Design-A-Week 2010 – nr.17 – Schnää, Schtyyl, Schound

Wo isch de Böle? Wo giits Schnää? Wer hät Schtyyl? Und was isch das für ‘n Sound???

Lime-green and white with a sleek swiss font. What more does your office with 30°C need?

A fan.

…And we need some too. Lots, loads, ginormous amounts! Send all your friends to Bonk.Apparel on Facebook or Twitter and get us all one step closer to world peace*.

Ta ta!
– Bonkalicious

Check out the rest of the Design-A-Week 2010 on bonksnow.com.

Played while posting this post:
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – Home
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros – 40 Day Dream

You can find more funky tunes in our Playlists section on bonksnow.com.

*Bonk.Apparel does not guarantee the implementation of world peace and will not be held liable for its consequences.

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr.16 – Not So Finnish

I can be dumb, I can be dumber, and sometimes I can just be blatantly pathetic. The latter sometimes applies at the same time as the former.

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr.15 – Lost? Lost!

FIFA World Cup, travel, Battlefield Bad Company multiplayer, skateboarding, heat. Repeat.

That’s the lodown, the excuse, the pardon my absence.
The site redesign is still in progress, but an easy clean page will appear sometime in the next two months. The current design is leaning towards the newest Travel Series setup, with simple two-color straight-lined pages.

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr.14 – All Roads Lead To Bonk.

Don’t stop, just bonk.

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr.13 – Éclaboussures de Fleurs

I’ve just returned to Germany and turned on my Xbox. This one will be short and simple. It’s colorful, flowery, feminine, possibly cute, maybe mystical – you decide.

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr.12 – Bomb The Slopes (In A Peaceful Manner)

How about we bomb the slopes with plumes of fresh powder? I like airplanes (and aeroplanes), I like mountains, and I like snow. So I called for an armada of Junker Ju52’s, stocked them up with our very own Asterisk and Raindropolix Snowbombs and let them do their thang.

Best New Music 2010 – nr.25 – Caribou

Your car, your friends, your future wife/husband – even the people waiting to cross the street who hear this on your mediocre car stereo – they will all love you for playing Caribou.

What The Hell Have We Been Up To?

You may have wondered where all the postage and sporadic activity went after a mildly successful start into the year. Twenty-something posts for new music, 10-ish posts for new designs, and a few other ramblings on nothing and nothingness.

Well, here are some excuses:

Best New Music 2010 – nr.24 – The Black Keys (Album Review)

Oh yes. We’re back on the rocker and this one’s a shocker. I don’t live in Florida anymore, I no longer have a car to blast my music from while speeding past fat police officers looking the wrong way with their speed guns, I can no longer wear sunglasses every day, but- I still feel like a king listening to this.

Best New Music 2010 – nr.23 – Avi Buffalo

Avi Buffalo have been popping up here and there more and more. Mentions and reviews across the blogosphere have helped drive a little hype for this Californian indie-folk-pop band. There’s even an interview with The Guardian. One aspect of the band which can be recognized in all the interviews and articles is that these kids – all roughly 19 – are horny. Teenage-blue-ball-horny. At least thats what you get from the (dirty) talks with songwriter and main man behind the band, Avigdor Zahner-Isenberg.

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr.10 – Zoom, Color, Spring, Lines

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr.09 – Location Of Last Living Unicorn Revealed

Since the last posts have been rather short and we’re pretending to be all artsy today I’m just going to say

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr.11 – Happy 420 :)

I’m skipping a few posts to bring this one on time. Happy 420 everybody!

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr.08 – Green & White in 86 Seconds

Green, white, text, adjust, finito. One minute twenty-six seconds and ready for posting.

Design-A-Week-2010 – nr.07 – Somebody Could Sue Me

Yesterday was Laax’s last day of the season. Today was the just another day of Bonk.’s never-ending season. Sooo, for those of you who know, the similarities are quite obvious. The only problem is, our logo doesn’t look as sexy as Laax’s.

Design-A-Week-2010 – nr.06 – Plenty Other Fish In The Sea

Dear diary,

Best New Music 2010 – nr.22 – Skybox

What if Simon & Garfunkel had tea and a joint with MGMT, The Descendants, and The KGB? You’d probably be fond of their offspring: Skybox.
The band has released two albums since forming in 2005. The first, Arco Iris (2006), was a bit more on the rocky side. The second, Morning After Cuts, was released January 2010 and has some über-chilled psychedelic-indie-rock-ness to it. Let’s have a listen.

