Let’s list classic downtempo albums, shall we? Massive Attack’s Blue Lines, NOW’s Car Boot Soul, Kruder & Dorfmeister’s K&D sessions, Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works, The KLF’s Chill Out. That was fun. Now let’s run through some of the all-time classic Big Chill moments – Sia belting out ‘I love you’ with Zero 7 at The Enchanted Garden, Kruder & Dorfmeister DJ+MC+sofa set at Lulworth, Norman Jay’s Sunday afternoon session every year…
Hang on. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?…
YES! They’re back!
Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister have been responsible for bass-heavy dubbed out tracks, live gigs, DJ sets, remixes and compilations – together as Kruder & Dorfmeister and seperately in side projects like Tosca, The Peace Orchestra, Voom:Voom and Dr Richard. Their Viennese sound is warm, enveloping and makes you dance in whatever way you can when you hear it, be it full on danceloor flailing or iPod-driven foot tapping and head nodding on the bus.
Expect heavyweight sounds from heavyweight names, in a long-awaited return to The Big Chill for Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister.
The Summer Sessions will consist of a two hour DJ set from each pioneer, Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister, plus the outstanding performance of silver-tongued MCs Earl Zinger and Ras MC T- Weed, plus VJ mastermind Fritz Fitzke. Those who were at Lulworth will already be familiar with his impressive visual skills. Your ears are in for a treat too, as K&D bringing more than a decade’s experience of choice club and funk tunes, whilst getting ample opportunity to express their forward vision of 21st century music, keeping things fresh and sophisticated with a sound that is guaranteed to keep you moving.
Kruder & Dorfmeister Biography
Well, basically two guys mainly known through their successful dj-sets and a respectable record of vinyl-releases since 1993. A dubplate-melting factor from Vienna. Two producers/djs/remixers whose distinctive trademark sound is at most times extremely mellow, has a lot of bass, downbeat tracks and a sense of epic soundscapes. There might be the occasional double-time breaks and the heavy and deep typically viennese feeling.
Consider K&D to roam in their own, unique realm of musical beutekunst that owes and gives a lot to rare funk tunes, electric jazz arrangements, the feeling of deep soul, hiphop, dub, reggae, ambient, fusion, brazil, chansons, dope beats and drum+bass and still a lot more influences that happen to find the interest of the two austrians.
At a time when hip hopbeats started to emancipate themselves from the rapping and everyone started to pay highest attention to the blooming breakbeat scene in the UK, K&D broke through out of nowhere with one 4-track e.p. (G-stoned) that featured a hypnotic track called High Noon and a cover that showed the dj-duo in true Simon & Garfunkel form, straight out of Richard Avedon anno 1969.
The impact was massive, especially since the first wave of enthusiasm came from the UK where musical imports from the continent are seldom appreciated. Gilles Peterson played the track first on his Worldwide show. Gathering momentum with support from people like Wall of Sound’s Mark Jones and tracks for fellow Austrians Count Basic or strange people like William Orbit, the further story of K&D and Richard’s Tosca project is well documented on various compilations and twelve inch releases. They met people like the Ninja tune posse, touched base with the leftfield dance, befriended Munich’s Compost crew, remixed artists as diverse as Bomb the bass, Bones thugs & harmony, Alex Reece, United Future Organisation, Rockers Hifi (the K&D version was used in the video of "Going under"), Lamb, Roni Size, Depeche Mode and dj-ed in more clubs than you would care to count.
Be it their self-produced tracks or the sound of their remixes, the K&D symptomatic feeling of lush european loungcore-dub pervaded all swift changes of the triphop hype and survived as a highly personal expression that found easy access into the world of drum&bass when the breakbeats became soulful.
Their regular presence in the club circuit, a characteristic side effect of their consistant travelling as djs, made them well-received guest at the various crossing of an international beat-set that took them from Vienna to London, to the American Westcoast, to Germany and back, with a tightly packed dj-bag full of remixes tracing their steps.
A mix-CD compilation, DJ-kicks, for German label Studio K7 marked a relevant change in the overall concept of K&D or rather in the way the audience seemed to take them in. From being well-respected underground heroes they had emerged to be full fledged media-celebrities in the music-press whose mix-CD was so excellently mixed and selected, that many new fans were attracted all over the world.
Kruder & Dorfmeister are somewhere between British breakbeat or the American illbient scene, but then again their musical imprint is outernational. They could achieve the special abstract global reputation that makes them neighbours to RockersHifi, Fila Brazilia, Howie B., DJ Shadow, the wordsound collective, Coldcut or the Thievery Corporation in a virtual neighbourhood of twekwando-ing beatmeisters.
