Archive for August, 2008

My brother Kirk is a sophomore at San Francisco State University. He’s planning to study design but has been experimenting with photography a lot over the past couple years. He showed me some of his recent stuff recently and it was really impressive so I thought I’d share. All of these shots were all taken with a Lomo LCA and cross-processed, bringing out all those nice colors. My favorite is the top one, it’s like a book about growing up in Sacramento boiled down into a single image. You can see more of his work at his Flickr page.

Last night i went to see Norwegian DJ Todd Terje, the man is a machine, a 6 hr set and most of the time he just plays edits that he did himself of songs, mostly that deep slow motion disco but with a lot of tribal elements which is always is a win-win situation for me.

Brought out a old favorite, Nightmares on Wax, i think if you do graphic design and you’ve listened to lounge music at some point in your career, this is probably played as much as Thievery Corporation or Air.

Grovesnor is a Hot Chip favorite, he toured with them in the UK, its kinda cheesy but has a great keys being played at the beginning and has a good feel to it.

The artwork above is from Fleet Foxes, i woke up with the song playing in my head and i’ve only heard the song a couple times. The overall color when you step back look at their cover is really appealing to me, it reminds me of Monty Python’s Holy Grail but really crowded.

Dolle Jolle – Balearic Incarnation – Todd Terje’s Extra Doll Mix

Nightmares On Wax – Nights Interlude

Grovesnor – Nitemoves

Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal

My first interest into Krautrock beyond Kraftwerk. I found NEU! ’75 (1975, duh) when I was 17 and have yet to stop listening to it eight years later.

NEU! was the brainchild of Kraftwerk’s Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother. Anything Rother touches, I like; which you will see in future posts.

This track is off of NEU! 2 (1973) and is a fine example of Rother’s melting guitar melodies, and (along with almost every other NEU! song) displays Dinger’s self-invented Motorik beat.

NEU! – Neuschnee (1973)

Above is the back side of the Terrabyte 3 poster from last week. Since this is only going to be on the small format hand flyer it was sort of a tight squeeze given all the info they wanted to include. I wanted to carry over the 60’s programming punch-card concept from the front, and considering the amount of text, I decided to use it as the central design element. Most of the type is set in Berthold Akzidenz Grotesk (at various weights) and is all grid aligned with a piece of graph paper I scanned in and set on Color Burn overlay mode. 

Incidentally, a couple people had mentioned an alignment issue with the left arrow on the front side. Thanks for the heads up, it’s been fixed and the finalized version is now up on the original post. There’s also more info on Terrabyte 3 now available at the Arboretum site.

Caught this ad on Paleofuture. The RCA Two Thousand was a TV set released in 1969 with a price tag of $2000 (roughly $12,000 in today’s market). It leveraged then nascent computer technology to, among other things, store favorite channels electronically and automate tuning. The interesting thing to me is how much it resembled a modern flat panel when the cabinet was closed (top and bottom left). Unfortunately, those are just doors; when in it’s opened state the Two Thousand looks a lot like any other old tube set from the 70’s. At any rate, the top image is wonderful to look at and downright prophetic when you consider this was designed in the late 60’s. It seems ripe for some sort of Ive-esque re-purposing a’ la the Dieter Rams inspired iMac.

The Okada Noriaki-designed B&D Messenger is a device that helps blind and deaf people communicate via SMS text messaging. I love the design of this thing, the cardboard housing they used to bring costs down ends up providing a very nice looking surface while keeping it inexpensive. They’ve also made the unit much smaller than other Braille phone devices currently on the market. The system is based on a set of twelve points that raise and lower to create braille letters which are translated from SMS texts received by your computer (USB connection required). It’s great to see someone using technological innovation to make a device that benefits people more accessible. More info and pictures can be found at the B&D site.

Via Gizmodo

Thinking back about what was probably the biggest turning point for me musicially was hearing and seeing Beck in his New Pollution video. I remember the first time i watched it all the way thru, i loved the way he dressed and how he performed the song in the video and then the video started going all over the place and i thought it was genius, every second of it from the Gainsbourg references to the all out odd moments where that wrestler is drinking milk. Well now he is still all over the place but it all still sounds like Beck. This new track off his latest LP has really grabbed me, its not as imaginative as New Pollution but that’s fine, it holds its own.

If you ever wanted to hear Moroder just do something like Spinal Tap’s Space Jazz Odyssey but way way better the new Lindstrøm LP which is only 3 songs but all 3 are over 10 mins does a perfect job. Lovely melodies but some i think i remember from other songs like this one sounds like a track from the movie Blood Sport which isn’t a bad thing trust me that soundtrack is pretty solid.

