(v)
(v_i)
(version_industries)

jonathan bates, better known for his part in the fantastic band mellowdrone, recently got back in touch with us regarding a ‘new thing’ he was working on. as luck would have it, it was ?some seriously rich and rewarding new music. the kind which fills the mind with images pretty fast. well,?the next thing you know we’re watching the thundercats intro in total awe, debating wallpapering our apartment walls with TRON screenshots, and obsessing over UFOs. how one thing lead to another is neither here nor there, but it turns out we were all down with this new thing … and it was taking us places.

what then ensued was the constant, rapid exchange of music for artwork, much the way a choir does their psalms and responses. there’s no question in our minds now that?big black delta was the only name you could use to sum up the music, what inspired it and everything we’d ultimately made together from that point forward. cut then to just a few days ago. cut right to the moment when we slung the cover you see above onto the proverbial coffee table. cut to us all looking at each other like we knew it was time. yep, ufologists were about to get some melody in their google.

it’s been two days now since the first song was released and people seem to be?really digging it. there’s more great material on its way and we only hope, as ever, that people enjoy the unity we’ve strived for between sound and vision.

after selling out of the $2 smaller editions of mellowdrone’s angry bear poster, we got together with the band and produced a limited edition, high quality, glossy, king-size run. the final edition is 24 x 37 inches in size, which is about as big as your average full size film poster. it’s not often our artwork gets printed so large, but it’s always something we’re very thankful for.

if you are in need of some fury on your walls, don’t hesitate to grab yourself an edition while stocks last –

http://mellowdrone.com/poster/

recently we decided to revisit one of our first websites and revamp it a bit. it’s a site that continues to attract people’s attention and represented, back then, our first truly experimental work. we were given carte blanche to make the site any way we wanted, and in our miserable, dank, little east-london bedrooms, it meant a great deal to us to finally be able to prove our worth.

that said, we believe hugely in the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ dogma and so have made the following respectful list of subtle changes to the site that we feel were only necessary to keep it breathing and satisfying its users.

1. actionscript 3 codebase
2. xml driven content
3. h264 video
4. additional ‘water colour’ interactive ‘sketch book’
5. full screen functionality
6. UI speed increase
7. new backdrop ‘studio photos’
8. higher quality exports of ‘day’ and ‘night’ short films

we hope, if you were a fan before, that you enjoy the upgrade. for those of you who’ve never seen the site before, we hope it finds a new and satisfied audience, and of course does a handsome job of introducing you to the artist’s work.

thomasnewbolt.com

we were recently asked to write an article about the artwork we created for 65daysofstatic’s new album, we were exploding anyway. the article has been included as part of a ‘takeover’ over on drowned in sound this week.

it’s not often we get to talk openly and at length about some of the inspiring relationships we’ve built with some of our collaborators. furthermore to be given this chance and to have everything we said posted up, unedited, was something we’re very grateful for.

we hope you enjoy the article. you can read it here.

what’s to say? there it is. the cover of 65daysofstatic’s fourth studio album, we were exploding anyway. simultaneously unlike anything we’ve done before and yet, we feel, very us. of course an LP cover can’t be entirely judged until you hear the music that goes with it, but know that it was made to try and walk both sides of that line. this is a record that will forever mean more to us than we can begin to put into words, so we hope pictures suffice.

album is out 26.04.10.

here’s the poster we just designed for the sonos smash up party in SXSW down in austin, TX next week. a big thank you to greenshoelace.com for the commission. we’re actually looking forward to finally getting down to the festival ourselves this year, rather than just being nominated for stuff from afar. of course we’re mostly there this time around because of our good friends the protomen playing not one but four shows throughout the music week. with that many performances it’d be impossible not to at least see one show, right? seriously though, be sure to say hi if you do come to one of their shows, as we’ll most likely be filming or photographing them in some capacity.

ioncinema.com, a webzine / blog website dedicated to american independent film, world cinema, documentary film and the world film festival scene, has just posted this article in praise of the HERE website. this is the site we built in collaboration with filmmaker braden king, to promote and provide information on his forthcoming feature film of the same name.

it’s also worth mentioning that the site was built using the ever more relevant ‘website-in-a-can’ setup offered for FREE over at wordpress.org. more than just a powerful piece of blogging software, it’s an extremely affordable, plug-in based solution for almost all your basic website needs these days. provided you’re happy to undertake the task of a little coding and skinning, you can build a very easy to update and maintain online platform to serve a variety of immediate needs.

worth a look.

the above, giant, 3′ x 4′ poster was available exclusively at the protomen’s act II release show last weekend in nashville, TN. we created it with the band as a thank you to fans for making the long trek, as they all did, to see the band perform both their albums back to back in thunderous, conceptual glory. version industries representatives, myself included, attended and helped make sure the performance was recorded both in HD video and with digital still photography. below is a taste of the material we gathered –

you can view the rest of the photographs we took here. you can also expect video footage of the show from us in the coming months. in the meantime check out this incredibly flattering review of the new album by nashville resident?yewknee. a perfect come down to an incredible weekend with our friends in the south.

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.