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr.05 – Ready For Takeoff

This one is simple: insert 10px lines as fill pattern, smack on a thick text, fly in the asterisk and make it look like a plane, ein bisschen Schatten and voila!

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr.04 – Stain Glass Bonkers

After a week of fresh powder and a bit of sunshine my goggle tan is ripe, my lips are chapped, and the shots are in the bag. Sadly, that’s most likely the last time I’ll be saying that this season.

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr.03 – Playground Park

If I were 6 years old, this is what I would draw.

Best New Music 2010 – nr.21 – Holy Fuck

As the song crescendoed into a downright orchestral blow-out, my arms waived frantically. Playing the drums, I grinned with content at the band to my right, and caught glimpses of the crowd to the left as I head-banged my way through the last minute of the song. When it was over I was raging – my heart beating, my nerves on call, adrenaline pumping through me like an oil rig at dawn.

I looked left towards the crowd, slowly pulled the curtain shut, and turned to my iPod to see which band had brought this city-center embarrassement upon me. It was Holy Fuck…

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr. 02 – Heartbeats

Staring at the UU and PV stats for this blog I saw lines going up and down, flattening out, forming peaks, and sometimes even kickers. I opened Excel and entered some numbers, made a graph, then went all photoshop on it, and bam! we have a silent but deadly heartbeat graph.

Design-A-Week 2010 – nr. 01 – Gold

Here it is, the first design of the year, the first design of the Design-A-Week Project 2010, and the first non musical thing to happen on the Bonkalicious Blog this month.

Best New Music 2010 – nr. 20 – The Pass

It doesn’t get much newer than this: The Pass have just brought out their very first EP, Colors, in February – and are currently recording an LP mixed by Alex Aldi (who worked with Passion Pit, The Walkmen, White Rabbits, etc.) [via IRC]

The available tracks are bright and funky – with tendencies to fall slightly in the vicinity of Phoenix, Passion Pit, and other New-Wave/Psychedelic-Pop bands – but are still fresh and clean.

Best New Music 2010 – nr. 19 – Portugal. The Man

Strolling through the musical universe I slowly started to think I’d have nothing to write about today. The wood block designs I was planning for the DAW2010 failed miserably due to lack of RAM on my seven (!!) year old laptop. The Flash Plugin for my Firefox seems to be on vacation, so finding your next favorite song has been pretty hard in recent days. I also lost my knuckle in a cheese-grater during breakfast. It’s not the first time that’s happened either.

But what the hell do you care?

How many bands do you know from Alaska? Keep reading, and you might just know one. Let’s listen to Portugal. The Man!

Best New Music 2010 – nr. 18 – Man/Miracle

If you liked the early laid-back roadtrip music we all know from Kings of Leon, you will certainly enjoy this fresh mix of drums, guitars, bass, sans synthesizers. Man/Miracle just released their debut LP, The Shape of Things, yesterday (March 3rd). It’s got some dark sides, bright sides, slow sides, and fast sides. A little bit everything packed in an atmosphere of original song-writing from the soul.

Now that your panties are wet, let’s have a listen:

What Is Bonk. Planning For 2010?

Last year was the first functioning year of bonksnow.com and the Bonkalicious blog. The Design-A-Week Project was completed (!!) against all personal expectations, and some of the designs don’t even look that bad.

A number of lessons have been learned and 2010 is going to be a time to adjust and move forward.
So, what are we going to do this year?

Best New Music 2010 – nr.17 – Fang Island

Fang Island describe their music as “everyone high-fiving everyone” – and that’s pretty much how it sounds. Imagine Animal Collective for punks, with little aggression and lots of distortion. Heavy riffs with Super-Mario melodies and very creative song structures, these guys put on a great display of energetic musicianship.

To show off their soft side, you have to watch this “concert” in a kindergarten. Possibly the cutest concert I’ve ever seen:

Best New Music 2010 – nr.16 – Two Door Cinema Club

Peer pressure. That’s why I’m writing about Two Door Cinema Club. It’s not that I don’t like them, I just can’t decide if I actually want to say I like them. Fantastic songwriting and meticulous production – which may be precisely the problem. I feel like Doug Morris is standing in the mixing room saying “make me a hit” every time the engineer cues the recording. Maybe it’s just too good?

