Lost AT E Minor

Trumbo

Dalton Trumbo was the first blacklisted writer to win an Academy Award. However, he could not claim the award until years later because he had been forced to write under a pseudonym. Trumbo was one of the Hollywood Ten and even spent a year in jail as a result of investigations into Communist influences in the motion picture industry. This documentary is fascinating not just for its examination of a bizarre period in American history where fear replaced reason and innocent men were jailed, but also for how Trumbo dealt with these hardships. Read more

TV

The last time we heard from Melbourne label TV, they were busy preparing for their debut at Rosemount Australian Fashion Week. Since then, the girls behind one of this year’s most talked about labels have delivered a stunning collection. Read more

Permanent Camp

Located on a mountain in country outside Mudgee, in New South Wales, Australia, a permanent camp designed by Casey Brown has been set. A timber structure clad in copper has been designed to have a closed state and an open state. From the closed position, the flanks of copper are hoisted and capture views across the valley. With an imagery of structures, materials and mechanics of old, there is something romantic about this foothold on the hill.

Brian Ulrich

I love the sense of intimacy about the work of Chicago-based photographer, Brian Ulrich. His retail project Copia ‘is a long-term photographic examination of the peculiarities and complexities of the consumer-dominated culture in which we live’. We interviewed him recently and asked him what camera he uses once he gets inside a store he’s photographing: ‘For many of the pictures in the Retail project I used a medium format SLR with a waist level viewfinder. Having a finder that you can look down into instead of holding it to your eye calls a lot attention to yourself as well as allows one to hold the camera still at much slower shutter speeds. Regardless of those things though, the majority of the time it takes a combination of patience and boldness. Strangely I don’t run into people having much of an issue with it. Most often I really don’t think people notice. If an employee does ask me not to take pictures I simply laugh and move on, I’m well aware that what I’m doing looks odd. Better to own up and walk across the street to the Kmart’. Read more

The Dodos’ Visiter

Like a packet of perfectly seasoned pistachio nuts, I can’t put this album down until it’s well and truly finished: until every last morsel of taut, snappy percussion and hypnotic vocals have been digested. They’re like Animal Collective at the wind-down hour - slightly more stabilised and with the psychotic fits tempered into a soothing, trance-inducing pace. Somehow it’s also immediately catchy, laced with subtle hooks and soaring backing vocals. It’s the sort of sound that sucks you into their warm world, likely to cause you to miss your bus stop if your mind sinks too far into the rich chasm of tracks like Red and Purple [below] or The Ball. Listen closely, because this might well be one of the releases of the year.