Music
We mentioned Lo’s List’s soft spot for podcasting gem Radiolab in our Complete Carry-On post from last year but the love just keeps growing for Jad and Robert. For those of you who aren’t up-to-snuff with the program’s format, the premise is as follows: each episode dissects — whether scientifically or philosophically — a topic, from Parasites to Parabolas, Mortality to Morality…
If you’re kicking about Williamsburg tomorrow night & not sure about where the musicophiles are hiding out, your best bet is to swing over to Zebulon on Wythe just off of Metropolitan for a completely free musical lineup including one of our local favorites, Up Died Sound. Part pop, part psychedelic jam band, Up Died’s free-spirited amble through their set is a pleasure to watch and hear. Mix that with the consistently top-notch ambiance of Zebulon, where you’re sure to overhear conversations in a good half dozen languages at any given time, and you’ve got yourself a bona fide cultural excursion. In the meantime, take a listen to my favorite Up Died track: Emotion Sickness…
I’m just loving Gravité, a visually breathtaking spin on beatboxing by Renaud Hallée (with the help of DP Simon Allard & PA Laurent-Dominic Chantal-Fortin). Ping pong balls, cutlery, glow sticks and sparklers — just goes to show that pretty much anything can be transformed into music!! Remember when you were a kid smashing the bejeezus out of the kitchen pots? Well, this seems to be the grownup rendition of that… Be sure to check out Renaud’s other music-in-motion video Sonar as well!
Argh! It’s been so busy here at the EP studio lately ( & exciting: we have a new addition to the team — badass, go-getting, design sidekick Nicky). But, with all this busy-beeing, poor Lo’s List has been getting the short end of the stick! So, while we keep trucking forth on these exciting new projects (rolling out this month!), we’ll be throwing a bunch of haiku-ed posts into the mix!!
Billy Baumann and Jason Teegarden-Downs are the rocking graphic duo behind Delicious Design League – a Chicago firm dedicated to making superstar, cream-of-the-crop gig posters for music industry names big (Animal Collective, Lykke Li, Sonic Youth) and not-quite-as-big. All the silkscreens are available for purchase on their site at uber-reasonable prices ranging between 10 and 30ish greenbacks – quite the steal for limited edition, 18″ x 24″
slickscreenserm silkscreens!
So, I’m not ashamed to say that, growing up, I had an overzealous obsession for pink. To this day, every time the color gets mentioned in a conversation with my father, he reminds me (in his persistent French accent) of my mini-me catch phrase: “PINK IS MY FAVORITE COLOR!!!” It hardly comes as a surprise when you consider the wall-to-wall magenta carpeting of my childhood bedroom… Stumbling upon Vanessa Bruno’s Spring/Summer Ready-to-Wear collection while doing some browser-window shopping at Style.com, I felt a happy pang of nostalgia – mixed with awe – as I flipped through the designer’s runway show, spiked with some very classy pink ensembles.
On January 13th the Iggy crew trekked out to Vibromonk Records in Bushwick, Brooklyn for another killer studio session of Iggy Music. UK indie rock & roll foursome The Heavy were impressively bushy-tailed for the 10am call-time: perhaps the sole perk of leftover transatlantic jetlag… Whatever qualms lead singer Kelvin Swaby might have had about the state of his voice were laid to rest as he belted out their first number: “Sixxxteen”…
Check out the behind the scenes shots from the day: our badass blogger Adriane (read her post about the session), resident goofball Woody (love the checkered oxford shirt Woods), and Vibromonk’s Dan Shatsky keeping “the chaos” at bay… Oh, there’s more: watch Lika’s interview with the band and the three performances from the day: “Sixxxteen”, “How You Like Me Now?”, and “What You Want Me to Do?”.
4h30: “For this track (listen after the jump) I imagine myself walking down a dark alley, alone, while a group of cyberpunks dressed in a Madmax style stare at me, I see Harrison Ford investigating (Blade Runner), and Maurice Dantec.”
Love this! Love this! Woodtec’s handmade cedar docking stations for iPhones and iPods are made-to-order, meaning each one is unique with it’s own knobbies and marbling. The docks are compatible with all iPods (except the shuffle) and use a standard USB wire…
These hilarious tees by YourEyesLie remind me of a naughty Catholic school kid’s history book. Be sure to check out all the royally inspired designs including the tattoo-esque Virtute • Gloria • Merces tee, the Flower Hand tee, and the Coca-Cola chugging Napoleon French Man Ware tee. YourEyesLie also has a nifty B&W collection of pop idol tees calledDestroy Pop and the A Laboratory collection of delicately hand-drawn designs. Yes – it’s the motherload of great tee designs. Kudos YEL!
Such a smart student project by Vimeo community member Saggyarmpit (aka Serene Teh) currently working towards a graphic design degree in Singapore. A little bit advent calender, a little bit flip book and a lot of talent come together to make this 2D exploration of a very 3D phenomenon, parkour. I love the details in the cityscapes: crumbling walls, exposed pipes, etc, as well as her choice to keep the rough edges of paper ripped from a spiral sketchbook. Paired with beats by Dr Dre, this video is hard to watch once… Happy Monday all!
Algerian raï, Congolese soukous, Senegalese mbalax: the music of Africa is as diverse as its people, climate, food – as diverse as, well, Africa. The tie that seems to hold the continent’s music together lies in its ability to hypnotize, to start your legs moving before you realize they’re doing so, to make joy rise up and provoke a sing-along regardless of the fact that you don’t speak a word of Swahili or Bambara. Here are my African favorites of the decade – each of which represents rich memories of celebration and dancing as those were the times that I turned to these oeuvres: daily dance-a-thons rituals with my brother to Mariama by Pape & Cheikh, coasting through the Atlas mountains of Morocco with Tinariwen leading the way… Just a few more hours and we will be turning the page, welcoming a new year, a new decade – I can’t wait to see what the world of musicians have waiting in the wings for us all! Tracks after the jump!
Since I already touched upon the illustrative prowess of So-Me in our Beatbox post for the top 10 music videos of the decade, I figured, might as well cover the bases and show off the artist’s bountiful tee collection as well. This year, Ed Banger Records and So-Me had the splendid idea to gather together their projects – music, apparel and the like – under the moniker Cool Cats. The result is a site full of the electro-balls-to-the-wall stuff the two are known for: from Justice EPs to SebastiAn tees. Sure, the tees will run you a tad more than your daily duds, but this is collector’s booty! Most styles were made in limited edition batches of 100 – so snag ‘em before they’re gone forever!
“Cool Cats t-shirts ain’t thick and our prints are soft. Because we don’t wear those big hip hop tee shirts anymore, like we used to, do you?”
Last Friday, December 18th, the Iggy crew headed out for a second live session at Brooklyn’s Vibromonk Records. Our recording just a few months earlier with Youssou N’Dour at this quirky industrial space was such a blast that we quickly snatched up the chance to return – this time with Brooklyn wunder-band, The Antlers. Here are some behind the scenes snaps of the session with Peter, Darby, and Mike – and, not to worry – videos of the shoot will be up in January!
