Posts Tagged ‘Sound + Vision’
Turntabilism fans who haven't yet caught CUT CHEMIST & DJ SHADOW's amazing live "Hard Sell" show have exactly 12 days and seven tour dates left to catch up on one of the best live events of the year. Looking to break open the traditional DJ performance, the pair teamed up with the idea to perform live mixes using only vintage, traditionally pressed 45's to create their impromptu soundscapes. Sequenced on an array of eight turntables fed through four mixers and an effects box or guitar pedal, the resulting "songs"—accompanied by an eye-popping image reel—are an incredible mash-up of genres, tempos, and eras, some never to be replicated again. Click HERE to check out the remaining tour dates. And, for fans looking to take home more than a T-shirt the just-released Hard Sell JUKE-BOT vinyl toy designed by English street artist PAUL INSECT and produced in a limited run of 500 units is available at the shows and in limited quantities online. Says Shadow of the toy: "We conceived it as a throwback to a pre-digital era. There's something about a jukebox doing battle with pesky iPods that seems to resonate with people. It's a kind of protest against the technology rat-race, particularly where music is concerned." HAVE A LOOK: Read More
Dr Takahashi reports for surgery in the plushie emergency room...
Friday nite saw Supertouch buddy and Japanese fashion mastermind JUN TAKAHASHI—founder of iconic couture house UNDERCOVER—moving his international "The Sound & The Fury" tour to Hong Kong where his creation of a new art mannequin in a process he calls "live doll operation" was the highlight of the evening. Hosted by HK streetwear think tank SILLY THING, the all-nite party featured live sets by MISHA from PAM, DEXPISTOLS, DJ OGAWA, and longtime Jun Takahashi accomplice MAJOR FORCE's TAKAGI KAN who provided background soundscapes for Takahashi's surgical strike performance in the duo's first collaboration since their NOWHERE STORE days in the '90s. The event brought out a crowd of HK's top celebs and hipster elite who partied alongside musician JUNO MAK, and visiting BATHING APE overlord NIGO dressed in his finest Catholic prep school summer uniform. HAVE A LOOK: Read More
For the past year Supertouch's own EVERLAST, aka: Mr White, has been holed up recording his forthcoming solo album "Love, War, and the Ghost of Whitey Ford" featuring his countrified Hip-Hop take on the classic JOHNNY CASH lament "Folsom Prison Blues." To commemorate the single's release, Mr White decided to debut it live as a duet with the Man in Black himself on the JOHNNY CASH SHOW, where he was joined by fellow musicians DJ MUGGS and keyboard whiz KEEFUS. Luckily, our boy MAZIK was on hand to film the madness. Johnny lives...
The sound of the future. Two speakers are officially deader than an Ed Hardy T-shirt...
Yeah, MP3s and their bastard half-brother & sister formats sound like shite compared to the full stereo image vinyl provides, but with the new stunningly beautiful PHONOFONE iPOD SPEAKER (that's right, "speaker" as in one) at least no one will be paying attention to the actual sound coming out of the speaker. Created individually by hand in Toronto by innovative concept lab SCIENCE AND SONS, each signed and numbered miniature gramophone amplifies iPod sound without external power or batteries by exploiting the virtues of horn acoustics to boost the audio output of standard earphones to up to 55 decibels (roughly the maximum volume of laptop speakers). Crazy as it may sound, upon connecting active earphones to the Phonofone base their trebly buzzing is instantly and profoundly transformed into a warm, rich sound that totally eclipses the low-fi source file. Impossible as it may seem this tiny porcelain unit sounds nearly as loud and rich as a premium iPod dock and only after playing with this little beauty for the better part of an hour during which we fed it a wide variety of input from the Bad Brains to Debussy did we believe it for ourselves. At $850 USD this little beauty is a connoisseur's plaything, but the looks on the stunned faces of your audiophile buddies at your next party will make it worth every cent. Until it shatters on the floor after said drunk audiophile buddy bumps into it, that is. HAVE A LOOK: Read More
That's right, as promised, NINE INCH NAILS frontman TRENT REZNOR has released the next NIN record "The Slip" as another free download available with no strings HERE. Unlike the band's recent free release, "Ghosts I—IV," however, this one doesn’t suck. Where "Ghosts" sounded like an odds 'n' sods collection of rejected atmospheric soundtrack bits, "The Slip" is a banger of a rock record in the recognizable NIN style we've all come to know and love. Yeah, there's a few throwaway instrumentals in there but it's nothing a delete key won't handle. In the words of Mr Reznor:
"'The Slip' is licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license. We encourage you to: remix it, share it with your friends, post it on your blog, play it on your podcast, give it to strangers, etc."
Also, unlike "Ghosts" which had allowed users to voluntarily pay for the download in whatever charitable denomination they deemed appropriate or purchase a limited-edition hard copy of the record with additional tracks, this album is simply free, and is available for download in a variety of audio formats including the superior Lossless and Wave files. Maybe Trent felt so guilty about making over a million bucks on a crappy album he felt the need to give away a good one for free. If so, that makes us feel better after wasting $5 bucks on the last one. GET IT NOW...
