Reader, we must ask for your patience + ongoing mental fortitude as we work to revamp both our primary Web site + this ‘Web log’, as they call it, bringing the latter more in the fold of the former and updating both in form, function, and freaking awesomeness.We’ll be taking some time off from ‘blogging’ in order to focus in on the site re-design. Also, we’re learning to surf. So. You know.

We hope to be back with you momentarily, bringing you the same high-quality coverage of all things design-y, art-y, music-y, vegan-food-y, where-are-we-going-to-live-y.

And don’t worry—we’ll try our best not to healthcare.gov this shit. Poor guys.

Reader, I’m going to share with you a cold, hard, indisputable fact that’s not often brought up in this space—I am a big nerd.

Now, to be clear, I’m not at all saying I’m a ‘cool’ nerd—for instance, someone who wears ironic t-shirts and geeks out on futuristic music tech or an aficionado of some obscure, dark corner of intellectualism who smokes pipes and has a crazy, gravity-defying mustache. No, I’m talking about the most traditional, common kind of nerd; the kind that would be the butt of jokes in an 80s rom-com; the kind that enjoys sci-fi, post-Tolkein high fantasy, computer role playing games, and actual Dungeons & Dragons, with its polygonal dice and awesomely intricate character sheets.

Hello. My name is Troy, I am a nerd, and this Dungeons & Dragons t-shirt is totally un-ironic.

Ah. That felt good. Thank you, Reader.

Such subjects rarely surface on the pages partly because this is a shared blog, addressing interests I hold in common with my wife + partner, Katie. These common interests are manifold and numerous but, on the Venn diagram of our respective interests, such nerdy pursuits fall far, far, far away from our area of intersection. Far away.

Another reason you don’t read about my personal nerdy hobbies on this blog—we’re a cutting-edge independent design studio, man. We’ve gotta write about design and art and culture and music and stuff like that. We can’t be cluttering up these pages with my doodles of Chimeras battling Blue Dragons or my highly detailed, multilevel, secret-door-filled (-~-) graph paper dungeon maps.

But, thanks to Sweden’s Simogo Games, I now have a safe space to talk about a particularly well-done, artsy, and appropriately seasonally spooky game for iOS.

In a market saturated with one-dimensional console rip-offs + revivals from the 8-bit era, Year Walk proves itself a refreshingly original game in terms of both content and style. The game draws from the real-life ancient Swedish custom of Årsgång, or ‘year-walking’, whereupon practitioners embark on fasting-induced vision quests in an effort to tap into otherworldly foresight and—for better or worse—catch a glimpse of their future.

As Scandinavian folklorist Theodor Almsten puts it in the Year Walk Companion, the free “definitive guide to the mysterious myths and creatures encountered in the game Year Walk”:

“The church was the final destination for a year walker. On his way he would typically encounter a number of supernatural creatures, which would pose a threat physically, mentally, and spiritually. If a year walker made it to the cemetery, he would walk around the church in an intricate pattern. This would open the year walker’s eyes to the future, but it would also lure out The Church Grim (the fearful, mythical goat-like creature of Scandinavian legend). After having completed the year walk, the walker would see visions that could manifest themselves in different manners. When the walker left the cemetery he might, for instance, see a sombre procession of dancers dressed in their finest church clothes. These would be the people that would die the following year. A reoccurring theme is, of course, the year walker who meets his own ghost on the road. Another story tells of how the walker would see newly dug graves. Love played a great part too, so a walker would typically meet wedding processions or even attend weddings yet to come.”

How this all plays out in the actual game is through first-person perspective controls that allow players to move side-to-side and back-and-forth through simple screen-swipes and by touching or dragging to activate items of interest. Through these simple, intuitive controls, though, players are immersed in the world Year Walk creates—a starkly beautiful, stylishly illustrated, wintery woodlands, complimented by the ominous sounds of the character’s solitary footsteps in the snow and Daniel Olsén’s spookily apropos, era-appropriate soundtrack. Progress through the narrative is based on solving a series of inventive puzzles, some based on visual patterns, some on user movement, and some on tonal frequencies, even.

The game is succinct in its scope and less of a long-play—though I got hung up on a couple of the puzzles, I think I finished it in a total of a few hours or so—and, at times, I felt a bit lost in terms of direction and goal, but I think that just added to the overall sense of exploration and quiet sense of foreboding that the game establishes.

