Spring [finally!]

The Brooklyn Botanic Garden's famed Cherry Esplanade and Cherry Walk are currently in peak bloom. See a time-lampse here and the latest uploads to Flickr here.



Flickr photos by Jimmy Lee

Ghostly, Collaborations and Tangents

"We get in the sandbox with other creative companies whenever it makes sense. We obviously love Adult Swim as do a lot of our fans, so it was a no-brainer. We were allowed a lot of creative latitude to represent the brand both musically and visually... The point of being involved in music and art is to try to keep things interesting for both our fans and ourselves. It's an advantage that small companies like ours have, so it would be a shame not to get in the sandbox once in a while."
-Sam Valenti IV, from an interview with Cool Hunting on Ghostly International's recent project with Adult Swim.

Ghostly Swim [mixed and engineered by Josh Eustis of Telefon Tel Aviv] is a milestone for the label in many ways. It reafirms Ghostly's position as leader in innovative marketing and should propell the brand to a much larger audience base. More importantly though, it represents an already strong label coming into maturity.

No hyperbole here, Ghostly Swim is the strongest compilation the little label from Ann Arbor has put out yet - including Disco Nouveau, which put Ghostly on the map. Most great LPs are lucky to have one or two "just-stop-you-in-your-tracks" moments. Ghostly Swim has a half dozen such moments. [Nick Cave's The Boatman's Call - possibly the most emotionally wrenching LP ever - had maybe three or four.]


Danny Scales a.k.a. The Reflecting Skin

Most interestingly, despite strong work from label stalwarts Dabrye, Osborne, Kill Memory Crash and Matthew Dear, the most powerful tracks come from recent signings. Without question, the standout track on this comp is "Traffickers" by The Reflecting Skin. Dethlab played an ealry version of this song every night of the "Now We Are Dead" tour with Solvent and Lowfish, and we have never had so many strangers come up and ask who it was. Same response, every city. [I personally think The Reflecting Skin best represents where electronic dance music is headed.] Toybreaker said of Traffickers, "it makes you stop whatever you're doing and calls attention to the Dune sized bassworms that are ravaging your bowels."
'Nuf said.

My second favorite track on the compilation is "Squirmy Sign Language" by Ben Benjamin - formerly of Midwest Product. It doesn't sound anything like the MWP you know. Like The Reflecting Skin, this is dark and lush electronic music equally fit for suicidal bedrooms or moody dancefloors at 4AM. Beautiful.

Third is my new most favoritest Detroit-area artist Deastro. "Light Powered" is a great track, but you should check out his album The Young Planets - Time the Teenage Twister on iTunes. Imagine if you will, Goudron meets Soviet meets Casiotone For The Painfully Alone meets Laibach meets The Lightining Seeds... and then add a healthy dash of My Robot Friend's sense for theatre.

Canadian producer Milosh's "Then It Happened" was perhaps the biggest surprise and most emtionally captivating track on the entire compilation. When I hear this song, I shut down and can't do anything but listen.

Other major highlights from Ghostly Swim include Tycho's "Cascade", Aeroc's "Idiom", School of Seven Bells' "Chain", and The Chap's "Carlos Walter Wendy Stanley" - my favorite from their brilliant new LP Mega Breakfast.

To be objective and fair, I certainly don't love all of it, but I appreciate the eclecticism and how it all works together. This is a really mature and well thought out collection of music.

Ghostly Swim will be available for a little less than two months as a free download, so grab it now! A reinterpertation will be available on CD this autumn.


We Work For Them for Spectral Sound

In addition to collaborating wht Adult Swim, Ghostly has recently worked with design icons Mike Cina and Mike Young of We Work For Them. [I've loosely been friends with Mike Young since the early days of the internets, due in large part to to his experimental projects with Mike Madill and 19.5 Collective.]

Cina has provided artwork for Ghostly's sister label Spectral Sound, including Kate Simko's She Said EP and Sami Koivikko's Sapphire 12".

Cina describes the collaboration as "perfect timing." "I met Sam in the early 2000's. He contacted me about some work I was doing." "Late last year, I was wanting to work on some personal-type work and it happened to be what direction Ghostly was going in. WeWorkForThem also was doing some stuff that needed the type of sound that Ghostly/Spectral is perfecting, seems like a perfect match for me."

Valenti agrees. "Collaborating with Mike was something we wanted to do for quite sometime, after seeing some of the projects he had been working on, it forced our hand."

