nosaj thing

The new single Eclipse/Blue by Nosaj Thing will be out 2nd Oct. Have a listen to this little piece of marvel featuring vocals by Makino Kazu of Blonde Redhead.

time to recharge

A small village on finest sand. A sunny place drowned in reed and purple fields. A place of millions of birds in motion. A place of wild horses with a sad fate and cattle that like to bathe in the Black Sea. A place of warm greetings from strangers. A place of occasional silent boats in an architecture of river channels that local fishermen know like the back of their palms. A place of the most dramatic cloud formations, sunrises and sunsets. A place so far from the rest of the world that it can only be reached on a ship on certain days of the week.

I'll be heading home, to the place that has been holding my heart for years: Sf. Gheorghe in the Danube Delta.

iron

I absolutely love the black and white, slow motion video of "Iron" by Yoann Lemoine aka Woodkid. Lemoine is French, 27 years old and amazingly talented in a number of fields (photography, film, illustration, music). The clip was directed by him and the amazing cinematography is by Mathieu Plainfosse. I just love the characters, their motion and the overall fierceness conveyed, as well as the way how it all visually complements the song! Enjoy:

Woodkid - Iron from WOODKID on Vimeo.

via artschoolvets

lotus flower

Wayne McGregor of Random Dance choreographed Radiohead's "Lotus Flower" of their new album "The King of Limbs". Enjoy this piece of marvel:

Radiohead - Lotus Flower von h0nki

subcarpati

I was certain I had blogged about this before, but I seem to have missed it:

Subcarpati come from Romania, are based in Bucharest, and combine folklore and hip hop sounds in a quite original fashion. The project is by Alexe Marius Andrei aka Mc Bean (member of the Blanoz collective and singer for Suie Paparude, whose album you can download for free and who have one of the best horizontal scrolling sites I know, designed by Stefan Lucut).

I highly recommend downloading for free their entire album from their website (at "descarca albumul Subcarpati").

thought of you

It's saturday, it's cartoon day!

Today's cartoon is an old-school 2D style one, by Ryan Woodward, titled "Thought of You". Enjoy:

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

The song is "World Spins Madly On" by The Weepies. Here's a behind the scenes, documenting the collaboration with modern dancers and choreographers.

via @fALk_g

kordan

Kordan from Brooklyn

Kordan: "Mirror" from KORDAN on Vimeo.

via Bloom CN on Facebook

nosaj thing

...and some really cool visuals:

Nosaj Thing - MIS, Brasil 2010 (leg. português) from Cauê Ito on Vimeo.

outside

I have recently watched a wonderful 15-minute documentary about Beijing and aspects of the life of its people, titled "Outside". The director, Sérgio Cruz, explains:

"In China, culture and the arts are very closely linked to people and their lives. The street life in Beijing is a 24-hour live show full of music, dance and sports. Over a period of month residence time (September 2007), I was observing Chinese life, collecting 'road images', documenting quotidian performances (...)"

But this beautiful piece of film, that portrays the fast-paced and busy life in the noisy and continually changing city, paradoxically manages to achieve a wonderful, tranquil effect by avoiding speech, creating beautiful transitions and using an overall slow pacing.

In my view, the film doesn not necessarily focus on the city itself or people's actions (be they dancing, performing or excercising) but rather on the context of these. And he manages to give the Western eye a glimpse of the interdependency and -connectedness of people in a collectivistic cultural frame.

View this movie at cultureunplugged.com

we are postrock

Via We like that I came across a wonderful website, titled We are postrock, the purpose of which is explained in the following:

"Our purpose in this is to subjectify ourselves in the music and visualize imagery for the postrock community. We genuinely believe that perhaps the really provocative area for future musical development lies in postrock.

We record and produce these HD concerts because we want to capture the closest thing to what it’s like being at a live postrock/instrumental show - doing it all for the love and passion we have for postrock music and all its bands."

Here I want to share two videos.

The first one is "Black Dunes" by This Will Destroy You, where the beautiful music is matched by the stunning visuals of the video.

"This Will Destroy You are an instrumental quartet from the great state of Texas who play a cascading brand of cinematic rock music. Often compared and linked to purveyors of the “post-rock” sub-genre, the band has managed to transcend the tag and carve its own niche via a delicate and balancing infusion of electronics, strings, and an array of unconventional “rock” instrumentation over bombastic and receding harmony."