Links
Kruder & Dorfmeister Myspace
Kruder and Dorfmeister Wiki
www.g-stoned.com
Graphic novels, digital comics, and technology-enhanced learning: Part 2.(INFOTECH)
Teacher Librarian October 1, 2009 | Lamb, Annette; Johnson, Larry An elementary student scans concert tickets for her graphic autobiography.
An eighth grader creates a comic to explain a pre-algebra problem.
A teen draws images for her graphic novel set in Ancient Greece.
From writing graphic novels to creating science comics, bring your class assignments, student projects, and course materials alive with 21st century approaches to communication. Regardless of whether you prefer Mac or PCs, students can use free online tools as well as inexpensive software to produce graphic novels, illuminated term papers, visual science reports, photo essays, and other engaging alternatives to traditional reports and student projects. These concrete products reflect student understanding and provide an alternative to traditional forms of assessment.
Today’s graphic communication projects help students synthesize and apply digital scraps, primary source documents, photographs, charts and graphics, and other visuals to create meaningful communications.
The introduction of Comic Life and other inexpensive, easy-to-use software has helped to make producing comics easy. Rather than a traditional biography report, consider combining graphic novels and Comic Life software. Use The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam by Ann Marie Fleming as an example of ah illustrated memoir. Based on a documentary, this book contains a wide variety of images from hand drawings to screen shots from videos.
Rather than writing a report about a person, ask students to select a family member of friend, design an investigation, and report the findings in the form of a comic. Of, work with the local historical society to explore famous local or state personalities. Incorporate original drawings and primary source documents including photographs; birth, death, and marriage certificates; scanned tickets, newspaper clippings, and other materials. Figure 1 shows an excerpt from a graphic biography created in Comic Life.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED] CREATING COMICS IN THE CLASSROOM As you develop assignments that incorporate comics, think about the wide variety of graphic elements that could be integrated.
[FIGURE 2 OMITTED] You do not need lots of photographs for a successful project. Lois Lowry wrote an entire novel called The Silent Boy (2005) based on a single photograph! This book is not a graphic novel, but it does incorporate a historical photo at the beginning of each chapter to get readers thinking about the characters, plot, and setting.
Analyze photographs for elements that tell about the person or character you wish to develop. Use The Mill Girl from the Library of Congress collection as an example (see Figure 3). How many different views can you find in a single photo? What if you zoom in or zoom out? What if you flip the photo of turn it? Can you tell an entire short story with a single historical photo? Use graphic software to modify the photos. publicdomainimagesnow.net public domain images
[FIGURE 3 OMITTED] Explore the features of your graphics software for ideas. For instance, take a color photo and turn ir black and white. Tell a historical story using new photos you have converted to black and white or take photos from different angles. Tell the story of a house using photos from many different angles.
When taking a field trip, proceed with a mission. Rather than simply taking snapshots, ask students to look for close-ups, distance shots, and interesting angles that could be incorporated into a project. Consider “over the shoulder shots” that show action rather than faces.
Using Original Art. From sketches to sculptures, students can take photographs or scan original works of art. Think about combining original photos and sketches as shown in Figure 4.
Many popular novels for young people are incorporating drawings. Some of these are graphic novels and others are just illustrated books. Check out The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: A Novel in Cartoons by Jeff Kinney (2007), The Absolutely True Diary of a Pan-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie (2007) and The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (2007).
[FIGURE 4 OMITTED] Using Charts and Graphs. Create your own charts and graphs using computer software or online graphing tools. You can also integrate screen shots from online games and other web sites. These are particularly useful if students are doing critical reviews. For instance, ask students to review an online game, then, write about how they would change it to make it more effective.
GRAPHIC NOVELS AND STORYTELLING Comic literature provides an opportunity to explore the art of storytelling. Involve young people in reading and creating effective narratives. For instance, the award-winning graphic novel Pride of Bagdad by Brian K. Vaughan (2008) tells the story of the bombing of Baghdad from the point of view of a group of lions that escaped from the zoo. Involve mature teens in writing a graphic novel set in Baghdad (see Figure 5).
