Lost AT E Minor

Yann Gross’ photos of tattooed bikers, cowboys, drag races, and Confederate-flag-adorned trailer homes are unnerving documents of the American experience. But his subjects aren’t American, they’re residents of the Rhone Valley in Gross’ native Switzerland. Judging from his photos, Europeans don’t necessarily look down their noses at the U S of A. Some of them actually celebrate it, blemishes and all.

How can you not love a band called ¡Apeshit!? Their name says it all. I got to catch these guys tour at a warehouse in Bed-Stuy the other night as they were capping off their most recent tour, and even though there were only 20 or so people in the audience by the time they went on, their set was absolutely epic, culminating in frontman Pat Berran being hoisted up and subsequently dropped by the drunken, sweaty, and heavily tattooed crowd. If you love fast, spastic, intensely brutal punk, this band will make you crap your pants.

Australian group Pivot have recently signed with the mighty Warp label and — even better (well, for us anyway) — have written a fun Secret Playlist for us. You can see where the many disparate influences have seeped into their latest recording, the beautiful and colourful, O Soundtrack My Heart.

We have a bunch of new playlists up on our sister site, My Secret Playlist, a music discovery website and weekly email publication in which we invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. Over the past few weeks, acts such as The B52s, Team Genius, Pivot, Jukebox the Ghost, Moby, Katy Perry, and the Dandy Warhols, among many others, have written about the music that inspires them. To sign-up to receive the weekly My Secret Playlist publication, just enter your email address into the website’s subscription box.

Just like myself, Courtney Reagor counts becoming a professional cupcake maker as one of her interests. She had me at ‘cupcake’, but easily held my interest with the predominantly hand-drawn illustrations on her site. She uses pen ink and humour to create illustrations for Time Out Chicago and CMYK, among other publications.

Mozzarella is the new sushi in New York since the opening of Obikà (pronounced Oh-bee-KA), Manhattan’s first mozzarella bar, at 590 Madison Avenue. It’s like a sushi bar that uses buffalo mozzarella instead of fish, and has been a hit in Rome since 2004. Obikà, from the word obiccà, means ‘Here it is’, in Neapolitan. Its innovative concept focuses its offerings on the Mozzarella di Bufala Campana DOP, a premium cheese, along with recipes and artisanal products from Italy. The minimalist and modern style of the Obikà kiosks also throughout Rome, Milano, London, Turin, and very soon, in Kuwait City.

She may have designed for Ralph Lauren, but it’s hard to believe that Brandy Lunsford’s first two collections have been of this calibre. Read more