RETROSPECTIVE: the big post at the end of 2012
Surprisingly short retrospective of 2012! Random IMAGES OF ROCK! OCD-friendly narrative lists of music and achievements!
Read more
MUSIC VIDEO TUESDAY: The Good Natured - 5-HT
Pop noir threesome THE GOOD NATURED just released their new music video '5-HT' - that's also the first single off their debut album we've been waiting so eagerly for during the past year (hopefully including all of the Skeleton EP, 'Lovers' and other brilliant tracks, not that they wouldn't be having any other kind of release, ever). This is an early morning without proper coffee, so while I'm going to get some, you go and read the Popjustice write-up. ROCK! (Pre-order the whole single here with mixes from GHOSTWERK and Kat Krazy!)
INTERVIEW: Slutwave Neonpunk Tarot (with Actually Huizenga and moi)
The first issue of carnal underground stylist Sophie Rotas' male fashion & erotic contemporary art magazine NERO HOMME is out (now in Budapest and hopefully by this weekend London, too), much like a heavily monochrome monogatari at obscure Soho coffeehouse/orgy joints. Issue BODY CONFIDENCE features a splatter round of body confidence black glamour shots and interviews with the likes of Emika, Matt Lambert, Chrysta Bell, Millie Brown, Theo-Mass Lexileictous, Jen Gilpin, Alexandra Groover, a three-way discussion of Princess Julia, Matthew Stone and James Long - also our swordclash of brains with slutwave goddess Actually Huizenga and moi that we've laid out according to the 22 cards of the Major Arcana. (Yes, this inevitably makes me the neonpunk.)
You'll get the first half of the interview in the upcoming days when Sophie & Co re-launches their site with content and the second half a bit later after that. Until then, look out for magazine sales points on their Facebook page. (Thanks to Ninth & Dawe for making the ultra-fast delivery possible!)
SHORT: WAR (Nine Inch Nails meets Leonard Cohen)
FilmShortage describes WAR as "A simply visually stunning short, accentuating on amazing color contrasts and movement. Coercive macro shots are brought together through colors, heart pounding sounds and famous words by Leonard Cohen." (read more on WAR's Vimeo page)
AFTERPARTY VIDEO: Qlimax 2012
Just as one of the YouTube commenters say, this whole video starts to get interesting around the 5:00 mark. Yes, it's around six minutes long. Yes, we're mildly aggravated.
INTERVIEW: Visually Marketplace Designer Spotlight (with moi)
Drew Skau of infographics powerhouse @Visually interviewed me this Friday after I've ended up as one of the winners for the infographics challenge of The Economist, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) and visual.ly. Read it in its entirety here!
MUSIC VIDEO: Metroland launch tribute video to London underground tube mapping engineer Harry Beck
Out now is a brand new video from the Kraftwerkian Belgian electronica duo Metroland. The video "Harry Beck" (in a remix by Növö) is dedicated to Harry Beck, an English engineering draftsman best known for creating the present London Underground Tube map in 1931. The remixed version is taken from the Metroland CD-only release "Mixing The Gap" which can be purchased from the Alfa Matrix webshop.
The video itself includes the first drafts Beck drew up of the diagram in his spare time while working as an engineering draftsman at the London Underground Signals Office. The London Underground was initially very sceptical of Beck's radical proposal, but it was tentatively introduced to the public in a small pamphlet in 1933. It immediately became popular, and the Underground (in the Uk and abroad) has used topological maps to illustrate the network ever since.
Metroland was started as a musical concept around the whole metro system. Less known is that the band recorded a soundtrack for some of the biggest metro stations worldwide, including London, Moscow and New York. Each unique track was handed over to the marketing department of said stations to use it. So if you hear Metroland through the boxes in New York, Moswcow, London, etc. You now know why.
This just came with the Alfa Matrix newsletter. Lodged somewhere between Kraftwerk's pre-90s technopop and bubbly Detroit mindneedles like AUX88, this is a taker.
PERSONAL: Winning the infographics challenge of The Economist, PEJ and visual.ly!
