Back Seat Quarterly

HVOB: Exclusive BSQ Q&A

Federico Mata — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:01:52 +0000

In the wave of the latest music here in the US, where commercialization has become paramount and loose lyrics which consist no more than a few syllables, it is that we find the originality of music has taken a backdoor to the expressive nature it so desperately seeks. No where is this more apparent than nightclubs across the states, that for the sake of having a dance floor dancing, the quality of the sound has gone down. Many music producers recording techniques have lost the audio fidelity of a well recorded album for the sake of loudness and iPods. As the New York Times reported, with technology comes a great cost. The rise of portable devices has led to a generation lost in loudness and does not know what high-fidelity audio sounds like, or cares to know. In the world of Lady Gaga’s and Justin Bieber running loose out in what is considered pop culture, we at BSQ Magazine makes our best efforts to find and sit down with the best the indie music scene has to offer. It has taken us some time, but we have found someone form the shores of Europe, this time from Austria.

HVOB, the latest sounds to captivate the music scene and dance floors of Europe, has the indie flare and sounds of structure that make-up a group on the rise. With melodic electro rhythm and soothing vocals, HVOB musical style rises to occasion that transports the listener to higher heights in sound escapism. Their debut album, the self titled “HVOB,” takes us on a journey through the soft vocal of Anna Müller, on top of the music created by Paul Wallner. Tracks such as “Dogs” and “Hold Your Horses” really captivate their musical essence on their album, making for easy listening while driving alone at night. Turn up the volume, for HVOB is among us.

BSQ MAGAZINE: Who is HVOB?
Paul Wallner: We started the project at the beginning of 2012; Anna brought her many years of song writing experience to the table, I am an experienced producer. In April 2012 we uploaded a few snippets to Soundcloud, and just a few weeks later we had signed with “Stil vor Talent”. It all happened very quickly.
Anna Müller: Not only do we produce all of our own music ourselves, we also make all of the decisions. We now have a team of professionals supporting HVOB – the artwork, videos and visuals are always produced by the same people, including Vienna VJs “lichterloh”, which is hugely important to us. Because for HVOB, the music and visuals are inextricably linked.

BSQ MAGAZINE: What does your name stand for?
Paul: “Her Voice Over Boys” defines the idea behind the project. On the electronic music scene it’s still unusual for females to produce – most DJs hire guest female singers for individual tracks. We do things differently, we write everything together.
BSQ MAGAZINE: What is your creative process in writing your lyrics?
Anna: I pre-produced the songs at home. I also recorded the vocals for the album in my bedroom. The final tracks were finished in Paul’s studio. We’ve done everything ourselves: it was a conscious decision not to work with an external producer. The lyrics come always at last – the music inspires the lyrics.

BSQ MAGAZINE: Why electronic music? What about it pulled you in?
Anna: We just wanted to make musik we love, and we can dance to. There’s no special reason why it became electronic music.

BSQ MAGAZINE: You have big name remixers remixing your songs. How did that idea of remixing come to be?
Paul: It’s the classical way in Europe to release an EP with Remixes of the songs. And it’s always exciting how others interpret your songs.

BSQ MAGAZINE: The tempo is really relaxed to your songs. What type of personal philosophy goes behind making it so?
Anna: There is no special philosophy, making music is always a very spontanous, creative act. We think it’s positive that you can listen to our album at home and in the club.

BSQ MAGAZINE: Conceptually, your music videos are a joy to watch. Can you tell us more about them?
Paul: We now have a team of professionals supporting HVOB – the artwork, videos and visuals are always produced by the same people, including Vienna VJs “lichterloh”, which is hugely important to us.

BSQ MAGAZINE: What is the idea behind the song “Dogs” and it’s choice of lyrics?
Anna: “Dogs” was the very first song of our actual debut album, and the song we formed our sound with. After that song, we found our style, and the rest of the album happened very quickly – in about a couple of months. The lyrics just came to my mind when I was producing it, I liked the sentence “Let sleeping dogs lie,” and so I formed the lyrics around it.

