These images are taken from a 1970’s era Chinese poster series entitled “Modernization Cannot Be Achieved Without Energy” (click for full versions). I love this illustration style; particularly the technical diagrams. I’m not sure if you can still score any copies, but they were for sale at The East is Red.

Via The East is Red

The official Tron trailer came out, looks really strong, can’t wait to see what else they’ll put strips of colored neon on in the movie. I’m excited about this as I was Dark Knight and that became a definite favorite of mine when it comes to action films. I can see the storyboard not being the best but the vehicles i’m sure will make up for it.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P78pl1FUXfA

This Bluebrain’s song takes a second to kick in, it has such unique production, vocals remind me a bit of TV On The Radio and the music makes me feel like how I felt after hearing The Dirty Projectors for the first time which they don’t sound the same at all but both album hit me off guard where the music wasn’t something i’d usually listen to but composition wise it was very fresh feeling and I wanted know if they could pull that feeling off thru the whole album.

This isn’t the only Prins Thomas song i’ll be posting from his new album thats for sure, I think it comes out next week in the US and i’m geeking over it. I think after the first few minutes in I wrote to him and said “epic! country space jams touching the disco gods” and thats a good thing in my mind.

Dayve Hawk aka Memory Cassette aka Memory Tapes aka Weird Tapes has recently made his way thru many of the cracks of sub genres and made a great name for himself which is well deserving since his music is top notch. I saw him open for Atlas Sound as Memory Tapes, he did his Memory Tapes sound really well plus added a hint of his disco-ish Weird Tapes sound into it all too, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED you check his work out.

A long groover from Motor City Drum Ensemble, these keys could loop forever in my head and i’d never get sick of them.

I did it. I am now a very proud owner of the Canon 5DMKII. It took months (years) of deliberation (pretty much since Scott wrote this article) and I finally pulled the trigger. I know the rumors are swirling about Mark IIIs and the etc, but once I heard about the upcoming 24fps firmware update I decided it was time. No more waiting. I’ve been shooting on a Nikon D40 since I started school and it was definitely time for an upgrade. (Though I still love the SB 600 flash — took the photo above)

As soon as I pulled it out of the box I was in awe. People say that Canons feel cheaper due to the construction materials, but I disagree. This thing feels like it could level a small village if thrown at the proper angle. Pair the body with the kit lens (24-105) and you have one serious piece of machinery. I purchased through Adorama because they seemed to have the best package deal. Just about everyone sells the body for $2499 at the moment; Adorama throws in a shoulder bag and a 16GB card. (Update: Or at least they used to…it must have been a temporary special price because now that package is listed higher. Keep an eye out in case it comes around again.)

My shots so far have been decent. Honestly I’ve only had it for a few days and have yet to really take it for a photography spin. I’ve mainly been experimenting with the HD video feature (a large part of why I bought the camera). After numerous videos of my shoes and other random subjects I decided to test it out in a music video scenario. Nothing crazy, just a acoustic performance like I usually do on Youtube (till now I’ve been shooting on an embarrassingly old MiniDV camcorder that is almost twice the size of the Canon). You can view the result here.

An unexpected issue with the completion of that video was the post-production file format mess. Apparently Canon had no interest in making things easy on us (although that looks like it will change this month). I ended up following the steps outlined here on Vincent Laforet’s blog with great success. I imported to the desktop, converted H.264 to Apple Prores (tanked my drive space), imported to Final Cut, sent to Color and back, exported using Quicktime H.64 compression, then uploaded to Youtube. Kind of a long roundabout process, but things went smoothly. As is true for the still shots as well, you immediately notice how much more control you have over the image in editing mode. Edits that used to crunch up image quality or produce unwanted noise no longer do so at all. The picture is so clean that you can tweak away to your heart’s content without ever losing the integrity of the image.

As I said, I’m just getting my feet wet with this thing and I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I field test it a lot more. I’ll be going to Japan in May and am looking at that trip as a great opportunity to take thousands and thousands of pictures and crash my hard drive with absurd amounts of footage. As I continue to experiment with this wonderful object I’ll put together a more complete review. In the meantime, for my sake, cross your fingers Canon *doesn’t* come out with any shiny new cameras anytime soon.

Helvetica and the New York City Subway System by Paul Shaw — which examines the Helvetica’s role and history in the New York City Subway system — looks like a must have for any design collector. It’s currently sold out of it’s initial limited edition but Shaw’s site says they are looking for a publisher. Let’s hope that works out.

Also not to be missed is David Heasty’s One Color Subway Map featuring, of all things, Helvetica. You may still be able to score a print, details are here.

Via The Daily Heller via Thinking For a Living

I’m pretty proud of this music selection today because its so diverse on the electronic end, we have a track from the potentially Top 40 worldwide Gorillaz, a summer track from Birds & Souls, a hip Yeasayers like song from Tanlines and one of the most beautiful ambient tracks that has come out this year from Loscil.

