This was a poster from Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible tour that could be folded into what they described as a "shadowbox". Found it while searching for something to post alongside this song. Neon Bible is incredible, I still find it hard to believe they outdid themselves after 2004’s Funeral, but here we are.

Arcade Fire – The Well & The Lighthouse

[audio:well.mp3]

Thanks to everyone for the great tips in the comments of yesterday’s Portland post. We’re going to try and hit those places. Last night we ended up hanging out downtown. We had dinner at Voleur -  amazing mac and cheese, highly recommended. Then we hit a great little place called Bo’s for Martinis. We ended up at a really cool bar where a wall hit me above my eye opening up a nice little gash and drawing blood; I’m an idiot. In my defense the wall hit me unprovoked; I was pretty much minding my own business. Unfortunately none of us could remember the name of it this morning.  The middle picture above is the DJ at the place, if anyone recognizes it speak up in the comments.

Please excuse the picture quality, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I neglected to bring my camera so I’m using my friend’s point and shoot Canon. I actually enjoy using it, at the expense of quality of course. It’s just nice for a change to not be lugging some 10 lb. chunk of metal around everywhere.

Today we went to Floating World Comics (thanks to J.Cross for the suggestion). They have a nice little collection of design books there, got a couple cool ones, I’ll post some pics up when I get home.

In Portland right now and of course didn’t bring my camera again.  This place is always great; we hung out in one of my favorite spots today, the Pearl District. It’s a great little neighborhood which really reminds me of Midtown Sacramento and Wicker Park in Chicago. I’ve got my friend’s little point and shoot so I will try and snag some shots here and there. Trying to figure out where to go tomorrow night, heard good things about hollocene, any suggestions?

Very nice colors from an old BOAC campaign. Could do without the clouds and the airplane but I suppose a concept like that would never make it past the marketing people without some of the obvious thrown in for good measure. Note the BOAC logo that is formed in the middle by the arrows, love it. Great fine print line at the bottom, perfect kerning. Unfortunately no info on the designer, anyone?

Via FFFFOUND

Very nice book cover via Grain Edit.

"This Land – A Geography of Canada by Edward Wahl c1961
Hans Kleefeld cover designer Great book discovery by Rosemary Travale.
Hans also designed the original logo for the Toronto Zoo."

Denise and Ryan rocking some ISO50 prints on their wall. Photo by Alison Conklin.

Aphex Twin is one of my favorite composers and his 1995 album "I Care Because You Do" will always hold a special place in my collection. I have to admit I really don’t care for some of his work; the more harsh experimental stuff is not really my style. But when he gets all melodic and ambient there is none better. This track here is one of my all-time favorites.

Aphex Twin – Alberto Balsalm

[audio:alberto.mp3]

Not sure if this vintage Playboy action qualifies as NSFW, but it seems pretty tame by today’s standards so thought I would post if not just for that amazing psychedelic swirl going on.

Unless you are way into audio production (read: geek) you don’t have any good reason to care what the EMI TG console was (it was essentially a giant mixer for recording music and several were installed at Abbey Road Studios and used on the Beatles album of the same name). Regardless, I’ve posted these images since these consoles have always intrigued me from an aesthetic point of view as well. I really enjoy the industrial design they put into this old equipment, such functional design and usually built to military spec. 

It has always been a dream to have a Neve, API, EMI, or SSL console in my studio but they run around $50,000 – $100,000+ so it’s going to keep being a dream until I find a bag of money at the park like in that one after-school special about being honest minus the honesty part. A company called Chandler now makes clones of these things and they look almost as good. My friend who does the post production work on my music uses a couple Chandler pre-amps and swears by them, but they’re pretty damned expensive too. I currently use a set of Neve clones, but it’s only 2 channels so still not coming anywhere near these massive old consoles.