A few good, long-ish articles having something to do with music.

• What’s the Matter With Sweden? Pitchfork examines how generous public arts funding in Sweden has led to a flourishing music scene.
• The ‘Antique-Garde’ Songwriters of New York City: I found this article through Curtis Eller, who is featured. He is a part of what the author terms the “antique-garde,” a name for a group of New York artists who explore old-timey music. (Eller’s section is the last.)
• The Wolf at Our Heels: From Slate, a survey on the eternal problems of instrument tuning, with audio samples.
• Grain & Gram is a “new gentleman’s journal” currently with a single feature. It’s a creative piece on musician Greg Perkins that reads like a print magazine, presented with large art and plenty of style. I hope they’re working on another.

One of my favorites—this classic music video was directed by Michel Gondry. I can’t help but look for similar patterns when I’m riding along.

On making it:

The video is based on DV footage Gondry shot while on vacation in France; the train ride between Nîmes and Valence was shot ten different times during the day to get different light gradients.

• LBJ orders some pants: since nearly everything a president does is recorded, we have this gem from President Johnson’s archive. He calls Mr. Haggar for some slacks, and he knows exactly what he wants.
• Hoefler and Frere-Jones’ (designers of Gotham and other typefaces) thoughts on combining fonts can be boiled down to “keep one thing consistent, and let one thing vary.”
• More information than you could ever want about why calculators and telephones have their numbers arranged differently.

Looking through some recent music, I noticed a number of similarities in album covers. There seems to be a trend towards pastoral and sea scenes, emphasizing the vast spaces of the natural world. In addition, most of the covers below are photographs, many with an unnatural tint of yellow or magenta. The effect creates a vintage, but timeless-seeming image.

It’s fun to consider these albums together because it creates a sort of playlist. What are the albums striving for, and what similarities do they have? How does the cover art relate to what I’m hearing?

Anyway, check out the list below (and click to enlarge it). I think the modern precursor for this kind of album art is The Fruit that Ate Itself by Modest Mouse. Can you think of any other releases that fit with the group?

Gonjasufi, Sumach Ecks, makes music that takes as much from psychedelia as from hip-hop and chillout. It’s an odd, mesmerizing mixture, yet the tracks are structured as pop songs and just as accessible. As his moniker and the album title suggest, there are occasional Middle Eastern textures to the music, but they sit comfortably on the shelf of influences, even playing nice with the Tom Waits blues of a song like “Ageing.”

Where the album truly impresses is in balancing its disparate elements, neither overextending in one direction or trying to jam too much into any one song. The lo-fi, hazy production works to connect the dots of what may otherwise be a scattered, genre-spanning mess. And unlike some strains of electronic music, the tracks never overstay their welcome, instead bleeding into the next and offering another fresh sound. Intense moments, like the ragged vocals on “She Gone,” are balanced by the laid-back bass and RJD2 jazz samples on tracks like “Change.” The album sounds cool, I haven’t heard anything quite like it, and I’m certain the understated “Duet” will be one of my favorite tracks of the year.