Simply stunning work entitled “Music Concert Series” by Los Angeles-based artist Hyejung Bae. The Yellow Magic Orchestra poster is my favorite.
Poster series for a concert of electronic musicians playing classical music with digital instruments. Newspaper illustrations from the 1800’s combine with contemporary optical patterns to represent the timeless value of classical music and its digital interpretation
Tongebirge
Nachrichten
Radioaktivität
Metropolis
Die Roboter
Schaufensterpuppen
Endlos Endlos
Trans Europa Express
Musique Non Stop
Boing Boom Tschak
Die Stimme Der Energie
Sex Objekt
It’s More Fun To Compute
Heimcomputer
Computerwelt
Nummern
Taschenrechner
Expo 2000 (Kling Klang Mix 2002)
Tour De France (Kling Klang Analog Mix)
Das Model
New-generation samba-soulster and actor Jorge Mario da Silva a.k.a. Seu (“Mister”) Jorge has risen from drug addiction and homelessness in Rio’s Belford Roxo favelas to international renown. The world has seen the Brazilian go from playing the amazing villain Mané Galinha in City of God, to crooning Bowie tunes in Portugese as Pelé Dos Santos in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.
Now filmmaker Kahlil Joseph has captured some of the Jorge magic in conjunction with the singer’s eponymous album with the group Almaz, made up of folks from the Recife-based mangue bit band Nação Zumbi. In the two elliptical b&w vignettes below, Joseph finds Jorge wandering around a tasty Hollywood bungalow, musing on his mysterious muse, The Model, the undergoddess, the Oshun. His opaque handling of Kraftwerk’s tentative klassic is a sight to be heard…
After the jump: Check out the revelation of the Model…
Relatively new to Youtube is this 2008 documentary in its three hour (!) entirety. I’ll admit I haven’t watched the whole thing yet so can’t vouch for quality, though it evidently touches on the whole beloved Krautrock spectrum. Hell, I’d watch a documentary about plumbing if it had something about Can in it, so I’ll be diving right into this one shortly.
So I’ve listened to the entire collection of the newly refurbished and reissued Kraftwerk catalog. Verdict? Well, when you compare it to previous versions, it certainly sounds better. In prior iterations, the CDs from Capital and Cleopatra always sounded kind of hissy and lacked a little clarity for my tastes. But do they sound tons better? Blow your socks off better? Well, not really, no.
Don’t get me wrong, they are certainly the best versions we’ve ever had, but why oh why were these albums not remixed for surround sound? They’re practically crying out for it! Autobahn was issued as a Quad 8-track in 1975. Could that not have been exploited here? It would have been so easy! And there would have been a real reason for fans—hint: it’s called a good value—to repurchase them in the multi-channel format. Man, I’d love to hear Computer World in 5:1 surround. Can you imagine how trippy that would sound? It just seems like a waste to me that they didn’t go the extra mile for one of the most seminal catalogs of 20th century pop music.
At least someone should consider putting out the quad version of Autobahn as a limited edition or something! The Kraftwerk remasters sound great, they really do, but I can’t help thinking that this was a real missed opportunity here.
Since Dangerous Minds seems to be trading the Stones for Krautrock (thanks, Brad Laner!), I thought I’d chime in with this BBC documentary, Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany:
Between 1968 and 1977 bands like Neu!, Can, Faust and Kraftwerk would look beyond western rock and roll to create some of the most original and uncompromising music ever heard. They shared one common goal—a forward-looking desire to transcend Germany?
