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Confessions of a Meta-Hipster: Episode III - Revenge of the Hip
Mini-episode this go-round. I've just received the three latest additions to my direct-to-garment printing project and it seemed as good a time as any for an update.
The graphic tee is a mainstay of fashion that just never seems to go away. There are to this day a number of quality websites specializing in cult graphic tees. But what could possibly be more hip than designing and printing your own graphics in tribute to your favorite musical icons? I confess, I was apprehensive at first about reintroducing graphic tees into my wardrobe. I'd been wearing disco attire for years and I feared that I might lose credibility in a simple tee. Then I re-read that sentence and realized how absolutely absurd I was being and promptly went to work designing new iconic graphics with which to adorn myself. Below is my black-band-tee paraphernalia at present. http://i.imgur.com/d6l3xXgl.jpg Key for the Plebeians (from top left) Cluster & Eno - s/t (1977) Captain Beefheart - Safe as Milk (1967) The KLF - The White Room stencil (1991) Analog Modular Synthesizer graphic UML-type flow chart of synth operation Moondog - s/t (1969) Underworld - Dubnobasswithmyheadman by the Tomato art collective (1994) Brian Eno - Before and After Science (1977) Klaus Schulze portrait Lemon Jelly logotype by the Airside art collective High-Res for Fanatics and Fetishists There is one additional tee missing - Godspeed You! Black Emperor's Faulty Schematic of Ruined Machine [to scale]. The graphic is a hand-drawn illustration which accompanied my copy of their fantastically dark F# A# ∞ LP. The shirt is currently framed in my listening room. http://i.imgur.com/OskWDa0l.jpg I've also a bank of yet-to-print tees for whenever the mood strikes. A few examples: http://i.imgur.com/8A5NY9e.jpg http://i.imgur.com/9TyK471.jpg http://i.imgur.com/OdDZl73.jpg http://i.imgur.com/xLGOJHZ.jpg http://i.imgur.com/JEBH92f.jpg ...and many others, with more on the way. I'm also considering a Silver Apples print, a NEU! logo, Faust's So Far, Terry Riley, White Noise, a single-color print of BoC's Music Has the Right to Children, and other freaks of the industry. And if you've any design ideas to contribute, I'd love to hear 'em! |
I always thought that nerdy synth shirts would be really awesome but never got around to looking or finding any. That flow chart one is especially great!
As per suggestions, maybe you can take the Fender guitar shirt idea: http://bonanzleimages.s3.amazonaws.c...0_thumb200.jpg And change it up with a Harry Partch adapted guitar design http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/CL/pix/par...ted-guitar.jpg |
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http://i.imgur.com/l9Yq1MKl.jpg But on to tonight's entry! I'm settling in for the evening with a new arrival just in from Germany (with accompanying mood lighting) - Hidden Orchestra's Night Walks. http://i.imgur.com/dWR5ZFTl.jpg This bold but understated debut record is equal parts downtempo electronica, organic orchestral music, seductive jazz, and cinematic score to a dramatic film noir that never was. Jazzy drum patterns and breaks blend seamlessly with sweeping strings and electronic soundscapes. Essential listening for the classy bastard in all of us. |
Revolution Starter Kit
I've just returned from antiquing escapades with my lady friends and brought home several groovy treasures!
I picked up my first-ever Pharoah Sanders record - a mint first press of the legendary Karma LP featuring "The Creator Has a Master Plan." I also snagged original copies of Jimmy McGriff's deeply-funky Soul Sugar LP... ...and a newly traded in first press of The Jesus and Mary Chain's noise pop debut, Psychocandy from 1985. I also snagged original copies of Jimmy McGriff's deeply-funky Soul Sugar LP and a newly traded in first press of The Jesus and Mary Chain's noise pop debut, Psychocandy from 1985. Before I left I also grabbed a clean copy of The Trouser Press Guide to 90s Rock - a mammoth oversize reference text of 2300 of the greatest punk, grunge, indie-pop, techno, noise, avant-garde, ska, hip-hop, new country, metal, roots, rock, folk, modern dance, and world music recordings from the decade of my high school years. It's the first time I've considered buying a critical text on rock music (I usually prefer 20th century classical and jazz), but this seemed an excellent starting point. AND as a nifty bonus, from the Devil's Library section of the antique mall I picked up a (R)evolution: A Journal of 21st Century Thought zine from The Anarchists of Chicago in the early 1980s which features a piece by Aleister Crowley. #sh*tyoucantbuyatthemall http://i.imgur.com/bAReUedl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/SLPdDgxl.jpg http://i.imgur.com/ipOGsGHl.jpg |
Something's Coming...
