Susanne Sundfør

Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs

Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs are primarily remembered for the song Wooly Bully, but I’ve been incessantly listening to Little Red Riding Hood. As a metalhead, any song that features howling makes me happy.

Miike Snow

Miike Snow is a collaborative effort from three well-established producers — Andrew Wyatt, Christian Karlsson, and Pontus Winnberg. Together they are a powerhouse, producing electro pop classics for huge artists. They penned Britney Spears’, Toxic, for instance. Though we won’t hold that against them. Their first solo album is vastly different. It’s an incredible multi-layered masterpiece, far deeper than any of the chorus pop pieces they’ve written for other artists.

The Shangri-Las are Out In The Streets

The period between 1:22 - 1:43 in The Shangri-Las’ track, Out In The Streets, is a miracle. I’ve never been so obsessed with twenty seconds of high-hat and high school girl shrieks: it’s a raging teenage fantasy that all the composition notebooks in all the lockers of 1965 couldn’t write better. That the singers have managed to preserve their naivety perfectly in this three minute song may be the reason I feel recording pop music is worthwhile.

Jürgen Teller for Marc Jacobs

Ten years of German photographer Jürgen Teller’s candid, glamorous photo campaigns for Marc Jacobs’ men’s and women’s collections have been collated into one cohesive 576-page fashion bible. This book does an excellent job of detailing just how significant this collaboration has been for fashion, featuring appearances from the likes of Sofia Coppola, Charlotte Rampling, Meg White, Thurston Moore, Rufus Wainwright, William Eggleston, and Winona Ryder. Read more

Yonlu’s hidden recordings

One of the most intriguing stories I’ve come across this year is about a young artist called Yonlu, born Vinicius Gageiro Marques in the town of Porto Alegre, in Brazil. His story is short but fascinating. As it goes, this sixteen year old songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and virtual artist locked himself in his bathroom, signed on to one of the various suicide forums he belonged to on the Internet, and took his own life, remaining online until the very end. After his death, his father went through his computer and found numerous musical creations, including the songs that make up his debut album through Luaka Bop. It’s an amazing listen and very ahead of its time.

Edgar Muller’s three-dimensional street art

Some people are talented, others are just truly remarkable. German artist Edgar Muller makes these three-dimensional apocalyptic fantasy street art in cities across the world. His work is reminiscent of that of English artist, Julian Beever. Read more