German trio, Aloa Input, is said to be from New Weird Bavaria, a place that, from the sound of things, is not only full of oddly fantastic flaura + fauna, but also strangely enticing music that spans genres and pulls them together in new and fascinating ways.

As Morr Music, the band’s label, puts it:
“Always on point when it comes to picking the best bits and pieces of so much input, Anysome, the band’s debut full-length, essentially resembles a huge map that covers most of the musical worlds and sonic landscapes we know. Make no mistake: Borges might claim a map of that size is useless, it’s nevertheless a hell of a ride.”

We took a few minutes to sit down with the band to talk about fighting the forces of monotony in popular music, the concept of bricolage, and how three guys decided to start one of the most quirkily enjoyable bands we’ve heard in quite a while. Read our interview, listen to a track from their debut album, and check out their spell-binding video for their song “Someday Morning” below.

raven + crow : So, your write-up on Morr’s site reads that you all “are on a musical mission to fight the ever-advancing forces of entropy and monotony”. You do have a unique sound. Is it something that developed naturally/organically?

Aloa Input: Before we even started to record, we talked about music over a couple of months. We were really convinced about what we didn’t want to do. But in retrospect, we really didn’t have any idea that it would end up sounding like this. So I guess, it’s pretty much a mixture. Maybe something like natorganically??

Nice. We support any such coining of new words. Speaking of though, do you have any super powers to help fight those ever-advancing forces?

Since we all have different musical backrounds, we kind of learned to put these influences together. The French ethnologist Claude Levi-Strauss came up with the term of “bricolage”. In certain cultural studies, this term was adopted to descripe the technique to put certain things—items or whatever—in a new context. So, if you like, you can call “bircolage” one of our so called “powers” to avoid entropy and monotony in pop-music.

I like it. Can you talk a little about how the band first formed? Were you all in bands previously?

We’ve all played in different bands in Munich before and still do. Munich is not that  big of a city. So when you do certain music, it’s pretty obvious and you get to know each other quickly. But the point where we decided to form what is now called Aloa Input was at a festival in Munich, where all of our former bands performed. The three of us where standing next to the stage and we were talking a little bit about music and what bands we dig. Right at that moment it was pretty clear that we had to do music together.

Do you all have any strong influences or bands that you think feed into your music creatively? I feel like Stereolab + American Analog Set came to mind a little for me…but more glitched out with awesome electronics + rhythms.

When we first came together we were all really into Animal Collective. We still really like the band a lot, but it’s not and has never been that big of a influence at all. I think we all really appriciate older music like Can, NEU!, The Beatles, Moondog Jr, and Calypso sounds. And there have been really great new bands as well. I think we’re all just really into music and open to interesting stuff.

I always feel the need to ask non-native-English-speaking bands why they chose to sing in English. I mean, I’m glad you do—it’s great to be able to understand a song, after all—but is it in hopes of just being more accessible to more people?

I think it’s more about what music you grow up with. We all had the most contact with music written in English. There is no doubt that there are great lyricists in German music, but for us, it seems more natural to sing in English. We actually haven’t even really thought about it, writing the lyrics in German.

Wow, that’s really surprising but, yeah, it makes sense. So, I feel like Bavaria is an area that has continued to identify itself separate or distinct from Germany…but I feel like I personally don’t really know much about the region beyond your food. What makes you proud to be Bavarians, not just Germans? What do you like about it there?

Puhhh…that’s a tough one. I know what you mean, but that’s not how we see it. Of course there are lot of livable aspects in Bavaria, like the landscape with the mountains and lakes and all, but there are also a lot of things which we don’t support. The city we live in raises its rents to unaffordable levels, the politcal majority hasn’t changed for ages, and the executive can be a pain in the ass a lot of times.

Yeah, sounds like most large American cities, actually. Slightly off-topis, can you explain what “New Weird Bavaria” is?