Best New Music 2010 – nr.15 – Blood Red Shoes

Guitarist + drummer, female + male. Looks good to me.
…And so do Blood Red Shoes. They don’t sound too bad either. Hailing from Brighton (the English seaside), this young pair are bringing out their second album soon, and we’re here to have a listen.

Best New Music 2010 – nr.14 – Shout Out Louds

Sweden has proven long ago to be a great birthplace for music and artists (and beautiful women). One of the many wonders of Swedish indie-culture are the Shout Out Louds. You’ve heard the name before, you’ve heard their songs, you may even have the last album – but you’re about to want more. There’s a brand new album coming out next Tuesday (Feb. 23rd) called “Work”, and it is definitely something to look out for.

This is the song you should know from 2007. If you don’t know “Tonight I Have To Leave It”, you can blame your uncool friends:

Best New Music 2010 – nr.13 – Dark Dark Dark

I spent the past 2 hours listening to good, mediocre, and shitty bands – looking for your next big music fix. Then, I came across Dark Dark Dark, and felt it was time to share. They are like a big group of gypsies who make fantastic music and probably even shower once a day. There are very positive reviews from online critics and there’s also an EP for 2010 – “Bright Bright Bright”.

So grab a mug of beer, hoist the sails, and whistle through the winds listening to “New York Song”:

Best New Music 2010 – nr.12 – Beach House

It’s winter and we like it. But Beach House is getting hot, so it feels like summer. You will find them on many ‘bands to look out for’-lists, so we will duly note this Baltimore duo in this little list of our own.

I haven’t been ‘captured’ by a single song yet (which isn’t a bad thing at all)… but I do like Victoria Legrand’s voice and the garage-pop sound in general. It’s like a sweet goodnight story. ‘After 11 With A Bottle of Wine’ -music, if you will.

So let’s start things of with a nice live video of “Zebra”:

The Quiet Before The Storm // Olympics, London, Music, More?

There are two minutes and nineteen seconds left and the score is 3:1 for USA. Switzerland is putting on a good game, but the Americans just keep breaking through their plays. It’s Hockey. It’s the Olympics. The Winter Olympics.

Best New Music 2010 – nr.11 – Blu & Exile

According to imposemagazine.com, Blu & Exile have been performing new songs at recent shows. So… let’s expect a new album sometime this year. There’s no new visible/audible material as of yet, but here are some great samples from the previous release (2007), called Below The Heavens.

Best New Music 2010 – nr.10 – Aesop Rock

image courtesy of http://www.rickbenedict.com

I can’t find any news or solid hints that there is a new Album coming out – but I either had a dream about it, or I’ve lost track of my source. I’m speaking of Aesop Rock, a very funky ‘indie hip hop’ artist signed to the Definitive Jux label- the same label RJD2 is on.

Best New Music 2010 – nr.9 – Gold Panda

Here’s another downtempo, chilled, electronic mishmash of soothing sounds and samples. Gold Panda is a bit of a mysterious artist – at least for now, there’s a hype, but there’s no real information about the guy.

So if you have any info, let me know. ‘It’ has apparently been remixing tracks for Bloc Party and Little Boots, so if the members of either group would kindly contact me, this would be much appreciated.

So what do I know?

Best New Music 2010 – nr.8 – Bonobo

Dishonest: I’ve been in the loop for years, he’s a personal friend, and I know every piece of hotness that’s out there.
Honest: I was on facebook and a friend posted a video which encouraged me to revisit this much appraised artist.

Bonobo is one of those that hang in a mellow pose beneath the surface, offering food at all times for any takers. Passerby’s may be invigorated by the interesting texture and the smooth mix of sounds, but their appetite is held at bay until they take a proper bite.

I took the big bite checking out “Flutter” and was instantly hooked.

Best New Music 2010 – nr.7 – Yeasayer

I was skeptical at first, but then I saw the following video of Yeasayer and was well adjusted. I’ve had them on my iPod for a while but never really registered the music with the name. Now I’ve had a good listen and can only recommend it.

This is a great studio performance from 2008, “Tightrope”

Best New Music 2010 – nr.6 – Beast

This. Is. Heavy.
The band is called Beast and their music fully lives up to the name. Growling basslines with a dirty female voice and a background choir that just makes you feel like a minion in the original Terminator movie.They call it ‘trip-rock’.

This is the first song I heard and still leaves the greatest impression, possibly because the video is as intense as the song. “Mr. Hurricane”: