A few weeks ago London-based illustrator and printmaker Richard Sanderson updated his website, adding some new work and a whole new shine to his portfolio. Richard had recently taken a break from freelance work, but he’s now “returned to the fold with renewed enthusiasm and a fresh perspective on all things illustrative” (as his bio puts it). This is great news as Richard is one of my favorite illustrator working today; I’m particularly fond of his gentle use of color and his ability to make illustrations that look both loose yet restrained. Take a look at his portfolio here or grab yourself a print at his shop – I’ve been particularly eyeing his Toybox print, a must for all Star Wars fans!
Philip
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Canon Blue is the music of Daniel James, an American musician who creates beautifully structured folktronica. He dabbles with dreamy melodies and displays a pretty great ear for what makes an upbeat pop song seem inspiring and fun. Back in 2007 he released his debut album Colonies on the Danish label Rumraket and it’s an absolute treat from start to finish. Impressively, Mr. James has written, recorded and played almost every instrument on this debut himself and has managed to get Grizzly Bear’s bassist Chris Taylor to mix the thing. For me, Colonies comes highly recommended and chances are that you’ll find something on their that grabs your attention and leaves you with a warm feeling of joy.
Fans of the aforementioned Grizzly Bear are sure to find some good things on here, and you’ll also find some nice influences from Daniel James’s label mates Efterklang in the mix as well. This is no accident considering that James can occasionally be found helping the band out on some of their live shows. Colonies is a great album and apparently a follow up is very close on the horizon. For now I’d recommend heading over to the Rumraket website and get your hands on The Halcyon EP which the label are giving away for free. It features the excellent track Ennui which is featured at the top of this post. Enjoy!
Philip
Although born in Kansas City, photographer J. Bennett Fitts now lives and works in LA. The other day I stumbled upon a great series of photos he produced entitled No Lifeguard On Duty. This body of work gives us an insight into some of the motel and public pools of the Los Angeles area, and explores the abandonment and decline of these sites.
Much of J Bennett Fitts’ work fits into a style of photography that really appeals to me. He seems to have an obsession with modern, artificial landscapes and as a photographer he’s taken the responsibility to document these parts of our culture. His series above catalogues these weird structures in their moment of decline; they now exist as purposeless forms carved into our surroundings, and he approaches them with a sense of formalism and a strictness that is clearly influenced by the likes of Bernd and Hilla Becher and Ed Ruscha’s photographic work. You can find more of his work on his website here.
Philip
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To some, Evan Abeele might be best known for his part in the amazing Canadian duo Memoryhouse alongside Denise Nouvion, yet Abeele also releases music under his own name. Here he creates wonderfully ambient scores which bring together elements of classical compistion with minimalist undertones. His bio describes his style perfectly as “evoking the sounds of Arvo Pärt by way of Boards of Canada”.
Last January he released a really nice EP of six compositions through his bandcamp page, as a way of getting some of the work he “felt needed to be released in some shape or form” out before he began focusing on his work with Memoryhouse. Each track on here is tender and restrained. It’s the kind of music that will have fans reaching for their musical dictionaries so that they can write about being “bathed in a sea of sonic tranquility” or about “exploring vast sonic landscapes”. I’ll attempt to avoid such clichés this time and just say, if you’re a fan of ambient music then the Lineage EP comes highly recommended.
Philip
It’s not too often that you’ll find people writing about roadways on The Fox Is Black yet I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to share with you this great initiative that the Norwegian government started working on back in 2005. This ongoing project is called The National Tourist Routes In Norway and its aim is to open up the stunning Norwegian landscape to tourists through a series of architectural viewpoints that enhance their surroundings.
It seems that more often than not rest-spots and viewpoints are functional yet mundane, yet here the government have really made an effort to create something that’s a little more special. To me, these architectural structures are stunning yet restrained. The government have worked with an array of talented architects who seem to respect their surroundings and have a desire to enhance the landscape for those who come to visit it. I’m particularly fond of the Aurland Lookout designed by Saunders & Wilhelmsen Arkitektur which is pictured at the top of this post. This structure lifts the viewer completely off the roadside and up past the trees, thus allowing them to be completely surrounded by the panorama of the fjord at Stegastein. It’s one of those places that you see and instantly want to visit.
Currently the route is comprised of 18 selected stretches from north to south of the county but it’s all part of a 15-year agenda set out by the government so we’ll probably see more amazing structures popping up along the country in the coming years. You can see a selection of the wonderful architecture on the Tourist Routes website or even start planning your trip to Norway.
Philip
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I don’t understand how music works – it’s what I like about it. I have no idea about the mechanics of it and what it’s made up of; to me that’s kind of the magic of it. Take the Dublin based duo Nouveaunoise for example; their music seems to be a jumble of sounds. Listen to any of their tracks and you’ll hear a combination of wonderful things all thrown into the mix. They use sampled percussion, complex electronic beats, real instruments and synthesizers all at once. They hurl it all together with a combination of push button samplers, real-time effects and general laptop wizardry. Common sense and old English proverbs about ‘too many cooks’ would tell you that this shouldn’t work and yet magically they seem to pull it off. Not only that, but they do so with panache, combining all these crazy elements with a skilled intricacy that creates something that sounds warm and organic. It’s a sound that’s difficult to achieve with electronic music, and yet they make it work.
Fans of Four Tet are bound to like their sound, and it’s apparent that other musicians like Caribou and Boards of Canada are also big influences for the guys. Last year they released their debut album, the terrific Paraphrase Accolade. You can download a copy of it on bandcamp, or pay a little extra and get a beautiful hardcopy for €8 (about $11). You should, because band member Conor Gaffney did a wonderful job on the CDs artwork (left), taking a cue from the old Blue Note records of the late fifties and early sixties. To me, those old record covers are the epitome of cool, so it makes perfect sense that a Nouveaunoise record should look the same way.
