Tiny Creatures was born in May 2006 with its release of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffitti’s

What made you come out of hibernation? How did you manage to corral all the original tiny creatures?
Janet Kim: The cyclone. I killed the wicked witch of the East.

Who are the artists and performers in the “Big Deal” exhibit?
Big Deal includes artwork by Jason Yates, Coco Yates, Nathanael Luke Walton, Jed Ochmanek, Garrett Cathey, Rachel Detroit Kucsulain, Tall Paull Gellman, Matt Fishbeck with performances by Geneva Jacuzzi, Mecca V.A., Puro Instinct, Nite Jewel, Julia Holter and many more.

How was the exhibit opening night?
The puppet show was great and Don Bolles’ improv soundtrack was definitely taking it there.

Did the girls truly go wild on the winter solstice?
All the performers were great. Your performance was a lot of fun and was the heart of the night. Piper’s band was awesome like blonde mammals running in the haze. Claire Cronin’s voice and poetry was like an old record coming back to life. Beautiful.

Some tiny creatures have gained quite widespread notoriety, and Tiny Creatures itself has got a bit of a reputation—What’s this about an Andy Warhol grant and a book?
The book is called Where Art Belongs by Chris Kraus. It will be released in February with Semiotext(e). The tales are dark and strange, like old memories. It weaves through the myth of what Tiny Creatures was and is and will be.

How has Tiny Creatures evolved since its inception and closing?
Tiny Creatures is. Tiny Creatures was. Tiny Creatures will be.

What’s happening for the closing of “Big Deal” tonight?
Holy Shit is happening. Hedi’s doing awesome projections of Russian Baths and some old French films for Softboiled Eggies. It’s our last show. Andrew Arduini as Vibe Central will do another one of his avant garde narrative fiction music freak outs which I love. Hopefully, he won’t put anyone in a head lock this time.

What’s next for you and Tiny Creatures after Big Deal?
Being a Tiny Creature as a tiny creature is. Ears and eyes. Surfing. Getting back into John Cage, Xenakis. Details. Concocting some sort of new drug. Embracing.

BIG DEAL TINY CREATURES CLOSES TONIGHT SAT., JANUARY 15, AT D.I.Y. GALLERY, 1549 SUNSET BLVD, 90026. PERFORMANCES BY HOLY SHIT!, VIBE CENTRAL, SOFTBOILED EGGIES, RACHEL DETROIT, SAM & ALEX, AND GARY SHULTZ, READINGS BY BOB BRANAMAN AND HEDI EL KHOLTI, PENNY ANTE’S CURATED BOOKSTORE, SCREENINGS BY STUDENTS OF MEXICALI ROSE COMPILED BY MARCO VERA, DJ JIMI HEY 6 PM/$5/ALL AGES. WWW.TINYCREATURES.COM.

Upset the Rhythm is the independent London label that’s always taken good care of Los Angeles—they were one of the labels participating in that first burst of No Age vinyl in 2007 and also put out releases for L.A. bands like Soft Boiled Eggies and BARR and now Foot Village, who will be releasing their Anti-Magic on Upset The Rhythm this July. And they’re also helpful in other ways—right now they’re helping Sun Araw (Cameron from Magic Lantern) and Pocahaunted on their U.K. tour. Next month, L.A. will return the favor with a special Smell show gathering together Upset the Rhythm bands from coast to coast as one of three special U.S. shows. Full details from Foot Village’s Brian Miller below:

UPSET THE RHYTHM COMES TO THE US!
Upset the Rhythm is a London based record label / booking agency that specializes in introducing small, DIY, Smell-esque American bands to UK and EU audiences. Chris and Claire, who run the label, have been incredibly successful at cultivating a large and young audience for American bands in the UK. Often, they gather large audiences for bands that, in the US, would be happy to just see a dozen kids at a show! Despite being in the UK, they are one of the most enthusiastic patrons of US bands. They were the first to put out No Age on vinyl, book
large tours for bands at no profit to themselves, and have an incredible roster of bands that includes BARR, Lucky Dragons, Gowns, High Places, Former Ghosts, Death Sentence: PANDA!, KIT, Foot Village, and a ton more. Despite their importance to American bands, UTR is not very well known in the US.

Those of us in Foot Village were inspired to pay tribute to UTR in celebration of our first release on the label. So, this July, instead of just playing a typical record release show, we have organized a showcase of bands on Upset The Rhythm at the Smell. The response from the bands was so overwhelming that both a San Francisco and New York showcase have come together as well. Chris and Claire will be flying out for all of these.

