Music Video Update: A-Punk

This is the music video to the hit by Vampire Weekend, entitled A-Punk. A perfect way to describe this song was written by a viewer who commented on the video on Youtube. He said "This is my type of song, because I'm punk, and prep!" 

The video itself is extremely original for its creative use of speeding up video. It is also remescent of Interpol's Slow Hands music video, in which everything is slowed down. 

Vampire Weekend - A-Punk

Radiohead Does It Again

Remember that post I wrote about Radiohead's Nude Remix competition? Well, they've done it again, only this time with the second most popular song of the In Rainbows album - Reckoner. As of the moment, they're selling stems of the vocals, bass, guitar, piano, strings, and drums from Reckoner on iTunes, for just 99 cents. Anyone can submit their remix of the song here. 

Click on the play button below to play the most voted remix yet, and if you like it, you can vote for it. 

Post-It Notes Movie

This is a video that EepyBird blog did called EepyBird's Sticky Note experiment a fascinatingly creative video that was made with exactly 280,951 sticky notes.  

EepyBird has already praised for their amazing Mentos Coke video. Just goes to show how far a little imagination can get you.

The Grey Album

Brian Joseph Burton (AKA Danger Mouse), has been creating electronic beats for bands since 2005. Just recently he helped create most of Modern Guilt, with Beck, and one great example of his work would be Demon Days, by the Gorillaz. However, when he first started out as a musician in 2003, he was creating solo work. His sophomore album was released in 2004, in which he took The White Album, by The Beatles, and The Black Album, by rapper Jay-Z, and succesfully combined them to make The Grey Album. With Jay-Z's rapping, Beatles backing voices and instrumentals, and Danger Mouse's custom beats, it's an experience you won't want to miss. Even if you don't care for rap, like me, it is nonetheless a definitive point in the history of remixing. However, this was all done illegally. 

The Beatles songs for the album were all unauthorized and created huge controversy. At first, the Grey Album was sold to only a few small outlets, but after EMI, the copyright holder of all Beatles material, attempted to half its distribution, it was reduced to an exclusive 3,000 copies. Nonetheless, fascination with the album let it thrive in internet downloads. Today, The Grey Album stands as not only a message to encourage creativity through remixes and mash-ups, but to plain-out do what you love, and be creative about it. 

You can download an Mp3 of The Grey Album for free here, and watch the promotional music video for The Grey Album here.

Music Video Update: Wanderlust

Today's Music Video Update is Bjork's Wanderlust music video off her latest album Volta. I don't have much to say about this video other than that it's by far the most strangest video I've ever seen. I would not say it's bad, but you certainly have to be in the mood. On the bright side, it is not as abstract as some of Bjork's other videos, which quite honestly just creep me out.

Bjork - Wanderlust

iStockphoto T-Shirt Contest

iStockphoto, one of the leading agencies in stock photos, vector images, and so on, is hosting their very first t-shirt design contest. Anyone can make their own design and submit it to iStockphoto to win 500 bucks and get their design sold around the world. The trick is, it can only be three colors, plus, it has to include the iStock logo and at least one iStock image. But hey, if you've got a trippy design in mind, go here, and submit it by October 9th. If you can, email me your design at danishpoet@yahoo.com.

Artist of the Week: Autumn de Wilde

Autumn de Wilde was born in 1970 as the son of Jerry de Wilde, a famous band photographer of the 60s and 70s. Taking after her father, Autumn is best known for her commercial photography of popular musicians. Her work includes portraits of Beck, The White Stripes, Elliot Smith, and many more. Personally, I find her composition creative and beautiful, here are some examples of his work:

The White Stripes

The above photograph was featured on the cover of The White Stripe's latest album, Icky Thump. The costumes were inspired by the cockney Pearly Kings and Queens. In the end, Autumn ended up hand-sewing about 13,000 buttons onto them.

