Buff Monster made a name for himself by putting up thousands of hand-silkscreened posters across Los Angeles, and other far-away places. His work is characterized by happy characters living in brightly-colored bubbly landscapes. Along with meticulously executed paintings, he has created a wide range of merchandise ranging from prints and stickers, to vinyl toys and plush.

In 2012 he created an ambitious homage to Garbage Pail Kids called The Melty Misfits; a collection of vintage-style trading cards, complete with wax wrapper. The color pink, a symbol of confidence, individuality and happiness, is present in everything he creates. And he often cites heavy metal music, ice cream and Japanese Culture as major influences. His work has been shown in galleries worldwide, often accompanied by large installations.

His art has been published in a variety of magazines, websites, newspapers and books, including Juxtapoz, Paper, Nylon, Cool Hunting, Angeleno, The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, The New York Times, and many more. He was also featured in Banksy’s movie: Exit Through the Gift Shop. After 15 years living and working in Hollywood, he has recently moved to Brooklyn.

Also for all our die hard Seclusiasis VIP fans out there, we’re gonna hook you up with a sweet treat! A dope VIP swag bag of classic, current and future Seclusiasis material! The VIP package consists of the fresh Street Bass ‘Philly Streets’ T-shirt, a legendary Kastle “Time Traveler” 12″ vinyl, Blok Boyz “Branding A Serious Situation” EP digital download and later this Summer you’ll score the new Starkey presents “Street Bass Anthems Vol 6″ compilation one week before it drops in early August. We’ll also throw in some bad ass stickers! $40 + $5 shipping, LIMITED to 25 orders!

Tracks:
• Clap City (Produced by Dev79)
• Zombie ft MC Elixir (Produced by Dev79)
• Secret Weapon (Produced by Dev79 & Oktopus)
• Show My A$$ (Produced by Dev79 & Jack Horner)
• We Do It (Produced by Dev79)

Seclusiasis’s Street Bass Summer explodes with the menacing B.A.S.S./Branding A Serious Situation from North Philly’s Blok Boyz. Already veterans of the mixtape grind – including one with Wiz Khalifa’s Taylor Gang – and protégés of State Property’s infamous Oschino, MCs 6 Mil and Inkredible Hus have joined voices with producer and Seclusiasis co-owner, Dev79, to forge a hybrid of Philly’s infamously gully street rap with thick-as-syrup beats and bone-chipping bass.

Some of you have already gotten a taste of what to expect with Branding A Serious Situation with the Blok Boyz’s “Going Outta My Head” on Dev79 presents Street Bass Bootlegs 3 and Dev79‘s remix of Blok Boyz and Oschino’s “Philly Boy Clap”, but even these bangers can’t fully prepare you for Branding A Serious Situation‘s sound that seems both congruent with and ahead of the times.

KEEP WATCH – iTunes Exclusive release is June 24, 2013 but you can pre-order now!

Dev79 – Going Outta My Head ft Blok Boyz by Dev79

Philly Boy Clap by Blok Boyz ft. Oschino (Dev79 Remix) by TRAPmusic.NET

I’ve been eating a lot of grilled cheese because they’re a pretty simple snack…

I decided to switch it up after finding some ingredients leftover from a meal earlier this week.

I decided to throw some leftover pizza sauce, cheese, and pepperoni between two pieces of whole wheat bread… I coated the outsides with butter and a dash of garlic powder…

A few minutes on each side and thats a PIZZA GRILLED CHEESE!

Before deciding on Pizza Grilled Cheese, I briefly considered Pizza Quesadilla, and Pizza Croissant. I will no doubt be trying those soon.

Tracklist
01. Mz Bratt – Selecta (Dev79 Remix)
02. Danny Brown – Grown Up (Starkey Remix)
03. Aquadrop – Plaza
04. MANIKAN & Taste Tester – Back2Back
05. Dev79 – Bang Gang
06. Ciara – Got Me Good (Starkey Remix)
07. King – Alright
08. Nila – BTSU (Knight Riderz Remix)
09. B.O.B. ft TI & Juicy J vs Starkey – Lies in this Bitch (Dev79 blend)
10. Blok Boyz ft Oschino – Philly Boy Clap (Dev79 Remix)
11. KW Griff ft Porkchop – Bring In the Katz (rar Kelly Remix)
12. Dev79 – Riddim of the Night
13. Distal – For You Girl
14. Amerie vs Jay-Z – This One Thing/Change Clothes (Son of Kick Remix)
15. JME – Murking (El Carnicero Remix)
16. Dev79 – Going Outta My Head ft Blok Boyz
17. Mike Jones – Turnin’ Headz (MANIKAN Remix)
18. Mary J Blige – Ooh (Bombé Remix)

At long last, Dev79 presents STREET BASS BOOTLEGS 3 is now available FOR FREE on Club Tapes.

