Beep Beep Moving Out

Not ending this blog yet. Don't worry. Just moving to Tumblr. Got more fancy functions. And I can get a new/more appropriate domain title. 

Head on Over

Ip Man X G.O.D. Woodstand Custom Design Showcase

Graphic Airlines
葉問 x G.O.D. 木人樁展覽
Ip Man X G.O.D. Woodstand custom design showcase
From 26 Dec 08 to 12 Jan 08
Location: DNM 68 Yee Wo Street, Causeway Bay

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father

Gromit Makes the World Go Round

Wallace and Gromit in 'A Matter of Loaf and Death'
Click here to watch (full)

We Love Stephen Sprouse Website & Interview with Marc Jacobs

As reported some time back, Louis Vuitton creative director Marc Jacobs has resurrected his previous collaboration alongside the late American fashion pioneer Stephen Sprouse, for a new 2009 lineup. With that release now waiting in the wing, an interactive website has become available featuring various aspects of Stephen Sprouse’s interaction with the fashion world as well as his work alongside world renown designer Marc Jacobs. Check it out at Welovestephensprouse.com.

Yay. Whip out those neon colors.

Source: Hypebeast

Cousin Cole

Cousin Cole - 1/2 of Flagrant Fowl. Other half is Pocketknife.

"I was super psyched to see my Bruce Springsteen remix on Todd Terje's mix for Resident Advisor last week. (Todd Terje is one of the top neo-disco dudes right now and a hero of mine.) Now there's a version floating around that was cut out of the Terje mix, and I figured I might as well send out the full unmixed version at a decent quality for home listening and such."

MP3: Bruce Springsteen - I’m On Fire (Cousin Cole’s Bad Desire Mix) (Direct)

Laid back track. Hope you like. Source: Discobelle

i don't knowwww

Sigh...It's been awhile. Been quite busy, finals, papers and shit.
Been kinda agitated about the whole 'about to graduate. must find good internship.' thing. i'm a junior but people are already freakin' out about internships cause when senior year starts, people will already start getting job offers by october. fuckers.
this is the 1st time in my life that i feel like i can't see my future. in high school, you know you're heading to college. i know that i'm heading towards a job, but i just can't see what kinda job i'm gonna do. i can't do much with my anthro major in hk and that's where i wanna live, at least for now. so i'm taking finance right now. not interested in it at all.
and i just got an interview for a world music director position at the radio station, not sure how well it went. i applied for music director (who looks over indie rock/pop stuff) and didn't get it. was a sucker punch to the stomach. so i'm not going to hold high hopes for this one. but the truth is, i really want/need a leadership position.
planning your life out and staying on track is overrated. but i can't helpt it because i'm the one whose most 'on track' out of my siblings. there's lots of pressure for me to do well. fuck.
i don't know where i'm going.

Tracy Chapman ft. Eric Clapton - Give Me One Reason (1988)

Uncertain Industry

Uncertain Industry: Angel's Bakery from Thirteen.org on Vimeo.

New York’s PBS Channel Thirteen has put together an interesting three part series called Uncertain Industry on the state of New York City manufacturing. Per the website: “New York City was once the capital of American manufacturing. In 1950, the city boasted nearly one million manufacturing jobs. By 2007 that number had dwindled to one hundred thousand. Today’s manufacturers face stiff competition, space constraints, and high real estate prices.”

It's just sad that the market just have no place for small businesses. They've got 2 more videos about the metal and umbrellas manufacturing industry in NY. Check Micheal William's post. 

Parra x Incase ‘Curated by Arkitip’ Video

Source: mashKulture

Joe and Eddie - There's A Meeting Tonight

From the film Hootenanny Hoot (1963), an entirely different space and time. God, Youtube can seriously do some marvels. 

