numan v little boots

bbc 6 recently hosted a collab between electro wunderkind little boots and electro legend gary numan.

here is my all time favourite numan track 'are friends electric?'...



and my favourite little boots track 'stuck on repeat'...

prepare to meet thy God

images from a collaborative photoshoot (my brother and me). location: miranda, firth of thames, sometime before christmas.

dusk

© AK

cgi

below is a short film (12min) by alex roman, done entirely with cgi. you want to see this... (in fact use the link below the video to go to vimeo and watch it larger)

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

invite

here's an invite i designed for my mum's 70th birthday using an old photo of her (from 1974) and her own handwriting.

003.

070110

today, constrained and pressed for time by the prospect of being at work, i visited the library and got out four books: dharma bums (kerouac) [in which beatniks hit the road], street renegades [in which artist intervene in open-air urban spaces], mail me [in which artists set their art to flight by drawing and painting on postal envelopes], destination art [in which artists create pieces in the wilderness requiring their viewers to travel to remote locations]. i step outside the library. i step outside. outside, and into my car. what is my subconscious telling me?

conflagration

© AK

002.

060110

after the suburban streets had returned to lazy quietness, touched with sunlight from a cloudless sky and a gentle breeze from the north, while the sun flickered off the tops of small waves, and tourists disembarked from cruise ships to wander through the village like sandal and baggy-hat-wearing hobby anthropologists with the kind of self-assured aloofness that only a costly cruise ticket can warrant and afford; i stayed at home, thought of you, and wrote this.

little house

a few months ago i posted a video of a location from an art project i was working on involving photographing a paper model house in various place. ages later, thanks to being on holiday, i've been able to do some post-production work on the photos, and so here are a couple of them. some bare-bones info about the project:

- create a model based on our house
- take it to various locations
- photograph it
- part of the 'safe little world' concept
- conceptually something to do with transplanting and juxtaposing the safe little worlds we create with perhaps 'hostile' environments

two of the images (ruapehu and turangi):


on the headphones: 'lisztomania' by phoenix.

001.

030110

the more i think about it the more i know. it’s good that we find hope lurking around just outside the buzz and hum of the white noise. just outside the outer atmosphere of our own little worlds. it’s there in a big quiet space that God resides, very much alive and well, quietly sustaining the universe and allowing things to function. tentatively, you make a little hole in the outer skin of your atmosphere and peek through. tentatively, and a little reluctantly, you shed the outer skin, widening the opening so that the spirit of God spills in. and then, more suddenly than you expected, you are different. your world becomes more than static, everything is moved and moving; and you notice faith, hope and love.

music 2009

there are way too many 'best of 2009', 'best of the decade' music lists all over the internet at this time of the year. they all vary depending on personal taste. i decided it would be rude not to create a list of my own; my list would be even more self-indulgent and not confined to music released in 2009 (or indeed the 2000s for that matter).

you may be familiar with the fact that i'm a bit of a last.fm freak, finding perhaps too much enjoyment in seeing lists and statistics related to my own listening habits. well anyway, here is a list of my most listened-to artists of 2009 (complete with ramblings about each artist). (oh, and the picture above has very little to do with the list - it's just a photo i took sometime in the last few years of a hercules (i think) nz airforce transport doing circuits over tauranga at dusk.)

1. massive attack. predictably, as they are hands-down my favourite 'group'. they push music boundaries while combining some of the best things about human existence: mood, electronics, samples, art, the uk, spoken word, collaboration, bass, and beats that tick along about the same rate as a resting heartbeat ('womb tempo' we'll call it). my one criticism is that they could afford to lighten up a bit at times - their earlier material had more lighter moments.

massive attack stormed back into the public eye this year with the release of their 'splitting the atom' ep. great stuff. my most played track of 2009 came from that release, but it wasn't the title track. it was a remix of a track called 'psyche' featuring martina topley-bird. new album coming in 2010.

2=. rhian sheehan. it feels good to have a new zealand artist this high up my list - and it is position well deserved. known for his ambient soundscapes, samples and field recordings, sheehan took these elements to their best possible conclusion this year with the release of his album 'standing in silence'. he stripped most of the beats out of this project and let the atmospherics talk. in the process, he played directly into my tastes - creating a beautiful album that reminds me of the best of the likes of múm.

2=. mogwai. like massive attack, another perennial favourite of mine. the scottish post-rockers didn't release a new record this year (2008's 'the hawk is howling' is their most recent). but their material is just so strong. to my mind, you could chuck out all post-rock and just keep mogwai and be pretty happy (you would also need to hang onto your sigur ros and radiohead). i also discovered at some point that it was possible to edit text with their music playing in the background while i worked, so they got a fair few plays this year.