The 12" sleeves represent both a neo-classical and abstract beauty and document a new era for the Ann Arbor based label. The 3 covers represent a new breed of Spectral talent including Kate Simko, Sami Koivikko and Cologne-based duo, Daso & Pawas. Ghostly will be offering a limited edition of prints of each cover on their online boutique The Ghostly Store as well as t-shirts by YouWorkForThem.

Ghostly has treated its artists, fans and collaborators like family since day one. Artists feel like they're working with rather than for the label, and fans feel involved in something special and personal rather than merely consuming a product. As far as cult brands go, Ghostly is fast becoming the Apple Computer or Volkswagen of record labels. Actually, I think Ghostly has taken lessons from cult brands such as those listed above, and blazed new trails where it comes to earning respect and loyalty from both producers and consumers. [Marketing guru Steve Wilhite - who coined the brilliant "Drivers Wanted" for VW and "Shift_" for Nissan could take notes.]

It can be very difficult finding people to work with who have just that right balance of talent, personal chemistry and motivation. Having conducted many interviews in my professional life, there are plenty of people who are highly skilled and organized at what they do, but you just can't imagine spending more than a few minutes with them before putting an ice pick through your temple. Likewise, there are some truly wonderful people in the world who turn out to be total flakes, or don't share the same motivations for making work. The right combination is of course different for everyone and every situation. [I once worked at a company who's primary motivation was making lots and lots of money. That's fine and all, but I'm very fortunate to now be somewhere that shares my primary motivation of making challenging, high quality art above all else. The funny thing is, we do pretty darn okay for ourselves with that.] Ghostly has done a wonderful job finding their perfect balance with an impressive artist, fan, and collaborator base that is beneficial and inspiring for everyone involved.

The best brands aren't for everyone, but they're just perfect for those who get it.

Kahn/Esherick House

Eames Demetrios recently visited the Esherick House designed by Louis I. Kahn and took some wonderful photos.


The house is innovatively to be sold at auction, more as a work of art than as real estate.



Additional info on the house and the auction at Dezeen.

Jonathan Schipper

[I could, but probably don't need to explain why Jonathan Schipper is one of my favorite sculptors...]


The Inherent Beauty in a Failed Attempt to Reconstruct


The Slow Inevitable Death of American Muscle


Raining Blood

Nick Cave on Fresh Aire

Nick Cave, Digging Himself a Singular Niche. Archive of 37 minute NPR interview from earlier today.

Special bonus: one of his best songs ever is also included about 1/2 the way through the interview.

Shoegaze goes motown

Ten years on and one of the most criminally unnoticed bands celebrates their amazing last album from 1998. Jessamine, a band that, on their last album somehow made music that sounded like if My Bloody Valentine grew up in Memphis...r&b plus shoegaze? Yep.

Three Way Electro

DETHLAB + 1 [a.k.a. Ms. Toybreaker, David Blunk II and myself] recorded a new live mix this week at the historic Atlas Building on Gratiot. You can download it right here [93MB, .m4a format]



tracklist:
[DETHLAB mashup intro] The Producers: "Keep it Gay" vs. Homotronic: "U Look Like a Gay"
Rude 66: "The Strings of Death"
Lowfish: "Domination Ver. 2"
Josh Dahlberg: "Interloop"
Kiko: "Slave of My Mind"
Sascha Funke: "Kuschelrock"
Apparat: "Arcadia (Telefon Tel Aviv RMX)"
The Reflecting Skin: "Traffickers"
Das Bierbeben: "Sturm Bricht Los"
Deutsche Amerikanishe Freundschaft: "Tanz Mit Mir"
Adriano Canzian: "You Excites Me So Much!"
The Presets: "My People"
Tomas Andersson: "Washing Up (Ttim Deluxe Mix)"
SebastiAn: "Smoking Kills"
Synapse: "Dust-Mite (Edit)"
[DETHLAB mashup] Ambivalent: "R U OK" vs. Gershon Kingsley: "Popcorn"
Zoo Brazil: "Face"
Richard Bartz: "Symphonies of Midnight"
[DETHLAB mashup outro] The Producers vs. Homotronic

+ The three of us will be DJ'ing a special edition of Disco/Secret this Sunday night at the Detroit Eagle. Expect your daily recommended allowance of dark synths and slapstick humor.