So if you’re looking for something to shake things up since the 42nd iteration of that game with all those upset birds and thieving pigs, I’d recommend giving Year Walk a try. Especially with Halloween around the corner, it’s a great way to introduce a little bit of manufactured fright into your nights—there were seriously some gasp-worthy moments for me. I recommend playing late at night with the lights off and headphones in.

Year Walk—available for iPhone + iPad—can be downloaded for $3.99 at Apple’s App Store. The Year Walk Companion—an interesting read on Scandinavian folk lore by its own right—is free and also available via the App Store.

So get your spooky gaming on, Reader.

To the right, the trailer for Year Walk (full-screen button for a larger version). Below, a nice little song by Jonathan Eng from the game and some of our Year Walk gameplay screenshots.

…and yes, I am super-psyched for Elder Scrolls Online. Thank you for asking.

Kishi Bashi creates beautifully complex, layered, orchestral pop that sounds like it comes straight out of the beak of some magical bird you’re happy to be near but fear looking at straight-on.

Or it comes from some really talented guy. One or the other.

Not dissimilar to last week’s featured artist Sin Fang in style or form, Kishi Bashi trends to upliftingly soaring sounds that build from enchantingly sparse quiet to whirring, shimmering choruses that make the listener feel like they’re caught up in a cyclone of melodic sounds.

Kishi Bashi is actually a pseudonym for violinist, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, Kaoru Ishibashi, who usually shortens his first name to K and was most well-known prior to last year as a supporting musician for acts like Regina Spektor, Sondre Lerche, and Athens, Georgia’s of Motreal. Though Ishibashi was born in Seattle and grew up in Norfolk, VA—this writer’s home town—he now calls Athens home as well.

Though he’s just wrapping up a North American Tour, you can likely look forward to seeing him again live next spring as he supports his sophomore full-length. In the meantime, enjoy his recently released digital two-song EP, Philosophize In It! Chemicalize With It! and download or order his stellar debut, 151a—awesome cover art for that below.

Also below, the title track from Ishibashi’s two-song EP and the video for “Bright Whites”—a stand-out track from 2012’s 151a—about strange steampunk-y mustachioed carnival-goers + two birds who just want to be free…and eat cake.

Reader, you may or not know this about us, but we are terrible decision-makers.

I don’t mean that we make poor decisions, like, ‘hey, we’re low on money, let’s cook meth!’ Rather, we deliberate ad nauseam with both major, life-altering courses of action and trivial choices—say, what to have for dinner. Honestly, we annoy ourselves wildly, so, to you, our readers, and, more so, to our real-world friends, we apologize on behalf of our mutual state of perpetual muddled irresolute un-rock-ribbedness.

I think.

Case in point—should we move home + office back to New York or stay here in LA. Like two evenly matched warring nations…or Conan the Barbarian battling Red Sonja, the pro-/con- lists are in constant state of ebb + flow, matching each other blow-for-blow.

Pros, LA: it’s a new place + experience right when we feel like we need exactly that; the access to nature for an urban center is unparalleled; it’s a mecca of local, vegan-friendly food; you can actually have a yard here; though we have yet to do it, we’ve been told (many times) you can wake up in the mountains, go skiing, drive to the beach and go surfing, all in the same day; people are REALLY (sometimes off-puttingly) nice; and, finally—THE. WEATHER.

Pros, NYC: it’s a never-sleeping, high-energy, buzzing hive of culture, politics, music, art, and ethnicities from around the world; it’s got a certain stoic classiness + history that no other city in America can rival; we’ve been there for ten years and put down roots; we’re nearer to our respective families; our dearest friends in the world live there; it’s—in our mind—indisputably the coolest city in the world.

I won’t go into cons—trying to be more positive, man—but they’re the usual you’d expect. So you see our conundrum, Reader. Honestly, it’s a good problem to have—we feel like we’d be happy either place and, essentially, we’re choosing between two really lovely lives. But it’s clearly a really big decision and one that we flip-flop back and forth on day-to-day.

Our solution: every day we each vote—NYC or LA—writing our vote down on a little slip of paper, folding it up, and dropping it into this lovely little bank, meant to hold spare change but currently—please excuse the high-school-era over-dramaticism—holding our future. Come late November, right before Thanksgiving, we tally up the votes and make the call. Some may see this as an affect of indecisiveness; we’d like to think of it as a tool to measure our impressions day-by-day and give voice to our mutual intuition.

Plus it’s a cute ‘lil ombre bank. May as well put a spotlight on it.

