Been a great run so far out here, heading in to the home stretch. We’re playing The Trocadero in Philadelphia with The Album Leaf this Saturday and have a couple of tickets up for grabs. Email aegphillycontests [at] aeglive.com with your first/last name and subject line TYCHO for a chance to win.
Just rolled in to Charlottesville for the show tonight at The Jefferson Theater, see you soon!
As you may know, I’m on the road right now for the Tycho Fall Tour with The Album Leaf. Really excited to announce that for the first time, we’ll be streaming a show live over the internet via Livestream. The show is tomorrow night in Nashville, TN at Exit/IN (tickets here) but you can watch live from anywhere starting at 10:30PM Eastern Time (03:30 GMT) via this Livestream page. It’s going to be a fun night, hope you can join us.
Heading in to Oxford, MS for the show at The Lyric tonight. Just want to say a big thanks to everyone who has come out and made this tour so much fun already. Still a bunch of dates to go, hope to see you out!
Tycho Livestream from Exit/In Nashville
September 13, 2012 – 10:30PM EST (03:30GMT)
Tickets to actual show in Nashville
Photo by Zach McNair
Thank you so much FYF / LA, we had a great time last night. Tonight is the first show of the Tycho tour with The Album Leaf in Phoenix! This will be our first AZ show so we’re really excited.
We’ve got a big month of shows lined up so check the Tycho tour page for listings in your area
Photo by @kirstendora on Instagram
Ah, the 2012 Summer Games, now nothing more than the hazy recollection of infinite spoilers and borderline mental illness. While the overall visual presentation wasn’t quite as bad as a lot of people built it up to be (it was certainly better than this bullshit — but not this), London 2012 was an Olympics whose branding I seriously doubt designers will still be going on about 40 years after the fact. Perhaps it was just too advanced for our feeble 21st century minds to comprehend, so to ease us back into our stasis of perpetual nostalgia I present some more universally agreeable fare, from the simpler age of 1976, when everything happening in this picture was perfectly acceptable and also this crudely fashioned chunk of internet-free wood was your computer.
The 1976 Montreal Olympics branding sits right up there with Munich (my personal favorite) and Mexico on the pantheon of graphic design’s greatest achievements. I’m curious to see which of the more recent Olympics — if any — ends up being canonized by the design community in years to come. From the looks of things we shouldn’t hold our collective breath, it’s all been downhill since 1984.
Further reading / viewing here via AisleOne’s Flickr
If you aren’t following Tim Navis (@navisphotography) on Instagram you’re blowing it. Above are some highlights, all fit nicely in line with his overall aesthetic. Must have a print of that top one.
More over at his Instagram Feed and blog
Friend of the blog and Tim Navis collaborator Cameron Ballensky shares some beautifully shot images of his camera collection. I first met Cameron when he assisted Tim on the Tycho shoot, this guy is a technical wizard. He was the one in the car doing donuts around us to kick up the dust in this picture; came out amazing.
Lots of other goodness at his blog
1996 was a pivotal year for me musically. It was the year DJ Shadow released Endtroducing and it was the year I was first properly introduced to electronic music, an experience that certainly altered the course of my life. Although Endtroducing probably ended up having more of a direct influence on my sound, the impetus for me wanting to create my own music was without a doubt LTJ Bukem’s Logical Progression, a continuous mix of what was later referred to as “Intelligent Drum And Bass”.
I was given the album by a friend (on MiniDisc of all things) and it served as the soundtrack to an entire semester of school. We ended up building a battery-powered backpack and walking around in the forests above San Francisco, blasting this sort of music through the mist and Eucalyptus trees; some of my best memories of this city. Sadly, Drum And Bass took some pretty hard turns a few years after this and I just couldn’t keep up. There were a few practitioners of this sound still releasing (most notably, perhaps, Big Bud) but in general things sort of devolved from here on out — to my ears at least. There were several more Logical Progression compilations released after this one (which was later referred to as Logical Progression: Level 1), but none managed to capture the zeitgeist quite like the first.
I think beyond the music, the associated artwork also had a big impact on me. One of my first forays into Photoshop was essentially just a bad ripoff of this cover. I did a little digging and it looks like it was designed by Phillip Wells (aka Basement Phil). Here is a quote from him (unverified of course) on the Logical Progression Discogs page:
I organised the deal for this compilation with Pete Tong at London Records on behalf of Dan aka LTJ Bukem.
When he was sent to an artist studio to do the sleeve, I got a phone call late in the afternoon from Dan saying he could not come up with a sleeve he was happy with and would I come and help. So I left my office at Vinyl Distribution in Reading and made my way up to London and when I arrived Dan was all flustered as the sleeve had to be done that day.
I looked through loads of pictures before coming across the picture used. I knew it was the one because of the ray of light shining down on the Earth, and remember saying to Dan that it was the perfect image as I saw the music that had been released on the label over the three previous years had been a shining light for the DnB scene. – Basement Phil
So enough background, on to the tracks. These are a few of the standouts for me. Photek’s Pharoah (referred to elsewhere as Rings Around Saturn) is far and away the best song on the album and would definitely make my all-time top 100 list.
Photek – Pharoah
Chameleon – Links
DJ Crystl – Mind Games
This is Nemo 33, the deepest swimming pool in the world. Located in Brussels, Belgium, the 113 ft. deep diving facility was designed by diving expert John Beernaerts for instruction, recreation, and film production.
I love the layout and colors of the space; the multi-level plateaus at the top are incredible. This really has a sort of 2001 vibe with a healthy dose of spent fuel pool thrown in. Would love to have a swim in there.
More on Nemo 33
