They're a classic Houndstooth pattern. Houndstooth became associated with high-end fashion when De Pinna featured the pattern in a collection in 1933.

The shoes also have a special feature, they're designed to ground you to the earth.

If you haven't heard about earthing and some of the medical studies that have been done into this area, Dr. Laura Koniver, the Intution Physican, has a good list of studies and Wellness Mama has a good podcast interview with Dr. Libby Darnell talking about this topic too.

If you just stop to think about it though, it makes sense. Our bodies have electromagnetic fields. The planet has electromagnetic fields. Humans "people" the earth, this is where we developed. And humans spent a HUGE amount of time walking around barefoot or wearing simple shoes made of hides and other natural materials that ground you to the earth.

It's really only recently we started wearing shoes all the time and even more recently that shoes were mostly made of synthetic materials.

So go hug a tree &/or buy some cute shoes!

Pluggz is currently having a sale too. Up to 70% off, so it's the BEST time to buy stuff from them!

Note: I have no association with Pluggz or anything else mentioned above, I just like the shoes & wanted to share the info. :)

This is Enhydris Enhydris from the first CLAWED album.

It's made entirely of heavily manipulated and processed sound samples. I used samples from the Large Hadron Collider and recordings from my DAR (Digital Audio Recorder), mostly of a professional plumbing company snaking the drains in condo where I lived. :) Fun fact, there are no human voices in this piece!

The video is a visualization, so you'll notice the imagery is very reactive to the sound. I like the way it looks like waves in water and includes a spectrum of colors as that matches the themes in the song.

People often tell me my works sound "cinematic", like soundtracks to a movie they're not seeing & yes, I think the pieces do paint a picture. I often do have a specific scene or sequence in mind. For this piece, in my mind it's a fantasy/sci-fi scene of a strange rainbow water snake ritual (thus the name Enhydris Enhydris) being performed by monks in robes (human? alien? who knows, robes!) with metal singing bowls. :)

Oh, I should probably also say this piece intentionally has "healing frequencies" included in it. So if you're actually listening to the full resolution version with speakers than can reproduce the frequencies (20-20K Hz), then it can have an affect on the body. I'm particularly fond on the low "cat purr" frequencies which have been studied and apparently can help heal bones fractures!

I've heard "Hey Ya!" getting some airplay again lately and it made me want to share this great cover by the Toronto band, The Blankket.

It's my fav version! I love the delivery and the tone; it really adds a certain urgency to the tune. :)

Hope you enjoy it!