Archive for November, 2011

When I first started to hear the new Beacon EP live on stage it reminded me if Underworld meets James Blake but once masters came back I got to experience their signature deep south low end and it had more of that R+B feel that Active Child or How To Dress Well have been parading. What really grabs me is the hi-fi simplicity mixed in with that feeling that their not trying to make pop music, such a hard thing to pull off, download their FREE single here and watch the trailer below which includes the song Exhale, their EP drops on Nov. 15th.

Warm Ghost will be in my top 10 albums of 2011 no question, so it was a joy to discover this remix today by School Of Seven Bells, the addition of female vocals takes this off this planet and puts it in a new dimension.

What is there not to love about Keep Shelly In Athens? I mean I always hear a new synth usage effected in a way no one else is doing, her vocals are sounding so marvelous for the style their going for.

Phantogram is powering thru with their sound, its got the force to beast thru and become a pop juggernaut while still hanging onto their sound and swirling in some influences from Blonde Redhead and TV on the Radio.

Ikko Narahara is a self-taught photographer and co-founder of VIVO, a Japanese photography cooperative he formed with five of his peers. Narahara’s work often depicts subjects in isolation from the outside world, and I love how he is able to abstract scenes of everyday life into graphic compositions, making the viewer feel an otherworldly detachment from familiar sights.

Galerie Priska Pasquer via Japan-Photo.info

Julien Vallée is easily one of my favorite artists working today. His work is so unique, refreshing, and wonderfully playful. I’ve written about Julien before, and I was very excited to learn that his awe-inspriing body of work is now available in print. Rock, Paper, Scissors is his first monograph which includes lots of Julien’s personal work and commissioned projects. For such a young designer, it’s pretty amazing how much he has created to date!

Another aspect of Julien’s work that I enjoy, is his penchant for documenting his process so carefully. I am a big fan of detailed process descriptions (as you could probably guess), and Julien’s process videos are exceptionally well done. One of my favorites is the making of DanseDance. The book will come with unique login codes to access more of these types of videos.

Rock, Paper, Scissors is put out by Gestalten and will be available in the US in a couple weeks.

The Radio Edit of Tycho’s Dive single hit iTunes today (including the excellent Teen Daze remix of Hours) which will hopefully help Scott reach some of the non-Tycho listeners and give them something to hum along too. I personally love the longer album version, he makes all 8+ minutes count, I still haven’t had a chance to be alone with the record by the ocean which I think is where this album will flourish on a new level for me.

Jacob 2-2 has a new EP that’s almost a LP length release in this day in age. Chalked full of synth melodies that will take a few listens to hear all the details, this collection of music will touch the hearts of 80’s fantasy lovers, listen to the whole album here.

Com Truise pulled out a beautiful unreleased diamond today, its free for now on his Soundcloud, get it!

An unexpected sleeper from Apparat, gorgeous textures and delays.

Those of you familiar with midi controller surfaces will know that, by in large, the product design associated with them leaves much to be desired. They are usually garish, overstated affairs seemingly designed to catch the eye of 18 year old ravers passing through Guitar Center. So I was pretty surprised when I saw the new line of Cubase control surfaces from Steinberg. The CMC line of modular controllers allow you to build a control surface using only the modules you deem necessary to your workflow. They even offer a frame to hold up to four modules of your choosing.

Of course, upon seeing these I was immediately reminded of the question I have been asking myself for years: why don’t we as Photoshop users have a system like this? There is something that comes close; the Avid Artist Color, but it isn’t compatible with Photoshop. Can you imagine having a modular system like the CMC that you could customize to run actions, edit color on the fly, manipulate images? Perhaps I’m being a little presumptuous, but I would think a lot of Photoshop users (and creatives in general) could benefit from an open standard for controlling software like Photoshop, Lightroom, and After Effects. The funny thing is that the standard exists already in MIDI, Adobe just needs to implement it and allow us to map controls to functions within their software. I guess after working with music software for so long and having hardware control surfaces as a given, it’s hard to understand why they’ve never made the leap to the world of visual production.

Would you use a hardware controller to work with Photoshop?

Also, here’s a pretty annoying video detailing the CMC system:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOtaD2rwW5I