Madame Lamb: September 2008

Showing newest 21 of 77 posts from September 2008. Show older posts

Monday, September 29, 2008

Megapuss

All hold tight, for on October 7th Megapuss is poised to destroy...in a good way. Devendra Banhart and Fabrizio Moretti (of Strokes, and currently Little Joy, fame) constitute the heart of this year's surprise supergroup. Combining Banhart's passion for quirky genre exploration and Moretti's rock sensibilities, this album, at least for me, promises to be a treat...a synergy of seemingly disparate yet delightfully harmonious talents. The album is titled Surfing, and, again, will hit stores on Oct. 7th. This song should be enticing enough for further listening.

Megapuss - "Crop Circle Jerk '94"

The group is finishing up tour dates on the West Coast with Moretti's Little Joy (who'll actually be continuing on and will be at the Mercury Lounge in November), but keep your ears to the pavement--I suspect there will be more. Here's one from Little Joy.

Little Joy - No One’s Better Sake

Exciting stuff coming out of LA these days huh?

Supernice Wall Decals

Supernice sells these dope stickers with designs by artists like keith haring printed on them. you can arrange the stickers on your wall individually or together to give the illusion of wallpaper. and they peel off relatively easily so that you can switch up the vibe of your room at the drop of a dime.

Spring Court

if you're sick of your chuck taylors you may be in the market for some Spring Court sneaks. they are THE original white sneaker. in 1936 tennis players across the globe ditched their espadrilles opting, instead, for spring courts. since, everyone from the beatles (on the cover of abbey road) to jane birkin to owen wilson have rocked them. after i saw how fierce my friend Sateesh looked sporting his classic white spring courts around campus i decided that it was time for me to get a pair. i'm still deciding between the original whites, or the metallic hi-tops (below). i also really like more masculine brown leather (below)...its hard to go wrong with these.

john lennon wearing spring courts on his wedding day in 1969:

Van Gogh @ the MoMA

here's Peter Schjeldahl's quick review of Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night showing at the MoMA September 21, 2008–January 5, 2009. if you weren't pumped enough for the exhibition already, the delectable bite of van gogh peter offers will surely do the trick (i love the last line).

The Night Stuff by Peter Schjeldahl September 29, 2008 (via The New Yorker)

Poignantly inferior paintings surprise in “Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night,” an instructive little show in new, cozy galleries at MOMA. (Good luck squeezing in.) There are masterpieces, too—“The Starry Night,” “The Night Café,” “Gauguin’s Chair,” and the indelibly weird “The Potato Eaters”—as well as wonderful drawings (none better, in all of art, than “Café Terrace at Night”). But at issue is the distraught ambition of a late-blooming, fragile man, seen in efforts to express the character of the world at sundown and after dark. Early tonal platitudes give way to forced imitations of Millet and other misfires. (“The Stevedores in Arles” anticipates nothing so much as strip-mall paintings on velvet.) Van Gogh did the improbable, winning by trying too hard—banging into limits that disintegrated, as profound inventions of linear rhythm and color harmony transfigured dicey motifs. The delirious “Starry Night” and the hellish “Night Café” attain serenity in their realization, cruising at an altitude of talent beyond imagining.

a basement sharpie mural

Charlie Kratzer of kentucky decorated the walls of his basement with $10 worth of sharpies. Kratzer's sharpie mural features images of Winston Churchill lounging with George Bernard Shaw, Rocky and Bullwinkle, the Cornell Law School (Kratzer is an alum), William Shakespeare, the Marx Brothers, R2D2, a fake fireplace facing a real one, and both the Walrus and the Carpenter (from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There).

View full panoramic views of the room and read the whole story at Kentucky.com.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

growing jewelery - chia pet chic

these growing rings by Iclandic designer Hafsteinn Júliússon are the ULTIMATE clash of couture and organism. they need to be watered/trimmed regularly and come in little greenhouse jewelery boxes. if a boy gave me a growing jewelery promise ring (a la zack/kelly in season 2 ) and told me it was symbolic of our growing love i'd stop the world and melt with him.

cornell feast

This weekend Lamby and I traveled Ithaca NY to visit our friend at Cornell. Here are some photos of the impromptu feast our friend Jules whipped up for us. We ate steamed mussles hors d'oeuvres followed by tender LAMB with a sherry sauce and grilled potatoes, cucumbers, mushrooms, and corn. then we danced till the morning sun.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Nortec Collective Mexican Electro

My music professor just told me about this mexican electro "group" with a very intruiguing sound called "Nortec Collective". Considered to be the godfathers of Tijuana electro, their unique sound comes from their exposure to late 90s techno and Norteño(mexican folk music: think accordian, trumpet, etc). In the late 90s they found some old Norteño tapes lying around the abandoned studio where they were recording, and started mixing the Norteno tapes with the techno/electro beats popular in the US an parts of Mexico. Before long, the men behind Nortec Collective established themselves as pioneers of the Mexican electronic music scene. (their name comes from Norteño+Techno).