It’s pretty much just a joke. We see ourselves akin to bands which are labled as “New Weird America”. So we thought we’d come up with somthing ironically new. It’s better than being labeled as just another Indie/Electro/Psychedelic/Experimantal-Pop Band.

That’s true. Any recommendations for anyone who visits Germany? I mean, besides seeing you guys play a show.

There are beautiful cities like Regensburg which didn’t get destroyed in the 2nd world war. If you want to experience how Germany would look like if there hadnt been this terrible mess, you should most definitely check those few cities out.

Will do. Speaking of shows, any plans to play any stateside? I know it’s ridiculously expensive for foreign artists to play the US these days, but we’d love to see you nonetheless.

Of course, that would be a great thing for us. Travelling around with your own music is one of the best parts of doing it. But only a few German bands have had the chance so far to go overseas for a tour. We have to wait and see what happens.

Well we’re rooting for you. We have to ask though—what’s with the name? Does it mean anything?

We thought about it as “hello input” without being to close to the hawaiian phrase. It’s a matter of how it sounds, since it’s a beautiful word. But also we think of it as not having any barriers around certain forms of music. 

Ah, well that’s nice. And the name of the album, Anysome?

It’s a neologism. We’re all in a certain stage of our lifes where we can’t really tell where it will all lead us. A lot of the lyrics on the album concentrate on that. We have all these possibilities and chances—through the internet the world is just a nutshell to a lot of people from our generation. And I think, you can also hear it in the music. There are a lot of different styles combined into one. Bricolage, if you want.

Bricolage! Can you talk a little about the video you did with Bryn Chainey for your track, “Someday Morning”? It’s so fucking cool. Is it real? Like, are those people really sleepwalking?

Bryn came up with the idea of a mockumentary. So it’s all fake! He’s a great director with highly creative ideas, which left us all stunned. We like that he starts his work with very innocent ideas, which kind of blow your mind if you think a little bit about it. We really hope to work with Bryn again.

Ah, well cool video. I seriously couldn’t tell if it was real or fake, so job well-done. Can you break down a line or lyric you like a lot off the album in terms of meaning and/or origin?

There are two lines of two different songs which say, maybe, a lot about the album: “A steady mind is always on the run” and “I had this thought, the best one that I ever forgot”. 

Nice. Then, I ask totally in a professional curiosity sense as someone who designs Web sites, but I notice you guys don’t have a non-bandcamp, non-Facebook, non-label site—do you feel like it’s kinda unnecessary with so many other outlets online these days?

Well, we’re actually planning on constructing a web-site. But until then, FB and BC are fine.

Totally. Finally, and most importantly, favorite bizarre corner of the internet you’d like to share with our readers?

The bizarre thing is, this song was our neverending earworm 2013. One of us even has it as his ring tone on his cell phone:

Whoa. That guy’s talented.

If you’re in Germany any time soon, try to catch Aloa Input live. In the meantime, you can import their CD + LP via Morr Music or get it digitally via iTunes.

Top photo by Ela Grieshaber

Many friends + clients may already know this about me, but I have a mild-to-emphatic obsession with the non-standard punctuation mark, the interrobang.

If you don’t know already, the interrobang is a little-used but wildly useful punctuation mark that combines the exclamation point and the question mark into one elegantly functional mark that clearly, intuitive expresses any of the following: “?!?!?!?!?!?!?!”; “WTF?”; “WHAAAAAAAAT?!”; “HUH?!”; “I AM CURRENTLY EXPRESSING SURPRISE, SHOCK, AND POTENTIALLY JUDGMENTAL DISBELIEF!”; and so on.

The interrobang—in its unquestionable sophisticated state of style + grace—doesn’t trifle with all-caps or redundant punctuation. No, in a single simple-yet-effective stroke, the interrobang communicates what so many taps on a tiny, tiny keyboard can not nearly so well.

