This is a good moment to start a new column. The relation of music and design, or music and art is an important ingredient of JB. I would like to share some favourite cover designs, details on label stickers of dance records or the spine of a sleeve, stamped white labels or elaborate silk screen printed record sleeves and everything that the world of the 12″ art has to offer and is relevant to me or the bunch of guest columnists, that will soon add some spice to this category.
To Our Disco (Design) Friends #01
Today is the 1st anniversary of the conspiratorial music night of Hard Wax called Wax Treatment (check the superb podcast) which is held monthly at the nice venue Horst Krzbrg, Berlin. My friend Erik Errorsmith Wiegand will be showcasing a liveact of his MMM project, together with Fiedel. And unfortunately I cannot attend which leads me to the first selection of designs that are all from this small befriended collective. All from Berlin: Smith’n'Hack, Errorsmith, MMM, Soundstream … As the design is pure minimalism I refuse to talk about it. The music tells the story, and it always had and still has such an impact on me, inspiring and ground breaking dance music. I will add some background information with the next post in this series. Read more …
Hungry? Hmm… Like cooking? Yes. Nice food? Absolutely. But it is with food titles as it is with fashion magazines (or interior titles, as mentioned before). I am not into this stuff at all. Maybe I find some interesting pictures or any good design. Mostly I wouldn’t know, why to read these magazines.
But Fire & Knives is that type of publication, that catches me instantly for being outstandingly charming. First reason would be that it is not a glossy title, it is printed on matt paper and comes in a tiny format (smaller than A5). Another reason is, they literally refuse to print elaborate food photography, actually it cannot be found anywhere in Fire & Knives. And the design is so pure. To put it as simple as the magazine is: Looks great and I want to read this!
“Fire & Knives is a new quarterly food magazine edited by Tim Hayward (Guardian Food Writer). Its focus is alternative writing about food and related subjects rather than recipes or glossy photos of lamb shanks.” Rob Lowe, who is also responsible for the great Anorak Magazine, is the art director of this piece, who might be known as an illustrator under his moniker Supermundane.
It’s the apartamento of food, but a lot more minimalistic. To put it with the word spoken next to the sizzling piece in the pan: well-done!
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly — Interview by J. Grabowski
Says Zach Frechette, who put his GOOD Magazine on the map by jam-packing it with arresting, relevant visuals: “There’s so much data out there in government documents and corporate reports. And it’s all so ugly!” I met GOOD Magazine’s editor-in-chief Zach Frechette and creative director Casey Caplowe at the international magazine symposium Colophon in Luxemburg exactly one year ago. They were representing GOOD as part of the exhibiting magazines of this weekend. A while back we had a chat about making GOOD Magazine, being visually compelling, rolling up ugly data and the future of journalism. That was before people were talking about the iPad …
Special. Awesome. Dark and edgy. You definitely need more than one word to describe what it sounds like when Jeff Pils is spinning records as a DJ or releases music under his alias Bogger.
Since the early 90s he is programming soundscapes in several projects as well as hosting radio-shows, such as „Digital Gadget“ and „Zum Alpharaver“ (Herbstradio, Berlin). The Berlin based Oliver Kiesow is also co-running digital-gadget/front, a label for independent electronic music. Known for his fierce DJ-sets at his residency in the berlin institution for rotating meat called Dönerlounge, in recent times he turned his moniker Jeff Pils also into an artist name, signifying tracks that act as open counterparts to the rather hermetical music of Bogger. Since five years Pils is a member of the interactive live performance group “Endliche Automaten” last year touring with an instant composition through eastern europe.
Today we are proud to continue our Dusty Cabinets series with a brandnew, technoid dubstep mix by Jeff Pils — growling and bubbling with that certain groove. Great!
Jeff Pils’ labelmate Helvetikone just released a new free mini album which is available through the digital-gadget website, right here.
(Thanks: text by Cantürk)
Better late than never … To finally finish this two-thousand-and-nine thing, I owe this list of some “appealing” dance tracks from last year, limited to a number of ten, maybe eleven. There have been some more solid dance tracks than before, it was a proper year, some fresher productions and even some real exceptional artists plus some great recoveries too. Admittedly I was more open again to this kind of stuff, it was more fun to explore all these beats. I will keep it short. Not so much gossip, more tunes … and a good preview of what will happen this year. Read more …
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The Dusty Cabinets Show — the DJ Mixshow of JB. with great music by various DJs and artists. Get all episodes on our Soundcloud Archive
September
25.09. @ Crackers, Berlin. RMFRD b2b Jenne Grabowski
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23.11. @ Cookies, Berlin. with October, John Osborn, Jenne Grabowski
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@ Horst Krzbrg, Berlin. tbc
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Futura @ about blank … has been postponed. New date soon.
Jenne Grabowski + René Loewe (Vainqueur)
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