Something's Coming...
A heads-up - mark your Google Calendars, everyone. Two particularly exciting new installments are drafted and ready for publication. The first will post this evening at 5:30. In a moment of spontaneous inspiration, I conceived, developed, and produced a piece of visual art comprising all of my MusicBanterness. The act was followed at 1:30 in the morning by a stream of consciousness excercise which became the latest in my Hip series, on the subject of the new project. Tune in tonight, and again next Friday at 5:30 when I reveal the audiovisual splendor that is my latest and very special new vinyl acquisition! Stay tuned. |
The Grand Unified Theory of Hip
I love a good challenge, and last night I presented myself with a most delightful dilemma. As you've seen from my previous posts, I've created a stockpile of obscuro graphic tees to thoroughly confuse the unsuspecting public. And with the plethora of imagery available from the avant-garde and cult cinema, I could go on forever printing these tees. But I'd never be able to wear them all.
And so I set myself the challenge - to conceive and implement the ultimate hip tee - a single design which sums up all of my specializes interests. The Grand Unified Theory of Hip. And then it came to me. What better way to showcase my academic pretension, my musico-cultural obsession, and my meta-hip snobbishness than with an autobiographical custom tee emblazoned with a Fruchterman-Reingold graph depicting the web-like interrelationships between my 60 favorite sub and micro genres? I quickly constructed a dataset of my favorite musical niches and formatted them as a CSV denoting each node and edge for the graphic. (For example: Post-Punk is an amalgam of elements from funk, dub, electronic, and experimental musics.) I was pleased to discover that my favorite data visualization application, Gephi was supported by Linux, and in a short time I produced this splendid graph. Behold, ladies and gentlemen: The Grand Unified Theory of Hip. Click here for a hi-res raster image. Forum-friendly thumbnail: http://i.imgur.com/7r8ezzil.jpg |
Update on the Hip tee!
Successfully reformatted the image for textile printing. Selected a cleaner, bolder sans-serif typeface, adjusted the weight of the lines to print clearly on cotton fabric, and added a hairline knock out stroke around the type to enhance legibility.
The tee has been ordered and is en route. Mission accomplished. Project duration: ~4.5 hrs. I'm quite happy with the result. http://i.imgur.com/0TrXjpG.jpg |
A Momentous Discovery and a Wish Fulfilled
The last two weeks of January have been beautifully inspiring. A further exploration of choral works at the recommendation of a fantastic fellow classical connoisseur led me to revisit Arvo Pärt’s Da Pacem.
http://i.imgur.com/Ij8DD0Ll.jpg I was instantly enamored by the sacred sounds of The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir and the fantastic production quality of the recording. And I was duly delighted by the discovery that the release was issued by the Harmonia Mundi label (from which I’d recently acquired the 20-volume CENTURY I and II early music catalogs). This remarkable music set the stage for a brilliant musical revelation - one that carried with it emotive and intellectual majesty I’ve not experienced since my first listen to Eno’s Airports. http://i.imgur.com/l0mdnSrl.jpg The revelation arrived in the form of a fated discovery of Germany’s Harmonia - the supergroup of Dieter Moebuis of Cluster (synthesizer, guitar, electronic percussion, nagoya harp, vocals), Hans-Joachim Roedelius of Cluster (organ, piano, guitar, electronic percussion, vocals), Michael Rother of Neu! (guitar, piano, organ, electronic percussion, and vocals), and eventually, Brian Eno (synthesizer, bass, vocals). Their small but influential discography was produced by Conny Plank, who produced works by Neu!, Cluster (almost becoming a member of the band), Ash Ra Tempel, Can, and Guru Guru. In December of last year, Larry Crane interviewed Michael Rother for TapeOp.com and discussed the formation of Harmonia, their work, but it was an article published January 20th of this year in The New Yorker titled, The Invention of Ambient Music that first introduced me to