Ministry of Type has a great post on these beautiful El Al Playing Cards. The cards — illustrated by Jean David — came in this cardboard sleeve. The MOT article is quite in depth and includes all sorts of extra credit info: Link
These are definitely the best looking playing cards I’ve ever seen, someone needs to reproduce these and offer them for sale. I keep seeing all these nice examples of design and thinking how sad it is that most of us will never actually get to see any of them in person. Apparently MOT scored his own deck the old fashioned way, via eBay, but that’s so 2002. Somebody needs to form a non-profit pirate design company that’s sole purpose is to reproduce and freely distribute design artifacts. I’ll take a few copies of all of these.
With GM in the news, I was thinking about Detroit tonight. Detroit was the city I grew up closest to. My father grew up here and his dad worked on the Mercury Zephyr line.
Growing up near the city, the musical influence was huge. On any given weekend in the mid-to-late nineties, late night radio would mix up everything from the classic Art Of Noise song “Moments In Love” to local ghetto tech beats and new drum and bass coming out of the UK.
Much has been made about the city and why it’s music sounds the way it does. The desolate beauty, the mechanized auto factories and even the isolated water-ensconced nature of the state. All if it is true.
Here are four tracks that give me that Detroit feeling. These not the more discussed and celebrated classics, but more personal favorites.
Psyche – From Beyond (Transmat)
[audio:frombeyond.mp3]
Carl Craig is a real legend and continues to impress. This song, under the Psyche alias is perhaps one of my favorite tracks ever. It has a crazy spell to it. It’s not quite techno and it pre-dates the breaks and jungle genres. It’s on it’s own planet. Pure late night driving music to roam the vacant freeways.
Cybotron – Cosmic Raindance (Fantasy)
[audio:cosmicraindance.mp3]
Note: Please play on a proper stereo or headphones as the bassline is what holds this all together. Juan Atkins (“The Originator”) is arguably the greatest groove maker of the Detroit techno school. Cybotron, his group with Richard Davis and John Housely is responsible for some of the most seminal cuts that have been sampled and re-interpreted endlessly. I remember driving down to the store Record Time in our friend’s Ford Fiesta, listening to this on repeat and his subs would rattle the entire frame. Simply majestic.
Drexciya – Digital Tsunami (Tresor)
[audio:digitaltsunami.mp3]
Drexciya is the most mythical duo of the Detroit techno school. The duo of the late James Stinson and Gerald Donald (also of Dopplereffekt, more on that later) made aggressive yet liquid odes to the ocean and it’s provence. This was a later cut, but got me into their brand of mutated electro. Their original pressings fetch a pretty penny on eBay and with good reason.
Suburban Knight – Collaboration Alpha (Peacefrog)
[audio:collaborationalpha.mp3]
As part of the vaunted Underground Resistance Crew, Suburban Knight racked up a Detroit classic with “The Art Of Stalking” and also co-wrote tracks with Kevin Saunderson for his seminal and wildly successful Inner City project. This is a more recent track, and not a “classic” by any means, but I chose it because it’s important to recognize that Detroit techno is not a vintage style, it’s a methodology and an ethos that will continue to exist.
It’s been nice being home this weekend after the past couple weeks on the road. PackardPlantz was kind enough to post up some video from the Detroit show (see above). I’ve been using Vidvox’s VDMX for the live visuals. VDMX is an incredibly powerful, modular, realtime video app for OS X. It employs Apple CoreImage to leverage the GPU directly and the performance is pretty amazing. It can handle full HD video with multiple layers of QC effects running over three decks with no problems. For this trip I brought along the brand new Vestax VCM-600 (pictured below) which I’ve really enjoyed working with.
After my set I had the honor of doing live visuals for Telefon Tel Aviv which was really an amazing experience to say the least (see video below or click here to view). Will Calcutt shot the video with a Canon 5D MKII and it looks pretty amazing. He showed me some other shots he got of Matthew Dear’s DEMF closing set which really showed off the range of the camera. I was pretty much sold after seeing those, unfortunately he hasn’t posted them yet. Suffices to say, the 5D MKII is the strong frontrunner for HD-capable DSLR’s in my book right now.
