Oi! Dear indie movie hungry awesomeness lovers, check it out: My friend’s friend’s friend has been working on this delightfully sloppy sillyfest thriller for the last god knows when and is now making festival circuits with it. As awesomeness has it, it’ll be screening at the Portland Underground Film Festival on June 13th. It only cost a puny six bucks and the director will be there. You can tell him Baylen Forcier made you go if you’re unsatisfied for some ungodly reason… I mean, watch the teaser. Times and tickets here.

View Victory Lap in a larger map

Here I go.

This week I’ve had the pleasure of spending a healthy amount of time with one of Wellington’s secret magical art jewels. Nicola Van Weersel, a local creative maven, is bursting at the seems with the kind of art stuff that every cultured city desires and only the finest humans possess. Ever since she acknowledged the disturbing absence of carelessness in her world Van Weersel has been on a one-woman quest to revive the inner child in all of us.

This crusade began nearly two years ago when she began making stuffed toys in a recurring patterned theme. Since, her rats have become increasingly larger and exponentially more psychedelic. She uses a range of materials, dyes, and accessories to make each toy unique in its own right.

Along with her sewing machine Nicola also dons a frequent brush. Her paintings are like epic scenes of creation acted out by single-celled microorganisms and looked at through a saturation filter. They tell stories of a non-descript and incomprehensible nature. Much like her toys, her paintings leave much to the imagination, again begging out the inner children within us.

Have a look at more of Van Weersel’s work on her Myspace or her CarbonMade

Dude. Why the fuck isn’t Jeffrey Jerusalem world famous yet? It can’t be just me who sees that his shit is untouchable… I’m not just blowing smoke here guys. Jeff’s first release, Grimace, was a glitchcore disco hybrid that made your average I’m-too-cool-to-dance bro go out and buy a tambourine with LEDs all over it and shake it like he was trying to ward off electronic demons. In short, it ruled. Now he’s returned to us with a whole host of freshy bangers, most of which, however, will seem familiar to some of you. The tracks that appear on Jerusalem’s second release, This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, are all remixes of Portland artist’s tracks. Jeff has dug in to the soul of each one of these Portland gems and extracted the electronic nervous system within. Each track varies incredible from one to the next. His mix of Penguin Prison’s A Funny Thing is a soulful disco ballad as seen trough the eyes of Daft Punk. Jeff takes on All God’s Children Can Dance by Portland dirty dance thieves, Guidance Counselor and transforms it into the glitchiest most awesome freak out fest since The Mockery off of ‘Grimace’. If you like the over-produced chopped and served glitch as much as I do you’ll also love his cut of Atole’s Strike Zone. Check ‘em out below.

So yeah, go see Jeff play at your earliest convenience (most likely when he gets back from touring Europe alongside LCD Soundsystem playing percussion for supporting act, YACHT) cause next time his solo show might be sold out. Holler.

Buy this record from LaserCave please.

Jeffrey Jerusalem – All God’s Children Can Dance (Guidance Counselor)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Jeffrey Jerusalem – Strike Zone (Atole)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.