PARTY NUMBER ONE: NEW YORK
Friday July 3rd @ MONSTER ISLAND BASEMENT
Ambergris
Lucky Dragons
Silk Flowers
Bird Names
Soft Circle
John Maus
Future Islands
Wet Hair (Shawn from Racoo-oo-oon)
128 River St @ Metropolitan Ave
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
L-Bedford, G-Metropolitan, JM-Marcy
8:30pm | all ages | $tba

PARTY NUMBER TWO: LOS ANGELES
Sat July 11th @ The Smell
Foot Village
Lucky Dragons
Gowns
Death Sentence: PANDA!
KIT
Softboiled Eggies
Former Ghosts
The Urxed (Rob from High Places)
No Age DJs
all ages / $8
247 S. Main St.
Los Angeles CA 90012
http://thesmell.org
http://www.last.fm/event/1041975

PARTY NUMBER THREE: SAN FRANCISCO
July 12th, Sunday, Club Sandwich presents Upset the Rhythm SF Showcase
@ The LAB
Foot Village
Gowns
Lucky Dragons
Death Sentence: Panda
TITS
KIT
The Urxed
Former Ghosts
2948 16th Street
San Francisco, CA 94103
5 pm $8 all ages
http://thelab.org
http://clubsandwichbayarea.com

All I’ve got to show from Coachella is a sunburn, a pimple, and a busted bottom lip. While there, I enjoyed: half-assed ass shaking to Crystal Castles, Ting Tings, and Girl Talk; Morrissey looking bloated but still croonin’ like a pro; Paul McCartney singing me to sleep as I lay in my tent; worrying that Ariel Pink was either going to melt or collapse into a pile of dust when exposed to daylight; watching Liars (featuring Alex Myrvold of Pizza!) squirm through my favorite songs while I wondered whether their presence signified a new direction for Coachella (towards an aesthetic I find much more attractive and interesting than that of, say, the stupid Killers) or simply reaffirmed my aforementioned belief that some music is best kept in dark places where sweat is produced via dancing hard as fuck rather than by standing in the fucking sun thinking, “I would be dancing right now if I weren’t sweating my balls off!”

And: I guess I do like that one TV on the Radio song; how gross but totally radical it is that M.I.A. can hop and squat and shimmy and slam like that so soon after popping a baby human out of her vagina? I mean, I hate it when people talk about their babies and how their babies are waiting for them so they can only sing seven songs but I’ll take seven songs and some dumb-ass baby banter if it means I also get amazing glow in the dark costumes and hammer-dancing in front of footage of impoverished Sri Lankan militia men while M.I.A performs effortlessly, barely breaking a sweat—unlike Gwen Stefani who looked like a sweaty bag of shit for several performances after birthing Kingston.

And: the Vivian Girls looking too shampooed to have all that hair in their face and doing absolutely nothing new but making me like them anyway—also a case of No One Dancing until my buddy Jack and I started a water-spitting war and got at least 12 too-skinny kids in short shorts to move, although they were mostly just scurrying away from us but really where’s the line between that and the way hipsters dance, anyway? Plus the Vivian Girls really know how to harmonize and they swapped instruments during a coda without any awkwardness at all, a well-choreographed gimmick that reminded me of how cool I felt the first time I switched drivers going 80 on the freeway but then also how I wondered immediately after, “Why did we just do that?” But then I thought immediately after that: “Sometimes it’s good to do something just for fun, even if it could kill you.” Not that the Vivian Girls switching instruments during a song could kill anyone—the analogy really lies in the doing something just for fun part, because you are young so maybe it’s enough that you are new even if what you’re doing is not.

Also—how No Age has really gotten their shit together. They are now a professional act complete with Scott their very own sound guy (ex-drummer for the Soft Boiled Eggies) and Jim Smith who coolly orchestrated the tech guys to get it all just right so that this show actually did get people bouncing up and down and shoving each other a bit. Plus Chloe Sevigny, one of my first female crushes, was there looking like a fancy rancher’s daughter wearing a white dress that was sort of see through if you stared at it long enough and with her golden locks in a tidy French twist. And: how I can’t help but hum along to that goddamned whistly song by Peter, Bjorn and John.

Finally: how watching X and My Bloody Valentine put into perspective all these kids making noisy pop music by recalling the rich and fabled genealogy of this newfangled uprising and putting a sincere (albeit wrinkled) face on sounds that were once something controversial and that today’s babies take for granted… it must be oddly pleasant to play a show you never would’ve been asked to play in your own heyday, knowing that tropes you helped invent are propelling smooth-skinned foals into stardom from what middle-aged critics are carelessly referring to as the “outside” or the “fringes” while you wonder where the hell that leaves you? But I guess that’s how culture propagates itself and blah-blah-blah babies are gross, even when they are not babies but musical movements.