Some of their latest stuff is a bit more mainstream, and yet other stuff has that chill-mexican-electro sound to it (the music you'd hear playing at a trendy nail spa in LA).
Nomada - Latinsizer (Nortec Collective)

Dandy Del Sur - Hiperboreal (Nortec Collective)

Com.COM - LCDR (Nortec Collective)

here's a new video they made for a song called "Norteña del Sur":

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Visionaire 54 SPORT

****I highly recommend watching this on full-screen in hidef here.

Visionaire magazine collaborated with Lacoste (who is celebrating their 75th anniversary) and launch their first ever wearable issue called "Visionaire 54 SPORT". Visionaire commissioned some of the worlds best arts/designers/filmmakers to create "full-coverage, full-color, photographically printed artist-edition polo shirts". Matthiu Placek photographed model Coco Rocha in each of the polos, and then assembled the photographs into this HOT photo-film.

the impressive list of artEEsts Visionaire commissioned: Nick Knight, Peter Lindbergh, Inez & Vinoodh, M/M París, Phil Poynter, Thomas Demand, Thomas Ruff, T.J. Wilcox, Karl Lagerfeld, Pedro Almodóvar, David Byrne, Michael Stipe and Richard Phillips.

the track playing is Fischerspooner’s Danse en France.

SOULWAX chemical brothers remix

Hey Boy Hey Girl (Soulwax '2 Many DJs' Remix)"

soulwax, who brought you that killer remix of the gorillaz tune "DARE", remixes the chemical brothers "hey boy hey girl".
Gorillaz - Dare (Soulwax remix)

Vote

my physics lab TA has been registering students to vote around campus. he was passing out these stickers (above) which i found to be surprisingly cool, at least cooler than i expected from him. (we didn't get along in lab...i always felt this hostile aura coming from him, but i'm pretty sure he treated everyone that way.). he had a pile of >100 stickers and he would only give me three. and then i found out that he didn't make these stickers, masspirg did.

sebastien sexualizes lake malsaucy

SEBASTIEN TELLIER - Divine
by lablogotheque

here's sebastien floating on a raft and heating things up supermario fab at 3am during the 2008 Eurockeennes music festival (the largest rock festival in france). the festival takes place on lake malsaucy's beach in belfort each year.

more at le blogotheque.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

passion pit

i'm really digging some of the tracks off cambridge electropop group passion pit's latest EP "chunk of change". I would love to hear "i've got your number" remixed, and the "sleepy head (laundau remix)" floating around the blogosphere is pretty postal service-y and relaxing. here are some tracks of their latest album "chunk of change"

passion pit - i've got your number

passion pit - sleepy head (landau wake up remix)
passion pit - sleepy head

passion pit will be playing at the bowery tomorrow night with french kicks. they're touring with yelle, but she isn't planned to make a cameo tomorrow (bummer).

Novel Designs posted this witty diagram review (below) a NYTimes reporter made to represent his experience at a recent passion pit's show in manhattan.

[pit.jpg]

white-headed langurs are soo cuteee fjlskdf!!!!

The white-headed langur, one of many endangered species of primates in Asia, is found only in Guangxi province in southern China. Langurs are also known as leaf monkeys, after their vegetarian diet of leaves and fruits. Conservation efforts have successfully lifted the population of langurs within the nature from 96 in 1996 to more than 500 today. The total population is estimated at 800.

White-headed langurs are born canary yellow. Here, a newborn langur clings to its mother. Female langurs can give birth once every two years. After a six-month pregnancy, a mother breast-feeds the baby for one year.

At three months, a young langur's face and ears have changed from a whitish pinkish color to black. The juveniles begin exploring independently of their mothers, although they will still cling to their mothers' chests when moving any significant distance.

