Thursday, June 30, 2011

Video - "Splitscreen: a love story" JW Griffiths

This video has been buzzing in the web, and I can see why: it's sweet and its execution is flawless.

It won the 2011 Nokia Shorts competition, and get this: it was shot entirely on a Nokia N8 mobile phone!

Splitscreen: A Love Story from JW Griffiths on Vimeo.

Monday, June 27, 2011

Music - Zoë Keating (cellist extraordinaire)

Before any palaver from me, click play here:

Sometimes music feels as if it is addressing me personally. It finds latent emotions within me and plays them, a form of resonance that sometimes makes beauty ache as I am swept away into the artist's soundscape.
Of course, most music can't do this for me, but I've just discovered somebody whose music does: Zoë Keating.

I won't go on about how she uses tech to sample herself and do multi track cello compositions, or about all the awards she has won, or all the big names she has played with. If you're interested, you can find out more about her through the links at the bottom of the post.

I will mention that she's had some up and downs with digital distribution and that the way she talks about music is lot like the way authors talk about writing...
Listening to her talk about music sounds very familiar indeed:




Listen and buy her music here.
Check out her blog here.
Zoë Keating on Wired about her creative process.
Follow her on twitter.

And anyone who eats okonomiyaki
as demonstrated by this twitpic of hers
gets extra coolness points!
Not that this lady needs extra coolness points!

Sunday, June 5, 2011

Double bill- Music and Comics: "Moon Hooch" and "Pants are over rated"

Well, I've been back from my holidays for a week now and it's time to share some of my recent "Oh wow, this is great!" finds...

No one has ever accused me of lacking rhythm on this blog, but it would have been fair to do so... Well in the name of rhythm I give you these upstanding gentlemen (except the drummer, who is sitting): Moon Hooch! Who apparently not only rock, but also rock the NYC subway:


There is a number of videos featuring this awesome trio (Mike Wilbur and Wenzl McGowen on tenor saxophones, and James Muschler on the drums) on youtube... So you can look them up there, you can go to their bandsite page (here), which has 8 tracks you can listen to or download, and you can friend them on facebook (here)

And now for something completely different... Or is it?

Some of you may already suspect I have deviant tendencies... Well you're right! I am a proud lover of webcomics! And I stumbled upon these two strips yesterday as I was daydreaming about having Charlie Brown/Snoopy, Calvin/Hobbes, Jon Arbuckle/Garfield interacting in a post apocalyptic environment and having a look to see if it had already been done... Anyways, net snooping following it's own paths, I remembered finding a plethora of Calvin as an adult fanart, and wondered if I could find any for Charlie Brown (the answer: not really, but there's a nice set of animeified peanuts characters floating around)... But there where two fanart Calvin strips I hadn't seen from a brother duo Tom (the artist) and Dan (the writer) who form "Pants Are Overrated", which is chock full of a chaotic mess of geeky humor; and in some ways is a lot like what Penny Arcade used to be (for the webcomic literate).

Enough preamble!
Here are the two strips that caught my (and everyone else's) eye (and aren't entirely representative of their usual style, as they humorously point out in their first strip following these two):
Hold control and click on the thumbnail
or wheel click on it to view it!
Hold control and click on the thumbnail or wheel click on it to view it!