BRC.01 - Colectivo Futuro
The BlogRollCall is a new series in which we close ranks with other blogs we like. When we started this site, it was common practice to feature like-minded blogs in what is known as a blogroll or to link back to content found there. This sense of community is disappearing more and more these days, as blogs become trademarks of their own, competing with one another for their readership. We don't like that development, we think it's bullshit to cannibalize one another when the main goal should be promoting good music - not ego!
So today we kick off BlogRollCall with our good friends Colectivo Futuro, with whom we collaborated before when we asked them to pick their favourite record covers. Miguel was so kind to put together a mixtape and we also talked about what the collective is all about.
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Who's behind Colectivo Futuro and what was the motivation to start a blog?
The initial concept came in 2005 or so when I was in college and we were looking for a name to start some parties with. We came up with Future Collective then. We booked Stacey Pullen, Derrick May, Bryan Zentz, and Juan Atkins in a span of a year, this was back in Miami. I then left the US and came to Europe and was trying to figure out what to do with the name. By the time I decided a blog was the right thing I changed the name to spanish and started writing about music, some design, illustration, art in general. This was about 2009 when the writing got more constant. Nowadays there's about 5 or 6 people fully involved in everything we are doing. Brunella (my wife) does anything related to the graphic design of our blog, our events, and our branding. Arash is kind of our street guy, doing a lot of the dirty work here in London, he's also our photo editor. Oliver who's one of our DJs and our music editor. Vittorio who just came on to write about art and other topics. And finally Harold who's still back in Miami and who gives a lot of insight on fashion, specifically menswear and that sort of stuff. So the team has been growing in the past year or so and we've done a lot of stuff both online and out in the streets since we moved to London.
What do you usually write about…
We want a platform where we can share things that inspire us. Whether it's music, photography, design, architecture, fashion. It's basically a collection of things or people we appreciate for what they represent.
…and can you highlight some of your features?
Definitely our Kristina Records one because it's the first editorial feature we've done where we've gone out and created all of the content. We went to the shop and took some photos, spoke to the owners and got the interview done. So it's our first end to end editorial post and is exactly the direction where we want to move towards. All of our colectivo futurist posts I'm quite proud of as well because it was one of the first series of features we started doing where we interview a different graphic artist each month and gives us a space to share the works of some amazin creatives from around the world. We've done everything from graphic design studios, industrial designers, photographers, and one of our next ones should be a fashion brand which would be our first. Finally, there was a post I wrote about the architecture studio MVRDV out of Rotterdam which I really enjoyed doing and definitely would like to do more of.
Can you recommend us any blogs you're reading?
Visual Melt is the blog of Leif Podhajsky who's a graphic artist living in London. His blog totally represents his own art but kind of expands on it. It's really well curated and they write about anything including music. It's very coherent and visually stunning.
Suppaduppa this is a Brazilian blog, which I can't even remember how I stumbled upon. They write about music mainly and some other lifestyle related content. We actually did a colectivo futurist feature with Bruna Canepa who's an architecture student and is part of the collective behind this blog. I love finding blogs from other countries and checking out what they are writing about.
The New Graphic is a blog curated by Michael Cina, one of my favorite contemporary graphic designers and artists. He does a lot of the covers and other design work for Ghostly International. It's just a great place to read about interesting new and old graphic design and other related content. From what I can tell Michael is also an avid music and record collector. So they write a lot of music related posts from a graphic design standpoint and I really enjoy that.
And lastly, can you tell us a bit about the mix you put together for us?
Initially I wanted to do a mix with only music from last year to kind of round up CFs favorite music from 2012. But then I ended up doing something completely different as it usually happens. I've been listening to a lot of hip hop lately and particularly have been enjoying a lot of what's coming out of NY where a lot of young rappers and crews are sort of taking a fresh approach towards that boom bap sound. People like Joey Bada$$, The Underachievers, Pro Era, etc. So I wanted to do a mix that included some of their stuff, which is often quite jazzy and surrounded that with some other jazzy stuff from BBNG, Madlib, Darryl Reeves, and Chris Dave. We love all kinds of music at Colectivo Futuro so it's hard to include everything in one mix; so in the end I just went with a gut feeling of music I'm personally digging at the moment.
Subscribe (iTunes)
02. Juj - Gradsmoke
03. Chris Dave & The Drumhedz - Cosmic Slop
04. Darryl Reeves - Donut Man
05. Pro Era - Last Cypher
06. MF Doom - Doomsday (instrumental)
07. BadBadNotGood - The World Is Yours
08. Triosk meets Jan Jelinek - Munmorah aka The Hell You Say
09. Joey Bada$$ - Suspect
10. Flying Lotus - Getting There
11. Teebs feat. Austin Peralta - Lsp
12. The Roots - Eve
13. Jahari Massamba Unit - Wonderin'
14. Kendrick Lamar feat. Ab-soul - Ab Soul's Outro
15. Cosmic Compositions - Ann Arbor / Pharoah's Dance
16. Cuthead feat. Elektrohan - Karma Vision
17. The Underachievers - Land Of Lords
18. Lukid - Veto
19. Hodgy Beats - Malaya
20. Swede:art - Snapshots On A Sunday Night
21. V - Untitled Xi
22. Karriem Riggins - Summer Maddness S.A.
23. Rawdee - I'm Sorry Interlude
Apart from their website, you can find Colectivo Futuro on Twitter, Facebook or Tumblr.