Archive for May, 2011

Again and again Stones Throw artists are pushing themselves into genres unrelated to their last release and doing it from unique angles, really amazed by this new James Pants, its like Tom Vek singing over….I got nothing, pretty damn one of a kind.

Young Montana? has soo much going in this song, I would love it way more if it didn’t stutter it up all the time, other than that i’m in love with the change at the 4 minute mark.

I swear I think Christopher Willits is in Fourcolor or maybe Taylor Deupree loves signing cut up guitar samples music mostly, not complaining at all I could listen to this song repeat for hours.

Dear Bon Iver, you sir are a great songwriter but you need to throw away that T-Pain iPhone app. Love, your fan Jakub.

I’m headed to Graz, Austria where I’ll be playing a Tycho laptop set at Springfestival and doing an ISO50 talk at the related Springsessions conference. The talk is on Saturday, June 4th from 15:00 – 16:00 at Kunsthaus Graz and the Tycho set is early the next morning, Sunday, June 5th from 03:15 – 04:30 at P.P.C. All the details are at the Springfestival site.

Sorry for the late notice, but I wanted to be absolutely sure I was going to make it out there. The Tycho album is now in the very last stages of mixing/mastering so I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to make the trip and the album delivery deadline. To make it all work I decided to hack together a portable computer setup from my main tower PC so I could finish up some remaining songs before I return when the mastering will begin. After some light dremel work I had all the components fitting inside a small aluminum case I found laying around (pictured below, the PSU is separate. And yeah, I’m planning on spending a fair amount of time at airport security). You might ask why I don’t just port the project over to a laptop; the reason is that the projects are simply too large to run my current notebook (early Macbook Pro Unibody). In order to run the big projects (96+ tracks with 250+ VST instances) I had to add three SSD drives in a RAID 0 (in other words, three fast storage devices chained together to act as one very fast storage device) configuration to my existing Intel i7 rig.

I had already been bringing my tower to Count’s (aka Mikael Eldridge, the engineer who I’m working together with to mix the album) studio to mix. We decided to mix several of the songs directly from Reaper as opposed to porting them to Pro Tools like usual so I had to bring my machine in. This already had me thinking about slimming down the rig to make it more portable. It’s really been a freeing experience being able to move around with my main computer; I’m so used to bouncing down projects, flattening layers, and generally compromising things to get them small enough to run on my Macbook Pro when I travel so the idea of having all the power of my studio computer with me anywhere is pretty exciting.

Of course, this is just a temporary stop-gap measure to get through a scheduling conflict. I think the next step is to get a powerhouse laptop machine with Lightpeak/Thunderbolt so I can get a PCI SSD RAID setup or some storage device with equivalent bandwidth. I was thinking about the Dell Precision (I’m PC only when it comes music and design, although I have several Macs and love them, just not for creating on) or some “gaming” laptop. It really doesn’t need to be that small, just more portable than a tower as I wouldn’t be moving it that often. Any suggestions? My wish list would be Intel i7 or better, 16GB ram, and at least 250GB of SSD storage with a bandwidth of 500MB/s up/down. Probably a tall order, but I’m hoping something on that level will be available soon.

Hope to see some of you in Graz.

Springfestival

Something about this home brings up a random memory that I can’t define. Growing up I was never around homes like this, but the surrounding woods look all too familiar. If I was to pick my favorite part about this house I would have to say it would be the use of the dark vertical siding for its color palette. The palette is a well-thought natural reflection of the surrounding trees.

Located in Snohomish, Washington
Architect: David Vandervort Architects

Via Wanken / Contemporist

(more…)

I sometimes wonder what some of you think of the house tracks that take a few minutes to start up? I seem to find any small changes in the repetition enjoyable. This 6th Borough Project packaging is nuts, I love the layout, I probably wouldn’t have checked it out if that art wasn’t there, glad I did.

The beat scene is growing at a rapid rate, soo fast that producers that have only been around for 2 years become legends to some in 6 months. I’ve never heard of Drifter but those vibrating keys kept me around and the drums made me head to his bandcamp for the free download.

