Dev Hynes to give money raised by fans after house fire to charity

December 19, 2013 17:29

The Blood Orange man will split the $24,000 fans donated to three charities

Dev Hynes has said he will give the money raised by fans after his apartment burned down earlier this week (December 16) to charity.

The Blood Orange man and producer lost all his property in the fire, which also killed his pet dog. His girlfriend's mother set up a crowdfunding site to raise money to replace his belongings, which raised over $24,000 in a few days.

In a post on his Tumblr page, Hynes writes: "If I am honest, the fundraiser makes me feel extremely uncomfortable. This isn’t me saying I don’t need the money, to reiterate, I have lost everything."

He then goes on to thank fans for all their support, adding: "This isn’t me being unappreciative…It’s overwhelming in the most extremely nicest way that people would care about this but as I stated before, so many people have nothing they can do to rebuild their life from scratch."

The money, he says, will be split between different charities. But he hasn't yet decided if he will give all the money away and has asked fans to contact him to tell him what they want him to do. " I want to give all the money to charity, 3 charities to be precise which I will explain further at a future point, that’s how I feel. I'm being spoken to by people who are close and understand my situation and are trying to advise me. As I probably am still in shock, and may not have a choice but to accept some of the money, and then think about charities, I don’t know… I don’t know where my head is at right now…"

Hynes released his second album as Blood Orange, 'Cupid Deluxe', in November. The album includes a number of guest appearances including David Longstreth (Dirty Projectors), Samantha Urbani (Friends), Clams Casino, Despot, Kindness and Skepta. Caroline Polachek from Chairlift appears on the single 'Chamakay'.

Hynes has produced music for Solange, Sky Ferreira and MKS, as well as being a former member of Test Icicles and creating music under the Lightspeed Champion name.

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Cheryl Cole wades into Dev Hynes house fire blog dispute

December 20, 2013 9:16

The Blood Orange man has said that he will never work with The Guardian again following an 'insensitive' article

Cheryl Cole has offered her support to Dev Hynes after his apartment burned down earlier this week.

The Blood Orange singer and producer lost all his property in the fire, which also killed his pet dog. Subsequently The Guardian posted a blog in their Comment Is Free section, deemed 'insensitive' by many, including Cole, who tweeted: "What an appalling article! How insensitive and heartless !!". Cole and Hynes have previously worked together.

The piece, originally titled 'Dev Hynes's puppy sob story has left me burnt out' has now been re-named 'Why celebrity crowdfunding has little appeal'. Hynes tweeted a link to the article, writing: "if... this is journalism then i'm done with the world". He also wrote on Facebook that he would never speak to The Guardian again, writing: "This is disgusting. I'm so hurt. I want to go on the record and say i will never talk to the guardian ever again, i want nothing i ever make to be on their website, or in their magazine. Please pull the interview i did recently. I don't want it to come out."

The Guardian blog post discussed the nature of crowdfunding, after Hynes' girlfriend's mother set up a crowdfunding site to raise money to replace his belongings, which raised over $24,000 in a few days. Hynes has now closed the fundraising appeal.

In a post on his Tumblr page, Hynes wrote of the appeal: "If I am honest, the fundraiser makes me feel extremely uncomfortable. This isn’t me saying I don’t need the money, to reiterate, I have lost everything."

He then goes on to thank fans for all their support, adding: "This isn’t me being unappreciative…It’s overwhelming in the most extremely nicest way that people would care about this but as I stated before, so many people have nothing they can do to rebuild their life from scratch."

The money, he says, will be split between different charities. But he hasn't yet decided if he will give all the money away and has asked fans to contact him to tell him what they want him to do. "I want to give all the money to charity, 3 charities to be precise which I will explain further at a future point, that’s how I feel. I'm being spoken to by people who are close and understand my situation and are trying to advise me. As I probably am still in shock, and may not have a choice but to accept some of the money, and then think about charities, I don’t know… I don’t know where my head is at right now…"

Hynes released his second album as Blood Orange, 'Cupid Deluxe', in November. The album includes a number of guest appearances including David Longstreth (Dirty Projectors), Samantha Urbani (Friends), Clams Casino, Despot, Kindness and Skepta. Caroline Polachek from Chairlift appears on the single 'Chamakay'.

Hynes has produced music for Solange, Sky Ferreira and MKS, as well as being a former member of Test Icicles and creating music under the Lightspeed Champion name.