According to Wikipedia:
“American Martin K. Speckter conceptualized the interrobang in 1962. As the head of an advertising agency, Speckter believed that advertisements would look better if copywriters conveyed surprised rhetorical questions using a single mark. He proposed the concept of a single punctuation mark in an article in the magazine TYPEtalks. …He chose the name to reference the punctuation marks that inspired it: interrogatio is Latin for “a rhetorical question” or “cross-examination”; bang is printers’ slang for the exclamation mark.”

So tragic, some might say, that such a useful punctuation mark is so difficult to put to use. There exists no pre-set keyboard shortcut on conventional computer operating systems or hand-held devices (I’ve seen it written that typing alt+8253 on a computer keyboard will result in an interrobang, but when I do that on a Mac, I get •™∞£, so it may indeed be the one up PCs have on Macs…).

On my work + home computers, I literally just keep a TextEdit window open at all times so I can easily switch between programs and copy + paste the mark with relative ease to express my outrage/confused shock. It’s less than ideal, but it gets the job done.

On my iPhone, the situation was far more dire—I’ve perpetually kept the Wikipedia entry on the interrobang open and, when I deem it appropriate to use, I painstakingly leave the app I’m in, head to Safari, highlight the word next to the interrobang in the entry as the mark’s too small to highlight on its own, extend the highlight area to include the interrobang, reduce it to not include the extra text, copy, return to the app in which I want to use the mark, and paste. No fun.

So I was elated to find that someone smarter than I came up with a much more streamlined solution for interrobang use. A self-described Apple nerd spells out the particulars on his blog Traveling Nerd, which we’ve written out and updated slightly for the most recent iOS.

1. Find an interrobang online, like this one—‽
2. Press, hold, and copy the interrobang
3. Go to Settings -> General -> Keyboard -> Add New Shortcut (at the bottom of the screen)
4. Paste the interrobang in as the “Phrase” and enter an exclamation followed by a question mark with no separating space for the shortcut
5. Tap Save
6. Repeat using the same two punctuation marks in the reverse order (“?!”)
7. Tap Save

Anytime you want to insert an interrobang in your text, email, et cetera, just type ?! or !? on your phone, and you’re good to go. What‽

Now, will someone please start a petition at change.org to get Apple, Microsoft, and all other smartphone + computer companies to make this a standard character with a set shortcut? I know there’s a lot going on in Syria and Ukraine and Venezuela and stuff, but this is a serious issue people. Serious.

What? We did just go to the James Turrell retrospective—how did you know?

We just wanted to write a brief piece to share a really great TED Radio Hour we heard this past weekend devoted to happiness and how finding it might be a little easier than we all think.

For anyone who doesn’t already know, TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a nonprofit devoted to ‘Ideas Worth Spreading’. It started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago and has since grown into a global platform for identifying and spreading world-changing ideas.

In this TED Radio Hour, host Guy Raz assembles short, easy-to-digest pieces from a team of experts to address how things like the pace of our lives, the things we surround ourselves with, and the simple concept of gratefulness all affect our overall happiness. Speakers include the inventor of the Track Your Happiness app, the author of In Praise of Slowness, the founder of small-space-living company LifeEdited, a psychologist who argues that our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong, and a Benedictine monk who writes about gratefulness.

So we implore you to now leave this Web site, head on over to TED’s, and take an hour out of your day to find a little happiness. We promise—it’ll be worth it.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Golden Road Brewing was founded in October 2011 by Tony Yanow and Meg Gill. Tony—a long-time vegan—is also the man behind Tony’s Darts Away pub in Burbank + the wildly popular Mohawk Bend in Echo Park. He’s also the reason the menus for all three of those establishments are so delectably vegan-friendly.

With its outdoor patio, outstanding ever-changing food menu, growler fills, 20 revolving beer taps, specialty on-daught only beer experiments, and game area (including giant versions of Connect Four + Jenga), Golden Road’s pub is one our favorite establishments in LA. Honestly, it’s probably a good thing we don’t live any closer, lest we risk going every day, getting the “NORM!!!” treatment, and completely draining our bank accounts.