Death Cab for Cutie

Fiona Apple

Beck

Under the Influence of Giants

Forever the multitasker, photography isn't all she does. Check out Autumn's videos on her website, here. 

Music Video Update: House of Cards

Radiohead's latest music video, House of Cards, is very unique. The song is off the album In Rainbows, which was released this summer, but what has made the video eagerly anticipated by many was the fact that it was made entirely with advanced laser scanners. The laser scanner machine was actually being worked on at the UCLA Media Lab when James Frost, Blip Boutique CD and Zoo director, introduced the idea to Thom Yorke. Pretty soon, the lead singer of Radiohead was scanning his face into the multimillion dollar machine to create this long-awaited, visual masterpiece.

Radiohead - House of Cards

Here's a link to a website where you can download the video, or actually edit different parts of the video yourself:

Radiohead TBD Records

RAC Remixes Radiohead

As you may know already, this April Radiohead hosted a contest to see who could make the greatest remix of one of their (in my opinion) greatest songs, Nude. Entries from across the country came in and put a new twist on the masterpiece. Of course, RAC did a remix, and even though it didn't get top vote, I think it's worth a listen. Click the play button below to listen to Nude (RAC Mix), and get a feel of what RAC's all about.

Read up on RAC from my last post, or check out the most popular mix on the Radiohead Remix website.

RAC Remixes

RAC (Remix Artists Collective) is a remix agency started by the Portugese 23-year-old Andre Allan Anjos, a musical and artistic genius that has made a profession out of remixing songs by bands from any genre. In their own words, they "provide re-interpretations/remixes of individual songs for artists/labels. Above all, we strive for excellence and tastefulness regardless of genre. We aim to maintain a style of remixing that strays from the “club mix” archetype, creating new incarnations of songs that stem from the original structure, but expand on their genre and musical arrangement. RAC mixes typically feature a unique blend of hip-hop drum samples, analog synthesizers, melodic hooks, and original performed instrumentation." 

RAC's worked with the Shins, Radiohead, Tokyo Police Club, and many more. You can listen to some of their remixes on their portfolio, or on the indie rock music site Stereogum.

Music Video Update: Viva La Vida

This is the music video for the song Viva La Vida, one of Coldplay's latest hits. No, this isn't the official vid with Chris Martin flailing his hands around like an idiot. In fact, in my opinion, this is a much better one. However, you can't buy it on iTunes, and not to many people know about this alternative version. It's really quite creative in incorporating the song's lyrics to nice story. In fact, some of the images shown in the video almost make it into a sort of art form. 

Coldplay - Viva La Vida 

Artist of the Week: Little People

When I was a little kid, one of my favorite things to do was to make set-ups. Me and my cousins would make houses, railroads, churches, streets and cities out of the toys we would find around the house, whether it be wooden blocks or toy racetracks. What this artist has brought back for me, is a sense of childhood, but more importantly, a sense of childhood shown through an educated adult's sense of creativity. This artist has successfully combined art and pure childhood fun, in his London street art. Here are some photographs of the work he's done:

Yes, I will admit that the last image is slightly graphic - but I can also deffend myself saying it is artistic license. The artist's pen name is Slinkachu, and he has appeared in the galleries and streets of London. You can buy a book of his street art here, check out his Little People website here, or read some of his cartoons, here.

The New iPod Nano

The new iPod Nano 8 gig was unveiled at today's "Let's Rock" Apple event in California along with the new iPod Touch and the new iPod classic. However, though all of this may sound like big news, the reality is, that it isn't. Photos of the new iPod Nano had been floating around the internet for weeks already, and the differences made to the iPhone and the iPod Classic weren't very large, other than a new feature added to the iPod Touch called "Genius" and a downgrade in the iPod Classic. Nonetheless, this event was an eagerly anticipated product launch, and being that there were no more surprises other than iPod Nanos in every color of the rainbow and Jack Johnson playing a couple of songs for the finale, shares in Apple fell 3 percent during the presentation. However, the event was a horrible let down. If you like Jack Johnson, bright colors, and the new feature added to the iPod Nano called "shake to shuffle", then it went great. 

