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Biography
from last.fm
 With affirmation of their brilliance in from their homeland, being awarded the critically acclaimed Australian Music Award Cloud Control are set to unleash their stellar collection of quirky layered harmonic psyche-pop on the rest of the world.

Cloud Control signed to bespoke independent label Infectious Music in 2010, and very quickly the tightly packed four-piece from the picturesque and rugged terrains of Australia’s Blue Mountains started to turn heads with the NME claiming “We’ve got a new bunch of favourite fuzzlings, and their name is Cloud Control” and noted BBC Radio 1 D.J Nick Grimshaw hailing Bliss Release the bands debut long-player “perfect for summer time”.

The first part 2011 has seen Cloud Control complete a string of live shows on both sides of the Atlantic, including a grueling nine show campaign at SXSW in Austin Texas and support slots in the UK with Noah & the Whale, Mona and the Naked and Famous. During this first visit to Europe, respected Dutch music title Oor Magazine noted “Cloud Control is setting a foundation for an undoubtedly successful music year for them in Europe. Let The Vaccines, Mona and the rest fight over being newcomer of the year. Here in Paradiso stood one of the festival hits of 2011.”

Returning to Australia in March to play two sold-out headline shows the band were specially requested by Foo Fighters to support them in a one off charity concert for Queensland Flood Relief.

With their amps still steaming Cloud Control jetted back to the UK for their debut headline tour in April, which ended triumphantly in front of a sold-out crowd at venue XOYO in London’s East End. And it seems as the weeks continue to unfold towards the UK & EU release of ‘Bliss Release’ on May 23rd, more and more people are professing their love for the group, including Huw Stephens from BBC Radio 1 who tweeted “Watching Cloud Control filling the breathtaking Koko venue with their stomping harmonious beauty” and Drowned In Sound who declared “Cloud Control have made a tremendously enjoyable album.”

Keep a close eye on Cloud Control this summer who play a slew of festival dates that already include Great Escape, Hop Farm and Field Day Festivals in the UK and the likes of Lowlands, London Calling, Hurricane & Southside and Les Rock Dans Tous Ses Etats in Europe.

Cloud Control are Alister Wright (guitar/lead vocals), Jeremy Kelshaw (bass) and siblings Heidi Lenffer (keyboards/vocals) and Ulrich Lenffer (drums).
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_Biography
written by Jenny Brown on jennybrownart.com
in search of sun cups at night
We spent a lot of time debating whether or not the blackened landscape was beautiful or horrific. My opinion kept changing daily. I had gotten the idea to put my bright blue wool socks on one morning… I thought they might cheer me and everyone else up, but I was wrong. Even in times like these, quick fixes are still quick fixes, and I never wore them again. I think everybody knew there was nothing to be done but to take stock of our new surroundings and accept them. Nobody really wanted to be there, what choice did we have?

Exhausted, we spent long days dusting snow off the frozen ground and trying to dig holes in it. I was put in charge of maintaining an abandoned free-standing chimney that must have been attached to a house at one time. One day when I was wading through the bramble that had grown around it, I decided to stick my hands in the opening of the chimney to see what I could find… I pulled out a curious collection of items: a frozen and dried lime, a dirty sponge, some nails, a hairbrush. I wasn’t sure what to do with them or why they were there… I had hoped for something simple… a bundle of photographs, maybe a book? I spent long hours lining the objects up on the ground in different orders and looking at them to try and figure out how they fit together.

