Features & Essays

August 24, 2017

Aoki, Electronica and the Live I.V. Music Scene

By Zoe Jones, William Emmons

When Aoki was merely 19, he was throwing roughly 20 shows a month out of his living room, recording tapes of every single one.

June 8, 2017

WebsterX and Milwaukee’s Hip Hop Renaissance

By William Emmons, Jasmine Rodriguez

Injury Reserve and WebsterX share a dynamic of creating spaces to craft seamlessly gravitative rap songs that are entirely divergent from their contemporaries. They are the embodiments of unapologetically challenging wha...

March 15, 2017

Cancer, Grief and Video Games

By Phi Do

Between the two screens sit a box of tissues and a picture frame of Green holding Joel: his son, the video game’s star and a 4-year-old diagnosed with brain cancer.

February 23, 2017

KCSB: The Station Behind the Fun-Drive

By Christian Watts

KCSB’s goal isn’t just to provide entertainment, but also to provide training in radio, educational outlets and community unification.

February 25, 2016

Graphic Voices Showcases New Media

By Frank Horne

Last weekend, Feb. 20-21 the Limitless Coalition (with the generous help of the Film and Media Studies Dept.) hosted the second annual Graphic Voices conference, dedicated to linking together students from all fields to ...

February 8, 2016

Sam Crane Live at the Batcave

By Mackenzie Hart

Aside from the occasional hungover student biking to the overloaded library or a bird cawing overhead, it’s quiet on campus on Sundays. Life—the buzz of students chatting with friends or bikers peddling to class—is...

June 5, 2015

A Graduating Editor’s Final Words

By Artsweek Editor

Let me tell you a story about a 19-year-old who came to UC Santa Barbara with a dream of being an anchorwoman. She wanted to take over for Katie Couric one day, she told her friends, who were disappointed that the girl d...

May 28, 2015

In Loving Memory of Lita Stone

By Demi Anter

This year, our campus and the Nexus suffered a tragic loss with the passing of Artsweek writer and CCS literature student Lalita Stone. I did not know Lita well outside of working together. She wrote often about burgeoni...

May 7, 2015

Live at the Batcave: Pookie

By Audrey Bachelder

Pookie. The word means “vagina” in Tagalog and is slang for a heroin pipe. In Isla Vista, it’s the name of a loud garage band that refuses to describe their genre, piping that anyone who asks a musician what thei...

May 7, 2015

Demi Anter: A Not-So-Starving Artist

By Mackenzie Hart

  At 10 after three, a girl wearing a flowing white blouse and silver sunglasses made her appearance at a table in front of the Coffee Collab. Her reddish hair framed her face perfectly, with blunt bangs hanging abo...

May 7, 2015

Waka Flocka Flame Declares Presidential Candidacy

By Ryan Mandell

Well, the tragic news is out, people are trashing their campaign signs, putting the caps back on their spray paint cans and undreading their hair: Waka Flocka Flame is only 28 years of age and has multiple felonies to hi...

April 2, 2015

Camping at Coachella: A Packing List

By Audrey Bachelder

Ahh, Coachella: those three days of magical music bonding in Indio, California where the Spicy Pie is eaten by thousands and Tupac appears from the dead, albeit by hologram. It’s the place where Beyonce graced her baby...

March 5, 2015

Live at the Batcave: The Crash Landings

By Alex Bocknek

Meet The Crash Landings. This local Isla Vista punk collaborative exists for one purpose — to fight the infestation of ska and reggae with high-pitched shrieks, disorganized anger, mosh pits, songs about rioting, ear-p...

March 2, 2015

Art Shall Live: ‘The Catalyst’ Launch Party Literary Arts Magazine Shines Spotlight on Lucidity, Tribe Ties and More

By Ryan Mandell

Love, the sublime and creation would be virtually unimaginable without their offspring: the arts. The art of Isla Vista is a penetrating reminder of how fortunate we are to live here, able to enjoy our beautiful communit...

February 20, 2015

Student Documentary Gets Selected for SBIFF: Blue Horizons Students Dive Deep with “Mussel Man”

By Audrey Bachelder

Out in the open ocean past the Santa Barbara harbor, the mussel man drives a self-designed boat at 4:30 a.m. to the harvest ropes. Using a fisherman technique rarely found in the U.S., he pulls up more than a thousand po...

February 16, 2015

Utah Report: I Went to Sundance and It was Awesome

By Frank Horne

Every January, Hollywood descends upon (or ascends to, technically) the picturesque snow globe that is Park City, Utah for the Sundance Film Festival. Since its founding in 1978, Sundance has been a forum for independent...