lunes, 27 de mayo de 2013

Lawrence Azerrad, y la portada de Californication

Lawrence Azerrad, auto de la portada de Californication
Lawrence Azerrad, autor de la portada de Californication



















¿Cómo te involucraste para trabajar en esta portada con los Red Hot Chili Peppers? 

Estaba trabajando en un equipo de la Warner Bros. Records como director de arte junior. Anthony Kiedis quería un diseñador con el que pudiera trabajar personalmente. El director creativo me llamó a mí. Si mal no recuerdo, para nuestro primer encuentro ya comenzamos a trabajar inmediatamente.

¿Cuál fue el concepto detrás de esta maravillosa portada? 

La columna vertebral de todo el concepto de la portada fue un sueño que tuvo el guitarrista John Frusciante. Anthony me dijo que el sueño era simplemente así: "Había una piscina, y el cielo estaba en el agua y el agua estaba en el cielo."
También llegué a trabajar con John en el progreso del arte, pero Anthony fue la piedra angular de nuestras conversaciones, y Flea estaba en Australia.
La pieza clave, entonces, se convirtió en cómo traducir este sueño estéticamente, y también tenía que ser algo en lo que la banda se sintiera cómoda para ser una representación visual de su música.


Con John de vuelta en la banda y Rick Rubin retornando como productor, se hizo hincapié en que esta iba a ser un disco de rock épico. Mi objetivo era comunicar eso, en el estilo de la portada. Yo estaba fuertemente inspirado por las grandes y antiguas tapas de la década de 1970, que influyó en mi uso de la letra pequeña, la imagen surrealista de gran tamaño.
Un gran reto fue encontrar la piscina correcta para fotografiar. Realmente buscamos cientos de piscinas en el área de Los Angeles.
La piscina que escogimos, pertenecía a unos amigos de las colinas de Los Angeles.


¿Cuánto tiempo se tardó en completar este proyecto? 

Es muy difícil recordar eso, pero creo que alrededor de cinco semanas. A fin de cuentas, tuve todo el arte y el diseño y terminé trabajando con ellos por más de un año.

¿Cómo podría describir su relación con la banda trabajando en esta tapa? 

La relación de trabajo con la banda fue gratificante. Trabajé más de cerca con Anthony. Había un sofá en mi oficina, detrás de la mampara.
Él y su ayudante Louie fueron a trabajar a ese sofá y observaron el avance de la portada, mientras caminaban en mi oficina. John lo hacía con mayor rapidez, y luego empecé a trabajar con él en un álbum en solitario. Al final del proyecto, se mostraron muy agradecidos y amables. Tuve el honor de ser parte de ese tipo de proyecto.


¿Hubo algún otro concepto creativo para esta portada, conceptos que no fueron usados? 

Buena pregunta. Había otra idea, en que todos dieran su sangre, literalmente. Tenían una enfermera para tomar su sangre para una sesión de fotos, la idea era ampliar microscópicamente su sangre para crear una obra de arte. Visualmente no estaba funcionando, pero no querían renunciar al desarrollo de este concepto. Esto fue al mismo tiempo que buscábamos el concepto de la piscina.
Para compensar el concepto de sangre, contacté con un médico y un fotógrafo que se especializa en fotografía 3D de biología microscópica. Usando imágenes de este médico, compusimos collages y patrones, con la esperanza de hacer una portada. Tratamos de seguir algunas direcciones por este camino, pero la idea de la piscina venció.


"Californication" es considerado un gran clásico. La portada también es clásica, todo el mundo se acuerda de ella cuando se habla de Californication. ¿Cómo te sientes al respecto? 

