art links, collected Instructables is an open source website for neat projects and stuff. It's just starting, but it's promising. They have plans for little led+battery+magnet combos that cost less than a buck a piece and look AWESOME. I'm also looking at their guides for screen-printing, bike to chopper conversion, and music-activated light controllers.

Wooster collective is a street art blog. Inspired, improvised paintings make me smile, though I'm sure that streetart suffers from many of the same perils as streetwear. Ah well.

Tapesculpture.com presents a simple idea with tons of possibilities.

The Knife- We Share Our Mother's Health (Ratatat Remix)  ¶ 6:21 PM 0 comments

  strength of signal the brand underground- i'm all over this shit. this piece from the nytimes magazine examines the streetwear phenomenon and asks if it's an extention of 20th counterculture. are these apparrel and 'lifestyle' companies subverting traditional ideas about branding , or merely putting out a j.v. version of companines like nike?

love fingers- good songs and a no nonsense design.

man shot to death near one of my hangouts. yikes.

song:
emperor x- spieltier  ¶ 1:35 PM 0 comments

  as cold as possible
With the interpol on the stereo, a cute coffehouse girl served me an iced herbal tea. After the second sip, my day became tolerable again.

Also, come see me at west end wine bar this sunday. I think i'm upstairs.

Jamie Lidell- Multiply (Hot Chip Remix)  ¶ 3:51 PM 0 comments

  lime blue times two I spent all night rummaging through the library catalogue, and here's what i'm checking out: a compendium of pre-crack street style photos, something on industrial music and william s. burroughs, the beautiful losers book, a counterculture reader, three typography manuals, and a history of disco called 'love saves the day.' In the process, I added three more movies to my nextflix cue and found a torrent for that Scottish import album of re-edits. To balance out all these 20th century dregs, I'm reading all of the Divine Comedy.

I hope the difference between name-dropping and a syllabus of private education is sincerity, because it's all i got.  ¶ 11:29 PM 0 comments

  demurgatroid

I had a phase this spring where all I would talk about was getting gold fronts. I still think it's a good idea, but it's less attractive now that I'm officially unemployed.  ¶ 11:00 PM 0 comments

  what you wanna hear
I tried to upload this a while back, but things went all crash crash on me. My post went something like: T.I., Grand Hustle, takeover, influence of snap, joke, link.

Rashad Morgan feat. Young Dro and T.I.- Tell 'Em What They Wanna Hear

There's several layers of exploitation here, but it's stubbornly seductive. It's about charming listeners as much as its about the ladies, and it's part of an encouraging trend in r n b. Hardly art already covered this.  ¶ 2:13 PM 0 comments

  your tattoo was a bad idea
this is how i understand the current pattern of mass distribution of subculture trends.

whoever started the thing
the cool people who know whoever
people who know too much about cool people
blogs, messageboards, etc
magazines
music
tv ads
retail stores
tv shows
people who could give a shit about whoever

i think there are serious books about the history of cool and popular lifecycles of art. i'm not sure if they need reading, though i love this stuff.

Brooks- Roxxy (Hot Chip's Women of the World Mix)  ¶ 7:02 PM 0 comments

  it gleam in the light
nowhere front- the month of july and the old college try

tv on the radio- i was a lover
romeo void- never say never
turbulence- notorious
the pharcyde- she said (jay dee mix)
yeah yeah yeahs- gold lion
jibbs- chain hang low
fleetwood mac- the chain
new order- age of consent
hot chip- colours (dfa remix)

OVERALL- The snap, crackle and pop are all there, but everything could be a little more milky smooth. I'm taking a break from self-criticism.

WARNING-scary audio drop outs in the last couple of minutes. i guess that makes it harder to cut out the colours. i'll try to figure out the problem.  ¶ 10:09 PM 0 comments

 
take more pictures
learn abelton
make more mixes
set up myspace music page
redesign website
draw more
blah
blah
blah
shower

Bernard Fevre- Subconscient Lamentation  ¶ 10:00 AM 0 comments

  the related problems of art, love and suffering Black Dice just released a book with picture box. Gore showcase the rhode island to brooklyn noise band, and the new psychadelic collage asthetic that happened on the way. I liked the wilco/picture box collaboration, and i'll bet this one is better.

