Pop:Other

l_I__I_l (2009-2011)

Twitter may not feel like the best place to flex your artistic clout, but much of the best art comes from working in tightly constrained parameters. The user behind the l_I__I_l account (or “LIIL” on their Blogger profile) understands this implicitly, and has created a series of illustrations boxed into the 140 characters (or less) framework. The spasmodically updated feed is the work of artist Oscar Ortega, who spoke to theTriangulation blog about his methods of working. The beauty in l_I__I_l’s work comes from subtle refractions of the base repetition he takes as his starting point, where near-identical figures are subtly shifted over a series of posts, and then disregarded altogether when a new burst of activity begins.

The Psychic Paramount “N6” (2011)

The Psychic Paramount are old fashioned in many ways. They like to take their time, to get things right, to opt-out of the constant rush to push material out online. It’s been six years since the band released Gamelan Into the Milk Supernatural, and it’s unclear what exactly they’ve been doing in the intervening years leading up to the recently released II. Maybe they just wanted to spend time on their craft, to get all the parts working in tandem with one another—principals that have been rapidly devalued in recent years, but appear to have fallen in their favor if the hyper efficient cut-and-thrust riffing of “N6” is any indication. This is rock strained through a huge process of attrition, so all the elements click together with optimum efficiency. 

Talk Talk Album Art (1982-1991)

Talk Talk’s music—particularly in their later stages—was so overwhelmingly powerful, so easy to enter and so difficult to extract yourself from, that it’s not hard to completely lose sight of James Marsh’s fine cover art. Marsh worked with the band throughout their career, and began to form a common thread in his visual work for them with the use of elements taken from the natural world (water, birds, dogs) on the sleeve for the 1984 record It’s My Life. He extended those themes with his literalist transposition of the title of The Colour of Spring album in 1986, but there’s always a bridge between the synthetic and the real in Marsh’s work, a plastic rendering of natural elements that provides a neat reflection of Talk Talk’s obsession with artifice (pop hits, synthesized textures) and the Earth (“New Grass”, “The Rainbow”, “The Colour of Spring”). That we almost certainly won’t get to witness their combined talents again still feels like a crying shame.

The Lunar Olympic Stadium (2010)

Welcome to the future of Olympic competition, where spectators can watch a gravity deficient javelin arc through the moon’s vacuum-level atmosphere and (maybe) touch down several minutes later. It’s either that or it will float up into the ether forever. It seems oddly fitting to think that mankind’s first contact with alien life could be through a rogue discus that never quite made it back to the moon’s surface. The Lunar Olympic Stadium is the work of design students Brian Harms and Keith Bradley, whose work can be studied in greater detail over at Arch Daily. The idea of having the central stadium set deep into a crater is inspired, and as that article points out, the notion of home advantage goes out the window during this competition.

Tranquility’s Cupola (2010)

The space shuttle might not be long for this world (or any other world) but it’s still bearing gifts for the inhabitants of the International Space Station. The latest addendum to the drifting base is Tranquility, a new module that was opened back in February of this year, and comes bearing “Cupola,” a Tie Figher-like set of windows that offers jaw-dropping views of the Earth. This picture of astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson relaxing in Tranquility (above) is a thousand space tourism fantasies come true.

Grouper “Hold The Way” (2009)

Liz Harris is a true outlier. Her work under the Grouper name has grown ever more fragile as the years have passed, ultimately leaving her balancing on the precipice of a distant and alluring void. “Hold the Way” is a hair’s breadth away from not existing at all, with Harris fracturing apart from tangible sounds and textures, instead choosing to fill her sound world with foggy keyboard drones and nebulous vocal distress. Weston Currie’s accompanying video perfectly matches the gently pulverized beauty of Harris’s work, occasionally harking back to Robert Weine’s masterful German Expressionist classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (see below). 

The Wuppertal Schwebebahn (Eugen Langen, 1901)

The Wuppertal Schwebebahn (above) is the oldest—and most spectacular—monorail still in operation. It was designed by Eugen Langen, who was partly responsible for developing the petrol engine, and first sputtered into life in 1901. Bucking prevailing trends for monorail design, Langen suspended his trains from above, leaving an indelible impression on the city of Wuppertal, where they still operate to this day.

Langen’s carriages glide over vast stretches of the city streets, the Wuppen river, and even a motorway. It’s been extensively modernized since Langen’s day, of course, and while it’s regarded by many as one of the safest modes of transport in the world, the Schwebebahn hasn’t been without a few mishaps along the way. Most famously, some bonehead had the idea of putting an elephant from a visiting circus on the train back in 1950, only for it to freak out, crash through the side of the car, and into the Wuppen river below. Miraculously, no fatalities occurred.

Nite Jewel: Video Work (2008-2010)

The sheer breadth of chillwave detritus currently plugging up the Internet is astonishing. Anyone whose patience has run as thin as the reedy grooves most of those songs are based on hasn’t missed out on anything, although it’s worth taking a minute to see where this leaves some of the original artists who were unwittingly tarnished with the chillwave label.

Ariel Pink has wisely decided to call time on his bedroom musings and has given his songs the glossy pop sheen they always deserved on the outstanding Before Today album. Meanwhile, Romana Gonzalez, aka Nite Jewel, has also cut herself free from the haze, notably on this year’s Am I Real? EP, which retains her fondness for mashing up disparate ’80s signifiers (Cocteau Twins, Hall & Oates, the Rah Band) but spares us the tiresome tape hiss and other lo-fi production ethics that have become de rigueur elsewhere.

The visual journey from “Artificial Intelligence” to “We Want Our Things” hints at a desire to move away from the space Gonzalez helped to define. The former is all plumey orange skies and crushed-out Ambien parties in the back of limos; the latter is an object lesson in stillness, with Gonzalez comatose on a beach, swaddled in mermaid garb, and muttering the song in stretched-out slow motion. Easily enough to suggest that Gonzalez, like Ariel Pink, has freed herself from the rote genre trappings she partly sketched out.

Chris Carter’s Tutti Box (2010)

Unfortunately we’re not going to get a chance to see the “Tutti Box” (above) that Chris Carter invented for his musical partner, Cosey Fanni Tutti, in its preferred setting, owing to this unfortunate news. In fact, these haven’t been the best of times for Carter, judging from this post on his blog about his recent mishaps, but perhaps the newly configured X-TG group will make up for it? Carter has also offered a lesson on how he put together the Tutti Box over on this site, which should help stoke the creative fires of anyone thinking of entering into the burgeoning post-Industrial scene. 

Sparks Album Art (1974-1977)

Anyone looking for an in-depth exploration of Sparks’ cover art should head to this excellent site, in which the original designers are tracked down, alternative versions are explored, and just about every fact you could ever want to know about the Mael brothers’ singular aesthetic is unearthed. Presented here is a selection of early album sleeves—undoubtably the duo’s imperial phase for cover art—which reaches an apex with the front and back shots of Indiscreet (1975). The concept of Ron pulling Russell on a horse seems somehow inevitable, but is masterfully executed nonetheless, with the band demonstrating their skill for pairing the absurd with the deadpan.

In fact, if Sparks are to be known for anything outside their music, it’s for Ron’s impeccably stoic persona, carefully crafted over five decades now, but often put to the sternest of tests by the music industry promo machine. There has been the occasional crack in his perma-dispassionate stance, such as this against-type violence during Sparks’ unlikely appearance in the 1977 disaster movie Rollercoaster, but for the most part his mustache has remained well preened, his hair immaculately fettered, his execution masterful. Ron Mael is someone who understands the value of long-haul branding, of setting up your stall and sticking with it regardless of the vagaries of fashion.