Google TV/Sony – This year my wife and I finally succumbed to purchasing a new TV. Rebecca had been researching for months and kept me updated on all of the latest trends in TV’s. One evening we were at Target and I saw the most beautiful LED flatscreen I’ve ever seen. The Sony NSX-46GT1 46″ is now hung above our fireplace and I’m constantly impressed with its beauty, especially watching sports. It has Google TV embedded which comes with some standard apps (Netflix, Twitter, HBOGO) and some standard OS goodies (Chrome, Gmail, etc). I’m excited to see what the future brings as more apps get written for it.

Instagram – Another fantastic iPhone app that has shaped my life. I love photography and am always on the hunt for capturing something beautiful. The community tie in with Twitter and Facebook makes it even more fun. Also worth noting is a web-based version of the app called Extragram. Follow me (as if): patatomic.

Dropbox – Possibly the best breakthrough in digital sharing since the flash drive. I use this just about every day in a variety of ways. It’s great to leave the office with all of my current files waiting for me at home to work on later.

Gotham Narrow – I’ve been using this typeface for a few years now, but have been using this more and more over the year. It’s a workhorse that is in the process of making my other “go-to’s” obsolete. It looks fantastic for headlines as well as body copy. Letter-spaced, all caps, bold…whatever. It holds up with however/whatever I do.

The Whole Love – This has been an amazing year for music. Tom Waits’ Bad As Me, Low’s C’mon, Radiohead’s The King of Limbs and PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake have all added to the audiosplosion that keeps an audiologist worried. According to iTunes, my most played album of this year is Wilco’s The Whole Love. It’s great to hear bands continue to create such great albums so far into their existence.

Catapulty – This Chrome plugin is fantastic to test websites on multiple browsers. Simply add the bookmarklets and kiss copying and pasting goodbye. It even works across platforms. I can “throw” a site from Opera and it’ll “hit” in Explorer. A simple concept, but makes my work-life that much better.

Lost Type Co-op – As an Art Director I’m constantly on the lookout for headline typefaces and these guys have delivered on more than one occasion (as witnessed by my latest design output). Their friendly donate-if/when-you-can makes for a great community model and I hope that it sticks as I’d like to see them around for a long time.

Gas Cubby App – A fantastic way to log miles and auto maintenance. It comes in a handy web version that syncs with your iPhone app. Very slick. Very useful.

Dribbble.com – Daily inspiration for my visual self. Sooooo much good work going on here. I just wish I was good enough (in my mind) to contribute.

Prezi.com – At work I was tasked with finding our sales team a better tool than PowerPoint, one that would make our company look tech-forward and offer a flexible means of presenting content. After a couple of days of searching I came across Prezi and haven’t looked back. While it isn’t there just yet, it’s easy to see that it’s well on its way. Web-based, iPhone & iPad app friendly with a fantastic user interface. Hopefully this next year will bring a couple of break-throughs that will cement it’s place in our corporate culture.

SSD – When I ordered my new workstation for my new job I was insistent on having a Solid State Drive. Never in my working life did I ever think anything other than a tower would be powerful enough to drive what I need to drive, but with an SSD I now use an iMac that has more power than any tower I’ve ever interacted with. Photoshop opens in about 3 seconds. Rebooting takes about 10. After Effects doesn’t chug. I can run Parallels/Windows without any kind of lag whatsoever. I’ve found my bliss. I’ll never own a computer without a Solid State Drive (until the next best thing comes along, of course).

Not exactly sure that there will be a “Pt. 2″ but I could easily keep going with this “list”. Right now I can think of about 30 other candidates that have shaped my life.

In the winter of 2001 I was sitting in the San Francisco Sunset LDS Chapel holding my new Visor PDA with its impressive 8MG’s of memory and green/grey LED screen. In my right hand was the stylus and I was busy at work assembling a list of hymns that would comprise an album that I was planning on recording someday soon.

At this point in my life I was coming to grips with who I was and where I came from. I had just read an excellent biography of my great-great grandfather Henry Lunt who was a pioneer and early leader and settler of the Mormon Church in Southern Utah. I was also heavily influenced by the music of composer John Zorn and his Masada chamber ensembles. I was impressed that Zorn had embraced his Jewish culture and turned to it for artistic inspiration. At one point I came to grips that I was a Mormon and this was something that most definitely made me unique in my musical circles so I decided that I should not only own it, but exploit it for whatever it was worth.

My original concept was to employ my non-Mormon musician colleagues/friends to take a stab at these sacred hymns. I figured that there might be some interesting results and that I just might hear something new in these very familiar melodies given this unique juxtaposition. Growing up in a musical LDS home these hymns were sometimes regarded as wallpaper as other musics received the spotlight. They were just always around and having someone take a stab at them could breathe new life into them. Deep down I knew that they were important, but at this point they didn’t seem to resonate within.

