Archive for October, 2008

As you may have realized by now, I love wood grain. The only thing I love more than woodgrain is when there’s stainless steel or brushed aluminum involved. This molded plywood laptop case by Brian Kelly doesn’t appear to be the most functional thing in the world (and it will certainly add some girth to your MBP) but sometimes form must come before function. More details on Brian’s Behance page.

The October issue of the ISO50 newsletter went out last night. Have a look at the online version or sign up to get it delivered right to your inbox. Oh the convenience!

What really makes my day and keeps me from not just becoming a complete hermit is when i see or meet passionate people and the most passionate person I know is my good friend Danny(The Reflecting Skin) by a long shot. If you ever could witness him enjoying a track or him performing it honestly will make you smile, you’ll have no other choice. Watching him is a mixture of a mad scientist that thinks he has nailed down some brand new formula for something extra special and is pacing back and forth and is completely unreachable or him literally dropping to his knees and giving you the “wait for it….ok now”. I wasn’t even allowed to speak in his room when we first listened to the new Telefon Tel Aviv record but when he played me this Arc Lab track at a really high bit rate and on great speakers he did all of the above. The bell comes in like it’s ringing on a foggy morning at about 5 am a 100 yards away then just a simple average IDM drum pattern comes to partner up the bell and you wait and there it is its simple and low but the bassline appears thicker than trying to eat cheese cake with a dry throat. The song comes completely alive with the melodies fighting for your attention like Aphex Twin’s “Fingerbib”. I hope you can enjoy it as much as Danny and I do.

Arc Lab – Versions

Oval – Do While

Quiet Village – Can’t Be Beat

Mike Cina designs sleeves and limited edition prints for Ghostly International sub-label, Spectral Sound

Mike Cina, one of the brains behind the prodigious YouWorkForThem design collective/ store/pretty-much-anything-else-you-can-imagine, is the artist of three gorgeous new 12″ sleeves for Spectral Sound.

Cina’s original 12″ sleeves displayed both a neo-classical and an abstract beauty in their immaculately composed, eerily evocative forms, while marking a new era for the Ann Arbor-based label. The three covers represent a new breed of Spectral talent including Kate Simko, Sami Koivikko, and Cologne-based duo Daso & Pawas. All of Cina’s recent work for Ghostly/Spectral was on display at Ghostly founder Sam Valenti IV’s home gallery this past month.

The covers are rendered as Giclee prints, which are created using professional 8-color to 12-color ink-jet printers. These impeccable printers are capable of producing incredibly detailed prints for both the fine art and photographic markets alike.

Each individual print is hand-numbered (in an extremely limited run of 40) and signed in the bottom right-hand corner by Mike Cina. The prints are available online at The Ghostly Store alongside shirt designs by Cina.

Tech Radar has a good article about Intel’s upcoming Core i7 processor, the first truly integrated quad core from intel (apparently the previous quad cores were actually just two dual cores cobbled together). Judging from the specs and the multi-threading performance this looks to be a very good thing for us in the multimedia world. Couple that with OS X Snow Leopard’s supposed focus on improving multi-core support and it’s looking like things could get very powerful coming up here. That is of course, if the developers hold up their end of the bargain by creating software that efficiently takes advantage of new hardware. But judging from past experience, it’s pretty clear that’s not going to happen (Case in point: Photoshop is still 32-bit on the Macintosh. WTF?). Either way, it’s exciting to see that processor technology is still moving along at a steady clip. Long live Moore’s Law!

Article Link

The last thing I would do to you guys is post Peter Bjorn and John – “Young Folk’s”, let’s be honest it was one of the catchiest tunes around and my favorite track when it came out but I honestly don’t think I could sit through it right now all the way thru. Well, PBJ came back and didn’t disappoint at all with a vinyl and digital only release that I couldn’t just post only one track of. I love the direction of this record, at times it’s like a poppy Bibio album and touches that 70s-80s PBS background music style but in hi-fi. If you’re going to ever buy an LP this year and don’t have a record player this is the purchase to make because the LP comes with a digital download and you can give the LP to friend and they’ll love you for it.

Peter Bjorn and John – School of Kraut

Peter Bjorn and John – Erik’s Fishing Trip

Peter Bjorn and John – At The Seaside

Peter Bjorn and John – Favour Of The Season

I thought this warranted it’s very own post. I guess I’m just not trying hard enough because I have none of this type of stuff in my house. Where do you even begin looking? Also via Alphanumeric’s HfG Ulm Flickr set.

Some great pieces from Alphanumeric’s HfG Ulm set on flickr. More proof that everything cool in design isn’t happening in America.

Atmostheory is the one-man design studio of Christopher David Ryan… a Portland, Maine-based graphic artist, daydreamer, pseudo-scientist, wanna-be astronaut and untrained intellectual who tends to find inspiration in pretty much anything… especially music, the universe, the human condition and natural phenomena.

Mmm, some more Michael Rother for you.

This is Harmonia’s second release just before Rother hit the studio to record NEU!’s ’75. Brian Eno joined them for their next release (Tracks and Traces (1976)).

Harmonia’s lineup was a match made in heaven: a perfect mixture of NEU! (Rother) and Cluster (Moebius and Roedelius). Wikipedia references them as a “Krautrock supergroup,” and quotes Eno as saying that they are “the world’s most important rock band.”

Deluxe was a departure from the trio’s first release Musik Von Harmonia (1975). It’s much more of a solid sound with smoother melodies.

It’s a long track (9:43), but definitely worth the full listen, as they fit quite a few movements into it.

Harmonia – Immer Wieder (1975)

See also:

• NEU! – Neuschnee
• Cluster – Hollywood