New BRIGHT POP ART EDM shirt designs (Anime like)

We have updated our Zazzle Store with new BRIGHT EDM shirt designs based on the latest EDM Single Cover artwork. Felt inspired.

In our store, if you look at ALL PRODUCTS,  you will see the latest designs. They shirt and options can be customized.

And others

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

TAKASHI MURAKAMI MONONOKE KYOTO Exhibition 2024/2/27

 

This 6 month exhibition at the Kyoto City KYOCERA Art Museum started a week ago. The continuous rain here had kept me away till yesterday. Very glad I got to it.

Takashi Murakami, now 62 years old, has been an artist for 30+ years, but I only heard about his SUPERFLAT about 10 years ago. I may have seen it and a brief interview with him in some TV arts program.  A week or so before we left Australia for Kyoto end of 2019, Murakami had a Yokai themed exhibition in Sydney I had wanted to go to, but due to final moving issues, and possibly rain, I didn't get to it.

But I didn't miss out as in the foyer, they had the 2 Murakami Oni that were in that Sydney Exhibition.

So it took some time to finally see his works "in the flesh". SUPERFLAT really caught my attention all those years ago. A current "pop art" inspired by the worlds of Japanese manga and anime. 

There were 6 large rooms and each had an explanation like this "manga". In English and Japanese.

A great exhibition. Also worth following up on his SUPERFLAT themes yourself. 

I think I was inspired by SUPERFLAT and his Mr.Dob character the first time I saw it. It just "click" with me. He says "Mr.DOB" is from slang word "dobojite" (meaning why?). I had never head that word, and asked my wife, and she said it sounds like a word made up by a child, but she could guess what it meant, but it isn't "Japanaese slang" that anyone would know or have used. 

When I go to an exhibition like this, one of the reasons is that I am hoping for it to inspire me in my own work.  More so now, since I retired from my technical career.  And I think I can see Murakami did, even before this exhibit. Or was that inspired by the same sources Murakami was?

It gets difficult to tell! If I look at my IN THE NEXT DIMENSION comic I can see a few influences

and I am okay with that. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

Experiment in Melodic Techno: EDM Bob?

Not so sure it is Melodic Techno, but that was the style I have been listening to, and applied through my own limitations. The long version of our Melodic Techno experiment, EDM Bob?  Like a Street Cat Named "Bob",  The Superflat "Dob" or Rowan Atkinson as Blackadder saying "Bob".

An earlier short version I used in this YouTube short:

In Murakami's SUPERFLAT, he has named his many characters Mr.Dob. Mine above are my own in his style, but are they too close to Dob?  Hence the question, "is this too Bob?".  But the mouth is from another cartoon character, and aren't those ears kind of Mickey Mouse?  You can take SUPERFLAT to also mean "shallow" in the way HELLO KITTY is, and the Nursery rhyme level melodic complexity of EDM feels like it fits to me, hence the "Dob" <-> EDM connection to me. I must also say I LIKE Superflat and Melodic Techno.

The Reaper Project of the track:

I had been setting up and finding EDM sounds for my own music since investigating Cassians's GREAT SOUTHERN LAND Remix. 

I put together a MS-20mini drum sound collection early on.  The Korg really is a versatile synth for very electronic sounds, but there are tricks, such as knowing how the external signal processor can be used for overdrive.

My first attempts at making the standard drum patterns were really dull though, and I found velocity manipulation of the hi-hats vital to give a simple four on the floor pattern life and movement.  Using tracks by KENSHO, Pyra and Cassian as reference lead me to the stylistic patterns their tracks use. No intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, middle eight, verse, chorus, ending here.  More slow build, release, hard verse, then ending, to fit into a different track in a DJ set.

A TSHIRT of a similar EDM POPART design is here

The rising sine wave tone in this was made in Audacity, in the chirp generator, as it allows you to set start and end frequencies and a duration.  

Most of the other tones and the melodic bits were played on the MS-20 while manipulating the VCF cutoff. Seems appropriate. I must say I am more influenced by Jean Michel Jarre's OXYGENE for the background sweeps and bloops than anything I heard in Techno though. Same for the panning of the swoops across the sound stage.  Now, OXYGENE is a melodic and technical wonder kind, and that kind of melodic and thematic development isn't part of Melodic Techno from what I have seen. I feel my melodies should go more places than they do, for now though, so maybe for the extended mix. Extended mixes are also part of the DJ, dance scene, so doing that is fine.  I could also say, my techno track here is kind of a REALLY STRIPPED DOWN variation of OXYGENE  at 124BPM, and made really really simple with the Melodic Techno "cliche" things in it. The Rise, The Drop, Snare Build and the long verses which change from no hi-hats, to with hi-hats, to with a snare to handclaps or whatever. 

I expect I will use this almost 5minute track as the sound track to a Car Illustration Sample Video as I haven't made one of those recently. A change from the more metal sound of some of my other videos. 

There is an interesting effect with musically compositionally simple tracks like this. As they don't "musically resolve" at any time, to anything, so there is never any "that is finished" feeling with them. I can have this track on repeat for hours and it doesn't get monotonous, even if not a whole lot happens in it, it is still changing.  Almost EASY LISTENING music!  

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology

A Viking Guitar God's Disco Album

 

Viking Guitar God,  Mattias IA Eklundh, has mostly done heavier guitar riff stuff in odd time signatures through his band FREAK KITCHEN.  Love it. Like this:

Then in 2022 he released his "Disco Album".  Intergalactic Songs Of Love and Reflection, 

a FREAK AUDIO LAB Album featuring mostly synthesizers put together in Reason ( or was it Alberton) and his pitch shifted "alien" vocals. Such as this track:

Mattias is a skilled musician, lyricist and vocalist. I get the impression he was given all the software tools and encouraged to do this different album, using the different workflow.  He called it "jokingly" his "Disco Album" but it isn't what I now know of as EDM.  Kind of a strange POP album, more danceable than his "normal" releases. 

Very interesting, and still has his meaningful lyrics. Something EDM isn't know for.  

I myself have been studying the current, more traditional EDM genre MELODIC TECHNO, and revisiting Mattias's take just shows how different it is.  Standard EDM is very repetitive, with slow changes and "drops", rather than solos and bridges.  That makes EDM sound boring, but it isn't. Even when repeating basically the same measure, there is movement, and all kinds of things happening in the production that I have found very interesting. The sound is also awesome. 

Last year I did an Ambient-ish Album, and I am guessing this year I will make my own EDM/Metal-ish tracks, but nothing I have made so far has excited me enough. 

We can be found at ArtAndTechnology