Night time was spent making escape plans, though we all admitted our new world was almost beautiful in the dark… the sky was always starless and velvety, and the remnants of the forest became a charming menagerie of tunnels and hiding places. Fact was nothing but fiction in these moments and we sometimes were hesitant to sleep because we didn’t want to miss looking at our surroundings in the night light. It was the only time I felt calm and hopeful. As the sun rose each day, we found ourselves silently wishing that all that imagined beauty from the night would really be before us.
Check out more of Jenny's work on www.jennybrownart.com
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10 simple ways to save yourself from messing up your life
  1. Stop taking so much notice of how you feel. How you feel is how you feel. It’ll pass soon. What you’re thinking is what you’re thinking. It’ll go too. Tell yourself that whatever you feel, you feel; whatever you think, you think. Since you can’t stop yourself thinking, or prevent emotions from arising in your mind, it makes no sense to be proud or ashamed of either. You didn’t cause them. Only your actions are directly under your control. They’re the only proper cause of pleasure or shame.
  2. Let go of worrying. It often makes things worse. The more you think about something bad, the more likely it is to happen. When you’re hair-trigger primed to notice the first sign of trouble, you’ll surely find something close enough to convince yourself it’s come.
  3. Ease up on the internal life commentary. If you want to be happy, stop telling yourself you’re miserable. People are always telling themselves how they feel, what they’re thinking, what others feel about them, what this or that event really means. Most of it’s imagination. The rest is equal parts lies and misunderstandings. You have only the most limited understanding of what others feel about you. Usually they’re no better informed on the subject; and they care about it far less than you do. You have no way of knowing what this or that event really means. Whatever you tell yourself will be make-believe.
  4. Take no notice of your inner critic. Judging yourself is pointless. Judging others is half-witted. Whatever you achieve, someone else will always do better. However bad you are, others are worse. Since you can tell neither what’s best nor what’s worst, how can you place yourself correctly between them? Judging others is foolish since you cannot know all the facts, cannot create a reliable or objective scale, have no means of knowing whether your criteria match anyone else’s, and cannot have more than a limited and extremely partial view of the other person. Who cares about your opinion anyway?
  5. Give up on feeling guilty. Guilt changes nothing. It may make you feel you’re accepting responsibility, but it can’t produce anything new in your life. If you feel guilty about something you’ve done, either do something to put it right or accept you screwed up and try not to do so again. Then let it go. If you’re feeling guilty about what someone else did, see a psychiatrist. That’s insane.
  6. Stop being concerned what the rest of the world says about you. Nasty people can’t make you mad. Nice people can’t make you happy. Events or people are simply events or people. They can’t make you anything. You have to do that for yourself. Whatever emotions arise in you as a result of external events, they’re powerless until you pick them up and decide to act on them. Besides, most people are far too busy thinking about themselves (and worry what you are are thinking and saying about them) to be concerned about you.
  7. Stop keeping score. Numbers are just numbers. They don’t have mystical powers. Because something is expressed as a number, a ratio or any other numerical pattern doesn’t mean it’s true. Plenty of lovingly calculated business indicators are irrelevant, gibberish, nonsensical, or just plain wrong. If you don’t understand it, or it’s telling you something bizarre, ignore it. There’s nothing scientific about relying on false data. Nor anything useful about charting your life by numbers that were silly in the first place.
  8. Don’t be concerned that your life and career aren’t working out the way you planned. The closer you stick to any plan, the quicker you’ll go wrong. The world changes constantly. However carefully you analyzed the situation when you made the plan, if it’s more than a few days old, things will already be different. After a month, they’ll be very different. After a year, virtually nothing will be the same as it was when you started. Planning is only useful as a discipline to force people to think carefully about what they know and what they don’t. Once you start, throw the plan away and keep your eyes on reality.
  9. Don’t let others use you to avoid being responsible for their own decisions. To hold yourself responsible for someone else’s success and happiness demeans them and proves you’ve lost the plot. It’s their life. They have to live it. You can’t do it for them; nor can you stop them from messing it up if they’re determined to do so. The job of a supervisor is to help and supervise. Only control-freaks and some others with a less serious mental disability fail to understand this.
  10. Don’t worry about about your personality. You don’t really have one. Personality, like ego, is a concept invented by your mind. It doesn’t exist in the real world. Personality is a word for the general impression that you give through your words and actions. If your personality isn’t likeable today, don’t worry. You can always change it, so long as you allow yourself to do so. What fixes someone’s personality in one place is a determined effort on their part—usually through continually telling themselves they’re this or that kind of person and acting on what they say. If you don’t like the way you are, make yourself different. You’re the only person who’s standing in your way.
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I stumbled upon Melissa Kretschmer's work on booooooom.com.  For those of you looking for some new inspiration, booooooom.com is fantastic for modern artists.  They are always updating on their website daily.  Now Melissa here, in her Plane Series, gave me a tremendous sense of calm.  Having a very stressful day, coming across her work was an amazing treat.  I love her movement here, the black boxes are obvious the first focal point of moment but it's not overbearing, we notice that are eyes are taking us somewhere however, the yellow boxes and stalling us from moving outside of the pieces. 
This piece here the black bars keep you here keeps you centered, while the white lines leads you out.  I love how energetic this one is to me.
This one, the black bars keeps you trapped, but in a peaceful way.  I don't know much about abstract art, I only took one class o it so far but from what I learn it's more about how you feel in each painting, it doesn't matter what it is about because everyone can feel something different.
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As I've been procrastinating on my painting, I stumbled upon this beautiful reminder as pushing yourself through those creative blocks, even if you don't do something good, it's important to get that creative energy flowing.  As I speak I'm getting off my comfy seat and starting to apply paint to my canvas

