I don’t know what this is, but I like it! Fuzzy, psyched out, and completely danceable. These Hungarian cats call themselves Piresian Beach and they make lo-fi, shoe-gazy, mood music with a female vocalist that drones and moans in just the right way. I doubt this is a offical video, but I like it none the less, and the chopped up archival footage just ads to the otherworldly feel. More to come as I find out about these guys.
“The Scraper Bike Movement seeks to capture the creativity of youth living within dangerous communities. It gives them a positive outlet that is fun, educational, and promotes healthy lifestyles. The Scraper Bike Movement offers youth a sustainable group of peers that is positive and motivating. We want to expand and enlighten young peoples perspective on life through fixing and painting bicycles. Our goal is to support youth entrepreneurship and cultural innovation.”
For more information here’s another great article on how the Scraper Bike movement grew virally through YouTube.
Who are Rad Omen? Hiding behind the faces of our most beloved fast-food mascots, Rad Omen refuses to be seen as individual, but instead as the anthropomorphic representation of the party massive itself. Rad Omen is not one for they are many. Their mission is a clear one: Search, Party, & Destroy. And, they want you to join them in this pursuit. The soundtrack to this mission statement became available for download today on their newly launched website. Weighing in at a compact 10 songs deep, Search Party & Destroy, contains a variety of electronic strains from the aggression of the drum and bass inspired title track to the synth pop of All The Girls to the four on the floor house stomp of the information age. The album ends with a pretty synth ballad that glows with that post-party feeling you get as you head home at the end of the night and the sun begins to peak its head out over the horizon. Join the collective and become one of the many.
Rad Anthem
Hey ladies! Here’s another rockin’ outfit idea using the amazing closet that is Metropark =] Cropped oversized tees are pretty darn awesome so I found this Metropark Stripe Crop Tee and worked around it. Throw on these super comfy True Religion jeans and some accessories and your good to go for an end of summer casual look.
METROPARK – STRIPE CROP TEE
TRUE RELIGION BRAND JEANS – BILLY TRIPLE NEEDLE DENIM
METROPARK – MULTI STRAND KNOT NECKLACE
METROPARK – GOLDOX ORNAMENT RING
METROPARK – ICON BLACK 80’S SUNGLASSES
METROPARK – PYRAMID GREY HOBO HANDBAG
CAPELLI NEW YORK – 3 METAL BOBBY PINS
The Arcade Fire have teamed up with, of all partners, Google to release an official video for “We Used to Wait” off their new album The Suburbs. The tech savvy video uses the emerging web standards of HTML5 to deliver a complex and highly interactive experience to help personalize the sense of nostalgia inherent in the song. The Chris Milk directed clip works best on Chrome. If you can remember it use your childhood address and visit http://www.thewildernessdowntown.net/ to play around.
The moment as a 9-year-old boy when John Gettings discovered his father’s stash of Playboy magazines in a locked chest in their attic, is the moment that shaped him as a photographer and was also the inspiration for his Polaroid series. From that moment in the 60′s, not only did his love for women (obviously) form, but his love for the look, feel and nostalgia of a vintage picture also did. At the start of his photography career, Gettings always strove for the lighting that a photo in the 60′s and 70′s possessed. Aside from the instant gratification that it provided, he also loved working with Polaroid pictures because of the feeling of his youth that they gave him. Interestingly, his Polaroid project actually happened as an accident. He was light testing a shoot with a single model. He clicked photo after photo, using different filters and gels, trying to achieve that vintage feel he always strove for. As a result, he ended up with 50+ photos of one single model, in essentially the same pose in each photo, with a range of colors and lighting. As he shuffled through the stacks of photos, he organized them in a grid-like pattern, perfectly lined up in rows, working off of each other.
Combined with a shadowbox-like frame, reminiscent of the ones that displayed the lunch menu and Spring Fling flyers at his elementary school, John Gettings Polaroid series was born.
Read Gettings’ narrative of the birth of the serendipitious Polaroids project here.
Ashes to ashes, dust to… vinyl? Hardcore music lovers live and die music. Now, they can literally die music… or die on music… or something like that. UK company And Vinyly is offering people the chance to press their ashes into a vinyl recording of their own voice, their favorite tunes or their last will and testament. They warn that “minimalist audiophiles might want to go for the simple option of having no tunes or voiceover, and simply pressing the ashes into the vinyl to result in pops and crackles. The process itself involves embedding the ashes in raw vinyl before the record is pressed. This means that when the plates exert their pressure on the vinyl in order to create the grooves, the ashes are pressed into the record.” Founded by electronic musician Jason Leach, And Vinyly was the result of his mother’s job at a funeral parlor bringing death closer to home, and his realization that he “might not be invincible.” Vinyl immortality doesn’t come cheap. The basic package will run you £2,000 (about $3,100) for up to 30 LPs — and that’s without a personalized portrait (also containing your ashes), an original song, “global distribution of your record in vinyl stores,” or a FUNeral (for which prices start at £10,000).
Creative way to be immortalized or super creepy? I say the latter, but you have to admit, it beats being six feet under or trapped like a genie in a bottle.
Etsy user LowLevel‘s work is simple: “All stencils are handmade. I use spray paint.” But the series of posters he creates are anything but simple, not because the technique is complex, but the subjects he paints are. Each poster features a historical icon – from the Dic of all dictators Fidel Castro, literary iconoclast Jack Kerouac, blue-eyed crooner Frank Sinatra and many more. Each icon is stenciled with spray paint from a handmade stencil, offset with a bright, appropriately patterned background based on the specific icon. The colors are funky and retro, and they all have the gritty feel of a propaganda poster.
LowLevel also offers prints on t-shirts and bags, ya know, if you’re in to that kind of thing.
Sihouette cutting is an extremely rare art form these days, but one man is still practicing, or rather, mastering, the all but lost form of portraiture. Master scissor artist Karl Johnson cuts each vintage-inspired silhouette entirely by hand. He simply looks at the person’s profile, either in person or in a photo, and starts cutting the exact likeness out of black paper – sort of like Edward Scissorhands, but less threatening and pale.
The SoCal artist will be on the east coast at baby store Babesta Cribz in NYC from 10am-5pm on September 11th. Stop by and get cut.
It’ll be the kind of profiling that’s actually encouraged on 9/11.
Another great example of creative urban renewal is Tyree Guyton’s 24-year-strong mission, The Heidelberg Project, where the forgotten neighborhood on Heidelberg Street in Detroit’s East Side has been turned into an outdoor art exhibition. Similar to the Favela project in Brazil, the Heidelberg Project is about healing communities through art. Guyton, founder and artistic director of the Project, uses everyday, discarded objects to create a two-block area full of color, symbolism, and intrigue to tell a story about the current issues plaguing society. It’s symbolic of how many communities in Detroit have become discarded. Now in its 24th year, the Heidelberg Project is recognized around the world as a demonstration of the power of creativity to transform lives. It is art, energy, and community that offers a forum for ideas, a seed of hope, and a bright vision for the future. It’s about taking a stand to save forgotten neighborhoods.
Is it junk? Is it art? Either way, it gets you to think and not forget these neighborhoods.