The Street Bass Summer jumps off with the third installment of the widely popular (and always free) Street Bass Bootlegs compilation series. It’s been nearly 330 days since Street Bass tsars, Starkey and Dev79, delivered the last installment of Street Bass Bootlegs and it has been well worth the wait. Dev79 presents Street Bass Bootlegs Vol. 3 is bigger than its predecessor – a staggering 18 tracks – that ebbs and flows effortlessly through extraterrestrial crunk, atmospheric R&B, scattershot hi-hat grime, and gully Martian hiphop. Or, simply put, the all-consuming NSFW swagger that is Street Bass!

With remixes and original works from vanguard producers around the globe, Street Bass Bootlegs Vol. 3 is a collection of 18 scorching heaters primed to ignite club speakers straight through the summer. From Milan’s Aquadrop to London’s Son of Kick to Edmonton’s Knight Riderz to the ATLien triumvirate of MANIKAN, Taste Tester, and Distal, Dev79 presents Street Bass Bootlegs 3 soundtracks the international Street Bass movement.

Among the remix highlights are Dev79’s snare roll tornado remix of Blok Boyz and Oschino’s “Philly Boy Clap” as well as his juke-leaning rework of Mz Bratt’s “Selecta”; Starkey’s singular brand of sonic Tourettes keep pace perfectly beneath Danny Brown’s signature syncopated flow on “Grown Up”. Bombé’s ethereal dub reconstruction of Mary J. Blige’s “Ooh” provides for a haunting closer, while .rar Kelly revamps KW Griff & Porkchop’s Bmore Club anthem, “Bring In The Katz” into the bleakest technoir this side of Berlin.

Just as dynamic as the remixes are the original compositions peppered throughout Street Bass Bootlegs 3. Aquadrop’s “Plaza” is an explosive hybrid of grime, trap, and pitch-bent synth roaring beneath Rick Ross sampled vocals, while King secures his sub bass sovereignty is unparalleled with his “Alright”. Distal departs from his signature Atlantian fookwork with the soulful “For You Girl”, while his Southern fried brethren, MANIKAN & Taste Tester, deliver a felonious one-two punch “Back2Back”. But, to be honest, to even say “highlights” is a misnomer. All 18 tracks bring equal force to the sensatory Voltron that is Dev79 presents Street Bass Bootlegs Vol. 3.

Check out what the press is saying about Dev79 presents Street Bass Bootlegs 3 and listen to some of the tracks featured below. And then GO COP IT at CLUB TAPES

MUSIC YOU NEED | VIBE MAGAZINE | DO ANDROIDS DANCE? | THE DANKLES | HIGH ON BEATS | BALTIMORE-CLUB.COM | KICK OUT THE JAM | TRAP & BASS

Street Bass Bootlegs Vol 3 Mini Mega Mix by Dev79

Aquadrop – Plaza by Seclusiasis

Danny Brown “Grown Up (Starkey Remix)” – from Street Bass Bootlegs Vol. 3 by starkey

Bang Gang by Dev79

It’s another installment of Beat Artillery, and for this one I’m gonna talk about a synth I just started working with, Cyclop.

Cyclop is made by Sugar Bytes, who are mostly known in the production community for their Effectrix plugin, which is basically an effect sequencer that you can throw on a track/bus and draw in various effects that trigger in quantized time on the incoming audio. I’ve used it in my productions mostly on pads or background pitched instruments to give them a little bit more life in the mix. Some kind of ‘movement’ if you will.

At first glance, Cyclop may seem a bit intimidating if you don’t dig into your synthesizers very often. It’s very far removed from something like a Minimoog. But the gui is pretty easy to navigate and it kind of follows a traditional 2 oscillator approach. But this is where Cyclop kind of gets interesting. The “oscillators” can pretty much be anything…. you can have samples, stacked sawtooth waves, analog modeled waves, something they call “phase stressed wavs”, fm… you name it. There’s also 2 filters which are also very well varied with vowel-stressed cuts, “ripple” filters, etc… it gets pretty wild.

They’ve also included a mini Effectrix-like FX processor into the synth which can control pretty much every aspect of modulation you could think of. LFO’s, Envelopes, effects like phasers, power downs, etc… literally anything.

Cyclop is marketed as a “bass synth”, but I’ve been using it more for leads. Bass might be their target sound, but Cyclop does other things just as well. If you look on the site, you’ll find all sorts of demos of dubstep bass sounding wobbles and all sorts of nonsense bass sounds… but if you think outside the box and really get into the synth, you’ll find that it’s pretty versatile and can deliver some very fresh sounds from it’s array of oscillators and filters.