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As another holiday came and went, we are finishing up this year with one more to go.  This is the time where we come up with resolutions, goals....  It's amazing how the turning of the year, which is just another day, feels like a turning of the mind.  What are you new goals of the year? 
Some say how to you spend your new years eve is setting up kharma for the year to come.  For the first time, I will be spending it meditating.  After a chaotic year of changes this has been, I feel, spending it meditating is rather suiting. 
_from last.fm
L.A. native Henry Laufer, the 21-year-old producer better known as Shlohmo, is a lo-fi beat junkie and field-recording enthusiast, whose crackling, low-BPM compositions update Boards of Canada’s filmstrip-soundtrack wooziness.

An LA native, Laufer grew up listening to “stuff like DJ Shadow, Amon Tobin, M83 stuff with some sort of cinematic vision.” He started making beats when he was 14, but “didn’t really do it with any sort of purpose until I was like 17 or 18. That was also around the time he and his friends, already fans of Flying Lotus, discovered Low End Theory. Shlohmo has rocketed onto our radar screen in recent months with his lo-fi, psychedelic mix of abstract hip-hop, bouncy synth-funk, breezy trip-hop, and what sounds like lost Mo’ Wax gems from an alternate future.

His tracks swarm from dirty textures, strange sounds and obscured samples. It’s not hip-hop what you hear, but the echoes are clearly there.

He also part-runs the WEDIDIT Collective.

His Shlo-fi EP is available for free download at Error Broadcast label website.
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Purity Ring is a new project started by Corin Roddick of GOBBLE GOBBLE, along with vocalist Megan James. "Ungirthed" is the first single from their project. -last.fm


Sorry that I failed to put this up on Monday.  The holidays are coming and time is getting busy, well work is busy.  Hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas.  It's funny how the meaning changes the older you get and family and friends drift off onto there own chosen path.  Christmas can be a very lonely holiday, if you let it.  

I'm excited with Purity Ring's direction off this 7".  It's very dark and dream state.  Just like my state of mind during these holidays.  :)  Enjoy the tunes, I will put up a list of my favorite albums this year soon!
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You can fix anything, even a broken heart.-Jewels Foster
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Asap Rocky gave me the same vibe as G-funk did back in the early nineties .  His beats are easily captivating and forgiving for his vulgarity.  I feel Asap deserves the credit for hip hop that is more raw, real, and so obviously not over produced.  I think we will be hearing more of ASAP, asap!
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_by Jonah Samson www.coolhunting.com
Jessica Eaton's series, "Cubes for Albers and LeWitt" may be highly technical and conceptual, but the end result is dizzyingly beautiful. Based on Joseph Albers' focus on the "discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect," Eaton's images add "multiple exposures and colored lights" to plain, monochromatic cubes to create enchanting graphics.

