Features
Michael Alvarez: Paint, Friends and Fam in the City of Angels
When looking at a painting by fine artist Michael Alvarez, it's easy to feel both amused and intrigued in an instant. A graduate from the renowned Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California in 2007, Alvarez has spent years pushing and perfecting his technical skills, while growing and connecting with his personal style. Paying homage to his family, friends, culture, and the components of his life in general, Alvarez's paintings are rife with personal and nostalgic undertones. The painter's...
Jock: From the Sketchbook to the Silver Screen
With an unreserved, emphatic coolness to his work, Scottish-born comic book artist Jock has made quite the name for himself in recent years, producing work for the likes of Sony, Warner Bros. Universal Pictures, and attracting the attention of both DC and Marvel....
Daedelus: Adventure In Time
The beat scene has never been stronger. With Flying Lotus surging forward with his Brainfeeder imprint and the likes of Night Slugs pioneering the impossible-to-define mash up of forward-thinking club sounds, we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to beats.
Alfred Darlington, or Daedelus, has played a pivotal part in the evolution of the scene and its sound. For the last ten years the producer has been pushing his trademark sound forward, often incorporating the most surprising of elements and doing...
DJ Shadow: ’96 ’til Infinity
TAP TAP TAP. "JUST MAKING SURE IT WORKS," SAYS JOSH DAVIS AFFABLY AS BRAINER WRESTLES WITH ITS NO-GOOD-SOON-TO-BE-THROWN-DOWN-THE-TOILET DICTAPHONE. SITTING DOWN IN A PLUSH ARMCHAIR, THE OPULENT TOWNHOUSE IN THE HEART OF CLERKENWELL, LONDON seems a funny place to be chatting to someone as unassuming as the man we all know as DJ Shadow. Looking unassailably crisp in a grey t-shirt, jeans and an Undefeated baseball cap, he’s laid back. Slow talking. Very California cool....
Kid Koala: Where No Man Has Gone Before
“Do you know my friend Rian Johnson?” asks Eric San, probably better known to you and me as Canadian turntable maestro Kid Koala. Sure, the filmmaker who directed Brick – that head scratching, cult 2006 crime thriller starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, thinks Brainer. “He said he started crying in a room!” laughs the DJ raucously, describing the director’s reaction to the ending of Space Cadet, Koala's new graphic novel....
Paul White: Rappers’ Delight
With his new album – ‘Rapping with Paul White’ – our record of the month for September, Brainer caught up with Paul White to see what makes him tick tock in his versatile world of hip-hop. To some degree, he is as expected; laid-back, friendly and, by his own admission, a quiet character. But get him talking, and his enthusiasm to push music on is charmingly effusive. Indeed, as we later cross Embankment Bridge, White spots a musician playing an...
11 Minutes With DJ Yoda
You may have heard it time and time again, but it's true: Duncan Beiny, aka DJ Yoda, has to be seen at least once in a lifetime. Instrumental in pushing the boundaries of turntablism and (in)famous for his cut-up style of mixing, the always tongue-in-cheek Yoda has refined his skills for the last decade and evolved from a hip-hop jockey with a difference, to an audio-visual mastermind oozing eccentric flare. Nothing is sacred, musical genres mean squat. And that's what...