Another impressive aspect of the brewery is their ever-evolving line of beers, including their signature Custom IPA Series. In the past, the series has included their Heal the Bay IPA—a bright, citrus-forward, summery IPA thats sales support Heal the Bay‘s work to protect the Southern California watersheds; the Better Weather IPA—a fruity, slightly darker IPA set to match LA’s less-than-harrowing winter weather; and, this writer’s favorite, the Burning Bush IPA—the first-known Rauch IPA (the German word for ‘smoke’; Rauchbier is a traditional German smoked beer), a coppery IPA made with a blend of 3 different smoked malts. It’s like a hoppy campfire in your mouth.

Golden Road returned to its altruistic roots last month, partnering with the LA River Revitalization Corp to create the 2020 IPA. The beer celebrates + supports the Greenway 2020 Project to connect 51 miles of the LA River, “transforming it from a neglected, concrete riverbed to a connected, public green space by the year 2020.” A portion of proceeds from each can sold in stores + pint sold at Golden Road pub go directly to LA River Corp, warming your heart that your benevolent beer-drinking is all for a greater good and warming your toes with a solid 7.4% ABV.

The beer itself has an earthy, piney flavor profile—making it a favorite with gin-lovers like myself—and boasts a beautiful bright red color on a sunny day…which we seem to have no shortage of in LA (sorry, still getting used to the ‘winter’ here). It was described to me at the pub as the “missing link” in the brewery’s IPA line and the taste palette in total. Beer nerds—the 2020 employs 2-Row, Crystal 77 malts and a total of six kinds of hops (Warrior, Palisade, Cascade, Ahtanum, Chinook , and Simcoe, the latter two of which likely contribute the most to the piney taste).

It rivals the Burning Bush on my personal Best EVER IPAs list…but I may require some more testing to give a thoroughly exhaustive opinion on the matter; purely for scientific reasons, of course.

In LA? Get thee to Golden Road. Elsewhere in California? Check your Whole Foods—we’re told they deliver as far north as San Francisco and as far south as San Diego. Pint cans come in cardboard boxes—cans because they’re easier to recycle than bottles and thus easier on the environment AND, we’re told, they actually keep beer fresher.

We posted this recipe to our Facebook page and released at as a someway infamously long Instagram photo just before the Super Bowl. Now that we’ve got the journal back, we thought we’d give the recipe a more fitting home.

These Buffalo Tempeh Skewers are easy-to-make, a hit at parties, and a lot better for you (and those poor buffaloes) than meaty wings. Plus we have two different, equally awesome marinades for them. Here’s what you need:

Tempeh (we use 3-5 8 oz packages depending on the party size—adjust the marinades to suit)

Smokey Buffalo Marinade
4 parts Frank’s RedHot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce
1 part Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 part Agave

Creamy Maple Sriracha Marinade
2 parts Sriracha (we like the original, Huy Fong’s rooster sauce, but use your favorite)
2 parts Veganaise
1 part Maple Syrup

Garlic Tofu Dip
Half a block (roughly .5 lb) Silken Tofu
1 Green Onion
2 cloves Garlic
Tablespoon Nutritional Yeast
2 Tablespoons Rice Vinegar
Dash of Salt

First, you need to dry out the tempeh. We use a stovetop grill pan so you get those nice grill marks, but you can use a standard skillet too. Cut the tempeh into long, thick rods that’ll hold up to dipping and cook on medium heat for about 20 minutes, watching closely and turning . If you use a well-season grill pan, you won’t need oil. You might a little olive oil with a standard skillet.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 375°F. Mix your marinades in separate bowls and, once done stovetop, place the grilled tempeh rods on an oven-safe pan or dish. Brush the marinade on and bake in the preheated oven for roughly 30 minutes, turning and reapplying marinade as it cooks off and is absorbed, roughly every ten minutes. Remove from the oven once the’ve browned and blackened at the edges, set aside and give a final brushing of marinade as they cool for 5-10 minutes.

