Now that IS an interesting download

The 1964 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer stop motion animation from Rankin/Bass is an absolute classic. Treat yourself this season and give it a watch. But also dive into the production of the film. There's plenty of YouTube listicles about it but there's no better authority on the matter than Rick Goldschmidt, a legitimate Rankin/Bass Historian.

This Remind Magazine piece on The Mystery of "Screen-Used" Rudolph Puppets is a strangely compelling deep dive into the history of the puppets that were used for the original animation. The animation was done in Japan but some of the puppets made their way to the US for various promotional photography needs.. but were those puppets ever used on screen? Or were they spares? All will be revealed!

I'm always a big fan of deep niche knowledge and this is a great example of that.

One of my local indie radio stations - WNXP - has been running a series of profiles on creative folks that don't always get the spotlight. The latest episode is a great piece on Piper Payne of Physical Music Products; a vinyl manufacturing plant right outside of Nashville. I've pressed several records with PMP and plan to press more in the future. Piper's story is fascinating and the larger vinyl industry story is also quite intriguing - particularly given how much it is changing. Even just four years ago, the story was very different.

It's not an easy industry to thrive in but it's heartening to see PMP doing as well as it is. I hope they survive for the long haul!

Way back in January, Tower Defense told me they'd written a Christmas song and suggested it might be a cool idea to try to put together a yk Records sampler from other bands on the label. I put the word out and today, almost a year later, I am happy to announce the yk Records Holiday Sampler 2024.

It's twenty tracks of original and classic holiday songs that will be available on December 6th. We're announcing it today to try and build some awareness because the undertaking is actually a fundraising effort for CASA Nashville, a non-profit that helps foster kids have safe environments to live in. Paying for music in 2024 feels a bit antiquated but if you know that money is going to a great cause, maybe you'll be more inclined to participate!

Right now, none of the songs are available to stream or hear. However, if you support the compilation before December 6th, I will ensure you get access to two tracks early. So, go support the release!

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The musicians did all the hard work creating and recording the songs but I tasked myself with creating promo images for each artist on the sampler in a "Rankin/Bass" kind of way. I'm obviously biased but I think they turned out great:

• Roger Moutenot
  Letter to Santa
• Tower Defense
  What Do You Want For Christmas?
• Matt & The Watt Gives
  No Child (Wants Their Picture Made With Santa)
• The Robe
  Gloria In Excelsis Deo (Calceamentum Vultus)
• Coupler
  Christmas Time Is Here
• New Man
  Christmas is a Mirror of the Mind
• Trash Man
  Wire Christmas Tree
• Birdcloud
  Cool Christmas
• Telefone
  Toys
• Little Bandit
  (Have Yourself) A Merry Little Christmas
• Talking with Hands
  Christmas Time
• Fetching Pails
  Where the Santas Meet
• Stone Jack Jones
  Away in a Manger
• Annie Williams
  Ave Maria
• The Myrrhmen
  Ding Dong Merrily On High
• Shaboi
  The Day After Christmas
• Mac Burrus & Tiffany Topol
  With You (This Christmas)
• The Features
  The New Christmas Wish Book
• sugar sk*-*lls
  Last Christmas
• Black Bra
  Just Like Christmas (Ode to Mimi)

Warning: this starts off quite intense - you may wanna jump 15 seconds in.

I am unfamiliar with the Canadian music duo Zeds Dead but if you are familar with the mash up concept of Girl Talk, you're in the right territory.

It's a breakneck pace of pop culture and samples but that's perfect Internet fodder. Let the firehose wash over you.

Side note, I had no idea that Beck's "Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime" is a cover. Guess that's a double bonus for me from Zeds Dead.

Been enjoying a deep dive into the work of concept artist Max Siedentopf. The website is a vast repository of ridiculous art installations, compelling campaigns and other oddities. It's a real blast from the Internet past where you can just spend a lot of time on one site looking at creative works. Feels great. Your cursor even turns into a fish sometimes. What a hoot!

In particular, I really enjoy this Selfridges Joke Shop window installation series. I was unaware but Selfridges is an upscale department store in the UK; so these sorts of wacky window installations aren't unexpected but that doesn't make them any less enjoyable. Give it a good click through.. here's some of my favorites:

Despite being around since 2015, I'm just now diving into Cities and Memory; an enormous repository of field recordings and found sounds. Their global sound map has contributions from an incredible variety across the planet.

Listening to random field recordings from around the world would be interesting enough (imo) but they take it a step further and invite people to remix these sounds, creating ambient soundscapes interwoven with the captures. You can browse by types of sound or, even better, dig into some of the paired sounds like Music for Sleep, Shortwave Transmissions or (my favorite) Obsolete Sounds.

