Beautiful Found Sounds

I get all sorts of artsy-fartsy things in my many inboxes, but this morning I stumbled upon of all things, an Icelandic composer who writes truly, hauntingly, painfully, lovely music. Olafur Arnalds has published a project online that I will be enjoying all day, and no doubt for many days to come.

The 21-year-old composer (yes, just 21) wrote and recorded a new piece every day and posted it online for anyone to download. Each of the compositions is free, and all of them are lovely.

I'm only through the first six of them. I thought at first "sure, I'll listen to them, but I doubt there will be downloading, I've got plenty of hauntingly pretty music on the ole iPod." Wrongo. So far I've downloaded every single thing I've listened to so far.

Here's what the newsletter (which I love) called VSL (Very Short List) had to say about the origin of the compisitions:

Day one’s piece, a waltz, was written for a friend named Elsa. The third composition — “Romance” — reminded Arnalds of a 19th-century opera. On day six, we heard a somber, year-old piece that Arnalds pulled off the shelf and reworked on the fly. And on the eve of the final day, the composer sent out a tweet in which he promised to end the week on a positive note. He delivered that note — a lovely duet for piano and violin — on Sunday, and it just might be our favorite of the bunch. At this rate, Arnalds can have a week of our time anytime.

Clearly-he's got more than a week of my time...and I hope yours too.

Check out the project at: Found Songs - Erased Tapes

While you're clicking around the Internets (not a typo) check out Very Short List too!

A Good Ad is Sometimes A Very Good Thing

There are times when an advertisement can surpass just being a "BUY THIS ON SALE for $24.99" shill and move into being a piece of well..art. This was forwarded to me today and it made me smile so much that I watched it more than once. So, while its doubtful that I'll ever encounter this product (its from a company in Germany) I'm awfully glad to have been introduced to Loewe's electronics. Hopefully, you will too.

Grafitti as Art: BLU

There's a lot of conversation in Atlanta these days about grafitti. Recently, a huge mural near my old house was defaced by a tag and even the local artists were raised to indignation. They wanted somebody to pay. They wanted the guy put out in public to be shunned and screamed at and taunted. I frankly didn't like the mural that much, so it didn't chuff me that much.

Graffitti is something that says "city" to me.

I might also say that this same group of riotous artists were up in arms last spring when a stretch of wall that has long been a graffitti work spot was painted matte green by residents. The artists were beside themselves with indignation when a local resident camped out in a tree and assaulted two teens who started painting on the wall in the dead of night.

Frankly, I think the whole lot of them are a bunch of nuts.

Here's an amazing short film by BLU. It proves graffitti can be art.


MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.