After what was perhaps the most arduous musical experience of my life, I’ve finally wrapped the new Tycho single. It’s a rather dense arrangement so getting everything to work together ended up taking 3 mixing sessions in SF and LA. I definitely learned a lot though, first, SSL is the most useful, greatest sounding EQ and compression I’ve ever used. Second, my monitoring situation at home is garbage. Time for some more Auralex and Adam A7s. Anyways, it’s done, and I’m done…for about a week or so then it’s back to work on the album.

I spent the free time I had between mixing sessions last week creating the cover art for the single, luckily that process ended up being a bit less stressful (you can see a small snippet of the artwork above). All the details will be coming shortly, the estimated release date is looking like late January. As always, you can keep an eye out here or subscribe to be notified when more info is available.

I hope some of you are sketch comedy fans here, i’m sure if Scott and I could add one more element to the site we would post youtube videos of Tim and Eric or other Adult Swim shows. For me comedy started with the Canadian show Kids In The Hall that was produced by SNL’s Lorne Michaels. The theme song to this show was by a group called “Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet” I’m sure many of us here that grew up close to Canada can hum the bassline to this theme song flawlessly.
I usually check out every release on Plug Research since they put out quality artists like John Tejada, Dntel, etc. I found this classic jam really catchy, it would of probably been huge in the 70’s but it reminds me alil too much of the song “We Will Rock You” but if you can get over that then this track has some parts to offer.
I look back and I don’t think I posted one Animal Collective song here and that blows my mind alil. So without posting one of their hit singles here is “Visiting Friends” a 12 min entrancing psych-folk song.
Small Sins is a very easy listen, super simple for a indie rock song in my opinion and I can’t help myself comparing the songs to Yo La Tengo or even Brendan Canning of Broken Social Scene.

Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet – Having an Average Weekend (Kids in the Hall)

Chessie – Intercity

Animal Collective – Visiting Friends

Small Sins – Too Much To Lose

Just a heads up that Adobe finally switched it’s trial downloads section to CS4 over the weekend. All of the CS4 apps are available via a Java downloader, and all are fully functional for 30 days. Link via 9to5 Mac

Poladroid is a new app that filters and effects your photos to make them look like, you guessed it, Polaroids. I would normally file something like this under gimmick and move on but I can’t help but appreciate the vignetting and color shift that the app lends to your digital photos, for an automatic filter it’s actually not that bad. Unfortunately it looks like you have to put up with the pretty fake looking border and drop shadow to get at that color shifting goodness, but it’s free so I can’t really complain. Check it out it at Poladroid’s site. All photos from Poladroid Flickr Group.

Old Toronto Blue Jays logo

New Toronto Blue Jays logo

I hope you don’t mind if I go on a tangent here? I know the baseball season is over but enough is enough on these redesigns that look like the Mountain Dew logo. Who are the graphic designers that are doing these? The new logo looks like its going 80 miles per hour. The old classic Toronto logo had such strong pieces holding it together especially the color scheme, separated shapes and the leaf. The new one strips away the only Canadian element about it the maple leaf and even the color red, what on earth was the designer thinking?

This student project by Ryan Hageman caught my eye today. Very nice color / typo interaction and a clean, direct style. There’s more over at his site notfreelance.com

Today marks a day of variety, we put up a cover of an old Chemical Brothers track reworked by Japan’s Shinichi Osawa. One of my favorite label’s Delsin delivers a deep and soft house cut from the mysterious Newworldaquarium. Caribou goes in a whole new direction with a Kelley Polar track that hints at he has been listening to a lot of electronic music and not just The Beach Boys. The Mountains seal the deal at the end with a gentle sleeper filled with layer upon layer of guitar.
Also, at the end there’s the original “Star Guitar” video by Michel Gondry just so you can pick if you like the cover more than the original, personally I don’t but its a wonderful effort by Mr. Osawa and featuring Au Revoir Simone never hurts. Chime in on the picks today since they’re all over the place and i’d love to hear if there’s something you like more than the other.

Shinichi Osawa – Star Guitar (feat. Au Revoir Simone)

Newworldaquarium – Tresspassers

Kelley Polar – We Live In An Expanding Universe – Caribou Remix

Mountains – Blown Glass Typewriter

Chemical Brothers – Star Guitar – Video by Michel Gondry

Star Guitar – The Chemical Brothers from Chen VM on Vimeo.

Some more wonderful Spanish pharma ads via exnovo.

Before I start to gush about The Sight Below I think Alan Kellman from Allmusic Guide nailed the description perfectly: “The work of an anonymous Seattle-based producer with an evident affinity for the outer realms of shoegaze and somber ambient techno, Glider would have been an equally easy fit on Kranky, like label staple Loscil, or an idealized version of 4AD that has maintained the line running through the darker and spacier aspects of their early catalog. Alternately, this is just as likely to evoke the absorbing gray moods present throughout the Cure’s Faith and Seventeen Seconds as thaw-out techno like Yagya’s The Rhythm of Snow or Markus Guenter’s In Moll. Though heavily processed, caressingly foreboding guitars are a major component of the Sight Below sound, the root is Wolfgang Voigt’s Gas releases — whether or not a muffled thump is present, rhythm is paramount. Lesser producers would ride out these tracks for eight or nine minutes, rather than the six-minute average here; this producer keeps things tight and ever-developing, never straying into formlessness.”

The Sight Below – Life’s Fading Light

Slowdive – Melon Yellow

Au Revoir Simone – Backyards Of Our Neighbors

The Sight Below – Further Away video

The Sight Below – “Further Away” from Ghostly International on Vimeo.

One testament to the success of Shepard Fairey’s iconic (and nearly ubiquitous) Obama poster is the sheer number of spoofs that have turned up since he created the now famous image. The Village Voice has compiled a rather comprehensive collection of them; some are good natured jabs while others come off a bit more incendiary. Either way, it’s an interesting look at the flip side of the veritable phenomena and centerpiece of a revolution in the visual communication and branding of election campaigns. I particularly like the Mad Magazine take pictured above; as a kid I obsessively collected every issue I could get my hands on and it’s great to see them still at it. Link