General Rambling - What it feels like inside my head

"And We Stood on the Shoulders of Giants" - Sylvia McKeown

I have noticed of late the gradual change I have undergone since I have come back from India and now more than ever I can see that I am not the person I was before. I have a great sense of calm in my life and all the quiet that I lost in my head for 2 years has slowly returned. If you meet me now, you would never be able to picture the emotionless human I was in 4th year half on the verge of self destruction and half trying desperately to find myself...
 

So where does this all come from? Well I stumbled across a short film which when I watched just feels like how I feel now and where my head is. It's a film by Alex Roman called The Third and Seventh and it is beautiful. Every aspect of the film is created by Roman, from the shooting to the sound and the 3D composting. Personally I don't think the 3D was necessary (and no one should ever destroy a book) but the the core of the film, the footage, just resonates with me and the music completes it perfectly.

Check it out, and Enjoy:

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

"For a minute there, I lost myself"

When I Grow Up - Rogier van der Zwaag

So firstly I appologise for the long absence, my work life has killed me of late but our 5th birthday is finally over and I can finally breathe again... phew.

Anyway since I have been away there have been many many inspirations for me to draw from but for today I'm all about Rogier van der Zwaag. The maker of the Music video "Grind" and the visual aspect of the band called Nobody Beats the Drum. The video is a masterpiece on a visual level but what makes the video particularly awesome is that it's stopframe. It would have been easy enough to make this 3D but he painstaking made all the blocks, painted and animated it all by hand. In an age of the digital take over it's still nice to see things that blow your mind knowing that no programing was needed just patience, time and effort. Things the world needs more of...

Enjoy:


Oh and here's a great little mockumentry on how the video was made (not that is shows you how it was made at all)



Plus on the upside he's kind of cute which doesn't hurt, wink.

When I Grow Up - UnitedFakes

Welcome to a new segment of my Blog called "When I Grow Up" which was inspired by a previous post I did looking at work I would kill to have been involved in. The very same could be said for the little company in Barcelona called UnitedFakes. Wow... Everything has some form of hand made touch, if the stuff is not hand made little buildings it's hand painted cell animations on acetate. Plus on the Vimeo site they have all the "making's of" where they show the painstaking work that went into it all. It just goes to show that sometimes you can find a place where you can be paid to make your dreams come true, all it takes is learning Spanish and a little bit of imagination.

Check it out here:

JOYEUX NOËL from UnitedFakes on Vimeo.


Urquinaona from UnitedFakes on Vimeo.


Handcraft Love Land from UnitedFakes on Vimeo.

Now, is that not worth learning Spanish for?

A Quick Look at Awesome - French Aids Awareness Promos

Oh! Oh! OH! My newest favourite thing has to be French Aids Awareness ads. I have always had a bit of a soft spot for the french especially after making friends with a particular darling but these ads do so make me love them even a little more. In your face, to the point and graphically beautiful; what more could you ask for? Oh wait, I know, a gay and straight version of the ads. How great!? We would NEVER get away with it here but that's why man invented Youtube.

Check it out:

Quick Look at Awesome - Asimo aka "Advanced Step in Innovative MObility"

I have always been a bit of a sci-fi geek, thanks mostly to my father, who taught me at a young age that sometimes real life is seriously over rated when you have a galaxy to explore. I have seen it all a million times including all the good ol' black and white vacuum cleaner sounding spaceships and can perform the Vulcan mind meld (well kinda) but it's always been an escape but the great thing is maybe thanks to Honda the future may be a reality.

Introducing Asimo (said Awesimo) a real life humanoid robot by Honda. This little guy has been around for a little over 9 years but I was reminded of him again when I  stumbled on this mini doccie made for Sundace this year and premiered on the 15th Jan, explaining how very complex making this little robot really was.

Check it out:


and for good measure a fitting song, Royksopp ft Robyn The Girl and the Robot


Ocelot remix


Note. I do take heed of "terminator" warnings of robots but believe that we will either die of global warming or be killed by Tom Cruise and the Scientology people before the robots get us so it's all good.

General Rambling - I got shot by the Sheriff

No songs from this band kids, got asked to take it down but you can listen to the album at the official website. But feel free to read the review anyway, song free. Wink.

There has been a buzz of late around this album, Contra, and at first listen you can understand why. It's happy and infectious and feels like you should be drinking Horchata. In all honestly, I wasn't the biggest fan of their first album. I mean there were a few tracks that were cool like Walcott but nothing in this league. It's like these kids did it the right way; they took the experiences of last album, grew up a little but still retained the sense of fun that's synonymous with them.  Oh and adding small elements of pixel electro doesn't hurt either.

The one song to me that stands out substantially for me is Giving Up the Gun. It just sounds a little cleaner and not like them so much at all. By which I mean; I don't smell the island air, it's more citylights musk. Close second is I Think You're a Contra but that appeals to the chilled moody side of me, especially the Violins (I'm a sucker for Violins).

"When I was 17, I had wrists like steal and I felt complete.

But now my body fades behind the brass charade and I'm obsolete"

A Quick Look at Awesome - Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2010 Call for Entries

There are moments in your life where you look at something and wish with your whole heart that one day when you grow up you could do something like that. At a time in my life where I love my life, my job, my friends, my family and "plus one" it's weird to think that I could possibly want more. But then I look at this and it seems that it's only natural to feel that way.