In January I closed the manuscript for my first book DAMAGE REPORT and promised not to touch text for a long time. So I started researching into infographics instead. Eleven months later I won the infographic challenge put on by The Economist, the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) and visual.ly. Read more about that here - where you can (and should) check out the other winners, THEY ROCK! (Well, that wasn't exactly Tim Ferriss tempo but I'm trying my best to get there.) I also have to mention that this work is a joint submission - appearing in the colours of tablet2cases.com with whom I've been working with for almost half a year now on visualizing data about tablets and related consumer behaviour patterns. If you want more eyecandy, check out my portfolio here!
LONDON: An Alternative Guide to Camden
“An Alternative Guide To Camden”, is a specially commissioned short film highlighting the best and quirkiest elements of Camden Town featuring one of the UK's top comedians Marek Larwood. Camden is one of the most popular tourist destinations in London according to Transport For London, receiving over 10 million visitors each year. The film was devised and produced for The Camden Eye by creative media agency Me:Mo Interactive. ()
Sent to the inbox of MEGA MECHANO ROCK by peterbenei. Cheers! (No goths, no rivetheads, no Cyberdog, no Hexagon, REALLY?)
GIG NEWS: Kraftwerk to perform back catalogue in Tate Modern (2013 February)
German electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk play eight live performances in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in their first London dates since 2004.
KRAFTWERK - THE CATALOGUE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 is a chronological exploration of the group’s sonic and visual experiments and presents eight classic master works from across their celebrated repertoire with spectacular 3D visualisations and effects.
Combining sound and images, the performances showcase nearly 40 years of musical and technical innovation, including new improvisations, 3D projections and animation. Commencing with Autobahn, each night covers one of Kraftwerk’s groundbreaking studio albums in full and appear in order of their release — Autobahn (1974), Radio-Activity (1975), Trans Europe Express (1977), The Man-Machine (1978), Computer World (1981), Techno Pop (1986), The Mix (1991) and Tour de France (2003) — alongside additional compositions from their back-catalogue.
Tate Modern, Turbine Hall
Wednesday 6 February – Thursday 14 February 2013 (except Sunday 10 February)
£60
Tickets go on sale Wednesday 12 December 2012 at 07:30 GMT
We expect these events to be extremely popular, so there is a four ticket limit per person for a single show and it is not possible to buy tickets for the whole series. This is to ensure a greater number of people get to experience Kraftwerk at Tate Modern. (more at tate.org.uk)
♫ MUSIC: British Murder Boys - All the Saints Have Been Hung
Regis/Surgeon slowly preparing you for another mixtape on London and cyberpunk. Watch this space for more soundy bits.
WTF: The Gangnam mutations (Whitby and Bass Blaster)
Speechless. One of the more unique mutations of PSY's sonic honeypot of a track is now irreversibly linked to Whitby Gothic Weekend. They might never need to spend another penny on marketing ever again.
And even hardstyle was inevitable, the Defqon.1 footage obvious and the whole thing makes me cringe about not listening to enough Hard with Style podcasts.
ART: Bangkok LED parkour
The Light Emitting Dudes is a short video project created by director Frank Sauer that took three freerunners, wrapped them in LED suits, and unleashed them on the chaotic streets of Bangkok, Thailand. Fueled by a techno soundtrack, the three runners from Germany, Australia, and Thailand were filmed over the course of two weeks traversing the ins and outs of the city in choreographed fashion, offering a visual spectacle that looks something like a real-life video game. (more via dvice)
ART: Wrecking Crew Orchestra's amazing Tron stuff
As performed by Japanese dance group Wrecking Crew Orchestra - this piece originates, according to Huffington Post, from Team iLuminate's TRON-inspired routine.
SUPPORT: Kickstarter finds Angelspit too weird, they launch Spitstarter
Since we're too weird for KICKSTARTER, Angelspit announce SPIT-STARTER!!
SPIT-STARTER is our rule-free platform to make lots of money, give it to Sir Richard F#*king Branson, and hi-jack one of his planes to ROCK North America on our WALL STREET MASSACRE tour.
By investing in "SPIT-STOCK" you are helping make the tour possible...and you get awesome sh!t in return! All proceeds of sales from our SPIT-STARTER page go directly to costs associated with touring, wreaking havoc, and obliterating the status quo! Your dividends will be everything from regular merch, to one-off insane jewellery! (read more here!)
