Archive for July, 2009

I’m pretty sure that i’m not alone when I say i’ve been waiting for this trailer for a long time. Looks really good, seems a tiny bit more mainstream that I would of imagined BUT there are definitely some unique parts and a great cast. I really like the detail on the animals and the background, should be an amazing film to see in the winter.

The Pirelli poster I wrote about yesterday came from this great book, Poster Collection: Zurich-Milan. Inside is a great and varied assortment of posters from the Museum fur Gestaltung Zurich’s collection. My favorite was the Pirelli tire advert, but I love the above as well. Starting from the top, designed by Max Huber, Silvio Coppola, Giancarlo Iliprandi, and Anna Monika Jost. The cool thing about the book is much of the work is rarely seen elsewhere. There is some commentary, but I recommend this book mainly for the visuals.

I am not one for motorcycles, but it’s an ad like this that makes me reconsider my position. Sign me up to be one of the motorcycle bad guys in the Bourne films.

What about that logo! I like it — maybe a little unwieldy, but it does a good job conjuring their product. I guess it’s hard to evaluate at this point given its classic status. As far as I know, Pirelli was in the business of tires and not bikes. Either way, Gerhard Forster makes the thing look damn cool. I love the charcoal-like texture in the shadows; similar to some of the Robert Longo work I wrote about a few weeks ago.

Went to Bowery Ballroom last night to check out The Drums, I fell in love with the music, the combination of eras in the sound was really refreshing. At times I thought Grizzly Bear meets The Cure and the guitar really keeps it catchy while the singer serenades and keeps the crowd feeling like you’re invited to dance on stage with him. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

I posted back in December on Lone’s LP Lemurian and got a lil bit of love and hate but I still listen to the record quiet a bit and so should you if you ever picked it up. ONe of my favorite labels just put his new EP at Werkdiscs which is run by Actress, definitely a great label and good pick up on that roster. This song Sunset Teens is a faster tempo compared to his LP songs but he still makes it sound Lone-ish, take that BoC comparsions, jk.

Kompakt’s 200th release is approaching and i’m anxiously waiting to hear what Wolfgang and Jorg are going to do. Back when Kompakt 100 came out I loved this Sascha Funke remix of Thomas Fehlmann, I just of played it everyday for months.

When I was following Trent Reznor on twitter I realized he kept talking about Mew and I remember never giving the band a proper listen, now i’d of loved to see this band live, a lot of detail here, do they really bring a vibraphone on stage or is that just played off a laptop somewhere on stage?

The Drums – Submarine

Lone – Sunset Teens

Thomas Fehlmann – Radeln (Sascha Funke Remix)

Mew – Hawaii

It’s been a long time coming, but the ISO50 Playlist Archive is finally open. There you will find all past playlists archived for your listening pleasure. Just click the “Play” button and the playlist will load into the player (top of page — RSS readers must visit site to listen). It took a lot of code wrangliing and hacking to get this to work so let me know if you encounter any issues. Enjoy!

On a side note, I’m scheduling this post to go live after I leave on vacation so hopefully everything is working when you read this. We’ve been having some issues with the site lately so if you get an error just try again a little later.

You are probably familiar with the illustration work of the exceptionally talented Kevin Dart. His most recent project is the trailer above — promoting a hypothetical film and his new book Seductive Espionage: The World of Yuki 7. The film was a collaborative effort between Dart, animator Stepahne Coedel and composer Cyrille Marchesseau. I have a soft spot for trailers of films that don’t exist, and this one is truly amazing.

Art of the Title Sequence recently posted an in depth interview with the three creators. They walk through a lot of process and really go into the fine details of the production. Very interesting read if you enjoyed the trailer.

via Kitsune Noir

Joakim is back and he brought the computer vocal speak n’ say with him and I gotta say he makes it work. If this came out earlier this year I would of counted this as one of my top “Hangin’ in my room summer jams”.

Lets say David Byrne and Sun Ra had to make a soundtrack for a film featuring Jacques Cousteau and Serge Gainsbourg spending time in Detroit, MI diving in old sunken ocean liners on the bottom of Lake Erie and walking thru abandon buildings in the day and at night they live it up in Denmark’s port bars planning out the most luxurious submarine ever, thats what I see when I hear this song by Seth Troxler and Matthew Dear.