Disco/Secret w.s.g. DETHLAB + 1
Sunday, April 27th at the Detroit Eagle
1501 Holden St, Detroit, MI 48208
FREE | 21+ | $2 drinks | guarded parking | leather

Trend Watch '08: Circuit Benders and Local News?

Bent Music Appears, Awkwardly, On Local TV - Film at 11
Something strange is happening on local affiliate news programs across the country: Circuit benders and other weirdo musicians are being asked to drop by and discuss their art for the American Public. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’d be a little confused and freaked out if I woke up and saw this first thing in the morning...

I don't know. Dan Deacon looks like he was born to do morning news.

[thanks Chris!]

The World As Flatland | Information Design Studio

The World As Flatland is the online home of Information Design Studio.



We design complexity

The Information Design Studio is specialized in the development and design of complex information systems. Due to the fact that these systems are comprised of a multitude of different applications (printed matters, three-dimensional and digital applications), the project work proves to be very interdisciplinary.

Our objective is to derive additional knowledge by organising, combining, condensing and visualising complex data. Our work does not depend on certain media and involves a multi- and interdisciplinary approach to communication, combining skills from graphic design, web design, 3D design, psychology, cognitive science, information theory and cultural studies.

Experimental Research

We find it very important to further develop Information Design in free, experimental projects. Our definition of Information Design is based on an interdisciplinary attitude and an openness towards all creative disciplines, especially art, architecture and digital media.


Maybe I'm weird, but reading stuff like this gets me all hot and bothered - in the good way.

[Actually, this sounds a lot like o2 - sans the singing gnomes of course.]

Go check out all of Information Design Studio's smart and beautiful work. The United Nations
Year of Languages project is rather excellent.

Allan Chochinov: Ode To My Toaster

[My friend Allan wrote this for Design Observer. Wonderful.]

Ode to my toaster, so shiny and clean
You’re the butterknife's foe, you're the bread's trampoline
You're the lightest, the darkest, the coolest and proud
You’re the jack-in-the-box of the countertop crowd.

In the old days you had a side entrance instead
You were far more ornate as a true thoroughbred
But now you're a box with a push-button trick
You're a bit more convenient, but a little too slick.

And if that weren't sufficient to cause you some shame,
There's your bullying arch-rival muscling in on your game
They say big toaster-ovens are "double the tool"
They can brown up a bagel and reheat your gruel.

But don't be discouraged, I still think you're swell
You do do one thing, but you do that thing well
And though fancy new gizmos might stir up a yen, remember
Your name still pops up, every now and again.

The Architecture of Autocracy

[via Archinect]
ForeignPolicy.com provides a tour of "the most ambitious and audacious designs breaking ground in some of the world’s least free countries." Go.

[If you're still wondering why Dubai is one of the most evil places in the world, Google Cat Le-Huy.]

Dear Democrats

You failed yesterday. If you want a compromised, opportunist, out-of-touch Washington insider as your candidate, fine. But don't dare count on my vote or any votes from my generation come November. We don't play to fear tactics and we can leave any time we want. We've been faced with the choice of the lesser of two evils our entire lives. For once we have the opportunity to change that and vote for someone we actually respect. Don't wuss out and give us the status quo yet again. We won't have it, and we refuse to vote for her.

update: Andrew Sullivan's insights on the Democratic generation gap.

Cyberoptix TieLab in Crain's Detroit Business

[My better half is in the news again...]



The Line On Design: Bethany Shorb

If you think most ties are boring, you're not alone — designer Bethany Shorb agrees. Visit the Web site for Cyberoptix TieLab, Shorb's online boutique, and you'll be greeted with a promise in the form of a slogan: “Ties that don't suck.”

Shorb's neckwear venture began as an afterthought back in 2006. Completing a screen-printing project, the Cranbrook Academy of Art-trained artist decided to make a tie for fiance Michael Doyle. He liked it, but more important, others did too. Lots of other people. And Shorb's business was born.



Initially it was only online. But Shorb found customers around the world eager to purchase her brand of screen-printed quirky neckties, more likely to feature a cascade of "40s-style falling bombs, a delicate print of tiny butcher knives or a stylized plague bacterium than the subdued stripes, dots or chevrons found on conventional neckwear.

“Part of being a successful marketer is seeing what's being done badly,” she said. “People say, 'Why don't you do T-shirts?' There are enough T-shirts. No one feels bad about T-shirts. Ties? Ties suck.”

New Ghostly Website + Ghostly Swim Compilation

Ghostly International rolled out a brand new website late last night: classic good looks, easy to navigate, and jam packed with info on all your favorite artists.