LINKBOX: Inside The Mind of The Damage, 2012 November
And you wouldn't even believe me if I said this is not for SEO but I just cannot keep up with the amount of bookmarking so I just needed to do this - more links I wanted to talk about but I ultimately haven't - games, infographics and magick. Yes, this was all in my head in November (and possibly October, too!)
GAMES | Android: Netrunner Video Review | Boundless | Epic's Fortnite is a 'fresh and bubbly' co-op survival sandbox game | Hardcore Sandbox Survival Game Boundless Announced | How to Play Android Games on Your Windows PC | Interview on The War Z outlines more on gameplay and design goals | Man-Eater: A Cool Realtime Game for Commuters | Novus Mundus - online wilderness survival sandbox goodness | Promoter app | Platinum Art Sandbox Free Game Maker | Sandbox games by popularity | Steam Greenlight: Project Zomboid | Top Ten Sandbox-Style Video Games | Wasteland Survival Sandbox
INFOGRAPHICS | 10 Awesome Free Tools To Make Infographics | 10 Free Tools To Create Visually Appealing Infographics | A Few Rules for Making Homemade Infographics | Cloud Infographic: What is Big Data, Anyway?Easel.ly: Create and Share Visual Ideas Online | Google Opens Up Infographic Tools for Everyone's Use | Grand Mosque Infographic | Infogr.am: create infographics & online charts |Infographics for Charities & Nonprofits; Here, There, Everywhere! | Interactive Globe: Small Arms Imports & Exports | Over 100 Incredible Infographic Tools and Resources | Infographics in Hickman's PAX ROMANA | Infographics vs Data Visualization: Top 5 Tools for Creating Infographics | Nature's Cure | On-line learning infographic | Piktochart: Infographic & Presentation Tool | The B2B Lead Generation ManifestoThe Do's and Dont's of Infographic Design | Which Profession Drinks the Most Coffee?
MAGICK | A Brief History Of Our Dynamic Inner Family of Subselves | Aghori | An Appraisal of the Films of William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Anthony Balch in terms of Recent Avant Garde Theory | Anthony Balch | Bon Phurpa | Bon Teachings | Chaos Magick Gift Sigil | Chinese Qigong Therapy | Commentary to the Bonpo Book of the Dead | Dark Retreat | Dreamachine | Dzogchen preliminaries | Frater U.D. - Practical Sigil Magick | Green Field, Allen - The Roots of Modern Magick, 1700 Thru 2000 | How to Make a Simple and Cheap Dreamachine | Insight Meditaton ebooks | Magic Spells with Menstrual Blood, Semen and Urine | Making a Magical Sigil | Mantra Shakti | Mantrams | Meet the Magus Pt 8: Transforming Perception in Another Suburban Romance | Men Jiuzhang: A General Introduction to Traditional Chinese Medicine | Mindfulness in Plain English | My Sigils which Aren't Symbolically Destroyed | Online Dreamachine | Parivartana | Pre-Abramelin Operation | Rainbow Body | | Rigpa | Skywriters in Hades 1 | Skywriters in Hades 2 | Ten Step Sigil Casting via The Tree of Life | The Genesis Breyer P-Orridge Online Archive | The New Hermetics | Why Does Magic Need So Many Rules?
FREE MUSIC MONDAY: Shiny Toy Guns, The Good Natured, VoxxoV Records
This is FREE MUSIC MONDAY. (Something to look forward to after losing half a gig of project photo material and getting shocked by voltage, but hey, it was me who sigilized for a more interesting life.) Shiny Toy Guns released the first video Somewhere to Hide off their latest album III and there's a new lyric video out for 5-HT by UK pop noir outfit The Good Natured.
One surprisingly good news was the appearance of a new label late last week - VoxxoV is poised on the top floor of the ambient-glitch-drone-noise-electronica lounge and they just released two free compilation albums, one with IDM/electronica entitled Fall is a House of Gold and Rain and the other is mostly drone/noise entitled Faith in a Wet Season. The IDM compilation actually features a few Tympanik artists like Access to Arasaka, r.roo, Normotone or Tapage - this one was tested for a fair amount of existential crisis in London and Reykjavík, so feel free to proceed without caution!
