Just hearing the name Volkswagen makes me think deep history. Especially now after stumbling upon a Volkswagen archive that has scans from Everett Barnes’ collection. It’s well worth checking out if you have the time. The collection starts from the early 1930s’ and goes all the way until 2005. It has nearly more images and spreads of brochures and random Volkswagen nostalgia than you can shake a stick at.
I was just digging in deeper into the Wierd Records[its not spelled Weird, I triple checked] catalog and this song by Frank grabbed me over and over, the guitar line reminds me of some huge 80s hit, is it Dire Straits? no, I don’t know what it is but its buggin’ me, either way its pretty poppy for a cold wave label and thats what makes me keep going back to them.
I wanted to include Alice Cohen in my playlist I did for Olde English Spelling Bee but somehow she slipped thru the cracks, what a great spacey track, the magic here is that she made it so short, it makes you want to play it over and over, smart and talented this Alice girl is.
I’m not going to pretend I know world music, its something I wanted to get into but its a slippery slope, I could end up listening to alot of stuff I don’t want to hear for hours and be disappointed and hate that I spent the time but this song by Diakari Dia Diakite dit Dia almost puts me in a daze. The rhythm keeps me wanting more while his intensity keeps me interested on what the song is about and i’m going to quote Anchorman to end this post: Ron Burgundy: “I’m sorry, I was trying to impress you. I don’t know what it means. I’ll be honest, I don’t think anyone knows what it means anymore. Scholars maintain that the translation was lost hundreds of years ago.”
So maybe some of you want to know what the label 4AD is up to, well the last mailer I got this song by Broken Records, i’m on the fence about it, is it too alternative radio rock for the label? part of it grabs me but a good portion of the song pushes me away and worries about 4AD’s future BUT I trust them so I keep checking back.
I’ve really never been one to hop on an exercise bike, but this new concept called the Ciclotte, makes me want to. Although I’d much rather prefer actually riding a bike instead, but this could be fun and great to use on those mornings where work needs to get done.
The design is quite nice and utilizes carbon fiber. I’m not sure that is completly necessary but it does make it look a lot nicer. If I were to suggest an idea for this company, I’d say that they should create a unicycle out of it by removing the two floor stands.
In 2005, I started putting together a compilation of my friends music, my roommate at the time was Danny [The Reflecting Skin aka PhilistineDSGN] who did the cover art and also did a song with me under the name The Hexx which is still to this day the only song i’ve ever put out officially. I met a few others via the internet like Mux Mool, Wisp, Dafluke, and Ghosthunt on myspace or WATMM (an Aphex Twin/BoC forum) and the rest are mostly guys from Ann Arbor, MI my hometown. The compilation came out for under $10 and had 20 songs on it and still to this day its that much, sometimes we drop it down to $5. I remember when it went up on digital retailers, since iTunes doesn’t tell you what will be featured its always a surprise on Tuesday mornings for record labels, its nice that you can’t buy your way into a banner on the iTunes page. When I saw it up it was back when iTunes had 3 big banners up horizontally at the top and The Rorschach Suite at the time was just all fresh faces 95% all new names and we were sitting inbetween Junior Boys and Imogean Heap, it felt like a David and Goliath story. I hope you enjoyed this preview I grabbed a few tracks of some fan favorites.
Kim Høltermand emailed to let us know about his incredible new series Tuve. I would love to find this place and see if it’s as eerie in real life as it is depicted here. Out of context some of the rocks look like abstract 3D renderings floating in space. It’s hard to imagine water that still. Breathtaking and haunting as usual from Mr.Høltermand.
If you don’t want a song stuck in your head than don’t check out this song that J. Dilla produced for Steve Spacek, i’ve been humming it since the middle of last week everywhere I go, in alleys and by the river or in my bedroom, “let the dollar circulateeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
I ran into one of the friendly guys from Small Black a few weeks ago in Greenpoint, he was walking home after just finishing recording their new album, I promise to have more up but here’s a taste with a remix by Star Slinger of their recent single.
Osborne gives Hot Chip a taste of Yacht Rock meets aaaaa….. refreshing slower dance medley? hmmm I can’ put my finger on it, whatever it is I love it and you will too if you have a beating heart.
I want more Sam Prekop, this is just not enough, what a great teaser, quick everyone into their bubble were gonna race to find a new color for the rainbow.
Zeitguised posted some new work on thier blog called Boolean Taxidermy. I want to eat it. That or float around and go to sleep in it. Anyway I think these stills are pretty remarkable. Check out the rest of their work to catch some of it in motion.
Boolean logic is a complete system for logical operations, used in many systems. It was named after George Boole, who first defined an algebraic system of logic in the mid 19th century. Boolean logic has many applications in electronics, computer hardware and software, and is the basis of all modern digital electronics. [link]
No doubt by now you have seen the Arcade Fire + Google Chrome super experiment posted today. This was awesome. Mind still blown. The site where the work was posted is Chrome Experiments and there is a ton of cool stuff there to keep you occupied for hours. (It’s my last day at IDEO this summer and I am having a hard time not playing with this every 5 minutes).
Even cooler, some of the experiments have ‘making of’ links and you can read a little more about their construction. (Warning: only interesting if you know what something like this means: for i in xrange(0, w.getnframes()):. )
According to CE:
We think JavaScript is awesome. We also think browsers are awesome. Indeed, when we talk about them, we say they are the cat’s meow – which is an American expression meaning AWESOME.
In light of these deeply held beliefs, we created this site to showcase cool experiments for both JavaScript and web browsers.
Hurts to try and conceive of all the possibilities with this type of technology. Can’t wait to see what they come up with next.
side note: I still maintain that some of the most interesting websites (in terms of rich/deep content) are those that haven’t even heard of CSS yet. I’m talking about websites that exist solely for the sake of information they host. Screw look and feel, their information needed to reach people. Something like this.
