The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.
Paul Mawhinney is the owner of the world’s largest vinyl record collection, if you’re a music fan of some sort i can’t see how this short documentary won’t touching you in some way.
Director Brian Levi Bowman has released a new short film entitled Meridian which features the Tycho track Daydream. I think it came out beautifully, those particle effects are amazing. They simply licensed the track for this so I had no input on the project; in a situation like this it’s always interesting as a musician to see what directors will do with your work. The finished product rarely reflects the meaning you originally had for the song, but it’s always nice to see a different take on things.
There are a few viewing options below, I recommend the Quicktime if you got it, the quality is much higher.
> View Meridian Quicktime
> Download Meridian Quicktime Hi-Res
> View Meridian in Streaming Flash
I know, I know, flash mobs are so last year. But I hadn’t seen this one yet and thought it was a good example of the concept as art. This must have been a pretty surreal scene to randomly stumble into, although I would have to think that most New Yorkers are pretty jaded to these sorts of stunts by now. The real trick would have been to do this in the 1930’s or 40’s. It would have caused a city-wide panic, people would think it was the rapture or something.
I’ve never seen one of these in person, but here in San Francisco I’ve witnessed Critical Mass a few times. It’s a pretty amazing sight to behold except for the part where I can’t walk across Valencia to get a falafel.
I don’t know where I stumbled on to this video, but It’s amazing, hilarious, and insightful all at the same time. Judging from the title I thought I was about to be subjected to some sort of right-wing rant about morals and values in America, little did I know I was actually in for a very down to earth lesson in design. I really like this guy’s attitude and it’s rare that you hear someone speak so frankly and unpretentiously about design. In my opinion, he hits the nail on the head with this and I couldn’t agree more. Even if you don’t agree with him, you absolutely must agree with the Futura titling.
I don’t have much info on this, but apparently it’s a trailer from an upcoming series called The Draplin Project featuring a guy named Aaron Draplin. Aaron’s site is full of interesting stuff and some very nice examples of industrial modernist design. I’ve posted the poor quality YouTube version above for ease of viewing, but you can also download the hi-res Quicktime version from Jess Gibson’s site.
I wouldn’t normally post something like this, but it is Friday and this is pretty good. I am having bad flashbacks from my freelance days, sort of in the same vein as this. Enjoy the weekend, but if you have clients like these, I am sure you’ll be stressing all the way through it anyways.
While I was in Detroit for DEMF last month I taped a segment for Current TV as part of a feature on Ghostly International (the label which I record for as Tycho). The feature is a good introduction to what Ghostly is about and includes some interviews with a few artists (Osbourne, Kate Simko, and myself).
Yes, it was a bit early and I think I’d had one coffee too many for that interview; no, I don’t know why there are random clips of me taking pictures of dumpsters. A couple of the pictures I was taking in those clips are included in the Detroit DEMF post. There’s also a clip of some of the actual DEMF set towards the end. The whole experience was a bit surreal; I played the opening set at DEMF around 1pm after a long night, was weird to be playing outdoors, in the early afternoon like that. The coolest part was that you could see Canada from the stage (look across the river in the shot from behind).
Skalpel are a jazz duo from Poland on Ninja Tunes, they sample 50s-70s Polish Jazz and piece together tracks. I always liked the video for this song and the raw lo-fi recording did it for me everytime. It reminds me of The Avalanches alil but not as uptempo, i’ll post something from them soon.
Skalpel – Sculpture
[audio:sculpture.mp3]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