The two's focus was creating harmony with Joe singing tenor and Eddie singing baritone. The rich blend created the sound that identifies Joe and Eddie. Throughout each album, the music stays raw, simple and within the genres of African-American gospel music, folk tunes, and Blues with a little jazz flavor. Songs contain little background instrumentals, since the "main objective was to focus on Joe & Eddie's singing...". This duo was known for their "rapid-fire delivery" and vocal improvisations, as can be heard in the songs "Green Grass" and "Children Go". - Wiki

Simple and Clean

Band: Whitest Boy Alive

Song: Golden Cage

Hand-Drawn Animation: Geoff Mcfetridge

王菲 - 不留

I was listening to this album on my friend's car and it reminded me of home, because my Dad's a huge fan of Faye Wong's (王菲)... Went to her concerts, got her CDs, VCDs, and even youtube-d her... You see dedication when you see a 50+ man try on some new technology... Oh and this is healthy admiration, not some distorted obsession, by the way. Haha, he said he likes her voice and her 'take-it-or-leave-it' attitude.

Anyway, her last album was released in 2003 and last official concert was in 2005. Other than the appearance she made earlier this year for a fundraising effort for the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, it is still uncertain whether she'll return to the music business. 

Elliott Smith

It's been 5 yrs since the passing of Elliott Smith, a singer whose sorely missed for his delicate lyrics and delivery.

"Waltz #2"

"Chris Garneau - Between the Bars (Elliott Smith cover)"

Source: Kitsune Noir

Lykke Li - Breaking It Up

Shot "in one take live in Stockholm" by Christian Haag.

Minilogue - Animals

Directed by Varelsen and Ljudbilden.

Source: Computerlove

This American Life

This American Life is a weekly hour-long radio program produced by Chicago Public Radio and hosted by Ira Glass. Also available as a free weekly podcast. Primarily a journalistic non-fiction program, it has also featured essays, memoirs, field recordings, short fiction, and found footage.

If you're totally out of the loop like me and don't know what the hell is going on with the economy, go check out the show by This American Life. Pretty informative. Even though I spaced out here and there throughout the show. 

If you feel like this crap is just too depressing and just like all over the place, then yeah... skip it. 

Ep 365: Another Frightening Show about the Economy

Subscribe. They put up new, interesting shows every wk. Check it out.

Source: Wiki

I Met the Walrus

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview. This was in the midst of Lennon’s “bed-in” phase, during which John and Yoko were staying in hotel beds in an effort to promote peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries traditional pen sketches by James Braithwaite with digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.

June Taylor Jams

June Taylor has a respect for food that is becoming more and more rare these days...

An example of the lack of respect for food can be seen in a recent scandal in China, where diary products tainted "with the industrial chemical melamine has caused the death of four infants and sickened tens of thousands of others". It's easy to point the finger at capitalism (or even at China, which is commonly perceived as an 'inhumane', authoritative country) and say that all corporate producers care about is profits, profits, profits and could care less about people's wellbeing.

But I think it's also useful to think about how the profit-oriented capitalist system is contributing to our culture of food. Now, it's more common to view food in terms of its monetary cost, rather than its quality. But then there's the problem that it's not like people don't want to buy quality food, but they're just too expensive. Then there're the questions, "Why is our system set up in such a way that quality food is hard to purchase?" and "Are there other ways that we don't need to perpetuate this industrial food system?"

Read up! I recc Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (Wiki, Excerpt of book). Interesting stuff to excite your brain juices.

But on a lighter note, haha this summer my older bro's ex-gf went to France. And to be nice to the family, she bought a jar of orange tea jam for our family of 5. It was so good + exotic that it was finished within 2 days. Haha and my mom told my brother to ask his then-gf if she had anymore. And she was like, '...No...I didn't know you guys will finish it that fast...It'll take me a whole semester to finish that jar...So I don't have anymore...' She doesn't understand that with a family of this size, you have to fight for food. There's the thinking that who ever's the slowest will just miss out, so that just perpetuates the system of food fighting and make the food disappear quicker, bla bla... Haha

Source: Cooling Hunting + Time

Elis Regina - Águas de Março

This performance was broadcasted in 1973, on a MPB Especial series called Ensaio. Check out the rest of the show here. I love the fact that she seemed to have enjoyed herself in the performance.

Similar to its predecessor, MPB (Brazilian popular music) was born out of an attempt to produce a Brazilian "national" music, thus revitalizing traditional styles. The beginning of MPB is often associated with Elis Regina´s interpretation of the mysterious Arrastão, by Vinícius de Moraes and Edu Lobo. The song was almost censored by Brazil's new ruling junta, because it told the story of a fisherman, while hauling in his nets, prayed to St. Barbara for aid. It was a story that hit a little too close to home for the everyday man.

