Archive for August, 2010

The video for Ratatat’s new single Drugs is absolutely horrible, which is exactly what they wanted. Carl Burgess scoured the depths of the Getty Images archives and pieced together this string of painful moments set to music. The recycled mediocrity vibe is strong and there is a fair amount of uglification going down via some video post. I have to imagine someone involved in this project is a big Tim & Eric fan, and perhaps watched one too many Aphex Twin videos.

Via Today And Tomorrow

Toko is a multidisciplinary design studio based out of Sydney (formerly Rotterdam). Their work is difficult to pin down as they exhibit design prowess in many styles and mediums. In the works above you may notice a consistent ‘distress’ to each poster — whether it be a simple fade or a TV-like distortion. Almost looks as if the posters were laid out and then tampered with by some visually gifted distress-gremlin later on. I especially love the “A Lack of Space” piece.

Also notice they are sporting one of those ever so shiny .nu domain names.

Just grabbed a few songs from a mixtape Memoryhouse posted on their tumblr, daydream calming selections, enjoy.

I’ve had these images laying around for ages and stumbled across them again tonight. This is a prototype digital camera Kodak produced way back in 1975. The “toaster-sized” system relied on a cassette tape for recording data. The digitized images took 23 seconds to record to tape which then had to be played back using a specialized system (shown in the second photo — note the name of the Motorola computer, “EXORciser”). This is one of those times where I’m tempted to say “look how far we’ve come in such a short time!”. But damn, 1975? I wasn’t even born. I never would have guessed they had this sort of tech back then.

I’m really not sure I’d be doing the things I do now if I was coming up back in those days. Either computers have made me lazy, or I’m just inherently lazy, but I honestly can’t imagine dealing with 23-second-per-image write times and cassette tapes.

Check out this piece about the process of creating the prototype by one of the original team members, Steve Sasson: “Plugged In – We Had No Idea“

New Grouper was unveiled today, its as exciting as when I put on her album for the first time, looking forward to hearing the B side to this 7 inch.

We’re going to have to wait until October before we can get our hands on Benoit Pioulard’s third LP Lasted. I follow his website though because he usually puts together limited runs of the record before the official release date, they sometimes include stickers, DIY packaging and polaroids.

Justin Broadrick has a history of creative work, as Pale Sketcher he touches more on the Ulrich Schnauss end of what we know. If City Centre Offices was around dominating today’s gorgeous instrumental market then they would be drooling over this record to add to their catalog.

We all hopefully have had a chance to enjoy a Steve Reich piece at one point or another, well this one grabbed my ear from the other room yesterday. Notice the vocal melodies Mr. Reich is duplicating and matching the notes he’s playing, beautiful work to just let play on.

This project was created by Bulgarian designer Mihail Mihaylov. The project is an exploration of The National Palace of Culture’s signage system. The project is very stylistically pleasing, but I really wish there was more information to fill in the projects gaps.

You may remember Impossible Project as the company that’s been promising to revive the recently-defunct Polaroid instant film brand. They delivered partially in March with the sepia PX 600 but now they’re finally offering full color film with their PX 70 product. The results (you can see some in this gallery – towards bottom of page) are a bit washed out for my tastes, I still would prefer the expired Spectra they offer. But it’s a step in the right direction for now.

Impossible Project PX 70

With Matthew Dear’s recent release of his new album Black City and 10+ years under his belt of releases under different monikers I felt like the time was right to share what this man has actually created over the years which is an inviting song writing style for a dancefloor and the soundtrack to a night with friends. Moody at times, hidden storytelling and hypnotic rhythms that touch on similarities of David Byrne/Brian Eno work, I really believe in Matthew’s sound as something revolutionary, so here’s an 18 song playlist of songs that have made my day at one point of my life.


With strong art direction by Will Calcutt and recent covers by Michael Cina of alias like Jabberjaw, Matthew has always had a tight branding campaign that not only shows his personality but is always so thought thru and cared for.


I really hope everyone can find the beauty in Audion, False, and Jabberjaw, those songs seem long and repetitive to a fresh new pair of ears but even after the first listen to songs like Just A Man I feel like there’s a natural instinct to enjoy that organic sounding drive, swelling and circular feeling the songs gives off.

Before jumping into this process post I want to define my terms: This project revolves around the concept of ‘FOMO’, which if you haven’t come across, stands for “Fear of Missing Out”. Fomo is a very real and worrysome condition that can affect anyone at anytime. It describes that feeling of jealousy and helplessness when you miss out on something great. Typically the condition becomes more prevalent during the weekends, summer, and nighttime. For example, “When I was looking at John’s pictures from the submarine party last night, I had a really bad case of fomo.” If you are stuck at work right now and your friends just went skydiving, you have fomo.

Nofomo by contrast refers to the state of being in which you have cured your fomo. You do not have a fear of missing out because you are always the one doing something awesome. You actually cause fomo, rather than experience it yourself. If you are living your life to the fullest and saying yes to everything, you have probably achieved such a state.

This is a project about NOFOMO. (And while it may not seem like it, yes this was for school.)

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Just a quick note that today is the final day of the 20% Summer Sale at the ISO50 Shop. All regularly priced items are 20% off until midnight tonight (excludes giclee studio prints, MP3s). Get in while the gettin’s good!

ISO50 Shop