We Are Augustines — Book of James
The National meets Arcade Fire, perhaps? All in all, “Book of James” is an uplifting tale of forgiveness. We Are Augustines is definitely the band to watch in 2011. Check out their debut album, Rise Ye Sunken Ships. Instant classic.
Oh Ye Denver Birds — Your Sacrifice
Australian music scene is the next big thing. Each of them had similarities in it’s exuberant/youthful tune. It’s why the country’s moved up quickly on my mental list. As to this band, Oh Ye Denver Birds, they’re not as straightforward as Jinja Safari, but rather falling into a slightly more relaxed groove. I’m really looking forward to their debut LP Good Ivy (rumored it will be released in early 2012, I’m super excited already).
Mister Heavenly — Pineapple Girl
Mister Heavenly is a legitimate supergroup. Islands’/The Unicorns’ front man (Nick Thornburn), Man Man’s front man (Ryan Kattner), and the drummer of Modest Mouse (Joe Plummer) created an oddly perfect harmony in this particular song. It’s an indie rock that is jovial and sweet in nature. Basically, an ear-pleasing & light-hearted song that you could play over and over without worrying you’ll bored to death by it.
For the past three months, I’ve been in intensive graphic design internship hunting. I hadn’t realized how much internships are so important on the employer’s point of view until now. People who had four or more internships on their résumé with an okay GPA may look better rather than people who had only one internship on their résumé with a killer GPA. Especially in my field, where GPA probably don’t matter that much.
There are a lot of advantages that you can extract from the internship,
Regarding the image I attached above, that’s my portfolio preview. I have this little trick to provide my portfolio cleverly in the early employment process: Employers loves to see your work as a whole. Most of the time, the people on the creative department don’t have much time on glancing/previewing on your work. So, rather than jumbling up all of your works in the attachment, you could:
This way gave me two internships right away. Awesome, right? Now, let’s hope I can secure another internship next summer abroad! Pray for me, peeps!
♫ Mister Heavenly — Pineapple Girl
I always wanted to make an article about These New Puritans for long. Unfortunately, due to the workload I’m currently handling, I only manage to snag a link from YouTube regarding their impressive performance at Summer Sonic Festival ‘08.
It’s the ritualistic drum beats that I love the most from this group. Thanks to Jack Barnett (vocals, guitar), who is responsible for most of These New Puritans’ amazing compositions and his twin brother George Barnett (drums, loops), who took control on those crazy cut-up intricate beats. They’re really good at making the waves so relentless; Changing in their speed and length, but always maintaining what I call, perfect imperfect tempo.
Just for the sake of their astonishing musicianship, there are two highlights that I recommend: First, Attack Music from the album Hidden, and second, Swords of Truth from the album Beat Pyramid. To be honest, they’re not suitable for everyone (I guess). But if you’re into tribal drums and art rock movement, These New Puritans is definitely for you.
Atlas Sound — Terra Incognita
My pair of ear constantly favored Atlas Sound over Deerhunter, so it’s pretty cool that the next chapter in the Bradford Cox saga is a new Atlas Sound album, called Parallax. The first song released off Parallax is called Terra Incognita. Layer upon layer of mood-enhancing effect and percussion is added until it blasts to a light psychedelic period of bliss. It’s really, really, really good.
I have this huge OCD problem that leads me to write more comfortably in English rather than in Indonesian. I love my language, I really do. In fact, I studied so hard I got 21 out of 25 correct answers back then on the SPMB (at least according to my university preparatory class’ solution). Talk about bragging, try to beat that up!
It’s just that, while I’m writing in Indonesian, I have an irresistible urge to write in a perfect form. Yes, I even cringed a bit whenever I wrote “nggak” instead of “tidak” just because I thought “nggak” was a little bit messy.
Q: “Then why don’t you do the formal writing in Indonesian?”
A: “Isn’t it too bizarre if you’re the only one who write in a formal way while the surrounding environment constantly using slangs/lingos?”
Not to mention the past, high school was even worse. If I decided to do something regularly (like reviews or school paperworks), I have to plan the writing method first so I wouldn’t find any loopholes in the future; Until I found out it’s very time consuming and ineffective when I got into the university. Thanks to you, chemical engineering assignments. To be frank, I still kind of inherit that trait; Did you notice it on my current blog posts?
