tiananmen square dance //

While researching known chillwaver Krusht’s recently released single from his upcoming album Hyperchill, we happened to cross the six degrees of separation between us and the artist that did the cover artwork for “Everything Is Beautiful”, Samantha Rehark. That Krusht single is really, really good, by the way. Anyways, Rehark is involved in a plethora of artistic media, including but not limited to cut-and-paste collages, digital rendering, photography, publication, and still-life-modern-art-type stuff. Let the record reflect that we’re not professionally qualified critics at all, but we do know what we like, and we like Samantha Rehark’s work, especially the chopped-up stuff. Mixing found graphics, retro photographs, and old-world symbolism, she composes pictographs that speak to a fantasized version of our shared cultural memories. The pieces from her Poptropica line appear to be gigantic, vast and detailed, like a hipsteriffic stained glass version of a Hieronymus Bosch piece, but we personally prefer the simpler, bite-sized works from her Cosmic Cult of Costume Children series. Check out a small sampling of some of Samantha Rehark’s vintage pieces that stood out to us below, and then do tha right thing, and check out the rest of her posted work, some of which is for sale here. I think we may have just found the cover artwork for “Tsq Vol II-8”!

I love it when giant soulless multinational corporations actually employ people with a nose for good design in their marketing and advertising departments. Granted, rarely does this happen, and neither am I a graphic arts expert, by any stretch. That said, via Comical Concept, a relatively humorous vector art site by Nathan Batson, I discovered this page from last year about a project in which designers were challenged to reduce corporate branding to terms that were as minimalist as possible. Removing all loud graphics, unnecessary color, and space-filling measures made for some sleek and interesting results. The art I posted here are just some of the examples, so be sure to check out the others here.

(A2591.COM)

(ANTREPO4.COM)

(ANTREPOSHOP.COM)

I discovered Ice Cream Social’s music via NOLOVE Recordings, a blog in Spanish run by a fellow who is quite the guru of various sidelined genres of modern artistic music. Right now, he seems to be on a bit of a post-rock kick, but earlier this summer, he compiled three brilliant mixes called the “Chillwave Surface” series. Featured on the third mix, Ice Cream Social’s song “Underwater” bewildered me, short as it was. More like a segue than a movement, “Underwater” is like a quick and vivacious dip in a crystal clear island pool, and it perfectly captures that spirit. The song dives right into the thick of it, splashing out fresh and clean tones, bubbles continuously meandering up rapidly, bringing with them to the surface tiny bits of the world below. Ice Cream Social’s “Underwater” reminded me of what Ilkae would sound like if they tried today’s more earthy sounding IDM on for size.

Available as a free download via Ice Cream Social’s Bandcamp, “Fathoms” (one of a handful of mini-albums and EPs by the artist) seems to be loosely erected around the central concept of places. Reminding me specifically of video game worlds, each track (sans one of them) has a place or a mission for a name (i.e. “Galaxy”, “Jungle”, “Boss”), which helps quite a bit with the imagery. Each track is exceptionally short, as in no-more-than-two-minutes-tops short, but in my opinion, this keeps the slice of life that we are able to experience vicariously through the song concentrated and rich. The music is upbeat, beat-centric, full of washes of warped downtempo synth, and completely devoid of vocals, so expect something that could easily fit into the chillwave or IDM genres. The entire outing is no more than fifteen minutes long, but creates such a refreshingly rich experience within that short time that you’ll definitely kick yourself if you pass it up. Do tha right thing and download Ice Cream Social’s “Fathoms” here, and, if you like it, maybe download another release or two and bust out some dimes if you can for this prolific electronic creator.

MP3 Download of “Underwater”, by Ice Cream Social

MP3 Download of “Galaxy”, by Ice Cream Social