Recommended: Dimlite’s new album ‘Grimm Reality’

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I don’t remember how I came across Dimlite’s new album Grimm Reality, but I’m certainly happy I did. The songs he’s produced for this record feel like they’re influenced heavily by the past, bits of jazz and hip-hop, weird guitar rock, experimentations with sound. And though that could be a hot mess, somehow Dimlite makes it all work in on chaotic yet cohesive mess. I’m usually shit at describing music, so here’s what Stones Throw had to say:

Titling his third album Grimm Reality might seem to point to a new autobiographical streak in this Swiss musician, but that would be too simple. It’s up to the listener to piece together a version of Grimm’s reality from mere hints: the wistful romance of “XY,” the tension and release of “New, Better Pain” and soon through every perfectly poised moment on this record. Likewise, looking for the remains of a hip-hop influence, or a connection to what’s happening on modern-day dance floors, won’t yield much here. The precedents that spring to mind are all cherished outsiders – Neu, The Residents, Beefheart, Philip Glass – footnotes in mainstream music history but, in an altogether preferable parallel universe, titans of the recent past.

It’s the swirling mixture of sounds that really give the album it’s character. I’ve been listening to the new album from RareBit (who’s track we posted last week) and it’s got a similar sound, if that’s even possible. It’s this melange of styles and historical sounds that are weaved together to create a new, cohesive something. I’d definitely recommend picking up this album if you like what you hear in the track above, titled XY.

Bobby

Work Drugs Cover Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’

Over the weekend I discovered the music of Philadelphia natives Work Drugs. Last year, the band played support to Two Door Cinema Club during their North American tour, and during that time, they listened to a lot of Adele. After traveling 8,000 miles with little more then Adele’s album for company, the band aptly decided to pay tribute to the English singer by covering her track Rolling in the Deep.

I really like what they do to the song – stripping it back until it’s barely recognizable and then feeding it through a filter of their own unique smooth-fi sound. I think it works really well and it’s nice to hear such a fresh take on a track that has seen a lot of covers and remixes over the past few months. Make sure to check out more music from Work Drugs here on their Bandcamp page.

Philip

The fragility of efficiency: Tensegrity lights by Michal Maciej Bartosik

A few years ago, I came across a photo of a lighting system designed by Michal Maciej Bartosik, although I didn’t know it at the time because the photo was uncredited. “Who did this?” I didn’t figure it out then, but the smart use of fluorescent tubes as structural components in a glowing dome stuck with me. Years later, I’m happy to have figured out who made it, and just how talented he is. Michal Maciej Bartosik studied architecture (and now lives) in Canada. A newer light sculpture/structure of his employs a structural principle popularized by Buckminster Fuller: Tensegrity.

Tensegrity has always made me a little nervous. It’s a very efficient way to hold something up, but there’s no redundancy: every member of the structure is critical to keep the structure standing. If a single cable snaps, it can cause the whole structure to collapse. So while I think these light sculptures are amazing, I have a hard time figuring out what happens when one of the tubes burns out.

Alex

The Desktop Wallpaper Project featuring Denise Nouvion: Day 5

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We’ve reached the end of our beautiful ride with Denise Nouvion and her lovely photos, but I have an extra surprise in store. Along with her final wallpaper, a beautiful image of a polaroid of a bike, we have a brand new track to preview from her the band she’s in, Memoryhouse. Pretty cool, if you ask me. I want to give a huge thanks to Denise for working with me on this. I think her images are lovely and I’m so happy they’ve been added to our pool of creative desktops.

You can click here to see the other days:
Denise Nouvion: Day 1
Denise Nouvion: Day 2
Denise Nouvion: Day 3
Denise Nouvion: Day 4

Bobby

Microbiology: It’s Pretty!

These delicate and “oooooh pretty” glass sculptures are actually quite terrifying. Why? Because they represent some very nasty stuff– bugs- that have cause a lot of people a lot of pain. From top to bottom, Luke Jerram has made for us the SARS corona virus, HIV and (my personal favorite) a bacteriophage. Bacteriophages work by attaching to the surface of bacteria, drilling through the bacteria’s wall and injecting genetic material from the portion of the bacteriophage that looks like a head. It’s like a terrifying, microscopic hybrid of a spider, a needle, and the baby head from Toy Story.

It is significant that these are made of glass, and not something else, for a few reasons. For starters, science labs use a lot of glass. Not as much as they used to, since disposable plastics have invaded many bench tops, but glassblowing used to be an indispensable skill for microbiologists. Another reason, and I did not realize this until I read it on Jerram’s website, but viruses are too small to have any color. That is, the wavelength of light is larger than a virus. All the color on the images from electron microscopes is made up: some are colored for scientific reasons and others are colored just to look pretty. So even though the viruses rendered in glass are in ways more accurate, they’re also, in a strange way,  prettier.

Editor’s note: Related but different, here’s a great piece on the micro bacteria which lives on the human body, and how they outnumber your cells by ten to one / Found via Kottke

Alex