Bon Anniversaire, Record Makers! The fantastic record label, Record Makers was formed in 2000 by the band Air and their associates. Which means that this year Record Makers celebrates their 10th anniversary!

To celebrate the occassion, they’ve released a free iPhone app featuring a special soundtrack by Sébastien Tellier and Mr. Oizo. The app invites you to create your own artworks by mixing together various combinations from the great drawings by Mrzyk & Moriceau.

If you can find one of the 3 special combinations in the app, you could win a week-long stay in Paris at the hip Hotel Amour, the entire Record Makers discography, or a selection of other great prizes!

See Record Makers for more details.

Music, line & colour. I love this video for the single “General Motors, Detroit, America” by Record Makers’ latest signing, Acid Washed. The video created by Anthony Burrill features his signature style of beautiful simplicity, producing an almost hypnotic display of colour & simple lines. It’s a refreshing approach considering the overblown production values of most modern music videos.

Check it out at Vimeo.

Update: The debut 12” by Acid Washed is available in transparent vinyl with Artwork by Anthony Burrill via Records Makers.

Explosions & Skateboards. Unkle. Spike Jonze. Lakai Skate Team. Explosions. Is there anything more to say?

Check out the video for the track ‘Heaven’ by Unkle.

Chill out in London. In these stressful financial times it’s good to hear that Buddha Bar, the famous chill-out Paris nightspot, has now opened a London branch. Located under Waterloo Bridge in a Grade 2 listed space, the place has been created by Raymond Visan, the creator behind the original Parisian Buddha Bar. So expect the oriental vibes, design, and food of the original, plus the signature hip chill-out music soundtrack (there are currently 14 best-selling Buddha Bar music compilations – if you like laid back chill-out tunes with an oriental flavouring, do yourself a favour and check them out.)

Find out more about Buddha Bar.

The germans are coming! I’m a bit late to the party on this one, but better late than never, eh? Modeselektor are Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary, an electronic act formed in Berlin. Often raved about by Radiohead frontman, Thom Yorke, Modeselektor’s album ‘Happy Birthday!’ features vocals by Yorke, as well as some other notable vocal contributors such as Maxïmo Park and Paul St. Hillaire.

If you like the darker electronic sounds of musical acts like Unkle, Portishead, etc, then check out Modeselektor. The Thom Yorke track The White Flash and Let Your Love Grow featuring Paul St. Hillaire are tracks worth checking out for a taste of their sound.

Strange & Beautiful. I don’t often post about music, simply because it’s not often that I hear something that sounds different to my ears. So it was really refreshing to hear something genuinely bizarre and unusual in the from of CocoRosie. The Paris based American sisters have a bizarre attitude to instrumentation in the form of vintage children’s musical toys, but couple it with eeriely beautiful vocals. Check out this live recording via youtube to appreciate their weirdness in a live setting, or check out the video for the track Noah’s Ark (attractive women with mustaches makes me feel slightly uncomfortable!)

Find out more at CocoRosie Land (be warned: the websites as strange as the music.)

Ahoy there, matey! I went to a great gig last night on a boat. I drove to Bristol to watch Sia play live at Thekla. The Thekla venue is an old Baltic coaster ship which was bought by an eccentric musician and converted into a fantastically intimate music venue.

Sia, who is probably better know for her vocal work with Zero 7, has an effortlessly soulful voice on record, and in a live setting she doesn’t disappoint either. The intimate setting onboard the Thekla was the perfect place for Sia to perform, and created one of the most emotive atmospheres I’ve experienced at a live music event. If you ever get the chance to catch her live, make sure you do.

You can find more Sia tour dates on her MySpace page.

Ceramics + Music = Design Beauty. I want a Phonofone by Science & Sons. The Phonofone is clever piece of applied science, a beautiful icon of nostalgia, and an ironic twist on the insular nature of personal listening devices. Through passive amplification alone, the Phonofone can instantly transform any personal music player + earbuds into a sculptural audio console. Without the use of external power or batteries, the Phonofone inventively exploits the virtues of horn acoustics to boost the audio output of standard earphones to up to 55 decibles (that’s roughly the maximum volume of laptop speakers). Upon connecting active earphones to the Phonofone their trebly buzzing is instantly and profoundly transformed into a warm, rich and resonant sound.

Find out more about the Phonofone by Science & Sons.

Sorry for the lack of posts this week… but I’ve been skipping around the country for the past few days. The highlight was catching Interpol play live on Monday night.

Also, I tried out a new design concept hotel in Birmingham called Nite Nite. The hotel is a boutique budget hotel that takes it’s inspiration from Japanese capsule hotels. Essentially, your room amounts to what can only be described as a luxury prison cell. That may sound awful, but it’s actually a great experience. The tiny windowless room which is kitted out with a 42 inch plama televisions and a high-spec wet-room area can be completely controlled from a star-trek style neon control panel on the wall. It’s what I imagine a cabin on a luxury space travel trip to the moon would be like at some point in the future.

