(v)
(v_i)
(version_industries)

we’ve just been given the most humbling write-up over on the german design blog designjournal. we’re not sure what we did to deserve this honour but it’s a very flattering read. we want to extend our greatest thanks to the authors of that site and will of course be bookmarking it for future reading. after all we’d be foolish to question their taste at this juncture!

here’s a brief snippet of what they had to say about us:

Version industries is a remarkable small design studio in New York City. Version Industries provides design for print, motion and web. Especially in the latter discipline, the studio shows its strengths. The – now come in the years – Website Version of industries is unique, it creates a very strange atmosphere, and has simply charm.

you can read the full translation by google here, or the original german here.

the other big news is that we’ve just risen from number 18 to number 7 in the design charts. this is our first 2 week stint in the charts & we’re pretty stoked about it.

we’ve also just been informed that both beyond apollo and house of jackie brown have been posted for user comments and ratings at the rather elegant design bookmarking site, irie.be. again, truly thankful to these bastions of aesthetic connoisseurship for pushing our work out to a wider audience.

so we had the great honour of being in the july issue of .net magazine, a UK based print magazine focussing on web design. our website for house of jackie brown piqued the interest of their editors and landed us a place in their showcase/gallery. you can view a PDF of the write-up we got here.

also, it looks like beyondapollo.com is our new champ. she just went in at number 18 in the design charts along with appearances on xhilarate, S5-style, spyline, QNT, RGB garden and practika. thanks again a million times over to director michael grodner for giving us the chance to be involved in such an awesome project.

hello again.

i’ve also listed a few of my favourite tracks from this month to check out.

so far this month:

richard skelton – grange
richard skelton – marking time – type records

richard skelton’s seminal ‘marking time’ finally gets a re-release on type records. this is an album of great, haunting beauty & has been a really effecting listen over the last year or so. richard’s music mainly consists of the interplay between bowed piano, strings, piano & location recording ambiance. richard runs his own label, sustain release, that put’s out bespoke cd packages to order for all his personal & side project releases. it’s worth checking out the packaging at his website, here. the thought that goes into the design is so spot on with the music he creates.

clint mansell – welcome to lunar industries (three year stretch….)
clint mansell – moon sountrack – black records

clint mansell’s soundtrack to film, moon has just come out here in the uk. the film however has not. bloody typical. same thing happened with darren aronofsky’s, the fountain. the only upshot of this was that i could fully immerse myself in the music before seeing the film & i felt this really helped with the emotional impact that the fountain managed to deliver. it’s also good that the others at the new york arm of version industries that have seen moon, are good at keeping spoilers to themselves!

floating points – j&w beat
floating points – j&w beat e.p – planet-mu

brand new signing to planet-mu, floating points has already been tearing things up with his ‘love me like this’ e.p from earlier in the year. this is an awesome two track e.p that weaves heavy melodic synth work into the already label established dubstep sound. tight drum work & a wicked hook on the first track made me pick this one as my last track of the month.

so that’s it for this month! next month they’ll be another bunch of other tracks that i think deserve some respect (i’m looking at you already, falty dl!)

lucky pierre music just emerged again for the first time in 5 years. the last time it was around we were just fans of the music they had under their umbrella, this time we had a small hand in heralding their return.

so what’s the story? well, where to even start?

back when everything seemed to matter more, everyone at (v) got into a band called PRICK. we found the band originally because they were on nothing records, like so many other great bands back then. however what made PRICK particularly unique were the unusually crazed vocals and complex lyrical play of their mastermind, kevin mcmahon. a man, we soon discovered, that had a much larger and even more remarkable musical body of work than we could have imagined. with record releases dating back to the late 1970s, it turns out kevin’s musical scope and lyrical imagination was simply vast. in fact so beguiling and intriguing was it, that we flew from london in 2003 to see a rare performance by PRICK in their home town. since then have devoured every rare recording, morsel of news and rumor surrounding kevin’s extremely sparse and mysterious output of work. nothing like being into a cult band that always delivers, huh.

