I'm loving this sythy/80s revival in music that's hitting the fringes of electro. And along with the music comes the awesome artwork. I hadn't heard of A Gap Between before but as soon as I saw this artwork I new what I was in for, and a quick visit to youtube proved me right! Well done to Colorcubic for nailing this, visual communication at its best. Check out more their tasty work here.
Just loving Com Truise at the moment, great to listen to when being creative. I wasn't convinced at first but I think the visuals work really well with this track. Enjoy.
It's great to finally be back posting again. It's been a couple of weeks since the my last post which has been way too long. At some point since my last post I came across this incredible piece of animation by Stuart Sinclair. According to Stuart this animation
"[is] done using "Trapcode 3d stroke" a "mirror" and "Trapcode sound keys" to react to the audio. The camera movement is keyframed. Then differen't color maps on top. So to clarify it' s half Expressions in after effects and half keyframed."
In a similar way to other artistic music videos I've posted I think Stuart has visually expressed this track to a tee. In addition, when watching this I feel as though I've never seen anything like it before. Very inspirational. Check out some of Stuart's other work on his youtube page.
A video artist on youtube by the name of TheFroschyankee has put this amazing video together for the Boards of Canada remix of Last Walk Around Mirror Lake. The union between moving footage and music here is near perfect. According to notes on the youtube page footage is from the movie Adrenaline Rush (The Science of Risk). Location: Eikesdalen (Norway). Check out TheFroschyankee's youtube site here, there are lots more tasty treats to be found there.
For those that don't know I am an avid video games fan. Sometimes I think this comes through in my art work. I thought this would slot nicely into friday afternoon (time of posting). So consider this some friday fun with smooth editing and some great tunes (mash up of pendulum and a track from requiem for a dream soundtrack). Youtube page here.
Henrik Wold has designed an awesome LP cover for Norwegian metal band Altaar. Typically, in my limited experience of metal, cover art for metal albums is fairly cliché, white overly gothic looking (and I don't mean sans-serif gothic) text on a black background with an array of biblical references and a goats head somewhere. Henrik has managed to recreate a similar sense of dark and aggressive underworld forces through his clever use of photography, with no inverted crosses or pentagrams. As a piece of art the viewer is presented with a scene of a forest and a window into a darker co-existing world. I've assumed that the smaller photo is of the same scene but at night, which if I'm right, is a nice touch. Henrik credits Arild Danielsen for the photography, check out his website, there are some very tasty treats to be found. Also check out Altaar on myspace. I used to be into metal in some of my earlier days, these days I crack open Master of Puppets occasionally, but that's about it. Altaar have some great ambient metal (if such a thing can even exist), which I genuinely enjoyed listening to.
Shadow, what more really needs to be said. Except that this is an outstanding video clip that has been carefully worked with the track. I had a bit of a hunt around google to try and find who put the video together with no luck. If anyone can tell me I'd love to credit them here. Enjoy.
Time for another little piece of late night electro. After snooping around the BOC youtube page I came across this video clip by Faust650. The track is a BOC classic from Twoism, their first LP, and Faust has done a great job at creating some original and fitting visuals. So many fan made music videos on youtube are just pieces of footage slapped onto a track without any real thought of narrative or a relationship between the two. Faust has very cleverly incorporated the video to fit the music. The style is a little reminiscent of early 80s experimental video clips which goes very well with this track. I could write more but my brain is moosh right now. I will point out however, that I went onto youtube to find a gem, and this is the gem I found. I couldn't help but smile while I watched it. Enjoy.
