June 23, 2010

Tell ’Em

This one goes out to Landon Donovan & the Comeback Crew:

» Sleigh Bells – Tell ’Em (2:56) – 6.1MB m4a @ 256kbps

You know how we do.

June 15, 2010

The Creators Projection

Intel × Vice’s recently-launched Creators Project feels a bit contrived on premise—i.e., a tech titan’s attempt to co-opt the cool—but the production value and content is really quite good. In fact, it’s just as well that Vice/VBS.tv gets a shit-ton money from a corpulent corporation with cash to spare; hence, the (free) star-studded NYC launch party. (It’s already sold out, but I’m going out of town that weekend anyway… speaking of which, I’m going to be out of town this weekend as well, so let’s just say that June’s editorial calendar will be a little leaner than usual.)

James Powderly (above) may be an engineering whiz, but Brock Davis is pure pop fun:

June 12, 2010

David Byrne × TED: Music × Architecture

June 10, 2010

Obligatory World Cup Post

*If you can’t tell, the images are mostly unrelated to the text

Ridiculously amazing photos of WC2010 buildup on Boston.com's Big Picture

• (UPDATE) First things first: The World Cup, Translated into American.

• Slate has the scoop on the secret history of American soccer in the first quarter of the last century (i.e.,the Roaring Twenties), featuring the Boston Wonder Workers, the Brooklyn Wanderers, and, of course, the infamous Fall River Marksmen.

• Even the New Republic has a soccer blog, where you can find gems such as Tom Vanderbilt’s on-point “Meditation on Loyalty.”

I hope I encounter this in real life at some point in the next month...

June 9, 2010

Music in Video Form

Frankly, I was disappointed with the squirmy PG-13 implied violence / homoerotica (not to mention the gimmicky bowlcuts) of “Alejandro”—especially because I thoroughly enjoyed “Telephone”—though Gaga is clearly (and perhaps commendably) going for broke on the Madonna ‘gay-man-in-a-woman’s-body’ schtick.

Perhaps I was unimpressed with Gaga’s latest S&Meh-tinged (as they say on Brooklyn Vegan) effort because I’d recently seen the entirety of the Cremaster cycle for the first time, over the past two weeks at the IFC Center. (Despite the datedness of the special effects, the scope of Matthew Barney’s vision can only be described as epic, and I have yet to fully digest the visual language of the five-part arc, much less form an opinion about it.)

Of course, the comparison is patently unfair to both artists, and, to Gaga’s credit, “Bad Romance” is easily one on my favorite music videos of all time. Now, let’s see if Klaus Biesenbach can get them together for some kind of blockbuster collaboration…

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

It’s tempting to peg the video as a metaphor for the album—drifting along, lacking ambition yet not unpleasant—but I haven’t listened to LP4 quite enough to pass judgment. Also, interview with Mike Stroud (½ of Ratatat) on Nowness.

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

I liked the video from the start, but it’s taken a few views to get into the song itself.

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

More jams:

Japandroids – Younger Us (Pfork) (A little too pop-punky on first listen…)

Yeasayer – O.N.E. (Clancy & Build Remix) (’Sup)

Crystal Castles – Suffocation (Memory Tapes Remix) (Pfork)

Kid Cudi [vs. LCD Soundsystem] – All Talk (ft. Chip Tha Ripper & Christian Bale)

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

June 7, 2010

Unsorted Links

UPDATE: Rearranged with respect to the next post; trust me, it’s better for everyone this way.

• Digital decay, visually.
• So-so Theophilus London music video.
• Not that you’d ever need an excuse to watch this video…
• Nice analysis of Nike’s “Write the Future” World Cup ad (which I like better than Adidas’ almost-as-star-studded Star Wars spot.)

Richard Barnes - Murmur 8, December 14 2005

June 2, 2010

Oldie but Goodie

Total classic.