That’s why I opted to write in English so, a) I can write more neatly without feeling awkward and b) I can practice my English. It’s a perfect solution.
I’m not a neat freak, I can be little disorganized and sometimes I left my room in a chaotic situation (although I tried to keep my room tidy whenever someone is coming), but when it came down to grammars, punctuations, etc.? I can be really hardcore.
♫ The Sugarcubes — Birthday
Disclaimer: I’m ranting.
Sometimes, I’d wish to be around with the people that have the same wavelength as I am. Well, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to be an elitist or anything; But being an artsy student in engineering environment is kind of tough. It’s hard to suppress my hunger, my need to talk, about art/design-related stuff that I wanted to share when most of the time people around here just constantly talk about renewable energy or such. No offense people.
Heck, let alone art/design-related stuff, questionable impressions regarding my favorite musics/movies like, “What kind of music is this?”, “I’ve never watched it before.”, “Your stuff is weird.”, “Why don’t we just listen to this rather than that?” are probably what people commonly have said to me whenever I tried to share it to them. (See? I’m not being an elitist at all, I even tried to share it without being a snob.)
Thank God I’m fortunate enough to have couple of friends who are willingly to hear my meaningless rants; It’s my fault for not trying to pursue a graphic design major in the first place anyway.
As for right now, I need to stop toying around and focus heavily on my portfolio, considering it’s what matter the most at the moment. Oh, and honing my English writing skill is important as well, because I want to have an exceptional in-depth master’s thesis about communication psychology in graphic design. Let’s see if I can enroll in RISD/CSM/LCC first! Adios!
♫ Andrew Bird — Plasticities
I can’t help myself but post another (amazing) illustration work again.
Illustration is one of those fields that requires a lot of right brain activity, it’s whether you’re good at it or you’re suck at it. That’s why I look up to people who are actually excels at it. Here, Robert Ball decided to bring fifty famous film badasses to print. Have a go for yourself and see how many you can name.
I fell in love the first time I saw Mr. Hipp’s work. As a graphic design enthusiast myself, I admire people who could manage color composition so neatly throughout their illustrations and Dan Hipp’s playful way to represent sci-fi epics from time to time never ceases to amaze me. If you’re interested seeing more of his work, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.
“Thursday”, a delightful short film by Matthias Hoegg, tells us an everyday love story in the not-so-distant future. This work recently honored with a BAFTA nomination in the Short Animation category.
I wanted to portray a futuristic world and add some friction, some everyday frustration that we experience when we interact with technology today, but also moments that make our mundane lives worthwhile.
Matthias Hoegg received his Master of Arts with honors from Royal College of Art, London.
Purity Ring — Belispeak
Alright, enough with my obsession to jubilant music, it’s time to move on to different material. This, I predict that Purity Ring is definitely going to be big really soon. If you like the kind of Gang Gang Dance or The Knife, then you’ll like this kind of music. It’s a perfect ghastly bubblegum-pop I must have said.
Let me introduce you my new beloved source of inspiration, The Big Picture. Basically, they summarize global events in vibrant oversized photographs. Although photojournalism isn’t really my thing, visual storytelling always interest me. Anyway, if it isn’t in your bookmarks, it should be right now.
Lord Huron — Into the Sun
I believe I’ve tried to listen to Lord Huron a year ago, but the internet connection back then was sluggish as hell. Then, after some music sharing experiences from a friend, I got (re)introduced to this Los Angeles-based band again. This group blends tropical drums, folk guitars, and reverb-affected vocals to create what I call, a sunny day music. Their debut single, Into the Sun, is very easy to ears but layered enough to be engaging. I’m really enjoying this, an awful lot.
What a fantastic attempt on creating a large scale ink drawing that is heavy architecturally-inspired by Joakim Dahlqvist. The excruciating detail of each artificial buildings reminds me the game of Where’s Waldo, except for grown-ups. If you want to see the full scale of the drawing, here you go, Piminski.
Joakim Dahlqvist received his Master of Architecture with a distinction from Architectural Association School of Architecture, London.
