The National

WE'RE SUPPORTING

Graham Carter, printmaker and co-founder of the Boxbird Gallery in Brighton, creates beautiful limited edition silkscreens. He has a new solo show slated to open at the Coningsby Gallery in London on August 30.

WE'RE LISTENING TO

Lindstrom, the man who single-handedly coined the term ‘minimal space-disco’ (well, perhaps nudged in the right direction by Orbital et al), recently released a new, rather ambitious, album, Where You Go I Go Too. Weaving between ambient trance and breakbeat-flecked disco, the producer responsible for the mesmerizing reworking of that tune we all secretly love, Roxy Music’s Avalon, has produced a worthy follow-up to his 2006 album, ‘It’s A Feedility Affair’. This time, however, there’s only three tracks, ranging between 10 and 29 minutes in length, and the Eno/Ferry influence is thankfully clear to all.

WE'RE THINKING

Israeli computer scientists recently created a computer program that changes photographs of people’s faces into more attractive images based on an algorithm that determines ideal distances between lips and chins, foreheads and eyes, and distances between eyes.

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

Hitotoki is a beautifully presented series of ‘Tokyo stories from curious outsiders’. Read more

History is the story of the winners, and western dominated culture recounts few triumphs from the east. Mongol is an effort to correct this balance, and the eastern influence is evident in much more than just the storyline. It is more like a fairy tale or legend handed down through generations, than based on fact, with mythical elements playing a major part, and the character’s motivations remaining simple. Read more

WE'RE WEARING

Free bird boots are handmade customized military boots, applying recycling to fashion in a new way. Created by young New York-based designer, Stacey Howard, the boots were originally collected from military bases in the South. As Howard says: ‘It felt most natural to my aesthetic to use vintage native American garments and paint to refabricate the boots. Using a soldier’s boot and an Indian’s blanket, I wanted to merge two opposite and patriotic styles and use them in the most organic way’. Free bird boots are currently sold through Steve Madden’s Steven stores on Ludlow and Bleecker in New York. Read more

WE'RE READING

I am really into Hong Kong action flicks from the 1980s and 90s. When I first moved to New York, there were a handful of curious friends who were also interested in watching movies such as City on Fire by Ringo Lam, which Reservoir Dogs was based on. How did they find videos like thus? At the legendary Kim’s Video in New York City. These days, City on Fire can be find online, and Kim’s is history. But all the videos that entertained the film geeks of this city for more than twenty years have found a new home in, wait for it, Salemi, Sicily. Yes, the southern island of Italy. Kim has recently relocated there, as this sad but heartwarming story about him in yesterday’s New York Times reveals.