Chopper

This weeks Top 5 comes from Ben Foot aka B7, who’s illustrations and weird characters have featured on posters, cd covers, in recipe books and Chopper t-shirts. Ben put together a small guide of resources for buying, selling and finding inspired. Lovely!

Threadless

Threadless is an amazing T-shirt design website, where you can get incredible art tees, hoodies and a variety of other products with fresh and awesome work by amazing designers from all over the world. The best part of Threadless is that the designs are created and voted on by the community and these scores helps the staff decide which tees will be printed next. They gave me a huge start online by picking my work for tees and also I made some great friends through Threadless. As far as the internet goes it feels like home to me.

www.threadless.com

Society6

Society6 is another great site where you can explore and discover a whole world of incredible artists working in a million different styles and mediums and buy prints, iphone cases and other products featuring their work. You can also post and sell your own art in a store by uploading it there.

www.society6.com

Tilteed

Tilteed is another t-shirt site which promotes and prints great art designed by the community which you can then buy on great quality tees and hoodies. They have also been cool enough to print my designs and given me great chances to get my work out there when they ran their Limited section.

www.tilteed.com

Juxtapoz

Juxtapoz is an arts magazine featuring some of the best artists and designers working today as well as emerging new talent. I’ve been very inspired by this magazine over the years. I still like to read an analog copy because the internet is obviously one day going to absorb our very souls until we forget what the sky look like, and I’d like to postpone that as long as possible…although you can also get a digital copy via their website.

www.juxtapoz.com

The Real World

Forget the internet for a week, or even just a day. Turn off all your screens and get out there to an art gallery to see works in the flesh. Go to a library, to the art on the streets and the walls of cities and towns or just out into a field and look at the stars. Because one day all that will be all nothing but silicon and black and white profile photos taken from flattering angles, and all art will be censored by a hideous, malformed, artificially intelligent mass of circuit boards with wire hair and chip-teeth, and we will be forced draw his image a thousand times over till there are no pencils left.

Don’t forget to tell everyone what you did on your Facebook status!

Have a look at Ben’s illustrations here

We would like to introduce the 3rd in the series of Top 5′s from local illustrator and musician Archie Edwards, here’s an introduction from the man himself:

As a wannabe illustrator and bedroom jammer, I have a lot of admiration for masters of the visual and auditory arts. Some people, however, manage to combine both, making sounds and images that go hand in hand and essentially becoming the masters of creation (even though that sounds like a superhero team). These people should definitely be aplauded, so here are 5 of them:

5. Rex the dog (Jake Williams)

I Can See You, Can You See Me? by rexthedog1980

Jake Williams and his smart-arse, synth-playing dog “Rex” produce light-hearted, varied electro music together. Or so Williams’ playful accompanying cartoons suggest. I think they would explain it better themselves, however, so click here for what they’re about in their own words (and pictures).

4. Portugal. The Man (John Gourley)

“The Woods” by Portugal. The Man by Portugaltheman

I actually heard the psychedelic rock of “Portugal. The Man” as a result of seeing the artwork of their singer, John Gourley. Teaming up with graphic designer friend Austin Sellers, Gourley decorates their album covers with his surreal, flowing illustrations and bizarre, distorted characters.

Have a look at some more of their cover art here.

3. Mr. Scruff (Andy Carthy)

Mr Scruff “Music Takes Me Up” (feat. Alice Russell) by Mr Scruff

Mr. Scruff’s instantly recognisable, smiley-faced illustrations (drawn in what he calls “Potato style”) don’t just adorn the record sleeves, gig visuals and music videos of his infectious, jazzy musical output, but also provide the brand identity for his very own tea company, “Make us a brew”. Brilliantly simple and effective. His website is the perfect showcase: mrscruff.com

2. Flaming Lips (Wayne Coyne)

“The W.A.N.D.”, The Flaming Lips by TwoThousand

What can I say – probably my favourite band and definitely the best live act I have ever seen. Singer and main man Wayne Coyne’s psychedelic art echoes their spaced out music and mind blowing, visually stunning live shows with an explosion of colour and paint. He has even opened his own “art space/ gallery space/ general freak out space” (in his words) called the Womb, in Oklahoma. To be honest, Coyne is just one of my favourite people full stop. You can see some more of his paintings here on their website.