Check it out HERE. Cyclops sells for $139/€119.

I’m not quite sure why I picked David Ayer’s End of Watch for this month’s Gleaming the Queue. Unlike many, I thought the Ayer’s scripted Training Day was rather pedantic, in spite of Denzel’s Oscar-wining performance, and I could not sit through his S.W.A.T. The film also starred Jake Gyllenhaal, an actor whose post-Donnie Darko work is as inconsistent as a weatherman. But, for whatever reason, I am glad I took Netflix’s recommendation for End of Watch – if only to see a LA cop movie where the cops are actually nobel.

The film covers three months in a patrol car with Officers Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Mike Zavala (Michael Peña). ”I am Fate with a badge and a gun,” Brian declares in the opening voiceover, sounding like the graduate student he is in his scant spare time. With nerve to match his ambition, Brian will walk fearlessly into any strange house and, when he unearths a cache of drugs or money, never considers taking some to finance his education. End of Watch isn’t “The Shield” – these two are actually GOOD Los Angeles patrolman.

Brian’s partner and best friend, Mike, is as expertly comic at imitating Anglo voices as Brian is at speaking Spanglish during their police-car banter, but a homebody who married his high school sweetheart Gabby (Natalie Martinez). Brian, with a history of three-night stands, may have finally found Ms. Right in the perky Janet (Anna Kendrick). All four are the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human beings you’ve ever known in your life, which, for a film about Los Angeles police officers, is jarring in and of itself.

Since the early 1990s, Hollywood’s portrayal of L.A. cops floats the notion that an officer needs to be crazy or corrupt to survive and thrive in a hellish job. End of Watch seems to argue that the boys in blue can have hearts of gold. And just as Brian and Mike are noble, the local Mexican malefactors are monstrous. I checked the credits and the Mexican cartel underlings with whom Brian and Mike battle are named “Demon”, “Wicked”, and “Big Evil”. And just as shitty as these characters’ names, every single gang member is portrayed like a walking stereotype. The only lines the gangsters ever get out are a mouthful of explicits through thick (and barely passable) accents. The film tries oh so very hard to get you to believe that these people are indeed the real thing, but it comes off a little too forceful and really only lop-sides the emotions.

The ethical point of view in End of Watch has its inspirational and novelty value, but the aesthetic POV — the pretense that most of what we see is “found footage” — borders on the ludicrous. Brian justifies his incessant carrying of a camera by saying he’s doing a project for grad school. Viewers at first may sigh and indulge this overused strategy with a conditional eye roll. But Ayer and cinematographer Roman Vasyanov go nuts with the cinemabatics, shattering the visual lexicon of film and replacing it with anarchy.

This works in doses, primarily in the beginning and during most of the action. Scenes are escalated to pure intensity as Brian and Mike shoot their way out of darkly-lit alleyways, with almost no time to check their blind spots or catch a breath. Ayer uses the up-close and fast-paced camera work to his advantage during these moments, because End of Watch at times feels like an airtight adrenaline rush, with thrills around every corner. You never can quite expect what’s to come next and for that I credit Ayer’s choice to shoot on the fly and without caution.

But then the rest of the film comes weighing down. For starters, the film will randomly switch between planted cameras to traditional ones that are invisible to the actors on the screen. It’s a head-scratching move, because it essentially pulls you out of the scene and makes you question the purpose of the “real” cameras opposed to the “fake” ones. Ayer would have been much better off if he chose one or the other and stuck with it. Switching back and forth confuses the presentation and muffles the execution.

Vasyanov & Ayers use wide aerial shots of Los Angeles – an obvious nod to Michael Mann – with breathtaking imagery of sun setting over the sprawling cityscape, only to then thrust the audience back into the crammed police cruiser, or crack house. Perhaps most interesting about the POV use in End of Watch is that it is not only from Brian and Mike’s perspective. At the start of the film, Brian recites all of the weapons he caries daily – showing off his side arm, two mag clips, handcuffs, etc. – to a motionless handheld in his locker. Later in the film, we see the Mexican gangbangers doing to the same – posing with their weapons to a motionless handheld. And although End of Watch is definitely the Brian and Mike story, I could not help but think that the similarity between the two scenes was Ayers’ way of saying that character in the film believes he is its star. Even the title of the film itself plays on the audience’s voyeurism that permeates throughout its 108 minutes. To be honest, I’m not fully sure if Ayers is trying to say more with the POV camera work than to just make a gritty LA cop movie, but there are enough clues throughout End of Watch to make one speculate.

