Ghostly International’s on going podcast series has had its share of diverse artists contributing monthly from Graphic Designers like You Work For Them to Detroit’s Hip Hop act Wajeed. This month Ghostly presents Worst Friends/Wolf + Lamb artist Slow Hands which you may know from our exclusive mix series, download and enjoy.
TRACKLIST Naum Gabo – Volgograd Mugwump – Stanza A Mountain Of One – Bones (Way Of The Ancients Remix) Jarvis Cocker – Discosong (Pilooski Mix) Phreek Plus One – That’s It Clap Rules – Old Sequencer – (Bostro Pesopeo Remix) Motor City Drum Ensemble – Raw Cuts #6 TJ Kong – Music (The Clashing Egos Interpretation) Break SL – Dirtbomb Phreek Plus One – Astro Boogie (Sportloto Alpha Remix) LCD Soundsystem – 45:33 (Padded Cell Remix)
I came across some screencaps from John Carpenter’s 1988 They Live over at the excellent I love Hotdogs blog today (you may remember ILHD from the film titles post) and was immediately struck by the “Obey” scenes. Looks pretty familiar right? Cool to see the inspiration for Shepard Fairey’s Obey Giant campaign, looks like a terrible movie though. Although Roddy Piper cameos are always welcome.
I talked about the HP Envy a while back as a potential alternative to the Macbook and now it’s finally out. I’ve always been a fan of HP laptops, they’re fast and cheap and I’ve had three which have all served me well. But they were all ugly as hell and covered with useless add-ons and blue LEDs; not exactly objects of desire, just practical alternatives to the pricey Macs. So when I heard about the upcoming Envy line I was pretty excited at the prospect of a PC laptop alternative that didn’t suck. Unfortunately, as hard as HP tried to clone the Macbook experience, the Envy seems to have fallen short of the in almost every way. I guess it comes as no surprise, nobody does it like Mac. Gizmodo has all the details on the Envy, including more pics and a review. I think I’
I feel in love with Information Records early last year once all the Studio remixes started to surface, since then they have released D. Lissik and Fontan. A ton of good spacey guitar noodlin’ in the best way, not one bad song out of that trio of bands.
I feel an even bigger psych rock movement(or maybe we should say moment) is about to happen, even bigger than the one we have now and one band that will take us there is the heavily 70’s influenced A Mountain of One.
Marble Sounds didn’t get much love when their EP was released BUT it was only a hand full of tracks, one track that I go back to is Good Occasions its a catchy alternative soft tune that builds nicely maybe even too nice, certain parts linger like a mid 90’s post rock song but the singers voice takes everything up a notch with his high pitch serenades.
I hope everyone that listens to ambient consistently has had a chance to sit with an Eluvium album, not just a song a whole album, he’s right up there with Loscil and Gas in my mind as someone that delivers a full on thought out release, always a beautiful surprise when a track like this pops up randomly at night on your player.
In one of his books, A Place of My Own, Pollan describes how he personally, with no carpentry experience, built this small structure behind his house in Vermont. This whole thing might be ringing a bell if you read the Linda Aldredge post, but remember her tree house is a real, fully livable home, isolated in the woods, in a tree. She definitely wins the battle of priciple, but Pollan gets the honorable mention for pragmatism. Although how many people just happen to have an acre of woods in their backyard? Or happen to own an acre of raw forest for that matter… I think this is an east coast thing, the woods always look amazing out there.
This “writing house” — as he describes it — is a great concept and I am willing to bet it’s an incredibly productive environment. I often find that working in the same space as I live presents unique challenges to motivation and focus. This seems like a cost-effective alternative to having different addresses for your working and living spaces.
How many of you work primarily from home? Do you find there to be a conflict between convenience and distraction in the home work environment? Comment
Art & Copy is a film about advertising currently making its way around the country. The film is an in-depth look at some of the best and most creative minds in the business. As director Doug Pray states, “I felt it could be a more powerful statement to focus the film only on those rare few who actually moved and inspired our culture with their work. And that higher standard made me want to make a film that reflected the same kind of disciplined artistic approach that my subjects used.” It looks really interesting and I’m really excited to see it.
