I was totally happy with the idea of my purchase until… I discovered there’s going to be a Star Wars edition of the Droid 2 coming out in September! Making the pain even worse… It’s going to be an R2-D2-themed phone! (check out this uber-cool preview website here). It’s going to be available to order online only, with “exclusive Star Wars content and external hardware designed to look like the trusty Droid from the film saga” and an image of R2-D2 on the back. There’s apparently some kind of crazy treasure-hunt contest involved… I’m ferklempt, just ferklempt…

Then again, with a name like “Droid” (which apparently had to be licensed from the Star Wars folks), this development was probably inevitable. Apparently the tech blogs have been up on this for a minute, so where have I been? Now, I am currently crying robot tears… Well, in two years, when I’m due for an upgrade, if they have a Bladerunner edition, we’ll be all good. Until then—the Star Wars edition is definitely the Droid I want!

Is that tradition Jack Spade and K-Swiss have announced a similar, but more straightforward – likely less aggravating – collaboration surrounding the first reprinting of Take Ivy, a book of photography featuring shots of sharply-dressed bourgeoisie during the 1960s. K-Swiss and Jack Spade’s contribution to the relaunch is a heavy-grade sweatshirt with silkscreened elbow patches, and a pretty sharp belt, both meant to update the styles featured in the book.

The package will be available August 31st only at Jack Spade retail.

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Honestly, there isn’t enough room to list Brian Eno’s great contributions to music, art, design, politics, technology and conceptual thinking (of course you could just read Geeta Dayal’s great book on Eno, Another Green World). What’s more, the man just doesn’t stop: he’s signed a new record deal with always-forward electronic label Warp Records, with a full-length release planned for November. Entitled Small Craft On A Milk Sea, the album was created with two frequent Eno collaborators, electronic musician and producer Jon Hopkins and experimental composer Leo Abrahams, who’s worked with the likes of Imogen Heap, Ed Harcourt, and David Holmes. “It contains the fruits of several years of jams between the three of us,” Abrahams said in a blog post. “I’ve not heard anything quite like it — it sounds ‘live’ and ‘alien’ at the same time. Some things have been permitted to survive, which only Brian would have had the courage to let go, and it’s so much the better for it.” (More from Abrahams and a track list for Small Craft On A Milk Sea can be found here.

It’s been five years since Eno’s last proper solo work and two since his collaboration with David Byrne, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today—and the fact that Eno will be reuniting yet again with Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music—makes anticipation high. So far, there’s been no leaked music, but here you can see the amazing, artistic packaging that Eno & co. have come up with. It represents that classic Eno vanguard spirit—if even the packaging can take the project to new heights, then it will be done.

The largest graffiti festival hits the walls of Islington, London this weekend featuring Europe’s top artists.  Coined as the “International Wall Street Meeting,” MOS will showcase aersol styles from France, Greece, Germany, Spain and across the UK along with fresh live music. The outdoor block party began in Germany in 2002 and since has grown into a calendar of events in 16 countries with over 100,000s of spectators. Now in its third consecutive year in London the blank canvas is set for twelve towering walls, a pop up gallery, rotating billboards and a slew of live underground music. Now that the hype of slick canvas street art is finally dying down, its so good to see raw illustrations back in their natural space and appreciated by everyday people.

A clip from last year’s Wall Street Meeting:

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Come rain, come shine, on waterlogged or frozen pitches, amateur football players across the county – in Liverpool, in Nottingham and Scunthorpe too – assemble every Sunday morning, bleary-eyed from the night before, but unbowed. Their wives hopefully haven’t dyed their socks pink, and the dog hopefully won’t have eaten their boots. They can take out all their unbridled aggression on the opposition, or the referee, or both; and for 90 minutes they can relive their childhood fantasies, of being John Barnes or Paul Gascoigne, or Vinny Jones if they think they’re hard enough.

It’s this romance of Sunday league football that’s the subject of Reality Football by photographer Alan Powdrill. A real labor of love, it has taken him three years to complete. He’s travelled up and down the country taking photos, starting off in Hackney Marshes, East London, with its 85 pitches that make it the biggest football field in Europe. The images are a reminder that the Beautiful Game isn’t about 7-figure salaries, it’s about grit and determination and that unexplainable buzz you get from kicking a football about, and getting covered in mud.

It’s difficult not to be seduced by these images of innocent teenage romance from director Tyrone Lebon, who was commissioned by Mount Kimbie to create a visual score for ‘Would Know’, the first single off their hyped debut album, called Crooks and Lovers.

Mount Kimbie, if you haven’t heard of them already, make the sort of ambient post-dubstep ravescapes, a bit like Burial on a see-saw with Alva Noto, and have picked up remix duties for The xx track ‘Basic Space’ as well as notable mentions from Mary Anne Hobbs, Ramadanman and Untold, if that helps you place them. Their album, for Scuba’s Hot Flush label, has been getting all the right people hot and flustered, so why don’t you own a copy yet?

But let’s also shine some light on Tyrone Lebon, the video director (also responsible for Mount Kimbie’s album artwork) who shot this video on a VHS camcorder, then transferred the tape and scratched and drew and shaded and generally messed up the negatives. It’s a killer look, though we’re not too sure about the wardrobe – what’s with those matching pyjamas daubed in Nazi Swastikas? Or is that the Hindu peace sign?

