Archive for December, 2013

I’ve been addicted to 1 mix this year and its been this on repeat. I HIGHLY RECOMMENDED it for tomorrow morning or just preparing for tonights countdown. Happy New Year ISO50 readers!

Love.
Jakub

DOWNLOAD HERE

For those people that have been on the fence about buying a modular, I think this is that piece that might put you in buying mode.

Intellijel Designs has introduced a new Eurorack synth module, the Atlantis, inspired by the classic Roland SH-101 synthesizer.

The Atlantis is heavily inspired by the architecture and sound of the Roland SH-101, but offers several enhancements:

Triangle core vcos (with far better tracking and Hard sync) instead of saw core
Primary vco has linear FM (not just exp)
MOD Vco can be linked to the primary VCO pitch CV.
Modulation oscillator switchable from LFO to VCO
Filter is multimode, 2/4pole switchable and has a special LP boost mode
Filter allows for selection of inverted ADSR mod source
Filter tracks 1V/oct
Mixer section includes and external source which is normalled to a sinewave
Filter has built in soft clipping
Envelope has looping option, re-trigger and selectable time range
Output VCA has two stage clipping circuit
External clock input for the S&H
Patch points for every synthesis section

via Synthtopia

[audioplayer post=33098]

Todd Osborn shares another free gift during the holiday, this time its all covers made on old computers. Anyone remember his gem from 2010?

Superstructure is yet another alias of Todd Osborn (Osborne, Soundmurderer, TNT, Starski & Clutch, etc). Continuing the tradition of intellectually undemanding Formula Fresh releases this release is a special holiday giveaway of cover versions made with older computer/game systems (ZX Spectrum, C64, NES).

This free album is also a precursor to Todd’s upcoming Drip.fm channel that will start subscriptions in 2014.

DOWNLOAD HERE

Tracklist
1 Telephone Line
2 Sweet Baby
3 Minute by Minute
4 Sharing the Night Together
5 Feels So Good
6 Sentimental Lady
7 Your Wildest Dreams
8 Always
9 BLT (Bonus Track)

Christmas in America: Happy Birthday Jesus is an on going photo project by photographer Jesse Rieser. This project of Jesse’s has to be one of my all time favorite projects because deep, deep down I am a Christmas fanatic (I’ll just never show it). This series captures a wide array of Christmas traditions across America. Everything from families who seem to never have enough Christmas decorations for their front lawn to an obscure gas station’s simple approach to the holiday season you would never bat an eye at. My favorite is the first image because I’m a sucker for weird, slightly dilapidated, isolated Americana imagery.

Check out the rest of Jesse’s series here: Jesse Rieser: Christmas in America.

Happy Holidays to all of our readers! We wish you a safe and joyful holiday season!

ISO50 Playlist 17 – Compiled By Heathered Pearls & Tycho
Track Listing
Tycho – Awake
Gardens & Villa – Bullet Train
Midlake – Antiphon
Atoms For Peace – Dropped
Nitemoves – Veaquis
Clu – Jade
Jon Hopkins – Breathe This Air feat. Purity Ring
Keep Shelly in Athens – Madmen Love (Braxton/Palmer Remix)
Fort Romeau – Jete?e
Todd Terje – Spiral
Dauwd – Heat Division (Tim Goldsworthy Remix)
Sly-One – Come to Mine (HNNY Mix)
Drake – Too Much ft. Sampha (Jessie An
Clubfeet – Cape Town (Panama Remix)
Dark Sky – Rare Bloom
Beautiful Swimmers – Running Over
Evan Michael – After All
Almunia – 3 ode to mom
Erlend Øye – La Prima Estate
Rollmottle – Mustang 1966 (Black Fastback Rmx)
Isolée – Allowance
Four Tet – Lion
Xeno & Oaklander – Sheen
The Range – Metal Swing
Absolutely Free – Clothed Woman, Sitting
Automelodi – S’rait Bon D’s’Revoir
Museum of Love – Monotronic

Past playlists are available in the Playlist Archive

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVwSYX7jIM0

This is like the archetype for every retro-styled with the synth-soundtracked logo build in and the crackly PBS voice over. Can’t believe this was made in 1980, would have guessed earlier from the quality.

Video Link

We’ve repressed a limited number of Tycho’s long-sold-out second LP, Dive on vinyl and they are available now at the shop. We’ve also got a free shipping deal going as part of the holiday sale.