4. cassettes won't listen. the work of indie electronic artist jason drake of new york. i still haven't pinned down exactly why i like this stuff so much. but i suspect it's the catchy hooks. also drake is very generous - he gives a lot of his stuff away. over the course of the year i collected a fair bit of his back-catalogue and rarities. 2009 was also the year in which he released 'into the hillside' - a rather fetching instrumental album with some excellent tracks on it. new album coming in 2010.

5. deastro. another generous indie electronic artist - this time it's randolph chabot of detroit. this year he released his second full album 'moondagger', but this fact seems to have escaped my attention (mainly due to it not appearing on emusic, where his superb debut 'keeper's' was championed). it must have been the free stuff that he gave away that kept my listening rate up. i really like his music - (sometimes quirky) electro-compositions that verge at times on the anthemic with an apocalyptic edge. i shall now go and attempt to remedy my oversight regarding his latest album.

6. m83. anthony gonzalez of france. amazing electronic-post-rock soundscapes morphed into 80s-tinged synth-pop in 2008 with 'saturdays = youth'. this album still has moments of his atmospheric greatness, but i personally prefer his more abstract stuff. once again a rather nice sonic background for my editing work.

7. zero 7. zero 7 at number 7. zero 7 of england released a new album this year, 'yeah ghost'. my like of the band stretches back to their first album and i have most of their music in my library - this fact combined with the new album, kept rotation high in my listening habits. i have to be honest and say that i really haven't given the new album much of chance and need to investigate it further before delivering my considered opinion on its merits. my feeling at this stage is that it isn't their greatest work, but thanks to their talent still rises above a fair bit of stuff that other artists release.

8. roots manuva. british hiphop. this man is a true innovator in the british music scene. the way he combines inner city attitude, intelligent and cleverly-written lyrics, with cutting edge electronic music (with a dub bedrock) make me all weak at the knees. 'cool' seems to seep out of all the cracks. i'm also fascinated with the christian themes and self-critique that comes out in the music thanks to his pentecostal up-bringing. manuva has a fascinating love-hate relationship with the things that shaped him as a child and it runs head-long into the lifestyle he has more recently indulged in as a rapper. his latest album 'slime and reason' (2008) sees him older and disenchanted with the lifestyle but still trying to reconcile all the pieces.

9. vangelis. and now to the grand-dad of electronic! casting your eye back up this list you will see at least two acts (m83 and sheehan) that would seem to exhibit hallmarks of this man's influence. i'm sure the others on the list would acknowledge his greatness also. the greek vangelis (aka evangelos odysseas papathanassiou) is probably most famous for the 'chariots of fire' theme. my listening revolves around his soundtrack to 'bladerunner'. a three-disc collectors edition of that soundtrack keeps him as a strong presence in my library, and he also finds himself in the same category as m83 and mogwai for providing a soft bed for me to 'recline on' while doing my editing work.

10. efterklang. the sole representatives of a strong 'viking' presence in my music library. i was somewhat surprised to find them in the top ten (rather than, say, sigur ros or múm) but 2009 was the year in which i discovered the danes and downloaded all three of their available albums. i don't know how to describe their sound: sonic soundscapes, choirs, electronics, folk instruments. the whole thing exhibits a particular arctic quality. in the last month i added 'performing parades' to my collection - a rather nice collaboration with the danish national chamber orchestra.

so there we have it. oh, and happy new year. it's 2010.

synth

if you have any interest at all in electronic music, you should watch this stormin' bbc documentary about the birth of synth pop in the uk. here's part 1 of the 9 parts that can be found on youtube...

beached

i guess ideally blog posts are supposed to be on the leading edge of the hype wave. everyone trying to pick the next big thing. this post here is decidedly derivative - not terribly original at all. but i thought i'd like to point out 'beached az' - a series of animated shorts in which australians take the mickey out of new zealanders and do it very well. here's a sample - there's loads more on youtube...

zero massive chinese air

it's a big month or two for kids like me who like trippy downbeat music. three of the legends of this kind of sound have/are bringing out new material:

