Today I read a nice wrap up of this year’s Decibel Festival on xlr8r.com. Didn’t make it to the festival this year so I was kind of keen on seeing what I missed. While I knew numerous names at the show this year like Zomby, Quantic, Bonobo, Amon Tobin, there are always so many musicians with whom I’m unfamiliar. So even reading reviews after the show bears fruit.

One of the sets that sounded great was by a young Detroit musician named, Kyle Hall. Clicking on the article link brought me to Hall’s website, Wild Kyle Oats on which I found this gem of a movie (short film – 19mins) about Detroit and it’s electronic music scene.

The highlight for me comes at roughly 5 minutes in, when “The New Dance Show” with host, R.J. Watkins, is being discussed. Mind-blowing moves. Totally rad. I mean my sister and I had “Soul Train” when we were growing up, but this show takes the cake and eat it!

Real Scenes: Detroit from Resident Advisor on Vimeo.

This video brought not only a smile to my eye, but one to my mouth as well. Fun and stylish! Made in Portland?

“Golden Tree” by Martin Brooks from Ninian Doff on Vimeo.

I was recently reading about this new typography magazine called 8 Faces edited by designer, Elliot Jay Stocks. The cover of issue number 3 was designed by McBess, a French illustrator who lives in London. His style reminds me of R. Crumb a bit, but perhaps that was just the prevalence of naked women in the illustrations. Looking around on McBess’ website was pretty fun. I especially enjoyed this short music video/cartoon.

Wanted to hear this cool jam today, so I’m putting up hear so I can find it again easily. This is the rhythm sending me onto my bike and home and the weekend which will be a full one at Bumbershoot. Getting all psyched up this week…so many musicians and bands I look forward to seeing and hearing. Koga and I are taking the full tour. So with that spirit, hear is Wanlov The Kubolor with a track off of his “Green Card” album.

Following a Twitter link to brainpickings.org, Maria Popova introduced me to both Andrew Zuckerman and his Wisdom project. The first video is an interesting, inspirational talk about how he came to do the Wisdom project and some of the things he learn from it. It is fairly long (for this blog) at 27 minutes, but very worth it. And now I’m really excited to see the Wisdom film, the trailer for which is the second video below.

Andrew Zuckerman from 99% on Vimeo.

WISDOM Trailer from Andrew Zuckerman Studio on Vimeo.