So glad to hear this track Stylo on the new Gorillaz tracks, I was going thru the album trying to find a song I liked plus one to share and it seems that this was my jam. It really reminds me of INXS – Mediate at times especially when the synth lead chord is being held down. I can see this song being played at clubs and also the more hip private parties, I hope it spreads like wild fire to people’s ears.

Birds & Souls are new and their first single is what i’m going to call 2010 summer’s jam for the festival circuit in the dance world(WMC, DEMF, Sonar, etc.). The track builds from what sounds like friends experimenting making a song into where they find a groove then after around the 4 minute mark it starts blooming into one of the more catchy songs i’ve heard in a while. Its definitely one of those songs to lose yourself in, you can’t even judge a 3 minute section of the song since the song completely transforms if you stick with it, really looking forward to hearing this on some big speakers.

This back to back with the Birds & Souls track you might like i’m a world music nut when it comes to percussion which I am but this song from Tanlines goes a completely different direction which is this sound that is seeping into the indie rock world. I think the unraveling of it started with Animal Collective > Yeasayers > to someone like Tanlines, the added synths morph it into something a bit more poppy and youthful and less experimental.

Time to shift gears and slowly dip into the calm water, let me paint you a picture in your mind: you’ve canoed around a mile off the coast its about 4:55am on a foggy rainy night where its almost dawn, you grab your goggles and put them on, they’re your favorite ones with an oval face and vintage leather strap that doesn’t match and somehow has made it thru all your early morning solo dives. You drop in the water backwards and go exploring like you always do, part of the thrill is people don’t know your out or know that you even do this, its your small kept secret that you take very serious yet when you come up from the water and you see the tiny bit of sun starting to peak out you can’t seem to never hold back your smile. Thats how this Loscil song is for me.

I’ve been bored with dance music for a bit now when it comes to the more upbeat stuff(the slow groove stuff has been amazing though). I use to play these kind of records and it was a ton of fun to dj out but its pretty much been harsh cut up remixes of Top 40, newbies that haven’t heard much of what was going back in the day and fusions of trending whatever. In Part 1 I went on this small rant:

“No matter how much you might hate certain kinds of music you can always find something that appeals to you unless you have a one track mind or prefer a safe and conservative lifestyle. So you’re definitely not looking for trance, you definitely don’t want what’s playing at Crunch gym, and your sick of what your friends are suggesting because the vocals make you uncomfortable or there are too many snare rolls or it gets too cheesy dreamy sounding. Maybe you just want one dancey anthem for the week, well i’m gonna do my best to help steer you in the right direction before you have a bad club remix of Pet Shop Boys on your hands.”

I hope these kind of posts show that there was some melodic dance cuts at one point that worked both in the underground and mainstream dancefloor, I hope we come back to this driving catchy sound where the synths are warmer and the instrumentals could hold their own without a vox.

I wish I could say these were from when I was younger, but the closest I ever got to BMX was digging jumps and watching my friends careen off of them (I went off once with a road bike, crashed, and stayed grounded after that).

Anyway the above shots were taken by Cameron Muilenburg from Hidden Clothing. It looks like he and his friends were pretty good — not only at riding but also at capturing the experience with basic equipment (I assume Polaroid). I love the color and composition. The first one feels like a still from a film, paused at just the right moment to capture the most movement.

Sure look like some fearless little kids. Check out the rest of the pics here.

via defgrip

Mark E’s works 2005 -2009 selected tracks and edits is a must have in my mind, I only wish I had collected all these tracks on vinyl but here it is in an easy to swoop CD over at Phonica.

Mark E’s production is very groove based a slow burn if you will, its definitely for fans of Pilooski, Studio, Marvin Gaye, or Moodymann.This music for a dance floor that’s in it for the long haul and not looking to tire themselves out at some club. You might notice his edits touch on slow house and disco and classic soul, nothing in your face, to be honest I could put a song on repeat and have it going for 40 minutes+ and just keep trekkin’ along my work day completely enjoying doing anything while every once in a while dance in my chair.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXES_GP36wI

Was reminded of Mercedes’ beautiful 1969 C111 gullwing design after their recent concept unveiling. Beautiful Pictures; I’ll go ahead and file this under “things you can’t have, ever”. I’ve always loved cars; I used to collect die-cast models when I was a kid. I guess I picked the wrong thing to be obsessed with though because it’s becoming increasingly apparent that a 1959 Testa Rossa just isn’t in the cards for me.

I suppose it’s for the best though; nice cars are so impractical and besides, this is the sort of thing that has me dreaming these days. ($8700 MSRP!!! why do you torture us?) I feel like we as designers sort of got a raw deal; we’ll never be able to afford what our taste dictates as acceptable to us (except for that one guy who redesigned the Louis Vuitton monogram maybe? He could probably buy the car and the guy driving it). And then you see MTV Cribs and these people’s houses look like they hired Scarface and the set designer from Full House to do their interiors.

More images here