ISO50

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Slum Village+Hudson+JDSY+Fleet Foxes

Posted by Jakub

Slum Village
Whenever I can sneak in a little J Dilla on the blog it makes me smile, I feel like its never a bad thing or that someone would ever say “you know what, there is too much Dilla being played”, actually I don’t think thats ever been said, i’m going to google that phrase…nope no one has ever said it.

Just picked up that Hudson Mohawke EP on Warp on vinyl last week at Other Music but i’ve been looking for this track in the stores. The middle of the track gets a bit too airy and distant for me but the vox with those keys in the last 45 seconds makes it all worth sharing with you.

One of the most avant producers i’ve ever met is Joseph Sims aka JDSY, his aesthetics might come off as a darker Dan Deacon or a unkept geocities site that holds a hidden message but his music is unlike any other. The choices for sounds and melody patterns on his releases give me goosebumps.

Why can’t there be a great AM Gold internet radio station online? that plays Fleet Foxes and Gordon Lightfoot all day and night.

Slum Village – Players

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Hudson Mohawke – Star Crackout

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JDSY – Smoke and Mirrors

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Fleet Foxes – Mykonos

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Pin-Up Girls In Stereo

Posted by Scott

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These pin-ups are from the amazing Vintage Knob collection. There’s plenty more of these to see over there along with the more basic fare: close-ups of audio/visual equipment sans hot girls. That Marconi one up there is the best thing I’ve seen in a while; wall size print coming up as soon as they deliver the 9900. Seeing stuff like this always gives me mixed feelings. It just reminds me of the wealth of beautiful images out there that are just lost to time. Can you imagine being able to get the original negatives to these shots and do serious enlargements? It’s nice that sites like The Vintage Knob are making these available in some form, but 72dpi Jpegs just don’t cut it for print output.

Synth Pioneers Pt. 1

Posted by Sam

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Hello, ISO Massive. I’m Sam – Scott and Jakub may have mentioned me before as SV4. I’ve worked with Jakub for a long time at Ghostly, and I have the distinct pleasure of releasing Scott’s work as Tycho on my label. Today, Scott and Jakub have humored me with some column space.

My musical history is all over the place from Hip-Hop to Italo to IDM to Funk, and i’d love to bring some of my favorite lost/forgotten gems to the table…

What i love about the ISO50 headspace is that it evokes a long-forgotten, if not imaginary, past. To my ears, these songs all share that elusive quality: it’s music from a time you think you remember, but were never alive to see.

Paul Hardcastle was a jazz guy with an electro hip-hop influence; dude was nice with a drum machine. You can still hear “Rainforest” and “19” on both late-night urban radio and at your dentist’s office. Daniel Wang put me onto this track and I later found the LP at a used-record store in Berlin. I’ve never found the opportunity to DJ with it, but it’s amazing to pretend there’s an audience that would want to get large to this.

Paul Hardcastle – Stop The Clock

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Mike Oldfield is best known as the guy who made “Tubular Bells,” the eerie synth classic which was later adopted for the Exorcist movies. This cut is amazing – it makes you want to drive a speedboat as slow as it will go and watch the coastline.

Mike Oldfield – Foreign Affair

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The Alan Parsons Project catalogue has some of the best “dad pop” of the ’70’s and ’80s. Parsons, a studio wizard with a great beard, was a production maverick and could write an amazing hook (“The Eye In The Sky” will make you feel like you’re at the mall waiting for your mom to run errands circa 1985). This track became big in disco DJs’ crates because of its endless groove and largely instrumental composition.

The Alan Parsons Project – Mammagamma [Instrumental]

Marc Moulin is criminally underrated and passed away last year. He is perhaps best known as part of the pioneering Belgian electronic group Telex, who have been immortalized by their Italo-style classic “Moskow Diskow” Moulin’s Placebo Years CD was reissued a few years back by Blue Note in Europe, but it deserves a much wider re-release. Moulin’s own work is more on the jazz-fusion side, but it’s heavy on the electronics, which is probably why he’s been sampled a lot – especially by J Dilla.

Marc Moulin – Balek

[audio:balek.mp3]

The Golden Ratio: Myth or Magic?