Why the change from small and squat to tall and slim? In an interview with CNN, Steve Jobs said that he had made the third generation iPod Nano a very "squarish" design so that they could fit in a hi-res screen. However, he also stated they had in fact managed to add the screen to the new iPod Nano AND make it the thinnest iPod yet. 

A thin but peppy Steve Jobs unveils the new iPod Nano.

Music Video Update: The Hardest Button to Button

This is the music video for the song The Hardest Button to Button by the White Stripes. It is in my opinion a very creatively entertaining video when it comes to using stop motion, and connects with the song perfectly.

The Hardest Button to Button by the White Stripes

More Designs!

I've added some more designs at the Arny L. Designs Shop and expanded my products to not only t-shirts buy posters and skateboards as well. Here are some of my latest designs:

The last design is a poster for my latest line of Arny L. Designs products Arny L. NYC.

Spore: History In the Making

This isn't the game of evolution, it's the evolution of games... it's video game history in the making"

 - Ben Silverman

The long awaited computer game Spore, is finally here. From the genius behind the Sims video games, Spore is about evolution, life and survival. When the game begins you are nothing but a cell, drifting around in a droplet of water and basically playing a modernized version of pacman. There are particles that you eat, and germs that will eat you, but once you eat all of the particles you lay an egg. That egg grows and evolves into an underwater creature, which after a series of games lays an egg itself. The creature inside this egg is the one that comes out of the water and starts a civilization. Afte endless hours of play, you are a civilized being in a UFO, abducting other species and creating and destroying civilizations. However, once you leave your planet, you soon realize that there is more than just your solar system to experiment with. There's a galaxy, filled with thousands of other stars, planets, and civilizations. Each with separately created creatures made by players across the world.

However, as if that's not enough, every time your creature mates, builds, or overall creates, you design the result in the creature creator, which is basically a three dimensional Mr. Potato head with endless possibilities. This actually takes away the part of the limelight from the rest of the game in some sense, as you will find yourself spending hours tweaking your creation to perfection. Every time you change a feature on the animal you've created, the rest of the body adapts to it. Whether it's the size of it's feet, the shape of it's head, or how many heads it has, the rest of the animal is realistically influenced by that part. When your monster builds a civilization, you can also design the buildings and architecture. You can experiment with different species by abducting them, placing them on different planets, seeing how they adapt, and so on. There are literally endless possibilities to this game, and it appears that it will take a lifetime to fully complete. However, we will only be able to tell that once it is released, which will be tomorrow, September 7th. 

Here's a 17 minute walkthrough through Spore, presented by the creator, Will Wright. 

Download a free trial of the creature creator for Mac or PC here.

Music Video Update: Evil

I've been listening to Interpol's second album lately called Antics. One of their most popular songs, Evil, is also one of the most creepiest, yet entertaining videos around. 

Evil by Interpol

Here's a link to one of my posts that mentioned the indie rock band Interpol:

The Indie Rock Movement

Artist of the Week: Paper Cuts

I've decided now that every week I will write a post about a conteporary artist that I find creative and original. This weeks artist has successfully made paper come to life in the most realistic and yet abstract ways. Here are some samples of his work:

Peter Callesen was born 1967 in Denmark. He has since then attended the Goldsmiths College in London and made numerous exhibitions, live performances, and interactive works of art. What he lives for can best be described in his own words - “I find the materialization of a flat piece of paper into a 3D form as an almost magic process - or maybe one could call it obvious magic, because the process is obvious and the figures still stick to their origin, without the possibility of escaping. In that sense there is also an aspect of something tragic in most of the cuts.” He has an upcoming exhibition in New York, which can be viewed on his website where you can also gaze at some of his other work, which has touched me in a way I cannot describe but hope has done the same to you.