Hackman
New for the world of Retroism is Hackman, a New Zealand based design collective that brings a hearty serving of vintage simplicity to the cluttered table of the modern world. Operating since 2002, their debut product is the Guinea Pig – a speaker for your iPod or MP3 player, Discman, Walkman, portable record player – any product that you can plug headphones into. The Pig requires no power source of it’s own, aiding you on your journey to ‘carbon neutrality’. It also allows you amplification capabilities without the restrictions of a pesky wall plug or battery. As well as being functional and sustainable, The Guinea Pigs are made from some very handsome hardboard and then laser cut with there own pattern. Hand assembled, individually named and numbered where they will be found the Pig Orphanage section of their website. Among those up for adoption include Brenda, Baby, and Scarface.
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Also by HI HO SILVER
I haven’t bought a CD in a while but I was strolling down Wellington’s Cuba Street looking for a bit of inspiration the other day when Liam Finn’s music tapped me politely on the shoulder and dragged me into the music store. Liam is New Zealand music royalty, of Neil Finn descent, although — with his wild hair and beard — he’s looking a bit more like a young Jesus these days. The record is made with the help of an analogue loop machine, and you’ll find the kind of stunning instrumental crescendos that I haven’t heard since The Beatles Hey Jude. He engages emotionally and spontaneously, with both skill and showmanship.
A personal favourite, Stolen Girlfriends Club continues to give a welcome fix of delinquency to the New Zealand fashion scene. Their initial following cherished their oversized t-shirts with cheeky slogans, but while they are in no danger of maturing (thankfully), their range of garments develop each season to cover denims, knits and such covertable items as silver hot pants. Their latest release, unashamedly entitled Elegantly Wasted, will allow you to look completely fabulous while behaving badly. Combining black and white with electric metallics and an alcoholic lime, it’s the kind of clothing you were meant to blow all your cash on before committing to your rent.
Paris House is a leatherwear brand emerging out of Wellington with a range of wallets, bags and temporary tattoos. With Sharon Paris at the helm, her latest collection, Belief creates a Victorian medical visual and is being stocked at World, Hailwood and The Good Room. My problem is the inclusion on the C word. Elevation to the status of ‘conceptual’ seems a bit fair fetched to me, because I could have sworn I was looking at a bunch of wallets. ‘Idiosyncratic’ statements merely hide behind a veil of ambiguity. If anyone can figure out the meaning of ‘It would appear that people believe in medicine, but they don’t believe in art without questioning either’, I will personally offer you a prize for doing so. So buy the pseudo-conceptual wallets if you dig the comments but if you are trying to decipher the higher meaning, I would be tempted to say you are looking into it too much. And admittedly, I have bought much sillier things because I was seduced by a strong aesthetic.
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I’ve never been one to go nuts over ceramics. However, Louisianna artist Michaelene Walsh may have changed that in a big way. What’s not to love about a ceramic popsicle collection, ceramic representations of classic vintage toys, or her amazingly whimsical mugs? As easily as these objects might have been created out of any other sculptural medium, the clay, with it’s irregularity and beautiful textured glazes, brings a tangible sense of life and character to these objects, which is what makes them special.
Chicago’s Cheer Accident started as a post-no-wave weirdo band typical of the Skin Graft roster, but of late, they’ve been doing some unrestrained pop and rock. They even have harmonized vocals and an occasional horn. This isn’t to say they’re commercializing – their songs are just as complex as ever, and there’s still a hint of discordance beneath the shimmering new sound.
John Lennon was right, these are ’strange days indeed’. Mind you, he also claimed to have seen ‘a UFO over New York’ and ‘Nazis in the bathroom, just below the stairs’, so he may not have been the most reliable witness. Read more
Lost At E Minor co-publisher, Andy Howard, is on a whirlwind tour of America at the moment, en route to his new base in London. He’s been diligently documenting his travels through his camera, the images from his New York leg being particularly interesting. Read more
I spent the formative first six years of my life in Wellington, New Zealand, a beautiful windswept city framed by a magnificent harbour in one direction and a stunning collection of green, rolling hills in the other. It was here, on a return visit many years later and deep amongst the clipped accents and ruddy faces of the weather-beaten locals, that I stumbled upon the vast catalogue of the then Dunedin based record label Flying Nun. And what a roster of acts they housed — The Chills, The Bats, The Clean, Tall Dwarfs, The Verlaines, and my favourite guitar-pop band, Straitjacket Fits. Read more
Perhaps the reason men are not known for their shoe fetishes is because when it comes to mens shoes in general, there are really only two must have varieties: vintage street wear and sartorialist leather. Read more
We love the look of new, free Montreal-based street magazine, SNAP!, an arts and lifestyle publication which focuses on all that exciting work that is conceived, created and marketed in Montreal by artists, creative minds and young entrepreneurs. Read more
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Italian-born, New York City-based photographer Paolo Ventura creates fairy-tale like pictures out of amazingly constructed, miniature dioramas that almost trick the eye into thinking he’s a tilt-shift photographer. Read more
Our celebrity-saturated culture makes many of us irrationally hateful of the faces we see on our TV screens and magazine pages. Good thing there’s Celebrity PunchOut to let off some of that steam.
Wheeeeee! This game is so freaking fun! You move your cursor over each dot to make them split into four smaller dots ad infinitum.
Forget battery powered vehicles. Cars made from ice are the future of transportation: no pollution, no honking horns, no painful rap music blasting out of souped up stereos. And if they melt, they melt. You just swim the rest of the way down the slipstream.
T-post: the world’s first wearable magazine
So here’s the scoop. Every six weeks, T-post subscribers get a new t shirt issue in the mail, with a news story on the inside and an artist interpretation of that story on the front. Yes, we agree. It’s clever, clever. Read more
Wolfmother. Rock n roll. Mystical lyrics. Heavy riffs. They have a new album out, Cosmic Egg, and we have five copies to giveaway, along with their debut album. To enter, tell us your favorite Wolfmother song and the city you live in. Yo! Two fingered salute. Read more
Australian illustrator Moofus is just 11 years old. As he says, ‘my mum and dad won’t let me leave school to get a proper job, so I draw lots of pictures’. This limited edition print of Sydney’s Coogee Beach is printed on Epson heavyweight matt paper with archival inks and is just US$20 through the Lost At E Minor store. Read more
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win now said | 19 November, 2008
Great Website! It helps me a lot with my tough homework. I’m not so hot in that class
Thanks for the hard work, keep it up!