Telefon Tel Aviv w/ ISO50 Visuals – Magic Stick, Detroit – Link
Just want to say thanks again for everyone who made it out to the Tampa, Detroit, and Toronto shows. I had a blast playing and hope to be back soon. You can find a few more videos on Youtube here: Tycho Detroit Videos
As you probably know, CBGB — the cradle of the NYC punk scene — was shut down in 2006. But not to worry, this site has got you covered with a 360° panoramic tour of the entire club photographed shortly before (or after?) it closed it’s doors forever. While this concept would surely make most of the bands who made the place famous roll over in their graves, it’s nice to know that the place is preserved in some form. The tour is solid as far as functionality is concerned (nice that it’s in Flash and not Quicktime VR) but the downright awful — and un-hideable — interface elements sort of detract from the experience. At any rate, the photos are high quality and you can zoom in and explore the very detailed shots of the interior and exterior of the club. Link
Loworks is a design company based in Japan. I’ve been on a wacky illustration kick recently, and it’s always fun to see what Loworks is up to. Their old site is one of my all time favorite website designs. It may not be the best design from an accessibility standpoint, but you can’t beat the creativity and absolute craziness at work. I wish it was still active, always made me happy. Computer Arts did a small feature on Loworks if you are interested.
Excuse the abstract image but i’ve already posted about this album in March which featured Cheerleader so I thought something a little different might be a good change of pace because every blog has been writing about this Brooklyn band. I still haven’t dove into this album completely because of DEMF but if I heard Ready, Able I wouldn’t of posted Cheerleader or Two Weeks. Ready, Able has a slow waltz and Eddie sounds abit like Benoit Pioulard to me, you see now that’s a duet I wanna hear in 2009.
One of the best voices i’ve heard live since i’ve moved to Brooklyn is a no brainer, 24 year old, Danish, Greek and Indonesian Jannis Noya Makrigiannis gave me goosebumps. He stayed at my place for about a week, one of the nicest guys, dressed like a southern European Italian Vogue farmer and right off the bat you could tell the guy had a kind heart and when he performed he looked like he was made to perform music and sing.
Nothing wrong with just throwing in a random Sonic Youth song to ground us.
Okay so i’ve become a Dubstep junkie, don’t tell anyone. I’ve looked high and low for the most energetic yet slow moving and heavy hitting tracks. I really think this might take over the US finally in 2010. This Joker cut has elements of a Top 40 rap anthem but its soo chunky, 8 bit, and twisted, i’m sure my neighbors love it too.
Just got back from Toronto today, thanks to everyone who made it out last night, I had a lot of fun playing the Drake. While waiting at the airport I caught this great clip via Create Digital Motion. “As visualists, the sad truth is we have a poorer sense of the history of our medium than musicians. Part of this is simply a lack of access. YouTube is a weak substitute, but it’s a start.” Very true, it’s sad to think how many great works in video (and design for that matter) have been lost to time and obscurity. Hopefully more work like Matrix III slowly make their way into the digital domain. Via Create Digital Motion
As you can tell i’m a huge fan of Bibio and his new direction isn’t too surprising but definitely a noticeable difference, it’s less lo-fi and sounds like he added some dubstep kicks to makes the whole overall sound more round. A 7 inch vinyl single will be coming out on Warp on June 8th with this song will drop before the LP, I look forward to hearing the B side and all the other songs, should be a great surprise.
Type Records grabbed up the distant serenading City Center and this new LP is full of echoed vocals and gentle guitar strumming, such good atmosphere and timing in all his music, it really helps me to relax.
Deastro is giving away a free EP called Grower, its all instrumental and almost sounds like he woke up in the middle of the night and had an amazing brainstorm for an EP and knocked it out in hours by finessing very similar sounds. Its an epic masterpiece at times and its super kind of him to just give it away for free like that.
Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas are back at it again, first off they make me feel like I should never touch a synthesizer because really they make it sound soo easy. This track takes me on this journey like i’m riding into space on an all silk loosely put together yacht and I have an epic plan and a long to do list of how to save the universe but i’ll doing it at 15 MPH and not worrying about how and when I do it though. Within a minute of just listening you might end up starring at your computer and just thinking who are these guys and how do we make sure they never stop making new music.
