The Brunettes go Stereo

WE'RE SUPPORTING

New York photographer Amy Stein’s work ‘explores our evolving isolation from community, culture and the environment’. Her recently released book, Domesticated, began when she was in grad school. ‘I was simply trying to make compelling images that wouldn’t get eviscerated in critique’, she says of the project. ‘As the series progressed, I began to become interested in exhibiting the work and have had many opportunities to do so this year. The Critical Mass book is the icing on the cake’. There’s an extended interview with Amy Stein on the Feature Shoot photo blog. Read more

WE'RE LISTENING TO

Driven by a wide spectrum of influences, the music of Brass Bed moves easily through an eclectic mix of genres: from alt-country ballads and progressive rock hooks, to sticky-sweet, heart-felt lyrics, and dissonant experimental freak-outs. As some wise folk have noted, it’s kinda like a cross between The Beach Boys and The Flaming Lips. Now, how could that be a bad thing? We have two of their songs — Olivia [listen below] and Polar Bird — available for free download in the Music Download section in the third column of Lost At E Minor.

WE'RE THINKING

Now here’s a serious treat. The digital work of illustrator Aleks Senvald possess all the handmade charm of an actual painting, brimming with a giddy charm and sweetness, played out through her wonderfully rich narrative. Read more

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

Jean-Julien Pous’ Seeking You is an animated love letter to the city of Hong Kong. It presses all the same buttons as Blade Runner and In the Mood for Love, with a touch of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s gothic style, and though it’s really amazing eye candy, it also smacks of creepy, orientalist expat. Here, an entire Asian city is exoticized, fetishized, and finally anthropomorphized in a rather unsubtle way. Why are so many creepy old European dudes so lecherous when it comes to Asia?

Peter Nalitch is Russia’s answer to Manu Chao. His video for the song Guitar is a Borat-like jab at low-budget, post-Soviet awkwardness — absurd English lyrics, Eurotrash earnestness, bad wipes, and cheap subtitles. But its tongue-in-cheekness is quite apparent, and the song is disarmingly catchy and romantic.

WE'RE WEARING

Tarot cards, folk music, Charles Manson, ballet, freaks and geeks, and Patty Hearst can all take responsibility for being some of the inspiration’s behind the Australian fashion label, Lover. It’s all too clever and witty to ignore. Each collection adheres to a specific narrative and a central character. 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.