BSQ Magazine: Anything new in the works?
Paul: We just released our debut album “HVOB,” and our next EP “Always like this” will be released soon, with remixes by Oliver Koletzki and Andhim, two very big names here in Europe. We will also play a lot of concerts and festivals this summer, hopefully we will visit the USA soon!

Photography by: Simon Brugner. www.theyshootmusic.com

En La Playa…

Federico Mata — Sun, 05 May 2013 23:47:12 +0000

“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life’s cruelest irony.”

― Douglas Coupland

The following is a photographic journey through my particular thought process on loneliness.

Walking the sandy shore, contemplating and observing yourself and those around you, all while enjoying the soothing sounds of the crashing waves and the cold Pacific Ocean hit your feet, makes for a bittersweet loneliness. Even when surrounded by the laughter and joy of others, which provides a healing power to the woes of life, the uneasiness which our human family continually permeates remains unchanged. Western culture, fully engulfed in the life of perpetuated consumerism and money-making, stranded in the belief of blue skies and rainbows of a democratic/capitalistic haven, there is little to be unhappy or worried about. With the burden of the cost of simply living in a world where things are handed to you prefabricated, and expecting you to consume the items without question, the safety-net of normality ensues. This is precisely what creates a state of severe depression and anxiety; the ability to have everything necessary in a capitalistic system creates boredom. There is no reward in doing nothing, thus the human becomes anxious in the role of creation, in other words, our inability to create something makes turn to destruction, for the sake of doing something. This destruction leads to a reality of constant competition for being the most creative, the most successful, the most liked, and the most rewarded. The mentality so apparent in western culture of competition is a fabrication from the innate need to create something far above oneself, the need for eternal life by the mind of collective experience.

The need to create eternal life has ultimately led to destruction.

The question remains whether this way of doing things has led anywhere truly positive for the human family. A consumerist mindset on a finite planet will lead to an inevitable doom. The excess created, as stated previously, leads to anxiety of always accumulating more. Where the psyche leads to is an anomaly uniquely human; a hoarding of the mind and things. It offers no clear evolutionary advantage to hoard things in the human species, other than to show off status and power in a structure based on pompous nothingness. The value system of culture raises the level on the deemed norms to a state of decay. This creates boredom, and most severely, a state of loneliness. It is incredible to suppose this reaction while one has all the material wealth and success regarded as a high-esteemed level of living. The need to create has led to an overabundance of lowly material possessions which has overturned the order of the soul. This is turn creates another area: the need to always be doing something.

In a culture of little authentic emotion, one must feel the wind.

In the absent of all that is sacred to a authentic human, one of emotion and self-awareness to its full potential, the modern western culture anxiety in the name of creation, must have in his possession an act of doing. God forbid if one nowadays is inactive in life. This inactivity would certainly spell out death. While true, we now have a hyperactive culture on never stopping, never taking a break, even from the most mundane of experiences. “I’m bored” is a war cry to do something, a cry for attention and affection, the need for activity. Out of all this, the saddest aspect of human existence manifests itself: loneliness. It is fascinating to see that in a planet of about 7 billion inhabitants, one can find oneself alone with everybody.

A new age of loneliness is upon us.

Given the current economic times that this country and culture faces, it is now that the highly respected idea of having a job that is under attack. With the flurry of new technology, it is the worker that suffers in job security and pensions. It leads the worker with less and less opportunities to have higher paying wages and standard of living. This in turn leads to a depressive state with one who has been fired or let go from a job, often making one feel ashamed or embarrassed of the lack of purchasing power and comfortable living. It is shunned upon in this culture to be unemployed, homeless, or lazy. The cultural values so evidently strong are the same ideals that lead to the depressive state and suicidal tendencies. A report recently published shows the rise sharp of suicides in this country, surpassing automobile accidents, due to the economic downturn, most notably to career professionals of the baby boomer generation. Beyond the need for creation, the culture instilled today is the need to create capital, and large amounts of it if possible. The hoarding of the mind of making and accumulating wealth is one the many human abstractions that lead to the destructive state of psychological stimuli. It is of no wonder that our culture instills a inherent loneliness to the way things are agreed upon and allowed to function.

