These New York experimentalists have followed up their much loved debut Mirrored without de facto front-man Tyondai Braxton. And while Braxton’s absence certainly makes for a different experience on Gloss Drop, the trio confidently marches onward with the aid of electro-rock pioneer Gary Numan, Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino, Boredoms’ Yamantaka Eye, and Chilean producer Matias Aguayo providing vocals. On “Ice Cream”, stilted guitars adorned with cartoon-y blips and beeps present a poppy revision of the group’s gonzo instrumentals from their earliest EPs. Meanwhile, Yamantaka Eye’s singing on “Sundome” marks perhaps the most surreal moment on the album — which is saying a lot, given Gloss Drop’s nonstop teeter toward chaos. Amid twinkling electronics, Eye’s almighty voice is digitally distorted to evoke a feeling that seems both deific and dystopian. On instrumental tracks, such as “Futura”, slick riffs befitting some spy film meet foreboding organs before giving way to tropical accents. The effect is both confusing and mesmerizing — a constant clash of sleek, sinister, and sunny moods that pervades the entire record.

Buy this at Other Music or iTunes. After the jump, check out the video for “Ice Cream”, featuring Matias Aguayo.
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Jacob Permutter placed fourth in the portrait category of our 3rd annual Global Travel Photo Contest. He is a photographer and filmmaker based in London. His photographic work includes 88 Days, a photo-essay shot in the US, paying homage to Robert Frank’s The Americans, which was exhibited in London. Jacob is currently editing images from a recent two-month trip through India. His latest short film, French Exchange, shot in Dijon, is in post-production. “I love working in different countries. The difference in locations and people waken the senses and provide an exotic and exciting platform to tell human stories.”

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George Simhoni placed fourth in the general category of our 3rd annual Global Travel Photo Contest. He has been recognized as a leader in the photography field throughout his award winning career. “If I can stop someone and give them a momentary thoughtful pause, a smile, or a thought, then I have accomplished my mission.”

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The Japanese comics known as manga can be repurposed in any number of ways. From Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s emotive everyday characters to Naoko Takeuchi’s “magical girl” super-heroines, there is seemingly endless variety in the current offerings of the country’s illustrated tradition. Rarely, though, does the form break so completely from the conventions of plot, structure, and characterization as in the work of Yuichi Yokoyama. Instead, the celebrated artist tends to focus on form itself.
     In the brand new English translation of his latest graphic novel Garden, published by PictureBox, Yokoyama constructs a fantasyland of geometric shapes and mechanized systems that bring to mind what might result if a Conceptual sculptor in the mold of Claes Oldenburg was hired to design a children’s playscape. Yokoyama’s garden abandons shrubs and flowers in favor of materials evoking modern industries. He fills the pages with disassembled airplanes and stacks of boats; conical mountains of paper and buildings made from cloth.
     Odd it may be, but what the artist seems to be drawing on these pages is an equivalence between the products of nature that would occupy a more Edenic garden and the machines that have come to inform contemporary living. It’s a connection both in design and mystique. Specimens from either group can appear to operate independently, managed by interior forces which make them all the more remarkable to those lacking knowledge of their inner workings.
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Is the small house the new McMansion? With our diminishing faith in the economy and growing passion for sustainability, big, splashy houses have lost much of their luster and small, uniquely-designed homes are becoming increasingly desirable. Mimi Zeiger’s book “Micro Green: Tiny Houses in Nature” collects some innovative new designs that are small in scale but not it attitude.
     Short of not building anything new at all, building at a smaller scale is the surest way to reduce a building’s environmental impact. Smaller buildings use less materials and energy, and are less disruptive to native ecologies. Small houses call on designers for expert space planning. And they call on the people living inside of it to make some significant lifestyle adjustments, like using a single space for multiple purposes, and keeping and storing fewer things. There’s simply no room for dining rooms, linen closets, and hot tubs. These homes also require a fundamental emotional shift, accepting that a small house doesn’t compromise one’s identity or quality of life. In that sense small house living has a lot in common with apartment living, something that city-dwellers are already accustomed to.

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Kevin Greenblat placed third in the portrait category of our 3rd annual Global Travel Photo Contest. Kevin is an award winning photographer and graphic designer who has lived in Austin, Texas for the past fifteen years. Though he photographs people and places all over the world, these days finds himself especially drawn to capturing the lives of people in Louisiana and West Texas.

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Rick Lew placed third in the general category of our 3rd annual Global Travel Photo Contest. Rick is an editorial and advertising photographer based in New York City. As a contributing Photographer for Condé Nast Traveler, Lew has photographed over thirty feature stories in over twenty five countries, not including the dozens of other countries he has traveled and photographed on his own. Italy (where his wining photograph was taken) is a country he always finds himself returning to, especially for assignments. “I feel most comfortable there, especially Sicily and the Aeolian Islands where the food is simple and delicious, the people extremely welcoming, and the water the most beautiful deep blue I’ve ever seen.”

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There’s a mystifying number of terms used to describe green architecture and its components: renewable, sustainable, energy-saving, Energy Star, carbon-neutral, LEED-certified. Perhaps the most powerful term is zero-energy, or net-zero, which describes a building that takes no energy annually from the power grid and has no carbon emissions, so that it doesn’t burden existing systems and pollute. A new book, “Towards Zero-Energy Architecture: New Solar Design” by Mary Guzowski, takes a look at some contemporary buildings that meet this goal without sacrificing style.
     Designers and builders can work to achieve zero-energy by installing appliances and heating and cooling systems that use minimal energy, and others that produce their own energy and can even contribute surplus energy back to the grid, like photovoltaic panels, geothermal wells and solar water heaters. But the most powerful strategies, and the ones more likely to shape the character of a building, are ones that incorporate so-called passive means to control light and heat, like site orientation, roof overhangs, operable windows, and shutters. Since heating, cooling and lighting are a building’s greatest energy loads, responding strategically to the sun and its movements is an important step to get to zero-energy.
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Marcela Taboada placed second in the portriat category of our 3rd annual Global Travel Photo Contest. She is an accomplished and independent Mexican photographer. Her work is in the collections of the The Hasselblad Center, Fotografisk Center de Copenhagen, Sonoma Museum of Art, Throckmorton Fine Art Gallery NY, The Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, the Fifty Crows Gallery in San Francisco, CA among others. She has received awards and stipiends like: III Journalism Bienale México, Hasselblad Foundation, National Geographic All Roads Photographers, Women the image Creator, Photo Lucida nomination, among others.

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Moby has been a stalwart of electronic music for two decades, and there is no sign of him slowing down. This month he released a new record, Destroyed, accompanied by an eponymous book of photographs he has taken on tour. The book serves as a sort of a diary but also a way to turn a mirror on the world, which could be quite cathartic for any celebrity. Some of the photos are excellent, especially the one that made the cover. That was taken inside the La Guardia airport and is the last word in the cautionary sign, “All unattended luggage will be destroyed.”
     In the introductory passage to the book Moby says that touring is decidedly unglamorous, that it is weird and isolating. Indeed many photos give off a sense of alienation and loneliness. They are taken at the airports, in hotel rooms, and at concerts. They are thoughtful and meditative and give off a certain sense of quietness. The pictures that depict concert audiences seem as if Moby pressed a pause button in the middle of the concert in order to reflect on his surroundings.
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