Archive for May, 2012

We truly have a treat to start the weekend with a stunning playlist from Jeff Bratton the owner of Cascine the label that brings us Chad Valley, Selebrities, Jensen Sportag, etc. Enjoy.

Writing this from the car, driving from MD to NY with the good men of Double Duchess.
– Jeff Bratton

Tomas Barfod – ‘Broken Glass’
New track by Danish artist, Tomas Barfod. who’s better known for one of his other projects,
Whomadewho. This whole release is fantastic. It’s out soon on Friends of Friends, but reminds
me of golden-era Morr material – melodic, downtempo, indie/electronic stuff. Morr helped shape
my love of labels early on and this song takes me back to that.

Picture – ‘Heaven 7’
Picture is David from Sail a Whale. ‘Heaven 7’ embodies that sense of swelling epicness and
drama that he does so well. It was released on Look, The Embassy’s imprint, last year. We’re
currently working with David on a project for Cascine.

Bam Spacey – ‘Vintern jagar’
Love this track. Subtle, bubbling and optimistic. Bam Spacey is from Malmo and his debut EP is
newly out on Ceremony. As a listener, this song puts me exactly where I want to be this time of
year.

Shine 2009 – ‘New Rules’ (Panther Hands Remix)
This remix has been on my machine since last summer, as we just never found the right place for
it. Panther Hands is Max from Selebrities, and he did this track without ever having the stems for
it. Great energy. Horn parts are a blast. Really fun stuff.

Cubenx – ‘Adrift at Sea’
A close friend in LA shared this album with me a couple weeks ago and I’ve been glued to it ever
since. Super diverse, yet super familiar. All types of influences at work on this release.

Bonus track
Mint – ‘I Don’t Kvetch’
I just spent a week at my mother’s apt in Annapolis, MD, and am feeling kinda sentimental from
the time at home. Classic, major key IDM like this has an important place in my musical history
– Mint’s music represents that for me, especially this track. It was made in 2009, but feels like
something from 2000.

The amazing work of Australian artist and creative director Leif Podhajsky has been posted about here on the blog before, but I thought I would feature him again, this time as the subject of this week’s Weekend Inspiration. I have found myself revisiting his portfolio frequently over the past few weeks, In particular for his amazing album covers, as I’m working on a few myself.

He also launched the Melt Blog and has been experimenting with video and visuals.

Posted by B3PO

What a solid collection of layout design by Korean designer Shin Dokho, I don’t have much more info but take a second and click on the images for larger version to see the details.

Infiniti is Juan Atkins, this track is classic, its soo damn good that in 5 years of doing music posts on ISO50 this is the first post of a song that how important I think this song is. Its also a song that makes you understand new music, it also makes you want to pay respect to the originators.

This Chromatics record is pretty damn popular but I find this slow jam the most appealing off of it, it just has a high repeat ratio in my iTunes, to be honest i’d love an instrumental.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED – RAJA was suggested to me by Shigeto, this is the first track he shared with me, without going all J Dilla this beat as simple as it is really had me gravitate to it over and over. The tone at the opening gets more and more addicting, its like a synth whale, I love it.

I really had high hopes for Grovesnor so i’m always looking for new material from him, he’s great if he’s used well, this tempo is perfect for him, he needs to be on more tracks.

As for the photo above, i’m not sure who the photographer is but I did tweak it just to warm it up a bit, love the original shot, its definitely inviting.

nicdesjardins – Nick is becoming a Trashhand jr. in a way, less on the dark feel and lighter use of contrast but the both love their urban alleys and natures small waterways.

andy gilmore – It might not be the flashiest instagram but if you want a peek into how Andy Gilmore starts his work or what are his visual influences then this is a perfect feed to follow.

chucknewham – Some people aren’t into the idea of graphic designers putting their overly worked photos on instagram, there are some parts that I don’t like about it too but chucknewham sometimes really nails it especially this simple edit.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Onuinu new single “Happy Home” had me looking for his album just one minute into it. Too bad the LP doesn’t drop until August, he’s on tour with Yacht on these dates. Its like a upbeat Black Moth Super Rainbow is backing Toro Y Moi for an encore at a outdoor roller disco, everyone is dancing.

New Gold Panda dropped today out of nowhere, Derwin comes with a full sound that ramps up and builds like a classic Telefon Tel Aviv track but has hints of Caribou but pitched down an octave, an amazing follow up for recent releases that will be hard to beat. One thing I have to say is something that I learned from Mux Mool is that Derwin puts a lot of punch into his rhythm section thats what separates him from most of his following producers plus there’s a perfect level of brightness added during mastering.

If there’s any label to be excited about it should be Tim Sweeney’s Beats In Space, they’re already on release #3, sounds like original indie-disco(I don’t know if thats even a thing) Erlend Oye material, 12″ ships May 22nd I recommended picking this one up.

