One of the Best Cincinnati has to offer....

 So Cincinnati's best kept secret is not Melt in Northside (okay, maybe it is as far as food goes), but  local duo Bad Veins. Bad Veins is made up of Benjamin Davis who mans the keys, strings, and supplies vocal chords & Sebastien Schultz who mans the drums while the reel to reel plays

 in the background making up for instruments not present on stage . Not only are they pretty to look at, but the sound that is produced is like a robot ballet; a perfect blend of man made joy mixed with technological heart. The energy produced on stage flows off into the crowd and is 

contagious. Their music captivates you like a Postsecret card who's truth you can't get out of your head. You'll find the tunes haunting you long after your ipod has stopped playing them or the concert has ended and you find yourself at The Anchor humming along to their remains.  The melodies and lyrics of this man and machine fusion connect with you and take you for a ride. The music seems to expand outward, curl in on itself, and then unexpectedly swerves off the road all together. The songs seem effortless, which is a sign of any good song writer. The chords float in the air and then bubble over in enthusiastic originality. Listening to Bad Veins will have you asking the question of how two people can weave together such complex sounds and textures, but hopefully you'll find yourself closing your eyes, relaxing, and letting them take you for a spin. 

I have found myself galloping all over the city to live shows since that was the only way i could hear their incendiary tracks. Their first full length album has been promised to arrive by the holiday season. But they are offering a free download of a little ditty on their myspace page: www.myspace.com/badveins and you can also download an acoustic set they just did for daytrotter at www.daytrotter.com/article/1386/bad-veins   

                           

It runs on creativity...

I am completely obsessed with this brand. I stumbled upon them a few years ago at Century 21 in New York. They had one rack of their clothing and i was smitten. The company is based in Amsterdam and will hopefully grow since the closest place from Cincinnati to find their clothes is in Chicago. On their website it states that, "Scotch & Soda doesn't believe in target groups. It's simple. We make what we like or find attractive... All that matters here is individuality and creativity. Creativity and our own way of doing things are the foundations for our brand. We're not looking to be the biggest, and therefore we don't have to adapt to the masses".  The clothes speak for themselves. There are little embellishments on every garment. It's magical. On my last trip to Century 21 after a hiatus of a year i was lucky again since they had another Scotch & Soda buy out. My credit card was none too pleased and showed this upon checkout, but it was worth it. Sorry girls, they only carry menswear. Check out their website: www.scotch-soda.com

Simple expression of the complex thought

So this past week in New York i saw the new Mark Rothko Painting No. 16 at the MoMA. It was in another room away from the other two Rothkos that they have on display and it gave me quite a surprise. It's immense size was sweetly suffocating and  i haven't felt something like it  since the first time i walked into the Rothko room at the Tate Modern Museum in London. It touched me in such a way that I had to sit down. Everything that i was feeling was summed up on one piece of canvas. There is a famous Rothko quote hanging next to his piece in the Cincinnati Museum of Art which sums up his mission, "I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on". The scale and surface of his paintings reflect these ideas. With his paintings, Rothko dismissed the "canvas as a window onto another world", which is the Renaissance traditional three-point perspective. The multiple dark colors almost makes the painting's surface flat, but it abounds with energy, shaking the viewer with hands of emotion and provides depth. You can't help but to walk into the space it occupies and begin to reflect and make the painting your own; it's exactly what I did and what I continue to do with each new piece that I have the pleasure to view in person. On the MoMA's wall by the painting was this quote, "We favor the simple expression of complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth". This is what all artists, hell, all humans should strive for: the elimination of illusion and the revelation of truth. Only then are we truely living.