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Music / The National

Epiphanies are wondrous things. Those little orgasmic sparks that ignite flames in the deepest recesses of one’s soul, etching burn marks that ensure one’s life is never quite the same again. The National is a living, breathing epiphany, playing a brand of guitar poetry of such heart-stopping beauty that the only way to react to it is to submit to its molding. That is why 2005’s Alligator coloured my lenses with delicious despair and melodious melancholy. That is why 2007’s Boxer will do the same thing. That is why spiritual arson will be the theme of my year thus far. Boxer will be released on 22 May. [see also The Paper Scissors]

Also by KENNETH YU

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HoboHookah

Professional socialites aside, anyone who has traveled solo or rolled up to a party alone knows how daunting it can be to strike up a real conversation. Enter the HoboHookah, a pipe that turns liquor — and other types of bottles — into hookahs. Its inventors, two guys from America, both spent time living in the Middle East and picked up on the considerable hookah culture there. Upon returning to the US they decided to design a hookah to fit in with their western culture. And out popped the first hookah built to ‘travel far and party hard’. Read more

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The Swell Season

Dating or married musician duos are always interesting beasts. Their intertwining affections and chemical reactions make for a potent alchemy of musical magic. Along the same vein of O-era Damien Rice and Lisa Hennigan, Glen Hansard (frontman of The Frames) and Marketa Irglova are the latest lovey-dovey couple with longings expressed in fingerpicked guitars and mourning cellos. Read more

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Shawn Kuruneru

Shawn Kuruneru has a hair fetish. The Canadian-born artist’s illustrations of long, flowing, shampoo TVC-worthy, liquid-looking locks wrap around various portraits and situations, forming an intriguing mix of medieval folklore, nature and elements of the human form. Featured in publications like Tokion and Arkitip, this is the world’s first enactment of Rapunzel’s Freudian dreams.

YOU'RE SAYING (2)

Francis Identicon Icon

Francis said | 26 April, 2007

’tis true, Alligator is a classic.

Zolt, when you dropping the Paper Scissors album on us? I need my fix…

Zolton Identicon Icon

Zolton said | 27 April, 2007

I hear you Francis. It’s not too far away I believe. I’ll ask the band if we can run a snippet of the first single on the website. stay tuned.

ZZ

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Hello, my name is Zolton and I’m a non-dancer. That’s right, a non-dancer. I choose not to dance for the mental welfare of others, though my inability to shake and roll with the best of them can probably be traced back to the Id, the Ego; that darn voice that sits somewhere at the back of my head and reminds me that any inclination to hurl myself about the dancefloor will not go down well in public. So I choose not to. Heck … it’s my party and I’ll sit quietly and observe if I want to. Read more

Music isn’t necessarily a serious venture. It’s almost funny when you find some you know will grate to dust the stiff upper lipped critics of the world. Every now and then I like the type of sound that hops around the edge of your ears without working its way into your brain and messing up the seratonin levels. And Californian 16-piece tropical-ska-pop group, Still Flyin’, do just that for me. It’s a good laugh, quite catchy, and an awesome live experience so I’m told: especially with the sun out, a can of cider in your hand and a bunch of grinning faces skanking around you.

Australian group Pivot have recently signed with the mighty Warp label and — even better (well, for us anyway) — have written a fun Secret Playlist for us. You can see where the many disparate influences have seeped into their latest recording, the beautiful and colourful, O Soundtrack My Heart.

We have a bunch of new playlists up on our sister site, My Secret Playlist, a music discovery website and weekly email publication in which we invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. Over the past few weeks, acts such as The B52s, Team Genius, Pivot, Jukebox the Ghost, Moby, Katy Perry, and the Dandy Warhols, among many others, have written about the music that inspires them. To sign-up to receive the weekly My Secret Playlist publication, just enter your email address into the website’s subscription box.

I recently discovered Lauren Fleishman’s work while looking at an old copy of The Fader. After a visit to her website, I found myself especially captivated with her Indiana series. Here she talks about her experience shooting in this rural area and exploring the stories that hide beneath the surface. Read more

Italian architect Antonio Cardillo is of the opinion that architecture is only still in pictures, as in its real life it is in a state of transition with man and light moving through it. Read more

Derrick R. Cruz has channeled his talent for creating densely detailed works into the creation of the brand Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons. Fuelled by the New York city art and fashion scene, Cruz’s pieces are timeless but relevant, and beautifully detailed in their imperfections. They combine gold, silver, resin and bronze to create dark but wearable art.

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WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST

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Anatomic Models

Kikkerland, the company behind those campfire tea light holders, has a line of amazing snap-together anatomic models of beetles, frogs, moths, cows, humans, and a wide range of other animals, even a wooly mammoth. Where the hell were these when I was a kid?

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Lightspeed Champion performs The Kids unhinged

We met Lightspeed Champion (Londoner and former Test Icicles member Dev Hynes) backstage at Oxford Arts Factory at precisely 4.15pm. We had everything organised right down to the songs he’d play and with a only a small timeframe to do it in, we were a little nervous. But Dev was relaxed, lighthearted and disarming — as with many other players — spontaneity reigned on the day. The store Celebrity Wigs was a little creepy. While Dev played to an audience of blank polystyrene faces, clad in the future headdress of drag queens and lady boys, business carried on as usual around us. Initially he had wanted to play a cover by The Veronicas and together we all tried to remember the lyrics for a good five minutes, but due to poor memory and a little nervousness on his part, Dev instead indulged us in a new track called The Kids.

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Two Americas

There are two Americas: one which strives to create its own culture, music, and art with a strong sense of ethics in mind, and another that drinks 32-ounce energy drinks before waiting on line to get into a club packed with women trying to get back at their overbearing fathers, and homophobic men with a fondness for Axe body spray. How do we bridge the divide?

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Alison Malone on her Daughters of Job photos

A couple of weeks back we featured the work of New York-based photographer Alison Malone, who went into the secretive environment of the Job’s Daughters to photograph the girls who are direct blood relatives of the Master Masons. This is the second part of that interview. The portraits of girls [below] are angelic. What was your intention of photographing them in this light? ‘There are many reasons that I chose to photograph the girls in this way. The first is the simple love I have of the straight photographic portrait and its ability to transmit the subtle nuances that come from an individual. When a portrait is made there is an opportunity for a delicate exchange between the photographer and the subject that creates a place to examine how one holds oneself in a moment’. Read more

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The Monotracer

Swiss manufacturer Peraves has recently introduced the Monotracer, a two-wheeled vehicle that’s remarkably similar to the lightcycles in Tron. Buckminster Fuller would be proud.

For visual people who rely on shapes and imagination, this eye test t-shirt by Hong Kong-based studio, WEME, is a perfect conversation starter. It’s available through the Lost At E Minor online store for just US$30. Read more

dear science poster

WIN

Happy, happy, joy, joy! We have a TV On The Radio poster designed by Tunde, as well as Dear Science on vinyl, to give away to a randomly selected Lost At E Minor subscriber who leaves a comment under this post telling us why they simply must have it.

WHAT YOU'RE DOING

  • Petit Vulcan is listening to Stop Play Moon

  • Petros is listening to Off Radio

  • Sarah is reading the New York Times

  • Christian is listening to The Revisionists

  • Sally is listening to Nuuro

  • Jess is reading My Secret Playlist

  • Ana is playing a good mood

  • Chanoa is watching Tabatha’s Take Over

  • Sindhu is spotting patterns in the sky

  • Rajasee is reading Garfinkel

What are you doing?

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