BIRDY NAM NAM – THE PARACHUTE ENDING from Steve Scott on Vimeo.

This is the music video you’ve always dreamed of getting when your track gets a music video. It’s been round the Web a few months ago, but I only discovered it today via the lovely 8-bit punk Anamanaguchi (see our interview), on their Twitter feed. It’s like what you worked out when bored in grade school Chemistry class with your best friend who planned to become a comic book artist for a career, scrawled in the margins of your notebook. There’s an evil Egyptian alien sarcophagus shooting what appears to be evil sugar cubes from orbit. There’s a crazy space alien superhero who’s all Shriner and Freemason and gets special powers when he replaces his hand with a vegetable squid … thing. And good triumphs over evil, which is what we all root for. It’s the sort of trippy album art we don’t get any more, but animated.

The animation, creative direction, and concept are by Will Sweeney, who under the name Alakazam Label makes fantastic, far-out illustrations, toys, and animations with edible acid-neon colors, and hamburgers for heads, and organic tendrils like pasta or vines or tentacles wrapped through the dreamscapes. You can see more of Sweeney’s work:

http://alakazamlabel.com/

Steve Scott directed the video, did concept design, and did his own compositing, which shows you he knows his stuff. Scott, based in Australia, has his own brilliantly wonderful stuff.

Birdy Nam Nam are a French DJ crew, cool enough to name drop Peter Sellers references in their actual name. They’re proper turntablists in a world in which that has become a rarity, with the prizes to match. Remix did a good write-up of their work in 2006; the best way to keep up with them now is to follow MySpace and, unfortunately for the world’s other continents, to live in Europe.

Justice did the production, in case that wasn’t evident; the marriage works.

And, seriously, special squid vegetable hands?

I wish my inbox were more like Tom's at Music Thing. The latest news from France via MT:
a super-digital-modular synth control surface virtual instrument. As if
that weren't weird enough, the thing looks like Don Buchla teamed with Playskool Toys, and this may be the only device on the planet that claims to be suitable for toddlers, schoolchildren, teenagers, schoolteachers, and professionals.
That's right: this modern digital device has a heritage going back to
the early 1970s (when it was analog, naturally), and it was originally
geared for using as a way of teaching about synthesis, music, and
memory. [PDF with full specs, history, and description]

30 years of development by the International Institute of Electroacoustic Music of Bourges (IMEB)
has turned it into a hybrid monster. Sure, it may look like an analog
synth, but the two consoles, combined with a Mac G5 running Max/MSP,
pack:

• Sound sources: line/mic input, analog oscillators, scratch in, and multiple samplers
• Multiple effects processors (filter, envelope, pitch shift, delay, EQ, reverb)
• Mixer
• Recording, live audio editing and looping
• Motion capture devices and graphic pad input — no screen required

A software version is supposed to be available now, though I
couldn't find it on the site. But what makes this so unusual (aside
from its use with preschoolers!) is the creation of a hardware
interface with faders that mimics traditional modular synthesis
interface layout, but using digital techniques. It seems the instrument
just naturally evolved from analog to digital, something rare in
instrument evolution. Something to chew on if you're a would-be
interface designer.

And if you don't already wish you went to school in France, watch these kids learning about electronic music. Now that's what I call "no child left behind."

Boing boing (you know, the site where I'm picking fights with Star Trek TNG veterans — more on that soon) gets the scoop on a disco club for toddlers (4 to 6 year olds). The velvet rope is in full force: the installation is at upscale Paris clothing shop Colette (makes Bergdorf look as un-hip as TJ Maxx), and only 10-12 kids are allowed by appointment only.

If you can make it in, though, this place has what must be the best
dance scene I've ever seen — to say nothing of the DJ dressed as a
panda (see the video on the project site). Older club kids, watch closely: these kids get it. Created by the crew at D-I-R-T-Y.com.

Now, of course, CDM continues to cover installations for grownups, so here's your challenge: make us feel 4. Um, without drugs.