Siempre es bueno cuando en los trabajos se puede ser parte de un proyecto tan especial, musical y culturalmente. Como diseñador gráfico, el aspecto más gratificante de mi trabajo es cuando sé que mi trabajo es apreciado. Con una tapa siendo ícono de un álbum y sabiendo que los fans aprecian el trabajo de diseño, es muy gratificante. El proceso de diseño fue una verdadera colaboración con la banda en casi todas las etapas.
La banda incluso trabajó directamente con las gráficas del álbum para lograr el uso especial de un azul Pantone en el océano/cielo para dar vida a la portada. Como los medios de comunicación y la cultura siguen evolucionando, creo que la función de la tapa perdurará. Puede que no sea en formato de CD, pero seguirá siendo el icono de un álbum. Sigo siendo feliz de haber participado en el proyecto.


¿Podría hablarnos sobre su trabajo y otros proyectos que hizo con otras bandas y artistas? 

Desde 2001 he trabajado de forma independiente como diseñador en http://www.laddesign.net .
He sido capaz de continuar mi trabajo con bandas y música (Herbie Hancock, Wilco, Brad Mehldau son clientes recientes de un proyecto musical), pero mi base de clientes también se ha ampliado para incluir las identidades visuales para hoteles, spas, cines y agencias de medios... realmente es una amplia gama de clientes.
Mi objetivo principal siempre es el diseño de algo fuerte y memorable. Para mí, el diseño, en su esencia, es muy divertido, así que soy más feliz cuando esta parte del negocio me lleva a hacer esto. Ser un diseñador independiente no siempre significa llegar a un diseño bueno, pero cuando sos capaz de hacer un buen trabajo, que la gente aprecie, estás cumpliendo eso.


Fuente: Foro Funky Monks

Entrevista sobre Stadium Arcadium subtitulada

Estos videos fueron subidos por un usuario (Sergio) del foro Funky Monks. Aquí se los dejo para que lo disfruten, fueron subtitulados por el mismo.
Los Peppers hablan sobre los temas del disco.



Parte 1http://vimeo.com/35948463
Parte 2http://vimeo.com/35950519
Parte 3http://vimeo.com/35952684
Parte 4http://vimeo.com/35953944
Parte 5http://vimeo.com/35952684
Parte 6http://vimeo.com/35956626

miércoles, 20 de febrero de 2013

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Videoclips

True Men Don't Kill Coyotes 
1984
Director: Graeme Whitler


Jungle Man
1985
Director: Lindy Goetz - Ron Sedgwick - Jim Hancock

Catholic School Girls Rule
1985
Director: Dick Rude


Fight Like a Brave
1987
Director: Dick Rude


Higher Ground
1989
Director: Drew Carolan - Bill Stobaugh


Knock Me Down
1989
Director: Drew Carolan


Taste the Pain
1989
Director: Alex Winter


Show Me Your Soul
1990
Director: Bill Stobaugh


Give It Away
1991
Director: Stéphane Sednaoui


Under the Bridge
1991
Director: Gus Van Sant


Suck My Kiss
1992
Director: Gavin Bowden


Breaking The Girl
1992
Director: Stéphane Sednaoui


Behind the Sun
1992
Director: Charlie Paul


If You Have to Ask
1993


Soul to Squeeze
1993
Director: Kevin Kerslake


Warped 
1995
Director: Gavin Bowden


My Friends
1995
Director: Anton Corbijn


Aeroplane
1996
Director: Gavin Bowden


Coffee Shop
1996
Director: Gavin Bowden


Love Rollercoaster
1996
Director: Kevin Lofton


Scar Tissue
1999
Director: Stéphane Sednaoui


Around the World
1999
Director: Stéphane Sednaoui


Otherside
2000
Director: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris


Californication
2000
Director: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris


Road Trippin'
2000
Director: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris


By the Way
2002
Director: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris


The Zephyr Song
2002
Director: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris


Can't Stop
2003
Director: Mark Romanek


Universally Speaking
2003
Director: Dick Rude


Fortune Faded
2003
Director: Laurent Briet


Dani California
2006
Director: Tony Kaye


Tell Me Baby
2006
Director: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris


Snow ((Hey Oh))
2006
Director: Nick Wickham


Desecration Smile
2007
Director: Gus Van Sant


Hump de Bump
2007
Director: Chris Rock


Charlie
2007
Director: Omri Cohen


The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie
2011
Director: Marc Klasfeld


Monarchy Of Roses
2011
Director: Marc Klasfeld


Look Around
2012
Director: Robert Hales con Alejandro Lalinde como director de fotografia.