It's possibly the one place on the Internet you can listen to a field recording of a discontinued coffee grinder and a beautifully, lulling, song made from that same device. Incredible.

The first new song from brand new band Echolalia dropped today - "Odd Energy." Not to abuse the term but the band is a bit of a "supergroup" - consisting of Spencer Cullum, Andrew Combs, Dominic Billett, Jordan Lehning, Jason Lehning, Eli Beaird and Juan Solorzano; all heavy hitters in the Nashville music scene.

I did the vinyl and CD layout (Michael Gaughan did the incredible watercolor) and had the pleasure of hearing the entire record early. It's a fantastic collaborative effort across the board. You will enjoy.. promise!

Matyus ponders the question - are Gif's Art? With a capital A. His ponderance cites Duchamp and "found objects." It's not a lengthy artist's statement but it's worth considering. Scroll through the gallery of Gif's and enjoy them being presented in such a clean and classy way. I think I'd probably pay to see an exhibit like this in real life.

Protip: scroll horizontally.

The IMG_0001 project is brilliantly simply - crawl YouTube for videos that use the default filename from the era of iPhones (2009 - 2012) that would send videos over to YouTube with a single button. In short, it's a massive repository of random videos from the nascent era of mobile video. Author Riley Walz says it much better than myself:

Between 2009 and 2012, iPhones had a built-in "Send to YouTube" button in the Photos app. Many of these uploads kept their default IMG_XXXX filenames, creating a time capsule of raw, unedited moments from random lives.

The project was inspired by a similar Ben Wallace project but Walz repository contains 5 million videos. Take it for a spin.

Random aside: this all reminds me of one of my favorite (now vanquished) sites on the web - foundphotos.net. Rest In Peace random photo archive.

"This is the world that you know; the world as it was at the end of the 20th century. It exists now only as part of a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix." &emdash; Morpheus to Neo in The Matrix

I have to imagine that quote has inspired countless sci-fi enthusiasts, researchers and technologists. Actually, I don't have to imagine it because this research paper directly cites it. They go on to ask the question: How close are we to realizing the vision of The Matrix (1999), where AI crafts a fully immersive, interactive world, blurring the line between reality and illusion?

Then it goes into some details and examples about a new interactive, realtime, AI model that they've built that lets you steer an object through a limitless 3D space. They primarily use a car through familiar terrain but the examples further down the page get much more wild. I recommend making sure you scroll all the way down and watch them all. There's no interactive demo yet but you get the gist.

Clearly, here in 2024, we are nowhere near the reality shown in The Matrix (as far as I can tell) but the question the researchers pose does contain a phrase worth pondering a bit. We do not have "fully immersive, interactive worlds," but we do seem to be edging into examples that "blur the line between reality and illusion." It's all about escalation from there, no?

Rather enjoyed this antialiasing nerd out from Jonathan Hoefler. Who better to really dig into the subpixel differences between the same font on two different social platforms? Unsurprising, but no less impressive, to read through how he reached his conclusion on which option feels more natural to a user's eyes.

YouTube decided that I needed to see this video, "flying through fractals using a 90s camcorder. The channel host clearly has a love for "vintage" tech of the 90s and demonstrates a rather unique effect with a very specific camera with a very specific setting enabled with a very specific angle of shooting. It looks so unbelievable, I have a hard time believing it's real! It's that wild!

The goods kick in at 3:37 but I suggest watching up to that to get the background and insight on what is happening.

The end effect reminds me of something straight outta 1979.

Sometimes Beaker is the perfect encapsulation of *all the things.* Truth be told, just about any Muppet losing their mind fits the bill. Hope you're having a good week, here's some distractions to slide you into the weekend.

• FKA twigs - Drums of Death (choreography glitch) - do I know anything about FKA twigs? No. BUT you don't really need any context to appreciate this combination of choreography, office setting and Aphex Twin style flipping out.
• Drive Share - remember the go90 streaming platform of original content brought to you by Verizon? Yea, me neither. But Paul Scheer and Rob Heubel made a series for it called Drive Share and it's pretty funny. All the episodes are here and there's a ton of cameos from names you like. I rather enjoyed this Jason Mantzoukas / Jessica St. Clair episode.
• The Curious Case of the Blocked Window - watch this March 1972 BBC broadcast in full and then tell me if it's parody or entirely earnest. I honestly could go either way.
• How David Copperfield Vanished the Statue of Liberty - I have not thought about this for multiple decades but it did occur to me that I had no idea how Copperfield pulled off this trick. Pretty clever.
• Voyager meets Frasier - in 1996 there was a TV special / documentary called Star Trek: 30 Years and Beyond. It's mostly a clip show and talking heads exhalting the show (rightfully). But there's also a sketch about 30 minutes in featuring Captain Janeway with a rather surprising new crew. It's corny but also legitimately entertaining, especially if you grew up on both of these. No shame in enjoying this!
• Stupid Cookie Sketch - still enjoying the absurdity of Montessori Boy, even if I'm lightyears behind by watching on YouTube instead of TikTok.
• The Ross Sisters - Solid Potato Salad - this takes a full 1:30 to really start. Then it takes another full minute to reveal itself. Stick with it. Insanity awaits.

