Here’s an ill project that the homie Clutchy Hopkins put us up on … Fat Albert Einstein – After The Beep. 

Monmouth Temple crew in Full Effect.

Any heavy digger will tell you that collecting  records is akin to a bad drug habit. You basically spend all of your time & money searching for that perfect high; that ill breakbeat, that dope 2 bar piano loop, that private loner psych folk track that you can’t get out of your head. Most diggers will also tell you that digging is basically an endless rabbit hole; the moment you think you’re getting close to the bottom, you find some new weird shit you’ve never heard before, more doors open, and the end is pushed further away. Well i’m here to tell you that the well just got deeper. We were particularly intrigued by this album because of the use of found audio from old answering machine tapes. It essentially equates to crack cocaine; found recordings in their purest, rawest, most unadulterated form … We fucking love it! Not to mention that the homie plays all of the instruments on the tracks. PROPS

Limited 12″ Vinyl

Limited 12″ Vinyl with selfmade sleeves. Limited to 150 pieces worldwide.

~Hola

Been a while since our last post, (we’ve been busy getting things ready for new vinyl & tape realeases by Tewz & LoSt.aRk !)

All that aside, we had to stop for a second when we saw this video … It sort of epitomizes everything we’re all about around here. Gear, art, turntables, & a bit of science … (& if you could get them to actually play records at the same time …. or somehow translate the grooves of the record into something visible …) We’re getting off topic, but you get the idea.

If you are like us, then you have a small turntable graveyard collecting dust somewhere in your studio/garage/moms basement; automatic arms that act erratic, motors that refuse to spin, direct drive patients waiting in limbo … either dead or in a permanent coma. So, What do you do with them? We’ve been planning on making some kind of hanging wall piece with ours … a clock perhaps? But this is far superior. Or, perhaps you’re dada esque mentality wonders “Why should a turntable only play records!?” … Can it not be a spinning flower pot? a lazy susan? or some kind of catapult? Could it drive me around town? Could it weave things? Could I turn it into a gigantic tatoo gun? or a Drawing Machine !! Eureka.

Classis SP Beats

Freefarm Film from Simon Pyke / Freefarm on Vimeo.

Really cool & inspirng short film on Simon Pyke about sound design and musical production. It really helps to think outside of the box when in comes to sound.

We are very proud of our newest release over here at Illektrik; the Tewz – Helix die-cut picture vinyl. This is definitely one of the coolest pieces of vinyl artwork that any of us have seen, and the music is equally impressive. With an initial run scheduled for 1,000, it actually only came in around 522, and we don’t have plans for a second pressing. So, get while you still can! They are already starting to sell out.

Oh, and we almost forgot to mention … In addition to being featured on VICE Italy, Helix  just got nominated for ALBUM OF THE YEAR!  you can help us win by going over to the Pirates Press facebook page & liking the post about Helix.

b.1980 Tewz is a Chicago based beat maker & visual artist (recently featured on Bravo TV’s Work of Art). Armed with dusty fingers, circuit bent drum computers, distorted kalimbas, wonky tape reels, vintage organs, fuzzy guitars, & low frequency oscillation; Tewz makes beats for space ships, planets, and intermagnetic loop travelers. You can expect a lot of crackily samples, lo-fi drums, tape hiss, and a gang of weed smoke.

The title of the album “Helix” is a reference to the Helix Nebula located in the constellation Aquarius.

Helix is limited to 500 worldwide.

Tewz – Helix EP by TEWZ

German artist Bartholomäus Traubeck recently debuted a record-player he developed which is capable of digitally reading the rings of tree-slices and translating them into piano music. Tree-rings, are annual records of a tree’s growth rate — which in turn offer clues to the hardships and fruitful periods experienced over the life of the tree.

YEARS from Bartholomäus Traubeck on Vimeo.

Pretty cool stuff, but just How exactly does it work?

“A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music based on the year ring data. Those are analyzed for their thickness and growth rate and are then mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently.”

Really fantastic work by artist Charles Kraft … I could write more, but these pictures really speak for themselves. I’ll try anyway.

There’s something about taking an idea so loaded, like a gun (pun intended) and making it out of such a fragile material like porcelain that … well, ask yourself what it means? Kraft draws upon the Dutch tradition of Delft painting, but does it in a way that turns it upside down. This is the kind of work that appeals to both the fine artist and the layman.

And if you get a chance, check out his series of natural and socio-political disasters painted on found china plates called Disaterware™.

More info here and here

In the process of trying to find out more information about a BUND Reel to Reel “Black Box”, I suddenly found myself on a completely random blog page looking at images and reading information about topics that weren’t even loosely related to my initial search. This probably happens to everyone. I read somewhere recently that it’s not unusual for the average 20-30 something to start at one place, and end up somewhere completely different; not just on the interwebs, but in our life paths and careers. It is one of the defining characteristics of our generation; and the ability to adapt and change isn’t a bad thing. It’s how we got here in the first place. All of this got me thinking about nature. I find more often than not that physical patterns in nature are a mirror image of the way we connect to each other, and I wondered; What does the internet look like? I had imagined, naturally, that it looked something like a tree, or a series of connected root systems. I was right.

Here it is.

“No map exists of the entire Internet, but these lines show the paths an e-mail might take across some of the largest networks. The lines branch at each network router, or node, along the way. Colours were assigned according to the geographic domain (for example, .se for Sweden) where each network router was registered. The map was created using the skitter tool (developed by D. McRobb at CAIDA), which sends out small packets of data from a source to many destinations through the Internet. The data collected by skitter give a snapshot of the Internet at a particular moment. (Graph created by B. Huffaker using graph layout code provided by B. Cheswick and H. Burch.)”

I discovered the Clayton Brothers by pure coincidence. A few years ago I happened to be at Chicago’s most intimate bar, the Matchbox. On that particular day I happened to be sitting next to graphic designer Monty Beauchamp. As he often does, he had with him a few copies of his magazine BLAB. I purchased two different issues from him right there at the bar. Inside those pages were some of the best contemporary artists this side of the Mississippi. Two of them happened to be brothers; The Claytons.

A lot of their work deals with the human body, but in a way that can’t be described by words. Instead, they use color, shape, and context. For good reason, their work always reminds me of the Chicago Imagist Ed Paschke.

You can find out more about them here.

The Date Farmers continue to blur the lines between high and low art. Their work is socially powerful, culturally relevant, yet emerged in an outsider art aesthetic. When I look at their pieces, I see letters from county jail, home-made tattoos, urban decay, and Latino identity reconstructed in a elegantly beautiful and critical way. My favorite works are those pieces that are simple; stripped down to just one idea without all the extra bullshit that a lot of contemporary artist put into their work. They’re honest. They present ideas as they are; in a matter that doesn’t necessarily take a particular stance, but still speaks volumes. Props.

We Are in this Together

Try and snag a piece if you’re lucky.