Pylon Sounds

Got To Be Real
All My Lovin'
Star Love
Come In From The Rain
You Saved My Day
Give My Love To You
Nothing To Say
You're The One
Daybreak (Storybook Children)

A1 Magic's In The Air (2:59)
A2 I Haven't Got Anything Better To Do (3:37)
A3 Boy, I Really Tied One On (3:46)
A4 Candy (5:15) Arranged By - Pee Wee Ellis
B1 A Beautiful Friendship (2:52)
B2 Higher & Higher (3:55)
B3 All The Way Down (6:22)
B4 Dream (3:51)

The other day I had an idea for a poster design that involved a vinyl record. I thought about taking a photo of one of my own records, like I had done for this cd packaging I designed last year

but I had previously had issues with too much noise in the image (time for a new camera!). Instead, I decided to make one using photoshop and freehand mx. Turns out it wasn’t that difficult to make, and I was pleased with the results. I considered giving away the image for free here on the blog, and then thought, even better; I’ll make a tutorial! (and give away the image as well). So here you have it, this is how I made my record from scratch:

In freehand, draw a perfect circle by holding down the shift key while dragging your circle tool. Draw a second perfect circle, much smaller than the first, and place it inside the bigger one.

Select both circles and in the align palette, select “align center” in both pulldown menus then hit the “align” button.

Select the blend tool, and create a blend between the two. In the object palette, change the number of steps to 80. Export this image as an eps, then open in photoshop. Open at 300 dpi, 3000 pixels.

Once opened, name your layer “vinyl”, then create a new layer and move it underneath the vinyl layer. Resize canvas to 11 inches, leaving your image in the center. Select your bottom layer and fill with white.

Select the vinyl layer. Using the magic wand, select the area outside and inside of the circles, then invert the selection. Go to your filters palette and select Radial Blur. Set the blur to 75 and click ok.

With your selection still on, create a new layer. Fill selection with black, set layer to multiply, and opacity to 92%.

Keeping your selection, create another new layer. Create a radial gradient on the top corner of the image like so:

Duplicate layer and set to overlay. Create a copy of this layer. Then create another copy, which you will rotate 180 degrees. Create a copy of this layer and set the opacity to 15.

Make a small circular selection in the middle of the record. With the vinyl layer selected, hit command-x to cut the pixels from this layer.

make a new layer above the gradient layers. This will be for your track seperations. For this part of the record, you will make several different sized circle selections around the record and stroke them with black. After you have several concentric circles (not all the same size; try to vary the width of the spaces between circles), set your layer to exclusion.

Select your vinyl layer, and with the magic wand tool, select the area inside the record. Now go to your black layer, and while holding down the option key, select the middle again. You should now have a selection of the ring around the inside of the record. On a new layer, which should be at the very top of the other layers, fill your selection with black. Set the opacity to 72.

Now it’s time to make the label in the center of the record.

Start by making a selection of the white area inside the record, and make it a few pixels wider than the white section. Making sure you’re on the ‘center ring’ layer, hit command c to copy your selection. Now hit command n to open a new document the size of your selection. Make your document several pixels larger on each side and click okay to create the document. Hit command-v to paste your selection.

with the magic wand tool, select the outside of your circle. With the selection intact, you can go ahead and delete the circle layer, and add a new empty layer. Select inverse, then fill the selection with your label’s background color.

using your guides, determine the center of the circle.
Now draw a small circle with your round selection tool, and delete the pixels in this area.

create a new layer and call it rings. make another circular selection, larger than the last, and give it a 2pt stroke of black. Draw another, still larger circle and give that a 2pt stroke as well. Give these circles a gaussian blur of 4. Adjust the opacity to 30.

open the image (supplied in the zip file at the end of this tutorial) record-layer.jpg. select all the pixels and copy, then paste into your record label document. Invert the image, and adjust the levels as shown.

Set this layer to screen. Set the opacity to around 40. If you’d like, you can duplicate the layer and rotate it, and move it around to your liking.