Time to drop it out and go a little deep, heavy beauties from Conforce, if you missed their latest album later year then I guess I just feel bad for you.

It’s about that time when iPhone 5 rumors start ramping up. Fortunately I have one right here for you to feast your eyes upon. This iPhone 5 concept or as the creator calls it, the “iPhone Plus”, was created by the same guy who dreamed up the Instagram Camera.

Here’s a quick feature list for you dreamed up by the creator:
– Liquid metal Body: thermoformed on a single plane, no junctions needed
– Screen with double alkali-aluminosilicate sheet glass
– 4.3″ Retina Display with In-Cell technology
– A6 Quad Core processor
– Rear Camera: 10.0 Megapixel, f/2.4, 1080p Full HD video at 30 FPS
– Front Camera: 2.0 Megapixel (VGA), 480p VGA video at 30 FPS
– Rear motion sensor
– Top pico-projector to beam photos and videos on any surfaces
– Slim design for an edge-to-edge thinner profile
– New slim-dock connector
– Fully “Capacitive” home button

What do you think about this iPhone Plus concept?

Poster series explaining complex philosophical theories through basic shapes, by London based designer Genis Carreras.

Aside from the posters, there is also a journal from the same series by the name of Philographics (Click on image below).

Posted by B3PO

Fascinated by the work of Paul Davies, an Australian architectural-landscape painter and sculptor. Can’t help but to find some parallels between his work and Scott’s, who both seem to have the ability to create “dream-like sequences”, through the manipulation of layers, color and texture.

In the words of Paul himself:

Much of this work has been sourced from my recent visits to America and Europe. During these visits I examined The Eames House and Schindler House, both in Los Angeles, Frank Sinatra’s holiday retreat in Palm Springs, The Bauhaus in Dessau and The Villa Savoye in Poissy. I have also visited the modernist buildings in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, by Van Mollyvan, who spent time training under Le Corbusier. Gaining access to these sites often takes many requests as some of the buildings are privately owned. I was interested in these examples of international landscapes and architecture because of the striking, atmospheric qualities I could capture when photographing them. To amplify these images, I collaged them with sourced landscape photographs, of North America’s West Coast, by Ansel Adams. Adams’s photographs, with their crisp cinematic quality, allowed me to play with the composition and to stage dramatic, non- existent scenes. The photographic images reminded me of typical holiday postcards and I have attempted to capture this in my work by intensifying the perspectives and altering the colour ways.

Although the scenes and structures that inhibit them seem picturesque, in reality, these iconic homes can often feel austere and isolated. My work investigates these images as portraits of space, devoid of human form, inviting the viewer to generate their own emotional response to the painting. The absence of people in my work encourages the viewer to wander uninterrupted through the space and appreciate the built and non-built qualities of the surrounding environment. Through my practice I have attempted to explore this concept of isolation by incorporating empty swimming pools in the picture. Throughout my school years I swam competitively and was fascinated by the vacant feeling of the outdoor pools when they were drained for winter. I recently visited David Hockney’s underwater swimming pool mural, painted in the 1980’s for The Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles. Hockney’s work addresses issues of space and location, and his swimming pool design is a brilliant 3D version of these concepts. This year I designed a version of Hockney’s mural, for my Father’s swimming pool, and the experience was helped by the understanding of space I learnt from my Sculpture study at NSW College Of Fine Arts. By creating my paintings devoid of people, “emptying” the swimming pools and “burning” the forests, I am attempting to convey this dislocation to the viewer and raise environmental concerns that face us today.

Posted by B3PO

Alex Koplin is one of the veteran commenters on ISO50 blog, while he’s been working on graduating he’s also had time to work on a few collages and some free desktops for everyone. I talked to him over the phone before I posted this and he shared that Adrift by ISO50 was an influence on the work which I thought was a good choice always to look at before working mostly anything.

I’ve always been fascinated by collage. It’s a visceral technique that emerged in the early 20th century as a form of pop art, involving the assemblage of a variety of different sources of color and texture. Inspired by a few recent projects, I set out to experiment and develop my own technique for collage. These collage/number studies are the result of my first concerted effort, and I couldn’t be happier with the results. What excites me even more is the potential to apply this technique in future projects, using different color and texture palettes, and new layout techniques. I learned about how layout and order of placement dictate the motion and flow of the collage, which can be especially noted viewing the piece at a small size, or from far-away. It’s especially interesting to think about collage in this case as a digital approach to replicating a technique that traditionally relied on the physical sourcing, cutting and gluing of materials. The affordances of applications like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, and the abundance of pixels to source from the internet allow us to replicate these processes without all the mess, but is this still giving us the experience of bonding with the materials as we combine and re-contextualize them to form something new, expressive, and ultimately our own? I can say I did get a taste of this feeling, but there is still a barrier that existed between me and this final result that beckons me to somehow bring this sort of technique into the material world.

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