As time marched on this album grew with me and evolved with the changing landscape that was my life. In the summer of 2001 I moved back to Salt Lake City and my dream of hearing non-LDS types taking their turn at these hymns faded. Instead I became more and more curious about how these hymns would have sounded somewhere in the middle of Iowa in 1856. I researched what instruments may have been available on the Plains and began plotting what musicians I’d like to employ to make this happen. One thing I was adamant about was making sure that this album was recorded live as I just couldn’t shake the vision I had of a nightly campfire celebration after a long days journey.

I was dealt a blow by my good friend Shawn Foster as he shared with me a copy of an album by The Beehive Band, which is a group of local musicians and ethnomusicologists who had taken on the historical burdon of documenting early Pioneer music. After listening I was happy to know that someone had taken the lead and did a fine job of documenting these musics that define my culture. Sadly, this left me without a concept and I tossed the idea aside.

A while later I encountered the Cold Mountain soundtrack and was deeply impressed. Somewhere between the shape note singing of the Sacred Harp Singers and Jack White’s claw hammer banjo fueled take on I’m A Poor Wayfarin’ Stranger I was inspired. Sometime after that I heard Sufjan Stevens version of Come Thou Fount Of Every Blessing and felt as though there was an audience for this music.

Then I had a conversation with Scott Wiley …

I don’t recall when I shared this idea with Scott, but I do remember one night at Slow Train Records in Salt Lake City when Scott shared with me that this album was going to happen. We were packing up after playing with Paul Jacobsen and Scott had either found some financing or had the time or figured out a good concept. Regardless, I was happy to have Scott aboard as 1) I love Scott and love working with him 2) I’d never get it done by myself and 3) Scott is deeply connected to the talent that would make this happen.

From this point it took a couple of years, but the e-mail finally came about scheduling studio time. Scott had enlisted the help of Paul Jacobsen and Ryan Tanner to shoulder the burdon of this project. Either by fate, or by circumstance I wasn’t able to participate as much as I had intended (who needs a drummer when dealing with sacred music anyway). But I was relieved and happy to know that something so dear to me was entrusted to three of my favorite like-minded musicians/colleagues/friends. I knew that they would deliver a superior product and that the experience would be fantastic.

Then came those inspired days in October of 2009. We assembled at June Audio (or whatever it’s called these days) and began the process of carving out and recording these hymns. Scott had wisely employed the talents of photographer and videographer Jed Wells to document the session. There was a palpable feeling in the air. It was special and I can only imagine that it was the spirit of our Heavenly Father blessing us with a portion of His Spirit. It was Zion, where the pure in heart dwelled. I have never had an experience quite like it.

There were several stars of the session, but for my money nothing comes close to our stable of vocalists: Debra Fatheringham, Paul Jacobsen, Ryan Tanner, Dustin Christensen, Sarah Sample, amongst others. They sang and sang and sang take after take. Rehearsal after rehearsal. They kept delivering superior performances. It was amazing to watch. This album would be nothing without them.

One of my most cherished moments came when we were tracking All Creatures Of Our God And King. For whatever reason I ended up playing the electric piano and sitting next to me was a man that I had never met. After one of the takes I looked over at him and saw tears streaming down his face. “It’s so beautiful” he said. My heart melted and I began to hear with new ears. Each take he got more emotional and I felt the beauty that he heard.

I believe that the total harvest was 43 songs. I hope most of them see the light of day. Sadly the two that I championed didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped (for those of you keeping score those would be Hank Williams’ House of Gold and Calling You).

Now, in now way, shape or form am I taking credit for The Lower Lights. This project was the culmination of multiple personalities, talents and communal vision shared by like-minded people. I’m grateful that Scott Wiley had the perseverance to carry on and make this what it is. Like I mentioned earlier, I don’t have that much to do with the band right now as my schedule simply won’t allow. I’m happy to be included in the e-mail threads and play a few live shows when I can. I love this project with all my heart and am deeply humbled that it has seen the light of day. To me it is a success as I drive down the road and see my kids in the rear view mirror singing along. They especially love Ye Elders Of Israel and ask for it (or demand it really) by barking out “Babylon” or “the hand clap song”.

Don’t miss out on seeing The Lower Lights this Saturday, November 20th at the Post Theater in Salt Lake City. Details here. To check out the album, click here.

What can I say? Life has owned me over the last few months. The old blog essentially broke a while back and I felt as though it was time to build a new one using a better platform. Unfortunately the redesign took time and took a back seat to about 100 other fires that had to be put out. Now that we’re staring down the birth of another baby I’m extremely motivated to ensure that my online excuse to document my kids’ young lives must simply be put back in order.