When your happy with the texture,command click on the label layer thumbnail to select the label. go to edit->copy merged, then open up your vinyl document and paste the selection. Center the label on top of the vinyl. (at this point, i realized my vinyl might be a little too wide in comparison to the label, so I cut around the edge of the vinyl. You can avoid this when making yours by making the center ring and label big enough to begin with).

Now all that’s left to do is add whatever design you want to the label and you’re done!

I’m including a zipped file with this tutorial that contains the layered psd (from photoshop cs2), and a flattened file that you can have to use as you wish (i don’t mind how you use it, but a link back to me would be nice if you do use it in a project).

Get the zip file here

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Audio. Lupe Unplugged: It’s cool when a couple of elements of a song are changed and the result is something completely fresh. Lupe Fiasco’s Superstar gets new life with this live version he recorded with Matthew Santos for BBC. It reminds us of Nelly Furtado’s cover of Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy.

The acoustic version is a bit more subdued than the original. Lupe employs a soft-spoken delivery and it kind of makes you listen to the words differently. He even does back up vocals for Matthew. Pretty impressive stuff. Watch the acoustic version of Superstar after the jump.

Film. Medicine for Melancholy: Medicine for Melancholy is an anomaly. It’s a story about two San Francisco hipsters and the Sunday they spend together after having a one-night-stand. They ride fixed-gear bikes, smoke a joint, visit a museum, go dancing at an indie-rock club, and buy late night tacos. They also happen to be black. Gasp!

Like it or not, a monolithic image of blackness pervades in popular culture. Any deviation from this is deemed inauthentic and unmarketable. This is not a subtextual issue for the film but a theme it tackles head-on. The duo’s affinity for indie-culture has left them isolated in a rapidly gentrifying city that is only seven percent black. Meeting each other seems to bring their mutual identity crisis to light. Their affection for each other is visceral, - they both realize, without actually saying it, that they belong together. Micah (the guy) wants to go with this gut feeling, while Jo (the girl) seems a bit reticent. Here’s what director, Barry Jenkins has to say about the film: “In this meek story of a random encounter, the film explores the process of negotiating one’s identity by illustrating how the effects of gentrification make it virtually impossible for minority urbanites to just be.” [Photo Credit]

Dork recommends Medicine for Melancholy. View the trailer [Here]

Media. Nike's Maybe: Once again Nike raises the bar. We've played their latest commercial at least twelves times now. We're not sure why, but we find this particular ad really compelling. Entitled "Maybe," it is narrated with Jordan's confident and instrospective tone. The shots, cut aways and sequencing is everything Nike has become - the symbol of defiant, odd beating, hard working, impossibilities achieved by the passionate. And, amazingly they've breathed this ethos in a narration articulated by the word maybe. It's just plain awesome.

Spike's Mars, Saul's List of Demands, and now Jordan's Maybe. We've added this to our morning get-hype machine. After watching this you'll feel like you can tackle anything if you put in consistent hard work. Get your dose of inspiration after the jump.

01 Hey, Mrs. Jones
02 Summer Samba
03 One, Two, Three
04 Free Again
05 Down By The Riverside
06 Blue Bongo
07 I'll Wait For You
08 Function At The Junction
09 Spanish Grease
10 Lara's Theme (Somewhere My Love)
11 Cast Your Fate To The Wind
PretOria Ripped

I’ve gotten the heads up from a few readers that my comments weren’t working. I deactivated the commentluv plugin, and it seems to be working now. That’s kind of a shame, because I thought commentluv was a really cool plugin. Anyway, if you tried to comment before and it didn’t work, please do try again. One reason i write this and give all of this stuff away is to connect with people; I’d love to know more about who’s reading.

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Film. The Killing of John Lennon: For all of the wrong reasons, Mark David Chapman, was a man ahead of his time. He was a 25 year-old narcissist, whose obsession with Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and celebrity, led him to murder. You can’t watch this movie and not feel weird. This attention is sort of what Chapman wanted, right?

