The turkey has been eaten, the in-laws have left, the traffic has settled and the flurry of the Thanksgiving has finally subsided. We were meant, during the holiday, to reflect and give thanks for all that we have in our lives, but those sentiments sometimes get lost in the craze surrounding Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday. We forget the “giving” part of Thanksgiving. To counteract this, “Giving Tuesday” was launched by organizations like 92nd Street Y, the United Nations Foundation, the website Mashable and the brand (RED). The day is meant to remind us to pause our consuming (figuratively. you can keep working on those leftovers if you want) and give back this holiday season. Here are five charitable organizations, both for the music and by the music, that you could give to this Tuesday:

Dear Jack Foundation

The Dear Jack Foundation (DJF) was founded by Andrew McMahon of Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness. While on tour with his first band, Something Corporate, McMahon was diagnosed with Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL). After undergoing treatment, he resolved to ‘initiate change and provide a voice for the generations of young adults who have been diagnosed with cancer.” With the specific aim of helping adolescents and young adults (AYA), DJF aims to support organizations, ‘which recognize the unique challenges the AYA community faces, during and post-treatment.” The programs that have benefited from DJF include the UCLA stem cell transplant program, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, First Descents, Cancer for College, Matt Cwiertny Memorial Foundation’s Matt’s Mixed Tape Project and the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation.

TWLOHA

“To Write Love on Her Arms” (TWLOHA) was originally the title of a MySpace post by Jamie Tworkowski. The essay was written for Renee Yohe, a friend of Tworkowski’s, who was entering rehabilitation treatment for addiction, depression, and self-harm. After posting the essay and spreading Yohe’s story, Tworkowski began selling t-shirts to help cover the costs of her treatment. That action and the phrase ‘to write love on her arms” (which appears in the original essay) stuck. It sparked the creation of TWLOHA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ”presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury, and suicide.”

Keep A Breast

Shaney jo Darden started Keep A Breast (KAB) in the late ‘90s after a friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. Originally a designer in the skateboard industry, Darden hoped to harness the creative energy around her in order to raise awareness about breast cancer. The result was KAB and the first breast casts. The casts were taken from female volunteers and painted to represent the challenges, both physical and emotional, that a breast cancer patient faces. They were showcased and eventually auctioned off to support various breast cancer charities. Today KAB still creates casts, but their efforts have also expanded. KAB now works to raise awareness through their “I Love Boobies!” merchandise, their Check Yourself self-exam cards, and their Ambassadors program, with proceeds funding The Keep A Breast Foundation’s programs.

New York Foundation for the Arts

The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) was established in 1971 with the goal of empowering artists and arts organizations. In the past few decades, NYFA has not only done that, but in 2009 expanded its reach to the international community. Before it reached this current scale, the NYFA started out with just four flagship programs: NYFA Classifieds, NYFA Source, NYFA Learning and the NYFA Artists Fellowship Program. Through these NYFA provided sponsorships, online resources, as well as awards and grants- all services that it continues to provide today.

Save the Music Foundation

VH1’s Save the Music Foundation was founded in 1997 with the aim of promoting music education by restoring music programs in America’s public schools. In its first three years, the Foundation managed to generate $25 million in support, created more than 350 music programs in 30 cities, and reached over 120,000 children with their efforts. For this, they won a Peabody Award in 1999. Today the Save the Music Foundation still aims to establish “strategic partnerships with school districts to build sustainable instrumental music programs by providing grants of brand­-new musical instruments to public elementary and middle schools.” In doing so it has brought $52 million worth of new music instruments to 233 school districts and affected 2.6 million lives. 

In addition to supporting these organizations, you can also support Art For Progress by donating directly or by doing your holiday shopping via Amazon Smile. For every purchase made a .5% donation will go to AFP.

-Zoe Marquedant

“This is a love story, a mystery, a crime drama, a wake-up call and a farce,” begins Jon J. Whelan’s voiceover in his new documentary Stink! Though a fairly modest enterprise, the film does manage to incorporate all those elements into a cohesive package. Stink! is essentially an eye-opening exposé of the unregulated or under-regulated use of chemicals in cosmetics, household products and clothing in the U.S. Whelan, whose own personal tragedy led him to pursue the subject, figures prominently in the film; he’s reminiscent of a low-key Morgan Spurlock or a more affable Michael Moore.

