Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Freddie Hubbard


I've always said that the best trumpet playing I've ever heard was by Freddie Hubbard on an album called Ready for Freddie. I'm not a really big fan of some of the music he did later on in his career but he was 23 when he recorded Ready for Freddie and that album is amazing. He also played on Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil, Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth, and albums by John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman, and Art Blakey. Those are some of my favorite albums from that time period and while I'll never come close to being the kind of trumpet player he was, he was a huge influence on me. RIP.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

University of Iowa Band Extravaganza


They used my photo for the newspaper! Although isn't it standard protocol to get the names of people you publish photos of?

Read the article HERE. Be sure to check out the slideshow.

GMAIL THEMES

Check them out here.

Monday, November 3, 2008

Friday, October 31, 2008

Monday, October 27, 2008

H&M Comme des Garcons Collab

I love this collection. Check out the price point too, they've made these affordable.

H&M x Comme des Garcons

Tuesday, October 21, 2008


skate - shot on red #1347 - 120 fps from www.theglobules.com on Vimeo.

NOOKA


Nooka Extra Dimensional National Video from Nooka Nooka on Vimeo.

"From a parallel comes Nooka. The story unfolds as we fall through the universe and logic we discover time."

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Esbjorn Svensson Trio - Leucocyte

The Esbjorn Svensson Trio is one of my favorite bands, hands down.

Pianist Esbjorn Svensson died tragically this summer in a diving accident. This was a major loss, not only to the world of "jazz," but to all music and art in general. This band has killed it on albums like Seven Days of Falling and Tuesday Wonderland. And, they do it again with Leucocyte. Leucocyte was recorded shortly before Svenssons death. As happy as I am to hear another fantastic EST album, it's truly upsetting to know that it will be the last.

Below I have posted the press release for the album...

Leucocytes, white blood cells, are a part of the human immune system that protect the body against foreign pathogens and infections. They must periodically renew themselves to continue their work.

For e.s.t., spontaneous jam sessions were the way to renewal. They would often rent a local recording studio for a couple of days during their tours and then start to jam. They did this without any pre-composed material. The musicians reacted freely to each other and let themselves be totally carried by the flow of ideas and musical to and fro. The players needed this freedom in order to explore new musical regions, or as Esbjörn Svensson always formulated it, "…to follow the music". In the past, many of the trio's compositions were developed through precisely this art of improvisation.

And there was scarcely another formation on the planet that was as predestined for this way of going about business as e.s.t were. The three performed with an almost telepathic assuredness, breathing as one; "This group has become one sound, one genius mutant human being with six hands, three brains and one musical sensibility." (Jamie Cullum). The trio constantly posed the fundamental question, "What can a piano trio be that it has not been before?" (Pat Metheny).

Leucocyte is the result of one of these two day jams. It took place at the famed "Studios 301" in Sydney during the band's Australian tour. In early 2008 e.s.t.'s sound engineer Ã…ke Linton joined the band at the Bohus Sound Studios in Gothenburg, Sweden to begin mixing. On April 28 there was a photo shoot in Berlin for the new campaign. On May 16 the artwork and album were delivered to the label.

Then on June 14 the incomprehensible happened: Esbjörn Svensson, probably the most influential stylist of the last decade, lost his life in a diving accident off the island of Värmdö near Stockholm.

As a result, Leucocyte has become Esbjörn Svensson's and e.s.t.'s musical legacy! It is the most venturesome album Esbjörn Svensson (p), Dan Berglund (b), and Magnus Öström (dr) have recorded as e.s.t. The essence of this journey of discovery is its ecstatic energy. It is a trip through the bloodstream sans compositional safety-net and stylistic restraints in which the borders of musical communication are sounded out.

Esbjorn Svensson's orbital musical journey began barely ten years ago with From Gagarin's Point Of View, before coming to Earth with Strange Place For Snow and Seven Days Of Falling. He provided food for the soul with Viaticum, lost himself in his Tuesday Wonderland, and the journey now comes to an end with Leucocyte.

This album corresponds 100% to the material that Esbjörn Svensson, Dan Berglund and Magnus Öström chose and sent to their label on May 16, 2008.


LEUCOCYTE

Love Lockdown on Ellen

Friday, October 3, 2008

Nooka Zub 20 for Yokohama Triennale

I really love these. Nooka has designed a watch to highlight YOKOHAMA 2008: International Triennale of Contemporary Art. The exhibition is underway and will last until November 30.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Jazz for Obama

$100 tix. The main purpose of this post is to point out that this flier says "Bilal / Robert Glasper." That's a duo I would LOVE to see.

I'll be in Chicago this weekend for Chris Potter's Underground band on Friday night, then the ultimate hip hop show at the House of Blues on Saturday. It consists of Common, The Roots, Talib Kweli, Bilal, Will I Am, Pharrell and Marsha of Floetry. It almost sounds too good to be true...I'll blog about it later...

Click here for Bilal's myspace.

Click here for Robert Glasper's myspace.

More Koplant No

http://www.nme.com/video/search/koplant

http://skaterschool.com/brian_patch/Pirate_Song.htm

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Above


STEALING FROM THE RICH from ABOVE on Vimeo.