A recent review called the Monotron “the Gameboy for synthesizer fiends”, and that’s pretty dang accurate. If anything, the Korg Monotron resembles another fairly new, ultra-stripped down analog synth that synth freaks covet, the Gakken SX-150. However, while the Gakken is dope in its own gritty right, the Monotron goes way further. For one, it feels way more solidly built than the kit-based Gakken, but more importantly, it features a powerful filter, taken from the classic, collectible late-‘70s era Korg MS-20, giving it a truly classic synth sound. However, what’s coolest about the Monotron, beside its Daft Punk-esque robotic moniker, is how absolutely limited it is. Unlike a full-featured synth, the Monotron only has five control knobs, giving you crucial but limited control over pitch, intensity, and that almighty filter; it also doesn’t have a traditional keyboard per se, but instead a ribbon strip that you run your finger over in a smooth continuous motion to create sound.

Despite the limited features, what’s fascinating about the Monotron is that it has no specific “sound”; everyone seems to do something slightly different with it. This is refreshing in an era where everyone seems to have an infinite number of loops, samples and software synths at their disposal, but you consistently hear the same tired sounds and tricks being used in songs. There’s no instant recall on this baby: instead, the Monotron forces the player to be truly creative with limited means—it’s like the Ramones of synthesizers! You can even run other sounds through it—guitars, other keyboards, microphones—turning the Monotron into a truly twisted guitar pedal. At the same time, with a little ingenuity, one can use it to replicate a smash hit pop song, like Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”:

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As well, it’s possible to make an entirely serviceable trance-ish dancefloor number using just the Monotron, as this video makes abundantly clear:

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It even has a practical application in worship music, as this rendition of “Amazing Grace” demonstrates:

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So if you’ve always been curious about synthesis, or are a classic synth freak seeking uncharted waters, I heartily suggest you check out the Monotron. In capable hands—or even idiot ones—it’s got the potential to be both the sound of the past and the wave of the future. As one reviewer questioned, “is Korg’s Monotron a toy or a tool?” In practice, the answer is clear—it’s gloriously both.

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Mingering Mike

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Christian Marclay Mini-Documentary

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Right? He co-founded Vice but went rogue/was forcibly removed after the hydra-headed magazine went corporate as fuck or something. Since leaving Vice he founded Street Carnage, a website where he’s just as affably offensive and stupid as he was at Vice, but with kittens. He also wrote a dumb book called Street Boners: 1764 Hipster Fashion Jokes wherein he makes fun of people who dress like him with less gold and babies but a little more pomade.

In support of his new “book” McInnes was invited to make fun of more people, taking a trip with them to Coney Island and getting “street boners” like, like crazy.

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And here’s a video with some intimate close-ups:

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Nearly three years ago The Boredoms, the mutable beast, set up a concert under the Brooklyn Bridge that they called 77 Boa Drums, a forest fire of seventy-seven drummers playing in a magnitude worthy of their task; to bind humanity together in one giant amazing drum circle inspired by Japanese creation myth and galactic metaphor.

And so, naturally, someone wants to reproduce it and sell it, to our great benefit. That someone is Thrill Jockey, The Boredoms’ stateside label, who filmed the entire thing with some nice audio and some high production values and who plan on releasing it in early September. We’ve got a month and change to continue living life the way we see it now, maybe.

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And so: the history of this arguably historical song:

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10cc, “I’m Not In Love”

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Despite their minimalism, Iwatani imbues the designs with a whimsical geometric lyricism. It’s wild to encounter such genius in its primordial-ooze state. What Iwatani create would become one of the most perfect, addictive video games ever; funny to think it all started with a pen and a pad.

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If you’re curious about the music accompanying the video, it’s a producer named Dimlite, from a song titled “Can’t Get Used to Those (Afterlude)”. You can find more on his Bandcampe page and his Myspace page.

(Ni9e)

The Art of the Stompbox looks at the industrial and artistic development of pedals throughout the last century, with a special focus on the livingly designed and technologically precise pieces of art now being produced. From the exhibitions website:

The Art of the Stompbox will exhibit for the first time a great number of hand-painted, screen-printed, or sculpted effect pedals; drawing attention to this recent phenomenon in contemporary culture that represents a demand and passion for transcendent tone and novel sound, as well as visual style. Also featured is a film produced by Henry Kaiser with Wilco guitarist Nels Cline (funded in part by the Levy-Lipson Educational Fund) that explores the natures and use of stompboxes in American electronic music culture. Be it jazz, blues, rock, country, or experimental music, pedals are an important part of today’s sonic expression for players of all electronic instruments.

Over the next two months the Museum of Making Music is hosting an event a month in connection with the exhibition, all focusing on live demonstrations of the remarkably specific uses now being employed on these little buggers. You can find out more information on the Museum’s website.

Regardless, here are some of my favorite works I could find (Winnie the Pooh Majin Boo?):

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Mortal Kombat original theme

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Jack Pierson, Kurt Cobain (1994)

Indeed, this isn’t some mere memorabilia exhibit. The range of artists dealing with Cobain’s legacy is surprising: Jack Pierson’s text-driven works collide up against Douglas Gordon’s identity-tweaking photographs. The breadth of work and ideas is staggering, from Jordan Kantor’s haunting paintings and Scott Fife’s sculptural popular culture to Gillian Wearing’s video art and documentary-based photography from the likes Alice Wheeler and Charles Peterson. It’s the kind of exhibition where you might come as you are, but end up changed after experiencing an icon through so many different points of view.

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