May 25, 2010

Part One Point Five

The China beat goes on:

Ines Brunn after Li Wei

Some notes on the People’s Republic before the second chapter on the Fabled C[hinese]hipster…

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

Wu Yulu’s amazing mechanical men:

After suffering a series of life changing set backs such as a burnt down home, spraying himself with battery acid, and experiencing great financial debt—all in the name of art—Chinese farmer Wu Yulu is finally gaining some recognition for his homemade robots.

–Designboom

DB also has a gallery of Wu Yulu’s ‘Peasant Da Vincis’ for Cai Guo-Qiang’s inaugural exhibition at the newly restored Rockbund Art Museum in Shanghai; some images interpolated below (cue egregiously ironic juxtaposition of images + text):

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

Click image to see Robo-Pollock in action at DB

Chinese news site Southern Weekend recently sent intern Liu Zhiyi undercover at the Shenzhen site of Foxconn, “the world’s biggest contract electronics maker and a major supplier to Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and other companies,” which has been under scrutiny for the suicides of nine workers this year (more background info at NYT):

I know of two groups of young people.

One group consists of university students like myself, who live in ivory towers and kept company by libraries and lake views. The other group works alongside steel machineries and large containers, all inside a factory of high-precision manufacturing environment.

–Liu Zhiyi, Southern Weekend via Engadget

The translated article is definitely worth reading, though the Apple connection clearly raises the profile of these otherwise-overlooked incidents.

Skeptics (or fans of Apple) have taken to pointing out that this suicide rate, in a plant with four hundred and twenty thousand workers, is no higher than that in a Chinese city of comparable size.

–Evan Osnos, Items of Interest, Letter from China blog on the New Yorker, May 25 2010

Again, clickthrough for sweet vids on DB...

On a lighter note:

“I hear that Americans can buy anything they want, and I believe it, judging from the things I’ve made for them,” Chen said. “And I also hear that, when they no longer want an item, they simply throw it away. So wasteful and contemptible.”

–Chinese Factory Worker Can’t Believe The Shit He Makes For Americans, The Onion

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

Essay Question (10 pts): To what degree does electronic music reflect the alienation of technology and hyperindustrialization?

Let me take this opportunity to explain my music. At first I liked drums, they were fast and noisy and that’s what I first produced. After a while I listened to more electronic, quieter music. I like fast music, but it’s more melodic as a general rule. I added more melody into my music, more baritone. My latest work has slowed down in comparison to my older music. In the past it’s always been very young, punkish, full of joy. Now, I like slower, blacker, darker music. Also, I like the Chinese influence. I cant explain it, I just like it. I add a little bit of Chinese music in everything.

–Sulumi, via Intel×Vice’s Creators Project

---- --- -- - -- --- ----

A few more for good flavor:

• Wild Wild Westernization: “16 Items They Only Sell at Chinese Walmarts” (Buzzfeed)

Henri Cartier-Bresson – Shanghai, 1948

• A glimpse into a Chinese toy factory.

Li Wei via the Guardian

May 24, 2010

End of an Era

“Let’s go to another commercial.” –PC (1:45)

Apple’s iconic “Get a Mac” ad campaign is no more: Jobs & Co. have pulled the plug on the cheeky TV spots that pitted stuffy-button-down-middle-aged-guy John Hodgman against relatable-young-hip-dude Justin Long (human representations of PC and Mac, respectively).

Here’s a montage of some memorable moments between the two titans of technology:

It’s an easy metaphor for the shift from the PC vs. Mac decade to a full-fledged, multi-platform war between Apple and everyone from Google to Adobe to Amazon—not to mention Microsoft ever-looming in the background—though it’s far to early to tell who will be the next Hodgman.

May 21, 2010

Nike – "Write the Future"

Amazing:

Full press release at Slam×Hype; metacommentary (re: Facebook) on the Times’ Media Decoder

Nike has also opened two pop-up spaces in NYC, which are just around the corner from each other in Nolita (click on images for more details):