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Stravinsky feted in top London dance house season

By Michael Roddy

LONDON | Tue Oct 30, 2012 12:05pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - London dance house Sadler's Wells will mark the centenary of the riotous premiere of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" with a commission that uses neither the original music or scandalous choreography, opting instead for a piece inspired by it.

Olympics opening ceremony choreographer Akram Khan's "ITMOi (in the mind of Igor)", with music by three composers that will in part draw on Stravinsky's groundbreaking work of musical brutalism, will have its first public performance on May 29, 2013, Sadler's Wells said on Tuesday.

That will be 100 years to the day after a near-riot broke out at the premiere of the ballet, choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky, at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris.

Sadler's Wells will also revive a modern choreography by Michael Keegan-Dolan of Stravinsky's rhythmically ferocious and paganistic ballet that changed the course of 20th century music, the venue said at a news conference announcing its new season.

Other venues around the world will mark the centenary, including 14 performances of various versions and tributes to the work at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, starting on the anniversary day with the Ballet of the Mariinsky Theatre and conductor Valery Gergiev in a re-creation of Nijinsky's original.

Khan, whose dance piece for the 2012 Summer Olympics was intended as a tribute to the 52 victims of bombing attacks on the London public transport system in July 2005, said that given the brilliance of Nijinsky's work, and a more recent version by Pina Bausch, he had decided to go in a different direction.

"It's not really a piece about Stravinsky, it's inspired by his concepts...but it's still about the story of the 'Rite of Spring'," the British-Bangladeshi choreographer said.

He said he had asked three composers to provide the music because "I just wanted to make things more difficult" - partly in the spirit of paying homage to the sense of rhythmical and musical rupture that he senses in Stravinsky's score.

He said that one of the vivid memories Stravinsky recalled from his youth was the sound of ice breaking on the river in St. Petersburg: "He would never forget the sound so the idea of rupture fascinated me."

Sadler's Wells executives said the venue had presented 677 performances in its 2011/12 season, an increase of 53 shows on the previous year.

Artistic Director Alistair Spalding decried recent proposals by the Conservative-led government to drop dance from the core curriculum under a sweeping revamp of the British education system, saying the move would likely reverse a trend of more young people learning dance in school and choosing dance as a profession.

"The predominance of dance in the Olympic ceremonies shows how rewarding and involving it can be," Spalding said. "It will be deeply damaging to reverse this investment."

He said dance was the second most popular activity in British schools, after football, and ranked first for girls.

(Editing by Stephanie Pett and Paul Casciato)

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How Gaga and Bieber could win the White House

Singer Lady Gaga and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg kiss each other during celebrations at the New Year Eve ball in Times Square in New York, January 1, 2012.

Credit: Reuters/Eduardo Munoz

By Lucas Shaw

Tue Jan 3, 2012 1:42pm EST

NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - With Twitter becoming indispensable for news and politics, the Washington Post has climbed aboard the speeding train, launching a new metric for tracking presidential candidates -- @MentionMachine.

@MentionMachine monitors Twitter and other media outlets for the number of times a candidate is mentioned, thus tracking his or her position in the national conversation. In other words, forget about the antiquated metrics like polling or endorsements and go straight to the source.

And if Twitter endorses a Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber ticket? So be it.

In introducing the new app, the Post showcases all the ways it can be used to evaluate how engaged readers are with certain candidates.

"Growth in number of legitimate followers or a high recurrence of retweets are both indicative of growing grass-roots support," the Post notes. "A spike in the number of times a candidate is mentioned on Twitter might signal an event that could alter a campaign."

How can the reader see whether a candidates is experiencing a surge of support? There's a toolbar on its campaign coverage page to show "scores" for each candidate, with each score representing the number of times that candidate was mentioned on Twitter in the past week.

One can also go in depth on a specific candidate, looking at the progression of mentions over different time periods. And what good would it be without the ability to compare candidates?

This is not the first time the Post has put some of its eggs in the social media basket. It launched the "Social Reader" for the revamped Facebook, enabling users to read their post stories from their profile rather than having to hop over to the Post's site.

With its parent company coming off a ghastly fiscal year and an "uneasy" newsroom, these forward-looking measures have to help, right?

At the very least, they could signal progress. With eight out of the top 10 most followed on Twitter being women, the era of a female president may be just around the corner.

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