This movie’s worth seeing because it’s not about what is going to happen (we know how the story ends, sadly), but why and how it happens. It’s doesn’t condone or romanticize what Chapman did. The film is entirely factual - nothing has been made up. All of Chapman’s dialogue was taken from interviews, depositions and court transcripts in the public domain. Chapman’s isolation and detachment are captured with shots of him walking the streets in slow motion in relation to the surrounding world. The story is told entirely from Mark David Chapman’s point-of-view, which is challenging, but it gives the film a vivid realism rarely seen. In exploring the mind of a celebrity stalker, Andrew Piddington (the film’s director) has turned the mirror on us, and exposed things about our celebrity-obsessed culture that we don’t like to see.

Dork recommends this film. View the trailer [Here]

Yep more free grunge textures. I have lots and lots of these. Aside from the free ones, and the 80 premium textures I have for sale here, I probably have another 200 or so sitting on my hard drive waiting for a home. I’ll continue to upload them here as time permits. Between the dayjob (making newspaper ads all day), family, and freelance design work, there’s just not enough time in the day! Hopefully in the next year or two I’ll have enough money saved to work freelance fulltime… I can’t wait for that day!

I know a lot of you are downloading the textures and brushes, and it would be awesome if you left a comment to let me know who you are (and even more awesome if you let me see what you make using the resources you got here). Hit up the comments if you have a minute; it would really be appreciated.

download 9 Free Grunge Textures here

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People's Choice - A Mellow Mood
Roy Ayers - Mistic Voyage
King Errisson - Jeannett
Kool & The Gang - Summer madness
Faze-O - Ridin High
The Floaters - Float On
The Lost Generation - This Is The Lost Generation (Jones Edit)
Gabor Szabo - Breezin' 
Kool & The Gang - Summer Madness Alt version
Roy Ayers - Everybody Loves Sunshine 
Leo's Sunship - Give Me The Sunshine [Vocals]

After thinking about doing this for a while, I finally sat down and made my first set of photoshop brushes. I give you, the Rock and Roll Brush Set! These were taken from photographs of my own gear, so it’s all 100% brand new, never before seen photoshop brushes. The brushes were created in CS2 and are high resolution. As always, you can use this however you’d like, so long as you don’t sell them or claim them as your own. I think I might have to follow in the footsteps of my esteemed design blogging peers, and create a flickr group to see what people are making with the design elements I’ve been providing. I’m eager to see what you guys come up with!

Download Rock & Roll Brush Set Here 

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Isaac Hayes - Body language 
Barry White - Love Serenade 
King Errisson - Loocking back
Les McCann - What's Going On
The Three Degrees - Maybe
Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes - Hope that we can get together soon
Billy Swan - Me And Mrs. Jones - with MFSB
James Brown & the J.B.'s - How Long Can I Keep it Up
Reurn to forever - Hello Again
Nancy Wilson - Can't Take My Eyes Off You 
Tyrone Davis - In the mood

Random picks from the archive:

Cappella - House Energy Revenge : Sampletastic nonsense from Italy.

Sven Väth - Beauty & The Beast(Underworld remix) : Kind of a missed opportunity this one, good but lacking something. it starts to get good just as it’s ending.

Egyptian Empire - The Horn Track (Foghorn mix) : There’s a Toxic Two remix of this also, but it’s not quite as entertaining. There is also an excellent Luke Slater mix of this track.

Mory Kanté - Mogo Djolo (The Ambush Vocal remix) : Not Yeke Yeke, which I’m sure everyone has heard enough of.

Biosphere - Novelty Waves (Mark Bell remix) : Do Levis still make the same use of music and video to sell their denims? I am grateful for this and Mr. Oizo in particular, but stuff such as Babylon Zoo can piss right off.

Urban Shakedown - Some Justice (Original mix) : For some reason I’ve found myself listening to Gene Krupa most of this week, yet when I went to return the CD to the stack this was sticking out, and is pretty much the antithesis of Gene Krupa.

Liquid - Sweet Harmony : and this one kind of goes hand in hand with the previous track as it also makes some use of Ce Ce Rodgers - Someday.

The Beatmasters ft. the Cookie Crew - Rok Da House(W.E.F.U.N.K.) : someday I’ll finish my Beatmasters post. I’m the rapper, now you’re the dancer.