Tycho Dive LP Vinyl

Machinedrum and Ninja Tune have expanded nicely on the continuation of keeping Vapor City an experience beyond just an album release with a release date.

Introducing “Vapor City“, sort of looks like Africa broken up into boroughs. I’m guessing you sign up and join as a citizen and once a month for the new few months new boroughs unlock and i’m sure new music will be given away like today. Vizion Center just went live which is a above, its a really special collection of ambient tracks from Travis.

As you may have noticed I haven’t been very active on the blog over the past year. This is because I had decided to focus solely on my music project, Tycho for a while. I spent the last 9 months or so working with the band on a new record which is now complete. Of course, Tycho is very much an audio / visual project so I’m still working consistently on design whether it be album covers, show posters, or online assets. I was working on the cover art and developing the packaging in parallel with the recording process this time around. We recently shared the final artwork for this LP, entitled Awake (listen to the title track here). I’ll go more into the reasoning behind and making of the artwork later, but for now here is a quote from this Reddit discussion of the cover art that I commented on:

This design was mean to be a flag; more of a symbol than what I would think of as traditional album art. I felt that, with physical mediums disappearing, album art didn’t necessarily have to fit a given format and I wanted something that could be readily transported.

If you look at earlier artwork you’ll see that I was pursuing a more maximalist / photographic direction for Tycho (e.g. http://imgur.com/a/kk93f ). But this album has a more stripped down, visceral thing going on and I wanted that reflected in the artwork. Really this is meant to be an inconized form of the sun / circle motif present in a lot of the Tycho cover art to date. Kind of like a unifying symbol for all the output that preceded this release. I see this, for various reasons, as the first true Tycho album and so wanted to focus everything into a simple form that encapsulated that idea. On a side note, there are eight color bands in the circle, each one representing a track.

The beauty of creating the artwork for the music over all these years is that I am free to develop a cohesive lineage with the imagery. From what I have seen of my peers over these past 13 or so years as a designer, we generally tend towards simplification as we go along and I think that is an important part of design: efficiency of communication. Whether this particular design is effective in that respect obviously isn’t something I have the objectivity to comment on, but that was the goal at least.

The album will be released on March 18th, 2014. Here is the track listing:

Tycho – Awake (2014)

1. Awake
2. Montana
3. L
4. Dye
5. See
6. Apogee
7. Spectre
8. Plains

And those who were following along on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter know that we released the artwork first via a 9×9 grid. I printed the artwork, cut it up, and photographed it using various pieces of musical equipment as backdrops. Here’s the grid in one image:

Makeshift lighting setup. All my camera gear was stolen recently so limping along with a point and shoot setup for now.

You can listen to the title track from Awake now on the Tycho Soundcloud page

More to come soon, thanks for the support!

[audioplayer post=33011]
We’ve finally reached it, the Top 10 songs of the year. Make sure to check out the rest of the playlists easily by using the Featured Post Section on the right side, I hope you’ve found something new or just a playlist to sit back with.

**Side note: I didn’t include Moodgadget or Ghostly International releases because that would just not be fair.

#10 Jessy Lanza – 5785021

Just how everything expands after the 3 minute mark does it for me, Junior Boys perfection.

#9 DJ Rashad – Pass That Shit (feat. Spinn & Taso)

I need the extremes of both ends of the music spectrum to make me feel normal, being from Detroit you couldn’t get enough Ghetto-Tech, this song just makes me happy.

#8 Diana – Born Again

“The Pop Song of the Year” for me, all ages and genres, nothing matters but the music here.

#7 Ptaki – Krystyna

The Polish in me and my love for slow disco bumped this song into the Top 10. Really though you can’t deny that bassline and the sample, just heavy lush disco, its like the West Coast Rap of Disco.

#6 Toro Y Moi – Say That

If anyone deserves Top 40 support its Chaz, keep him happy and in the studio.

#5 Boards of Canada – Nothing Is Real

They came back in such a perfect way this year.

#4 The Field – A Guided Tour

My favorite listening album of the year, beautifully prepared, a formula that doesn’t need adjusting.

#3 Majical Cloudz – Childhood’s End

The only emotionally vocal song that hit me this year, he does simplicity soo well.

#2 Dirty Beaches – Casino Lisboa

This song is the definition of passion and drive.

#1 Bibio – A Tout a l’heure

Uplifting done right, changes my mood instantly, music is priceless when it can do that to you.