Cool Hunting
| 22 June 2006view entries from: this week | this month | view previous day | view next day |
American Express Butterfly Card
by Evan Orensten
American Express just introduced their new Butterfly Card, a foldable card and keychain carrier available to all of their Gold Card holders.
Similar to the Discover 2GO Card, the concept is to make taking (and therefore using) your card as convenient as possible. Since most people use some sort of key chain it's a logical choice to design around.
The card can be handled like a standard card, left halfway in the case with the magnetic strip exposed, or folded up in the case and slipped easily in your pocket, purse or on your key chain.
Also on CH: American Express Red Card
via JK On the Run
Skull Sponge
by SummerSeventySix
Yeah, I hate washing-up too, but at least now we can indulge our skull-fetish while doing the dishes. $6 from Scandinavian Details. They also have heart-shaped ones, if you're a lover and not a fighter.
via Crib Candy
Gore
by Ami Kealoha
Gore, the kaleidoscopic photo collage that's equal parts documentary project and art book by New York noise band Black Dice and their collaborator, photographer Jason Frank Rothenberg, gets a launch tomorrow 23 June 2006 at New York's New Museum. Featuring Rothenberg's dreamy anonymous landscapes and snapshot-like portraits interspersed with (and integrated into) cutouts of porn, candy wrappers, '70s-era advertisements, and other ephemera, the book shows the influence of member and fine artist Bjorn Copeland. The 50-odd pages of psychedelia—from High Times worthy marijuana spreads to a recurring eyeball theme—are not unlike listening the orchestrated cacophony of Black Dice's music itself. If you can't make it to the party, get the book from the New Musuem, D.A.P., or Amazon.
Also on Cool Hunting: United Bamboo's After Ever Tees
Dani Siciliano: Slappers
by Ami Kealoha
A frequent collaborator of UK pop-click producer (and CH favorite) Matthew Herbert, the talented vocalist Dani Siciliano returns with her second solo album, the beautifully minimal Slappers. Herbert’s influence here is clear (whether or not he actually produced this record isn't), but Slappers has its own distinctive sound as well.
Both Herbert and Siciliano have the rare ability to successfully fuse pop and experimental music. But where he tends to make big music with his little sounds, she makes little music with hers. Working with limited sound palettes and lots of space, Siciliano crafts sparse and raw pop songs dotted with striking vocal harmonies that momentarily surface and recede like time-lapse films of blossoming flowers.
With classical, jazz, and electronic credibility, it’s not surprising that—without losing the cohesiveness of her sound—Siciliano dabbles in new forms on this album, most prominently in the country blues-influenced “Why Can’t I Make You High.” Like Björk’s Vespertine, the album is both intricate and intimate, Siciliano’s vocals often feel like she's whispering in your ear. Some songs, without seeming incomplete, give the refreshing impression of being unfinished, like a glimpse of a fleeting thought echoing and deteriorating, while others pulse with an almost-danceable electro thump. Preorder it from Soul Seduction.
Also on Cool Hunting: Herbert Scale, DJ Scribe
Battuta: The Zingaro Equestrian Theatre
by Ted Cahill
French "cavalier" poet and performer Bartabas combines an unimaginable hybrid of horses, horsemen, musicians, images, and dance under the roof of one virtual stable/stadium to create "Battuta," a wild performance art experience on the fence between popular and high art. In this new creation inspired by culture of "les Tziganes" or gypsies, Bartabas, with his troop Zingaro examines the infinite poetry of travel, along with its accompanying freedoms and the danger those freedoms can induce, in a 90-minute performance that hypnotizes the audience to the point of vertigo. Opening 29 June 2006, Battuta takes place nightly through 27 July 2006 at the Festival d'Avignon in France.