Looking out to the world often finds you alone.

When we allow ourselves absorbed by this culture and mindset, the inevitable outcome is a pathology bent on never being alone, which does not heed introspective thinking and transference. German psychoanalyst Arno Gruen states in his important work The Betrayal of the Self, the role of those associated and disassociated with one’s culture:

People with a dimension of inner experience that belies the official jargon are in danger, since they deviate from the norm, of being classified as mentally handicapped or disturbed. It is diminished human beings who are presented to us as normal. These are the people who cope most successfully (and apparently without problems) with a diminished world.

In our daily dealings with people who function “better” in this diminished world than we do, we may even feel inferior on occasion.

Being “maladjusted” the societal norms is many ways much more unfavorable than being well adjusted to the culture in which one happens to be a part of. Going against the “norms” of a culture often leaves one in a more severe case of loneliness and acceptance. Rebelling against these norms are left to those freethinkers which are almost always deemed as undesirable by the majority. Martin Luther King Jr. said it brilliantly in his 1963 speech of being maladjusted. The neurotic and often schizophrenic behavior patterns of western culture shows its ugly face every time one becomes maladjusted to it. The core principal to all human interaction and language patterns is one of abstraction, which leads to the way we act within our culture.

The culture of nature leaves none maladjusted.

The abstract nature of thought leads to the conquests that lead to power, neurotic behavior, and ideas of grandeur. This is all to prevalent in this culture, and are not seen as bad, but one to strive for. Our cultural icons of film, television, books, music, and most media shows the war on power achievement. It becomes instilled into our collective psyche as a norm, and one of constant struggle. Competitiveness and natural selection are seen as paramount in the job field and overall power mongering. This of course, is severe poverty of the basics of human understanding and field of thought found in the human species. It would be a great insult to the rational person to think this as normal. In the abstraction, the greatest fear to escape the culture is that of autonomy, or responsibility of one’s own actions. We are always willfully able to entrust upon on others for our wisdom and understanding, and do it without question.

In his sensational and extraordinary book, Listen, Little Man!, the often ridiculed and misunderstood psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich most emphatically writes in his lengthy rant on the little mind of a little man–the common man:

In far countries little men have closely studied your longing to be an indiscriminate slave. It has taught them how to become little big men with very little mental effort. These little men were not born in mansions, they rose from your ranks. They have gone hungry like you, suffered like you. And they have found a quicker way of changing masters. For a hundred years truly great thinkers made unstinting sacrifices, devoting their minds and lives to your freedom and well-being. The little men from your own ranks have found out that no such effort is needed. What truly great thinkers had achieved in a century of hardship and earnest thought they have managed to destroy in less than five years. Yes, the little men from own ranks have found a shortcut–their method is more blatant and brutal. They tell you in so many words that you and your life, your children and family, count for nothing; that you are a feeble-minded flunky to be treated as it suits them. They promise you not individual but national freedom. They say nothing of self-respect but tell you to respect the state. They promise you not personal greatness but national greatness. Since “individual freedom” and “individual greatness” mean nothing to you, while “national freedom” and “national interest” stimulate your vocal cords in very much the same way as bones bring the water to a dog’s mouth, the sound of these words makes you cheer. None of these little men pays the price that Giardano Bruno, Jesus, Karl Marx, or Lincoln had to pay for genuine freedom. They don’t love you, little man, they despise you because you despise yourself. They know you through and through, much better than Rockefeller or the Tories you know. They know your worst weakness, as you ought to know them. They have sacrificed you to a symbol, and you have given them power over you. You yourself have raised up your masters and you go on supporting them although–or perhaps because–they have cast off all masks. They have told you plainly, “You are and always will be am inferior, incapable of responsibility.” You call them guides or redeemers, and shout hurrah, hurrah.

