Archive for January, 2009

The DEC PDP systems never cease to be a source of inspiration for me and the above example of a PDP-7 system at Columbia’s Electrical Engineering department is no exception. I am not sure who took this photo as there was no credit included (source: Columbia Computing History). It would be tempting to gut the cases and fill them with modern studio equipment if you could find a nice used example. Also, if you have an oscilloscope in your computer you win.

For you Mac heads out there, this is your great-grand daddy. A PDP-7, referred to as the “Unix Genesis Machine”, was used by Ken Thompson and his team in 1969 to develop the Unix OS (a very early precursor to what would become Mac OS X).

Where do I even begin? Alan Parsons is beyond epic. He never leaves my turntable, car, or iTunes playlists. Always on repeat.

At 18, Alan had his hands on the Abbey Road tapes while working at Abbey Road Studios, and shortly thereafter engineered The Dark Side of the Moon. This guy was a machine.

Pyramid is my favorite release of the group, though AllMusic calls it “average,” and claims that isn’t a necessity. Shame on them.

Which one is your favorite release?

The Alan Parsons Project – What Goes Up

The Alan Parsons Project – Hyper-Gamma Spaces

A semi-related treat:

Tom Croose is back with another exclusive DJ mix for us here at the ISO50 blog. This mix has some of his own edits that haven’t been played out yet. I hope everyone here has seen Home Alone so the Wet Bandits intro makes sense. Look for Tom Croose to play on Viva Radio’s Naked Friday this week.

Tom Croose – Wet Bandits Intro
Jorge Ben – Eu Vou Torcer (Tom Croose edit)
Fiona Apple – The First Taste (Tom Croose edit)
Fleetwood Mac – Never Going Back (Tom Croose edit)
Mark E – Night Mover
Cave Bear Cult – Spaghettidisco
John Selway – Shake The Snow
Dubtribe Soundsystem – Do It Now
Worst Friends – Enemy (Light Leak mix)
Joyce – Aldeia De Ogum
Martin Denny – Stardust

Free download of Tom Croose – Marv is sick (of winter)

Tom Croose – Marv is sick (of winter)

The Chicago Tribune has posted a nice collection of old gadgetry. Yes, we do have all of this stuff now, but none of it looks this cool. My favorite is the inlaid computer keyboard, I’m trying to do something similar with some recording equipment my desk right now but somehow I doubt it will be that clean.

If I had to watch one band live for 4 hours straight I think the only band that could be is Broken Social Scene. I don’t even think I could even take my all time favorites like Boards of Canada or even Radiohead for 4 hours straight without stretching and asking if anyone wanted to take a break. Obviously this track isn’t the best example of what B.S.S. makes but when I sold merch for them when they played live before they got big I remember them giving me a copy of this record and this track being the first thing I heard and thinking this band is going to be huge or I’ll give up on music.

In 2005 Caribou, Junior Boys, and The Russian Futurists toured together, in my eyes that was probably the best tour that year. The day they came thru Detroit to play at the Magic Stick was the day that I gave up on Michigan supporting the music scene. 14 people showed up to the show because of Detroit Tigers playoff baseball. Dan Snaith the mastermind behind Caribou/Manitoba killed it for us with a synced up visual show, 2 drummers, playing every kids instrument that you hear on Up In Flames and he sweat out all the sweat in his body. Dan, if you ever read this you have to understand and take in that you’re the best live musician when it comes to putting in everything you have into a show. Also, to be an electronic indie musician that pretty much brings their whole studio with them on the road and attempts and succeeds to play each melodica part to every xylophone hit makes me want to light my copy of Reason 4.0 on fire.

In 1996 Matador Records put out the collaborative efforts of Jörg Burger and Wolfgang Voigt’s side project Burger/Ink, I was probably drooling over 1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins at the time. Back then at my school if you loved Smashing Pumpkins you had to hate Nirvana and Green Day and pretty much everything else besides Nine Inch Nails so this Burger/Ink record never crossed my plate but how would it? I lived in Farmington Hills, MI. If you like Gas or even Broker/Dealer who told me this might be one of their favorite albums of all time then its worth picking up and letting it grow on you. “Twelve Miles High” is a driving track compared to the rest of the record. After 10 minutes I don’t realize its repetitiveness and how it has fell into the background while I work. That is one thing about some of the electronic music on the blog that might be alil boring for some people, I can’t stand silence really when I know I could be listening to music but the great part of all this kind of music is that it doesn’t ask for your attention. Sometimes it becomes that distant train that goes by a half mile away that reminds you its 5pm or some cicada making the most amazing sound ever while you walk on the sidewalk in the summer. Its not like we’re all listening to Gas and saying to ourselves “Gawd! when is this song gonna do something! ugh!” its doing what its suppose to be doing which is playing something really pretty while you have to focus on something else and its not asking for you attention like some squealing pop song that asking you to download its ringtone or sing along with it.

This Recloose song should actually be at the top of this post, the song is ridiculously good especially for the lovers of older soulful house that doesn’t rely on vocals from some gospel or motown song. It’s also perfect for those people that need a song to give to take their friends as a baby step into house music.

