One of the most influential electronic labels since i started working in the industry has been Kompakt out of Cologne, Germany. Its owned by a favorite musician of mine Wolfgang Voigt aka Gas, who has some of the most unbelievable ambient records on Mille Plateaux in the mid 90’s. 1,2,3, No Gravity was always a great vinyl to throw on during the beginning of a dj set just because it had this feel to it that everybody might actually know it or wanna know it once the distant vocal came in. Also, The cover art is part of a compilation series that comes out every year, i think Kompakt is on Total 8 now, definitely worth looking into especially their other compilation series “Pop Ambient” which is also yearly. For the non techno fans, i promise to keep the techno to a minimum, if i post techno its mostly because of the melodies usually.

Closer Musik – 1,2,3, No Gravity

The 1976 print on grey American Apparel Tri-blend is now back in stock. I know a lot of people had been waiting for the mediums to come back so now’s your chance, get them while they last at The ISO50 Shop.

The Obama print sold out over the weekend, 4300 of a limited edition of 5000 (the final 700 were previously reserved). Thanks to everyone who picked one up, I am sure the Obama campaign is very thankful for your support. Sorry to anyone who missed out, I will definitely be doing what I can to make these available in a different form soon.

This was one of the largest format prints I’ve ever done and it got me excited to start converting some of the old designs to larger formats. Be on the lookout for the big stuff soon. For those of you waiting on the case study I was going to write for this piece, I’m sorry for the delay. This past month has been nothing short of insane so I’ve been playing catch-up on a lot of front. I am shooting for having that out this week.

Some random beauty from Graphis 71/72 via The Nonist. These are from the same issue as that Dietmar Winkler piece I posted a while back (one of my all time faves). The Bedside Nurse stuff sort of reminds me of Air’s Virgin Suicides OST cover.

1. Charles Goslin / David Barnett. Covers for the magazinebedside Nurse. (Look very modern don’t they? But the bigger question “Bedside Nurse magazine?!")

2. By: Kohei Sugiura. Front and back covers of Marketingram, the Shiseido house organ, here dealing with the morphology of the human head.

3. By: Ron Hughes. Cover for a record about ecology. (Gore could have used this for An Inconvenient Truth 35 years later.)

I found Milosh thru the pretty reliable iTunes electronic front page banners. First i thought it was the singer of Sigur Ros Jón Þór Birgisson because he does kinda look the same. Finally I clicked and found out it was a Plug Research release which is home to some of my favorite artists like Daedelus, Dntel, Thomas Fehlmann, and John Tejada. I think Milosh would be a great addition to a Tycho track, don’t you agree?

Milosh – Couldn’t Sleep

If you like “Couldn’t Sleep” then this live version of “You Make Me Feel” might be perfect for you, i remember when i saw this video and heard the voice layering i pretty much just decided to throw away my Reason 3.0 and Ableton Live.

This is either absolutely brilliant, or absolutely insane. Either way it’s great. It’s a video and remix of Radiohead’s Nude featuring some nice shots of vintage machines and seemingly composed mostly of sounds from those machines. Update: here’s a Vimeo link to the video.

Update #2: Radiohead posted about the video on their blog today. Congrats James! (thanks joe for the link)

Video by James Houston. Via Jesse Woodward

For those that are looking for something that’s melodic but with texture this Fennesz album Endless Summer is by far my favorite to put on when its just too humid in your home and all you wanna do just relax and not move. I would of posted my favorite track “Happy Audio” from this album but i think the repetition might of overwhelmed some people. The track Endless Summer feels like its split up in 3 parts where the guitar takes turns with this in and out melodic noise as the lead piece and at the end everything wraps together nicely. I think it would have to take 3 talented people like Christopher Willits, Biosphere and William Basinski to be able recreate a track like this again. The artwork by Tina Frank and photography by Hertha Hurnaus is just stunning and was ahead of its time i think for a 2001 release. I’d love to know if this wasn’t enjoyable for someone all the way thru especially towards the end where it sounds like Christian Fennesz brings in this muted string addition that brings everything together very tight in a good way in my opinion. For those who have this record its definitely worth dusting off and putting it on again.

Fennesz: Endless Summer

Buro Destruct was one of the design bureau’s i found after finding Scott’s ISO50’s work that i really enjoyed. I was mostly drawn to the bearded guy icon and their poster’s they did for artists on Warp Records 5-10 years ago. I love their well thought out press photo though and books they’ve put out over the years.

Some British logo design and great grid action via Alki1.

Krautrock + Orange = Good.