Monday, December 20, 2010

30th Anniversary Concert of Einstürzende Neubauten

Here's a great concert by avant-garde industrial rockers Einstürzende Neubauten. I kinda think that Einstürzende Neubauten are the industrial band, creating a sound that was truly industrial. They build a lot of their own instruments out of industrial materials - power tools, sheet metal, pipe, rebar, basically whatever you could possibly find on a construction site. Somehow they make this blend of industrial instruments and conventional instruments sound musical - at least I think so. Sure, sometimes it's just cacophonous noise, but sometimes it's surprisingly beautiful. But you can watch the concert below and decide for yourself what they sound like.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Mucha Coming to My Room

Yesterday I spent more money than I was planning on. But I think it was for a good cause - it was to frame the above set of decorative panels by Alphonse Mucha, one of my favorite artists. This set is titled: Times of Day; and features Morning, Day, Evening, and Night. For some reason the above series is shown here in reverse order, which is weird - why wouldn't you want them in the right order? At the moment, Times of Day is my favorite set. Though that could change any time; he has a lot of really beautiful sets.

I've slowly collected a few pictures that I've really wanted to get framed, but this is the first time I've actually bought a frame for any of my pictures. When I was in Prague in 2008, I bought a collection of Mucha prints that contains several of these four-panel sets. So, to avoid having to buy a billion frames, or just let stuff sit unframed for forever, I bought a frame with colors neutral enough that several of the Mucha sets will work with this frame. So it's kinda like buying a frame for twelve or sixteen pictures instead of just four. So I think things worked out pretty well.

I suspect it'll be several years before I get anything framed again, which is fine. Frames are expensive and I just don't have the cash to be framing tons of stuff. But also, moving framed pictures is way lamer than moving unframed pictures; and while some of you might scoff at the thought, eventually I will move to someplace new. But I kinda felt it was time for Mucha to come out of the box and get on the wall. It'll be a nice addition to the wall.