Yesterday also saw the release of Ghostly Swim: a 19-song collection of music and art available as a free download in partnership with cult classic programmers Adult Swim. Also be sure to check out BoyCatBird's first ever animated music video, "City Suckers" by Daniel Garcia/Superfi.

Edward Hann

The fabulous work of graphic designer Edward Hann:

Overnewsed but Uninformed

Overnewsed but Uninformed is a beautiful & detailed infographic analysis of our actual global news situation. each 2-page spread focuses on a specific news-related theme, such as the global news distribution, media usage, most used news sources, news conglomerates & business structures, state of news censure, use of online media, plus a visual analysis of different title page layouts, as well as a direct comparison of different news headlines for the same news story.

I'm drooling.





[via Information Aesthetics]

The Papercraft Mac

Otaku hobbyists and retro fanatics alike (aren't they usually the same folks anyways?) now have another project to occupy those rainy april shower days: The Papercraft Mac!




Now available for everyone to enjoy, you can download a PDF template here, and build your own. Also check out the redesigned c-trl/68k site!

Cranbrook Degree Show + Massie House

Tonight is the Cranbrook Degree Show preview - always one of the most inspiring exhibits of the year.

Here & Now: Cranbrook Academy of Art 2008 Graduate Degree Exhibition
April 19 - May 10, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday, April 18, 6-8pm
Cranbroook Art Museum
39221 Woodward Avenue, Bloomfield Hills, MI 48303

+ Opening to the public on May 3rd is American House 08, a full-scale prefabricated house on the lawn of Cranbrook Art Museum by Architect-in-Residence William E. Massie.

An American House 08 embodies Massie’s innovative architectural practice through his use of computer-based fabrication technology for efficient, precise and customized buildings. The house, with its two glass elevations that unite the interior experience with the exterior landscape, is defined by a pair of volumetric anomalies that were intricately generated through a Computer Numerically Controlled machine. Massie uses the surface of these complex forms to capture light from multiple video projectors, creating a flexible ambient environment for the occupants.

Click here for more on both events.

Russian Avant-Garde, Theremin and Industrial Music

[It seems that most of the posts here lately have fallen into one of three categories: design and ethics, futurism and music and things Bruce Sterling would like... which, come to think of it, most often includes the first two. Here's one that includes all three - as well as one of my other favorite topics: iconoclasts. Also, I'd like to note that this is the first post of 2008 written entirely from our back patio, and I couldn't be more excited about that!]

While gathering information for the long overdue follow-up to The Art of Noises and a separate post on art and synesthesia, I kept coming across articles on artists working shortly after and in similar spirit as the Italian Futurists, but not directly connected. It shouldn't be surprising that most of them were Russian. [I hadn't really planned on this being a post about Russian avant-garde art, but the background is critical to the later part.]


'Tatlin at Home' by Raoul Hausmann, and model of Vladimir Tatlin's 'Monument to the Third International'.
(It should be noted that Tatlin is not even present in Hausmann's portrait. The anonymous man represents the collective nature of the revolution - from the perspective of the Berlin dadaists who were fascinated with Russia at the time.)

Russian Futurists, although inspired by Marinetti's manifesto [perhaps the greatest work ever in one of my favorite mediums: hyperbole for the sake of provocation] "acknowledged no authorities whatsoever," including Marinetti himself. Russian Futurism fizzled out not long after the Bolsheviks came to power, to be followed by the brief but significant Absurdism movement OBERIU. In the years between, Constructivism [another outgrowth of Futurism] had defined perhaps the most distinctly Russian and Bolshevik friendly art movement yet. But times changed quickly, and with Stalin's rise to power the only state endorsed art was Socialist Realism, quite literally sending the avant-garde into exile.


Léon Theremin

This leads us up to the time of Lev Sergeyevich Termen - better known as Léon Theremin.

I'm going to be lazy now, because my new favorite arts and culture blog, Coilhouse has already done all the right research and put an excellent article together. Below are a few choice tidbits from Russian Industrial Music, chapters 1 and 2. [It would take way too much space to re-post the whole article, but you should definitely click and read the link to the left here. I was completely unaware of most of the the technology and music being made behind the Iron Curtain. It's seriously mind blowing.]