The photo at left seems to be a digital projector taped to a chair, which is taped to a weight-bearing column. A dvd player and a powerstrip are included. I want one. From the dfa flickr gallery of the Gore publicantion celebration.

//chapel trill this saturday//  ¶ 10:42 PM 0 comments

 
photo is from tinyvices, the image empire of tim barber, fmr. photo editor of vice magazine. I think mcsweeney's arranged a whole bookstore by color once.

koan is my word today.

Kelis- Bossy (SebastiAn Remix)

One of the best pop songs on the radio has been remixed by an artist on a small Parisian record label. The results are huge. It makes you wonder whether daft punk ever wanted to take a stab at foxy brown. Apparently there are also white label remixes by switch and alan braxe, which is blog for holy shit.  ¶ 7:31 PM 0 comments

  we read so many pages Library thing dot com is myspace for booknerds- social networking with professional libraryin' software. Read more here.

Professional sports players are often bad decision-makers.

Money might make you slightly happier, but not as much as you think.


Here's a tremendous anthem from John Lyndon's post-Sex Pistols group. A dash of that post punk jangle-jangle, but subdued with a Paul Simon bassline and pop-rock drums. There are also some cinema swell strings in there, but not in a corny way. The whole piece feels like the end credits music to a lovely 80s coming of age story flick. The lyrics are universal, ambivalent and positive, but we invented language to communicate these messages. Anger is an energy. Let the road rise with you.

Public Image Limited- Rise  ¶ 7:40 PM 0 comments

  these are most of my favorite things   ¶ 1:33 PM 0 comments

  looking for the perfect beat

The inspiration behind LL Cool J's "Control Myself," DJ Khaled's "Holla At Me Baby (Feat. Rick Ross, Paul Wall, Pitbull, Lil Wayne and Fat Joe," and that Visa check card commercial with the break dancing worm.  ¶ 1:31 PM 0 comments

  i cannot live without books
The Believer's website used to have a feature called "Snark Alert." Literary critics often use their reviews as forums for experiments in self-indulgent invective, discovering new ways to say 'this sucks' instead of identifying and supporting worthy creative endeavours. The Believer trusts in the redemptive power of good art, and finds that disparaging the bad is not nearly as important as enjoying the good, especially since the bad is already so plentiful. Snark Alert affirmed the overall mission of the magazine and put overly and overtly negative critics ON BLAST.

I would like to introduce a related concept, that of the Smarm Alert. This warning system seeks to identify odious examples of writing that's a tad too precious and blurs the line between oddity reporting and post-Onion fake news creativity. I like learning curious facts about the world, and I appreciate elborate imaginings, but I find pieces that smear the line bewtween the two particularly annoying. For my first example, I offer The Believer's "History of Rock Music." The piece gave a history of the rock harmonicon, a sort of stone xylophone invented in Keswick. Reading about an difficult and obscure musicial instrument would have been great, except that joke-y asides forced me to doubt the veracity of the whole article. How else was I to understand the suggestion that John Lennon was the first conceptual rock musician, since he didn't actually play any rocks? What about the 'nine milestones of the genre' subtitle?

Hardy-har-har-har. Is this thing for real or not? Seriously, I am obsessive compulsive and I need to know. Just answer me. Give me a sign. You think I am not smart enough to figure it out on my own, huh? Well, screw you cheeky bastards. C'mon. One little textual hint one way or another? ARGH.

ps-j/k. McSweeney's, you know i love you.

Visit the Keswick Museum and Art Gallery to learn more about the rock harmonicon.
Read all of the Believer's online exclusives, for they will brighten you day, your outlook and your mind. Who else is writing about Jamie Lidell, the social politics of everyday metaphor AND Reinhold Niebuhr?  ¶ 1:03 PM 0 comments