I was happy to see that they also feature Mono, one of my favourite bands. "Battle to Heaven" is like an epic tale, so powerful that it's almost kinetic:

"The band’s style of instrumental rock music is influenced by the genres of experimental rock and shoegazing, as well as by both the classical and contemporary classical periods of classical music, and also by noise and minimalism. We found that their musical structure reflect classical compositions & movements intertwined in a meditative narrative progression."

music

RT @reese: the right music fights the demons. electrically surges the soul. gets the proverbial ass moving. makes dreams happen.

hana

Wonderful hipnotic experimental music piece by Asa Chang and Junray. It's like a mix of oriental and cyber sounds. This really has the power to transfer one temporarily to a dream world. Enjoy!

via David Valentim on Facebook

all the way to china - then i would stop

via Ricky So

baths - lovely bloodflow

The video below was recently released for Baths' "Lovely Bloodflow" (directed by Alex Takacs and Joe Nanikn of Young Replicant) and I recommend it for its cinematic beauty. It depicts the last minutes in the life of an injured samurai, whose dying moments are prolonged by two fascinating spirits of the forest (yokai), who take him to meet the main forest spirit. This one will finally put an end to his agony in exchange of his soul.

via Nerdcore via Stereogum

andymori

Andymori are a young Japanese band, whose songs always manage to cheer me up. I especially like their incredible energy. One of my favourites however is "1984", which is slower, but equally enjoyable.

1984

Follow Me (live)

Everything is My Guitar

青い空

chemical brothers - another world

moderat - rusty nails

Moderat are an indie electronic band based in Berlin. I discovered their music via the newest "Pictoplasma - Characters in Motion" trailer. But what actually really left me in awe was this brilliant mesmerizing video by the Pfadfinderei studio for their track "Rusty Nails". The motion and shapes are so dreamlike, I feel like watching it over and over again.

I loved the part, where the human body is wrapped like a cocoon. The following parts: the wind-blown silk and the uncovering of the bodies are great. But my favourite section of the video comes at the end, where the dynamic layers of the fabric are staged by fantastic body postures and jumps. Enjoy:

Moderat "Rusty Nails" from Pfadfinderei on Vimeo.

only man

Here is a very cool video for English band Audio Bullys' "Only Man" (out March 23rd) from their new album "Higher than the Eiffel", which will be released March, 29th.

The video was directed by Jonas and Francois (Justice, Madonna, Kanye West) from famous Paris based production company El Nino. Although their other version of the video is also noteworthy (set as a duel to be the "only man" featuring some nice vintage Porsche cars), this one is definetely an eye catcher, with interesting camera work and awesome custom type molded into sneaker soles:

audiobullys - only man from EL NINO on Vimeo.

via Stefan Lucut

bakuchi dancer

Here is a very nice video for a very catchy song by DOES, titled "Bakuchi Dancer". Unfortunatelly, the quality is pretty poor but considering that it will probably be removed soon, enjoy it while you still can.

back to the future

Here's this saturday's morning cartoon: a geat example of creative talent from China. It was made as an MV (music starts at 1:55) for Chinese 8-bit producer Baifan. It is the very first animation by Chinese animator, painter and VJ Wang Meng, whom I had the pleasure to interview for NeochaEDGE.

"When I was doing this series, I put forth a concept I call “I’m gonna regret the rest of my life if I give up my transformers and be a mama’s boy.” (如果为了比别的小朋友小红花多 而放弃玩变形金刚，我会遗憾终生的。)

(...) We started losing that happiness in high school when we were pressured to study excessively, and now we are pressured to work excessively, etc. – but what’s it all for? What’s the relationship between the “ideal” and reality? Is the “ideal” that we spend so much time studying and working really all that great?

Over the last few years there has been a resurgence of all things “retro” in China – 8-bit music, of course, can be included in this trend. This trend has greatly influenced me and my work. I think the reason people are into these things is not because the retro games or fashions of the past are better than the modern games or fashions or whatever. It’s mostly because people nowadays want to rediscover the happiness we all had when we were kids. That’s what’s happening with 8-bit music, it’s being made all over again as a re-fabricated retro thing because it makes us happy."