We Are The Muzak Makers

And We Are The Dreamers Of Your Dreams!





A StellaVista re-branding for the troubled Muzak-Corporation. Unfortunately they went for the Sarah Palin-lookalike instead.

Remember

1 City | 2 Lives | 3 Reasons | 4 Nights
Remember | Remember Me | This Way


Lyric excerpt "Remember" by John Foxx/Nation 12

Directed by StellaVista

I have become a director yesterday! Thanks to this funky Text-To-Movie Program that lets you easily direct a scene with up to two characters. I was amazed at how easy and intuitive the process is. You can chose different settings, characters and languages (which in return allow you to let your characters speak with strong accents). Camera angles, expressions, movements and sounds can be easily selected and you can drag and drop them everywhere into your script.
In a relatively short while I came up with three short "music"-clips.

My first attempt has a Kevin Spacey look-a-like performing an excerpt of The Talking Heads´ "Once in a lifetime".



Next I went to Düsseldorf where tourists ask you the way to the "Kling Klang Studio" instead of the central station. Here I had lots of fun to teach the computer to speak with a German and French accent. "Ja tvoi sluga! Ja tvoi Rabotnik!"



I then managed to sneak into the Pet Shop Boy Mansion, where some fundamental questions were being discussed. "Love, etc?" is my most ambitious project today. But will the audience love me?



If you sign in for a free account you can also "remix" every film as you wish. George Lucas must have had his hands in this.

It´s great fun to play around with. You can call me Alan Smithee now.

Back from Barcelona

Back from the most beautiful city in the world, where even the millions of finely honed decorations on the splendid facades have fractal decorations. A city that looks like it grew out of the sea, made of fossil stones, plants and shellfish


We walked the streets, the beaches, the mountains and bars like mad and we actually feel like we need a vacation from the vacation. But as we arrived sunburnt and thinly dressed in cold, grey, snowy Berlin we just wanted to go back.

What else is to say about Barcelona? The architecture is just so ripe and overflowing without being overly decadent. People are very friendly and helpful and despite the fact that the city is full of tourists you never get that rip-off feeling that follows you around places like Paris (which doesn´t even have a beach, nor an Amanda Lear exhibition).


I am not spending much time with taking good photos, and I think that it´s impossible to catch the beauty of Barcelona on film. So it was a nice coincidence that a tram ride through Barcelona appeared in Youtube a few days ago. I didn´t recognize much of it, since the footage was taken in 1908! By the time Catalan Modernism was almost finished but the main focus of this clip is the movement and watching the people on the streets. The piano music is very nice and soothing.



The same video (with another, more silent-movie soundtrack) that compares the old with current views, can be seen here.

Off to Barcelona

I am off to one of my favourite cities in the world: Barcelona!


It´s been some years since I´ve been to this amazing city for the last time and I am really looking forward to walk the streets and hang out in my favourite hi-rise hotel again: Hotel Arts on a high-up floor on the right hand side, facing the sea and the city is one of the best places to be.

Stella will be back next week.

Sweet Smoke

I went to Amsterdam for a few days between x-mas and new year. When I lived in Cologne I would spend many weekends in this amazing city and I have probably explored the entire place several times by foot and bike.

Amsterdam is one of the cities which make you happy to be European. Everything about it is exceptional and unique. Venice might be more delicate and elegant but Amsterdam is bursting with life and energy despite the projected clichés that everybody is either stoned, a tourist or a prostitute (or all of this combined).


Since we haven´t been back during the last eight years we immediately began to wander the crowded streets to find our favourite places and to see what was new. We would eventually spend around 15 hours each day walking around, shopping, eating exotic things and lounging in the various, fantastic grand cafés and coffee shops.

Amsterdam has the wonderful "Grand Café"-culture. These are huge restaurants for hundreds of people who go there to sip a coffee or tea. They also serve lunch, dinner and alcohol. These cafés are a so great because they attract an incredibly mixed crowd. Everybody goes there and becomes part of the bustling, yet relaxing atmosphere.


My favourite is Cafe de Kroon pictured above), which is hidden on the first floor of a house overlooking Rembrandt Plein. When you enter the massive room your jaw might drop a bit. Imagine a place that opened in 1898 (which it did) that kept a distinct part of it´s interior over time. Take a colonial film set in Africa, art-deco lushness, decadent lounge atmosphere clashed with a futuristic night-club and you´re halfway there. This place has the most mixed up guests you might ever see under one roof: You can see decked out grannies sitting next to models, hipsters, families of all possible gender combinations and tourists from any imaginable place.

Another amazing place is the Grand Cafe 1e Klas which is located inside the Central Station. 100 years ago this used to be the waiting room for first class travellers and the style has been kept through time. This luxurious place still keeps live parrots as a nice but questionable attraction.


Then, of course there are the numerous, infamous coffee-shops which range from murky rooms with Bob Marley murals to sleek hi-tech bars with giant fishtanks underneath the plexi-glass floors. Coffee-shops don´t serve alcohol and the new anti-smoking laws now also apply to places where you go to have a smoke. Of course only smoking tobacco is illegal so you can either smoke the weed pure or add some herbs. Very bizarre.

Although many bars I used to go to years ago were not existing anymore or were closed for (eternal) refurbishment the sound of Amsterdam is still pre-dominantly house. The only other music you hear is Dutch and even some German Schlager which is always met with frenetic singing and partying.


