Sébastien Hayez was kind enough to send me this Graphis Flickr set where you’ll find a lot of nice shots of various Graphis books. Link

Jakub posted some stills from the upcoming Where The Wild Things Are movie a while back and now we have a very nice movie poster to go with them. This thing is looking better and better with each new development.

I’d like to suggest more shows and tours to check out via the blog since most of you are probably too busy to check the local venues weekly. Scott and I have been posting about Benoit probably more than any other musician on here. Below are dates for his first official tour w/ Windy & Carl besides a handful of shows in the past few years. I’ll try and get some words from him about the shows and his setup soon.

Apr 23 2009 8:00P WhipperSnapper Gallery
Toronto, Ontario

Apr 24 2009 8:00P The Shop
Ithaca, New York

Apr 25 2009 8:00P Lunt Basement
Haverford, Pennsylvania

Apr 26 2009 9:00P Sundazed
New Haven, Connecticut

Apr 27 2009 8:00P Oxfam Cafe, Tufts Univ.
Medford, Massachusetts

Apr 28 2009 7:00P Le Poisson Rouge
New York, New York

Apr 30 2009 8:00P TBA
Richmond, Virginia

May 1 2009 9:00P Bebe Theater
Asheville, North Carolina

May 2 2009 8:00P 529
Atlanta, Georgia

May 3 2009 8:00P Bullhorn
Lexington, Kentucky

Benoît Pioulard – Ash In The Sky

In the world of audio engineering, the name Neve has become almost mythical. Rupert Neve was responsible for a very popular EQ and preamp circuit design that helped produce many a hit record over the years. I personally love the Neve sound and record everything through a set of four Neve clones. While clones are great and can approach the sound of the original, they’re still not truly a Neve. So to see an actual Neve Sidecar show up on Ebay was a surprise. Just seeing pictures of these is pretty intense, I can’t imagine what it would be like to actually use one. To me, the color and design inspire a sort of reverence, kind of like the Futura of the sound engineering world; classic, refined, and functional. At any rate, a $40k mixer is just a dream…but what a nice looking dream.

Our favorite Scandinavian pop star Erlend Oye is back with his band The Whitest Boy Alive, by the sound of it after skipping thru some of the songs on the LP I feel like we got a intimate recording of the band in the studio, each instrument is upfront in big bold letters. I’m really loving the key work on the whole LP, gonna take a walk and check out the whole thing now.

Mux Mool’s new EP dropped today exclusively on iTunes, you may know him from the Ghostly Swim compilation or the intro song for the engadget podcast called gdgt run by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block. The synth bass in this song is as warm as butter and the melody sounds like its straight from a soundtrack for an ending of a 80’s tropical action film, too good to miss.

Digged up an old Casino Versus Japan 10″ that was released on Wobblyhead years back, made me really miss Erik’s work. If your reading this Erik email me i’ll put out your album! damn you’re good at melody my friend.

MF Doom hrrrmm I mean Doom just never fails me, the instrumental here just guns down any imitators, the intro horns remind me of a fuzzy memory of watching an A-Team & Airwolf marathon on the USA Network in 1989.

The Whitest Boy Alive – 1517

Mux Mool – Teal Trim

Casino Versus Japan – Via Rouge

MF Doom – Kon Queso

The above are part of Richard Misrach’s On The Beach, a series of large scale (six by ten feet) photographs of swimmers and sunbathers in Hawaii. You can pick still pick up the book (though it looks like it’s become quite expensive), or if you find yourself on the East Coast, you can see the exhibition in person. It was recently on display the National Gallery and is scheduled to be in Atlanta until August of this year. I highly recommend seeing these in person; they are absolutely massive and are truly awe-inspiring viewed full size.

The last image is my favorite photograph of all time. When I first saw it, it affected me like no photograph ever had. I was left speechless, and am still not able to really explain what it is I find so powerful about it. It’s hard to tell on screen, but the little dot in the water is two people embracing. I like that you can’t see the shore; for all we know, they could be floating out in the middle of nowhere. Of course, all of the photographs were taken out of Misrach’s hotel room window, so they can’t be too far out there, but it’s easy to forget when all shoreline indicators are absent. Perhaps it’s this sense of remoteness and potential danger, combined with the serenity of the overall scene, that gets to me. I feel worried and calm at the same time. I would almost fly to Atlanta just to see it again; it’s like a drug.

“The Olivetti Lettera 32 is a portable mechanical typewriter designed by Marcello Nizzoli for Olivetti in 1963 as the successor of the popular Olivetti Lettera 22. This typewriter was popular amongst journalists and students.
The typewriter is sized about 34x35x10 cm (with the carriage return lever adding about 1-2 more centimeters in height), making it portable at least for the time’s standards, even though its 5.9 kg weight may limit portability somewhat.”
– Wikipedia

A friend that I used to work at Adobe with sent me this Adobe UI Gripes site yesterday. I really can’t say why I find it so amusing but maybe it’s just nice to see someone going through the same frustration I feel sometimes with Adobe apps. I guess when you’ve essentially monopolized the creative software market like Adobe, you make a pretty easy target for stuff like this. Anyways, it’s a fun read and there are gems like this sprinkled around here and there. I’ve encountered a lot of these before and just asked why, but I’m not sure I ever got as worked up as this. Link

Realistically, I really only have a few problems with CS4. At the top of the list would be Bridge. Somewhere around CS3 Adobe decided to cripple Windows machines and remove the thumbnail icon viewing capability from the OS file explorer thereby forcing you to use Bridge (pretty clever). This wouldn’t be a big deal, I actually like Bridge a lot, only problem is it crashes nearly every time I use it for more than 10 minutes. There’s a fix for 32-bit windows installs but not for 64-bit so we’re left with the generic icon when trying to browse PSD’s in explorer. A couple others would be the permanent hand icon mode (you’ll know it if you’ve encountered it…thankfully there’s any easy fix: reset warning dialogs, but why?) and the delay in dragging content from one tabbed window in Photoshop to another tabbed document, you have to hold that thing up there for waaay too long. How about you, what Adobe bugs do you love to hate?

Our very own Alex Cornell designed this poster for the live 2 hour solo acoustic set he’ll be playing this Thursday at the California Academy of Science in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco. Be there! His set is part of the Nightlife series featuring a lecture by WIRED magazine.

Edit: Unfortunately, it looks like it’s sold out.

Edit #2: Apparently there are tickets to be had at the door. Just make sure to show up a bit early…

I’ve been seeing these 2 Periodic Tables floating around, the larger version of the typeface one is pretty fun to look over and I guess the Photoshop CS shortcuts one is a poster and there’s also ones for Illustrator and InDesign as well.