Here's the latest Popote card. Junia and I have always loved graffiti and the art style that it is. Neither of us are good at writing so we got our friend Franky to write a few things for us. Here's the first of hopefully many graffiti inspired ideas for Popote.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Thug Love, Popote card
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
New Popote card
Since I'm spending most of my free creative time thinking about Popote, I figure I'll post our new stuff on here since we don't have a blog for the co. yet. Things are definitely going slower than I'd hoped but I guess that's to be expected when the medium we're using is readily available when I want it to be. One day Junia and I will get our own machine and we can get really crazy.
Dance Dance Dance
I got a quick minute to post. I just had a few minutes to eat some lunch and decided to catch up on my La Blogotheque podcasts. I hadn't watched any in a few weeks and these two made me forget I was eating or sitting or moving or being. I hadn't heard much Lykke Li stuff but I'm totally sold after seeing this. Bon Iver is almost to the point of getting played out but these Bon Iver Take Away Shows re-newed that spark that was first there months ago.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
mis fotos
I finally uploaded half the Diana pics Junia and I have taken over the last few months! I'll soon be using some of these as backgrounds for some vinyl pieces I'll be selling through Popote (which I still haven't posted about..don't ask me why). Popote is our new company in which we will be designing, making, and selling greeting cards, home decals, and various other items using vinyl as the "print" medium. cool huh? anyways, gotta love the lomography cameras. These are all shot with the Diana F+ using either kodak black and white or Fuji color, 120 medium format film.
I took these shots on the plane ride back from San Diego! Junia was feeling kinda sick and I was sitting there with the camera in my lap like a tonto tourist who has never seen clouds!
GOTTA love the nasty Mariachi's! these guys were humping EVERYONE. These are at a 90th birthday party in Imperial Beach.
I have more up on my flickr.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Poster for last post!
What's up! I've been suuuper duper busy with things! I haven't had any time to spare for Soundslikeyouandme :( In any case! I found the poster for the Ellen Allien and Modeselektor show in Sept. (i know i know...pretty ugly, but the show's gonna rock!) See you there!
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Ellen Allien + Modeselektor
Those of you in SF!
Make sure you purchase your tix to one of the coolest shows of the year. On Friday Sept 5th, bpitchcontrol-ers, Berlin-based Ellen Allien and Modeselektor are playing at Mighty. Get your tix soon cause this is a definite sell-out show. I've been waiting for a show to make me this excited for a while- now all I have to do is wait 2 months. They don't have a flyer for the show yet, but keep on the lookout for one here.
Here's a quick mix of the two to get your mouth watering. then you will HUNGER!
I love the new Ellen Allien album art. I have it as my desktop background! The color palette and the simplicity of it just turn me on. totally turn me on. Unfortunately the album isn't quite as bursting as the art. I put one of the good tracks as the last song on the mix.
Monday, July 7, 2008
Muxtape
Something that's been missing from all of our jumps to a more digital and "connected" life is the craft of mixtaping. It's something I've been really trying to bring with 8-Trck Engineer. Someone else has been thinking about it and they come out with Muxtape. Muxtape started in March of this year and it's a place for users to create mixtapes in a super simple way without going through a ton of loops. All you need is 12 songs to upload and your set. I love the minimal and bright colors which make it feel very 8-bit and non-intimidating. They even get musicians and celebs to post up some mixes which I think I'd be pretty interested in listening to.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
8-Trck Engineer Ep.09, The Wonder Years
This mix is inspired by my high school years. Every track on this mix was heard countless times throughout my middle school and high school career. I'm not sure if any of you have tried doing this but it's pretty freekin hard. The problem is I still like tons of the music I liked back then and trying to choose the right songs to make this list work was pretty tough. I'm going to say this is like the inch tall nipple-tip of the mile deep ice-burg. I had to choose the most important ones as well as the ones I can still stand listening to...the timless ones.
8-Trck Engineer Ep. 09, The Wonder Years
Os Gemeos at Deitch
If your in NY before August 9th check out the new Os Gemeos show at Deitch Gallery called Too Far Too Close. Os Gemeos are some bro's from Brazil that are pretty unstoppable right now. From all the low-brow/street and urban art in the last few years, Os Gemeos have been my favorite. I love the scale they work in, their color palette and their character style. They seems to keep it feeling Latin American without any cultural cliches, which I love. Deitch Gallery is an awesome spot for them because it's sooooo open and high. When I was in NY I had to stop in for the Jim Isermann show. The gallery layout is one of the best I've been in, especially for larger installations.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Let it flow
Hey everyone! So after weeks of hearing my girlfriend Junia say "Dude 2 mixes a week is too much" and weeks of me saying "Junia! NO!"- I've finally accepted her advice and will now only be posting one 8-Trck Engineer episode per week. That way those of you who actually listen to it at work or while you do your dishes or read through your Google reader blog subscriptions or where ever you may be when you listen to these mixes- you can take your time with them and really soak the music in!