Stink!– and Whelan’s quest – starts when the widowed filmmaker orders pajamas for his young daughters from the popular tween-tailer Justice. His attempts to find out what makes the PJ’s smell bad are met with uncooperative ignorance on the part of the company, from customer service reps to its CEO; basically, chemicals used in the clothing cannot be divulged as it is “proprietary information.” That phrase soon becomes a loathsome mantra on the part of manufacturers and those representing the chemicals industry as a legal excuse to protect themselves. Whelan decides to send the offensive PJ’s to a lab for analysis…

Meanwhile, the movie gives us some pertinent history: A 2009 government report warned that environmental toxins are seriously underestimated. Flashback to President Nixon’s National Cancer Act of 1971 and the ensuing 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, which was supposed to regulate new chemicals, but has been virtually toothless in the face of opposition from trade associations and the powerful American Chemistry Council. The main loophole in existing regulations is that chemicals used in a product’s fragrance do not have to be identified on its label. And the fragrance industry, a behemoth business, has successfully fought regulation every step of the way. As Whelan notes, the FDA may regulate what goes into our mouths, but not what goes onto our bodies.

There’s cause for concern: aside from rises in certain types of birth defects, autism and other conditions, the rate of breast cancer has increased from one in 20 women in the 1960s to one in eight, which is especially worrying to Whelan; his wife Heather died of the disease in 2009 and he is raising two daughters. Heather’s story is slowly and straightforwardly divulged via photos and home movie snippets, interspersed throughout the film along with interviews with activists and legislators fighting for transparency, and Whelan’s own attempts to engage various industry figures regarding the loophole.

He includes the story of teenage Brandon Silk, whose near-fatal allergic reaction to AXE body spray led his mother on a futile mission to identify the chemical that is so harmful to her son. (Of course the formula is “proprietary.”) Most maddening perhaps is the fact that Europe and China, among other nations, abide by the “precautionary principle” when it comes to chemicals and thus have much stricter regulations than we do. Their cheaper, sub-standard products are dumped in the U.S. market where questionable chemicals are innocent until proven guilty. (Except they often can’t be proven guilty since manufacturers don’t have to divulge all the ingredients in their formulas.) Unsurprisingly, the lab report on Whelan’s daughters’ pajamas is not good.

Net Return Entertainment

Throughout the movie, Whelan, a likable everyman sort, catches up with various stakeholders including Justice CEO Michael Rayden, lobbyist Steve Rosario, New Jersey Rep. Leonard Lance, whose 2012 Cosmetic Safety Amendments Act is widely endorsed by the cosmetics/personal care industry, and Calvin M. Dooley, president and CEO of the American Chemistry Council, none of whom seem willing to answer his pointed questions about chemicals used in children’s clothing or the fragrance loophole. Though Whelan admits that he’ll never know the cause of his wife’s cancer, there is no denying the fact that there has been an increase in our collective “body burden” of chemicals over the years, and that the prevailing business model favors profits over caution, or even common sense.

Stink! ends with Whelan’s oldest daughter on the phone with Aeropostale, trying to find out if flame retardant chemicals are used on the company’s clothing and eliciting the same non-answers her father has gotten throughout the film. An enlightening look at an issue that most of us are already somewhat familiar with, the film serves as a reminder to be wary of the everyday products we use. Clearly we’re the only ones really watching out for ourselves.

Stink! opens this Friday at Cinema Village in Manhattan.

—Marina Zogbi

The deplorable terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday November 13 has left 352 wounded and has tragically claimed 129 lives, including an aspiring designer named Nohemi Gonzalez, studying abroad from California.

Fashion blogger, Mai Hua  New York Times thought that the explosions “were just another burst of gang violence,” while a woman picking up Chinese takeout recalls a terrifying account of people “hiding under tables,” and her car “riddled with bullets.”

It’s painful and difficult to fully imagine the entire weight of horror these innocent people experienced, and our hearts go out to all of the victims and lives lost. And this weekend, the heartfelt sympathy in the wake of this heinous can be seen all over social media, especially within the fashion community.

Photo Credit: Jean Julien

See below some of the outpouring of love and support from such leading members of the fashion world, including Valentino, Ralph Lauren and Christian Louboutin .

Jacqueline Colette Prosper, yummicoco.com

Read More→

Hot Sugar’s Cold World, Adam Bhala Lough’s engaging new documentary, begins with the title musician/producer recording the sound of Pop Rocks candy dissolving in a young woman’s mouth. It’s as good an introduction to the iconoclastic Hot Sugar (Nick Koenig) as any: this New York-based musical alchemist creates highly atmospheric compositions out of myriad everyday sounds. His moody, multi-layered electronic music has become the main soundtrack for Comedy Central’s Broad City and has graced tracks by rappers Antwon and Heems, in addition to many other Koenig collaborators. (One of his first high-profile production credits was for the song “Sleep” from The Roots’ 2011 concept album undun.) The movie invites us to watch — and ultimately marvel at — Koenig’s unorthodox, intensely personal process.