Bob Dylan played another song of hers on his Theme Time Radio Hour, but recalled that by the end of her Arrastão rendition, Regina posed in a crucified position, with tears streaming down her eyes. This emotional song performance won her awards and widespread popularity in Brazil.

The earliest MPB borrowed elements of the bossa nova and often relied on thinly-veiled criticism of social injustice and governmental repression, being based on progressive opposition to the political scene characterized by military dictatorship, concentration of land ownership, and imperialism.

The conjuncture that created the MPB movement ceased to exist after 1969, but the acronym has survived, albeit with a less specific meaning. Transforming from a left-wing musical movement, MPB became the core of Brazil's urban middle-class music, and the term still indicates a certain aesthetic quality in modern Brazilian music.

First heard about Elis Regina on Dylan's radio show, he played a cover called "Aquarela Do Brasil" that she did with Jean Toots' Thielemans. It's a song that's really hard to find, butttt with my skilllzzz I've gotten hold of it! Just click on the link to the song.

You can learn a bit more about her here.

Source: Wiki + Dreamtime

Bon Iver & Lykke Li

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago


Lykke Li - A Little Bit


Lykke Li feat. Bon Iver - Dance Dance Dance


Lykke Li once mentioned her appreciation for Bon Iver's music and maybe that somehow got them to perform together. YAY!

Source: Stereogum

João Gilberto & Caetano Veloso - O Pato

Well, haven't posted in a long while...but 27club commented on one of the entries and I was like, 'Damn, someone still reads this?!' So I've decided to do a couple more.. Haha I guess I need a little nudging...

Anyways, been learning a bit about history of Brazilian music, specifically the popularization of samba under the rule of Getulio Vargas in the 1930s-40s. He tried to promote nationalism through the use of radio and pop culture. Pretty awesome stuff - music as a political tool...

But I'm more into bossa nova and above is a video of João Gilberto (aka 'Father of Bossa Nova') and Caetano Veloso (an equally well-known musician... whom I know little about). It was a movement that lasted from the 1950s-60s.

Hope all is well.

JR JR JR

TRAILER " WOMEN ARE HEROES"
Uploaded by JR

'“Women are Heroes" project, a collaboration between JR and Médecins Sans Frontières.

Taking his trusty 28 millimeter lens, for the last year JR has been traveling to such countries as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Southern Sudan and Kenya, documenting the lives of a group of incredibly courageous women.

Now, on the occasion of International Women’s Day, the full documentation of the Women Are Heroes project is being launched on the web. And not surprisingly, the work is absolutely breathtaking.

This past Saturday, the faces of eight women were placed on walls across Brussels, where they will remain for a month.'

It's so easy to bitch... So easy. But when you compare your daily troubles with those of these women, women who can still bring themselves to put on smiles and funny faces, who are you to piss and moan?

Source: Wooster Collective

Look from Down Below

Click me!

Source: Fecal Face

Black Eyed Dog

"Heath Ledger had directed a relatively unseen video for Nick Drake's "Black Eyed Dog," a song titled after Winston Churchill's term for depression. Ledger created the video for an exhibition paying tribute to Drake's work ([whose life] was cut short by an antidepressant overdose [in 1974, at the age of 26]). In the time since, Heath's self-described "obsession" and unfortunate similarities with the singer-songwriter have been drawn out and explored, as has most every other detail speculative or otherwise of Ledger's life. Bits of the video are now available, bundled into this newscast circulating on YouTube. In it, Ledger directs himself spinning in a field and drowning in a tub."

At first I appreciated how the reporters provided some context for the video, but they just dragged on and on and on. Stop milking it.

Source: Stereogum

Accompanying Viddies

LOVE is a DESERTER


U R A FEVER


CHEAP and CHEERFUL

Some People are Just Born Cooler Than Others

Source: Official Site

Source: The Stylish Underground

Fashion Rocks! 2005 - Prada/The Kills

Source: United Visual Artists

Wood Suits by Michael Rea

What kinds of projects can we expect to see from you in the near future?