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
MediaMaster
I've changed all the past 8-Trck ep's to MediaMaster's radio because FileFactory isn't working out very well for me. It's a temporary upload service like rapidshare and megaupload which means that after a few weeks songs start to disappear! After a bit of searching I found Media Master which is an actual music storage service built so you can store your music and listen to it anywhere from any computer. So far it seems to be a pretty solid service. You can even upload your playlist from itunes directly! pretty nice uh?
Monday, June 23, 2008
8-Trck(x2.5) Engineer Ep.08, SummerSundaySleep
I couldn't contain this episode of 8-Trck to 8 tracks. I had to multiple it by 2.5 and I have the number needed for this playlist to be the most enjoyable and also have the most impact.
Wired|Listening Post posted about an article in the Times titled :"Does Music Have the Power to Send Us to Sleep?: A recent experiment in Japan tested the power of music to send us into a deep slumber."
I absolutely love reading about Music and it's neurological power. The experiment took place in Japan where Dr Takuro Endo filled 1,500 people into a theatre. He then seduced them for three hours of carefully chosen music ranging from Chopin and Tchaikovsky to folk singer Mary Hopkins and Japanese tenor Masafumi Akikawa. I would have loved to be in that audience!
I took a Classical appreciation class in college and remember sometimes it was like a battle for my life to stay awake. I would have been an experience to sit among 1500 other people and collectively fall asleep.
After reading both the blog post and the Times article about Dr Takuro Endo and his experiment with music and sleep, I took up Wired's challenge and created my best 8-Trck Engineer episode yet. Except it's 20 tracks of pure mellow bliss for your summertime sunday nap needs! I hope you press play and open a new window and read those articles. It's great stuff. After reading go lay down and take a nap.
8-Trck Engineer Ep. 08, SummerSundaySleep
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Super Crew
Alrightalrightalright.. I'm in no way some advocate or pusher of MTV or Randy Jackson. But if you grew up hip hop in any way, watched early or recent B-Boy movies, or at least even appreciate dancing, you need to watch ABDC. If MTV ever had ONE reason in the last 10 years to watch it, America's Best Dance Crew is the reason.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Win some Lose some
Aniboom announced the 3 "Golden Ticket" winners for the Radiohead video competition. I'm disappointed mine wasn't a winner but I'm not surprised at all. I made my video knowing not much would happen with it. Check out the semi-finalists and golden ticket winners here. I'd say there is maybe 2 worth a Radiohead tag. I seriously don't know how some of those pieces were chosen over hundreds of better videos. When you check out the forums there is only 1 out of 25 comments that are positive about the whole contest.
The one other Radiohead contest for In Rainbows turned out to be sort of a joke towards the fans. I'm talking about the Nude Remix contest. Thom said in an interview with NPR: "This was quite a difficult task for everybody that entered, as Nude is in 6/8 timing, and 63bpm. Most music that's played in clubs is around 120bpm and usually 4/4 timing. It's pretty difficult to seamlessly mix a waltz beat into a DJ set. This resulted in lots of generic entries consisting of a typical 4/4 beat, but with arbitrary clips from "Nude" thrown in so that they qualified for the contest. Thom Yorke joked at the ridiculousness of it in an interview for NPR radio, hinting that they set the competition to find out how people would approach such a challenging task."
Let's see what happens with the Aniboom video contest.
click below to check it out.
8-Trck Engineer Ep.07, The New Radio
With the past few 8-Trck's I've been constructing the mix in response to some kind of current event.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The Minted.com Challenge
I've entered the 2nd Minted.com design contest. This time it's for Holiday photo cards for newly weds. If you've come across this post, help me and my friends start our business (more on this soon) with that prize money! Just register with your email and name (they won't sell your email so don't worry) and just find my designs and vote! (vote here)
Friday, June 13, 2008
8-Trck Engineer Ep.06, Donde Esta ChulaJuana?
Junia and I are flying down to Chula Vista to visit our families for the weekend. I was going to finally post some new indie stuff, but I think I'll save that for when I get back. I've got the urge to get a little Nortechno on your ass.
Monday, June 9, 2008
My feet will experience Unknown Pleasures.