Brendan's Death Song
2012
Director: Marc Klasfeld

viernes, 18 de enero de 2013

The Creative Act - John Frusciante

John ha publicado recientemente en su blog, y a continuación les dejo el texto para que lo disfruten. A lo largo del día estaré subiendo la traducción. 

The Creative Act

The phrase The Will To Death refers to the underlying, predominantly unintentional, organization in works by artists who love and are devoted to the creative force, but hate what they see of the life force and its ways. It is a set of abstract principles which may be applied in the creative act. In artistic symbolism, one comes close to death, and not only does he not die, but he lives more fully for having had the experience. It may be conceived as a set of musical/mathematical formulae which the musician utilizes without knowing it.

The creative force is produce of the life force, but our judgement of the life force is based on our perception of its effects, its surface, everything that happens in the external world we know. The closest we come to seeing the essence of the life force is in our perception of the creative force. In works of art, the creative force providesaddition and multiplication.The creative force is assisted by human intelligence through our devotion to division and negation, and so, symbolically, from the standpoint of human intelligence, the act of creativity is a striving towards death. The reason creative action can be a fulfilling life enriching thing, is because our creative thinking is negation only on the thoughts surface, the thoughts essence being identical with the wishes of the essence of the life force.

So in The Will To Death one strives towards death, but is indirectly supported by the life force, and so the artists will is always aiming at something it never reaches, for the creative force upholds the aspects of the life force which the human is blind to. And so due to feelings and inner visions, the mental divisions and subtractions an artist must be fluent in carry him down a path that is only subtractive in his relationship to his tools, while the creative force carries the additive substance of the life force which is ultimately perceived.

Subtraction and negation are always a matter of degrees, beyond which is the positive unknown, the essence of the life force. The primary perceptive apparatus of the artist is appropriately blind to the positives behind negation, yet he senses them, and he is often inwardly shown them. But just like people and their attachment to image and appearance, he cannot grasp the positive unseen and unknown, so he clings to his negations, subconsciously knowing they are attached to the life force, but consciously only knowing the life force by the world and its ways, that being his only working image of it. Were it not for the seemingly inexplicable meaning inherent in his work, he would not strive down a path of negation and division. It is the subconscious knowledge that this is actually an upward path which fuels him to continue to strive towards a greater comprehension of the negatives which to most people appear to symbolize the feared unknown, pointless to dissect. In other words, the artist strives toward death, because to him it feels like life. And when he presents his work to others, it looks like life to them, while it is actually negation and death which are beneath the surface. And, of course, beyond the surface of that, as I've just explained, is the life force, once again.

If an artist is applying The Will To Death, he has the following three positions in balance. He is in between, occupied with negation and separation. In front is the expression of life, visible and audible to him and to others, and behind is the creative force, visible and audible only to him. Behind which is the life force, which he can not see anymore than his spectators can see his mental negations, or the personification of the creative force which is perhaps known to him.

Three conditions need to be in balance for the artist to apply The Will To Death:

1) Trust in and devotion to the part of the creative act he can not control. He must possess a conception of the difference between the creative force and himself, to a great degree in order to be controlled by it. This means a kind of letting go of the very parts of himself that share something in common with the creative force, namely, the desire to maintain a solid forward motion. This motion comes if one trusts the creative force. None of us can cause it any more than we can cause the forward motion of time. To take part in it is all that is in our power, and to do so is a great privilege. If ones love for art is great enough, their appreciation for their chance to participate in the creative act great enough, then to trust in the energy which guides them comes naturally, If the artist has an internal personification of this aspect of the force, then it is this that he loves and trusts, but he still must love and trust when there is no image, but only a feeling and a non-specific, non-defined, sensible, talking force of energy. And this trust in what amounts to his own feelings, must be greater than his trust in the things people generally trust, such as general consensus, popularly accepted points of view, commonly adhered to limitations or restrictions, and present day conventions.

