You know his face. Skin pocked and riven with decades of wear, stern brow and pouched eyes, downturned moustache framing a sneer that could blister paint. As an actor, Danny Trejo plays the kind of bad guy you simply do not fuck with, and it’s convincing for a reason. Growing up in LA, he got hooked on the hard stuff when he was barely a teenager, fell into a routine of stickups and drug hustles, and inevitably wound up in prison, where he fought his way to multiple lightweight and welterweight boxing titles. Eventually he cleaned up, got out, and years later found himself on a film set, visiting a friend and former addict who he was sponsoring in recovery. The director spotted something he liked in that grim face and no-bullshit attitude, and put Danny in the movie. Over the next thirty years Trejo gradually built a successful career in acting, with hundreds of credits in TV and film, notably linking up with director Robert Rodriguez for Desperado, From Dusk Till Dawn, and most recently to star in the Machete series, his character’s spinoff from Rodriguez’s popular Spy Kids franchise. At seventy, Danny’s in high spirits, grateful to still be doing what he loves and maintaining an admirable sense of humor about the hardships and misadventures of his early years 

Few would accuse Jamie of wearing his heart on his sleeve. In conversation he’s so calm, so measured that he can almost seem cagey. But the one subject on which he is always eager to engage, unsurprisingly, is music. He’s a member of London indie trio the xx, responsible for the beats and samples that fill out their spare, sultry aesthetic, and is a sought-after DJ and producer in his own right. Whether he’s praising the rotating list of artists that serve as his muse, or bobbing his head approvingly from behind the decks at one of his gigs, it’s clear that sounds speak to him louder than words. In Colour, his first official full length as Jamie xx, is an album of sonically rich instrumental UK dance tracks, each plotting a point on the spectrum of emotions his in- person demeanor tends to leave hidden. On this record he’s trying to achieve a feeling he himself seeks in the music of others, aiming to make the needle hover in that sweet spot somewhere between heartache and joy. 

“Oh, dip! This reminds me of a substitute teacher gig I had with a special ed class once. That’s a compliment, they were all very creative.” A group of unsuspecting young branding execs have crammed into their company break room on the fortieth floor of a Times Square high-rise to watch Ricky Powell give a slideshow. “It’s really unusual for me to be in midtown in a corporate office, I’m usually in the West Village being bohemian.” Ricky showed up early smelling curiously pungent, and uncorked a bottle of red from the refreshments table well before the crowd filed in. He’s been brought in to show a selection of his renowned street photography, mainly informal portraits and candids from the hip-hop and art scenes of ‘80s New York. He’s often associated with the Beastie Boys—his close friendship with the rap group was formative to his career, and they feature in some of his more recognizable early work—but his shots capture everyone from Rakim, LL Cool J and Run DMC to Keith Haring, Warhol and Basquiat. His live presentation is part standup routine, part history lesson, peppered throughout with irreverent catchphrases, nicknames and ludicrous anecdotes, and interrupted more than once by his tipsy overtures aimed at certain females in the audience. The HR lady in the back row is visibly uneasy, but Ricky’s roguish charm is disarming, and the crowd is thoroughly amused. He’s a little out of control, but the man knows what he’s doing.

I met James Fuentes when I moved to downtown New York City in the fall of 2003, when he was working for Jeffrey Deitch. I shared a loft studio on Grand and Crosby, down the street there was a vortex of cultural activity coming from Deitch Projects. They had skate ramps, hosted art parades and workshops, and they brought a populist tone to a part of the art world which made the myth of being a career artist feel attainable.

The incredible spontaneity and energy of that time was characterized by geography, in particular the loose divisions between public and private spaces. James Fuentes was the first person that I knew of who decided to go out on his own to start his own gallery space. I recently met up with him at Cafe Katja on Orchard Street to find out how his enterprise came into being. 

You can hear the ambition on Eclipse, George Lewis Jr.’s third record under the name Twin Shadow. After two albums of sultry, synthesized pop on indie imprint 4AD, he’s made the jump to Warner, a bona fide major label, and pumped up his sound accordingly. The quarters still feel close, but the stakes are higher, the scope somehow more grand. This time around his vocals soar as often as they simmer, the lovelorn lyrics buoyed by vivid instrumentation, a sound designed to fill out the sorts of expansive venues he’s clearly set his sights on. It’s a leap, but not one of faith, exactly—having abandoned religion early in life, he says he’s just now outgrowing his cynicism and searching for something new to trust in. This sentiment is echoed on lead single To The Top, with the words of a lover turning to Lewis for assurance doubling as an appeal from him and his fans as he promotes himself to a new musical frontier: You gotta make me believe you. 

Genesis P-Orridge is more than a man. By turns a performance artist, mystic, equal rights advocate, poet, occultist and musician throughout the course of his career, his aim has always been to subvert traditional power structures, challenge established modes of thought, and generally approach life as a grand creative experiment. His performance art collective COUM Transmissions caught England’s attention in the ‘70s with their unpredictable shows and confrontational antics, and his band Throbbing Gristle are credited as pioneers of industrial music, but in many ways his most awe-inspiring endeavor came about years later when he met Lady Jaye Breyer in New York. The two quickly fell so deeply in love that they longed to be melded into a single life force, a physical and spiritual being that transcended gender. To that end, they underwent matching breast augmentations and other surgeries to unify their physical appearance. They called their collective being the pandrogyne, and proceeded to live and create art as this new synergistic union, their former selves now forever inseparably linked. Even after Lady Jaye’s death, Genesis continues to self-identify in the plural, credit works with their joint designation Breyer P-Orridge, and take comfort in the knowledge that Jaye is still present and thriving in their perpetual collaborative state.