
The Sopp Collective
The Sydney based design group, The Sopp Collective, was founded in 1999 by Katja Hartung and Thorsten Kulp from Germany, Nelson Alves from Portugal and Kåre Martens from Norway: Your most recognisable work are the CD covers that you’ve done. What is it about that medium that you like working with so much? ‘We love music. And on top of that, album cover art and other music related jobs generally offer a great opportunity to explore personal vision. We wouldn’t mind doing it all day, everyday of the week. In saying that, we really enjoy working with other industries too that allow us a similar freedom’. What’s been the best CD artwork you’ve seen by another designer? Kåre: ‘That’s a tough one. There is a band in Norway called Kloroform who had the whole cover knitted. I thought that was pretty sweet. The designer, Martin Kvamme, asked some old ladies at a nursing home to knit the covers for him’. What does Sopp refer to? Sopp means mushroom in Norwegian. That doesn’t make sense to the rest of the planet that doesn’t speak Norwegian but the name has just stuck with us and we like the sound of it’. What’s usually playing on your stereo when you’re illustrating or designing? Kåre: ‘That varies a bit between the members. Personally, I’m a bit of a BBC addict so I tend to listen to the radio a lot’. Katja: ‘Yes, in particular the movie show, which is very entertaining, though not so productive to work with. Apart from that, my music never gets played for apparently obvious reasons so I won’t answer that one’. Nelson: ‘Right now, I love Jenny Wilson and the Battles album’.
Also by ZOLTON
Crimea X is the coming together of two offbeat, disparate characters, DJ Rocca (Ajello, Super Sonic Lovers, Maffia Sound System) and Jukka Reverberi from 90s Italian glam cult rockers, Giardini di Mirò, who have often have been compared with the sound of Mogwai, Arab Strap, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. We asked them about their favourite music and they started with The Smiths song, Ask [listen below] ‘I saw them playing live on Italian TV. It was during the 80s when I was extremely young, and I’ve never stopped listening to this song’. Read the rest of Crimea X’s Secret Playlist.

I love the curated selection of abandoned swimming pool photos on Feature Shoot today, featuring work by Carlo Van de Roer and Albert Jodar, amongst others.

Win a set of Sony personal audio prizes
Thanks to Sony Australia, four Lost At E Minor readers will win personal audio prizes, including the new 8GB Walkman S series video MP3 player and the MDRXB500 Extra Bass headphones. Read more
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With the new Tim Burton movie right around the corner, the quirky, spooky paintings of San Francisco artist Michael Page are just the right fix to hold me over. With a muted woodsy world inhabited by puppet-like figures, and the endearing monsters that terrorize them, ‘ll most likely be dropping by for a Page fix even long after I get my fill of Coraline next week. Read more
Just a few days ago, Benjamin Verdoncke climbed out of the human-sized nest he’d been residing in for the past seven days. The Belgian artist took six weeks to build the nest, which hung fifty metres high against a skyscraper in Rotterdam. Read more
These antler pendants are hand-crafted, made in sterling silver, and brought to you by the talented kids at Fuzz Design. They are revolutionizing the way we view hunting and taxidermy: it just got a whole lot more fashionable! Why not wear a piece of reindeer around your neck this Christmas?
Legend has it that Paul McCartney hated the line from Hey Jude – ‘the movement you need is on your shoulder’ – so much that he was going to scrap it until his partner in grime John Lennon told him it was the best part of the song. So it stuck. Read more
This one-stop shop for all things eco-friendly is proof that protecting the environment is becoming a popular pastime. Almost every material category that comprises our society, from design to celebrity to transport, is looked at through a green lens. They’re ranked number twenty-two on Technorati’s list of 75,000,000 blogs, and even Daryl Hannah is singing their praises. Why? Its writers, they claim, ‘have the ability to take topics that most of us snoozed our way through in school, and make them the addictive juicy, green bits that they are’.
If animated wall drawings of severed heads and insect men ejecting their brains from their craniums is what people produce when they have too much time on their hands, then we should do their laundry for them and cook them dinner so they’ll have even more time on their hands.
I caught Austin band Watch Out For Rockets playing the other week at the Beauty Bar, a small smoky den on a bustling hipster strip. Although they hit the stage a few hours late, they still cranked out an awesome set of guitar-based power pop, though they left out my favorite track, Urgent Serpent Merchant (below).
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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.

I live the upbeat, feel good tempo of the new single — A Hundred Hearts — from Philly group, The Swimmers. Off their latest album, People Are Soft, this song is a strangely fitting anthem for the blustery day outside.

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

Amazing cake designs by Charm City Cakes
Baltimore company Charm City Cakes produces the most innovative wedding and party cakes on the market. Inspiration for these creative bakers comes from everywhere: art, fabric, furniture, architecture, landscapes, science, and music, and each cake is individually designed to match your personality, and the theme of the occasion you are celebrating. Don’t miss these cakey engineering masterpieces. Read more

Hong Kong-based illustrator Man-Tsun draws dark and beautiful painterly images that look like they are straight off a high-end Japanese animated film. Read more
Thanks to Sony Australia, four Lost At E Minor readers will win personal audio prizes, including the new 8GB Walkman S series video MP3 player and the MDRXB500 Extra Bass headphones. Read more
These Fan earrings are finely etched stainless steel on sterling silver hooks (nickel and lead free). The thin metal sheets allow the earrings to be light to wear while still being elegant and striking. Designed and made by Polli in Australia. Purchase now. Read more
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