We end another intense work week at Nokia House with a drink at the top of Hotel Torni. It only takes 14 stories to have a spectacular view of Helsinki and feel very poignant. Olly’s new album Karhu ja Tiikerini (A Bear and a Tiger) makes it even easier. Music made in and for Finland. The track ‘Break Fast’ is on repeat. Wait for the drop. A gush of optimism like the first wave of heat in the sauna. Days of hyper reflection and visceral heartache.

Finding old projects is always fun, or at the very least entertaining. While digging through an old external hard drive I found this one which takes me back to a time when I was consumed with kneeling on my apartment floor groping toys into the late hours of the night. This is what happens when design students don’t go to class ha… In 2001, James Reeves, Steve Baker and I holed up and made this stop-motion animation for the fun of it. Construction workers and spacemen build a space station, send faxes, and find friendship, all to a very soupy electronic soundtrack. After all these years this low-fi copy is the only surviving version, but the fuzziness probably adds to its janky charm. Direct YouTube link here.

Low winter sun and Le Soleil Est Pres De Moi by Air makes even riding the bus romantic.

Turku, Finland

If it’s going to be winter, then let it be WINTER. The Big Ship by Brian Eno on repeat while gliding on a train through soft Finnish snow forests.

Fuck yeah for brass band disco rock taco truck bottle rocket booty-shaking block parties on Frenchmen Street.

In 2001 Candy, James Reeves, Stephen Baker, and Dan Parham started a design house & record label called Red Antenna. Along the way she made minimal techno, electro, and mellow riff raff. Various projects below. The best part of this is the 12″ packaging for Typography, which she designed and silk-screened by hand. It was later featured in the book Fingerprint: The Art of Using Handmade Elements in Graphic Design. Music made with a vintage Roland Juno 60 keyboard & Ableton Live and performed with slideshows of sexy alphabets and Detroit city planning history.

Sample track - Telegram 41

Wheat-pasted silkscreens on 11 Spring Street, NYC

Photo by Stephen Baker

“Fiercely polished electro with rocked-out soul. Thick driving percussion, lowriding vintage bass for boomin’ systems, and sparkling analogue keyboard lines conjure sharp modernist grids, colorful scenes from tomorrow’s discotheques, robots with dirty minds, and half-forgotten night-drives through Babylon. Candy Chang is remarkably able to glance back at Prince and Cybotron, while keeping her designer’s eye fixed on a new style and sound all her own.” Released in 2003.

“From the hipshakin’ “Letterpress Express”, like a Russ Meyer soundtrack, to the all-in assault of “Bravo Futura”, as always the artwork is incredibly well packaged” – Syntax

“Bubbling stripped down acidic electro with swelling basslines and dark pop moods.” – Sonic Groove

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Photo by Stephen Baker

In 2007 at the Minimal/Maximal Festival in Grenoble, France and the Destroy All Cars event in New York City, she performed new tracks to an urban planning backdrop for educational times on the dance floor. Named after various Detroit locations, the Detroit Detroit songs pay homage to the city where she worked and danced many late nights in her late teens and early twenties. They fall somewhere under booty bass, synth pop, and minimal techno. She paired the music with a slideshow on Detroit’s history and metropolitan growth. The Grenoble event happened thanks to French distributor Chica Chic, and the other events were produced by record label Red Antenna. Music made with a Nord Lead keyboard and Ableton Live.

Track List

1 . Outer Drive
2 . Highland Park
3 . Greektown
4 . Cobo Hall
5 . Woodward Ave
6 . Hart Plaza

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In 2001 Steve Baker, James Reeves, Shawn Lindaberry, and I surrounded ourselves with samplers, guitar pedals, keyboards, flangers, and other toys and made some mellow music to sleep to. Behold ‘Sleep Management’ by Rewind Wonderland. Download mp3s below and sleep to it too. Released on our label Red Antenna.

01 Fabric
02 Professional Impulses
03 A Deeply Rooted Fear of Trees
04 Warm Night by the River
05 When We Were Pedestrian

In 2001 Candy, James Reeves, Stephen Baker, and Dan Parham, founded a record label & design house called Red Antenna. They released records & CDs of minimal techno, electro, and krautrock and played at parties in NYC, Detroit, Berlin, Grenoble, Antwerp, and Helsinki. As designers who DJ’d and made music, they also obsessed over the rekkid as an art object and spent many late nights hand-stamping and hand-silkscreening their custom kraftboard sleeves in their little NYC apartments. Over the years James and Steve grew the company into a successful design firm, and the record label became a distant memory. But the memory gets more entertaining with time, and Candy recently found old event photos (below). They had fun and learned a lot. Artists included Karl Zeiss, Com.munikation, Tomorrowland, Addisko, Kinosport, Rewind Wonderland, Variable X, Stochastic, Marco Raab, me, and many others on The New Electric Policy compilations.

Select records

Select CDs

Select Red Antenna events, 2001 – 2007

Readymade logo

This is what happens when design students don’t go to class… In 2001, James Reeves, Steve Baker and I holed up and made this stop-motion animation for the fun of it. Construction workers and spacemen build a space station, send faxes, and find friendship, all to a soupy electronic soundtrack. After all these years this low-fi copy is the only surviving version, but the fuzziness probably adds to its janky charm. Direct YouTube link here.