Posts by Scott

Some very nice information design going on in the top example from Ken Garland’s Portfolio.

When I was in grade school the U.S. was trying to convert to the metric system. Obviously, it didn’t quite work out as planned. We used to have metric study sessions for a few years when the conversion attempt was at it’s strongest, but it seemed to sort of lose steam by the time I got to middle school. It’s really a shame; inches suck, and so do quarts. The conversions and units never really make sense, they’re always these arbitrary ratios. Metric is so clean, you can deduce any conversion based solely on the latin prefix and you don’t have to factor in the length of some king’s foot when you’re trying to measure things. But I guess that all goes without saying. Everyone else also have way cooler plugs than us, but that’s a whole other post.

Just a couple examples of the influential work Ken Garland was doing in the 60’s and 70’s. See more at his portfolio. Sorry for the quality on the second one, couldn’t find a large version so I had to scale it up.

Event poster for 50 Exhibition via Blanka Supersize.

Just a quick note to thank everyone for checking out the new single; Adrift is already at #17 on the iTunes charts.

Also a note on the iTunes exclusivity issue. Ghostly International, the label who releases my music, often grants iTunes exclusive rights to a single for a specified period of time. In this case, a month. But after that month, or possibly sooner, it will be available at all other online retailers as well as right here from The ISO50 Shop. I am sorry if this is an inconvenience to anyone, I will be sure to post as soon as the song is available via alternative channels.

Also, as Jakub pointed out in the comments, this is also available as iTunes Plus, meaning it is DRM free and encoded at 256Kbps, just the same as all the other retailers.

Purchase Adrift / From Home on iTunes (US)
For Purchase outside the US search "Tycho Adrift" on iTunes

Cover and pages from the 1974 Citroen Brochure. The cover is absolutely amazing.

So if the last music post left you wondering what ever happened to Digable Planets here’s at least a small part of the explanation. My favorite member of Digable was definitely Butterfly, so when I heard he had a solo project called Cherrywine I was pretty excited. The resulting album is sort of middle of the road for me, but this single is definitely strong and while the subject matter is a far cry from the revolution fomenting intellectualism of Blowout Comb it’s still an enjoyable listen.

Back in 2003 when this album came out I was able to catch Cherrywine when they came through Sacramento. It was noticeably underattended, particularly considering the fact that the group was headed up by none other than Ishmael Butler. While it was sort of disappointing to see such a poor turnout, it ended up working in our favor as we got to meet Butterfly and talk with him after the show.

Cherrywine – That’s What I’m Talking About

[audio:cherry.mp3]

I’m probably posting this against better judgement, but here’s the raw footage from the FITC "Conversations" segment Si Scott and myself did in Toronto this year. I was under the impression this would be edited, but it just plays straight through, sort of funny. There are a lot of other conversations in the series, they can be found here. Some of them get pretty interesting, everything from pron to drugs…

Our conversation clocks in at 51:55 and sort of rambles all over the place, but Si Scott is an incredible artist so it’s interesting to hear his take on things. You can find Si’s portfolio here.

The new Tycho single "Adrift / From Home" is now available for purchase. Purchase Adrift / From Home

Tycho – Adrift (clip)

[audio:adrift_clip.mp3]

Tycho – From Home (clip)

[audio:home_clip.mp3]

If you cared at all about hip hop during the early 90’s, chances are you’re a big fan of the two albums Digable Planets released during theie brief but brilliant career (Apparently they are touring again, but I’ve yet to hear of a new album). This was way back when, just as rap was turning into the complete mess we hear today and before "what what what what what what what what" was an acceptable refrain for a song. I know, I know, it’s not like everything back in the day was great, and it’s not like everything now is trash; it just seemed like it was easier to come by a well thought out, intelligent hip hop album back then.

When Digable Planets released Blowout Comb I was a Junior in High School and I had spent the previous summer installing a ridiculous sound system in my car. I think I played this album about 500 times in a row the first week I had it; I distinctly remember blasting this particular song (9th Wonder) on repeat on the way to taking my S.A.T.’s that year. Strange how you can forget whole chapters of your life but somehow you remember something seemingly as trivial as the song you listened to on the way to a test. I guess that’s the power of good music. It seems today I consume most of my music through headphones on planes or coming out of computer speakers, neither of which do this song justice, this one has to be played through the 12’s in your trunk to get the point…the bass is massive.

As for the cover art, this was the sort of thing I coveted when I was younger. I wasn’t exposed to anything even approaching good design where I grew up so album covers were one of my only windows into the world of somewhat decent graphic design. I remember being blown away by the design and packaging of this CD when it came out. Now looking back, I see it wasn’t exactly perfect, but still well executed considering. The version on the bottom is the cover for the single, which I think I had in cassette form before I got the album on CD.

Digable Planets – 9th Wonder (Blackitolism)

[audio:9thwonder.mp3]

Some very exciting news about the new CS suite (dubbed "CS Next"). It is being reported that Photoshop CS Next (CS4) will have GPU acceleration, meaning that it would be able to leverage the extremely powerful processor that, for 2D work like Photoshop, usually sits dormant on that $400 gaming video card you have in your computer. This is really big news and could lead to very big performance gains for large computations like filters and screen rendering. No news on how the lack of a 64-bit flavor of Photoshop for the OS X platform will affect this development. Via TG Daily. There’s also some more info over at TUAW.