© 2013 Theodore Taylor III
One of my goals since college has been to see Flying Lotus perform live. Last night I accomplished that mission, along with seeing performances by his friends Thundercat and Teebs at the 9:30 Club. All three were fantastic and my ears still haven’t recovered yet. Seriously, I think I need to invest in earplugs next time. You can see more photos on my Flickr account.
This is an album cover I illustrated for Potholes In My Blog’s tribute to Sam Cooke, a compilation of beats sampling his music. You can stream the music below. Also, smoking is bad.
This is an album cover for Emay’s Potholes Music debut Into It, a selection of beats made using samples pull from the music of Ramona Falls. For the artwork I decided to pull inspiration from the work of Theo Ellsworth who was responsble for the cover of Ramona Falls’ album “Intuit”.
This is an album cover I illustrated for Potholes In My Blog’s Robot Soup, a compilation featuring instrumental tracks from the likes of James Pants, Suzi Analog, Kidkanevil and others. Those who donate $5 (which goes to charity in support of music education) will receive the 11×17 poster below.
This is the cover I designed for Potholes Music’s first artist compilation, Distant Arcade. You can download the compilation here.
This is an album cover I created for Javis FauX’s “Deal With It Vol. 2″ for Potholes Music. It’s based off of the “deal with it” meme, but with Star Fox, obviously. Stream the album below.
This is my cover design for a new Potholes In My Blog beat compilation, Cosmic Island. It’s an island in space, obviously. You can download the compilation for free here and read more about it on Potholes.
I’m happy to announce that I recently completed work on When The Beat Was Born, a children’s book written by Laban Hill which tells the story of DJ Kool Herc and his part in birthing hip-hop culture. I’ve been working on this book for quite a while and it feels great to see a finished product. I’ll discuss it more when Roaring Brook Press publishes it around Spring of next year.
Here is an album cover I designed for Choongum’s first EP, Fantasy, on the recently-launched Potholes Music. Most of the inspiration for this piece came from the strange, alien landscapes that appear in René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet, one of my favorite animated films.
You can read more about Choongum and Fantasy at Potholes In My Blog. And if you have about an hour to waste, why not watch Fantastic Planet in full on YouTube?
Here is the ridiculous Rayforce/Sega Saturn-inspired artwork that I created for Potholes’ latest beat compilation. Rayforce (aka Gunlock aka Layer Section aka Galactic Attack) has been one of my favorite schmups for years so I felt this was the appropriate time to show my appreciation. You can download the compilation here.
Artwork for Abjo’s first release on Potholes Music. You can read more about it here.
I made the decision to consolidate all of my music from 2006 to 2009 into one album. You can download it on Bandcamp for free and listen below.
The podcast I made for Potholes In My Blog is up! It’s basically an overall view of where my head is musically at the moment. You can check out the post here or listen below.
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Tracklist
This week’s top weekly artist is Danny Brown, a rapper out of Detroit. He recently released a free mixtape that’s being touted as one of the best hip-hop releases this year.
For this piece I practiced some new techniques, specifically adding values with watercolors. I’m not sure how successful it was, but I like it overall.
Next up for my weekly top artist series is Samiyam, a beat maker associated with the Brainfeeder crew who recently released an album called The Sam Baker Album. A number of his beats include video game samples, so I imagined what a Samiyam NES game would look like. The giant fireball was inspired by an older interview with him. Thanks to Mykola for helping me identify Sam’s hat and shoes…