The “little man” was once a great man.

The innate need for guides and redeemers, be it with a partner, bosses, politicians, teachers, gurus, or “experts” in the journey of life is one to take with caution. It is of this author’s opinion to tread lightly in the acceptance of information, including this piece. We have been in many ways traumatized by simply interacting with others, and nothing is more terrifying than not being able to do so. Our interaction with the world and others leads us to a field unknown to our subjective emotions to the self; one which is in constant interacting with the inner juices of your innermost thoughts. When we let someone in, trusting whoever it may be with our most cherished thoughts, an immediate change from self to collective ensues, making the thought no longer yours, and shared to as a group. This can be a tricky proposition, especially when the first inclination of a discovery is to share it with the world. The question then arises, what are we to do about it? Is it a good or bad thing?

When presented with such questions, the natural response would be to seek help. This is not a bad, for communication ads to the questioning process, what is the negative outcome is if one continually seeks help for the sake of not thinking and questioning for oneself. This is where one can be manipulated and set to think in only one way. and is most noticeably evident in schooling, parenting, politics, religion, and to many extents, the sciences. Art is not immune either. Once we become attached to a certain way of thinking, the outcome is a case of becoming a repeater. The language that we speak is not our invention, but a learned tool created long ago. Our way of thinking thus becomes an outcome of culture, leading to the norms accepted by such. This is the danger located in the need for guides and redeemers, that it leads us to a way of non-thinking, all for the sake of not having the responsibility for not thinking for oneself.

Where do we find our answers to life?

Certainly, there are the needs for teachers of all kinds to help you out on the quest for finding the truth to the cosmos. A great teacher though, will not give you answers directly nor will he know all the answers. He will frustrate you to no end, and challenge your questions with more questions. He will make you think for yourself. Zen masters are notorious for this, and know that all wisdom lies from within, in conjunction with the microcosm and macrocosm. For that which is above, is also below. It is often comical seeing the student frustrated and angered towards his teacher on the lack of answers, but the teacher knows that the teacher is not what is important, but the teaching. It then becomes apparent that the student has had the answers all along, yet it was within himself that they lie.

It is when we detach ourselves from the subjective experience of oneself, that the loneliness and disarray ensues. When we attach to someone else or an idea completely, do we find that the loss of autonomy is dangerous, and the destructive path commences. Not that one needs to alone at all times, for communication is essential for human survival, but coming to one’s own conclusion on the subject of the self must be crucial to autonomy. As much as one can be as extroverted and enjoy nothing but the presence of others, the outcome of culture has issued a competitiveness approach on how we deal with others. Instead of opting for a collaboration instead of a competition, we further alienate ourselves to a existence of loneliness. A culture built on this breeds schizophrenia, a condition built on extreme alienation and ridicule of the social norms. This is the most detached person, an inauthentic self. Very simply, it means that culture has won. When one gives into the absurdity of inauthentic existence, that of living on the impressions of others and culture, is bound to live in sorrow for the sole reason of existing for others, and not oneself.

Trapped within a culture, alienation can create schizophrenia at an alarming rate.

On the notions of love, and the permutations one permits in a relationship, we are often found in a rut on who is being authentic and real with one another. In the plight of persona and appearances, with the male wanting to be a strong figure without fear and a woman all too willingly to abide by perpetuating this act by the male counterpart, the instilled fear and insecurities of the male are further developed to the point of accepted cultural distinctions. Gruen further elaborates:

The great misfortune is that, disregarding what our heart tells us, we live according to the ideology of a mutilated self, going along with preprogrammed kinds of love that are not love at all. In addition, there are people who play, as it were, a game within the game of “being loving.” They are the truly evil ones. They hide their actions behind the lie of being loving and in so doing manage to get by. Since we are often in complicity with their game, we usually cannot afford to see through the situation. This explains the success of psychopaths in our society, to recognize them for what they are would force us to confront their false love, a mere parody of the real thing. Instead, we direct our anger at those who are seriously attempt to help us face reality.

