The best album covers reveal something about the records they decorate. But graphic designer Simon C. Page, who has made sleeves for artists including Ministry of Sound and the Crystal Method, takes that connection even further with a series he calls Musically Inspired Album Covers. “This year I have been asked to create more and more album covers, which I love doing, but I noticed that the ones which I wanted to work on most were the ones where I had been inspired or moved by the music,” Page writes at his website. “The artwork here has been created, influenced and inspired by just listening to the music. ” See what hearing the Avalanches, Daft Punk, and more looks like in some of our favorite covers from the collection, then visit Flickr to see the entire series.
As we noted a while back in our roundup of albums you really should hear in November, Sigur Rós have a live album out this week. It’s called Inni, and if it’s anything like the other live recordings of the band we’ve heard (like the transcendent Live at the Icelandic Opera House from 1999), it’ll be worth laying your hands on. And it got us thinking: releasing a live album is something that bands do less and less these days. In some ways, this makes sense — it’s so easy to bootleg and distribute live recordings and videos these days that the market for official live releases just isn’t what it used to be. This means that pretty much every list of definitive live recordings you ever read relies on the same old ’60s and ’70s records. In an attempt to prove the genre’s not entirely dead and buried just yet, we’ve put together a selection of the best live albums of the past 15 years or so. What are your nominations? Read More »
Harrison Krix of Volpin Props has created an amazing, working replica of the famous helmet worn by Thomas Bangalter, one-half of cult French electro-duo Daft Punk. The helmet certainly looks the part, but it also boasts “350 LEDs, can run over 4 hours on a single charge, and the matrix is capable of being updated on-the-fly with a custom programmed iOS app.” If that weren’t impressive enough, consider that the helmet is actually the second of the set, a partner project to the already-completed replica of Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo’s gold topper. But while his first Daft Punk helmet took him 17 months, the second took him only four. We’ve checked, and Krix isn’t taking orders, but if you’re a crafty type, you can check out his process here and follow in his footsteps. Click through to see a video of the helmet’s progression from mere materials to a work of art, and check out some shiny photos of the finished product.
School orchestras tend to be somewhat straight-laced – an Ode to Joy here, a bit of Handel or Bach there… All very pleasant and well-intentioned, but not exactly cutting edge. So hats off to Dublin’s Trinity Orchestra – the only entirely student-run orchestra in Ireland, apparently – who threw convention out the window by performing Daft Punk’s Discovery from start to finish in February. A video surfaced on YouTube this week of the encore to the show – a medley of “One More Time”, “Aerodynamic”, “Da Funk”, “Superheroes”, “Around The World” and “Crescendolls”. It’s really pretty impressive, and way cooler than anything we got to do in music class at school.
Record label EMI published the results today of a charity auction it held earlier this month to raise money for tsunami relief funds in Japan. There was plenty of interesting material to be had, although it was, of course, all well out of our price range – but if you happened to have a spare $10k sitting around, you could have snapped up signed copies of David Bowie’s full back catalog, while $6,744 would have gotten you Billy Corgan’s handmade “Zero” t-shirt. The news got us thinking about other band paraphernalia we’d love to get our hands on – read on to see our selection, and let us know what you’d like on your mantelpiece. Read More »
We landed on the moon way back in 1969, but our obsession with space didn’t end as soon as we shoved an American flag into a celestial body. No, our cultural curiosity about all things silver or jumpsuited or tentacled has worked its way into our hearts, closets, and aesthetic (probably in that order, too) and camped out there for almost half a decade. From Ziggy Stardust to Lady Gaga, the cosmos have driven what’s equal parts edgy and out there in the fashion world in a very consistent way. Check out our chronology of space fashion in pop culture after the jump.
Now out on DVD, director Gaspar Noé’s Enter the Void is a visually arresting psychosexual acid trip through the Tokyo underworld.
New to the neon jungle, Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) gets caught up with drugs, while his sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta) finds refuge working at a local strip club. After a bust goes awry, Oscar’s spirit sets sail — but helplessly hovers over the city as his friends and loved ones deal with the aftermath of his indiscretions. Loosely based on The Tibetan Book of the Dead and scored by Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter, the film presents a mind-bending, candy-coated nightmare.
Today at Flavorpill, we saw the evolution of Daft Punk helmets thanks to this handy infographic. We liked this cool visualization of this year’s domestic box office. We wished that we worked in a research lab back in the ’60s — if only for the outfits! We wanted to spend the night in this bizarre hotel on train tracks in Norway. We drooled over the eye-catching design aesthetics of these home soda machines. We were totally on board of Patton Oswalt’s twisted plan for reviving geek culture by killing it first. We were transfixed by these floating Elvises. We watched a video shot during the Snowpocalypse in Queens that Roger Ebert says should win the Academy Award for best live-action short subject. We discovered another really good reason (you know, other than death) to turn off your iPhone during flight. We got schooled on net neutrality by Lifehacker. And finally, we wanted to DIY our own Tron cat. Do you think she would mind?
Did you know that November is National Peanut Butter Month? Neither did we. And we may not have any jelly, but we sure do have some jams (ba-dum-ching!). For your auditory pleasure, we’re serving up another heaping helping of new music, from a taste of the Daft Punk-composed Tron soundtrack to a delightful glimpse of the upcoming 30 Rock soundtrack. And, as always, right click and save as to download, or scroll to the bottom to collect ‘em all.
Having just scored the upcoming Tron sequel, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, aka the mysterious and influential duo known as Daft Punk, are still going strong more than 15 years after their debut — thanks at least in part to their omnipresent helmets. Tron: Legacy comes out in December, with Daft Punk’s highly-anticipated soundtrack (which promises to be epic!) due out on November 22. To hold you over until then, we’ve pulled together some of our favorite pieces of Daft Punk-inspired fan art after the jump. Enjoy!