Ultimately, the saving grace of End of Watch is the on screen bond between Brian and Mike. Gyllenhaal and Pena show superb chemistry, and Pena’s performance is especially strong. The two make what could have been a gimmicky buddy cop flick something a little more special, with a deeply emotional core at its center. Brian and Mike are truly brothers in blue and not once do you question that.

As it sits End of Watch is a well-made cop drama that is as unafraid to show the audience the bond between officers forged by the daily horrors they face. Although it does somewhat glorify LA’s finest, at the same time it does a great job showing you just how much they can actually go through on a single given day. The story may be Ayer’s most clean-cut, but it works as a performance-centered film that never completely ruins the handheld gimmick.

The Street Bass Summer jumps off with the third installment of the widely popular Street Bass Bootlegs mixtape compilation series. It’s been nearly a year since Seclusiasis Street Bass tsars, Starkey and Dev79, delivered the last installment of Street Bass Bootlegs and its well worth the wait. Dev79 presents Street Bass Bootlegs Vol. 3 is bigger than its predecessor a staggering 18 tracks that ebbs and flows effortlessly through extraterrestrial crunk, atmospheric R&B, scattershot hi-hat grime, and gully Martian hiphop. Or, simply put, the all-consuming NSFW swagger that is Street Bass!

All 18 Tracks will be available FOR FREE on JUNE 7, 2013 on Club Tapes

Tracklist
01. Mz Bratt – Selecta (Dev79 Remix)
02. Danny Brown – Grown Up (Starkey Remix)
03. Aquadrop – Plaza
04. MANIKAN & Taste Tester – Back2Back
05. Dev79 – Bang Gang
06. Ciara – Got Me Good (Starkey Remix)
07. King – Alright
08. Nila – BTSU (Knight Riderz Remix)
09. B.O.B. ft TI & Juicy J vs Starkey – Lies in this Bitch (Dev79 blend)
10. Blok Boyz ft Oschino – Philly Boy Clap (Dev79 Remix)
11. KW Griff ft Porkchop – Bring In the Katz (.rar Kelly Remix)
12. Dev79 – Riddim of the Night
13. Distal – For You Girl
14. Amerie vs Jay-Z – This One Thing/Change Clothes (Son of Kick Remix)
15. JME – Murking (El Carnicero Remix)
16. Dev79 – Going Outta My Head ft Blok Boyz
17. Mike Jones – Turnin’ Headz (MANIKAN Remix)
18. Mary J Blige – Ooh (Bombé Remix)

So I hit the store, invited a couple of my peoples over and the action went down. Lionshead beer was flowing, a couple el’s of bubblegum filled the air and the grill was blazing with a wide variety of goods. The menu included turkey burgers, wings, yellow squash, pineapple, corn, onion and more.

My photo documentation this time out was not amazing but I encourage you to get your own grilling session happening and feast your eyes on it live. Teaser – later this summer I’m gonna do a blog documenting my infamous turkey burger recipe!

She decided to take me to Lands End with her  (which is only just at the end of Geary street, the street I live on too) and we would get up super early and hike around for a bit.

For those that do not know Lands End is part of the San Francisco Golden Gate recreational center on the Northwestern corner (Pacific Ocean side of San Francisco).  You can take the bus 38 all the way down Geary Blvd for only $2.00 but we drove this time.

Reilly Guiding us down the trails

As we started the walk (I’m not so much cut out for hiking ATM as I’ve just been writing music all winter with minimal exercise) I started to see thee most beautiful Cypress Trees, and I cannot tell you how amazing the air smelt, clean, crisp, and like…. Trees! ; SF air in general is pretty amazing since we are surrounded by ocean and bay but I live in a high traffic area with lots of, not the most couth people.

The Cypress Trees

Walking along still we see wild flowers blossoming and popping up in every turn of our walk.   As we are walking deeper into the path we turn a corner and get to view the left hand side of the Golden Gate, which is absolutely stunning, and looks over to Bonita Cove in Marin Headlands.

The Golden Gate peeking through !

We stay for a moment and then head on further towards the paths.

The trail becomes hillier; we start a hike up a hill, which in some parts forks off to other trails and destinations.    We venture down on set of stairs that lead to the cutest little beach that has piles of blooming flowers, driftwood and huge natural rock formations at the edge of where the water starts.

Beautiful blooming flowers on the beach

You can see that some people have had fires at the beach (and I wishing we could start one because it was quite cold that morning), we sat for a moment, I checked out some stunning rock formations on the beach and decided to get back up and going, I was quite cold, I will be more prepared next time.

Huge rock formations on the beach

I suggest going super early, as we were walking back to the car, loads of walker and runners and were making their way rushing through and around us.

Next time, I need to check out Sutro Baths, which has loads of Shipwrecked ruins, I’d love to grab some flicks of those!