SNEAK PEAK - Black Balloon Publishing and The Recipe Project

I just got this news release and I am completely fascinated with this idea.  Recipes set to music?  Danceable music? Easy to follow recipes?  I want to make this right now.		HERE’S THE SCOOP: Black Balloon Publishing puts out genre-bending books that rebel against industry convention: the weird, the unwieldy, the unclassifiable — in anything from classic paperback, to interactive e-book, to digital storytelling collage. At only two books a year, we take on what we love — and it’s a deep-seated, hippocampal love — each title receives a personal publicist, a targeted marketing plan, promotional trailers and videos, a groundbreaking interactive app, and one helluva dedicated editor. Black Balloon books are not dropped, remaindered, or ignored. They are revered.
OUR BOOKS MARRY OLD SCHOOL WITH HIGH TECH
We like Book as object — the smell of pulp, the sound of pages turning, the heft of a binding in hand — and as electronic thing — back-lit and scrollable. But why stop there? Let’s animate it — add some clickable PET scans and stop-motion video. Visualizations are insights, right-brain entries into left-brain text. Think sexual urgency maps. Topographical models of contagious diseases. Flow charts of self-flagellating monastics. The path of a cheeseburger through a digestive tract. The teachable moments are endless, and all lead back to text.
BLACK BALLOON PUBLISHING: BEYOND BOOKS
Check out this musical, magical web wonderland: Pull a clothesline for the publisher’s catalogue (Books! Recipe apps! Stop-action animation! Sizzling music videos! Perfume!). Go down the rabbit hole for blog treasures (think robot bosses, anthropomorphic rolodexes, and atonal investigations of Einstein in drag). Read the About letter. Submit on an interstellar ray. Just go!
LAUNCH TITLE: THE RECIPE PROJECT
Black Balloon’s debut title is an unprecedented food & music extravaganza that transforms recipes — word for word — into singable, danceable, riotously delightful songs. Recipes by the likes of Mario Batali, David Chang, and Tom Colicchio have been set to song and packaged inside a red-hot, illustrated book of chef interviews and essays by acclaimed food writers such as Melissa Clark and J. Dixon. The wizards behind the idea? The band One Ring Zero, which asked each rock-star chef to choose the musical genre for his or her song. Listen as the talented duo (Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp) go polka on John Besh and mariachi-fy Aaron Sanchez. Isa Chandra Moskowitz receives a Breeders treatment; Chris Consentino gets served some Beastie Boys sauce (circa Paul’s Boutique). CD included!
THE RECIPE PROJECT TRAILER
This stop-motion music video for Batali’s Sweet 100 Tomatoes spells it out in 59 seconds. For song samples, band info, and five-scale sensory assault, check out the website: therecipeproject.com.
FREEBIES
FREE App that finds recipes so easy you can sing ’em. Plus a spinning LP and book excerpt! For song samples, band info, and five-scale sensory smack-down, check out the website: UPDATES INCLUDE: New recipe song, chef interview or culinary musing, and many, many more recipes. therecipeproject.com. Download the FREE App from iTunes!
COMING THIS SPRING…
Louise: Amended An illustrated memoir by a twenty-something dilettante fashionista, who suffered a massive brain bleed that left her with blurred vision, slurred speech, and a dragging foot.