One person that’s on fire right now is DJ Koze, some of the best tracks coming out are from him, he does nice poppy late night remix for Matias Aguayo.

This last song i posted because i don’t have the original on this computer but i thought you might enjoy this remix of it. Part of me just wants to wait and get Kate Bush’s original up but the Chromatic’s kept it about the original and not about them which i liked.

Beck – Youthless

Lindstrøm – The Long Way Home

Matias Aguayo – Minimal (DJ Koze Radio Edit)

Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill(Chromatics edit)

Update: Tickets & info are here
Update: Poster Image updated (see above) and back posted here

I just finished up the poster / flyer design for the third annual Terrabyte event (click the above image for a large version). This is the first work I’ve done since the Obama poster and it was a nice chance to get the wheels turning again. The spec was pretty open, just had to include the themes of Nature / Technology / Art. I went for a sort of 60’s modernist infographic approach, like a page from an old physics textbook maybe. This was also the first chance I got to use one of my favorite new fonts: Hellenic Wide. The face was really a pleasure to work with, it cuts a nice line and sort of acts as it’s own divider so there wasn’t much need for all sorts of lines and spacing. Time permitting, I’ll post a small "making of" on this in the coming months. The poster will be available for purchase online in the next couple months and I am hoping to have some early copies available at the show itself.

For those of you into nuclear physics, the imagery is supposed to represent a critical mass, as in everyone coming together and then and explosion (of the aural/visual kind, not atomic). Poster design aside, try to make it out to this event if you’re in the Southern California area, it’s sure to be a great evening of music and visuals, I’ll be playing a set as Tycho and doing some live video / visuals as well.

Terrabyte is officially described as a "unique celebration of nature, technology, and art". Translation: A great evening in the Los Angeles Arboretum out on the green listening to live electronic music and viewing visuals on huge screens. All ages are welcome; it’s a $10 donation to get in and all proceeds go to the Arboretum preservation fund. There’s a bar for those 21 and up and a lot of exhibits to check out. An architecture school builds this massive array of projection surfaces that stand about 30 ft. tall to fire the visuals on to; it’s a pretty amazing sight. Needless to say, it’s a great time and well worth the ticket price. If you missed the past 2 years, now’s the time to make it out, this will be the best one yet.

Here’s this year’s live lineup:
Tycho (+ISO50 Visuals)
Test Shot Starfish
Dusty Brown
Eezir
Deru

More info at the Arboretum’s site

Date: September 14, 2008
Location: L.A. County Arboretum & Botanical Gardens 
Time: 5:30-9:30PM
Entry: $10 Donation
ALL AGES SHOW

See you out there!
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This week David Byrne and Brian Eno released something for the first time in 30 years, the album is called “Everything That Happens Will Happen Today” and the last song posted “The River” is from it. I just picked it up online and pretty much made yesterday a whole day of Byrne + Eno and wanted to share a few tracks from The Catherine Wheel score. As for the new record, i found a lot more straight forward and vocal which is great but i personally wanted more rhythmic sounds accompanying each track since they are both genius in my opinion when it comes to percussion.

Brian Eno/David Byrne – Black Flag

Brian Eno/David Byrne – My Big Hands (Fall Through the Cracks)

Brian Eno/David Byrne – Dinosaur

Brian Eno/David Byrne – Eggs In A Briar Patch

Brian Eno/David Byrne – The River

Also, If you haven’t seen this already, David Byrne made an organ that sits in the middle of an abandon building that triggers parts of the building to make a sound, it’s really interesting, sadly it’s not too far from me and all my trips and plans to make it out always fall thru, I might just go by myself.

David Byrne – Playing the Building

Tristan Perich is a visual artist and musician doing some very interesting work in both fields. His music project, called 1-Bit Music, is an actual circuit that plays back music at 1-bit. All you electronic musicians and engineers will know that 1-bit is the lowest possible representation of digital music, meaning that the resulting audio is quite stripped down from the analog form we know and love. You may recognize the sound as reminiscent of old console games from the ’80s many of which were at 8-bits. Although I wouldn’t be listening to this in my car, it’s interesting to hear someone pushing digital audio in the other direction while the rest of us record in 32-bit floating point. Listen below for Tristan’s version of Fischerspooner’s Just Let Go. Visit his site for more songs.

Tristan Perich – Just Let Go (Fischerspooner)

Perich also does machine drawings using a pen apparatus he designed. You can see some examples above or check out his site for more.

Via YDEK