1. zero7 - released their new album 'yeah ghost'. (zero7 released their first album 'simple things' in 2001 - mellow loungey music but subsequent albums have explored new musical territory while maintaining that essential mellowness)
2. massive attack - have released their new ep 'splitting atoms' this very day. (the greatest band in the world. yes you heard me. released the groundbreaking 'blue lines' in 1991 thus changing the world's musical landscape forever. the new ep is four tracks long - the lead single (made with damon albarn of blur and gorillaz fame), and three superb remixes of songs that i assume will be on the full album - to be released sometime next year)
3. air - release their new album 'love 2' today too. (quirky french loungesters that march to the beat of their own drum exploring all sorts of sonic fields. very french. they released their severely popular and very classic album 'moon safari' in 1998)

and that picture up there isn't a still from some fantastic new (or old) sci-fi film, it is in fact rows of chinese policemen taking a break while guarding the aquatic centre during the beijing olympics in 2008. [source: time]

mos def

i've liked mos def for a long time since seeing him on a dvd doco called 'freestyle: the art of rhyme'. recently he's probably been more publicly visible (read: "visible in the mainstream") as an actor (ford prefect in 'the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy' and as chuck berry on the recently released to dvd 'cadillac records'). but while i enjoy seeing him in films, it has to be said that rap is where he really excels. his latest album 'the ecstatic' is fantastic.

so first up here's a little clip of him dropping some lines while walking along some japanese street:



and here's a clip from the aforementioned 'freestyle: the art of rhyme':

pull my heart away

i think you might need to be a hunk of wood not to like this song - and i think even some hunks of wood would appreciate it...

little house on the central plateau

this is a bit of a teaser... a short video clip from one of the locations of one of my current art projects. the project involves a paper model that i designed and constructed (based on our house) photographed in different locations. all part of my safe little world concept. on the weekend my brother and i went off photographing and i commenced my project with locations in rotorua, the desert road, mount ruapehu and turangi. the film clip was shot in the desert road location on the same camera as i was taking the house photos on (my much-loved canon g10). a spectacularly beautiful location with cold wind and views of mount ruapehu. afterwards we realised we'd actually been standing in an army training area...

safe little world: little house on the plateau from andrew killick on Vimeo.

a brittle filament

nice little animated music video from Hrishikesh Hirway who performs as 'the one am radio'. track is called 'a brittle filament'... music is available from emusic - oh, and if you decide to sign up for emusic (recommended) then let me know before you do - because if i refer you then we both get free music : )

audio player software break-down

me and mp3-playing software go back a long way. it all started with 'music match jukebox', which came with one of my computers about 8 years ago. in those days i wasn't really into the mp3 thing - i was most definitely listening to cds - frankly my hard drive would never have coped with a big music library. it wasn't until i upgraded to a computer with a 200gb drive that my hard drive-based music collection began to take precedence.

after a brief dalience with windows media player i moved on to itunes. most people go to itunes because they get an ipod but i was just using it because it seemed to work well. i liked that it was free and i liked features like 'smart playlists' etc. but apple kept on upgrading it and making it bigger and bigger so that it started taking up more space and i started to go off it. by then the itunes store had come to nz so i was using it for that and intitially i thought i was stuck because of the amount of itunes music i had (still in the days of itunes drm).

then i started doing some research and after a bit of trial and error decided on mediamonkey. it was feature-laden, had a smaller memory footprint than itunes and, when i tried it out, actually seemed to be making my music sound better. not only that but it played my itunes music fine and supported last.fm (another must).

and thus it continued for over a year. but mediamonkey - despite what they say - is not actually free. its advanced features are locked away until you pay. and unfortunately some of those advanced features are to do with smart playlists - limiting what you can do without parting with cashola. i always thought i would end up paying for the full version of mediamonkey... but just recently i decided to delve into the world of mp3 software again.

the first program that really caught my attention was songbird. it is a very cool concept that has a lot of features and is still in development so should continue to improve based on user feedback. songbird's particular claim to fame is that it also works as an internet browser, making it very handy when you come to interface your music collection with the resources of the internet.

i was happily using songbird one evening and playing the software version of risk when i noticed that risk was hesitating before certain actions - a sure sign that something was using a lot of ram. sure enough i discovered to my dismay that songbird was using twice the memory that mediamonkey had used and research on the net revealed that this a well-known weakness of the program.

so i went looking again and this time i came up with j.river's media jukebox. this software used to run on the same basis as mediamonkey with a free and paid version, but since j.river released a new software solution that encompasses all the media in your home they have made their music player 100% free. and it's a great program. you have to put up with a bit of advertising for amazon's music download service and i found that j.river want payment for the mp3 encoding feature (you can also use your own external encoder), but other than that it is feature-rich, sounds great, has native last.fm support and is very customisable. and for all that, its memory footprint is actually slightly less than mediamonkey, plus you don't need to run the last.fm program to scrobble so you save memory there too.

the shop

here are some pics of the new shop in cherrywood that we have opened... for more about annie blackberry go here.