My Sidewalk Psychiatry project has gained some more attention recently, thanks to Boingboing and some great personal sites. Emotional prodding in public space also reminds me of this fresh project from the ’90s. Graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister often references it as one of the few art/design projects that has “touched his heart.” Mimicking the standard signs in New York City’s subway cars, the artist True replaced them with some humorous and touching life instructions. The original warnings were subtly changed to “Riding with despair prohibited, Keep hopes up,” “Do not hold grudges,” and “Life Instructions: Have fun, Do not hurt people, Do not accept defeat, Strive to be happy.” Check out his site here!

I’ve never ridden the subway with despair, but I do enjoy a commute with some romantic melancholy. Few things are more poignant than listening to moody music in crowded places. Using a cool and simple tool called Muxtape.com, I created a mellow mp3 mixtape I like to call Ten Songs That Will Turn Any Old Subway Ride Into the Most Poignant Life-in-the-City Scene From a Heartbreaking Movie. Listen and sigh. Track list below.

1. Nico - These Days
2. Air - Mike Mills
3. Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin - Je T’aime Moi Non Plus
4. Mellow - Airplane
5. David Bowie - Space Oddity
6. Ratatat - Cherry
7. The Zombies - Beechwood Park
8. The Rolling Stones - She Smiled Sweetly
9. Sonic Youth - Superstar
10. Brian Eno - The Big Ship

Artwork above is by True and was scanned from Sagmeister’s great book Made You Look.

Favorite toy no. 257: Speak & Spell. In 1978, Texas Instruments introduced the first single-chip speech synthesizer which was able to electronically duplicate the human vocal tract on a single chip of silicon. In charming and fresh fashion, their first product was the Speak & Spell for children and it quickly became one of the most popular toys of the ’80s.

The inviting bleeps and gentle man-voice have since been sampled by various artists, including Kraftwerk and Dopplereffekt, and the machines themselves have been reconstructed into crazy-ass synthesizers by those with know-how. Texas Instruments went on to produce boring calculators for adults, but they’ll always be grandfather of the talking toy and that makes them supercool.

James (aka KinoSport) just made a hot new mix called Crashed in Radioland. Bookended by In the Mood for Love sound bites, it’s a warm, echo-y land of motivating background music to work to. And as time goes by, it shifts ever-so-slightly into soft-focus, just like you at work! Download it for free and get productive to old school dub techno hits by Basic Channel and Burger & Ink and wall-of-sound anthems from Brian Eno and The Field.

Image above by James from his site.

My Red Antenna cohorts have put up a Red Antenna music site with some of our recent tracks and mixes, as well as a few of our previous CD and vinyl releases. If you like minimal techno, electro, disco house, or krautrock, you’ll loooove Red Antenna. Listen on the spot and download truckloads of free hott music!

The “Detroit Detroit” mp3 set includes six new songs that I created for the dance floor. Chock full of milky basslines and catchy counterparts, the tracks range from synthpop to booty bass to disco house to minimal techno. I performed them at the Minimal/Maximal Festival in Grenoble, France and the Destroy All Cars event in NYC. Named after various Detroit locations, the songs also pay homage to the city of automobiles, vacant buildings, and good techno!

Full of cheese and wine, I performed at the Minimal/Maximal Festival in Grenoble, France on November 16th. Dancing shoes were everywhere and good times were had by all. Check out photos of the night here, thanks to the camera prowess of Steve Baker. With a backdrop of visuals, including my alpha girls, collages, and various urban planning projects, I played six new tracks and will post mp3s here soon…