Here are who i think might be the best indie hip hop producers at the moment when it comes down forward thinking, more on the electronic end and catchy. Its great to see that a few went the extra mile and got a proper designer for album covers like Dabrye’s WK Interact artwork and Eliot’s someoddpilot artwork.
[audio:lotus2.mp3] [audio:dabrye.mp3] [audio:lipp.mp3] [audio:daedelus.mp3]
All the tracks today are remixes, all in which i feel stand strong comparable to the original track.
This Burial remix of Bloc Party is by far a favorite of mine in the last week, also i can’t find a digital version of it anywhere. I think what attracts me to Burial’s sound is the softening and quietening of that UK Garage low end, its done so well by him.
The Erol Alkan remix of Midlake sounds like a Fleetwood Mac cover to me but i just can’t put my finger on it. I’m glad its not this club bomb or noisy edit, he actually does add a great fullness to the track that is riding a thin line to being an AM Gold/beard and tinted glasses/amber lit wooden studio jam which isn’t a bad thing at all (puts on a Gordon Lightfoot LP and watches this commercial on mute).
Praveen does wonders with the track Pinconning, the resonance from the kick drum and accordion makes it sound like your listening to it while your underwater.
I was hoping with this last one that i could find an Album Leaf song that Album Leaf fans didn’t have, hopefully i did for some of you. As for the song it makes me jealous that i don’t have a xylophone or vibraphone to play on everyday but if i did have one i’d probably never get anything done.
I just stumbled across Craig Ward’s site this evening. Really loving his type-centric design style. Check out the rest of his stuff here.
I’ve recently built a new computer and now that it’s complete and all is in working order I thought I would post some thoughts on the process and hopefully fill in some blanks on the way to go about building a computer for optimum performance in Photoshop (along with other multimedia applications). This is of course a very broad subject which would be hard to cover in its entirety in just one post, but I will try to hit the main points and provide some links to more in depth discussions. Also, if you’re a computer genius and expect this to be some sort of treatise on the intricacies of processor architectures and FSB speeds, best try somewhere else because I only know my hardware as much as I need to in order to make it work. So you might find that I oversimplify some things, but I am more concerned that things work and not why they work.
Caveat 1: This rig was built to do large scale print work (12×18" @ 300dpi and up). If you are just doing design for the web or screen (72dpi) a lot of this might be overkill. The CPU will still be an issue, but the memory and swap disk’s roles in speeding up performance will be greatly diminished.
Caveat 2: I will be assuming you are using Photoshop CS3 so some of the examples may not make sense (e.g. menu hierarchies) but all of the core concepts will apply to any version of Photoshop.
Caveat 3: I am also assuming you have some level of technical knowledge when it comes to computer hardware / software or you probably wouldn’t be trying to build your own computer.
Caveat Emptor: I have no idea what I’m talking about.
Caveat Googlor: If you need more info than is provided here, the collective super-brain known as Google is your friend and knows a hell of a lot more about all this than I do.
So if you’re feeling brave, click the link below to read the full article.
Wicker Park is a neighborhood in Chicago something akin to Williamsburg in Brooklyn or Midtown Sacramento. I stayed there the last time I was in Chicago and really enjoyed the area, lot’s of great restaurants, bars and clubs. A great electronic venue, Sonotheque calls Wicker Park home along with my new favorite, Rodan. We ended up there last night, great atmosphere / people / music.
Please excuse the watermarked image, I found it on google and really liked it. I decided against bringing my camera on this trip just to keep the rig to a manageable size. But I did find some interesting shots of the Wicker Park neighborhood here.
Have start getting ready for tonight, see you all out at the MOMI.
Jakub sent me this image tonight which is, of course, amazing. It reminded me of my favorite Bossa Nova song "Aguas de Marco" so I thought I would post both. Note this is not the cover of the album this song is from. Impeccable style going on here, typography is top notch and the photographic composition is near perfection. That salmon color in the background is usually a dead giveaway for cross processing, wonder if that’s what’s going on here? If you look closely at his collar you’ll see a bit more evidence of the xp.
As Jakub pointed out, the original version has a black border as well as an alternatively effected version of the photo. Sort of torn on which I like best, the border sort of encapsulates the negative space which is nice, but there’s something about this version I think is a bit cleaner. There’s also a rather nice full vertical version here.
Antonio Carlos Jobim y Elis Regina-"Águas De Marco (Waters Of March)"
[audio:jobim.mp3]
We had some problems getting enough American Apparel tees in so there have been a lot of shortages at the shop lately. Well we finally got the AA blanks in and so the restocks are rolling off the line quickly now. Restocked today:
Tycho Arc (Gold)
Waterfall
Rain
Science of Patterns
Drove to Sacramento today to deliver the artwork for this Saturday’s Gallery Show. Stuck around for a while to watch them hanging the work, took some shots. Should end up looking nice, there will be some new stuff in there along with five large format pieces and some as yet unreleased work that’s just been printed for the first time. All the work is limited edition printed in Giclee on watercolor paper. Try to make it out and say hi…There will also be a live Tycho set and the whole thing is free for all ages. Info