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Superchunk Can Always Count On: Taiyo Kimura

Don’t call it a comeback, Superchunk‘s been here for years. The band members just haven’t been doing anything since the release of 2001’s stellar Here’s To Shutting Up. Well, not much together, anyway, apart from a few one-off gigs and the occasional single. Singer/guitarist Mac McCaughan and bassist Laura Ballance have their hands full running Merge Records and raising families (plus McCaughan has released a number of fine Portastatic records); drummer Jon Wurster has toured and/or hit the studio with the likes of Robert Pollard, the New Pornographers, Bob Mould and the Mountain Goats in between hilarious Facebook postings and Best Show On WFMU appearances; and while we’re not sure what guitarist Jim Wilbur has been up to, other than gigging with Portastatic, he probably has a lot on his plate, too. It’s a wonder the busy quartet was able to reconvene for the fine Majesty Shredding (Merge), a more-than-welcome return that’s accompanied by the band’s first full-on, albeit relatively brief, tour since 2001. Superchunk will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with McCaughan and Ballance.

Mac: Japanese artist Taiyo Kimura works across multiple disciplines with a sense of humor and a sense of purpose. I first became aware of his work through the late Branch Gallery (which was here in Durham), which showed his drawings and other works, like his sculptures of crawling babies sewn from soccer balls. His video work (as well as a bunch of tiny drawings) is on display now here in N.C. at the Nasher Museum as part of The Record: Contemporary Art And Vinyl and includes video of Taiyo burying a record player as it still plays, a plucked chicken leg holding a stylus on a spinning disc and Kimura choking himself as the rope around his neck attached to a spinning record pulls him closer and closer to the turntable.

Video after the jump.