Serve + enjoy.

Computer Magic is Brooklyn’s Danielle “Danz” Johnson—producer, DJ, and creator of superb electro-pop. We were immediately hooked by her keyboard-driven sound and wryly deadpan singing when we first heard Johnson’s songs through Oh My Rockness a few years back. With countless EPs and digitally released singles under her belt, she’s now hard at work on a debut full-length which we’re sure will prove wildly successful.

We got a chance to catch up Danz to talk about her musical career, making it in NYC, and being big in Japan. Give it a read and listen to her most recent release, Extra Stuff EP, below.  We’re fans of “Time to Decide” + “Summer Vacation” especially.

raven + crow: First off, are you at all affiliated with Computer Magic Training in San Jose, California?

Danielle “Danz” Johnson: Unfortunately, I’m not!

Fuck. Guess I have to trash all my questions then.

Can you tell us about your name? We’re always interested in that kinda thing, being in the branding business. Were you just like ‘It’s boring to go by Danielle Johnson and I like computers and this sounds cool”?

The name comes from a quote in Spinal Tap from Viv Savage: “Quite exciting this computer magic!”.

See, I need to re-watch that movie. So rich with quotable material.

I think I first heard you through Claire + Patrick over at Oh My Rockness way back in 2010, at which point you just had a few songs floating around the interwebs. I think the conventional thinking back then was still ‘get heard, play shows, record a full-length’, but in the years since, full-lengths seem to be less and less important. Do you feel like putting out an LP is a necessary or expected step in a musician’s evolution still?

I definitely think it’s still necessary to put out full-length albums. I think what happened is, music just became easier to put out for unsigned artists. A full length is a delicate thing, it takes time to perfect, it usually takes money, one song you just upload.

Well-said. In addition to the, what, 23 EPs you’ve put out, I read that you put out a couple full-lengths in Japan. Any plans for a full-length stateside?

In Japan I’ve been fortunate enough to have a label that supports putting out the music I’ve already made available online, press it onto CDs, promote it, etc. 

Over here it’s a bit different, I’ve been releasing everything basically by myself. Over the next few months though, I plan to go into the studio with Claudius Mittendorfer (Neon Indian, Bloc Party, Interpol) and make my first full length record. I wanted to wait until I had the funds to work with a proper producer and record in a proper studio, wanted to wait until things were just right to start recording my debut full length.

So you’re totally big in Japan. 

There is a big audience for Computer Magic in Japan, the music has really caught on over there, it’s amazing. It helps that I’m in love the culture. Definitely one of my favorite places to be and tour for sure.

I’ve always wanted to visit. The language-based + cultural barriers seem so scarily insurmountable, but I’ll have to do it one day. Seems like a shame not to.

So, with the exception of a few EPs, most everything you’ve put out has been free of charge. Do you feel like that’s the best way to get your music out to the most people or do you just think it’s not possible anymore to make money off of song sales? Or are you just getting us all hooked on your mad beatz and before raising your prices dramatically, thus triggering the coming Computer Magic Crack Epidemic of 2014?

I don’t think any artist can avoid getting torrented and I’d rather have direct traffic to my site rather than thepiratebay, so I put up my stuff for free, at least for a little while. It’s a tough subject because I obviously want to get paid for the work I do, but on the other hand, free stuff is just so cool for fans. The more people that have your music and enjoy it the better, in my opinion.

That totally makes sense. It just must be so hard to survive—literally—as a musical artist these days.

I know you started making your own music after moving away from New York and spending some time in Tampa. We just moved from Brooklyn to LA ourselves. Did you feel like you just needed a break from the non-stop-ness of NYC for a while or what brought on the move?

