I have been meaning to do more posts with good examples of contemporary poster art and after seeing Well Medicated’s 50 Amazing Gig Posters Sure To Inspire article I thought now would be a great time to start. Concert posters were always my biggest inspiration for getting into art and design. I like to think of my work as sort of straddling the disciplines of pure graphic design and the more illustrative styles featured in the Well Medicated post so I’m always excited to see new work from these types of artists. It always amazes me how they do so much with so little and how they stay true to the classic modernist typographic ideals. It’s very rarely that we as designers get to be truly idealistic with our design so it’s a breath of fresh air to see work like this, unmolested by the hands of middle-men and marketing departments.
On a side note, seeing a large collection of stylistically similar prints like this always reminds me of the rather strange disconnect I’ve noticed between the world of gig poster artists and graphic designers. A good example would be FlatStock at SXSW; that whole scene always seemed to me to be quite insularly while a lot of the design festivals I end up presenting at seem to fall short in their representation of the poster art world. Perhaps I’m missing something, but you’d think there would be more overlap between the two worlds given how much the output has in common.
Since there are 1,000’s of 12″ electronic vinyl still coming out every week to record shops a lot of the labels have taken design more seriously to catch the record buyers attention by keeping a consistent layout and font for their stock sleeve jackets that hold the vinyl. I collect alot of these stock sleeves, i thought this would be a good way to post some vinyl versions of songs too and show you some of the record sleeves that don’t make to the people that only buy CDs and MP3’s. These first 2 are Kompakt’s TOTAL series and REKIDS regular stock jacket that usually changes up alot but they keep the same font and usually keep it centered.
UPDATE: One other thing is that a lot of vinyl doesn’t make it to CD unless the musician does an album with the same label and CD’s are pressed or if it gets licensed to a DJ mix CD or podcast.
DJ Koze – Zou Zou
[audio:zou.mp3]
Radio Slave – Screaming Hands (Cosmo Vitelli’s Radioaktivitat remix)
Update: as many pointed out in the comments, this is set in France, not sure where I got that UK reference. I guess I had Cunningham’s work stuck in my head while I was writin.
I was debating whether or not to post Justice’s new Romain-Gavras directed video for Stress just because it’s so damned violent. Like out of control, completely senseless violent. But I decided it would be a nice counterpoint to Justice’s last video so I decided to put it up. The video follows a gang of youths around the city as they cause mayhem and beat the hell out of people. It’s set against the familiar dreary backdrop of urban UK streets reminiscent of Chris Cunningham’s Come To Daddy video for Aphex Twin (which is equally disturbing, but at least no one gets a bottle smashed over their face in that one). I’d be interested to hear what everyone’s take on this one is; right now it feels intense but I’m having trouble finding any deep meaning beyond that initial visceral reaction. But perhaps that’s the point.
Music site Better Propaganda picked recent Tycho single The Daydreamas song of the day today (9/9/08). They’ve posted a review and a free MP3 download. Check it out here
These last couple of days i’ve been going to shows and heading to a few more this week. The one i’m most excited about is Deastro, he has great energy to his music but keeps it together without getting too noisy and replaces it with catchy looping of synths. I saw Flying Lotus and Daedelus Sunday at Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan where all these shows are going on, both of them are unreal live, they take their album songs and strip them down and make the songs really come alive on stage. Tonight is Deerhunter, haven’t heard much of this band to he honest even though they’re everywhere, i just liked that the lead singer listens to Markus Guentner so it should be good. The last track is a Kooks cover of the ever popular MGMT, i think this acoustic cover is almost competing to be better than the original.
Deastro – Michael, The Lone Archer of the North Shore
[audio:deastro.mp3]
Flying Lotus – Auntie’s lock/Infinitum (featuring Laura Darlington)
An interesting CG clip from Discovery’s Miracle Earth depicting our destruction via giant asteroid set to Pink Floyd’s Great Gig In The Sky. The song is apt for many reasons, not the least of which being that the vocalist sounds like she is actually being burned alive and/or crushed by a giant asteroid. But I’m a sucker for that 70’s bass sound so I can’t hate. It’s actually a pretty sad video to watch, and the final sentence of the titles is rather ominous. Although 6 events in 4.55 billion years isn’t really much to worry about considering the cosmic blink of an eye humanity has occupied in the universal timeline. Also, I am pretty sure you don’t really notice/care when you’re instantly vaporized, you just turn to vapor, and so does your Macbook Pro.