The label DFA is on a tear, I mean its like a 12″ release every week and an album every month, i’m not complaining i’m just impressed. I wasn’t too big of a fan of earlier YACHT but with this album everywhere this week and solid art direction I had to give it another chance and i’m happy I did. Think if The Slits had to adjust their sound to play a Goth bar one night, that actually sounds like something I want to hear and Yacht did that here in this song.

Metric is the girl from Broken Social Scene right? wow what a change, she’s going for YYY’s status i’m guessing, I definitely have a thing for the intro of this song, it kind of reminds me of Bloc Party.

Joakim – Love & Romance & A Special Person

Seth Troxler & Matthew Dear – Hurt

Yacht – Summer Song

Metric – Help I’m Alive

So a couple of months ago I realized that I haven’t really been on a real vacation in my entire adult life. Sure, I went on that trip with my brother a couple years back, but there was a fair amount of business mixed in there and the rest of the time it was more about seeing and doing everything we could and less about relaxing. My neighbors got married in Tulum, Mexico a couple years ago and all of the stories and pictures they came back with made the place seem amazing. Fast forward to a couple months ago and throw pig flu into the mix and you have a cheap, awesome vacation in a tropical paradise. We’re flying into Cancun then driving down to Playa Del Carmen for the first few nights and then it’s on to Tulum. Staying at this awesome hotel called “Basico”. Looks very well designed.

In keeping with the vacation spirit I have decided not to bring my laptop or the big camera. I know I will regret this at some point, but sometimes you need a break from everything and with those two things anywhere near me I just start thinking about work. I will be bringing my little Canon Elf which can take HD video and does a surprising job at still photos for how small it is. Besides, it’s a pretty good feeling knowing I’m going to be leaving tomorrow morning for a week and everything I need will fit in a carry-on shoulder bag. I think that fact alone is enough to make up for leaving the D80 behind.

So I’ll be leaving the blog posting in Jakub and Alex’s capable hands for the next week. I will have my iPhone so I’ll probably post some stuff up to Twitter now and then. And hopefully the site itself doesn’t completely implode — if you didn’t notice today (what timing!) we had a lot of server issues which seem to have been resolved for the time being. Anyways, see you all in a week, time to disconnect from the matrix for a while…

I went to a Minimal Wave show once here in New York, probably one of the more memorable shows i’ve been too because of the dark atmosphere and hidden venue. The girl that djed played some stuff that sounded like Oppenheimer Analysis at times and I recently just found out that they originally came out on Minimal Waves label, well that was a nice coincidence, definitely a great synth pop song.

Policy of Truth.

Anyone ever see Air France LIVE? i’d like to know how they would do a show of their music live? maybe they just DJ? either way if you’re sick of MGMT and need to pull it back a couple notches than try this song No Way Down.

Simple yet to the point, Onra has a nice hold on abstract hip hop world right now with Nosaj Thing, Mux Mool, Hudson Mohawke and Samiyam.

Oppenheimer Analysis – The Devil’s Dancer

Depeche Mode – Policy of Truth

Air France – No Way Down

Onra – Haterproof

ISO50 Playlist #4 – Compiled by Tom Croose

Click to Play
Playlist will load in player at top of page (RSS Readers click here)

Track Listing:
Flying Lotus – Massage Situation
Wax Stag – Folk Rock (Bibio Remix)
Jorge Ben – Cinco Minutos (5 Minutos)
St. Vincent – The Strangers
Todd Rundgren – I Saw the Light
Maria Helena Toledo & Luiz Bonfá – Whistle Samba
The Long Lost – Woebegone (Flying Lotus’ Luckiest Charm)
Isan – No. 1. (Lent Et Douloureux)
Peace Orchestra – Shining
Mount Kimbie – William
Metronomy – A Thing For Me (Breakbot Remix)
Superpitcher – Sad Boys
Bullion – That’s Not Dee
Césaria Évora – Angola (Get Down Dub By Pepe Bradock)
Ecstatic Sunshine – Duck
Born Ruffians – Litle Garçon
Cass McCombs – I Went To The Hospital
George Harrison – The Light That Has Lighted the World
Johnny Cash – Country Trash
Santo & Johnny – Sleepwalk