Posted by Scott

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If you’re a designer you’re no doubt familiar with the concept of The Golden Ratio. People often invoke the idea to explain why something is inherently well laid out or pleasing to the eye. I have heard people say they see it in some of my work, but I’ve never knowingly tried to pursue it. And that’s apparently the whole point; even if we don’t consciously know it, they say we are constantly seeking it out. When the Golden Ratio presents itself to us we subconsciously recognize it because it supposedly mirrors the proportions of our own human form.

Load of crap? I thought Yoga was a load of crap but now my knee is better. But for the record, I still don’t believe in wizards and/or gemstones, except in medieval times when both apparently worked great. Whatever the case may be, this guy sure seems to think everyone’s favorite ratio isn’t all that golden. Keith Devlin wrote an article for The Mathematical Association of America entitled The Myth That Won’t Go Away and in he he posits that the entire concept of the Golden Ratio as it pertains to aesthetic appeal in humans is a falsehood perpetuated by centuries of myth. He does concede, however, that “the appearance of the golden ratio in nature…is real, substantiated, and of considerable scientific interest”.

I came across the article in @AisleOne’s Twitter who, as it happens, is a proponent of the application of the Golden Ratio in web design and typography. For the record I don’t really have an opinion either way, just haven’t studied it enough. But I thought it was interesting to hear a dissenting viewpoint on the subject given that everyone else I’ve ever talked to about it only sang it’s praises. Makes for an interesting debate I’m sure, anybody have any opinions they’d like to share?

By the way, when I was searching for an image for the article I came across the poster you see above via Myleftisyourright. You can also find some other cool stuff in the same gallery.

Graduating to Graphic Design

Posted by Alex

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I just finished reading Never Sleep, the new book by Andre Adreev and Dan Covert of dress code. As a student, the back of the book (pictured) kind of freaked me out when I first saw it. My brief and occasional foray into the world of freelance has exposed me to some differences between school and the professional world of design, but I’ve always figured I’ll be in for a wake up call when I graduate regardless. I was psyched to see a book written about this exact process, and I spent last night (as the title suggested) reading the lot of it.

The book chronicles Andre and Dan’s transition from design school to the professional world. They describe, in-depth, just about every aspect of their journey; studying at CCA, working for MTV, and the eventual creation of their own studio in NYC. Along the way, they include examples of their own work from each stage of their career, as well as various essays by professors and professional designers (many of which are available on the site). The book describes just about everything that happened to Andre and Dan, even the occasional IM conversation, and this makes for a very engaging read. The third person narrative is just about as random as it is amusing, and is ultimately very accessible and insightful for the struggling design student (that’s me).

Dan is Ohio. Andre is Bulgaria. They is dress code. At the combined age of 50 their work has been recognized by shiny awards, appeared in lots of magazines, coffee table books, and 3 museums. They met while studying graphics designs at California College of the Arts. Then moved to New York and got jobs with MTV working in motion and print—before stupidly leaving their dream jobs to start a studio of their own. (Buy)

Images From Where? and By Who? Part. II

Posted by Jakub

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Here is the second installment of Images From Where? and By Who? where we try to figure out who did the original design, photograph or product and if that becomes too easy then its hopefully just a nice small collection of images that might be inspiring for your day of creating.

The first image I just found yesterday and it had nothing attached and the link was generic. I would love to know if these are miniature or full size because i’d save up and buy that small brown one on the right.

The second image i’ve shown Scott once and told him if I could ever have any special power it would be being able to draw the way this car is drawn, incredible work in my opinion.
The third image is just of this generic floppy disc sleeve, you see I use to be a buyer sometimes for a few thrift stores back in Michigan and i’d spend a lot of time looking for a lot of things that looked exactly like this, to most it looks like whatever 80’s junk but i’d probably frame it.

Burial + Four Tet

Posted by Jakub

Burial + Four Tet
Burial and Four Tet have just put together probably this years best collaborative effort on vinyl. The vinyl release contains two 9 minute tracks that show off both of their skills of making catchy repetitive melodies that lay over airy soundscapes and softened keys. Moth has the potential to become a great piece to space out too while Wolf Cub asks for more of your attention while it plucks along and kicks into dubstepville.

Burial + Four Tet – Wolf Cub

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Burial + Four Tet – Moth

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Four Tet – Twenty Three

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Burial – Forgive

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