This is my submission for the Dj Shadow Remix Project. On Shadow's website there is/was a calling for fans to submit art work for the cover of this upcoming album before March 31st (2010). I jumped at the opportunity, I've listened to Shadow for many years and the idea of creating a piece that reflects his music was very appealing. It took me a little while to nail a concept. I really had to stop myself from just diving in and creating some arbitrary mess that had no substance (but would have been fun anyway). I decided to concentrate on the idea of a remix and to try to visually define remix with a DJ Shadow flavour. I really wanted to avoid all the DJ clichés out there and in doing so started looking at old cassette tapes as a possible avenue, and the idea of a "mix tape" which was popular in DJ circles back in the day. I started collecting tapes and admiring their beautiful old designs from the 70s and 80s. I noted the feelings of nostalgia I got from tapes, probably associated with memories of my first cassette tapes. For the first 15 years of my life all the music I listened to was on cassette tapes. I've also felt nostalgia when listening to particular DJ Shadow tracks, and this was something I definitely wanted to explore in my submission. So eventually the idea of slicing, dicing and "remixing" old cassette tapes is what led to my final execution. The tapes I used are also my own design. I photographed old cassette tapes and redesigned the labels with a retro spin in illustrator and photoshop. Let's hope Shadow likes it.
Please feel free to tell me what you think of this design. Can you see it as an actual Dj Shadow cover?
Tron is fairly topical at the moment, with the new film on the horizon Tron references are popping up everywhere. I remember watching the film as a kid and being somewhat amazed but not so engaged by it, perhaps after watching Empire Strikes Back 200 times everything else seemed mundane. I watched it again about a year ago and felt a lot more convinced by the Tron universe, I found my self wishing that it wasn't so family friendly though. What else would one expect from a Disney film? In an older post I wrote a bit about how the context of a piece of moving image can change when contrasting music is played instead of its original sound/music. The clip above demonstrates this perfectly. I'm not sure who originally put this together but they've essentially created a Tron montage to a particularly dark and gritty piece of drum and base. It's pretty straight forward stuff, but works really. The track, "Imagination" is by Dom and Roland, an amazing DnB artist that I draw inspiration from when the slower tunes won't do it for me. Enjoy.
I'm working on a project at the moment uses of old cassette tape imagery. My first step was to try and get my hands on some old-school tapes, this wasn't too hard, my local tip shop had an enormous selection. After getting re-acquainted with the designs, textures and sounds of the old tapes and developing a new love for them it occurred to me that these are so cool that there must be some sort of online following. With out to much trouble I found tapedeck.org, I'm going to take a guess and say it's the biggest collection of cassette tape imagery in the internet. It's amazing to see all of these old tape designs lined up next to each other. I don't think I would have ever imagined who good these would look. I feel like I should be starting my own collection, I think these may become (if they aren't already) collectors items.
I've been wading through youtube tonight, orignially looking at Ulrich Schnauss clips and eventually finding my way to Autechre (who have a new album, which I really should have been checking out instead). I came across this fan video which is really quite fitting to the track. The animation is awesome, existing in a world between vector and 3D. The only reference to the creator of the clip I could find is parkink.net. Anyway here's a little late night electro for your aural pleasure. Enjoy.
Recently Boards of Canada have setup their own youtube page which features many BOC songs with official and artist inspired film clips. This is one of my favourite BOC songs with a clip by DDRpwnerer which I think compliments it perfectly. Enjoy.
I went to see some tasty live electro music on the weekend, one of the acts, a couple of local guys called Acumen put on an awesome DJ/VJ set. They completely blew me away with their combination of experimental dark electro music and dark visuals. The visuals consisted of a combination of eclectic, abstract 3D animations and clips taken from various pop culture sources including multiple movie clips – all with dark tones. I recognised all of the movie clips but felt like I was watching them all for the first time due to the new context that they were playing in.
Anyway, one of the clips they played was Disney's "Night on Bald Mountain". This is a clip that I had watched countless times in my childhood and had completely forgotten about until I saw it again during Acumen's set. I thought I'd post it because I think to some small degree it has influenced me artistically, and is something that I still find intriguing and can watch multiple times over. It must be the darkest thing to ever come out of Disney. I don't really know why I liked this as a kid (or why I still do). I've always found the darker side of art and music more intriguing and captivating. Perhaps the depiction of danger or evil experienced in the comfort and safety the home allows us to taste fear induced adrenalin without being in any real danger.
According to wikipedia The night on Blad Mountain depicts "The nocturnal Chernabog summoning from their graves empowered restless souls, until driven away by the sound of a church bell" I wish I could play it with the Acumen's music but it is still great in it's orginal form. Enjoy.
