Been a fun filled week of flu, but that has been happily offset by some new music that’s simply not getting off my playlists.

XXYYXX is the name of 16 year old (!) producer, Marcel Everett and his music is fantastic; like the ebodied sound of a cocktail mixed one part joy, one part melancholy and two parts beauty. That, or I’m thinking about cocktails too much, but do check out the lad’s stuff.

Ooh… this one I really like. The Eagleman Stag (directed by Mikey Please) is a stop-motion short that tells the story of Peter Eagleman, who’s always lived with a obsessive predisposition towards time. Wonderful art direction, fantastic animation, a really great soundtrack; all this coupled with a well told story whose themes touches on time, subjectivity and even bits of existentialism… It’s pretty easy to see why this short has been recieving overwhelming acclaim of late.

Dunno why, but there’s a recurring moon thing going on here at the mo… Well, actually, there usually is anyway, but besides that point, here’s another moment from Apollo 16’s mission that NASA doesn’t promote often…

Going for some slightly abstract ones, each of varying medium. First is an animation of the track “Where Did the Night Go?” by Gil Scott-Heron (who I should make a note of checking out more of later).

Second, one in a series of semi-psychedelic watercolour animations by Matt Box based on influential skaters.

And lastly, this fluidly surreal short by Masanobu Hiraoka that evokes several impressions of Masaaki Yuasa films, but wholey unique as well.

Adventure Time Fan Art

Ghosts of Gemini

NASA have recently released several photos from their archives, taken during the flights of Gemini, the often overlooked tech testing phase that took place between the Mercury and the Apollo space program.

One haunting image in particular is that of doomed astronaut Ed White wrapped in shadows and looking uncannily like Brad Pitt for some reason (looked nothing like him in general). Anyhow, the rest of the images can be found here.

From the last company I’d have pegged to develop an awesome new technological advancement (though it kinda makes sense), Disney Research have released this video of their Touché interactive system that is both simple in it’s approach and incredibly versatile; by being applicable to almost any surface, be it water, wood or tasty, tasty human, the practical possibilities of this is huge.

Hell, the five examples they give at the end of this five minute video are amazing enough, but the more I think about it afterwards, the potential applications really do seem limitless. Check it.

I’m not even sure what you call this process of… er, using non-music based objects to create tunes; I’m sure there’s a term for it and I’m not thinking right today, but whatevers. It’s cool.

First off is the original DOOM video game theme played on eight floppy drives:

Old favourite one of Radiohead’s Nude on an array of old computer components:

And finally, I couldn’t figure out which video from these guy’s channel to choose from, but eventually settled on In the Hall of the Mountain King (though in retrospect, something mathematically Mozart would be wonderfully appropriate).

Either way, musical Tesla coils. Are. Awesome.

Christ, this video confirms the fundamental laws of awesome that Arnie should make a musical; or that this should be the blueprint for the upcoming remake I just read that they’re making (really?).

Also, of similar awesomeness is the Amazing Robocop Rap.

Am home early today thanks to the flu looking to do something vile to my body. But just as the night is darkest before the dawn, a new fucking Dark Knight Rises trailer has made my fevered evening more endurable. Unlike the latest Prometheus trailer (that’s rumoured to be filled to the brim with devil-worshiping spoilers), this one at first, seem like it’s gonna head into that territory but then, Christopher Nolan’s shining fucking name blazes across the screen and it almost mutates into this insanely pants tightening sense of ‘okay… fuck yes. This is gonna be awesome.’

That or the flu meds are finally starting to work.