(...)

We're stopping our blog, but planning other things in the blogosphere.

There are better ones out there that do a similar thing. Here are a few of our favourites:

It's Nice That
seiz whaa?
CR Blog
Can't Meme, Won't Meme

You can find us on Twitter as @nickbrad and @juleshunt for stuff we like, and we'll still be doing Soup as our online scrapbook.

Everything will be okay.

Crystal Fighters Promo

It's been a long time coming, but the new video for the Crystal Fighters' debut single 'Xtatic Truth' on Kitsune finally made it to YouTube today.

Thom and Eoin asked me to art direct the promo.

Sam Hicks

Sam Hicks is a photographer who we were lucky to do a bit of work with last year and hope to again.



It's the last week (and a bit) of his show in the Lanes in Brighton at the Crane Kalman gallery, so if you're there any time between now and the 19th of July and have had enough of seagulls and or just other people generally, go and see his work on huge C-Prints. Or buy one, like Will Young did.




It's not just that he shoots nails-looking dudes on bikes and lonely-looking molls in motels, but it's his lighting: David Lynch meets Wim Wenders meets Lawrence G. Paull meets John Seale.

2 Many VJs

Last Saturday I nipped down to Brixton to catch 2 Many Djs do a gig at the Academy. Not only did they musically smash the back out of the night, they had an awesome VJ set that accompanied the Djing. For every tune they mixed in, it's artwork animated and was projected behind them as they played. A really simple idea that worked very well.

I'm not 100% sure the tracks were on DVD and they were mixing with VDJs, but it's possible. Either way, the boys done good.



The clearest example of the graphics I could find from the night.



Manchester, not Brixton, but showing a transition between two tracks.

Image Digging

A healthy portion of our spare time is taken up sifting through sites looking for images and video that tickle our taste buds. I'm not talking about the god-awful task of sourcing images for spec work. This is enjoyable brain sponging.

If you've got any bit of a collector in you, it can be little addictive. Time disappears and eyes get sore whilst you're on the hunt. So we thought we'd feed the habit, get all image pusher on you, and give our Google Readers a shake, see what falls out.

But first, we should start with Soup, a tumbler website that aggregates the stuff you find on the web. You can set it to automatically load images, links, quotes and video from all of your other sites, but we like a bit more control, so we manually post using the upload tool that sits in the task bar. Virtual scrapbook-tastic. Check ours.

Links: (Some old faves to kick off with).

Ffffound
Follow a trail of recommended images fffforever and ever and ever.

Flickr
No longer just a collection of wannabe photographers work. We've stumbled upon some amazing collections of models, posters, typography, even some nostalgic trading cards. Plus now it's got video.

Vimeo
Youtube's fit cousin.

CRBlog
Standard.

Lens
The New York Times' photography, video and visual journalism.

GigaPica
The best of international photojournalism.

Seiz Whaa?
"A space for the occasional brainfarting or just random flim flam from the interweb."

Yimmy's Yayo
"Visual crack for the ocular fiend."

Bad Bannana Blog
"Ideas, inspiration, ephemera. Put 'em in the freezer and bake some bread later."

Cool Hunting
Does what it says on the tin.

Ectoplasmosis
Silly on the surface, deadly serious content though.

Geekologie
"Gadgets, gizmoes and awesome."

It's Nice That
Quality creative industry sampling, whatever it may be.

Made In England
Cookie is a man, this is his blog.

Monster Munch
Sock monster maker and collector of cool.

Grain Edit
Retro looking loveliness.


Oh, and if you do need to do a bit of specific image searching, we haven't found a tool that beats Cool Iris.
Check it out, it's like Minority Report.

Mother Goes Pop

It was bound to happen sooner or later - no Shoreditch space is complete unless it has some trendy art hanging on it's walls. So Mother add to their adventures outside of advertising by turning their reception and canteen area into a fully fledged art gallery. They're titling it Downstairs, and last night was the opening of a Peter Blake retrospective.

This hasn't been the first exhibition in the space, (previous experiments have included Martin Parr and Anthony Burrill & Michael Marriott) but it was officially the first opening of Downstairs, and a very swanky affair it was too. Apart from the legend himself, we noticed Dawn from East Enders and Harry Hill supping on the free culture.



Look there's thingy-me-jig

Along with the exhibition starting, Mother have launched the CCA Art Bus. It was parked outside last night, and in a lot of ways, is a cooler idea than the gallery opening itself. It's upper deck is an art space, while it's lower is an educational space. Yesterday Peter Blake bombed about in it, stopping at various pop art monuments and picking up relevant celebs along the way. In the future it will drive to British schools with the aim of introducing children to the visual arts.

CCA Art Bus



CCA Art Bus

Noel Fielding kills people with a big pointy stick

Checked this the other day, it's well good....



... it reminded me of the awesomeness of this guy's work...



You know how horror films now are mostly really crap, well Dario Argento was a genius when it came to keeping you perched on the edge of your Chesterfield. And he managed to do it with style and the freakiest soundtrack to boot.

Argento cut his teeth working in a particular type of Italian thriller genre called Giallo. A term that translates as "yellow". It's taken from the colour of the covers of the pulp sexy gore fiction novels, a lot of the films in the genre were based on. But, it was his move into the supernatural with films like Suspiria, Inferno and Phenomena, and his teaming up with the mighty, freaky prog rock band, The Goblins that got me drawing the comparisons.

Rather than gush about an aging Italian, that is, unfortunately well past his movie making prime, I urge you to check out his two masterpieces, Profundo Rosso and Suspiria.

In the meantime, have a gander at The Goblins: soundtrack- ers to the 70s horror.

(fans of Justice will recognise the hook sampled from the theme from Tenebrae).