[FIGURE 5 OMITTED] For example, the series Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer is available as both a traditional novel and a graphic novel. Compare an excerpt from the graphic novel with the traditional format book, then, talk with students about how visual storytelling is alike and different from verbal storytelling. Involve young people in visualizing existing stories or writing their own graphic novels. Provide photos ora camera to stimulate visual thinking and writing. site public domain images
Language Development. Use the Learn Spanish with Superman comic series from Berto to get second language learners involved with learning and writing in a foreign language. Ask students to crop a single photo and use different elements to tell a short story with dialog. Also ask students to develop characters from photos and write short visual stories.
Ask students to invent a family based on immigrant photos of the time period and create a comic about their experience passing through Ellis Island (see Figure 6).
VISUAL REPORTS Rather than a traditional text report, consider ways to incorporate visual elements. Use Hooray for Inventors! by Marcia Williams (2005) as an example of how the story of inventors can be told in a comic format. Ask students to create a one-page history of an invention.
Science Reflections. Take photographs during science projects. Place the images in an electronic folder that students can access. Ask students to create a visual reflection of the project. Archive photos so each year the number of images expands. Use over-the-shoulder and close-up shots so that the faces of individual students are not shown.
Problem-Solving Assignments. Design assignments that ask young people to use visuals as a way of sharing their understandings of subject-area content.
Photo Essays. Photo essays allow young people to share their experiences, historical retellings, information about processes and cycles, and field trips.
[FIGURE 6 OMITTED] ILLUMINATED TERM PAPERS COMIC TOOLS FOR THE SCHOOL LIBRARY It is fun to use specialty software, but you can use tools like Microsoft PowerPoint and Publisher if you do not have Comic Life. Also, think about open source tools such as OpenOffice.
If you are using PowerPoint, simply paste in your photos, then choose a thick line and you will have a nice frame around your comic. You can use the Autoshapes to locate call-outs to use as speech balloons.
Online Tools. Many web sites provide tools for creating comics. A list is provided below:
* Build Your Own Comic Create your own comic using the backgrounds and characters provided. Just add your own balloons. Print and color off-line.
* Disney’s Comic Creator Choose among four characters and a single panel cartoon.
* Garfield’s Comic Creator One of the best online tools, this comic strip builder uses Garfield characters and also lets you create your own.
* Kabam! Comic Creator From the Center for Disease Control, this tool lets you tell a story. Unfortunately the developer does not have much control.
* Make Your Own Graphix Make comics using a set of characters, objects, and settings.
* MakeBeliefsComix One of the best, this web site provides characters with different emotions and the option for 2, 3, or 4 panels. It’s a great tool for all games to make simple comic strips.
* Pixton One of the best tools for creating and storing comics online, this site provides a special area for schools.
* ReadWriteThink Cartoon Creator Make a very simple comic strip using a set of visuals provided.
Many comic creation web sites such as Toondoo, HyperComics, and ComicArt School are popular with teens but provide resources for adults that may not be appropriate for young people.
COMIC CREATION AND THE SCHOOL LIBRARY As you work with teachers to design projects that involve reading and creating comics or graphic products, think about ways to incorporate standards for 21st century learners.
Sequencing. Comics are a form of sequential art. Seek projects that require students to follow directions of identify sequences. For instance, students might create step-by-step instructions to show their understanding of a scientific process. Or, they might design a comic focused on a series of events in history or the life of a person.
Depth. As you design assignments, ensure depth of thinking. Comic projects should require students to summarize and synthesize information. Be sure students are using a variety of resources and citing these resources in the comic, as footnotes, or in a bibliography at the end of the comic.
LEARN MORE REFERENCES Alexie, S. (2007). The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little Brown.
Delisle, G. (2007). Pyongyang: A journey in North Korea. Quebec, CA: Drawn and Quarterly.
Hennessey, J. (2008). The United States Constitution: A graphic adaptation. New York: Hill and Wang.
Kinney, J. (2007). The Diary of a Wimpy Kid: A Novel in Cartoons. New York: Amulet/Abrams Lowry, L. (2005). The silent boy. New York: Laurel Leaf.
Miller, F. & Varley, L. (1999). 300. Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse.
Rodriguez, J. (2007). Postcards: True stories that never happened. New York: Villard.
Selznick, B. (2007). The Invention of Hugo Cabret. New York: Scholastic.
Tan, S. (2007). The arrival. New York: Arthur Levine.
Vaughan, B. K. (2008). Pride of Bagdad. New York: Vertigo.
Williams, M. (2005). Hooray for Inventors! Somerville, MA: Candlewick.
CREDITS Lamb, Annette; Johnson, Larry
Tags: dorfmeister, kruder, people, peter, richard, sound, tracks
Posted in Artists 2007 | 27 views | Share:
| No Comments Yet »