I didn’t get to see Public Enemy because I was busy almost getting arrested. Then I was not allowed back in so I didn’t get to see the Cure either. Lame.

—Drew Denny

Download: A Certain Ratio “Shack Up”

Part Time Punks‘ Mike Stock texts us that A Certain Ratio have confirmed to headline the Part Time Punks fest on Sun., Nov. 16! They will be joining an already really impressive line-up and pushing it toward the legendary! If you don’t know them, they were one of Manchester’s best and are a perfect embodiment of the Part Time Punks playlist! Tickets are still on sale for only $13 here and full line-up is below!

PART TIME PUNKS FEST
SUNDAY, NOV. 16
THE ECHO AND THE ECHOPLEX

A CERTAIN RATIO

with

PYLON
THE SLITS
LOVE IS ALL
VIVIAN GIRLS—[INTERVIEW]
THE NIGHTENGALES
NERVOUS GENDER
SAVAGE REPUBLIC
THE URINALS
THE WILD STARES
ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI
TUSSLE
MAGIC BULLETS
THE MUSLIMS—[INTERVIEW]
GRIMBLE GRUMBLE
THE SOFTBOILED EGGIES
WARPAINT
WEAVE
NODZZZ

GUEST DJs
CHUCK WARNER (of the excellent HYPED 2 DEATH and MESSTHETICS comps!)
DAN SELZER (Acute Records!)

AND SCREENINGS OF RARE VIDEOS INCLUDING PERFORMANCES BY…

THROBBING GRISTLE, EINSTURZENDE NEUBATEN, SAVAGE REPUBLIC, SUBURBAN LAWNS, WILLIAM BURROUGHS, TALK TALK, SOFT CELL, GENESIS P-ORRIDGE and MORE!

Tickets are now on sale—link here! Only $13 for the whole show on Sunday, Nov. 16, presented by L.A. RECORD and KXLU and featuring the bands below and more!

PART TIME PUNKS FEST
SUNDAY, NOV. 16
THE ECHO AND THE ECHOPLEX

with

PYLON
THE SLITS
LOVE IS ALL
VIVIAN GIRLS—[INTERVIEW]
THE NIGHTENGALES
NERVOUS GENDER
SAVAGE REPUBLIC
THE URINALS
THE WILD STARES
ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI
TUSSLE
MAGIC BULLETS
THE MUSLIMS—[INTERVIEW]
GRIMBLE GRUMBLE
THE SOFTBOILED EGGIES
WARPAINT
WEAVE
NODZZZ

GUEST DJs
CHUCK WARNER (of the excellent HYPED 2 DEATH and MESSTHETICS comps!)
DAN SELZER (Acute Records!)

AND SCREENINGS OF RARE VIDEOS INCLUDING PERFORMANCES BY…

THROBBING GRISTLE, EINSTURZENDE NEUBATEN, SAVAGE REPUBLIC, SUBURBAN LAWNS, WILLIAM BURROUGHS, TALK TALK, SOFT CELL, GENESIS P-ORRIDGE and MORE!

L.A. RECORD is beyond excited to team up with KXLU to co-present the Part Time Punks Fest on Sunday, Nov. 16, at the Echo and Echoplex! Mike Stock and Benny Shambles have arranged a top-notch line-up of bands from all over the planet, currently headlined by Athens’ classic Pylon! Full line-up—with more revelations to come in the next weeks—below!

PART TIME PUNKS FEST
SUNDAY, NOV. 16
THE ECHO AND THE ECHOPLEX

with

PYLON
THE SLITS
LOVE IS ALL
VIVIAN GIRLS—[INTERVIEW]
THE NIGHTENGALES
NERVOUS GENDER
SAVAGE REPUBLIC
THE URINALS
THE WILD STARES
ARIEL PINK’S HAUNTED GRAFFITI
TUSSLE
MAGIC BULLETS
THE MUSLIMS—[INTERVIEW]
GRIMBLE GRUMBLE
THE SOFTBOILED EGGIES
WARPAINT
WEAVE
NODZZZ

GUEST DJs
CHUCK WARNER (of the excellent HYPED 2 DEATH and MESSTHETICS comps!)
DAN SELZER (Acute Records!)

AND SCREENINGS OF RARE VIDEOS INCLUDING PERFORMANCES BY…

THROBBING GRISTLE, EINSTURZENDE NEUBATEN, SAVAGE REPUBLIC, SUBURBAN LAWNS, WILLIAM BURROUGHS, TALK TALK, SOFT CELL, GENESIS P-ORRIDGE and MORE!

ADVANCE TICKETS ON TICKETWEB.COM NOW!