Harmonia. The article cites a video interview from 1997 in which Bowie named some of his influences, including Kraftwerk, Neu!, and Harmonia. An inspiration good enough for the Thin White Duke is certainly one worth exploring, so I wasted no time in queuing up Harmonia’s first album, Musik von Harmonia, released in 1974 on the classic Brain label. http://i.imgur.com/QCcnjFfl.jpg Instantaneously I knew I’d found something exceptional. The tracks were united in a consistent theme - instrumental exploration of subtle, ever-shifting sonic textures - an electronic realization of Satie’s vision of furniture music. On the surface the work might initially appear uneventful, dull, and lacking in focus or direction. There are no lead vocals and no primary melodic structure. However these seemingly detrimental characteristics are precisely what contributed to their greatness and lasting-influence in the world of ambient music and beyond. Eno has stated that Harmonia was "the world's most important rock band" in the mid '70s. Daniel Dumych elaborates in his article for hyperreal.org: "Perhaps Eno's reason for praising Harmonia so highly was that their music fit the requirements of ambient rock. Its music was equally suitable for active or passive listening. The careful listener found his/her attentions rewarded by the musical activities and sounds, but Harmonia's music was also capable of setting a sonic environment." In John Cage’s classic Indeterminacy: New Aspect of Form in Instrumental and Electronic Music (Folkways FT 3704, 1959), he observes: "If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." http://i.imgur.com/C8zsnnxl.jpg Cages words accurately describe a first-listen to Harmonia’s music, (only I was instantly receptive to the “subtle, ever-shifting sonic textures” to which I alluded above.) Headphones donned and eyes closed, I laid in bed and soaked in every note of the Harmonia catalog. By its conclusion, I’d scoured the web for information on available recordings in a vinyl format and was astounded and elated to learn that only three months prior (to the day, in fact), a massive deluxe 6LP box set celebrating Harmonia’s complete recordings had just been issued by Grönland Records in Germany! The teaser video for the set: The set, titled Complete Works, contains all the released material from 1973 to 1976, including their 1976 collaboration with Brian Eno and four unreleased tracks (Documents 1975). Also included are a 36-page booklet, a concert poster, a pop-up, and a digital download code. http://i.imgur.com/Ln7UyLll.jpg Overcome with excitement at this fateful cosmic alignment of circumstance, I sprang from my bed, and quickly dialed my contact for German import vinyl and limited edition recordings. The set was not intended for distribution in the US, and copies had already sold out from the Grönland Records website. Thankfully, my contact came through for me and within a matter of minutes I’d secured a copy for my library. It just arrived in the States and I couldn't be more delighted. Below is a video of the unboxing of this wonderful box set. It’s truly remarkable to experience this sort of exhilaration over a newly-discovered artist. As an archivist with well over 100,000 recordings in my library, there are moments when I fear I’ve exhausted the 20th century of all its surprises. But, like I was by my first experience listening to Harry Partch, I am once again awakened to the magnificence of our greatest century of cultural artistry. Click here to view a gallery of images I've taken detailing the contents of this wonderful box set! |
Collectors and Sellers – Your Discogs Wish Is Granted!
Quite recently I came upon an announcement from Andreas Dahl on Reddit about the latest revision of an Android mobile app for Discogs.com which he’d independently developed. I’d tried a few of the unofficial Discogs apps in the past but had really found little use for them. Still, I was curious and downloaded his app – Discographer, to check it out. I am thrilled that I did! The official Discogs app is still in beta on the iOS platform and Android users have not yet received an official release, but I can say with great confidence that the need for such an app has been 100% fulfilled by Dahl’s independent project.
