Great couple days in the food ’n drinks department. My favourite night shop’s selling (get this) ‘Duff Beer’. Shit yeah! The crate says the beer you thought you could only get at Moe’s. Pret-ty, pret-ty, pret ty cool huh? Not two days later I find out there’s one (1!!!) video store in town that’s still selling Ben & Jerry’s Half Baked icecream. Something to do with the owner of that shop buying the icecream all the way in Belgium… I’m not going to tell which video store it is, but they who must eat some now at least know there’s still some left. To quote the legendary Ice Cube ‘it was a good week’.
Wholy Moly! Suus and me entered the Blue Band ‘gezonde vetten’ competition and are nominated to compete with two other entries to win the Folder Challenge Award, an anual advertising award. Pretty exciting, especially since this is the first time we even participated on such a project. Our graphic approach must have worked somehow pretty well in the wild world of adverts. In a funny lil’ film made by GGTV videoproducties you can see us telling about how we got the idea and goof around in the background a little.
These are five records I designed the album covers of this year. They are Choca Alazaba’s ‘Reverse Bad Energy’ / The New Earth Group Prouctions, Benjamin Herman’s ‘Blue Sky Blonde / DOX Records (which became the best selling jazz record of the year thank you very much), Sir Ian’s ‘Apathology’ / Dying Giraffe Recordings, Rosa Ensemble’s ‘No Ark Dead Eel’ / Dying Giraffe Recordings and Hidde van Schie’s musical alias The 21st Century’s ‘Nocturnal Tellurian’. The last three are to be offically released in 2010 but they’re already done and sent out to be reviewed, so here’s a sneak peak anyway.
I’d like to say they’re my Album Top 5 of the Year, but that would be too much of a coincidence. They are, however, great records all five of ’em! So be on the lookout! Suus and I also did the design for the new The New Earth Group album ‘Eurafricarabia’ this year, which is to be released february 20 in Rotown (Rotterdam) and will be released through Excelsior Recordings.
I suppose this is my last post for the year, so I leave you all with the almost genuine dutch fireworks slogan: ‘You are a cunt, if you with fireworks stunt!’ and hopefully see you all in 2010!
Quite some time ago I posted something about an amazing song and music video I had seen when I had stayed in with the flu and instead of working had been watching tv for one or two days. The song was Arctic Monkeys’ I bet you look good on the dancefloor and I remember my friend —and quite the music buff— Niels Post commenting ‘I don’t get it, it’s just four blokes on a stage’ to that post. But it was exactly that, or the way they pulled that combined with a greedy look of ambition in their singers eyes, what I had liked so much about them. (plus they reminded me somewhat of The Feelies, which is always a good thing).
Couple of years later, a couple of days ago, photographer and friend Pim Top showed me this new A.M. video to their new song ‘Cornerstone’. Now I had not really been following the career of the monkeys, occasionally I had heard some of their albums because Joep Jacobs played those albums like there was no tomorrow, here in the old studio, but I had only found their sound ‘way too ADD’ for me.
This new song Cornerstone however, got me as psyched as the time I first saw ‘I bet you look…’. And the video’s just beautiful. Lots of lo-budget stuff is just lame, art school, fashionist thrash, this thing now really underlines the notion of ‘less is more’ as gestures and motions become truly meaningful, in a vivid manner inclusive to the most vulnerable irony or sleaziest, foulest romantic lyricism.