Said cute bank is made by Copenhagen-based ferm LIVING, available in the LA-area at modern Scandinavian living store, Huset in Abbot Kinney.

Stay tuned, Reader!

At the start of this year, we told you about about our long-time love affair with German record imprint, Morr Music + our favorite new musical find, Sin Fang, the nom de plume for the extremely talented Icelandic musician, Sindri Már Sigfússon.

As he wraps up his tour opening for fellow Icelanders múm and prepares for Reykjavík’s massive, highly acclaimed Iceland Airwaves music festival, we thought we’d share an interview we recorded with Sigfússon last month.

Listen on as we discuss his early work with folksy precursor Seabear and he breaks down his bizarre visual aesthetic, talks about what he’s working on now, and tells us why it’s so difficult for small foreign bands to play the state these days.

Sin Fang will actually be stateside this week as he plays KEXP’s Reykjavík Calling this Saturday in Seattle. As

Sigfússon explains, Reykjavík Calling is a cross-cultural event that pairs local musicians in Seattle with Icelandic musicians to create new, live collaborations.

Sin Fang is being paired with Seattle band, Kithkin, described as “a Cascadian youth tribe out to spread the hidden knowledge of the forests.” They continue, “Through its rituals and performances, Kithkin hopes to confront crowds about the impending ‘end of things’ through witchee rhythms and chaotic sorcery.” …I’m not sure how I feel about the ‘end of things’, but who DOESN’T love witchee rhythms and chaotic sorcery‽

Reykjavík Calling is a free event, open to the public Saturday night at 8PM at Neumos—925 E Pike St.

Below, listen to our interview, then check out album opener “Young Boys” and the video for “What’s Wrong With Your Eyes”, one of the two videos mentioned in the interview.

You can download Flowers—Sin Fang’s stellar third full-length—via iTunes and order the CD + LP online.

More street art news—elusive British artist Banksy recently announced a month-long residency—“Better Out Than In”—that spans the entire city of New York. Our friend + artist, Melissa, spotted this excellent piece—Banksy’s second of the ‘show’—yesterday soon after it was…eh, installed?

According to Los Nuevos York Veces: “Reporters from the Village Voice located the first image, at 18 Allen Street, near Canal Street, on the border of the Lower East Side and Chinatown. Painted on a concrete wall, it shows a child holding a can of spray paint, standing on another child’s back, below a sign that reads ‘Graffiti Is a Crime.’ The images in ‘Better Out Than In’ are accompanied by a loopy audio guide, accessed by calling an 800 number that appears beside the stencil. (Dial 1-800-656-4271, ext. 1 for this one.) ‘This piece is typical of Ban-sky’s output,’ the guide says. ‘The children in this case represent youth, and the sign represents – well, signs.’”

Listen to Banksy’s announcement of the show and keep up with new pieces on the official site. And stay sharp, New Yorkers—it’s like an artistic scavenger hunt!

As it turns out, the Brooklyn-based artist known as Swoon (Connecticut-born, Daytona Beach-raised Caledonia Dance Curry) isn’t—to my knowledge—a witch or practitioner of any sort of dark arts, though, still to this day, her works draw me in with a seemingly mystic pull. Swoon continues to paste up similar works in cities around the world but, of late, she’s also been turning her eyes to more collaborative creations, like the Swimming Cities of Serenissima that she helped create and then piloted directly into the 2009 Venice Biennale.

Two years ago, she continued to cultivate her collaborative tendencies, teaming up with New Orleans Airlift—a group that encourages collaboration with New Orleans-based artists—to create The Music Box, an experiment to create musical architecture. That experiment, declared a run-away success, has now grown into a larger project named Dithyrambalina. And no, I have no idea how to say that. As they explain:

“Two years ago New Orleans Airlift and the artist Swoon launched the Kickstarter campaign that funded The Music Box, our prototype for an ongoing musical architecture project we call Dithyrambalina. That proof-of-concept was more successful than we ever believed possible!  We transformed a blighted 150-year-old house into a temporary village of playable musical houses with interactive instruments embedded into the walls, floors and ceilings of structures. The Music Box welcomed over 15,000 visitors for days of interactive public exploration and nights of ground-breaking concerts, as well as over 500 students for engaging workshops.”

Now, the group is raising funds for an expansion of five more musical structures that will act as the first of Dithyrambalina’s ‘growing musical village’ and, as they travel across the country, brand ambassadors of sorts, “sharing the wonder and possibility of musical architecture with new audiences as we continue to grow our village and work towards securing a perfect and permanent site for Dithyrambalina in New Orleans.”