1. Teebs (Mtende Mandowa)

Teebs – Arthurs Birds by Hyp3Dog

Mtende Mandowa (AKA Teebs) approaches his music and art in a similar, experimental way, threading together a diverse selection of styles, elements and techniques to make his atmospheric creations. His art is always on a large scale and you get the impression he is just going with the flow as he paints, holding a brush one minute, then a spraycan, then weilding a circular saw… It seems like an exciting process. For me his visual work is the perfect extension to his music and vice versa. He also skates, and used to flat share with legendary producer Flying Lotus! Again, you probably get a better idea from the man himself in this video

James Varlow is part of the Beat Connection crew who have been putting on nights in Kettering for the past 5+ years. He has selected his tracks of the year so far, OHHH Bangers! See you on the dancefloor!

1. Adele – Rolling in the Deep (Jamie XX Shuffle) You can’t get away from this woman, even when you think you’re alternative, she pops up with this beaut. Describing it is hard, it progresses from pop to indie, dancehall to DnB (well almost). Jamie XX has truely created an Adele tune that we can all dance to and not feel guilty about doing it, changing the key to Adele’s vocals was genius, but a little bit scary. To be honest, I’ll have a little shuffle with my mum to this at the next family wedding.

2. The Knife – Heartbeats
No they haven’t covered Jose Gonzales, he actually covered them. This track has it all a nice beat to it and it fits any situation. Stick it on your head phones, go have a skate or a bike ride, hell, walk into town on a Saturday night and just listen to it sound tracking your life while carnage exists all around you.

3. Decibels – Francisco’s house Yes they are local lads and good friends of mine but that doesn’t mean that IO don’t believe this is one of my tracks of the year. They have already been shortlisted in Bleep.com’s 50 unsigned artists of 2012 and I believe that really good things will happen for these guys. My club night, The Beat Connection, is named after an LCD Soundsystem song, and Decibels have continued this electro party feel. Daft Punk played at Francisco’s House, not mine. In fact, why not come to see them Friday 23rd December @ The Beat Connection in Kettering

http://www.facebook.com/Decibelsarehere

4. Rage Against the Machine – Killing in the Name of (SebastiAn Late Night Remix) I come from a town with a heritage of metal and rock, and I’ll be honest, its not the most inspiration al music to me. But classic tracks don’t slip by very often. This remix, by French electronic artist SebastiAn (see ‘Motor’ to get an idea of his hair brained scheme’s) was apparently conceived after a late night drinking session with those other French electro lads, Daft Punk. Think of the classic, then just mess it up with electro sounds, high pitch squeals, vocoders and Stephen Hawkins reciting the lyrics instead of Zack de la Roche and you’ll dance your tits off to it regardless.

5. !!! – Hello, is this thing on? This band, wow this band, I wouldn’t have a musical clue if it wasn’t for them. (you can say ‘Chk Chk Chk’ if you can’t pronounce ‘!!!’). They hail from New York and have an average age of 38 now, but they still put on the best live shows I have ever seen. Yes he can’t sing, but imagine everything you would want from a live show and they do it; Percussion, brass blow out, triple drumming, front men with real swagger, sexy dance moves and sweat. They are the epitome of everything good about the scene I love. If you know me, you’ll know this band as I just cannot stop talking about the quality they have. To be fair, the recordings are only good, but it is the live shows that stand them up as the best band of the last 10 years for me.

The Beat Connection

Introducing the first in our series of Top 5′s from TakeOver owner and designer, Lukas Vinicenko.

1 / Revok ‘King of graffiti full stop’

2 / Augor ‘Always fresh work,sometimes abit too much’

3 / Neckface ‘My first piece ever was a copy of neckface character,’

4 / TOXIC ‘free tox’

5 / S.Fairey ‘I don’t like what obey turned into,but Shepard Fairey has inspired millions including myself ‘

P.S F*%k BANKSY!