Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip

Oasis? Just a band. Led Zeppelin? Just a band. The Beatles? Just a band. Ow Yeah! These lyrics spoken by poet Scroobius Pip in a British accent combined with the raw electronic beats by Dan le Sac are kickin' ass. These two fellows quit their jobs working in a record store to sign a record deal at Sunday Best after the track Thou shalt allways Kill (see above) became a download hit. Best record on their album we think is Angels.
If you want to join us going to the Ekko in Utrecht watch them perform on 20 november this year, just give us a call! (thanks Eighty Pur!)

Go and see:

Logo by Build

Objectified, a documentary film by Gary Hustwit. Two years after making Helvetica, the succesful film about the font and typography in general, Hustwit comes with a new piece called Objectified. This time the topic is industrial design, as you can read on its website:

It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the people who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability. It’s about our relationship to mass-produced objects and, by extension, the people who design them.

Objectified will have its world premiere screening in early 2009. If you did see his first film and you liked it, you know you are not going to miss this one. If you dindn't, we highly recommend doing it anyway!

Happy Iceland

Some time ago the whole A.K. team was in Iceland for some days to visit some friends in Reykjavik. We had some time to travel inland a bit and we could stay a night in our friends' summerhouse not far from Hekla, Icelands' biggest and still active vulcano. Offcourse we also saw Geysir and the immensly powerful Gulfoss and lots of other beautiful places. But the thing that struck us most were the views from the coastlines as you can see in the pretty picture above, taken by mrs. Kobayashi. It made us realise how far away and isolated Icelanders must feel from the rest of the world. It gave us both the shivers and an uttermost relaxed feeling at the same time. We're still not sure which one had the overhand for us but according to researcher Jon Carlin from The Observer, Icelanders must be the happiest people living on this here planet, all 313.000 of them. Read his explanation right here.

Mickey Tilburg - Schneider.mp3

We at Archibald Kobayashi create stuff ourselves as well. So here is the first of hopefully many to follow of these creations. It's a piece of music called Schneider done by our own Mickey Tilburg. Expect a minmal/techno kind of track with some old school feeling to it. Play it loud, goddamn!

Download:

Mickey Tilburg - Schneider.mp3

Follow Mickey on his recently started myspace.

SJK

Big up to our friends Tim and Sander from Tilburg based Studio Jan Koek. These younsters are quickly making name in the Southern parts of this country with their poster designs for poptemple 013. Keep a close eye on them.

Sharevari

Share! Vari! Share-share-vari-vari! Woohaa! Nice clip of Detroits dance show The Scene featuring A Number of Names with the song called Sharevari. Appearing on Detroit based underground disco label Cappricio, it has been acclaimed to be the first ever techno record. Our personal favourite? The guy @ 2:00, because his hair tops everything. That's grand style y'all. (Thanks Vio!)

Evelyn McHale

This got to be the image of the most beautiful suicide. It's the picture of Evelyn McHale, a few minutes right after her jump from the Empire State Building in 1947. The elegancy of her body laying in the wrecked car, like a model laying in silk sheets, struck obviously many people. The picture appeared a couple of weeks later in Time Magazine with this caption:

On May Day, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. 'He is much better off without me ... I wouldn't make a good wife for anybody,' ... Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale's death Wiles got this picture of death's violence and its composure.

Years later Andy Warhol used Wiles photo to create a piece.

All City (1983)

This is a small documentary about the early days of Hip Hop which started to come above ground in the South Bronx in the early 80's. It's made by Henry Chalfant who was one of the first, next to Charlie Ahearn (Wild Style) to understand that Hip Hop was something that was going to stay around for a while. Besides making this rather unkwnown film, Herny Chalfant also co-created the more famous grafitti documentary Style Wars and the grafitti bible Subway Art. Enjoy this pure footage of the pioneers of Hip Hop and let those raw cracking beats make you go poppin' and lockin' again on your old schoolyard!

Muxtape

Update: Muxtape has just been taken down by the RIAA...

"Create & share mp3 mixtapes, the way the kids do" is what the guys at Muxtape are saying. And they are telling the truth. Using this site really gives us back the feeling of our youth. Composing 60 or 90 minutes TDK cassettes and giving them to your friends. On top of that this here website works as elegant as it looks. Composing works fluently. Not too much explaining, options or graphical mayhem. You want to listen to what other people put on their tapes? Just click around and discover. Click here for our tape. Sometimes internet can be a lovely place...

Go and see:

Paris, Texas. A brilliant movie from Wim Wenders. It won the Palm d'Or in 1984. It's one of the strongest opening scenes in filmhistory according to us. That pure soundtrack made by Ry Cooder combined with the acting of Harry Dean Stanton (he normally only plays B-roles for some reason) makes you wanna see the whole thing. Travis Henderson's dusty, unshaven Texan style is bleedin' rapid. We think Mr. Ozio agrees...

Best track ever! Part I

This is definately our best track ever: Peaches en Regalia from Frank Zappa. After disbanding the Mothers of Invention, Zappa made this famous enduring composition. The track reappeared a couple of times on later recordings.

Mugshot Art

Wow, what a way to open a blog. Its not the friendliest way we must admit, but we at Archibald Kobayashi like this image a lot. Why? We hear asking yourself. Its just perfect 'in balance' we think. Nice colors, good position and it's very intense. You tend to feel sorry for this person since the sadness and the helplessness in his eyes are beaming out. But his nose reveals that he probably didn't learn from earlier mistakes. Anyway, we like it and we will probably once blow up this image to poster size and hang it in our office.