The frightening and most difficult thing about being what somebody calls a creative person is that you have absolutely no idea where any of your thoughts come from really — and especially you don’t have any idea where they are going to come from tomorrow. — Art & Copy
We’ve been watchingThe Persuaders in class over the last few weeks and, while it’s not specifically about graphic design per se, it’s easy to draw useful parallels between the two disciplines of advertising and design (as they are often one and the same anyway, whether you like it or not). If you are interested, you can watch all of The Persuaders on the website.
This winter is shaping up to be a pretty excellent time for designers as far as film is concerned. Art & Copy will be in San Francisco in early November, Objectified comes out on DVD on October 13th (so sad they had to push it two weeks due to a “manufacturing snafu”…how ironic), and Visual Acousticswill be here November 6th.
I think I am most excited for Visual Acoustics — I remember writing about it a while ago and have been surviving off of Shulman’s wonderful photography in the meantime. Also worth mentioning is The September Issue, the film chronicling the development and process behind the largest issue of Vogue Magazine. I saw this one recently and would recommend it, but it wasn’t quite as good as I was hoping. It’s exciting to see design related films making their way into the (almost) mainstream!
Side note: Art & Copy employs a beautiful ampersand in the logo for the film. Not sure what it is, but it’s very excellent looking.
All I want to hear during this Powell song is for someone to say “Here’s the Beat Konducta on the Blue Note Records…” just kidding, the man has some talent and a great ear, check him out on iTunes I also picked up Dimension X and Crystalisation from his catalog.
Another strong release by Mr. Paul White, the 4 track EP called The Punch Drummer just leaves you wanting more though, still a good way to spend $4.
4AD picks up another great UK group called The Big Pink that can bring the wall of sound but also can maybe help veer the hipsters crowd away from the Franz Ferdinand.
I had to post this Weird Tapes edit partially because I love the song but the Laserblast sync music video just puts it over the top.
Powell – Reflexion
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Paul White – Synth March
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The Big Pink – Dominos
[audio:doms.mp3]
Hail Social – No Paradise (Weird Tapes Edit)
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Hail Social – No Paradise (Weird Tapes Edit) Video…Kinda
The new Performance Mouse MX from Logitech didn’t make it in time for the Design Mouse Roundup post from last year but I sure wish it had. I have the MX Revolution (the original version of this new Performance MX) and I really love it, save for one fatal flaw: a defective battery. This was apparently a common issue with the old MX mice and they lose their ability to charge properly. So now it’s pulling light duty upstairs as an entertainment center controller, a purpose for which it’s surprisingly well suited.
I’ve been using the Razer Death Adder recently, and aside from it’s tacky design and even tackier name, it performs very well. I’ve been steering clear of wireless mice — I just don’t trust the accuracy and the last thing I need down in the studio are more wireless signals — but this new one is pretty intriguing. I’d really like to have hyperscroll back, I miss it on the Death Adder.
In keeping with this week’s (completely unplanned) typographic theme, I thought I’d post these excellent covers by Emil Ruder. I’d love to see someone try to get away with type layout like this on a client project.
Some additional info (apparently translated) from 80 Magazine:
“in 1953, TM held a competition to design a cover series, inside layout and advertising pages. 12 people took part, including the basel typography teachers emil ruder and robert büchler. the TM jury report on ruder’s entry:
‘the designer if his competition work chose the square as design motif, wich also resonates again in the page layout. this cover series is designed with sparkling fantasy; bold and new, far way from tested solutions, in a darling refreshing attemp. […] a really new solution which could have an interesting change from the arrangement up to now’
five covers by emil ruder were applied to break the monotony of the winning entry of robert büchler”
extracto da revista-libro ‘ruder typography ruder philosophy’. idea magazine 333. vol. 57. marzo 2009. xapon. issn 0019-1299 +
Just found a compilation from a label run by one of the guys from The Drums called Holiday Records, really promising fun material, there is a slew of genres being exposed, bits and pieces hint that The Drums have the depth and truly live thru their sound and are well deserving of the 2009 hype.
New Burial from the forthcoming Hyperdub compilation, i’m definitely feeling this.
There once was a time that the label Traum was pretty much outstanding week after week, firing from all angles with the some of the most beautiful compilations and rising stars, those were the days when deep minimal melodic had a chance to become what Space Disco is today.
Texture expert Farben still pops up regularly on my iTunes, the songs always dim the lights in my room when they come on, makes me think about the times I end up staring at flickering candles or when you crush up flint and sprinkle it on a lighter and you end up having a tiny little sparkler show for a short while.