Well. probably not. I'd put these up on my wall before I walked on those beautiful inserts with my sweaty feet. I ran into these on the Wired blogs. Turns out this is a custom pair on display at Ran in Manchester. But godamn would I like a pair of these bad-larry's.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
8-Trck Engineer Ep.05, The Coming of Age
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
White Glove Tracking
From whiteglovetracking.com:
On May 4th, 2007, we asked internet users to help isolate Michael Jackson's white glove in all 10,060 frames of his nationally televised landmark performance of Billy Jean. 72 hours later 125,000 gloves had been located. wgt_data_v1.txt (listed below) is the culmination of data collected. It is released here for all to download and use as an input into any digital system. Just as the data was gathered collectively it is our hope that it will be visualized collectively. Please email links to your apps, video, source code, and/or screen shots to evan[at]eyebeam[dot]org. Work will be exhibited in an online gallery and depending on popularity and interest potentially in a forthcoming physical gallery exhibition as well. Huge thanks to everyone that contributed to the data collection.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
This is getting crazy...(in a good way)
Our Videotape
FINISHED! Alright everyone. Remember weeks ago when I posted a Radiohead video submitted to the Aniboom Radiohead video competition? I said it inspired me to make my own. Well I did and here it finally is.
Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom
Sunday, June 1, 2008
8-Trck Engineer Ep.04, The Human Inspired
OK so here’s my two part answer to the question "What does it mean to be human?" discussed in the previous post.
B. 8-Trck Engineer ep. 04, The Human Inspired
There are countless ways to answer this question using this format, but I wanted to keep this at a level of “I’d-like-to-play-you-some-music-you-haven’t-heard-yet. So don’t ask in some Spiccoli voice “Hey bud, where’s Beethoven? Where’s Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd?” Yada yada yada. I’ve answered this question this way in the hopes that any person can come along and listen, enjoy, then think about making their own mix. “What is it to be human?” is practically a rhetorical question. It has no answer other than what you feel is the answer.
This is a collection of 8 songs- put together spontaneously and without too much thought other than I know each one of these songs reminds me of what I am in this existence. It’s 8-Trck Engineer episode 04.
Pedal, Sump, Pedal, 2008, Staubgold Records. This piano duo from Sydney just released this album of improvised piano awesomeness. Some of the tracks are brilliantly unnerving, and some are just brilliantly moving like Sump. Staubgold says this: “What are they thinking? These guys are doing a record of acoustic piano music in this day and age! And let me tell you something, my prejudice was totally crushed within the first minute of listening to this CD. Just when I was thinking two grand pianos, four hands have nothing to say in this 21st century...”
The Radio Dept., What Will Give?, Pet Grief, 2006, Labrador. I have a feeling The Radio Dept is going to move me just as much when I’m 85-years-old. This is timeless timeless timeless music for us emotional pop lovers. They’re just friends school friends from Sweden that create wonderful music only Humans can create.
Tycho, Past Is Prologue, Past Is Prologue, 2006, Merck. Tycho, aka graphic designer ISO50, aka Scott Hansen, is from San Francisco! What!what! This guy is amazing. His beats are bliss and his design is dope. This song just KILLS me. I don’t know why, but it does. He needs to play more sets here in SF, that’s all I need to say. Bring back Beats and Boardgames!
M83, Teen Angst, Before The Dawn Heals Us, 2005, EMI France. I could have chosen any M83 song and it would have fit well in this mix. M83 has an extremely unique sound that has this quality about it that really makes you feel human. I feel like M83 is emotion in music form. It’s raw, LOUD, chaotic and intense but beautiful, balanced, and calming. One of my all-time favorite bands.
Tristeza, Balabaristas, A Colores, 2005, Better Looking. Another all time favs. The Album Leaf and Tristeza both hold special places in my heart. You can hear every stroke and touch of their fingers playing. Tristeza’s guitar and bass are almost unmatched by anyone in this genre. They tried playing with a stand in guitar player last tour and he couldn’t hang. It would hard to hear their live set being messed up, but at the same time it reinforced the complexity and strenuous rhythms they use.
Epic45, England Fallen Over, England Fallen Over EP, 2005, Make Mine Music. A highly inspirational band for me. If you like this song, just seriously by everything Epic45 has done. It’s really all that good. Hopefully your listening to this mix with headphones or good speakers cause this track uses GREAT channel techniques. I LOVE this band.
Radiohead, Weird Fishes/Apreggi, In Rainbows, 2007, self released. Another all-time fav for me. Shouldn’t have to say much about this song or band other than Brilliant.
DJ Shadow, Blood On The Motorway, The Private Press, 2002, MCA. I know I know. This song is a little old. But I BET you forgot about it. I BET you forgot how amazing it is. Well Junia (my girlfriend, Tonteria) DIDN’T! Honestly I forgot this song within the depths of my hard drive, but she called it out. If only Shadow could go back to this! He gave us a little taste with the live set release he did with Cut Chemist.
"What does it mean to be human?"
Marvin Minsky, artificial intelligence pioneer: We do something other species can't: We remember. We have cultures, ways of transmitting information.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Science has been kickin ass since the Enlightenment!