http://i.imgur.com/McceUCh.png The app was initially released in September of 2015 and Dahl has steadily been improving the app, actively responding to the input from his user base. As of February 14, 2016 the app has reached version 1.3.4 and is stable and fully-functional. I’ll outline a few of the features below. The Welcome Panel The Welcome Panel displays a quick-reference summary of Discogs general statistics. This includes the total number of releases and catalog percentages of its Most Popular Genres, Styles, and Formats. Your Collection Android users have been waiting for a quality and fully-functional mobile means of accessing their album collections. Discographer’s Collection feature is the solution we’ve been waiting for. From this menu, you can view your collection as a graphical grid of album covers with artists and titles, or as a list with album cover thumbnails. A quick menu option beside each entry lets users remove titles, move them to subfolders, add to their seller inventory, and view the artist/label page. You can also dynamically sort your collection by a wide range of criteria – title, artist, year, format, label, Cat #, newest added, rating, or by a specific collection field such as notes or condition. Combined with the search function, this makes navigating large collections of thousands of titles a breeze. I was also happy to see a Manage Folders option to browse and modify the sub-categorization of my collection. This feature was missing from other independent Discogs apps I’d tried in the past. TIP: For sellers with particularly large inventories, if you’ve indexed the location of the titles in your library using the Notes field of your Discogs Collection, this app can tell you exactly where to retrieve the album for sale and provides every possible piece of data about your copy, right in the palm of your hand! http://i.imgur.com/Gv9h84I.png Vinyl Hub Integration A most welcome feature, Discographer includes Vinyl Hub’s searchable Google map of user-contributed record stores worldwide. From within Discographer you can search the globe, tap to call, and open stores’ addresses in Google maps – excellent for the traveling vinyl hound. For advanced features like the Vinyl Hub forum, there is a View on Vinyl Hub button. This integration adds excellent value, encapsulating all your album shopping needs into one fantastic app. http://i.imgur.com/Swgw0QV.png The Search Feature The Main Menu’s search function puts all of Discogs.com’s powerful search capabilities in a single, easy-to-use panel. And as with all of the app’s other functions, Andreas Dahl has done an outstanding job of building every menu into an impressively mobile-friendly layout. The search feature lets the user easily search by Release, Master, Artist, Label, and Stores without the frustrating interface of a drop down menu or having to open a secondary search config settings cog. Just tap the arrows at the upper left and right of your screen and the search heading will change to indicate the category of your search query. Best of all, the search menu includes a camera function so that the user can snapshot album barcodes, making collection-building an absolute snap! User Summary Panel Once logged in to your Discogs account, Discographer will display a complete summary of your profile. Everything is here, from contact info to collection stats to recent activity and Discogs recommendations. In earlier versions there was difficulty logging in to a user’s account from multiple mobile devices, but as of the latest release this has been resolved with a pair of in-app security codes which you will be prompted to enter on the second device at login. This gives users increased accessibility while protecting the security of their account. http://i.imgur.com/Srinn4U.png Album Summary Panel The album summary panel is a stand-out feature of incredible value to Discogs.com users. Below the album art, the panel is divided into a series of organized sections. The first presents all the basic info you’ll need to verify you’ve accessed the correct pressing – the album cover art, title, artist, label and catalog #, release date, genre and style. The next pane displays info about the user’s copy of the album, including rating and condition, folder, and notes. This is followed by a summary of Discogs suggested pricing based on various states of condition quality, (a fantastic quick-reference for crate diggers in the wild!), and below that, a list of copies currently for sale in the Discogs marketplace. Further panels provide track listing and album credits, Discogs catalog numbers, and barcode and matrix information. There are also buttons to view the release on Discogs.com, to share the entry, and to explore user reviews. Every feature offered from the desktop Discogs.com website appears to be fully accessible from this app, and its clean and well-organized interface make finding the information you need easier than ever from your tablet or smartphone. http://i.imgur.com/zI2u3Zv.png The Marketplace The Marketplace menu is divided into three primary screens with a navigator at the top of each. The first details all of your Orders, including all related communications and details. The next screen contains Purchases, and the last a mobile-friendly Inventory of all titles you have listed for sale in the Discogs Marketplace. A search panel is featured at the top of each of these menus, so any title you need to recall is only a few taps away. Additional Features The Main Menu also includes buttons to browse the marketplace, view and modify your Wantlist, and to build public Lists. If there are any other features you’d like to see integrated into this wonderful app, please contact the developer. Dahl has done an outstanding job and been great at responding to community feedback and requests. I absolutely recommend supporting future developments by purchasing the ad-free version for just $2 from the Settings menu of the app. It’s all right, Discogs team. You don’t have to worry about developing an official app for the Android platform. Dahl has got us covered! Download Discographer here! |
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