On sunday we made sure to get into "De Trut" in time. "De Trut" (the bitch) is a weekly GLBT party in a small venue that only holds 230 people. Waiting in line becomes part of the night and as soon as the small basement room is full you´ll have to wait until somebody leaves. "De Trut" was born out of the gay squatter scene over twenty years ago. It is run via a non-profit fund and all earnings are distributed to GLBT organisations. The atmosphere is unlike any other gay bar in Amsterdam (or anywhere else)which could be partly due to the dirt cheap drinks (beer is one €). If you ever go there, make sure to check out the unique fungus on the ceiling!

"Sweet Smoke" by Mr. Scruff is a track that really captures the mood of Amsterdam for me:

08 From 08

Most new and interesting records which were heard at StellaVista Towers during 2008 have their own blog-post here. So, in no particular order, a recap of the tracks and albums that entertained me this year. The links lead to an earlier blog entry which either contains one or two streams or a Youtube-link.


Club 8: With "The Boy who couldn´t stop dreaming", Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård made one of their most restrained and breezy albums. Sun-drenched, fragile, Swedish summer-pop that is almost disappearing into thin air. I actually preferred the earlier "Strangely Beautiful" which was also re-released this year.


Morgan Geist: "Double Night Time" is Geist´s first album after his debut "The Driving Memoirs" from 1997. The whole album is great, but it´s the opener "Detroit" which really stands out for me.









Cut Copy: The first half of "In Ghost Colours" is a superb succession of hit after hit. Especially the album track "Out there on thin ice" with it´s crowd noise and euphoric lines "If that´s what it takes - don´t let it tear us apart - even if it breaks our hearts" is amazing.
The fact that I can still enjoy listening to "Hearts on fire" - after all the hype and the inevitable re-release of Guru Josh´s "Infinity" (which was definitely spawned by the success of Cut Copy) shows that CC really know how to assemble their citation-pop.


Private In fact "My Secret Lover" was already released in 2007, but this stand-out single "We got some breaking up to do" came out this year along with a remix/dub album. Private are from Denmark and have produced the most shamelessly 80s rip-off album in a genre that has many similar artists. If you are not entertained by Private you should leave this site now!


Rex The Dog "The Rex The Dog Show" is part debut album, part compilation of own and commissioned remixes. It is surprisingly nice, despite featuring a mix of the drab The Knife.
The single "Bubblicious" features the best Yazoo/Alison Moyet sample ever. It is certainly no surprise that this appeared along with the Yazoo re-union concerts.


DJ Cole Medina vs Bee Gees "Love you inside out (Pinches Mix)". This blissed out re-edit of the Bee Gees track (from "Spirits Having Flown) was listened to endlessly on my car-trip to Vancouver. Pure magic!




AxUs "Love your Brother (Abacus Rethink Dub)" marked the return of Austin Bascom. With this deep as shit production he proved that he was and is one of the most prolific deep-house producers around.






Ladytron "Velocifero" did still not bring them the desired mass appeal they so crave for.
Still, on the borderline of electro-rock Ladytron are still the best thing around. I always fall for their airport-announcer-vocals. Someone recently said they sound like Nico fronting the Marc Bolan Band. Spot on!

Snip

One of the few really helpful tools that came with Vista (not Stella) is the Snipping Tool which allows you to copy a snippet from your screen and store it as a jpeg (or whatever you prefer).

This way you can easily capture fleeting images from flash-animations, movies or anything that doesn´t work with "save copy as".

Here are a some examples of frozen, unseen digital images from random, perpetual animations. (click to enlarge!)

Merging Todd Ford

Todd Ford´s paintings are a cross between photorealism and commercial art, which is both very much appreciated here at StellaVista Towers.

If you open his website you will be greeted by a slideshow which blends some of his paintings into one another for a brief moment. Since I was always fascinated by double- and super exposure, I could not help to grab screenshots of this one special moment when his paintings overlapped.






Of course, Todd´s work is great by itself and I could understand if he is not happy with the way I turned his art into "faux-art". Anyway, there is something about these "mash-ups" which I really like and since they appear on his site - even only for a fracture of a second by means of a widget - it gives way to lots of theories about art, it´s depiction and the possibilities of the receptor of toying around with it.



Todd also writes a blog which shows more of his art - at times on the easel but 100% un-merged.

Concrete Plastic

I like Zaha Hadid´s architecture as pure form and sculpture. Since she is rather popular and sticks to her style, which is a mixture of sci-fi art-nouveau, abstract sculpturing and some echoes of Le Corbusier, she is obviously hated by many.



Maybe that´s why she recently scored lots of commissions by smaller German and Austrian cities, who are not exactly known for their international architecture to build something, anything for them. So, Zaha Hadid´s forms decended on small tram-stations in Innsbruck, where she also designed a beautiful new Ski-Jump tower (very first pic).


Fire stations, a science center and a building for BMW were built in Germany. Now it´s off to Dubai, the oasis of architects, where you should´t be caught dead without at least two spectacular projects "opening sometime around 2010".




As I said before, I am much more interested in Hadid´s work as sculptor and commercial furniture designer. Her "VorteXX Chandelier" (what a wonderfully silly name) needs to find a place in my new apartment (although at first I need to find out where to get it and how to pay for it).


From tomorrow, November 1st, the Sonnabend Gallery in NYC is opening a show with installations, Hadid has been working on for some of her international projects.



These giant, amorphous convulsions of plastex are exactly my kind of thing. Huge forms that seem to flow from the ceiling, organisms that form at the edges of time and consciousness, only to freeze into a senseless and beautiful statue of externalised, forced use. Yes, you can sit on it or use it as a desk in your opera house, as the pic below shows.