If you’re not claustraphobic and you ever find yourself in Birmingham, UK and need a room for the night in the centre of the city, you should definitely check out Nite Nite.

Great video work from London based creative team. The guys from TEAR let me know about the award winning video they created for the buzz generating artist Ebony Bones. TEAR is the alias representing designer George Tsioutsias and artist Theo Michael, and the video they’ve created for the charmingly titled single ‘Don’t Fart On My Heart’ is a strikingly visual collection of scribbles and random stuff (just what I like.)

You can see the video on YouTube, or get a better quality version on TEAR’s website.

See more work by TEAR.

‘Gypsy’ probably isn’t the right word. It’s just that it slips off the tongue better than ‘Eastern European’. Whatever you want to call it, there does seems to be an emerging trend for all things gypsy/eastern european. Apparently, “Gypsy Holidays” are the hip new short-holiday experience. There’s even a major US television series currently airing following the lives of a family of travellers called The Riches.

However, it’s music where it’s really having a big impact. There’s the “Gypsy Punk” of Gogol Bordello that’s been around for a while, but it’s the newer eastern-european folk influenced artists that are ticking all the boxes for me. Check out the slavic radiohead stylings of Beruit, or other eastern-bloc tinged artists like DeVotchKa, A Hawk & A Hacksaw or Matt Elliot.

Quick! Buy yourself a battered caravan, before everybody wants in on the trend!

Record your next album in style. If I was a rock star, I’d definitely be recording my next hit album at the Deltalab studios in downtown Copenhagen.

Delta Lab Recording Studios are the world’s first designer recording studios and the premiere studios for artists seeking both a singular, creative experience and comfortable, professional environs for their recording, production, and mixing needs.

Ok, so maybe you’re not a rock star, but if you love modern design interiors, go and check out the photos on the Deltalab website. You’ve got to love some of the Clockwork Orange inspired moments.

Find out more at Deltalab.

I tried, I really did. I tried to watch the film, Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle, but I just didn’t understand the appeal (I suppose the fact that I’m not really into football doesn’t help.) According to IMDB, the movie is, “Halfway between a sports documentary and an conceptual art installation, “Zidane” consists in a full-length soccer game (Real Madrid vs. Villareal, April 23, 2005) entirely filmed from the perspective of soccer superstar Zinedine Zidane.”

I was intrigued to see what M/M Paris did with the opening credit sequence of the film, but the real star of the film is the soundtrack by Mogwai. The soundtrack is contemplative, and quietly seething. It’s beautiful music, and if you’re into the more laidback sounds of a band like Air, you’re bound to like the Zidane Soundtrack too.

Check out the track Black Spider for a taste.

If you like other-worldy haunting music, check out Jóhann Jóhannsson. Jóhann Jóhannsson has created an album titled IBM 1401, a User´s Manual. The story behind the album is quite touching. Jóhann’s father was an engineer on a very early IBM 1401 computer, and learned of an obscure method of making music on this computer – a purpose for which this business machine was not at all designed. When the computer was taken out of service in 1971, it was given a little farewell ceremony, almost a funeral, when its melodies were played for one last time. This “performance” was documented on tape along with recordings of the sound of the machine in operation. Jóhann Jóhannsson’s album is based on those 30 year old recordings of the IBM 1401 computer.

Check the video on YouTube for the song Sun’s Gone Dim, & The Sky’s Turned Black to get a taste of this hauntingly soulful music.

Verdict: A two-hour version of Falco’s ‘Rock Me Amadeus’. That’s not to say I didn’t like it; embarrassingly, I quite like Falco’s ‘Rock Me Amadeus’. However, Falco was rocking the eighteenth-century costumes, baroque interiors and 80′s music well before Sofia Coppola got around to it.

View the trailer for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.

The Marie Antoinette Soundtrack is the real outstanding work of the film. Suprisingly, the modern day music by the Aphex Twin, 80′s tracks and classical pieces don’t seem out of place at all. This soundtrack, and Late Night Tales by Air (which also contains a mixtures of 80′s tracks and classical pieces — it must be a french thing) is all I’ve been listening to recently. For some reason, both albums have a cool calm european sort of chill-out vibe thing happening, which works for me!

First of all, let it be known that I don’t speak french. So, for all I know, Dominique Ané (known as “Dominique A”) could be singing about almost anything — but, I don’t care! The music speaks for itself — as cheesy as that sounds. My iTunes has been playing the album L’Horizon non-stop since I bought it. It ticks all my boxes. Moody? Check. Dark? Check. Possible soundtrack to your imaginary life as a tortured artistic genius living in a Parisian garret? Check.

If someone translates my favorite tracks like ‘Antaimoro’ and ‘Rouvrir’, and it turns out he’s singing about sunshine and rainbows, I’m going to be seriously annoyed. In fact, I don’t want to know. Ignorance is bliss!