Archive for September, 2009

I never know if the newer generations of music fans like The Police as something other than a drinking game song band. They’re my favorite band of all time, I even kind of have a small little shrine in my room involving Synchronicity vinyl, Sting shirts, DVDs/VHS’s, and 7 inch vinyl, I have no shame. The 1:09 intro in Secret Journey always grabbed me especially when it hit the 0:40 sec mark and I knew the guitar loop was coming.

Little Dragon’s song Feather has be this year’s most dark magic/fantasy sounding indie pop song of 2009, the girls voice has this early 90’s grungy girl voice that has points where she just sounds like she doesn’t care at all about anyone and it comes off almost cold then other times it sounds like she has David Bowie arm on her shoulder and she’s singing to make it on the Labyrinth 2 soundtrack which would be amazing!

Without ever hearing J Dilla or Dabrye things like Taken By Trees song structure would never make sense to me but now I love this kind of Jacob’s Ladder unraveling sound, if you need another visual then try this its like watching some vintage cartoon with a car driven by a hippo with a tiny hat with the X band-aid on the tire rolling over each rock on a bumpy road.

I’m not sure if the “dance mix” will ever go away in the indie world or if its even frowned upon yet, it definitely helps if you want to play a song that you like to a group of friends that want to go out but don’t want them to be bumped out by your good yet sad music.

The Police – Secret Journey

[audio:policesecret.mp3]

Little Dragon – Feather

[audio:featherdragon.mp3]

Taken By Trees – My Boys (Animal Collective Cover)

[audio:myboys.mp3]

The xx – Shelter (Them Jeans Drum Edit)

[audio:themjeans.mp3]

After last month’s foray into the wonderful world of SSD’s via my newly super-powered Macbook Pro, I decided it was time to take my main tower PC to the next level. It wasn’t an easy decision at first, but it soon became a lot easier when two of the four drives in my RAID0 Photoshop swap array went down (for more on RAID, see my earlier post on the subject). I also had a very large format project beginning the next day and was dreading slogging through it with plain old HDDs. So I had two choices:

1. Go the (much) cheaper route — around $300 — and replace the drives in the array with two new ones of the same, ye olden tymes HDD variety.

2. Take the plunge and buy SSD’s at around $400 a pop.

I’ve made the mistake in the past of skimping and then regretting it later and I am finally starting to learn my lesson on that one. After all, computers are the central element in my professional life and how I make my living. With that in mind it’s easier to justify the large expenditure, as long as the performance gain is substantial enough. And was it ever. I’ve fallen for performance gimmicks and hype here and there in the past and have been disappointed time and again. This wasn’t one of those times.

When I built this particular machine I decided to go big with the processor and got what was at the time a the state-of-the-art Intel Q9650 Core 2 Duo Extreme. I didn’t really skimp on the rest of the components either, it’s definitely a solid rig. Still, I always felt it wasn’t living up to it’s full potential, especially considering the coin I dropped on it originally. Lately, when things are moving slow or just not acting right, I’ve caught myself considering building a new machine. Considering how recently I built the thing and how much it cost, this is just ridiculous. This was supposed to last me a while and be — to a certain degree — future-proof (which, in the computer world, means about 3-4 years). So it sort of came down to spending the $2500 to build a new tower or spending $1200 to make the existing one faster. In light of my experiences with the SSD and my Macbook Pro, I came to the conclusion that the best course of action was to replace the old HDD’s with SSD’s.

I ended up settling on a three drive configuration: One dedicated drive for the OS (Windows 7 RTM 7600 — which has been working out amazingly well) and two drives for the RAID0 array. The Windows drive is clocking in at around 245MB/s (over six times as fast as the average I/O on my old HDD) with a .1ms seek time (which is off the charts fast). The RAID array with just two drives is running around 480MB/s which is significantly faster than the four HDDs I had in there before.

All the numbers are great but there’s a lot more to the story than just raw I/O performance. The drives have removed the one big bottleneck that was left in my system, allowing all of the other components to reach their full potential. The performance increases I’ve seen go far beyond what you might expect from just a faster disk drive. It’s like a whole new computing experience, I feel more able to experiment and a lot more confident about overall stability. I almost feel like the computer used to choke on big data read/writes and would just finally crash. With the new drives it just rips through anything and never really hits that tipping point where things lock up. This new found stability could also be due to the fact that I installed the final RTM version of Windows 7 when I put in the new drives. I had been using the beta, which although very stable in it’s own right, didn’t quite compare to what I am experiencing now.

The bottom line is that SSDs are the real deal. Yes, they’re still expensive, but if you work with computers and very large files, you owe it to yourself and your workflow to look into what they have to offer. If your rig is feeling sluggish, getting a SSD to perk it up might actually turn out be a bargain when compared to the price of a new machine. Of course, a more pragmatic person might wait another year or so until the numbers come down, but I didn’t really have that luxury this time around. I’ll be posting the detailed data next week once I get a chance to do some more tests. The next step is to split that Windows drive and install OS X. If only they made Sonar for Mac I’d make the switch.

As some astute readers pointed out in the Tycho Live in Seattle post, the event is not quite as “free” as originally stated. I checked in with the organizers and apparently only the lobby area — where Michna and Lusine will be playing — is free. The auditorium show — where The Sight Below and myself will be playing — is actually $10 (unless you have a Decibel Fest pass in which case it’s included).

The event is the opening gala for this year’s Decibel Fest, you can get tickets here. I’ve heard they’re almost out so get on it if you haven’t already.

Sorry for the confusion, see you out there!

Mayer Hawthorne has been rocking it everywhere recently, both Justin Timberlake and John Mayer have said over twitter that they love the record. The funny thing is that its on Stones Throw and I think it was just suppose to be a fun/joke record at the beginning. All the smaller hype started when he released a clear red 7 inch heart shaped record that was a great unique merch piece that definitely caught my eye then the major hype hit when iTunes picked him up as the free single of the week and then everything just spun out of control for him in a good way. Don’t get me wrong, I love it and I love this “Maybe So, Maybe No” song, its so catchy and I can probably sing it after only hearing it 3 times, just such a ballsy record to make, I can’t even imagine making a whole motown record today, definitely takes some guts and Hawthorne couldn’t of done a better job in my opinion.

The man behind Midwest Product and PostPrior has kept the torch lit for us instrumental electronic indie rock fans by making music under the name Ben Benjamin. The sound of his song Sideways Cerebus is pretty fascinating to me because the beginning sounds like Midwest Product or an electronic version Mercury Program to me busting thru the ceiling of what they use to do and taking it to another level when the piano comes in, it almost has this Telefon Tel Aviv feel after awhile but without the huge lovely whale sized synths surrounding you, just for the record “huge lovely whale sized synths” are a good thing I just couldn’t think of a bigger sized object, i’ve already used Ocean liner recently.

I probably will never stop posting IDM on this blog, it always takes me to a fantastic and aesthetically pleasing place in my head. One of the guys that I do keep posting about is o9, he was a pretty big unsung hero even among the IDM followers, probably because he never released on a netlabel which was a pretty popular thing to do for an IDM producer back then which was just a label giving your music away for free on their site. Notice the precisely placed static in this song, is that intentional?

What a name to pick Porn Sword Tobacco, its like he was choosing his name out of a hat that contained key words from an old Monty Python script, if you like this song collaboration of piano and guitar than check out older Bibio or Canyon Country.

Mayer Hawthorne – Maybe So, Maybe No

[audio:sono.mp3]

Ben Benjamin – Sideways Cerebus

[audio:cerebus.mp3]

o9 – Seven Milliseconds

[audio:millisec.mp3]

Porn Sword Tobacco – Spectrum Campfire

[audio:spccamp.mp3]

A few rejected book covers by Klas Ernflo. Beautiful typography at work here — I especially can’t get over how amazing the uppercase G is in the top image (looks like Didot, but I’m not positive). Surprising (and not at the same time) that these were rejected by the publisher. I would have bought them on the spot, regardless of their contents!

Recently I’ve been trying to determine my favorite occurrence of each letter of the alphabet. I’ve picked a few, like the “G” seen above, but most letters remain up in the air. The eventual goal will be to have a list of 52 shapes; representing my absolute favorite renderings of each letterform, upper and lowercase. After that I guess I’ll move onto symbols and numbers (I already know my favorite “7” — Clarendon). A few other examples might be the “W” from the Westinghouse logo, the lowercase Avant Garde “a”, and maybe the “H” from Scott’s recent post.

Would love to hear everyone else’s favorites! It’s hard I know, to narrow it down outside of the context of application, but I’m sure there are some standout letters for each of you. Let us know!

I know i’m not the person that should be writing this since some of you who follow the blog sometimes have to snowshoe/pull your hair/wade through my odd writing style, but I just need to get all this off my chest. It started off with this Facebook post I wrote because I was just so bothered after putting on MTV for the first time in I don’t know how long:

“Took a peek at the MTV’s music video awards tonight to see if pop music has stepped it up but still no luck at all especially instrumentally, christ! What do they do with their money? Big time creativity/musicianship/entertainment fail. Let’s just hope people like Fever Ray, Matthew Dear, Atlas Sound, SVIIB, Erlend Oye, and Benoit Pioulard keep pushing forward because that was embarrassing to watch.”

(more…)

Some very nice scans of 1960’s and 1970’s Scandinavian logos from Oliver Tomas’s Flickr. As great as these logos are, it’s always amazing how much better things look when scanned from a well printed page. The texture and imperfect edges really take it to the next level.

Via Oliver Tomas

My most recent assignment for my MFA program is a pretty exciting one. Our task this semester is to pick a dead, dying or defunct brand and revitalize it. We are free to choose pretty much whatever we want so long as we can make a case for its need of a makeover and/or repositioning. The goal is not only to develop a new identity system for the brand, but also to extend its focus into untapped commercial avenues. For this part especially, we are encouraged to let our imaginations go wild. At the end of the project we will have an overhauled identity system, new product extensions, and an imagined history starting from wherever we picked up — the only thing that must be carried over is the original name.

Pan Am, a most beloved brand, would be a great example of something that would work really well for this project. Picking something that is familiar to people and in the public consciousness is always a good strategic choice. Although, you do run the risk of competing with a powerful history and a previously very effective identity. Another good example that Scott and I discussed was General Dynamics.

Today in class we went over everyone’s choices and there were some pretty cool ones; some very random, and most with lots of potential for sure. I am still on the fence with my choices, but I think I’ll come round this weekend when I have more time to think of potential futures. Right now, I’m thinking it might be fun to try and make No Fear cool again. They obviously aren’t an extinct brand, but if you visit the website you’ll see there is room for some…improvement.

Anyone think of other brands that are in desperate need of a renovation or rebirth? We found this list, but most I had not heard of. I’m sure there must be some others out there just screaming for an overhaul. Sound off in the comments.

UPDATE: The brand I ended up choosing was Playboy. Read about it here.

Some very nice vintage Braun Catalogues from Thimet. Looks like Braun’s influence on Apple extends beyond just hardware; I’m pretty sure that last one came with my Macbook. The site also has some great shots of classic Braun calculators (bottom of page) —one of which you will recognize if you’ve ever used the iPhone calculator. My favorite will always be the ET11 though, which clearly influenced the Omron 86R’s design.

I keep seeing all this among friends kind of “press” on Memory Tapes and a ton of remixes by him so I bought his Seek Magic LP to see if I could find something I like and i’m not so surprised I found a couple great tracks. The one that stuck the most with me is Swimming Field, its full of airy slow melodies and builds to an outro with these huge lo-fi drums, woodwinds, and a fantasy spaceship sound, I know it doesn’t sound that good of a description of something you’d want to hear but i’d suggest you give it a listen.

The Beat Konducta needs to do a soundtrack stat, give the man a cool mill., what are you movie directors doing not hounding this guy for music daily.

Reggie Dokes was brought to my attention by Tom Croose a few weeks ago and I just got around to listening to his catalog. The sound of Chicago Pimp might actually define what I love about calssic sounding House music, it has that militant kick that has a ton history behind it from the Detroit and Chicago original heads, a looped key melody thats stripped down, these stretched out open ride cymbals and hi hats, and this gradual feeling that the song is taking over the space you’re in. All these together is a recipe for what makes a huge Detroit crowd lose their minds without yelling, pure body music.

Okay I can’t get enough of Bradford Cox as you can tell if you follow any of the recent music posts but there’s nothing wrong with that, I mean listen to this song from his upcoming Logos album, holy crap its like he’s serving me my nostalgia in a glass and its thick as syrup, I feel i’m just lost in a stare while watching large amounts of pink taffy being made, so lush, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Memory Tapes – Swimming Field

[audio:sfield.mp3]

Madlib – The Payback (Gotta)

[audio:paygotta.mp3]

Reggie Dokes – Chicago Pimp

[audio:chicagop.mp3]

Atlas Sound – Washington School

[audio:washings.mp3]