2) The ability to mentally lose himself in a fascination with negations and divisions. Essential to the creative process are contradictions, taking things apart, carving away at things, and disconnecting this from that. Most important is contradiction of the force that guides him, his love for this force being so great that the contradiction can not help but lead to a new agreement. He must be going in one direction, and then switch to a new direction, without losing his way. If condition 1 is in place he need not fear going astray. The artists role is to always look for new ways to go, despite that he is not the one driving.

3) Third is his creation of the appearance of conditions 1 and 2 as being a singular motion, not a multitude of contrary directions. This implies that conditions 1 and 2 are so balanced that there is a perfection of form in every countermovement contained within. Every counteraction soon finds its coordinate. Every ending feels like a new beginning. Every repetition feels like a continued flow. Every negation appears as positivity and every loss appears as a gain. There can be no difference between feeling and appearance to the artist, they must be one in the same. It is this point that is stressed by the undercurrent of the life force. The life force is far away, pertaining to arts essence, and it is also near, pertaining to the perception of the sum of all the things that comprise a works appearance. These are the sides. The artist sees three parts, what the creative force brings and perpetuates, what the artist himself twists, turns and counteracts, and the sum the artist perceives. And it is there that the artists involvement in their work must end, if The Will To Death is to be applied. Otherwise the artist is compromising condition number one, and to whatever degree he does so, the balance required for the application of The Will To Death is thrown off. The artist stands in the middle of two sides. What is beyond these is of no concern to him. He will never directly perceive the life force, and doesn't want to. And he can't hear with other peoples ears, or see with their eyes, and he sacrifices the benefit of his own senses to whatever degree he attempts to do so. The creative force is driving the artist in a car. The artist who attempts to take over the wheel will find The Will To Death unavailable to him, as he has made himself unavailable to it. Humans being located at a single point in the moment is the reason we hear and see as we do, and it is this which makes art and its perception possible in the first place. Our limited scope of vision is a gift, allowing us to see left from right, up from down, positive from negative and so on. Because each of us possesses a singular perspective, we can trust what we see and feel. We can contradict ourselves and be right both times.

So to summarize, one must allow themselves to be controlled by, yet counter, that which controls them, in such a way that the momentum and basic design provided by the controller remains, while the will and individuality of the artist persists. The creative force is half the essence of the life force and half a correlative of the artist and all his essential negativities. In The Will To Death, the creative act is a friendly argument between the creative force and the artist. This is the same as two close friends arguing about boxing. Just as both friends have a certain knowledge in common which provides the basis for the argument, the artists ability to navigate through negations and divisions aligns him with the creative force and its additions and multiplications, to the point that the argument is actually an affirmation of that which connects them.

The life force is primarily concerned with the effects of communicative energy, and the creative force is primarily concerned with the increase of the quality of art, and they have a perpetual friendly argument along these lines, and the lives and work of entertainers and artists, and the various combinations of the two, are the subjects. On the surface, it would seem that the life force always wins the argument with the creative force, and the creative force always wins the argument with artists. But while the life force created the creative force, the creative force in turn created the human perception of the life force. And the creative force creates artists, but humans mere existence creates a space for the creative force to live within. This means the apparent loser is always also the winner, as life force, creative force, artist and audience are all essentially one thing, just as a boxing argument results in the affirmation that each friend is his own man while the sport itself connects their differences. This was all set in motion so the true wishes of the life force would be vivified, of necessity, by negative units of itself, which gradually results in the hidden intentions of the life force becoming visible. The creative forces purpose involves the life forces higher aspects emerging victorious over its lower aspects, and the artists purpose involves the creative forces higher aspects emerging victorious over its lower aspects. What we see of the life force and its ways may often appear detestable, but the creative force we love represents the hidden parts of the life force, which we have been given the power to cultivate. This has been put in our hands in order to bring a flower out of the dirt.

jueves, 17 de enero de 2013

#


El tiempo sin escribir,
No me impide percibir
La calidez que siento al mirar
A mi estrella por la noche brillar.