Other things I'd recommend watching that aren't necessarily "Friday Video" material? The Most Underrated Painting Ever, Pickled Herring short film, Making comics with Plastic Models and Game Maker's Toolkit Magnet Game (this guy rules). That should help influence your algorithm properly.

Been spending some time on the Ampwall Discord and found myself listening to Megafauna's original score for Nosferatu - entitled To The Land of Ghosts. It's intended to be played underneath the film but it works quite well as an atmospheric, somewhat creepy, soundtrack to your day. Excellent find.

I love a collage as much as the next person but I gotta give special accolades to fontanesi - an Italian artist doing a whole lot with a single slice. Two images with one division between them that makes for quite an immersive result. Is there post processing going on here? Maybe! I choose not to believe so and just enjoy the clever simplicity of collaging these images so perfectly.

I recently came across the indie game Odallus, a Metroidvania platformer that feels very much like a classic NES game. The trailer does a good job of showcasing the gameplay and aesthetic.

I haven't actually played it yet but I was really intrigued by this graphics breakdown from the author. It seems many fans were so smitten with the 8-bit style that he wanted to clarify how Odallus actually breaks the limitations of true NES art. This gets extremely far into the weeds discussing limited color palettes, sprite sizes, blends (and lackthereof), animations, aspect ratios and the whole lot.

I don't know the first thing about indie game development of this nature but I really enjoy and respect the understanding of the finer details - and when it's appropriate to break the rules. Great read and, probably, a great game!

I mistakenly did not post this back in October but this thread of Mundane Halloween costumes is incredibly entertaining. There are 30 tweets in the thread, so if you like the four above, you're in for a real (mundane) treat.

Who's ready for some fun? Or, at the very least, some momentary distraction? I certainly am! Not all of these are the bite sized absurdities you may be used to as a long time yewknee dot com reader (that's what TikTok is for) but I am confident you can turn your brain off for awhile here. Let's get to it...

• Marbula One S5 GP4 - the qualifying rounds for some pretty gripping marble runs. Yes, that's right, marble runs. If you've never enjoyed the high paced thrills of marbles running down a track, strap in! And these are just the qualifying rounds! Go deeper.
• World's Longest Waterslide at Escape Theme Park in Malaysia - this thing is 1,111m long. That's roughly 12 football fields (if my math skills hold up). The theme park website is worth a visit when you're done with that video.
• Robert Smith's Funniest Moments - I think the new album from The Cure is phenomenal but I will never tire of seeing Robert Smith be a cheeky little cutie.
• The Interrogation - speaking of TikTok, Montessori Boy posts many funny things buuuuut they aren't really also available on YouTube. Here's a good one and then you can make the leap.
• MF Doom - Vomitspit - celebrating the 20 year anniversary of MM.. FOOD, the animation style on this video is fantastic.
• The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet Was Finally Found - if you have dabbled in lost media at all, you've definitely heard of "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" - a bootlegged recording that no one has been able to determine the source of for 17 years. It seems they've finally cracked it!
• Lloyd Langford Standup - I watch a healthy amount of Taskmaster, any of the English speaking variety I devour. Langford was a competitor on the Australia version and quite amusing. His bit here about ice cream really got me.

Have a great weekend. Touch grass, all that.

I've been listening to Self since, approximately, 1995 when their debut record Subliminal Plastic Motives was released. They haven't really released any new material since 2015's "Monogamy" single. That nine year gap is pretty grueling for a fan but, fortunately, frontman Matt Mahaffey makes plenty of other music with his production company Cake in Space. Not to mention that other members of the band make great music.

Anyway, that's big wordy intro to note that Self has broken the seal and released new music. "Love You Less" is streaming on all the things. It's a far cry from the sound of the band that emerged 30 years ago with SPM but it's an enjoyable evolution. Hopefully this is the first slow drop of more new music. Time will tell.