I seriously wish I could be in NY at this festival. After tasting an event like this at this years Yuri's Night, this 5 day event looks AWESOME. Colbert and Theoretical Physicist, Brian Green, talk it out. I'll be posting a few things in the next few days about event coverage, ESPECIALLY! this: On Saturday, May 31, neurologist and author Oliver Sacks will join neuroscientist Mark Tramo and the Abyssinian Baptist Church Choir in the World Science Festival Event Music and the Brain, an exploration of the power of music to inspire and uplift, and as an effective tool in the therapeutic process.
"Political Science"
After reading an article today titled "Political Science" from the online magazine Science News, I stopped and thought about San Francisco. Usually when talks about the developments of a green city come up, especially New York, it's hard not to stop for a second and compare things with San Francisco.
And the reason? “Far too often,” the mayor contends, “it's because of what I call ‘political science’ - the willingness [of governments] to disregard or suppress scientific findings when they don't conform to a pre-determined political agenda.”
"Bloomberg had city agencies measure New York’s carbon footprint. And it was huge: some 58 million metric tons of CO2 per year – and growing. Last October, in response to the findings, he signed an executive order forcing city agencies to cut their CO2 emissions 30 percent by 2017. To make the necessary changes, he said, “we've committed 10 percent of our annual energy costs – equal to roughly $80 million a year.”...He's also instructed city cabbies to convert to hybrid vehicles or similarly high-fuel-economy cars within four years. That’s a big change considering New York’s is the biggest taxi fleet in the world."
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
8-Trck Engineer Ep.03, my swedish sigh
In celebration for the new track by The Radio Dept, this 8-Trck Engineer is strictly Swedish. Over the last 2 weeks I got a hold of the new Action Biker and an older album by The Bridal Shop. I realized that I keep running into these Swedish albums and then a few days ago I get the new Radio Dept track and then I just couldn't stop myself. I had to share my Swedish friends with all of you. My Swedish sigh begins as a burst of electric air but as I exhale it calms to barely a few night-time piano strokes. Enjoy.
trck-2. The Legends, Play it For Today... this is from The Legend's last release in 2006 Facts and Figures. Where previously they had this great british pop shoegaze sound, the now have a euro pop shoegaze electronic sound. That seems like a pretty good evolution right? Well, they made the jump extremely well and I'm looking forward to see what else they come up with.
trck-3. The Bridal Shop, From Seas... from 2007's From Seas, this song is a great hint at the 7 track album that really hasn't received much attention, or at least as much as it should have by people who love this genre. You like old New Order? You like the airy vocals and modest-pop? you like the Bridal Shop.
trck-4. The Radio Dept, Feddie and the Tojan Horse... What can I say? this band is track for track pure enjoyment. They seriously make me feel special when I'm listening to them. Does that sound stupid? fuck it. I'm excited about this song because it's off their new album scheduled for September. CAN'T WAIT.
trck-5. Action Biker, Love for Sure... This is Sarah Nyberg Pergament's little solo music. This is off 2008's Hesperian Puisto, Action Biker's first official album release. This album better catch on here in the States. If it doesn't I'll be really surprised. Maybe I should write to Pitchfork and tip em off... nah. they suck.
trck-6. Jens Lekman, I'm Leaving You Because I Don't Love You... One of my favorite songs of 2007! This album, Night Falls Over Kortedala was on rotation for MONTHS here at home and at work. This album was impossible not to like.
trck-7. Jose Gonzalez, Cycling Trivialities... Another top 2007. This is off Jose's second full length, In Our Nature. You need to own both albums if you already don't. Seriously
trck-8. El Perro Del Mar, From the Valley to the Stars... This song is off of Sarah Assbring's 2008's From the Valley to the Stars. This also is a great hint as to the rest of the album. I love the feel of this album as it is completely connected to the name. I would love to be laying at the bottom of a beautiful valley looking up watching the stars. El Perro Del Mar is hard to catagorize because conceptual-folk-pop doesn't do her justice. I'll just say I'm a fan and keep it at that.
Friday, May 23, 2008
8-Trck Engineer Ep.02: It Will Never Die.
Seriously. Rock and roll will never end. Take a few minutes and listen to this quick mix and you'll know what I'm talking about. THIS IS FRESH and this is 50 years old!
Thursday, May 22, 2008
It will never fail.
Frank Lloyd Wright said "Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you." These limited edition Spirograph prints are intense! They are the work of Greig Anderson aka Effektive, a 26-year-old designer in Glasgow. I came across them on ISO50's blog. Scott Hansen (aka ISO50) has been on my RSS for a bit now and it's one of the few blogs I actually go to almost everyday not only because I love his design but because he shares some amazing stuff like these prints!