Archive for April, 2008

Leaving early a.m. this morning so spent the night getting prepped and packed for Toronto. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ll be speaking at FITC and playing a couple live shows. For the live stuff I’ll be doing an all new visuals set using a new piece of software I’ve completely fallen in love with. It’s the most enjoyable app I’ve come across, maybe ever. It’s a modular video app called VDMX and it blows the doors off anything I’ve ever used for the purposes of live video. You can essentially design the way it works to your liking, you design the interface and the functionality. There’s a bit of a learning curve but once you get over that you start to realize how powerful it can be. At $300 it’s not super cheap, but considering the feature set and functionality it’s well worth it. It can do quartz composer effects and blending modes all in real-time. 

I am using a Novation Remote SL and footpedals to control most of the parameters of the video portion, and a the same Novation with split parameters to control another laptop running Ableton Live. I’m also routing a set of audio outputs from Live to VDMX which then analyzes the incoming sound and modulates various parameters based on the amplitude of selected frequency ranges. Somehow VDMX is able to do this all in real time, I’m still not quite sure how.

There’s a show Saturday and Sunday night, I’m hoping to video tape the show on Sunday night at the Drake but it remains to be seen if we can track down someone to tape it on short notice. If you or anyone you know has proper video equipment and some skills to go along with it, let me know.

Graphis Annual 1960: one more thing I wish was on my bookshelf.
Via insect54

In addition to the Tycho / ISO50 set at the Drake, Toronto April 20th I’ll be throwing down some visuals + music as ISO50 at FITC’s launch party. The visuals will be across multiple screens and broken up with some sort of pre-processing system developed by Markus Heckmann (Wüstenarchitekten) as part of his and Tom Kuo’s Superspace project. Should be interesting results, see you out!

ISO50 Live @ FITC Toronto Launch Party
Saturday Night, April 19th
The Burroughes Building – 3rd Floor
639 Queen West, Toronto
9PM-3AM

Featuring Superspace: Synchronized Audio & Video Performances With DJ Task & VJ Wüstenarchitekten

Special Guests: ISO50, Suedath, Bocce, and ether.mann.

A couple interesting alternative takes on the calendar with some great typography. I am not sure who made these, I remember that I saw them on ffffound but as usual, the source info left much to be desired. Please fill in the blanks if you know more.

The next Tycho single drops April 21st, 2008 as part of the Ghostly International / Adult Swim compilation Ghostly Swim. The single is a live version of a working title from the forthcoming album. The Ghostly Swim compilation will be available as a free download from the Adult Swim website. The comp will feature the Tycho single along with tracks by other Ghostly artists; should be a great collection based on what I’ve heard of the lineup. 

CORRECTION! So apparently this was *not* designed by Philistine (although I still love his work). I was misinformed and now am uninformed….So just waiting on the proper channels to fill me in on who designed this. I’ll let you know as soon as I do.  Below it is a teaser video for the release featuring some cool branding work for the compilation.

Air are, of course, one of the better bands to come around in the past 20 years. They blessed us with 3 albums full of some the best synth work ever recorded (I don’t particularly care for most of their latter day work). My favorite album is a collection of singles released between 1995 and 1997 entitled Premiers Symptômes. Words can’t describe this, so just have a listen. I am sure most of you have heard this album, but it’s so good I thought it warranted a post even 11 years after the fact. And the album cover is so amazing, it should get a post all to itself

Also, click the live shot below the cover for a very cool short documentary entitled Eating, Sleeping, Waiting and Playing: A Film About Air on Tour: Soundcheck, New York via Pitchfork.tv.

Air – Les Professionales

I’ve been loving the American Apparel Tri-Blend heather shirts for a while now and I’ve finally added one to the ISO50 tee lineup. If you’re not familiar with them, they have a sort of old school feel, a bit more elastic and form fitting than the 100% cotton AA stuff and a lot softer and light. A perfect summer shirt for sure. The design has been screened on without a base-coat to lend a mildly worn effect to the print, it really blends well with the heather shirt. The 1976 design is now available in Heather Gray Tri-Blend at The ISO50 Shop.  Get them while they last, this limited first run is moving fast!

The latest ISO50 / Tycho Newsletter is out now. Inside are details on the new 1976 shirt, a couple new Tycho singles and some live dates. Check it out here or subscribe to ISO50 to receive it automatically.

Joe Rossell sent in these great shots from the Yuri’s Night show on Saturday. He used a Canon 40D and from what I’ve read, it’s a comparable model to the legendary 5D but at half the price (there’s a good discussion of this issue at the Flickr 400D group). I want to ditch my Nikon D80 sooooo bad, I really loathe that thing. Seeing filmic results like this from the 40D just makes the decision so much easier. But I feel like I should hold off since there’s been talk of the 5D’s successor being release very soon, supposedly early 2008.

The show itself was a pretty interesting event. I played in the day time but the whole thing went on until 2am (here’s a shot of the same stage later in the night, a bit different vibe). The day set was great though, a very mellow vibe and a totally great crowd. And besides all that, how often do you get to play on a billion watt sound system inside of a NASA research hangar? The only issue I had with it was the DJ format. I don’t really like when they hide you way up there behind all these counters and gear, it sort of takes away the intimacy of the show. But then again, it was an airplane hangar, so how intimate was it really going to get. I also couldn’t do visuals since it was still daylight, but not much you can do about that.

And by the way, the observant might notice the 1976 variant I’m wearing. It’s brand new and will be available at the shop in the next couple hours. I’ll be doing a proper release and newsletter tonight, but consider this an early warning.

I don’t want to make a habit of posting random ironic-kitsch type images, but this is insane. Someone sent this in from Photobasement. I love how you can see the Photoshop alpha hatch behind the titling. Truly epic design.