specialized in a certain genre of electronic music. One of the more popular arenas of the day was the Drum and Bass Arena tucked away in the corner of the park. The arena hosted a large number of artists along with emcees. This crowd was certainly into it and didn’t seem to let the rain or the heat interfere with their dancing.

The other big name of the day was Paul Oakenfold. Also representing the UK flavor, he has been setting milestones in house music since the 1980s. Formally of Cream fame, Oakenfold’s performance would have pleased any trance lover.

The day was long filled with dozens of flyers for after parties and tons of dancing. My analogy is that Ultra Music Festival is to the electronic/dance music world what the Vans Warped Tour is to punk rock. It’s big, it’s flashy, it’s commercialized, it’s overpriced, but a few quality acts (Underworld, Rabbit in the Moon, the Streets) do perform at it.

– Kira Wisniewski

Fighting the glossy, spray-on tanner attending, overpriced Winter Music Conference for five years now is the all-night party known as Infiltrate. Infiltrate 5.0 went down this year at the Soho Lounge (what didn’t go down there?) in the Miami Design District on Saturday night.

On the flyer it proudly boasted, “no VIP, no badges, no bullshit.” So, while one could pay an exuberant amount for VIP status at Ultra before sundown, you couldn’t buy that status here, let alone find a glow stick.

Dozens of acts representing the local and national electric underground scene were all present and accounted for in one of four different performance areas. Outside, an airy patio area was constructed where DJs spun an eclectic array of music. Inside, various upcoming DJs spun in the blue room to a sparse, relaxed crowd. In the orange room is where you found acts like Otto von Schirach, Doormouse, Vector Weirdos (Phoenecia and Dino Felipe), and $ki-Mall. Upstairs, the largest and most packed area, was reserved for the hip-hop lineup.

Back downstairs in the orange room, where the smell of cat urination filled the air from the week’s multiple parties, is where some of Miami’s favorites could be witnessed. $ki-Mall, host of WVUM’s “Electric Kingdom,” performed an exciting set that tied in samples of classic rock and metal bands. T

The crowd danced with giddy excitement as they threw up their arms and bounced around. $ki-Mall’s actions reflected the crowd, playing air-guitar and jumping around behind his blipping laptop, making for the highlight of the night. Orlando native Randy Garcia, who offered a mellower set that gave way to Doormouse’s bomb-dropping digital assault, followed up his set.

Dan Doormouse, dressed in a Slayer t-shirt and cowboy hat, screamed until his veins were popping out of his neck. He literally took off his pants and started doing jumping jacks and push-ups during his performance. Doormouse put on a visually stimulating performance. Everyone cheered him on as he spit up into the air then caught it back in his mouth. He frantically danced, as if hoping for a heart attack.

At the end of his set, Doormouse shared a critical poem with the crowd that connected dots between Miami’s music scene and a fashion show.
Security was tight and police were patrolling the parking lot. T

he party raged on clear until the wee hours of the night. The resistance to the Winter Music Conference is alive and well. As the WMC and Ultra get bigger and bigger, expect Infiltrate 6.0 to do the same.

– Kira Wisniewski

If you were not at this party, what is wrong with you?

Vice must have sold their souls to the big red amigo for more money than Don Johnson reportedly had stashed in his whip (a few billion).

And trust us, the last thing we should do is put your girl’s lips all over a New York publication (glossy at that), but Vice flew down their wily krew (who more than live up to their irreverent hipster bible’s namesake) – every coke-fueled yankee/canuck connect you’d wish to meet – to serve Miamians the tastiest platter of gluttonous electro your eyes will ever hear in Vice City.

Detroit’s Adult. (middle right) played upstairs in sweltering – almost unbearable – heat as drunken, scantily clad vixens danced freely on the edge of the stage. They couldn’t cease even when vocalist Nicola Kuperus told them to “get the fuck off.” Their album, Anxiety Always, drops next month – we’ll cop it as a souvenir.

Down stairs the temp was deadly, as Tommie Sunshine fed lyrics into a mike chancing death by way of electrocution. This bearded champ was decked out in an American flag top with cut-off sleeves and ’80s shades dancing his ass off, as his posse poured him a chalice of champagne. DJ Hell (who bored us at CMJ last October) put the whole room in a frenzy, he let records spin and made heads do the same thing. A poster above him read “Our Scene.” Soho Lounge had suddenly become Plaid. Christ.

Outdoors, James Murphy of DFA and LCD Soundsysyem was showing some edge, tossing on classic rock, we don’t even remember, to a crowd of superstars like Casey Spooner of Fischerspooner and Mandy Coon of W.I.T. (top pic). Kurt Cobain was screaming, “…but that’s ok ’cause I found God,” and suddenly it all made sense.

