balmorhea: all is wild, all is silent.

I discovered Austin-based acoustic classical/experimental quintet Balmorhea from a post at Josh Spear and have been listening to their latest album,  “All Is Wild, All Is Silent”, non-stop for the last week. They manage to make even my morning streetcar ride to work somehow feel emotionally windswept and epic.

I have a fetish for string instruments. For me, there’s something hypnotic and almost transformative about watching someone play the cello. Mixing all manners of strings – violin, cello, guitar, banjo, double bass – with piano and more, they create a universe of sound. It feels heavy yet it breathes, it’s enveloping yet it soars. It all heaves with a feeling of abandon and stillness, like the end of a very long journey.

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mindpie: the death & life of ice cream.

I found this on one of my current fave blogs, Knack Studios. Created by Orrin Zucker, part of film and animation collective MindPie, comes The Death & Life of Ice Cream. Sweet stuff melts, sweet stuff unmelts. It’s the circle of saccharine life.

If it’s wrong to cheer on the time-lapsed reformation of a liquified fudgesicle, then I don’t want to be right. These frozen treats don’t need no ice box telling them what’s what. Freezies fight back! Drumsticks ain’t yo bitch! This is enthralling… it also made my tongue ache a little and gave me a hankering for something salty.