Dennis Juan Ma [re-loaded]

WE'RE SUPPORTING

We’ve featured Autumn Whitehurst’s vector art many times over the past few years and checked in with her recently about work and play in New York City: ‘It’s dandy, thanks for asking. I’ve lived here for about a decade and I don’t get out into the city as much as I used to, don’t oblige myself to go see all the newest cultural happenings because there’s always something new going on, and yes I totally love that, but I’ve committed the last five years to my work and it’s made me a bit of a homebody’. Read more

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

On the roof of Bangkok’s Banyan Tree Hotel is a dining experience like no other. The Vertigo Bar sits sixty one floors up, and serves delicious gourmet meals and cocktails. These are expensive by Thai standards, but cheap enough for shoestring travellers to indulge in now and then (a cocktail costs around AUD$12). I’ve spent hour after hour in the bar, drinking and smoking and taking in the amazing view. Most nights at Vertigo end the same, with fast-moving storm clouds rolling in without fail at about eleven pm. While wait staff scurry to move tables, and drunken diners navigate the steep stairs down to the safety of the hotel, the more hardy can sit and watch the clouds race closer and closer towards the building, soaking in both the atmosphere and the rainwater until the lightning gets too close for comfort.

WE'RE WEARING

It doesn’t transform or actually play music, but this watch with a face that looks like a cassette tape, is still pretty cool. Read more

WE'RE THINKING

California-based artist Andrew Brandou draws from the children’s books, as well as the tripped-out, cult obsessed, disillusioned zeitgeist of the 70s when his early consciousness took shape. The storybook-ish quality of his works creates a sort of narrative of the tectonic shifts that have taken place in the psyche of an entire generation — anthropomorphic animals frolic in subtly Japanese-lacquer-inspired landscapes as gas-mask-wearing cops creep, grinning skulls loom, elevated freeways overwhelm the rising sun, and bloody murder scenes remain hidden just beyond the view of the paintings’ innocent subjects. Read more

WE'RE READING

A survey of two thousand Britons has revealed the country’s perfect pet. Max is a bizarre hybrid that is part cat, part dog, part rabbit and part horse. Insurance firm More Than, which conducted the research, suggests that Max ‘has high energy levels, loves daily walks and sleeps for an average of nine hours 27 minutes a day’. Read more

Oh boy, this is fun. Omaha’s Tilly and the Wall are kitsch-cool-camp-vauderville meets pop-folk-flamenco, with a tap dancer for a drummer and some serious, serious charisma for a calling card.

WE'RE LISTENING TO

French duo Trop Tard make straight-faced, Suicide-esque, synth-and-guitar electro tunes that sound like dark rituals performed in the catacombs beneath the streets of Paris. Repetitive, bleak, and cold, this is dance music for the shambling undead.