I am currently working on a piece involving carbonite and myself. I am also interested in making a piece that deals with exorcism. I just confirmed that I will be traveling to Germany this summer to build a time machine. I feel in the new global theater, America should give back. While we received so much help from German scientists in building the first nuclear bomb. The least we could do is help them build a time machine.

hahaha

Artist Statement

Standing on the shoulders of other people's dreams could perhaps be the most pathetic of all dreams. The intent of my work is to create something short of its outcome. My goal is to create the idea of an object that remains a dream. The objects I create are based on fictions, rather than realities. I have always been interested in the ephemeral worlds established in film, or even in popular culture. Fictions or established hearsay allow for a flawed interpretation, which leads to a flawed result. The sublime is unattainable, and not an option. I further amplify this experience by only using my memory to construct my images. Failure is imminent. I find humor allows me to enjoy this experience, and I in turn build humor into the worlds established by my work. I have chosen to depict these states with unfinished wood, and other materials which convey a sense of the temporal. I find the beauty in life lies in between moments. My work offers a sense of what could be and what could never be simultaneously.

Source: Fecal Face + Michael Rea.com

Billie Holiday - Fine & Mellow

Nina Simone - Ain't Got No...I've Got Life

Nina Simone, in Harlem 1969

The 50s-60s seem like a cool time to live in. People were just so involved in the anti-war, civil rights, counterculture movements. Music was reactive and provided meaningful social commentary.

Got hold of the Feb issue of Mojo, was an interview with Joni Mitchell:

There's a strong undercurrent of discontent in Shine [her recently released album]. What are your feelings about the government these days?

I was angry at the handling of New Orleans and how quick the American people were to impeach a man for sex and how slow to move on other things that made everyone in the world want to nuke America. I was also angry at the inability of this generation to know what to do; their inability to move at all, which is an unusual thing for youth.

What do you mean?

In their youth, my generation was ready to change the world, but when the baton was passed to them in the '70s they fell into a mass depression because all the revolutionaries are quick to demolish and slow to fix. When handed the baton to fix it, they didn't know what to do so they kind of degenerated into the greediest generation in the history of America - the hippy, yippie, yuppie transition from the '60s to the '70s to the greedy '80s and Ronald Reagan.

[...]

Machiavelli said, "People don't know what to do with peace. It always degenerates into fashion and fornication," and that's what we have.

EDIT: Nina Simone - Ain't Got No...I've Got Life (megaupload)

Room in a Box

Hidden inside Casulo:
"An armoire, a desk, a height-adjustable stool, two more stools, a six-shelf bookcase, and a bed with a mattress."

Size:
31"x47" OR 80x120 cm

(Dis)Assembling time (by 2 people):
~10 min

Additional tools needed:
None

Designed by:
Marcel Krings & Sebastian Mühlhäuser

- Can serve as emergency packages that can be sent to crisis-stricken areas.
- Concern: Whether those materials last long, especially when the design targets those who move around a lot.

Take Away Shows presents Sidi Toure

#83.2 - Sidi Touré - Part 2
Uploaded by lablogotheque

Sidi Toure strolls down the streets of his hometown, Bamako in Mali. As captured by the Take Away Shows series.

Marling

Ridiculous! Laura Marling's only 18. She's been active in the music scene since 2006. Damn it! Damn it!!

Source: nialler9

There are Some Great People Out There

I was looking for Ellen Page interviews on Youtube the other day and saw the trailer to an theatrically unreleased film of hers, An American Crime. It really made me feel sick because it was so disturbing. What made things worse was that the film was based on a crime committed by a twisted lady in Indiana.

Don't watch the trailer. It made me feel depressed for the rest of the day. Because it reminds you that there are such nasty-hearted people out there.

Anyway, got hold of a (digital) copy of "The Concert for Bangladesh" the other day. It was a benefit concert in 1971 organized by George Harrison (1/4 of the Beatles who wrote the memorable track: "My Sweet Lord") and Ravi Shankar (an Idian sitar player) for a country that's still amidst of ethnic and political conflicts.

Musicians who lent their help - Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, Billy Preston...

Makes me feel like I've really missed a great time for music. These people were the "mainstreamers" of their time, look at what kind of mainstream artists we've got now... People seemed to be more concerned about social affairs then and wanted to make a change. Now, efforts seem too polished to be genuine, even though we had the whole Live Earth deal.

Source: Don't Think Twice, It's All Right Do yourself a favor and check the link :)