...say what you want.

Above.

Koplant No from last night

Koplant No played a pretty good gig last night at The Mill in Iowa City. We played one of Joel's new tunes, I think it went over VERY well. I think some things are starting to come together with this band...stay tuned...

Thanks to Uday Verma for the pic.

Click here for Uday's Blog (electronic music, programming).

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Kanye Listens


So Kanye West has been reading responses to the new track he posted on his blog a few days back. He has recently redone the vocals (still autotuned), the taiko drums, and added some nice surprising effects on the vocals and piano. The mastered version of the new recording was posted on his blog today. I'd bet that neither of these will go on the album, which is, apparently, an entirely vocal album...

Listen to the original recording here.

Listen to the new recording here.

Check out the live performance from the MTV Video Music Awards here.

I need to get some real-time autotune on the trumpet I think. Yes, Ha!

Monday, September 15, 2008

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Mr Jones Watches...you just made the LIST

Mr. Jones watches from London. Series 2. Make sure to check out the animations for each of the designs.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Christian Scott

Christian Scott. I think I might love this guys' style more than his music. Watch for a live cd/dvd set sometime later this year... And no one can click that link and say that Stacey Dash doesn't look amazing!

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Friday, August 22, 2008

Jaga Jazzist Live Concert Video

Here's a video link of a great Jaga Jazzist concert in Paradiso, Amsterdam. Jaga Jazzist is a 10 piece band from Oslo, Norway. I hate using the word "favorite" but if I had to choose a favorite band, it'd probably be Jaga Jazzist. I could write about them all day...but for now, I'll just leave y'all with this link:

http://www.fabchannel.com/jaga_jazzist_concert/

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Peritonsillar Abscess

The past couple of days I developed a very sharp pain in my throat. A visit to Student Health was unsuccessful, they did nothing. Then the next day (yesterday) it got much worse, to the point that I couldn't speak well or swallow. So, I went to the ER. 6 hours later, they did a computed tomographical scan of my neck and determined that I had a peritonsillar abscess. Then at 2:30am, they performed the surgery to remove it and then I went home feeling much, much better. And, they gave me a bottle of vicodin. To drink. Yeah, it's pretty good stuff.

In other news, I've recently discovered one of the funniest blogs I've seen. FAIL Blog. If you've never seen it before, definitely check it out. There's enough posts on there to combat hours of boredom. Enjoy.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Air Max 95


Nike has just re-released the Air Max 95 in chili red at select retailers nationwide. These take me back. Way back. To 1995. When I was 9.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Visvim

Visvim: shoes and clothes.

Opening Ceremony


Some photos from the opening ceremonies in Beijing. Make sure to scroll down to view the last image.

Friday, August 8, 2008

The Reactable


Multi-touch y'all! The reactable consists of little discs and cubes that represent some classic synths (I think). You can rotate, translate and combine them with others to create a visually unique musical performance. I heard about this some time when the instrument was featured during Bjork's last tour.




Breastfeeding...at 8

Well...yeah. I do think this is real.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

jacob fred jazz odyssey


A few months back I found this record by the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey called "Lil' Tae Rides Again." If you haven't heard it, do so immediately. The Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey is a band that I knew previously as a sort of outside piano trio, maybe something like The Bad Plus. I never took too much interest in their music until I stumbled upon Lil' Tae, their most recent studio release. This was something altogether different than any kind of piano trio I had heard, and while I hate using genre terminology to describe music, it was closer to that Chicago post rock sound that Tortoise has. Partly because there was no acoustic piano, or at least very little acoustic piano. Anyway, I loved it. The whole record. Then they came to Iowa City maybe a month or so ago and played a great show at the Yacht Club. They played all the tracks from the record, and in the order of the record (if I remember correctly), but it sounded completely different from the record. Initially I was a little disappointed. The album has a lot of portions which I only found out recently were taken from a studio recording deconstructed and remixed into an altogether new blend of soundscapes. This album would be very difficult for a band having a history as a piano trio to recreate perfectly. The bands most recent live release, "Lil' Tae Rides Again/Live" (now as a quartet) is a compilation of some of the better takes of recent live recordings and is also definitely worth checking out.

I'm definitely hooked on this band now. They took a chance on their most recent work. They let producer Tae Meyulks completely reinvent their sound for the studio record, then embarked upon the major challenge of transcribing a bunch of heavily spliced and remixed tracks for live performance by an electro-acoustic ensemble of four musicians. The end result, to me, is this band becoming a lot more than another out-there piano trio. Good music for MORE people. Keep it comin'.

the beginning

alright y'all, i've created myself a blog. and i'd prefer you say pee-pee soaked heck-hole instead of urine soaked hell-hole.

cheerfully withdrawn.

a few months back i stumbled upon matthew waldman's work. he's the one responsible for the incredibly innovative nooka watch designs. a much more linear (although not binary) method of time-keeping. their line was relatively small then but they're keepin' the interest high with a ton of new designs, colors, materials and collaborations. check out this one they created as a gift to kanye west at the conclusion of his glow-in-the-dark tour.


unfortunately, it looks as if these won't be available to the public...i'd love to add this one to the collection along side my black zub zenv.