Interview

Via BoingBoing–Okay, Internet, you can let your collective breath out: Die Antwoord, the South African rap group who mesmerized you last month with some of the weirdest music videos of all time, has a record deal. The trio's first album, $O$ (available here to stream for free) will be released by Interscope–for those keeping track, that means they'll be sharing a label with Feist, Dashboard Confessional, and Robin Thicke. There's a dinner party we'd love to see.

Die Antwoord will also be touring Europe and America starting in April. Fellow South African Neill Blomcamp, fresh off an Oscar nomination for his film District 9, will direct their next video–which means, one hopes, that it will feature more aliens and fewer close-ups on frontman The Ninja's tattoo collection (though the Richie Rich tat just below his left collarbone does seem oddly appropriate, given his haircut).

We're just looking forward to finally figuring out what this "zef" culture the group keeps alluding to means: Reuters calls it "an Afrikaans term loosely meaning redneck," but then again, as The Ninja himself definitively explained to New York magazine, "We not trash, we are fuckin' fancy." We admire that kind of confidence!

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One disadvantage to the pay-what-you-wish model that the music industry has borrowed from museums in the last few years is that, in practice, most people end up not wanting to pay very much at all. Admit it: how much did you really pay for Radiohead's In Rainbows? (According to one survey, one-third of people paid nothing, and the average person coughed up just £4.) Or for Paste, during their pay-as-you-will period in 2007? Or, for that matter, for the silly Nine Inch Nails promotion that offered a variety of ways to pay for their 2008 release Ghosts I-IV, including a $300 option that included a Blu-Ray disc and an autograph?

And have you ever paid for a Girl Talk recording? Though the model has been used primarily as a one-time gimmick for other groups, Gregg Gillis has always been forced to rely on it–because Girl Talk's mashups consist entirely of thousands of unlicensed samples, he's legally unable to demand a certain amount for them. Girl Talk's label, Illegal Art, has long instituted a pay-what-you-wish model for Girl Talk albums, allowing fans to contribute to Gillis's coffers with the implicit understanding that they were just making "donations."

As the label has just figured out, though, there is one way to put a set price on a Girl Talk album: donate all the proceeds to charity. Today, with that in mind, llegal Art is releasing a limited-edition 2-LP pink vinyl version of Girl Talk's 2006 album, Night Ripper. The shock of its lofty $100 price tag is alleviated by the fact that 100% of the proceeds will go to charity: water, a foundation that brings safe drinking water to developing nations. So if there's someone on your holiday gift list who's as socially conscious as musically conscious–well, you're welcome.

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The ironic thing about Saturday's The Art of Rebellion group show at la.venue in Chelsea is that, in practice, it's hard to make capital-A art and capital-R rebellion work together. (Especially when the whole affair is corporate-sponsored. Harley-Davidson, to be fair, is not exactly Coca-Cola, but still: not so rebellious!) The result, in this case at least, is a bunch of lowbrow artists milling about in nice clothes, chatting politely while a DJ plays remixes of The Doors at a perfectly respectable decibel level. (PHOTO CREDIT: BRENDON BOUZARD)

This was the second iteration of The Art of the Rebellion (the first was in Santa Monica in February, which showed Shepard Fairey's work the same day he was arrested), featuring ten artists best known for designing rock posters, each of whom painted a gas tank to benefit CUE Art Foundation. The interpretations of the theme ranged from the fairly predictable (Brian Ewing showed a beautifully detailed skull-and-hummingbird theme) to the rather impractical (artist Art Chantry blew holes in his tank and shone a red light inside, creating a cool jack-o-lantern effect that also rendered the tank totally unusable). At the preview Friday, we spoke to three of the artists.

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Grooms

The only diary entry on Brooklyn noise-pop outfit Grooms' Myspace page is a playful one, titled "New Name...New Album...New Haircuts." (The haircuts part, it turns out, is a joke–bassist Emily Ambruso confides she hasn't cut her hair in over a year.)  The entry starts out: "We were Muggabears, now we're Grooms. Is it a verb? Is it a noun? Not telling."

Grooms (née Muggabears) are, thankfully, more forthright in person than in writing. In anticipation of their Under the Tracks show at Highline Park tomorrow, we sat down for a chat at Death by Audio, the Williamsburg arts space where the band practices and records (Emily lives there, too, with a cat named Honeybeans).

ALEXANDRIA SYMONDS: What have you been doing today?

EMILY AMBRUSO: I had a mole removed!

AS: Yeah? From where? Is it sensitive?

EA: [Gestures to her ribs] It's numb. I don't even feel it.

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