Lost AT E Minor

WE'RE SUPPORTING

We’ve been following the young French singer/songwriter Orouni for some time now. His last album got a big thumbs up on here and the new release, Jump Out The Window, has laid waste to the grumblings of the ‘difficult second album’. Read more

WE'RE LISTENING TO

Strip away the cookie monster vocals and downtuned, distorted guitars, it’s hard to imagine death metal still reading as death metal, but 8-bit duo Dr. Zilog manage to do just that. The Floridian sound-card tweakers make some pretty amazing original, NES tunes that are strangely compelling, catchy, and actually quite metal.

WE'RE THINKING

Israeli computer scientists recently created a computer program that changes photographs of people’s faces into more attractive images based on an algorithm that determines ideal distances between lips and chins, foreheads and eyes, and distances between eyes.

WE'RE WEARING

Derrick R. Cruz has channeled his talent for creating densely detailed works into the creation of the brand Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons. Fuelled by the New York city art and fashion scene, Cruz’s pieces are timeless but relevant, and beautifully detailed in their imperfections. They combine gold, silver, resin and bronze to create dark but wearable art.

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

I love the interesting lines and clever use of sustainable materials found in the Klein Bottle House, a holiday place in Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. The architects, McBride Charles Ryan, based the design around the concept of the Klein Bottle, ‘a descriptive model of a surface developed by topological mathematicians’. Read more

Says Van She bassist and vocalist Matt Van Schie about the Bush Tetras track — Too Many Creeps — from 1982: ‘I LOOOVE this tune. It opens with a perfect snare roll, and then the counter bass and guitar rhythms make it so cool. The lyrics are even more valid today. They’re one of my favourite bands of all time, and so many people try to do what they did for real. What a time! I wish I was born back then in New York, hanging out with these kids. Ahhhh!!’

WE'RE READING

DJ Spooky — That Subliminal Kid — is just about the deepest crate digger around, trawling the barrels of long-lost record stores for choice vinyl to spin in his wickedly dubby sets. He gave us the inside word last week on his eight favourite songs right now via our sister website, My Secret Playlist. This is what he had to say about Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Panic in Babylon: ‘If there’s anything that the twenty-first century has told us, it’s that dub is the real original hip-hop. Lee Scratch even had to make it clear in 1965 by adding “Scratch” to his middle name. Take that, Grandmaster Flash!’ Read the rest of DJ Spooky’s Secret Playlist.