The photographer starts with a set of cubes painted only white, black and gray, then shoots them under red, green and blue gels to capture the vibrant final pictures. The reflective value of the cubes controls levels of light and dark, while the layering of the primary colors creates a broad range of hues. One may be shocked to realize that the resulting images, made using only Eaton's 4x5 camera, have not been digitally manipulated.
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Eaton's work recently appeared on the cover of Art News magazine in "The New Photography," and she is currently showing at the FOAM museum's "Talent 2011" show, at the Musée d'art Contemporain de Montréal for the 2011 Quebéc Triennial, and at Higher Pictures in New York.

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Hope everyone had a fantastic weekend!  Those who are following my blog (thank you :)) every Monday I'm trying to post a new band that I really enjoy.  I also add  a short bio on them because for how much music is out there these days, how much do we really know about these bands?  Hope you enjoy.  Phantogram's Nightlife ep has a nice taste of trip-hop, which I so miss, along with a healthy electrobeat pulse.  It's like drinking a mocha with an orange twist.  Smooth with just right amount of zest.  


__By Zach Kelly; November 1, 2011 pitchfork.com
Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter, the New York-based electronic pop duo better known as Phantogram, make music refreshingly disinterested in pulling punches. With Eyelid Movies, their debut full-length from last year, the rhythm-heavy foundations and a twilight-lit mix of melody felt streamlined, yet still demonstrated vision and character. Taking cues from trip-hop and dream pop (Portishead seem to be an important reference point), they never seemed shy about being upfront with their influences. Despite cryptically nicknaming their sound "street beat," the tag made some sense-- the hard-edged urgency of said beats undercutting such lush romanticism felt perfectly suited for those long, late staggers home. So it's with the appropriately titled Nightlife EP that we find the twosome refining and tweaking some of the ideas put forth on its debut without entirely resting on its laurels, and offering a few of the band's best songs to date.

In a press release, Carter explained that Nightlife "couldn't have been written anywhere other than in clubs and hotel rooms during this experience we've been having for the last year or two," describing the time Phantogram has spent promoting Eyelid Movies. The nocturnal states that often accompany life on the road have proved beneficial in the case of Nightlife, convincing the duo to push their music outside of their collective headspace and into a more social setting. Bands trying to provide an honest snapshot of a night out on the town often fall short by focusing solely on the highs of the party (those are included here too, of course), but Phantogram seem to find just as much clarity in the comedown ("It's a new day, and I got new ways of turning into stone," goes the chorus on "Turning Into Stone"). As much as you can move to Nightlife, moments of austerity and romance are still guiding lights here-- when measured correctly, Barthel and Carter are often able to craft appealing, ambidextrous tracks that feel suited for dancefloors as well as the backs of cabs.

Part of this notably animated reupholstering likely has something to do with that fact that Phantogram have been performing live as a trio, with Tim Oakley handling drum duties. And while Carter is in charge of all things drum-oriented on Nightlife, the temporary change-up clearly made its mark, as Phantogram sounds more like a bonafide rock band and less like the flimsy pop act they could've dissolved into. Take single "Don't Move", a dance track that feels perfectly proportioned for starry eyes in close quarters. But look closer, and you'll find a proper heir to Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me-styled bombast, complete with horn clippings, Middle Eastern vocal samples, and marching band drum rolls. And while the Mazzy Star-esque coda that reduces the appealing bass knocks on "Turning Into Stone" into something plush and more intimate might not be necessary, it all suggests that this is a more realized pop voice willing to expand, experiment with and reinvigorate their sound.

Not everything here is as compelling, but the true takeaways (the first three cuts, including the outsized, life-affirming "16 Years") are well worth the misguided ambition and watered down moments that inhabit the EP's second half. Closer "A Dark Tunnel" means to shade the buzzing urgency of Return to Cookie Mountain-era TV on the Radio but misses the mark; squint hard enough and you'll see that "Nightlife" probably isn't going to succeed in any context outside of a CW show. Unfortunately, this means that, at only six songs, Nightlife's batting average takes a considerable dip. But what remains is good enough to encourage you to root for Phantogram, and to really hold onto those few great tracks that you'll be taking home with you at the end of the night.

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