Courtesy of Amplify Releasing

Something of a wunderkind, Koenig found his MO years ago as a young hip hop fan, when he realized that “everyone winds up using the same sounds,” so he decided to make his own. Hot Sugar’s Cold World  follows Koenig over several months as he creates his music in a variety of environments and cities; collaborates and hangs out with assorted luminaries including Jim Jarmusch, actor Martin Starr and Heems (Himanshu Kumar Suri); queries astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson about the nature of sound; and talks about his process and his life. At one point in the film, he breaks up with his girlfriend, Internet-famous rapper Kitty, seemingly due to conflicting touring schedules and the damaging effect of online commenters.

It’s clear that Koenig is driven to find and record sounds. Early in the film, he fakes interest in purchasing a $90,000 Steinway baby grand piano, mainly to record himself playing it for a future composition. At another point, he has an intern call a funeral home in hopes of recording the silence in a viewing room. (He’s turned down, but will get the opportunity later in a more personal setting).

“Recording sounds is the closest I have to having control over anything in life,” he explains. As for traditional recording, “There are no rules; the people who wrote the rules are playing it safe.”

Courtesy of Amplify Releasing

Koenig travels to Paris and stays in the apartment of his grandparents, Holocaust survivors whose ordeal “makes me feel like the most worthless piece of shit,” for complaining about his own problems. A brooding sort possessed of a romantically morbid streak, he visits and records sounds at their grave, as well as in the Catacombs, where his messing with skulls and bones sets off an alarm. He later plays a cathartic club show where swaying attendees are transported by his music.

Though his pronouncements (“There’s no point to drums anymore…People rely on humanity too heavily”) seem somewhat anti-human, his music is undeniably compelling. We see Koenig’s method, from recording a specific sound, to digitally manipulating it into a usable recording, to incorporating it into baroque, often haunting, compositions. There’s seemingly nothing — a dollhouse on fire, a fountain pen — that isn’t sonic fodder for him, and often these sounds hold a deeper meaning. This is “associative music,” which contains sounds that evoke certain responses in the listener, even if they don’t realize what they’re hearing.

On a visit to UCLA, Koenig visits the room where the Internet was invented, part of a project to record the silence of meaningful locations. Back in New York at the Rose Center for Earth and Space, he seems happy with Degrasse Tyson’s ideas about sound and silence. (Naturally, he later uses the renowned scientist’s recorded voice in a composition.)

Courtesy of Amplify Releasing

Hot Sugar’s Cold World is a absorbing portrait of a musician whose approach may at first come across as gimmicky and self-indulgent, but who appears to be on a genuine search for meaning. By film’s end, there is no doubt that he is a true artist with a worthwhile mission: “I want to capture the beauty of the world… I record these things to remind me, so every time you listen to music you hear the beauty.”

Viewers should pay attention to the final credits, which includes a long and varied list of sounds used in the making of the movie, i.e., “lipglossed lips kissing air,” “petting cactus,” “petting velvet” and “snails eating money.”  Definitely one of a kind.

Hot Sugar’s Cold World is available on digital platforms including iTunes, XBox, Vimeo, Amazon and Google Play.

—Marina Zogbi

Halloween is barely behind us and yet the storefronts and Starbucks cups are already all geared up for Christmas. The holidays are still a solid month away. We still have Thanksgiving and the start of winter to get through. Let’s focus on the present and all the good albums that have come out instead of decking the halls in November. Based on the past month and the beginning of this one, it looks like 2015 is going to close strong. Releases have included Matt Berninger’s new project El Vy as well as relative newcomer Alex G. Here are some of our favorite releases of late:

English folk/singer-songwriter Frank Turner has been churning out heart-wrenching, honest songs for just about a decade now. His most recent record Positive Songs for Negative People is a continuation of autobiographical lyrics and pounding melodies. The record also continues on the vein of redemption and positivity that Turner began several releases ago. “Josephine” is just this. On an unrelated note, the album is Turner’s most popular to date. Turner has been using his new found popularity for good. He launched #FTRAOK, a hashtag meant not only to celebrate the release, but also to “showcase some of [his] and [his fan’s] best examples of Random Acts Of Kindness.”

-Zoe Marquedant