In 1921, Russian physicist Lev Theremin, an inventor who insisted on building all his creations by hand, constructed the theremin, one of the 20th century’s first successful electronic musical instruments and still the only music instrument whose haunting tones are elicited without touching the device. Unlike Theremin, neither famous theremin-users John Cage, Download, Brian Eno, Meat Beat Manifesto or Edgar Varese were ever arrested for its use. After a decade of teaching and performing, Theremin was suddenly seized and imprisoned in 1938 by the KGB on the grounds of “anti-Soviet Propaganda.” Theremin was sent to Siberia and later to a labor camp in Omsk, where, alongside other indentured scientists, he was forced to work on various military projects (Theremin was later given the Stalin Prize for perfecting the eavesdropping device known as “the bug”). Thus begins the history of industrial music in Russia…

[Many innovations in synthesized sound happened in Russian military research laboratories] ...the first of these inventions, a two-voiced analog music synthesizer known as EKVODIN, was conceived in the 1930s at a Russian center called TSNIATRI, or “Automatic Devices for Defense.” Its inventor, Andrei Volodin, was not a musician at all; his task had been to conduct military research in the area of psychoacoustics. In his research, Volodin needed a source of material for his experiments with human response to various sounds, and so the EKVODIN was born. Soon the device found use at the hands of musicians, and Volodin’s synthesizer almost went into mass production but, uninterested in electronic music, the Soviet State cut funding for his project in the sixties. After that, Volodin continued working on the synthesizer, but he simply did not have the energy or resources to go on - Volodin died right in his laboratory in 1982.

More success was enjoyed by the ANS – the first photoelectric synthesizer invented anywhere in the world. Designed in 1939 by Evgeney Murzin, th e technological basis of the invention lay in the synthesis of sound from an artificially drawn sound wave. Murzin was an engineer and the design of the ANS was a hobby that took 20 years to realize. Despite the fact that only one copy of the ANS was ever created, it enjoyed wide use by many Russian composers. Eerie ANS compositions by Edward Artimiev grace Tarkovsky’s sci-fi films Stalker and Solaris. In 1999, Russia’s Electroshock records released a compilation drawn from archive tapes of ANS works from 1964 - 1971. Composers on this album included Edward Artemiev, Stanislav Keitchi, and, most notably, Alfred Schnittke, whose steel-grinding-against-steel ambient-noise composition “Steam” marks the beginning of a distinctly industrial sound in Russia.

If the early industrialists in the West were fetishizing the experience of expression under control, people creating a similar sound in the USSR were living it. Separated from their counterparts by the iron curtain, musicians in Russia began composing, collaging, cutting up and programming a range of sound experiments which became the first industrial projects in the USSR at a time when such activity was prohibited by the government. Bizarrely, many of these works coincided directly with the releases of groups such as Throbbing Gristle, Z’ev, NON and Cabaret Voltaire, completely unknown in Russia at the time. This suggested that the zeitgeist of industrial culture transmitted through all boundaries of communication...

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Click here for the rest. It's essential material to anyone with interest in electronic music and/or subversive culture.

Electric Kissing Parties

[via Coilhouse] from the book “The Art of Kissing,” published by Hugh Morris in 1936:

“Some few years ago, a very peculiar kissing custom arose which deserves mention here because, from it, we can learn how to adapt the method to our modern devices. At that time, when young people got together, they held, what was then known as, “electric kissing parties.” Young people are ever on the outlook for novel ways of entertaining themselves. In fact, when ether was first developed as an anesthetic, the young bloods of the town used to form “ether-sniffing” parties in which they got a perfectly squiffy ether “jag.” But to return to the “electric kisses.” An excerpt from a contemporary writer will, perhaps, give us some idea of what happened: ‘The ladies and gentlemen range themselves about the room. In leap year the ladies select a partner, and together they shuffle about on the carpet until they are charged with electricity , the lights in the room having been first turned low. Then they kiss in the dark; and make the sparks fly for the amusement of the onlookers.’ The same sort of experiment could be performed nowadays, on cold, dry nights when the air is overloaded with electricity.”

Awww... that's the cutest thing I've read in ages (not mention the best name idea for a party I've heard in ages!) You're looking at the proud new owner of electrickissingparty.com

Also on the strange and fascinating subject of Victorian era sexuality, here is a NOT safe for work solution for what was then called “female hysteria.” The text is rather amusing...

"Unfortunately, hysteria was a recurrent condition and repeated treatment was often necessary. Taylor touted his steam-driven massage device as speeding treatment while reducing physician fatigue.”