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A conversation between Bradford Cox and Laetitia Sadier
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"Do the rich need the poor to be rich?" questions Stereolab's Laetitia Sadier on "Oscuridad," a song looking into the massive wealth and class gaps that rule this world. "Would there be poverty if there weren’t any rich?" The song comes from the French singer's fourth solo release, Something Shines, out this month on Drag City. In advance of its release, Sadier spoke with Deerhunter's Bradford Cox with the intent to discuss her record, one which she has explained as "an exploration through Debord’s La Societe du Spectacle, and how it is still up to us to guide and shape our fate, individually and collectively." The resultant conversation, though, was more wide-ranging, covering everything from the complicated politics of independent music and the recent short
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fallings of leftist thinking, to philosophy and religion and class and war. Throughout the course of this lengthy discussion, Sadier and Cox deconstruct the influence of capitalism and commercialization on creativity, and search for vulnerability and humanness in a toxic, trying world.
Bradford: I got to finally listen to your new album tonight and I have to say this is my favorite of your solo releases so far. This album is I think the most immediate album you've made. I found it immediately engaging. The first song, "Quantum Soup," I think aesthetically it is very immersive. The title is very good. You've always had such great titles.
Laetitia: Well, thank you.
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B: They're very descriptive and make the song easier to contextualize. And the production is wonderful. Who is this producer?
L: It's Emma. We produced it with Emma, my drummer.
B: The sound is fantastic. It's very human and very warm.
L: Yeah. Well that's what we want, huh? Personally that's what I respond to, the warmth. I don't respond to cold. Well, not positively anyway.
B: That's funny because when I think about the conversations we've had in the past, and when we've talked about your early musical influences, I think of this French cold-wave . . .
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An interview with feminist lit writer Andrea Coates / by Kate Meizner
I first learned of Andrea Coates in early 2013 when a friend linked me to critical takedown of Vice co-founder Shane Smith aptly titled, “Andrea Coates vs. Vice Magazine - or, the Battle for a Better World”. The piece was self-published on Coates’ personal writing blog, which contains a colorful, sprawling maze of prose, poems and videos littered with politically charged MS Paint art. I initially found Coates’ writing difficult to parse – I got lost in her dense paragraphs littered with experimental capitalizations and alternate spellings. But the takeaway was worth the struggle, and as I read on, I found an endless series of blog entries containing complex and compelling critiques of topics ranging from Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In to mass media and sexual exploitation therein.
Hailing from British Columbia, Coates is a self-proclaimed ‘Feminarkist’ and is most well-known within the Alt Lit community for weaving this perspective into her expansive, politically-charged and sometimes incendiary blog and social media posts. Earlier this year, Coates posted her self-published opus Splendid Insanity in serialized form, one chapter at a time. The meta-narrative, which follows Coates’ delinquent goth alter ego Hap’E BLU, contains a strong current of institutional critique. On a macro level, Hap’E BLU’s story condemns patriarchal and capitalist structures, and on a micro level – misogyny and lack of accountability within the Alt Lit space.
I recently spoke with Coates about her novel Splendid Insanity, mass media, and using writing as vehicle for enacting positive social change.
I'm currently reading your book Splendid in/Sanity. For those who are unfamiliar, what is the book about?
. . .
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WEEKLIES
by Nicole Snyder
I'm Confused.
by Colleen Green
Ways 2 stay cool.
by Chris Lee
Ello is not the answer.
by Ethan Long
Tomboy, "Sweetie."
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