Chris Mars

WE'RE SUPPORTING

I’m in love with interior decoration designer Jonathan Adler’s Druggist Pottery collection. It is so old school, but new school, yet edgy. They’re on sale at the moment, so I just purchased a white Anger Jar. I live in New York, so I tend to have a lot of … errr … emotion to store in there.

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

For some reason it’s rare that you see London in this light. Nightscapes of big cities are usually reserved for New York and Tokyo, for example. Perhaps the comparatively scarce skyscrapers makes the city less photogenic in that respect. So photographer Jason Hawkes’ work is long overdue — he has really brought the city to life, and given it that lick of golden light that a long-exposure is good for.

WE'RE WEARING

Love it or loathe it, you’ve got to admit that the ruffled blouses and strict pencil skirts on television series Gossip Girl give you a guilt-free reason to watch. 25-year-old former model Abigail Lorick was approached to ghost design the Eleanor Waldorf Collection by using her budding real life label Loricklady. The press surrounding the show has boosted her profile and her new collection featuring all the Upper East Side trimmings is greatly anticipated.

WE'RE THINKING

Most people think of the countryside and rural life as peaceful to the point of being profoundly boring. Kate Kirkwood’s photographs captures a less idyllic beauty where life and death intersect in a controlled chaos that is agriculture. Each of Kirkwood’s images have a mythic quality to them — cows and sheep blur past her lens like nymphs or lurk on the horizon like demons and gods. Read more

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.

Oh boy, this is fun. Omaha’s Tilly and the Wall are kitsch-cool-camp-vauderville meets pop-folk-flamenco, with a tap dancer for a drummer and some serious, serious charisma for a calling card.

WE'RE LISTENING TO

Analog electronics by British outfit Belbury Poly (Jim Jupp and Eric Zann) make me believe machines have souls and the ghosts of obsolete recording devices are haunting the dusty stacks of libraries debating the relevance of 60s avant-garde music and counterculture.