long story short, that was 6 years ago. today version industries are very proud to present the online music store for the entirety if kevin mcmahon’s body of work spanning from the late 70s to the present day, be it PRICK, lucky pierre, (sic) or fear of blue :

store.luckypierremusic.com

customized, reskinned and built with love for a guy who’s work’s kept us company in the studio since the very beginning, we hope you enjoy digging around and taking a good listen to the samples you find. we’ve gone to great lengths to ensure you can get the music in mp3 and FLAC as well as obtain physical copies of the releases. it should be a treat for newcomers and older fans alike.

before you do that though, take a listen to this song:

don’t say maybe, (lucky pierre, late 70s)

and watch this video:

attitude
from poortraits of thinking (released 2010)

both should give you a good idea of what it is we do so love about this man’s work. there really is nothing quite like it in the grand scheme of things. enjoy.

(v) co-founders giles + caspar celebrated their 30th birthdays last week.

we are proud to present the logo for the protomen’s forthcoming sophomore release, act 2. a limited run of t-shirts bearing this new emblem just sold out at their recent bonnaroo ’09 festival performance. stay tuned to the band’s online merch store at zambooie for a forthcoming new run of these shirts and more. in the meantime, check out the animated version that was projected above the band during their bonnaroo showcase:

animated act 2 logo

mellowdrone’s second album angry bear went on sale today from their label, coming home records. as previously reported, we were responsible for the artwork for both the CD and the vinyl. you can view the front and back cover on our website now in the printwork section. fan of the band or otherwise, we hope you enjoy the work. though we must stress, the images won’t really come alive until you’ve heard the music and understood why you are seeing what you are seeing.

mellowdrone.com
myspace.com/mellowdrone

greatings.

i’ve been very busy recently at version, as you can see from the beyond apollo website that we just launched. many hours of hard work has gone into the sound design and multi-tracking of the atmosphere & environmental soundscapes you will hear if you pop over to the teaser experience site. i also had the pleasure of working with original dialogue recordings of the script that our new york studio recorded. i really wanted to nail the feel of some of my favourite sci-fi films that deal with the loneliness of space, such as enemy mine, solaris, silent running & the incidental sound design of films such as alien & outland. i hope that everyone has a chance to play around with the teaser website to uncover all that it has to offer.

on a personal note, i’ve also been trying to write a new album over the past four months and i feel for once, that i’m near the home stretch. i’m at present trying to stop myself from writing any new material so i can stop playing catch-up with the mastering side of things! good news is that i have another track for people to check out whilst i finish everything off.

there are some nice new tracks from wisp, gravious and hannu that are really worth checking out as well.

so far this month:

wisp – picatrix
wisp – the shimmering hour – rephlex records

the second track from wisp’s third official album, this time on rephlex records. for me this is my standout track from the album, it perfectly encapsulates his melodic ?-ziq stlye melodies with the awesome production of aphex. wisp has made the quintessential braindance record for rephlex (until more aphex comes out…)

gravious – world of tomorrow
gravious – futurist ep – highpoint lowlife records

after two awesome 12″ eps on hotflush recordings, gravious comes back with some brilliant sci-fi inspired dubstep on his new ep. i loved his wormsign track on his first 12″ for it’s sly nod to dune & the pressure of the bassline that reminded me of the awesome thumper that the freman use to call the worms of arrakis. it’s nice to see him come full circle with the sci-fi influences (this time it’s the william gibson short story, “the gernsback continumm” that inspired him to create his new ep). i fully respect the sci-fi leanings, as science fiction novels & films influence a lot of my own works.

hannu – valtameri
hannu -hintergarten – kesh

brilliant new album of modern classical infused, minimal ambient electronica from hannu. this is my favourite track on the album as it brilliantly mixes various moods whilst utilising a strong palate of electronic, classical & home tape recordings style sounds.

more stuff next month.

our teaser site for the feature film debut of director michael grodner, just went live. the film is to be called?beyond apollo and is based on the acclaimed science fiction novel of the same name by barry n. malzberg. the film is currently in pre-production, so everything you see is merely a conceptual taster of what’s in store. for up-to-date information about the film check out the beyond apollo blog. otherwise, as ever, we hope you enjoy the experience we’ve created.

david carson has posted a link to our recent article about design and advertising on his own website. we feel vindicated (to say the least) to have received this kind of acknowledgement of our point of view.