It's tactile, real thought provoking and above all else true and maybe it's about time that I need to go out and get myself something more... to rethink.

Enjoy!

Rethink Scholarship at Langara 2010 Call for Entries from Rory O'Sullivan and Simon Bruyn on Vimeo.

Songs of the Week - Hurts

These 2 Manchester boys have stolen my heart in one foul swoop this morning, found them last week in the digital version of the Dazed and Confused Jan Edition but as life goes only listened to then today. The embers of a band I really had love for, Daggers, Hurts rose to become what is being said as "the best thing to come out of Manchester since New Order."

Soaked in old school post punk flavour, the songs are just beauty itself with videos that look like they've come straight out of a Hedi Slimane / Anton Corbijn shoot. So  little wonder Hedi actually fell for them too and shot them for Dazed.

 

 

Fashion legend photos aside here's a video and of course, the music:


Blood, Tears and Gold (click divshare to download)


Wonderful Life

"I never thought I'd be the man I am now,

it's 20 seconds since I've left you"

A Quick Look at Awesome - Jeffery Brown

So I lucked out a few months ago and came across 2 graphic novels by Jeffery Brown at the Deerhunter Junk Sale. I got his most acclaimed novel Clumsy and his second one Unlikely (also known as How I Lost My Virginity). Each book chronicles a relationship he had with a girl, not sparing any embarrassing details (and there are many). His lines are fragile and drawings often crude but in a way it works as it reflects the fragility of the situations.

Read Clumsy here and Unlikely here

 

 

 

 

Jeff: I love you

Alissyn: How do you know it's love and not obsession?

Conversations in the Office - Asian Persuasion

After getting off the phone with the Tai Chi instructor's daughter

S: Wow, how tricksy, she didn't even sound Asian... don't you have that when they don't even sound Asian?

M: I know right?! It's so tricksy.

S: Yeah, it's jut not normal if they don't sound Asian and they sound normal

J: THEY AREN'T NORMAL!!

S, B & M just blink...
J doesn't even look up, keeps typing...

General Ramblings - A little more Chicago, a little less New York

Jaco Haasbroek

Today is a bit of an up and downer, full of emotions and the lack there of. But I have to say it for the first time finally feels like a new year, thanks funny enough to the reminder of all the same things of last year. The oddness of being back at work with a small twinge of tiredness from the night before. I have to say that my heart still feels numb from Friday night but I have a feeling that this numbness too shall pass soon.

So I will miss shoe but till then I will be listening to a little more Animal Collective, a little less Iron and Wine (early morning music). Why Animal Collective? Well these boys keep popping up everywhere in various "album of the year articles" for their Merriweather Post Pavillion awesomeness and so time seemed right to hit them up again... plus they're just happier really.

Thus today's songs are Iron & Wine Trapeze Swinger and Animal Collective My Girls... for my shoe. Enjoy.
Trapeze Swinger


My Girls

"Please Remember me, Happily"

General Ramblings - New Years Resolutions

Tom Gauld - What is life like in the future?

So it's a new year and apparently I should come up with ideas of what I want for this year... hmmm, well I guess I want what we all do... all the best bits of last year and none of the bad, obviously but I guess we need to delve a little deeper than that, so here it goes

- Start taking photos again, seriously
- make my crazy creative ideas a reality
- see new places (ie, Iceland in October)
- Carry on loving with my whole heart
- Continue on my journey of finding me and what I want

But most of all Love and Balance... a whole lot of love, balance, snuggling and if I'm lucky... cookies. Ultimately I don't believe a resolution is something that should be defined by the time of year or the space of one but an ongoing pursuit. When you want a change do it.

But when all else fails I'll be hitting up this little website I found, a new years resolution generator. Check it out, I recommend it. Especially the bit that says make a paper airplane... come on, get on it.

Song of the Week -The Knife, in collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock "Colouring of Pigeons"

 So my favourite human I have never met Karin Dreijer Andersson and her brother Olaf Dreijer along with those great kids from the Sims and Planningtorock made a little Opera I would KILL to see called Tomorrow, in a year based on Darwin. Making use of traditional Opera singers, Modern Singers, Karin herself with the music inspired by the sounds of the amazon Olaf collected the combination is nothing short of extraordinary.

The great thing is for those who haven't been lucky enough to make it to any of the shows that have been played all over Europe they have announced that they will be releasing a studio version of the opera the 1st of March (yay!) and they released their first single "Colouring of Pigeons" out today (double yay!)

Check it out:



Karin on Colouring Of Pigeons: "The title is taken from Charles Darwin's studies of pigeons, a breakthrough of his examinations, coming home after The Beagle trip, it is when when he started to discover the genetics transfered within generations. It is a track maximizing the results of his studies. I thought of the "diversity of everything" something we have discussed a lot with Hotel Pro Forma, and a non-hierarchical way of seeing things. All the small details he studied and made notes of, like a pile of ants, an ants hill. Also a feeling of seeing things for the first time, overwhelming and shaken, but not afraid."

You have to love those Swedes hey?

Happy happy 2010

So it's a brand new year and this artwork by Haasbroek describes it best... I'm looking forward to a phat year indeed. Ha ha, lame... anyway.

A lot has gone down since the last post... the zoo, Lego, Christmas trees, turkey, Veerkykerskop and Love... and a whole lot of Boney M... Total Retro Song of the week indeed I mean it was Christmas after all.



So a very very happy happy for you my bloggy friends :D