Recently I posted a debut track by Slow Hands which is coming out on Brooklyn’s Wolf+Lamb label, you may know Ryan from New York’s DJ duo Worst Friends which our Tom Croose is the other half of. I asked Ryan to focus on something eclectic and something for designers and creatives to listen to while working instead of something a little more dance driven and Ryan really delivered by using everything from Slum Village to The Steve Miller Band to DFA’s Woolfy.
Once you get to the Project Sandro track you’ll end up in a slow and steady groove — it slays actually — I’ve been waiting for something like this for awhile and the ending movie sample is pretty sweet.
Look for the next couple of mixes to be non-genre specific and melodic and hopefully something that exposes the diversity in electronic/rock/etc music.
The iPhone photo was taken while Ryan was asleep and then Scott came in and made it proper.
TRACKLIST Alice In Wonderland (Soundtrack) – The Garden & All In The Golden Afternoon Slum Village – Fourth and Back Sade – Sweetest Taboo (Slow Hands edit) The Steve Miller Band – Fly Like An Eagle Soulphiction – Prison Song (Feat. Marcin Oz) Aldo del Lago, Tolousse y Alain Junot – La Isla Bonita Ab Orchestra – La Isla Bonita David Bowie – Magic Dance Project Sandro – Blazer Woolfy vs. Projections – Isabella Trus’me – Drilling Wareika – Belonging (Vocal) Tensnake – Holding Back (My Love) Slow Hands – Fast Tongue Chateau Flight – Instand Replay Talking Heads – Sax And Violins Dan Auerbac – When The Night Comes Princess Outro
Art of the Title Sequence has a bunch of new material up, including an interview with the minds behind the Wall-E end credits. Looks like a staggering amount of research went into this. As usual, the results are terrific. A version is up on Youtube, but as they suggest on the site, much better to consult the Blu-Ray if you’ve got it.
Lettercult — site dedicated to “custom letter culture” — has posted a “Best of the First Half of 2009” list containing many great examples of custom typography. Some inspirational stuff in there: Part 1 & Part 2.
Niagara Falls has a composing genius in their hands, hell, burn down that wax museum they have and make a stage close to the water fall and let Wisp play live weekly, the town needs something fresh and cinematic and Wisp would never disappoint for one moment, he could be their Blue Man Group.
Reid Dunn might be known to some of his close internet friends as someone that plays fantasy video games, hangs out on the WATMM forum and leaves polite comments once in a while, works the night shift, and might not jump onto AOL messenger until 3am every night until morning sending you clips of tracks he makes thru the day. All that is great and all but he has reached some musicians dream which is to release on Richard D. James’ record label Rephlex and pretty much put everyone to shame in the IDM world.
If you haven’t listened to his new LP The Shimmering Hour then you haven’t heard Aphex Twin served to you on a silver platter with some of the finest tweaks, iron man marathon speed and maximized sound quality. Honestly, I put it on this record and I feel like i’m about to ride in on a horse into a village and burn that whole thing down, which isn’t a bad dorky thing its just that epic and fantasy filled. Some songs I feel like i’m feasting with foreign kings and riding on dragons that have 3 heads as a level 60 Gunslinger Destromath but thats besides the point, its Reid the kid that I thought since 2004 would be huge one day and after 5 years he has become a favorite composer of many electronic fans and seriously not to plug him but for any video game company that needs a sound designer and you think Amon Tobin or Richard Devine is the top of the line well then you need to give Reid one day to compose you something for any scene and i’ll bet my left arm(i’m left handed) he’ll make it perfect. Alright, i’ve gone overboard and thats what happens when you’re listening to this record and writing about it.
(please note the artwork above is only partially the final art used for the release, I just enjoyed that section of the cover a lot more)
I had seen Aron Jancso’s “g” poster on Buamai earlier but just recently saw more of his work. Very impressive mastery of typography. Check out his Flickr for more.
I was going to save this Juno song for the perfect ending for a mix because I think it blows a lot of similar bands like Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, etc out of the water if you compared best song to best song. The recording of the vocal could be one of my favorites, the builds are not too drastic but still have these epic parts to them. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
How did I miss The Autumns? probably because i’m not a fan of the guys vocal but lyrically and sonically they’re outstanding, what do you think? I can’t imagine how they sound now though.
Tom Croose’s partner as Worst Friends goes under the name Slow Hands, he’s a classically trained guitarist that makes slow house/disco that pretty much sound like it’s inspired by Sade which might be the best direction for the future of slow disco and comes so natural to Ryan’s style of making music.
This Herrmann & Kleine song could calm anyone with its digital fake waves in the distance, child toy melodies, and dreamy keys, all that comes to mind is taking a calm nap in a foreign city.
Juno – The Great Salt Lake / Into the Lavender Crevices of Evening the Otters Have Been Pushed
I’ve been working on a new poster over the past week and it’s very near completion. It’s a limited edition for the August Ghostly 10 Year show Chicago installment. If you follow me on Twitter you’ve probably seen a sneak preview of the poster (the image above is a cropped snippet). The one up on the Ghostly site is a very early draft though, we just needed to get something up as a placeholder while I worked out the final version. There will be two versions: one with the artist names and one without. Bot will be available in large format offset and Giclee in the coming weeks. I’m hoping to post up the finals very soon here, could be as early as tomorrow but might hold off until Monday to make sure everything is dialed in.
I’ve been focusing a lot on music lately so this has been a nice chance to get back into design for a little bit. It’s definitely been a challenge wrapping it up though. I feel like the older I get the harder it is to decide when a project is complete; I just want to keep going through every possible permutation and variation until the finished product presents itself to me. For this particular poster I’ve been finding success in bouncing the different versions off of friends to see how they react. I’m still not sure if that’s the best idea, but it seemed to work this time around and it probably cut down a lot of the time I would have spent second guessing myself. Stay tuned for the final versions…
