Alphabet Arm Design News

Surfer Blood – Astro Coast

Charlotte Gainsbourg – IRM

Broken Bells – S.T.

David Bazan – Curse Your Branches

Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson – S.T.

Lucero – 1372 Overton Park

Fela Kuti – Best of the Black President

Mean Jeans – Are You Serious

Fat Wreck Chords – Wrecktrospective

Vampire Weekend – Contra

• Brendan Benson – My Old Familiar Friend
• Soulwax – Much Against Everyone’s Advice
• Pernice Brothers – Live a Little
• Inner Circle – Crucial Reggae
• Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons – Death Won’t Send a Letter
• Spoon – Transference
• The Cribs – Ignore the Ignorant

• We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls
• Three Inches of Blood – Here Waits Thy Doom
• Naked Raygun – What Poor Gods We Do Make
• Fugazi – everything on Archive.org
• Melvins – Stoner Witch

We had fun last year highlighting our favorite releases of the year, so we thought that we’d do it again this year. Well, fun like a stick in the eye, but we decided to do it anyway. The reality of the situation is that it’s so difficult to pick one release over another. Some folks out there—principally every music magazine in existence—are releasing their top releases of the decade. That just seems like an exercise in cruelty for us, so we’re going to keep it to the past year. In no particular order, here’s how it breaks down:

Ryan’s List

• American Steel – Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts
• Matt + Kim – Grand
• Teenage Bottlerocket – It Came From The Shadows
• Fake Problems – It’s Great to Be Alive
• Dear Landlord – Dream Homes

Ira’s List

• The Bouncing Souls – Ghosts on the Boardwalk
• The Dead Weather – Horehound
• Franz Ferdinand – Tonight:
• Six Finger Satellite – A Good Year for Hardness
• These Arms Are Snakes – Tail Swallower and Dove

Aaron’s List

• The Avett Brothers – I and Love and You
• Doves – Kingdom of Rust
• Handsome Furs – Face Control
• Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
• Tegan & Sara – Sainthood

Chris’s List

• St. Vincent – Actor
• The Dead Weather – Horehound
• Mos Def – The Ecstatic
• Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career
• Noah and the Whale – The First Days of Spring

• The XX “Self Titled”

• Noah and the Whale “The First Days of Spring”

• The Swell Season “Strict Joy”

• Raekwon “Only Built 4 Cuban Linx PT II”

• The Grates “Teeth Lost, Hearts Won”

• Blitzen Trapper “Black River Killer” EP

• Lee Morgan “lee-way”

• John Vanderslice “Romanian Names”

• The Raveonettes “Pretty in Black”

• Sunset Rubdown “Dragonslayer”

• The Little Ones “Morning Tide” EP

• Wire “Pink Flag”

• Pissed Jeans “King of Jeans”

• Angry Samoans “Back from Samoa”

• Psyclones “4″

• Naked Rayguns “Basement Screams”

This past weekend we flew out to Colorado for the Monolith Music Festival. (For those of you that don’t remember, we branded and designed nearly all of this year’s campaign). We had an amazing time—going into great detail would be too difficult—so we decided to break it down into a simple, concise list of our favorite moments/things.

Our Monolith Top 10 List

10. The epic landscape
9. Boston band, Passion Pit, causing Red Rocks to bounce. Literally.
8. Being on the verge of sickness from endless honey-roasted peanuts courtesy of the SouthWest Airlines booth
7. Riding in Method Man’s van (you’ll have to ask us for the sorted details)
6. Watching M. Ward at arm’s length
5. Experiencing The Mars Volta experience from back stage
4. MF Doom performing 20 feet from our booth
3. Being on stage while Rahzel KILLED IT and then getting high-fives from the legend-himself.
2. WaterCourse Foods – epic vegetarian dining
1. Cross-promoting our services, cavorting and sharing a booth with our pals at Jakprints!

Speaking of Jakprints, we teamed up with them to give away an iPod Touch on both Saturday and Sunday. The contest consisted of a festival-photo-scavenger-hunt. In true-fashion we branded the giveaway, designing hand-out cards, a horde of banners and some insanely sick, dye-sublimation t-shirts—all beautifully printed by Jakprints (of course!)

In order to be entered into the drawing one would need to shoot photos of the 5 items on our list before the last band went on (each day). We were really pleased with the amount of people that participated. We received some fantastic images to put it mildly. In the end there could only be one winner each day—so big congrats to our winners!:

Jenna Spencer and April Ramquist

Jenna’s photos from the Saturday contest:
1. The Jakprints/Alphabet Arm booth 2. The Monolith Logo 3. Someone with a band tattoo 4. A white dude with dreads 5. Someone wearing fresh, green sneakers

April’s photos from Sunday contest:
1. Someone doing a handstand 2. The Esurance logo 3. Someone with a completely righteous tie dye shirt 4. A radical mullet 5. A recycling bin

• Jay Reatard – “Watch Me Fall”

• Saviours – “Into Abaddon”

• Judy Nylon – “Pal Judy”

• Dear Landlord – “Dream Homes”

• The Cramps – “Songs The Lord Taught Us”

• The Thermals – “The Body, The Blood, The Machine”

• Early Man – “Closing In”