Broken Bells features artist–producer Danger Mouse and James Mercer, the lead vocalist and guitarist for the The Shins. I’ve only heard the music that’s on the site, but it seems like a great album. Plus if you buy the limited edition music box you get 44-page notebook that includes photos and illustrations, a glow in the dark sticker sheet, a poster and 2 post cards with the cd. I love design work on this package. Even if the music was lame, and is sounds like it’s not, it would be worth it just to get the music box. If I could only justify spending the $40. I may have to just go with buying the album.

Update: My friend Sarah saw my post land in Facebook and let me know that you can listen to the whole album on NPR’s site.

Atomic bombs, puppets, dogs and a great song. This video looks poorly done at first and is seemingly random, but if you watch the whole thing it’s amazing. I don’t want to say too much. Make sure you watch it all the way through. It’s worth the eleven minutes. Keep you eyes peeled for  small details. You may want to watch it more than once.

Addition/Subtraction from flight404 on Vimeo.

Older Magnetosphere/Turbulence/Nebula render from flight404 on Vimeo.

Robert Hodgin is a Coder/Artist living in San Francisco and a founding partner of the Barbarian Group where he worked until late 2009. Robert’s work goes from simple 2D data visualizations to 3D terrain simulations. His about page states that he has interstes in theoretical physics, particle engines and audio visualizations. Seems like a pretty intelligent guy to me.

The first video above is a field simulation Robert created as an exercise to learn more about C++ vectors and lists. I really don’t know what that means. Here’s an excerpt from his explanation: “It involves 20,000 particles which react to external forces and can be reborn locally if they should happen to stray too far. Into this mess of particles, you can place either an attractive force (gravity) or a repulsive force (orbital). The attractive forces pull every particle towards it based on the laws of gravitation. The repulsive forces spin either clockwise or counterclockwise and any particles nearby would be thrown away from the center of the rotating force.” All in all it makes for a really interesting abstract video. Make sure you watch it in HD even though it takes some time to load. The second video is an audio simulation called Turbulence he created that is simply mesmerizing. You can see more of his work on his site.

Chris Greenwood photo by Jaime Poulin

Chris Greenwood’s album Igloo was recently released on iTunes and amazon.com. I had the opportunity to work with Chris on the album artwork and during that time did an interview with him. In the interview Chris talks about what it was like to make the album, why he fell in love with making music and what some of his plans are in the future. We also had strange moment in the middle of the interview. Click the read more to get read view the interview.

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I thought about writing my own top 10 music list of 2009 but there are so many other good ones out there I figured it would be better to list the top lists that I like. A few things to note. These are not in order. I tried to stay away from POP lists. They are much easier to come by but much less interesting. The Decemberists come up a lot as well as Animal Collective and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Some of the links below, like Kitsune Noir’s go to pages where you can download the mix; others are just lists. If you have a list you think should have been in here let me know in the comments. I’ll be happy to add it to the post if I like it. I’m sure there are a million other good ones out there.

1. Kitsune Noir’s Favorite Albums of 2009

2. ISO50’s Top 50 Songs of 2009

3. Spinner Top 2009 Songs

4. Yasly Best of 2009

5. Yewkee 2009: Best of Mix

6. Pitchfork Top 50 Albums of 2009

7. Indie Music Filter: Best Songs of 2009

8. NPR Music Best of 2009

9. Pretty Much Amazing’s Best Albums of 2009

10. Spin 40 Best Albums of 2009

I just got my copies of Chris Greenwood’s new album, Igloo, which I laid out and did the illustration for. I’m really happy with how it came out. My favorite part of the design is the disc which has the rough sketches I drew when laying out the birds for the front cover. It was Chris’s idea to use them; he really liked my preliminary drawings. I did too; I’m glad I got a chance to show what they looked like before I blacked them out. My wife Meg did the lettering on the font cover. Chris wanted to have a lot of hand written text. I think it goes well with the over all theme. I’m also happy with the color of the artwork. The orange/rust color on the inside printed just right and contracts the blue of the disc. The album is really good too. It is due out the beginning of 2010. I’m not sure of the exact date, but I have an interview Chris that I’ll post as soon as it is released. You can hear one of Chris’s songs from the album here. You can also hear more on Chris Greenwood’s myspace page.