808 State - The Master (Massey mix) : As previously spoken of. And to repeat my earlier request, any other tracks from this that interested parties might want to anonymously donate would be very welcome. The Resistance is Futile album is easily my most wanted record, edging out Deep Shit and the Black Room.

Jam & Spoon - Stella (Moby Electro remix)

A matter of how much heat you can take.

Well, I had the intention to write a new tutorial and make some photoshop brushes for you this weekend, but it would appear that my allergies and sinuses had different plans for me, and I didn’t get much of anything done. To make up for it, I have eight free high res images for you to use as you see fit. I have at least 250 photos, mostly textures, that I plan to put up here very soon. Keep an eye out for that!

8 Free Images

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I’m working on some things to share with you this weekend, but in the meantime, I’d like to post a few cool videos I found on youtube. Here’s a short film about typography that I love:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o1U4o1bc2k

And here’s an interesting television news spot about type design

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezyRovNSaHs

Finally, a short piece on David Carson, filmed by Hillman Curtis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_j5M-xJIC0

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By no particular intentional design, this is my 150th post according to the WordPress dashboard thing. That would mean that I’ve written an average of 2.5 posts a week since initially putting this place together, and I really didn’t think I was that productive. This post has been sitting in my draft folder for a while, festering while I try to ignore it but with a milestone approaching I must rid myself if the millstone around my neck.

It started coincidentally enough because I was looking through some older posts, and Smith & Mighty stuck out somehow leading me down a smoky alley to their remix of Beats International’s Dub Be Good To Me.

Stepping back a bit from there to before Beats International, Norman Cook’s initial post Housemartins work appeared under his own name as a double A side single with two distinctly different vocal styles. The lead track was Blame It On The Bassline featuring the vocals of Wildski, based on the Jackson 5’s Blame It On The Boogie, and sampling Chic’s Good Times and Matt Bianco’s Wap Bam Boogie, which I referenced earlier in the week. Wildski later produced the Tears For Fears sampling Warrior, but didn’t really seem to find the UK rap niche that was bubbling under and is perhaps indirectly responsible for the Stereo MCs and Dizzie Rascal.

The AA Side of this release was provided by an artist more known for his indie output and general Peel friendliness, Billy Bragg providing a kind of falsetto voice for Won’t Talk About It, and this is why I stumbled on the London remix of Sexuality earlier in the week.

Anyway, back to dubbegoodtome. Dub Be Good To Me is a cover of The SOS Band - Just Be Good To Me and makes use of the bassline from The Clash - Guns Of Brixton. The vocals were supplied by Lindy Layton, who later went on to form Hardknox on Skint but I might be getting ahead of myself there. Post tag fly boss walk jam nitty gritty, Lindy released a cover of Silly Games featuring the vocals of Janet Kaye who had an earlier hit with the same track.
Following the release of Dub Be Good To Me, The Clash track was remixed by Jeremy Healy of one time Haysi Fantayzee success and Ezee Possee infamy and released as Return to Brixton.

To try and get back to the loosely defined subject of this post, there is a Smith & Mighty remix of the Tica reprise of Rock The Casbah. Whatever that is.

Things!

Double Trouble & The Rebel MC - Street Tuff (Norman Cook remix) : Which starts with a rhythm very similar to that which used to introduce the cricket on BBC2 and also samples Shaft.

Fatboy Slim - Song For Lindy.

All of this said, I still can’t seem to find the one Beats International track I was thinking of though, I think it might have come from the For Spacious Lies 12″ and it ends in a looped locked groove.

Beats International items on ebay

Rachelle Ferrell (b. 1961, Berwin, Pennsylvania) is an American singer and musician. Although she has had some success in the mainstream R&B, pop, gospel, and classical music scene, she is most noted for her talents as a contemporary jazz singer.
More Wikypedia

Lp this will be heard as the voice of Rachelle Ferrell VOICE INCREDIBLE!
Claude Nobs Intro
You Send Me
You Don't Know What Love Is
Don't Waste Your Time
My Funny Valentine
I Can Explain
I'm Special
Bye-Bye Blackbird
Prayer Dance
With Every Breath I Take
Me Voila Seul
On Se Reveillera