By the time Miss Kittin (see Omar’s feature) sexed up the casbah with Anti-Pop Consortium’s “Ghost Lawns,” Vice (not party co-sponsor Spin) had lit up our scene like Iraq on a bad day.

For more info visit www.viceland.com (remember not to subscribe).

De La Soul spitting at the Delano in the refreshing Miami Beach breeze for Winter Music Conference…say what?

In the crammed car ride over there, we were quickly saying a number of forgotten things (rumors about Pharcyde, DJ Jazzy Jeff, and Digable Planets came in from cellies, but only De La showed up).

The stage was set up near the lush pool area, girls and sugar daddies were sipping wine and liquor in their bungalows, giant orbs floated in the water, models pranced around, the lighting was a soothing mint green.

Ah, the Delano.

Posdnuos, Trugoy and Pasemaster Mase came on ready to set it off. Two songs later, it was “ya’ll too sexy too party or what?” Even “Me, Myself and I” didn’t put wrinkles in Versace suits!

BUNNIES ON THE CATWALK: L&A got a tan at the Playboy fashion party at the Raleigh Hotel on SoBe and saw some bunnies getting sprayed with water just how they like it.

Some anxious debutantes (bottom pic) posed for our photo, thinking we were Playboy recruiters, and fantasized about their own centerfold magazine spread one day.

Ask him yourself: according to Madlib, a half-hour spent out of the studio is a half-hour wasted. How else would this productive Oxnard, California native create his eccentric beats and experimental projects inspired from an extensive collection of jazz, funk and soul records?

After dropping Soundpieces: Da Antidote with his slept-on hip hop trio Lootpack in 1999 (with DJ Romes and Wild Child), he linked up with Stones Throw label owner Peanut Butter Wolf and, concealed behind his alter ego Quasimoto, he released the equivocal Unseen LP, which made underground hip hop fanatics piss in their pants. A year later, he scrutinized the boundaries of acid jazz and played all the instruments on Yesterday’s New Quintet and is currently finishing an album with Jay Dee.

Madlib’s assiduous nature and innovative techniques put him in a league of his own in the hip hop game. Chatting with him at the Stones Throw party at the Creek Hotel last Thursday, L&A attempted to extract a little info out of this outlandish character for our readers:

Q: You seem to like veiling yourself behind pseudonyms such as Quasimoto and Yesterday’s New Quintet. Why do you keep obscure identities?
M: I don’t want it to just be Madlib, Madlib, Madlib all the time, you know? I wanna do some different shit, I wanna confuse people. Quasimoto, he doesn’t tour, he’s the Unseen. But I’m working on a Jaylib album and we’ll probably do some touring, so you can catch us then.

Q: What stimulates you to produce unusual and bugged-out beats?
M: With music, I don’t really think about it. It’s hard to explain. I do stuff I wanna hear that I don’t be hearing, you know? I guess it’s what happens when I be doing shrooms…

Q: What kind of music has influenced you?
M: Jazz, reggae, funk…Sun Ra, David Axelrod, Stylistics…I mean, there are too many to mention.

Q: What’s up the youth and jazz days? Why aren’t the younger heads listening to jazz?
M: Unfortunately, jazz is kinda dead [with young people]. All music runs in cycles and it’s hip hop that’s going on right now. But I’ve been working on Yesterday’s New Quintet like crazy. I got like 30 albums worth of material and it won’t stop.

Q: So I guess jazz isn’t dead for you. What about Winter Music Conference? What’s your impression and opinion of the event?
M: WMC? I don’t know. It’s my first time attending it and I been in my room the whole time, so I don’t know too much about it.

Q: Last question, so we don’t waste any more time. Since you said music runs in cycles, how long is hip hop gonna last?
M: Mainstream hip hop? It’s gonna keep blinging, man. The hip hop that we do is dying though. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but the underground, we’re just doing it for us.

For more info, go to www.stonesthrow.com

Omar Sommereyns can be reached at SOASIS@aol.com.

Fresh from attending the enjoyably cheesy DanceStar Awards (co-host Juliette Lewis, now single, is our idol), we walked down Ocean to Billboard Live where Urb was having its annual WinterOasis extravaganza.

The reliably naughty Peaches (1) stripped and squatted on a strobe light. Her girlies Electrocute (3,4) are to die for. Roni Size (in the background) (2) and adorably chubby spinstress Princess Superstar (5) should have a kid.

Seated at the modest patio of Raffin’s Cuban Caf