Interview

In pilotspeak the term "severe clear" describes a rare set of visibility conditions with an almost infinite amount of clarity, typically appearing after stormy weather. As fate would have it, those conditions presented themselves on the morning of 9/11. "It allowed the pilots to line up with the towers very easily and sometimes severe clear is so clear that the horizon mixes with the sky and creates different elements," says former Marine Captain Mike Scotti, the subject of a compelling new documentary of the same title, which premieres today. "It's also an allusion to the idea of infinite visibility as a means to see what it's like to be in combat." Scotti should know. After spending 12 years in the Corps, with tours in Afghanistan and the initial invasion of Baghdad with Operation Iraqi Freedom, a vivid imprint of the war was left on this New Jersey native. Scotti recorded his unit's 40-day voyage on the USS Boxer and the ensuing march to Baghdad as source material for a book he intended to write when and if he survived. "I bought my first camera early on in my Marine Corps career just because I knew I wanted to take pictures of stuff, and I just like to tell stories," says Scotti. "I never planned to make a documentary film, otherwise I would have shot things differently."

Pure of purpose when he started his deployment (armed with a picture of an old school friend who died in the World Trade Center attacks, which he intended to avenge in Iraq) Scotti, now 33, returns home after the invasion to find himself alone with feelings of disillusionment after realizing there were no WMDs—and perhaps no justification for the war. The only solace he finds is in his fellow marines and the mourning of his friend at Ground Zero.

MORE »

"I grew up in a really shitty place two hours south of Stockholm and now I'm playing Soho House in New York," Erik Hassle gushed to an intimate crowd Tuesday night during a six-song showcase that marked his first perfomance on American soil. The lanky 21-year-old was scheduled to make quite a bigger splash in New York, Los Angeles and SXSW to promote his much-anticipated debut Pieces, which dropped yesterday on iTunes. Unfortunately, his visa application got held up so he's not allowed to play any public shows on this tour. His show at the Viper Room  last night had to go invite-only. Even so, Hassle was pretty upbeat after the first performance. He told me he'd spoofed the customs fiasco in an AOL video sketch where, "I could only play for 20 seconds before I had to stop and say something about the U.S., and then I could continue," he says. "But I've been trying to sing myself here my whole life so this feels incredible." That enthusiasm came out Tuesday through Hassle's shockingly soulful delivery of the acoustic versions of his pop hits "Don't Bring Flowers" and the digitally skyrocketing single "Hurtful." He also served up a blistering cover of Sam Cooke's "Nothing Can Change This Love" that made me completely  forget I was watching a 6-foot-3 Swede who wasn't born until a quarter-century after Cooke's tragic death in an L.A. hotel.

"When I first heard Wilson Pickett sing 'I'm In Love' or a cover of 'Hey, Jude' I just wanted to scream," recalls the singer, who was introduced to Swedish punk  and American soul at a young age. He also had a "natural introduction" to learning instruments because his hippie-ish parents moved the family to a rural village with a population of 600 when he was just nine and turned a barn-like building in their garden into the village theater. "All the musicians stayed at our ouse and they had all their instruments out so I kind of got into it in a sweet way," he says, making sure to note that, "In small cities people like to get drunk and it got pretty wild. Me and my friends would be playing soccer between old people having sex."

This unorthodox schooling seems to have paid off. Hassle met his manager at the age of 17 when he was studying at Stockholm's musical secondary school Rytmus (where Swedish pop singer Robyn trained her Grammy-nominated voice), where he learned to blend his R&B upbringing with a pop sound that was born in the schools of British New Wave. "The school reintroduced me to pop—a lot of stuff I had forgotten about or just missed, like Depeche Mode, Radiohead, Joy Division," says Hassle. "I've always wanted to sing the soul I grew up with, but I was really blown away by these amazing minimalist elements in pop songs." If that sounds naive, remember that we're talking about a (very talented)  21-year-old with an orange fro and a tattoo of his siblings' birthdays on his right arm so he'll remember them. With that youth also come adolescent lyrics about heartbreak and some synthy beats that we'll call universal, but the range of Hassle's voice is undeniably powerful. "I don't really care about a song or lyrics, I'm really just interested in the way people emphasize words," explains Hassle. "That's what makes a strong impact on me." By his next (and hopefully more public) U.S. tour in April, he may well have a lot more people thinking that way.


Pieces is out on iTunes.

MORE »

PHOTO BY MATT LOW

In the past few years the Jack Spade diaspora has produced variously intriguing new ventures in art and advertising, fashion blogging, and, with the recent launch of Matt Singer's eponymous label, an eccentric new (dare we say, Spade-ian) lifestyle brand. Having spent nine years at Jack, which he helped launch with Andy Spade after working with him at the Chiat Day advertising firm, Singer left the brand last winter to produce the things that he'd want in his "wonder room." "I don't think I'm special in this regard," he modestly told me last week  at his Lower East Side studio, which is decorated with Saarinen furniture, a wall tacked with inspirational (and strikingly odd) news clippings, and samples from his collection and various collaborations. 

For the latter, you might recall the book he produced of The Paris Review's interviews with William Styron to help boost the journal's subscriptions. He also got the Parsons School of Design's Illustration department to base this year's theses around superhero alter-ego stories written by Brooklyn grade schoolers, and teamed up with Soho-based eyewear designer Selima Salaun for the non-profit-benefitting Project Selima & Matt, which produced a limited-edition pair of frames with an inscription written by Jonathan Lethem for The Thing Quarterly last fall and a forthcoming pair of "invisibility glasses," out this month at the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.

"If you're cursed with having silly ideas and the need to share them with people that's what you get," says Singer, whose decidedly less silly fashion collection just dropped at the newly opened Project No. 8a at New York's Ace Hotel. Among the highlights are unisex two-ply, double-stitch cotton oxford shirts with plackets that stop just above the tastefully rounded hems, decoupage ashtrays with the images of the Soviet space dogs Laika, Belka and Strelka (which also adorn his hang tags), handmade cotton belts (in turquoise, purple, salmon, navy and yellow) that feature a little monkey stamped on the inside of the suede fasteners, and his signature line of 22 ounce cotton canvas bags—a weekender, briefcase, and tote - that boast nicely weighted waxed cotton handles and a cheeky logo featuring the planets being orbited by a tetherball sun. "It's probably Jack-ish," admits Singer of the line. "But I think by doing some of these things for so long I've learned how to make them better. I'm not someone who's going to buy a new bag each season, so it's really about making great things."

MORE »

"As a kid I used to pretend I was different pop stars. I'd put on Prince and my dad had a collection of walking sticks and I'd pretend to play guitar to, 'Let's Go Crazy,'" Dan Black told me over drinks last month before a set at Webster Hall with Kid Cudi. All it took to send him into orbit, as it were, was a long winter in a Parisian cave. "I'd been working with bands for quite a long time and had quite enough of democracy and compromise and was like, 'I want to do something incredibly selfish'," says Black, who left his alt rock band The Servant in 2007. "I just holed up in my apartment in a cellar in Paris and went crazy. I skimmed the edge of insanity doing 30 days straight in the studio." What he emerged with from his creative hibernation in 2008 was a spectacular calling card of songs, including the viral mash-up originally called HYPNTZ, which blended the beat to Rihanna's "Umbrella" and samples from the soundtrack to Starman, with Black rapping the Notorious B.I.G.'s lyrics from "Hypnotize." In short order, it became an internet sensation.

MORE »