On a side note: I’m not a fan that Justice has the option to make their own custom home, it’s all I ever want in life and I already have it all planned out and they took a prime spot it looks like.

Broken Social Scene – Capture The Flag

Caribou – Medium Sized Working Dog (Steady Steady)

Burger/Ink – Twelve Miles High

Recloose – Kapiti Dream

I remember seeing the BumpTop desktop concept making the rounds a while back but today I came across a bit more interesting version. In it, BumpTop creator Anand Agarawala walks us through the interface and it’s various features during his presentation at the 2007 TED conference. The concept is obviously in it’s early stages and while this demonstration seems to highlight some of the more frivolous features of the interface, I think a lot of the ideas could be very useful in a future OS. My favorite part is when he dares to insult the sacred cow of OS X, pointing out that it’s essentially a more “lick-able” version of the “same old crap we’ve had for years” (i.e. Windows). You gotta love the audience reactions. Video Link

Note: Since this video is now almost 2 years old, a multi-touch interface is notably absent from his presentation. In the time since the original video Agarawala has updated and has a nice multi-touch BumpTop demonstration here.

Brooklyn’s Collin Palmer aka Calmer fuses psychedelic elements with Jazz influenced compositions in the most well constructed and exciting ways. In this song “Past is Present” Calmer offers up a real dreamy yet driving piece that will take you from having goosebumps to completely relaxing within seconds by dropping a wall of colorful sound in front of you. Calmer is known in Brooklyn for his unique setup on stage usually playing on custom shaped cymbals that he has cracked or bent himself and 60’s surfing documentaries playing in the background, well worth your time to catch live if you haven’t seen him. Head on over to XLR8R to pick up a free track of his called “Open Source”.

It’s Friday and I know you wanna hear some J Dilla since you haven’t probably put on Donuts in a month atleast and thats a shame.

I have to thank Praveen for sending me over a record that I would of probably never picked up unless I was bored in line at Starbucks. The CD would have be playing on the speakers and the CD case was the only thing within reach to read besides the menu. I’m not saying Bon Iver is playing at Starbucks but I wouldn’t be surprised, it has indie-pop singer/songwriter written all over it and everyone is talking about this record. I actually found 3 tracks on it that I really like, i’m actually looking forward to them popping up on shuffle. Bon offers what I like in acoustic guitar playing which is this slow repetitive drive but thats not what is grabbing, a lot of the simple background additions really make this song plus his voice doesn’t sound like some annoying kid from Austin or Seattle or David Gray.

I grabbed this Marius Vareid track from Tom Croose who’s mixes I sometimes post here and i’m pretty sure he got it from the talented crew on Dream Chimney. Guess what it is? yes some slow disco but this time more on the drumkit and guitar angle. I thought it would be nice jam to gradually head into the weekend.

Calmer – Past Is Present

J Dilla – Gobstopper

Bon Iver – Lump Sum

Marius Vareid – Skumle Planer

Came across this very cool CSS/HTML grid designer today. Aptly named “Grid Designer 2”, this tool allows you to mock up grid-based page layouts and set typography styles. A very handy page to have in your bookmarks, now they just need to make a widget out of this. Grid Designer 2

Related Reading: Five Simple Steps to Designing Grid Systems, Aisle One

One of the most important non musical to do’s for a musician/designer is getting a proper press photo in my opinion. This is your chance to show a ton of your personality and a big step in getting writers on board for a feature or helping them to understand your musical direction at that time. This doesn’t mean you have to show your face, take for example the fact that we never saw Burial’s face for more than a year — we just had that drawing of him — but it set the mood I thought. If you’re a musician or even graphic designer, I think brainstorming out some ideas first is well worth your time when doing a press shot. We’ve all worn out the standing in a urban landscape, the blurry shot at a live show, or standing still like a mannequin with a white background. So from 2009 and on i’d love to see photographers really grabbing the personality out of their subjects (Timothy Saccenti’s excellent work comes to mind). This kind of effort in a press photo could make or break you chances with bloggers or writers many times prompting them to use your photo above a couple other things they’re writing about that day. At any rate, a good shot definitely increases your chances of being written about.

Above are a few of my favorites [from top to bottom: Kraftwerk, Boys Noize, Erlend Oye, Jimmy Edgar, Jarvis Cocker]

I definitely count The Smiths’ 1984 Hatful of Hollow as one of my top 20 all time. This is one of those albums that makes you want to post the whole thing but I thought it would be a good challenge to try to narrow it down to three songs. I posted the re-issue version of the cover—featuring a cropped version of Gilles Decroix’s now iconic image (layout/design by Caryn Gough)—as I prefer its design to the bordered original. I really like the overall visual style of their release art, that sort of duo-tone screen print thing that Belle & Sebastian later used to such great effect. Out of the three standout tracks I ended up choosing, at least one of them—This Night Has Opened My Eyes—would make both my top 50 songs and top 10 basslines list. I love that smooth 70’s DI tone, always amazing how good a lot of the older Peel Session tracks sound considering they weren’t studio recordings in the conventional sense.

This Night Has Opened My Eyes

Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I want

How Soon Is Now?