Cool, right? Watch the video below to find out more and visit Dithyrambalina’s Kickstarter page to support them + check out their very donation-worthy rewards.

Since starting up in 2008, Free Energy has just about been through it all. From being signed early on to James Murphy’s DFA Records + multinational outfit EMI to being produced by Murphy himself to being on everyone’s best new bands list from Rolling Stone to Spin to opening for musical juggernauts like Weezer—Free Energy already seems to have lived far beyond their five years.

But instead of dwelling on perceived successes or challenges of the past, the band has turned its focus inward, spending time + energy refining their sound and doing some maturing that was maybe missed with such a meteoric rise early on. Free Energy self-released their sophomore full-length, Love Sign, this year and they’ve never sounded better.

Now, with the band—originally from Philly by way of Minnesota—scattered between the city of brotherly love and Los Angeles, Free Energy’s enjoying a short sojourn together out west, holding a month-long residency at LA’s Echo and spending some time recording original demos and cover songs in the nearby desert as they find their spirit animal.

Listen to the interview we did with frontman Paul Sprangers (middle, above) last week about Free Energy’s not-so-average evolution as a band, what they view as success, and how they’ve seen the music industry change firsthand over the years. And apologies—we had to cut a little bit at the start of the interview due to an audio problem.

Be sure to give a listen to Free Energy’s excellent new cover of Jackson Browne’s “Somebody’s Baby” below—click through to their SoundCloud page to download the track. You can download their album, Love Sign, via iTunes and order the CD + vinyl from the band’s site…where you can also pick up some nice Free Energy friendship bracelets.

Anegelenos can catch Free Energy at their final residency show tonight at the Echo along with Don’t Stop or We’ll Die, The Rebel Light, The Black Apples, and comedian DC Pierson. The show’s free, just RSVP via the Echo.

Photo by Dominic Neitz.

Ever since its opening, the Williamsburg outpost of high-fashion Brooklyn boutique Bird has functioned as not only an emporium for all things in vogue, but also as a cultural hautespot.

And yes we are fans of alliteration + the written pun. Thank you for asking.

With high ceilings, a big, open floor plan, and beautifully rich wood features, the Ole Sondreson-designed space begs to be used for events + parties and owner Jen Mankins has never let it—or us—down. She’s consistently + regularly hosted events for Fashion Week, trunk shows for featured independent designers, and a steady stream of artists’ works on her store’s considerable walls.

Next Wednesday, Bird will celebrate its first ever group show, The New Americana. As the show’s organizers explain:

“The term ‘Americana’ has come to be associated with traditional folk art from the country’s past. This exhibition, however, makes the argument that the American view of our shared cultural history has expanded to include more recent national experiences of religion, race, politics, entertainment, and commerce. In that vein, the curators hope to present a counterpoint to the big-box retail environment that has become a defining feature of the United States landscape by exhibiting these works in a small, privately owned business.”

The show brings in artists from all over America with their paintings, sculptures, and mixed media pieces to help convey this new view of our country, its people, and how we all live amongst one another. From commentaries on California’s state of mind with Karolina Gnatowski’s mixed-media-with-hashpipe ‘This is a Pipe Dream’ (detail above) to pieces that explore stereotypes in what most of us can now agree is not ‘post-racial America’, the show goes well beyond photos of run-down gas stations in rural America…which, to be fair, I created many of myself in college.

The New Americana—curated by Justin Anderson, Peter Joseph, and Rachel Stekson—features works by Chad Andrews, Ben Bertocci, Dan Bina, Clara Claus, Brad Fesmire, Karolina Gnatowski, Jake Kean-Mayman, David Maddy, Easton A. Miller, Clive Murphy, Ramon Silva, Kristianna Smith, Tribble + Mancenido, Darryl Westly.

An opening reception will be held at Bird Williamsburg—203 Grand b/t Bedford + Driggs—next Wednesday, October 9 from 6-8PM and will feature music by DJ Nancy Whang. Go because we can’t. We promise a good time. RSVP on the event Facebook page.

Below, a full shot of and detail of Gnatowski’s ‘This is a Pipe Dream’; Tribble + Mancenido‘s ‘Family as Trees’; Ramon Silva‘s ‘Greedy Genius’; Dan Bina‘s ‘I Am a Man’; Easton A. Miller‘s ‘Fool Me Once’; and the show poster.