busta rhymes and mike shinoda

it's funny, i just got an update on the busta rhymes + mike shinoda [of linkin park] collaboration and noticed that i'm wearing the same nooka today as busta is in the video! more on their song together here. there's a link in mike's blog to the video preview.


i'm wearing a t-shirt from ghostly records and green mihara pumas from a few years ago.

grand sounds in the nooka studio

i must say, i have a great knack for predicting music success. i predicted that tainted love by softcell would be an unprecedented hit in 1981 when it was still an indie release as well as predicting scissor sister's fame after seeing them play in a dive bar on pearl street a year before their first single in the uk – and i'm happy to see the musings in my past music reviews for the presets coming to form.

and the theme is "grand vision". there are bands that just have fun and find fame in the process, and others who have a grand vision of their sound. i heard that in scissor sister on a crappy sound system in a dive bar and i hear it in these two bands below.

the presets when i first heard beams by the presets i felt that they were another band like cut copy that produced great sounds, especially as remixers for other people, but had little to say on their own. after listening to it more and more, the girl and the sea became my favorite song of that year and i had a feeling that there was a lot more to them than what was heard on beams IF they got into more songwriting. well...apolcalypso is exactly what i expected in that direction. this album has everything, dance beats, atmospheric sounds, actual songs, and great production without sacrificing that indie feeling modular records is so good at! it's like speak and spell by depeche mode had a baby with duran duran, and the baby's nanny was Fischerspooner.

midnight juggernauts here is another australian act that sounds like they're from williamsburg brooklyn. dystopia is a grand endeavor – though the sound is electro, it's more like the gothic/scifi local synthpop of the early 80s in NYC that never really caught on anywhere with a real 2008 production budget. there is something reminiscent of sparks but somehow less contrived and more future-forward. they actually sound a bit like visage. i actually imagine this band eventually morphing into an arena rock band producing scifi inspired heavy metal...but that may be 5 years off for them. i can see them doing fun covers of the sweet or even queen. all-in-all, a very fun album.

coming soon, nooka nooka

here's a preview of what the package will look like. coming in may!

vancouver

this past weekend i went to vancouver which is in the vast northern territory know more commonly as canadia [or candaland]. it is a unique city in the sense that nobody seems to work – literally 98% of the buildings in the city are residential, and a good portion of the units seem to be empty, yet the shops are full of shoppers, the restaurants are full of diners, and the streets are full of porsches.

i was told 2 different explanations:
a] everyone reverse commutes to work in the suburbs,
b] most of the money is made from marijuana trade, so no need for fancy office buildings.
i also suspect that a lot of the condo units are investment properties for people in hong kong, singapore, korea and japan.

good food, great parks, skiing accessible by city bus – what more can one ask for! definitely worth a visit.

and if you want to buy nooka there, check out illustrated example for zubs at 227 carral street and design house for leather strap models 1110 mainland street. for other shops in BC, check the where to buy section on www.nooka.com.

color story sage

as an experiment, i gave my interns the challenge of telling a color story for our zubs. 2.0 was given the color sage.

Den här Nookan påminde mig om en dryck vi har i Sverige som bryggs på träskvatten värmt i heta källor. Jag tror det kallas grönt te här

you can buy the model featured here.

last grey blog for a bit

totally by chance, everyone in my studio dressed in the same color palette today – spooky huh?

nooka pairings

restaurants offer up pairing menus to push certain wines, so i'm gonna share some of my nooka pairings with you:

the silver sneakers are my new favorite shoes, the mini cooper edition from tiger onitsuka...they are actually very comfortable to wear as well. at first i though a mirror faced nooka with a metal mesh strap would go best with these shoes, but i opted for the white zirc which captured the dynamic white accents in the footwear. any white nooka would go well with these snazzy kicks! pants by uniglo.


i've been obsessed with grey clothes for a long time. it's actually quite difficult to find neutral grey clothing in the US [grey here tends to be greenish or bluish, so I fill up in japan!], and so it was natural i created a grey line-up for nooka – and they go great with my new dark cool grey shoes from around-the-shoes. well-worn grey jeans from united arrows green label.

UPDATE: looks like gap has a lot of neutral grey this season...but that means actually going to a gap store if i want to check it out....i'll keep you updated.