Being keenly aware of the self and others is the safest way to overcome the perils of culture. By being the most autonomous possible, without fear or ridicule, a sense of zest and peace arises within the character of your true self. Being one’s own teacher to the extent of realizing one self to the inner microcosm, and familiarizing oneself to the chakras in all of us, is the way of defeating loneliness and boredom, the masks of our civilization. This is where true wisdom lies, in the foundation of self. It would be a call to authenticity, so pure in form that it cannot be unmoved by anyone. The question then becomes how well you can cope with it.

Reaching the coast and hearing the everlasting peace of ocean waves and the oncoming onshore flow, it is nature, our true teacher, and being alone with it, that can show us the way to eternity, to that which lies in all of us– the human potential to know oneself.

Once realized, all things become secondary.

“He dwells in us, not in the nether world, not is starry heavens. The spirit living within us fashions all this.”

-Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim

Photography by Federico Mata

Model: Jett Kelly

Location: Oxnard, CA

The RAW Showcase, For RAW Talent!

Andre Gerron — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:14:16 +0000

RAW brings you the most of Indie Art!

What is RAW?

RAW: natural born artists is an independent arts organization that hand-selects and spotlights independent creatives in visual art, film, fashion, music, hair & makeup artistry, photography, models and performing art.

RAW’s mission is to provide up-and-coming artists of all creative realms with the tools, resources and exposure needed to inspire and cultivate creativity so that they might be seen, heard and loved. RAW educates, connects and exposes emerging artists in 54 artistic communities across the United States and Australia, through monthly showcase events. Join us in celebrating the work of these artists.

RAW events are multi-faceted artistic showcases. Each event features a film screening, musical performance, fashion show, art gallery, performance art and a featured hairstylist and makeup artist. These artists are all local, hand-picked talent who have been chosen to feature at RAW.

RAW events feature a cash bar for cocktails while you enjoy the night. Dress code is cocktail attire, so dress the occasion and get ready for an artistic circus of creativity!

With This said, BSQ got to attend the RAW event this past February 28th. We are here to enlighten and touch more on the type of art, scenario, and artist that were at the event and get more in depth on the showcase.

This RAW Showcase had everything. It had music, it had great artists, photography, painting, digital art, drawing, jewelry making, performing arts, etc. It was definitely an inspirational event to be a part of.

Here we have an artist who specialized in painting. His canvas work was great, and very clean. His style is also very Urban and dark, but with a great feel to it. He uses heavy blacks on the shading and the linework that really makes the art pop along with his colors.

This particular artist did something very unique. he used a torch to make these little statues, jewelry and other little creations like marbels out of glass. This was extremely creative, and he did his work live at the show to showcase how it was done. I was amazed by this craft, because it is the first time i have ever seen it myself. I tip my hat to this man for having such a skill and being able to use it effectively and creatively.

There was also a small live Fashion show. In this show, the ladies had their hair, make-up, and clothes all done for them. The fashion show only lasted a short time, but it was long enough to be able to show off the skills that the artists were there to present. Some of the outfits were very creative, along with the hairstyles and make-up to go with them. It was interesting to see a fashion show made up of everyday Indie artist, and their ideas behind what they see as fashion.

Aside from the Fashion and hair show’s, we also had Performing Arts and Music! This event was packed with excellence. Very great music from live bands of all different genre’s of music. The performing arts was amazing. These women had incredible upper body strength and balance to do the tricks they were doing on the pole on stage. Very creative and amazing tricks had people befuddled. Jaws were dropping every moment with what these women were capable of.

These bands were also amazing. The singing, the soul that was involved, the guitar playing and music were all great. It really set the mood for an Indie event and made Martini ranch feel so Alive. All of these bands were on point with their music and performances, and I’m very glad i was there to witness them in their glory.

Below you can check out a short video of some of the scenery that was captured at the event. Be sure to stay tuned for the next, more in depth coverage on the RAW Artists showcase after the June 27th Event!