Cool people like cool things, which is why we asked the dudes from DIIV to share a taste of their taste on Perfectly Imperfect.

DIIV is a Brooklyn-based band comprised of Cole Smith, Andrew Bailey, Colin Caulfield, and Ben Newman. Their unique flavor of shoegaze and post-punk made them one of the most critically acclaimed bands to come out of the Brooklyn DIY scene and a must-see live act. The band’s debut album Oshin had its tenth anniversary in June so Captured Tracks reissued it with some demo recordings and a box set containing 7” of the band’s first three singles. They also told me that they’re working on their 4th record now and have a few exciting things being announced in the near future, so stay tuned. Lucky for us, Cole, Andrew, Colin, and Ben are here to tell us about what they’ve been into.

Without further ado

Cole Smith (instagram)

📚 malfeasance by michael serres

i find myself thinking about this book constantly. kind of about human waste and how it defines our interaction with and destruction of our natural environment. it’s definitely a blackpill but it’s kind of beautiful as well.

💿 computer controlled acoustic instruments pt2 EP by aphex twin

a very strange and unique album, highly recommend.

🎲 magic: the gathering 

possibly the greatest trading card game of all time. not sure where to begin but i take this game very seriously. i play the modern format mostly and consume a lot of streaming MTG content. kanister is a streamer from poland who democratizes his playlists and the musical experience of watching his stream is unparalleled.

🏬 the santa anita mall 

buying products in person feels like a dying art. i like to look at products and look at people looking at products. mall culture feels like a relic of a distant era and it brings me comfort. they also have vegan corn dogs.

🔈 srsly wrong podcast

i love this podcast. it was recommended to me by a friend. they talk about social ecology, anarchist utopianism, library socialism, labor, and a lot more.  its smart, funny, and generally pretty comprehensive, it’s cool

👁 youtube comments on pre-2000 music

these are often entire worlds in themselves. there is tragedy, reflection, love/loss, and nostalgia for a bygone era but generally through a lens of conspicuous consumption. extremely beautiful and dumb at the same time. i love to listen to the song and put myself in the commenter’s emotional mindset at the time of posting. music can deliver in us a wave of emotion out of nowhere and this is truly one of the rawest expressions of that.

👀 the cia’s instagram page

the public face of the organization responsible for untold human atrocity. it’s so on-the-nose that it almost feels like satire at times. most of the comments are people looking to join. sometimes i honestly can hardly believe it exists. i wonder who runs it

Colin Caulfield (instagram)

📕 Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin

Obsessed with this Chinese sci-fi novel right now.  It's putting to words a lot of the unavoidable existential dread that we're all trying to ignore.  I'm not usually a big fan of super hard sci-fi because I'm for the most part scientifically illiterate, but this book does such a good job of making physics poetic and kind of horrifying.

🌋 r/Collapse

Andrew turned me onto this subreddit recently and now it's part of my daily routine for better and for worse.  People posting about the world falling apart.  There's a lot of doomsday preppers in dialogue which I don't really care about, but there's something weirdly comforting about people openly talking about the many elephants in the room when it comes to the current societal downfall we're careening towards.

📕 Circe by Madeline Miller

This book destroyed me.  It's a reinterpretation of the myth of Circe, one of the OG witches in Greek mythology who was exiled to an island for eternity.  She's a minor character in the Odyssey, but is given the lead role in this.  Unbelievably poignant writing about life and death.  Sobbed at the ending - it's a beautiful book.

💿 Warm Chris by Aldous Harding

Aldous is the master of making sneaky, initially unassuming albums that I come back to over and over.  She has such good restraint when it comes to production.  All her records have this modest and refined quality: everything clear and up front with all the focus on performances.  I've always been envious of that kind of approach.  (see also: Jassbusters by Connan Mockasin)

💿 Conflict by John Carroll Kirby

Shout out to my friend Kirby who is undoubtedly one of the most talented musicians I know.  Creatively, he's had an amazing pandemic that started off with this really sparse and luxurious instrumental record.  It's like ambient solo piano with expert synth and flute arrangements. The songs are so meditative and neutrally emotional in that magical way good ambient music is. 10/10 from me.

🎮 SplatterCatGaming

I've been a longtime video game obsessor, but recently I packed everything up and decided to say goodbye for a while.. my plan is to live life "fully" while I still can and then become deeply obsessed again when I'm retired.  In the meantime, I like to watch this youtube channel which is tirelessly dedicated to trying out every variety of new indie game.  I literally don't know how he finds the time to play all this shit.

👖 Meals Clothing / 69 US 

My friends Sam and Amber design and run these clothing brands in LA and it's usually what I'm wearing.  Huge cuts with big pockets and everything is comfortable.  They also have a store called Cloud College on the east side that sells in house brands as well as local weirdo designers.  It's something

Ben Newman (instagram)

🎬 The Criterion Channel

It’s like a film class that you make your own curriculum for. I honestly never really liked movies that much until I got a subscription. It seemed like too much work to try and understand the whole history of cinema. Now I realize that film making is an art form that’s made of all the other art forms. Music and sound, photography, painting, sculpture, writing, story telling. My life is changed.

🍚 Rice

Rice is the best food. Perfect texture. I love any rice based dish. Sushi is probably humanity’s greatest culinary achievement.

🌾 Instrumental music

Instrumental is probably the wrong word, but ambient, noise, classical, electronic music, etc. music without words. I love lyrics and poetry, and listen to music with words a lot, but many times,  especially in headphones, when I listen to music I can hear my own thoughts better, and hearing someone else’s in there is too distracting. 

💾 Archive.org

Full of information, archives within archives. A lot of cool old government film clips and PSAs and science and educational films. Tons of books and audiobooks and really obscure/fringe writing from the whole spectrum of political thought as well as classics. Also going on the website wayback machine and looking for websites I made on Geocities when I was 12 is fun. Makes you feel like an archaeologist.

Andrew Bailey (instagram)

🎛 roland edirol v-4

basically its an old video mixer they used for public television church broadcasts and stuff like that, but for some reason Roland added a bunch of janky effect options, a few of which are actually legit.  It blends two video inputs, so if one of them is a camcorder pointed at the screen and set to luminosity key blend, you get some decent feedback trails.  I haven’t watched a movie without ediroling it to shit since I got one.  

🥣 kava

kava is a mystical root from the pacific islands that brings you closer to gaia and aligns your chakras as a defensive wall against the pain farming demiurge.  jk its just a drug and is bad for you, don’t believe anyone that tries to tell you otherwise.  that said, it’s a solid alternative to alcohol- it makes me more social and relaxed but doesn’t lead me to crashing my car or cheating on my girlfriend.  also it tastes like sour wood shavings because that’s what it is.  

🎧 noise cancelling headphones

are you often surrounded by loud sounds that make you angry?  cop some over-ear noise cancelling headphones, put them on with some ear plugs in and pipe some white noise into them.  Someone could be screaming in your face and you can’t hear them.  it’s like walking around with your head in an invisible air conditioner.- 

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