I’ve been keeping my eye on Psychemagik mostly for his edits, if you love this one then google search for his Talking Heads edit.

Function co-runs a label called Sandwell District(love that name), a great label for stripped down techno. If you appreciated Sleeparchive in the past and want more of that then just search thru the Sandwell District catalog.

Loving the details on this New Orleans Wild Cats print by Theo Ballmer. Looks nice next to the (totally unrelated) G59 poster by Franz Fässler.

Photos by Insect54

This weekend is all about riding out this Eddie C record ….to space! I want to watch glow in the dark laffy taffy being made under black light while I sit on a chinchilla rug at a rollerskating disco holding a fat corgi in my arms that is covered in syrup and he’s okay with that. #senseoftouchelevated

The always catchy/hazy Teen Daze is starting to take pre-orders for his upcoming LP on Waaga, perfect timing, now I just need to live somewhere where I can sit down and enjoy this song other than my room.

Brian Eno is giving away this song that didn’t make it on his album for FREE on his website, enjoy that resonance and classic voice.

I don’t know how I feel about the first half of this JJ track, it might be too softy/gentle but when those drums come in you get that Sigur Ros feel.

What a great mix, i’ve listened to it twice today and I actually deleted my earlier music post and let this one lead instead. When Tadd comes back into the scene people will recognize how big of an influence he was to all the new beat makers.

DOWNLOAD THE MIX HERE FOR FREE

TRACKLISTING
1. Mandre – l’oasis
2. Cloud One – doin’ it all night long
3. Mass Production – slow bump
4. Michal Urbaniak Group – inactin (excerpt)
5. Roy Ayers – d.c. city
6. Tyron Davis – a little bit of loving (goes a long way)
7. Esther Byrde & Solid Gold Orchestra – touch me tease me
8. Dynasty – adventures in music
9. Blomdahl – suite from aniara (excerpt)
10. Busta Rhymes – woo hah (jay dee remix)
11. Marc Rosen – the connection
12. Kan Kick – chickenhead reality
13. Rhythm Heritage – three days of the condor
14. Mike Vickers – the man in the white suit
+ Jakki “O” – for club dj’s only
15. The Roots – da lesson 1 (instrumental)
16. Georgia Anne Muldrow – hello
17. Gene McDaniels – dream of you and me
18. Count Bass D – bullets hit brains / doxology
19. Dabrye – temper
20. Weather Report – river people (excerpt)
21. Manzel – midnight theme
22. Arthur Blythe – uptown strut
23. Thomas Clausen – bio rhythm #3
+ Andres Lewin-Richter – study no.1
24. Jeff Lorber – water fall
25. Kleeer – tonight
26. Visitors – joyo can you hear part 1

Selections of Anni Albers’ pieces from the NGA archive. Incredibly, most of these were created when Albers was in her 70’s. Really inspiring to see someone productive throughout their entire lifetime. I sincerely hope I’m as motivated at that age.

via But Does it Float

If you haven’t already checked out Baths side project Geotic then you’re missing out on some of the best FREE calming music out there. I guess he reached 20,000 fans on facebook *walks around like a boss* and decided to gift a new EP to all of us, download it here.

Brothertiger follows the footsteps of Washed Out and early Toro Y Moi but with a lil more freedom when it comes to sugarcoated synths, I guess he plays in Brooklyn at the end of next month, definitely going to check him out.

I was a big fan of Clue To Kalo, I think I liked it way more than Postal Service when all of this stuff was popular in the early 2000’s, this CD stuck around and a few songs especially let my mind roam around while I sat and worked.

**Throws it into 4th and pulls onto a coast side road and puts the top down, lets Kleeer take it home**

It’s hard to pin down what Apolis Global actually is. One part clothing shop, one part advocacy group, they guys at Apolis are certainly a versatile bunch. I’m writing about them mainly because of how impressed I was with their overall branding. They’ve got their visual message down. I placed an order through their shop and received the awesome artifacts above. It took me a moment to open the box because I didn’t want to destroy it.

I actually found Apolis by way of their logo, which I absolutely love. You can find out a little more about it here.