Over the next few months I’ll be documenting the birth of baby #3 while archiving the past in an effort to pretend like the last few months of my online atrophy didn’t exist.

Enjoy!

Beirut – March Of The Zapotec
I don’t recall where I read the review, but once I saw that this album featured a brass band from the Mexican provenance of Oaxaca I just had to check it out. Years ago I came across an album full of field recordings from Oaxaca (titled Explorer Series: Mexico – Fiestas of Chiapas and Oaxaca) and I was smitten with the beauty contained therein. From a musical perspective I can’t imagine how one goes about writing songs around a brass band from another culture. Were these compositions that the band already knew and the songs came later? I don’t know, but it most definitely works.

Coda by Panic Software
As a web designer this tool has been revolutionary in my process. I can FTP and live-update with the best of ‘em. I love the way it displays code and interacts with its sister tool, Transmit.

KEEN Winterport II Boots
Working at a ski resort puts me in all kinds of unusual weather conditions. These boots have performed well so far and have now replaced my old trusted Sorel’s. Slip on quick and not-so-bulky enables me to commute to work in comfort and style.

Blitzen Trapper – Furr
The opening song Sleepy Time In The Western World still gives me chills in all it’s lovely through-composed goodness. The title track Furr lyrically cracks me up. It’s nice to hear songs crafted not only with unusual orchestration, but unconventional form as well. It takes me back to listening to Prog Rock (in a good way).

CSS Edit
With the ability to rework any living website, this tool has taught me more about CSS than just about any other means. Quite possibly the best $30 I’ve spent on software.

The Garant Yukon Snow Pusher
Leave it to the Canadians to design a perfect snow removal device. I stumbled upon this beauty at our locally owned and operated Ace Hardware™ last year and have consistently marveled at the engineering behind it. The handle is so well thought out with its two or one handed option. The bent neck has saved my back and made lifting not nearly as troublesome as it could be. Too bad this was omitted from Gary Hustwit’s industrial design documentary Objectified.

Trade Gothic
One of the most basic typefaces in my arsenal, yet so beautiful and utilitarian. It has this unique ability to get out of the way of content while standing on it’s own if needed. As a headline or display it works as well as looking good as body copy.

Tilt Shift Generator
This year my Verizon contract finally expired and I got to get with my peers and purchase an iPhone. Sure, AT&T has lived up to it’s mediocre service but having this little photo app has more than compensated from those pestering phone calls. I also love the companion Toy Camera app as well. Worth every bit of the $2.99 I paid.

Fully Automated Sprinkling Systems
Since my wife and I moved into our house five years ago it has been my dream to install a sprinkling system and plant new desert-friendly sod. Finally this past summer this dream came to fruition. I broke concrete, rented a trencher, nearly clipped our gas line, made 300 visits to our locally owned and operated Ace Hardware™ store, glued my fingers together and got to know my father on a much higher level. Tears fell when I finally saw and heard water spraying from those beautiful little sprinkler heads.

Smashing Magazine
As a web designer I drink from the fountain of wisdom and knowledge this site has to offer. Following them on twitter is an even more rewarding experience.

The Art of The Title Sequence Blog
I’m sure it’s obvious by now that I’m a type geek.

The Art Of The Title blog scratches that itch as it breaks down the beauty that is this medium. Sad that there is so much crap out there when there could be so much beauty.

This American Life
On the rare occasion that I get to travel with my family, my wife and I love to hook up an iPod and catch up on these podcasts. We love the stories and the story telling, though I think that my wife has a crush on host Ira Glass. Sometimes I wonder if there’s something in my life that’d make an interesting story, but then I come to my senses and realize that I don’t have anything to add.

Queens Of The Stoneage – Songs For The Deaf
I’ve owned this for years and remains one of the only albums that brings me to air-drum. Just ask my coworkers. Dave Grohl is possibly one of the greatest rock drummers that I’ve ever heard.

Sufjan Stevens – Illinois
Sure, I know that I’m a little behind on this one but once I was bitten, I was smitten. I love the orchestration and the unconventional use of conventional instruments (well, conventional to the son of a band teacher). Chicago is one of those songs that I could play over and over and has this magical quality to it. Thank goodness for all the remixes of I’ve now come across.

ISO50
It never seems to fail that I find inspiration every time I visit this site. Scott Hansen is brilliant and I’d love nothing more than to adorn my house with his beautiful posters.

Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
Not quite on the same level as Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but better than just about any other album I’ve heard this year. Glenn Kotche is simply the most interesting drummer I’ve heard in years. I appreciate how he doesn’t take the easy way out and gives each song something unique and interesting.