A baby, its mother and another adult female. The monkeys travel in family groups of an alpha male, several females and their offspring, typically totaling 10 to 20 individuals.

via NYTimes Slideshow.

2 Animation Shorts

i had to watch these two shorts for my film class:

the first is a four minute color animation short called "Digitopia" by Miwa Matreyek. she has a really keen sense of how to superimpose still/moving images, and the visuals are equally mesmerizing and stimulating.

the second is a five minute animation short called "Allahu Akbar" by Usama Alshaibi. the intricate geometric ornamentation in Arab culture is used to praise the perfection of God. When Alshaibi's father brought him a book from the middle east filled with these hand drawn patterns Alshaibi scanned them onto his computer and mashed them together. The end result is an entirely new way of seeing these static designs. "Allahu Akbar attempts to come closer to that ultimate beauty and mystery which is God," Alshaibi explains.

sleevefacin' part deux

some more sleevefaces, cause they never cease to put a smile on my face. see a whole slew of them at Flickr

Bryan Ferry by Hide and Seek Sleeveface.

Tina Turner by Hide and Seek Sleeveface.

Elaine Paige by Hide and Seek Sleeveface.

Barry Manilow by Hide and Seek Sleeveface.

Monday, September 22, 2008

EXCLUSIVE! The Leaf Meta-Edit

ML has exclusive access to The Leaf's latest and its KILLER!

download The Leaf Meta-Edit here
listen below

Boomp3.com

56 Leonard Street

Herzog & de Meuron Architects have released photos of their new project at 56 Leonard St in tribeca. the buildilng will accomodate 146 “houses stacked in the sky" on 57 floors (that means views all the way to atlantic city). each private residence has a unique floor plan and private outdoor space. the buildling eschews standards -literally and figuratively. all the residences are individually sculptued and highly customizable enabling individulaity under a shared roof.

Autumnal Equinox

today is the first day of fall and so today the autumnal equinox will take place at 11:44 a.m this morning.

the autumnal equinox the moment when the sun is directly over the earth's equator. on this day the sun will spend an equal amount of time above and below the horizon at every location on the earth. day and night will be the same amount of time. and if you've been wondering why the moon has been so beautiful and prominent in the sky as of late (i def have) its because on/around this time of it takes the moon the shortest amount of time to rise into the sky after sunset (due to the angel of the earth/moon/sun being perfect). but it all goes down hill from here, guys! the days are getting shorter, the nights are getting longer.

but there's something really wonderful about a robert frost poem in autumn. here's one of his most autumn poems "after apple picking" published in 1914 in which he describes his half awake-half dreaming state after a long day of apple picking. while picking apples he becomes intoxicated by the fall and the apple's smells, sounds, textures, and images that remind him of the complex relationship between life and death...and sleep?

press play to hear the poem read aloud. the poem's text is below.

After Apple Picking by Robert Frost

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still.
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples; I am drowsing off.
I cannot shake the shimmer from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the water-trough,
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and reappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
And I keep hearing from the cellar-bin
That rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking; I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall,
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised, or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

the chemical brothers google earth project

this summer the chemical brothers asked fans to film a 2-20 second film clip or photograph relating to "midnight madness", their latest single. fans then uploaded their videos/photos to the chem bros website and tagged the exact location of where the footage was taken. the videos were then arranged together using the new google earth application, and some of the footage was used in their "midnight madness" music video (above).

experience the interactive global project at the the chemical brothers website using google earth and watch what their fans do around midnight.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

new mixwit-Montego Bay 1978

a mix i made to keep your heart warm as the leaves fall off the trees. happy first day of fall!


1.	Eric "Monty" Morris - Penny Reel
2.	Toots and the Maytals - Do the Reggay
3.	Jimmy Cliff - Miss Jamaica
4.	Bob Marley and the Wailers - Rastaman Chant
5.	Robert Marley & Beverly's All Stars - Judge Not
6.	Folkes Brothers (with Count Ossie) - Oh Carolina
7.	Bob Marley and the Wailers - Time Will Tell
8.	The Ethiopians - Free Man
9.	The Spanishtonians - Rudie Gets Plenty
10.	The Wailers - Simmer Down
11.	The Paragons - Island in the Sun
12.	The Wailers - Duppy Conqueror
13.	Culture - Two Sevens Clash
14.	The Wailers - Bus Dem Shut (Pyaka)
15.	Ken Boothe - Moving Away
16.	The Abyssinians - Satta Massagana