Nueva Forma has graciously allowed me to post these Listening Pleasures here for you guys. They have captivated me for the last month when stumbling upon them. Prior to this post I’ve also posted mixes 1-8 on Wanken with the track listing for each.
Each month Nueva Forma creates one of these mixes featuring artists from their own label and also guest artists whom they feel fit. The mixes are presented as podcasts and can be downloaded from the website. Each is around an hour or so in length. So sit back and enjoy the wonderful listening pleasures brought to us courtesy of Nueva Forma.
This is the first in a new series of interviews where one artist interviews another, five questions each. I’ve been on the road with School Of Seven Bells, hearing their daily interviews, and I’ve noticed too many similar questions keep coming up again and again. I’m hoping that the artist/artist format can give readers a better idea of what’s on the artist’s minds. I’ve also asked each artist to two songs which they’ve been listening to, all of which are posted above.
Up above is a full album stream of the new LP by Gold Panda, we got the exclusive stream because you guys seemed to love it soo much on a recent post, nice one ISO50 readers! below is a small blurb about the UK producer.
““I didn’t want to write ‘beats,’” says UK producer Gold Panda, “I didn’t want bangers. I wanted songs with structure.” And yet, despite the artist’s protests to the contrary, his debut album, Lucky Shiner, is full of bangers—of a kind. “Lots of factors affected the way it came together,” he explains, “touring, mixing, moving houses and splitting with a girlfriend. Family, friends, and lovers, places I’ve never been.” It’s that mix of directness and emotion that characterizes Lucky Shiner, an album of beat-driven electronic music that’s easy to fall in love with, and to. In Gold Panda’s world, vinyl-static beats and heart-on-sleeve melancholia collide, and the results are breathtaking.”
FujiFilm has just released a gorgeous, large-sensor compact camera that was inspired by traditional analog film cameras. The camera, called the FinePix X100, has a 12.3MP APS-C CMOS sensor (approx. 1.6x crop factor). The X100 also has this new feature called the ‘hybrid’ viewfinder that allows the user to switch between optical and electronic viewfinders and project shooting information into the optical viewfinder. If all that was too much for you, check out this video.
More importantly than that though, I find the subtle design of the lip over the LCD, the viewfinder flip switch and the shutter and aperture controls to really sell me on the design. Listed below are also more of the features that are sending me head over heals. Oh wait a second, news just coming in: the camera ships March 2011 for $1000!
Specs to consider:
• 12.3MP Sensor
• 1280 x 720 HD Video w/ sound
• F2-F16 Lens
• ISO 100-12800
• 5 FPS Shooting
• 2.8″ LCD
• 127(W) × 75(H) × 54(D) mm in size
• More info here
I’m always geeking out on music hardware and have a soft spot for DIY projects like the one you see above. I came across this custom MIDI controller by William Logo and was pretty impressed by the looks of the thing, especially considering that it was built with off mostly the shelf parts for under $400. I’ve been wanting to build my own custom controller for the Tycho live shows (to control VDMX, which runs the visuals) but I’ve never found the time to get anything started. It’s nice to see someone pulled it off with some aesthetically pleasing results. And I’m really loving the vibe of the photos, great tone.
For all you music geeks out there, I’m just decided to lighten my VDMX MIDI controller load by swapping out the big Akai APC40 and heavy Vestax VCM600 for a Novation Launchpad and a M-Audio X-Session that I’ve had lying around. We’ll see how the new setup works out for the upcoming shows.
You may remember Josef Schulz’s series Sign Out from a while back. I was a big fan of that series, but these photographs, that focus on the subtle details of architecture, are much more intriguing to me. It’s all about the lines and the color. I am reminded of the work of Philipp Schaerer — that or video game architecture, where environmental details are obscured just enough to allow you to focus on the bad guys (or reduce processor load).
Using digital image processing, the analogue picture produced is then “cleansed” of the few remaining hints pointing to age, location or environment of the buildings. All details that might possibly allow conclusions concerning the actual size, users, time or place of the buildings are completely removed. The physical reality of the buildings is changed in such a way that they seem to become virtual blueprints designed to perfection.
— Excerpt from an essay by Thomas Ruff.
Hard Format has some great shots of and original 12″ sleeve for Kraftwerk’s Autobahn (the brown tape just makes it that much better). This has to be one of my all-time favorite covers; I cut a picture of it out of Rolling Stone and had it on my fridge for years, but if I had this is would be framed in the middle of the room. What are some other great minimalist sleeves? Link them in the comments.
Everyday Magazine is a magazine that focuses on the behind the scenes of creative folks. I find the design to be quite relaxing and the inner pages to be nicely laid out. The project was created by Mikael Floysand as an assignment at Westerdals School of Communication.