I went through a period where I would literally never see sunlight. I dropped out of college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I was DJing full time which was fun, but needed something different so I moved to Florida to get away. I feel like that was the best thing that could’ve happened because I discovered something new about myself (i.e. music making). Good things come out of change, when things are stagnant you can’t move forward or realize where you’re at.

Amen to that, sister. What’s you take on NYC today? It’s changed so much over the past 10 or so years.

I love New York. It’s my favorite city. It breaks you down and builds you back up. The rent is too expensive, everybody complains, the subways are dirty. But as a true New Yorker would say “ey, whaddya gonna do?” As for it changing, it always has been, but I can see how it’s sped up in the last decade. 

True. Did you read that piece David Byrne put out a while back about the 1% killing New York’s creative community?

Yeah. It’s hard for creatives to live in New York. It’s just too expensive. 

Do you feel like you’d ever move away from New York?

I’ve thought about Amsterdam. If I knew more Japanese maybe I’d consider Tokyo. Sometimes I think about moving to the middle of the country into total seclusion, but then I worry that I’d drive myself crazy. I don’t have an allegiance to New York. My dad lives here (upstate) so I’d always come visit. I guess overall a complete different country really interests me, of course first I’d need the money.

Which brings us back to making money off music. How’d you originally get hooked up with White Iris Records?

Daron Hollowell found this article “Band To Watch” on Stereogum about Compute Magic. He emailed me and we hit it off and I flew to LA to make the Electronic Fences EP. Those guys are great.

Totally. Started by some ex-Duke-Dogs (our college mascot). Now that we’re Southern Californians—any plans to play LA soon?

Yes. I’d say more but I don’t know the details yet.

Fair, fair. Was it awesome to walk around NYC in a spacesuit for your 2011 video for “The End of Time”?

It was weird but I felt awesome and invincible. Also, if you watch the people’s reactions in the video, no one even notices. 

So New York. We like your recent Sun Ra cover—any other fun covers planned in the near future?

I sort of just decide to cover songs on a whim. It’s a mixture of being both obsessed with a specific song and bored. I plan to make more in the future. Recently I’ve been listening to Nine Inch Nails’ Wish on repeat, so who knows.

Oh, a cover from Wish would rule. I feel like ‘Happiness in Slavery’ would be an oddly good fit.

Lightening round—Dream show line-up you’d like to play?

Paul McCartney, Radiohead, Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, Pavement, Brian Jonestown Massacre, Nine Inch Nails, Nas, Frank Zappa (because this is a dream line-up), Beck, Serge Gainsbourg, The Who (with Kieth Moon) and William Shatner as host and covering “Rocket Man”. 

It could happen. Predicted winner of the coming World Cup?

Brazil.

You come off as quite the synth buff—favorite/dream snyth?

I have the Moog Voyager which I love, although I really want a polyphonic synth, so I’d say maybe the MemoryMoog, PolyMoog, or the colorful, amazing looking EMS PolySynthi (pictured right).

Whoa, that looks like it was designed for a Sesame Street character. Go with that one. Favorite Downton character?

I’ve only seen the first few episodes, but I remember I liked the guy with the cane.

Daredevil? Best video game ever?

Super Mario 64, Wave Race, Banjo-Kazooie, Rayman. (Galaga, if we’re at a bar). 

Band you’ve been extra-keen on of late?

I haven’t been listening to anything new recently, just a lot of Gary Numan’s Replicas album and Pavement.

I heard Numan do a live set for KCRW last year. He still holds up live. Most amazing animated GIF?

The one of Andrew WK’s interview on Fox.

Related—do you fall in the ‘jiff’ GIF camp or the hard G GIF camp?

G camp. I only think of peanut butter otherwise.

THANK YOU. Finally, and most importantly, if you were a mythical beast, you’d be…?

A dragon?

Well-chosen.

