A glitchy, animated simulation of synesthesia.

[via ANIMAL]

An incredible LED surface that responses dynamically to contact with water.

[via cosascool]

It’s been about a year since Brendon joined the band – initially as a session musician before quickly confirming his position as a permanent member and great friend. With a broad musical palette, he has been involved with groups from post-metal to alt-country. Recently, we discovered that a particular project, Ender–an excellent post-rock/drone act with one enigmatic release–has made its way onto Spotify. Hopefully you can enjoy this album in your territory via the player below.

An immersive, interactive installation of 8,064 LED lights by Squidsoup.

[via Laughing Squid]

11811 has been nominated for the Independent Music New Zealand Taite Music Prize which acknowledges artistic merit, creativity, innovation and excellence. Previous years’ nominees include album producer David Holmes’ band Kerretta.

Discover great NZ music here.

A mashup by Elliott Howey of the film Metropolis with our music video for Helix, set to the song Voight-Kampff.

Beautiful photography mapping the invisible terrain of Wi-Fi networks in urban spaces.

[via @nicksayes]

It’s third time lucky for Decortica which is not to say the first two albums are not worth hearing, that’s not the case at all. This is a band that has been honing its sound – moving towards its goal – since 2005 and now, with new album 11811, the Auckland-based band perfectly realises a vision/version of metal that is driving and pulsing, constantly seeking and searching, never leaden; arguably it’s metal rather than heavy metal – but let’s not assign it to (just) the metal genre because there’s rock and post-rock and math-rock ideas here.

[FULL REVIEW]

It was only in an earlier interview, when Bosher was asked how the name of the new (third) Decortica album should be pronounced, that he realised how challenging the title, ‘11811’, was. It could after all be ‘one, one, eight’ etc., or ‘eleven, eight eleven’, just for starters. He’s unconcerned, saying that doesn’t matter to him as much as how it looks on paper, the meaning that can be extracted from it musically and the identity that it gives this intense, dynamic and often heavy (hints of Faith No More and Deftones are indicative) rock record.
“The album is an expression of something through an abstract medium, and to that end we have chosen an otherwise nonsensical album title that has more to do with the visual pattern that it creates, than the actual words if you sound it all out.”

11811 is also the name of the album’s fifth track, one of four with a numeric-based title. (Two of the others were added late, at the request of the record label, in order to leaven the album’s density, and as segues were given names coded to their track positioning – F0UR and 73N.)
“That track [11811] is one I indentified with. Out of all the songs it held a special significance to me, both in terms of its themes and the sound of it, and I thought it appropriate to extend that to the rest of the album as well.
“The source material and references that we make in this record comes from the field of abstract sculpture, light sculpture specifically, and a group of artists I really like in that space, who use code and logic as a way of creating interesting visual displays.
“That, I think, spoke to the way a musician would use harmonics and so on to express themselves in an audio sense. Then to give the album some human drama, and something a little more relatable, I referenced a lot of sci-fi sources and cinema. Anyone really interested could easily follow that thread and learn more about the concepts of the album through those lyrical cinematic references.
“It becomes difficult when you talk so abstractly and so obtusely, to create a compelling lyric around it, so the cinematic references were made to inform an interesting collage of words and ideas with a little bit of dramatic element.”

He perhaps needn’t have worried so much, as his voice and music – intense, hard driving, prog-inflected alternative rock/metal, carefully recorded by long time collaborator David Holmes – provide ample drama.
“We are a guitar- and drum-orientated rock band, without extensive lead solos. It’s very riff-orientated and to that end percussive. The flip to that is dissonance of chords and so on, which is to do more with tonal and sonic landscapes.

[FULL INTERVIEW]

11811 is a sonic journey to the underside of your mind. This album is dark, it’s heavy, it’s melodic and there are moments where it trudges through the notes like a colossal monster. The vocal style on this record lifts it from its darkness (which is brilliant in itself) to a much more haunting level that is peppered by blood-curdling screams, guitar riffs and a sound that shapeshifts through textures. The density of Decortica’s sound is balanced by their song writing. Sections aren’t competing endlessly for your attention, but are knitted together in a way that allows each one to rise above the rest and fall back down in an evolutionary cycle. From the album opener, ‘Asterisms’, 11811 grabs you and holds you by the face until it’s finished with the closer ‘Designs in Exploded View’.

[via Groove Guide]