Ahora parece difícil explicar
Lo que tampoco puedo demostrar.
Se estrechan los pretextos para lograr
Estar junto a ella, y meditar.

Porque ya no suelo reflexionar,
Sobre la vida y nuestro andar.
Puede haber sido sólo desvariar,
Al menos sirvió para soñar.

De algún modo te sentí
Por la noche abrazarte a mí.
Entonces comencé a buscar
Coincidencias para procesar
Algunas frases en mi mente,
Y escribir algo sorprendente.

Pensé en el sol, el cielo, el mar,
No encontraba nada con qué rimar.
Resultaba imposible componer una canción,
Pero debía hacerte una mención.

Por tus ojos debía observar,
Las aves desde el árbol volar.
Las risas de los niños al jugar,
Oírlas junto a tí al despertar.
Los enigmas de tu piel descifrar,
Al poder tus manos acariciar.
Apreciar tu cabello sobre el rostro y pintar,
Una playa tranquila cubierta por el mar.
El movimiento de tus labios debiera recordar,
Para aprender nuevamente a platicar.
Si consiguiera verte bailar.
El atardecer ya no me podría fascinar.
Estando cerca tuyo siento mis extremidades vibrar,
Mi corazón latir fresco sin cesar.
Tu fragancia cálida y singular,
Es el perfume que me logra guiar.
Cayendo rápido y sin respirar,
Conteniendo el aire hasta golpear.
En el aire parece flotar,
El recuerdo hermoso de observar
Profundamente tus ojos brillar,
Simplificando el sentido de bienestar.

Sumo un triunfo único a mi repisa,
Cada vez que me regalas tu sonrisa.




Nicolás Biaggini


lunes, 14 de enero de 2013

Se estrena sencillo inédito de Jimi Hendrix


'Somewhere' forma parte del disco 'People, Hell & Angels'

Faltan dos meses para que salga al mercado el disco inédito del músico estadunidense Jimi Hendrix, titulado People, Hell & Angels, mientras tanto hoy se dio a conocer el primer sencillo "Somewhere".

El tema promocional "Somewhere", fue liberado este lunes en el programa del DJ Shaun Keaveny en la radio BBC 6Music, e inmediatamente trajo grandes reacciones por parte de sus fanáticos. People, Hell & Angels saldrá a la venta el próximo 5 de marzo, por lo que ya se encuentra disponible en preventa en la página oficial, e incluye 12 temas grabados entre 1968 y 1969 y que nunca habían salido a la luz.

El portal NME informó que en este disco, el legendario guitarrista experimenta nuevos sonidos. Las canciones fueron grabadas en paralelo a su banda Jimi Hendrix Experience.

El lanzamiento de este álbum inédito se produce meses después del estreno del documental que registra la participación del músico en Woodstock en 1969, Hendrix 70: Live at Woodstock, con el que se celebró los 70 años de su nacimiento.

Escucha Somewhere aquí:



Fuente: http://www2.esmas.com/entretenimiento/musica/noticias/545126/se-estrena-sencillo-inedito-jimi-hendrix/

Red Hot Chili Peppers live @ Auckland, New Zealand - 14/01/2013

Vector Arena Auckland, 

New Zealand 

 14 de enero 2013 

Setlist: 

1. Monarchy of Roses 
 2. Around the World 
 3. Scar Tissue 
 4. Look Around (Stone Cold Bush tease) 
 5. Snow ((Hey Oh)) 
 6. What in the World (David Bowie cover) 
 7. Can't Stop 
 8. She's Only 18 
 9. Throw Away Your Television 
 10. The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie 
 11. Right on Time 
 12. Under the Bridge 
 13. Suck My Kiss 
 14. Factory of Faith 
 15. Californication 
 16. By the Way 

 Encore: 

 17. Chad & Mauro & Josh Jam 
 18. Higher Ground (Stevie Wonder cover) 
 19. Soul to Squeeze 
 20. Give It Away 
 21. Final Jam

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