LA-based label Kill/Hurt will be pressing limited edition 180 gram vinyl (500) + colored cassettes (250) of the Extra Stuff EP April 2. You can order both via Danz’ site. If you can’t wait until then, buy it via iTunes. And keep an eye on Computer Magic’s tour page for coming 2014 dates.

We’ve been in love with Brooklyn band Augustines (formerly We Are Augustines) since we first heard them in the summer of 2011, stalking them all over New York City that subsequent fall as they ran from venue to venue for CMJ. Their debut album, Rise Ye Sunken Ships, was a solid rock album, start-to-finish, full of emotive story-telling through beautiful, heart-wrenching song-writing.

What’s more, their live shows are fucking spectacular. Singer, Billy McCarthy, belts out songs that tell of his past heart-ache while song-writer, multi-instrumentalist, and fellow former Pela-member, Eric Sanderson, and drummer, Rob Allen, help to pull the audience in emotionally with the music they create.

So, needless to say, we were excited to see the band play The Troubadour last week and they did not at all disappoint.

We’ll spare you the play-by-play, but we highly recommend anyone in the path of their seemingly endless tour catch them if at all possible. They’ll be winding their way across the US until the end of the March, when they’re heading overseas to play the European circuit. Full listing of tour dates and links for tickets on their site.

The new, self-titled album, like its predecessor, is stellar and filled with emotionally charged, sweeping songs that make you want to simultaneously weep and pump your fist in the air.

Listen to it below and, by all means, support this excellent band of excellent people by buying it from them.

Nearly four months ago, we put a halt to all regular blog pieces, taking the longest break from writing in the five plus years we’ve doing it and leaving what I can only assume was a massive, anguishing hole in everyone’s lives.

Partly, our virtual absences was due to major life changes—moving home + business from the upper right-hand side of our fine country to the lower left-hand side—but it was also done to enable us to focus in on a redesign of our Web site and, with it, our blog, Kindness of Ravens.

Well, I’m here to inform all those concerned that we are back and we are better than ever.

Along with a complete refresh of our Web site itself, we’ve pulled the journal (né blog) into the fabric of the site to better integrate it with our work and build a more cohesive public persona.

That sounded pretty good, right?

Truth is, we’ve long wanted to unify our blog audience and our business one, have grown very tired of dealing with the confines of Blogger, and—as mentioned above—are into shaking things up of late. Thus…this.

Please do feel free to peruse the new site. Not only does it have a completely new look, but—with friend + developer, Paul Singh—we’ve taken a hatchet to the organization of the whole thing, giving users much more streamlined access to our portfolio. You can explore via the top navigation categories—print, brand, web—and, once on project pages, use the right-side icons—illustration, art direction, et cetera—to see additional classes of work.

As for this space, expect a few other changes in the coming months. We haven’t been idle in the past few months and, in fact, have a virtual stack of pieces to share with you. We will be focusing in a bit more in terms of categories of coverage though, so you can use those tabs at the top write of every journal page to see any pieces tagged with design + art, culture, music, and/or food.

And please be patient with our past blog posts at Kindness of Ravens—thought all five years of writing’s been pulled into the new structure and old links will continue to work, we’re working backwards as we manually clean them all up a bit. So don’t be alarmed if things look a little wonky as you dig back.

Though most of our friends, family, and clients know already, we thought we’d take a quick break from the site redesign to let the rest of you know the results of our NYC vs LA vote.

The count is in and, though we continue to stand by our assertion that New York is the greatest, most magnificent city in the world, we’re ready for a change, Reader.

So, come 2014, we’ll be calling Los Angeles home; specifically, lovely Beachwood Canyon—an oasis in the city, mere steps from both the majestic mountains of the largest urban park in the country and the hustle + bustle of old Hollywood.

We’ll be back in New York often though and very much intend to have the business operate simultaneously on both coasts. Plus, we can’t stay away from our East Coast friends for that long.

See you in the new year with a new look.

Happy holidays and all the best in 2014!