Lost AT E Minor

Tsatsulow

This guy is unreal, simply awesome. If every kid’s misspent youth eventually turned out as good as this, then parents would be forever silenced. What’s more, he’s not even Brazilian. Yes, the Japanese are the masters of style, whether fashion, technology, or now even ball skills. Except for this. Ahem.

English for Professionals

For your NSFW fix of the day, here’s a bizarre instructional video from Japan that runs through all the English phrases a working girl needs to know.

Seekae hear The Sound Of Trees Falling on People

Sydney band Seekae started playing together at the beginning of 2007. Initially Commander Keen, they changed their name after they noticed a band in Aberdeen who used that same moniker and ‘who played really nice music’, says one third of the group, George Nicholas. They obviously didn’t think they needed the competition. In their early 20s and relatively new to the Sydney music scene, Nicholas and bandmates, John Hassell and Alex Cameron, have an accomplished and mature sound, making Gameboy inspired ambient electronica similar to Electric President and Prefuse 73. Currently they’re writing and recording a new album titled The Sound Of Trees Falling on People and plan to release it at the end of this month. Read more

Sam Weber

There’s some awesome new work up on New York-based illustrator, Sam Weber’s website, including this one above which is did for the Soulpepper Theatre. We asked him a little while back about what his studio workspace was like: ‘I am fairly particular about where I like to work, and what sort of stuff I like to have around me. There are things that I look at often — a book of Max Ernst collages, one on Yoshitaka Amano, and a big stack of clippings from magazines and the Internet that I will periodically leaf through to get inspired’. Read more

Famous Blue Raincoat

Many years ago, when my hair was longer and my clothes were shabbier, I played guitar in a Sydney-based rock band. We never come to anything more than a few years worth of gigs and a deeply closeted aspiration to take the radio charts by storm. We never did. A lack of talent intervened, but it was damn fun while it lasted. Anyway, at one point during this debauched period of my life, I had a friend who was the frontman for the exotically named, Blue Apples of The Moon. He had an unusually resonant baritone and a penchant for writing epic music. One day he handed me a demo cassette with a batch of his new songs on it. I took it to work with me the next day, whacked it into my Sony Walkman, and immediately swooned amongst the lulling tones and fretfully beautiful lyrics of this Leonard Cohen classic. I was gobsmacked. Totally mesmerised. And having never heard it before, I presumed that my friend — this humble frontman of a bizarrely named rock band — had just penned the greatest song of our generation. For about eight minutes and seventeen seconds, I was convinced he was genius. That was until one of my workmates pointed out that it was actually a Leonard Cohen masterpiece, one of many. It turns out that my friend’s demos were on the other side of the cassette. And they were pretty average. But hell, anything would be after this unholy precedent.

On the road with The Basics

A little while back, we ran a week long diary from Australian pop band, The Grates. It was kinda to get a window into the world. Hell, voyeurism is the new black. So we asked Melbourne-based rock band, The Basics, to do the same thing as they bring their music to the deepest reaches of Australia’s Northern Territory. These are the words of bassist and vocalist, Kris Schroeder: ‘Friday November 7. Darwin. It’s a weird old joint this one — I can probably compare it closest to Queensland’s Cairns, with the backpacker industry making up the life and character of the Central Business District. This makes it particularly good for bands, as you’ve got a ready audience staying only metres away from the music venues. Today was our first Darwin gig (at Monsoons), and it was a ripper. I’d organised with my mate Nathan to bring up the Sunshine Reggae Band from Ikuntji in the Western Desert, and they were going to be the first Indigenous band to play in the main street of Darwin, which is apparently quite a cultural breakthrough. The best bit was how well received they were, someone saying “This is great, because it’s what you should expect to see in Darwin, not just bloody cover bands all the time.” Quite chuffed. By the time we played it was packed out, and everyone was loving it. Job done’. Read more