Macky World, the latest brainchild of visual, musical and fine artist Matthew McAvene, recently took the Santa Barbara Art Walk by storm.  McAvene used his talents to display his goods in an outstanding setup pictured below.  For his first week at the art walk he is selling creature hats, sculptures, paintings and Tape Ninjas!  Enticing people as they pass by are arial puppets and the massive display with door cut-out.  Two puppets, Joh Avridge and Beeps the Robot, invite potential customers inside…

Macky World’s Entrance

Creature Hats

In the several months before I moved out of Santa Barbara last October, a band emerged on the scene to reignite my hope for the rebirth of the local musical landscape. Not since Matthew McAvene teased me with a few smoking sets in early 2007 had I felt the spark of any new, home-bred talent. All it took was one performance by Howlin’ Woods on a Friday night at Cold Spring Tavern to convince me that these guys had the goods. They could jam fiercely, led by the sinewy guitar voodoo of Griffin Chetakian. The rhythm section of Matthew Farrington on drums and Brian “Solar B” Chandler on bass (and keys) was rugged and raw, yet with an intuitive grace. A lot of bands can jam. These guys came across as the total package thanks to the presence of a true frontman. Jordan Chetakian – a powerhouse vocalist with some acoustic guitar chops to boot, boasted a dynamic range. He could rain down with the back-alley blues, bust out a little Sly Stone soul and woo the ladies like a tormented indie rock icon. Offstage he was just an unassuming, plaid-shirt wearing dude with glasses which made his spotlight transformation all the more profound.

Hey everyone,

We are proud to announce Solutions for Dreamers : Season 3, the latest benefit compilation CD from Oniric Records, is now available on iTunes!

All proceeds from the album are being donated to The World Food Programme (WFP), an incredible organization that fights hunger worldwide.  The album features the single “A Step for Mankind” by legendary band The Wailers, featuring Duane Stephenson and Bishop Lamont.  Thirteen great tracks are accompanied with factoids about world hunger and The World Food Programme, showing this album’s strong passion to creating a difference in this world by taking care of its inhabitants.

Pick up the album today and know your donation is going directly to fight world hunger. If you would like to buy the album directly from us, you can do so here!  You also have the choice to download the album in high-quality MP3, Apple Losless, or FLAC. We like high-quality sound. : )

We at Oniric Records would like to thank each of these artists for their passion to fighting world hunger and for their generous time and effort in creating these tracks for our compilation.  Each of these artists is generously donating the proceeds of their track’s sales to WFP, so we strongly recommend you go support these artists and buy more of their music if you enjoy it!

Thank you for listening, and we genuinely hope you enjoy.

Sincerely, The Oniric Records Team

We want you to be able to sample a free track from the album,
click here to download Mr. American by Marc B!

A big thank you to Matthew McAvene and Atman for their amazing efforts at turning Oniracom’s concrete floors into a work of art.  Instead of buying and laying tile, why not Faux paint tiles on your concrete floor?

Here’s how to do it yourself….

BEFORE

AFTER

Click to Read More…

The Ocean is one of the Earth’s most valuable resources. It provides 99% of the Earth’s living space, and is the largest known habitat for living organisms in our universe. The Ocean carries more than 90% of global trade between countries, and fish supply the greatest amount of protein consumed by the World’s population. It is important for us to care for the environment and the Ocean is the biggest part of it. Heal The Ocean is a Santa Barbara based non-profit organization that serves to protect the Ocean from pollution and mistreatment. In their mission Heal The Ocean (HTO) states “Heal the Ocean focuses on wastewater infrastructure – sewers and septic systems – as well as ocean dumping practices that contributed to ocean pollution. We are focused on Santa Barbara County, but our methods are now serving as a model for other coastal communities across the country.”

Read more.

Enjoy a slideshow of over 100 photos of the 2009 Heal the Ocean Benefit Concert.

This event featured guest speakers Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Jean-Michel Cousteau & Hillary Hauser. Fine artist Matthew McAvene provided us his Fabulous Fish Puppet Show.

Oniric Records produced the music portion of the night, featuring Culver City Dub Collective and The Black Seeds who played until The Coral Casino in Santa Barbara kicked us out.

Check out the sneak preview of Matthew McAvene’s new song “Super Hero Dreams” for the Solutions For Dreamers : Season 3 compilation to benefit I Went Hungry.  I Went Hungry is a non-profit set up by The Wailers to help eradicate world hunger.

Matthew premiered this song live as part of the New Noise Music Conference & Festival at the Sandbar with a little help from Jose Esquivel (Culver City Dub Collective) and Adam Topol (CCDV & Jack Johnson).

Oniracom will be well represented at this weekend’s New Noise Music Conference and Festival, held in Oniracom’s backyard of Santa Barbara, CA.  New Noise Santa Barbara is a three-day music and digital media conference that will showcase emerging and established bands, host educational panels on the music industry’s hottest topics, present esteemed experts from all aspects of the business, and serve as a place for players big and small to connect and plot the future of music….

Today I thought I would share a quick tutorial on how you can make a hand drawn myspace header image and then show you a way that you can quickly add that header image to the top of your myspace.  (If you are only looking for the code that adds an image header to your myspace page, see step 10 at the bottom).

To see the Header in action go check out Myspace.com/MatthewMcAvene