Events / The Grates: an ongoing diary by Patience
We love Australian band The Grates. So much so that we asked their frontwoman Patience to write an exclusive diary for Lost At E Minor over the next week, giving us the inside word on what the band are up to. We’ll run a new posting from it each day. This is her entry from last Saturday: ‘Today nothing happened. Actually, that’s not true. Today by sheer coincidence we all went and saw Batman independently. Awesome. So good. Don’t see Batman because you want to, see it because you need to. I don’t care what you think, just see it. Spend your money. At the very least it will give you something to debate with your friends about. This is something we do all the time at Grates headquarters. It’s a fun way to find out more about your friends and also solidify your own opinions. Who knows when your already explored opinion on weather it’s okay to kick a robot dog will be challenged. Trust me, something like this will one day happen to you and if you take part in regular debates with friends you will be more than able to cope with the situation’.
Listen to The Grates track, Sukkafish.
Tagged: Australian bands, Brisbane, indie-rock, pop music, rock music
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A few weeks back we asked Patience, frontwoman of Aussie pop starlets The Grates, to write about a typical day in her ever-hectic life. Today, it’s drummer Alana’s turn: ‘On the menu. I had soup and a sandwich. How very American of me. Actually, I really miss America. I can’t speak on behalf of the other two but I’m really keen to head back for a tour. Today I had quite a few over the phone interviews (in the biz we just call them ‘phoners’. If you are in an up-and-coming band, saying ‘phoners’ will make you appear as though you have done some too) which was heaps better than usual because my flatmates and I all went in for a cordless phone’. Read more
Cold War Kids’ Loyalty to Loyalty
With their slow burning, ramshackle pop escapism, Cold War Kids have ignited a spark in that oft-derided indie music scene. So perk up! Their new album, Loyalty to Loyalty, can be heard in its entirety through the MTV Leak website.
Download the track, Something is Not Right With Me
The B-52s: ‘My Secret Playlist’
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TV On The Radio poster and vinyl
Happy, happy, joy, joy! We have a TV On The Radio poster designed by Tunde, as well as Dear Science on vinyl, to give away to a randomly selected Lost At E Minor subscriber who leaves a comment under this post telling us why they simply must have it.
Ok, so it’s 3.30 on Thursday afternoon and I’m sitting in a Brooklyn cafe, tapping away as fast as two fingers possibly can. As I look around, discreetly to my left and then more openly to my right, I cannot see a single person in this warm and friendly place wearing a more stylish and comfortable scarf than the one that I have wrapped around my neck. Yes, as my grandfather would say, it’s a very ‘handsome’ scarf — a soft, playful, ‘handsome’ scarf. And you know what? There’s not a single damn person in this room who can compete with it. Ha! That feels good. That feels very, very good. Mind you, it is 76 degrees outside, and I’m starting to sweat, so perhaps I’m just a little … ummm … over-dressed.
Fujiya & Miyagi discuss their album, Lightbulbs
The new Fujiya & Miyagi album, the aptly titled Lightbulbs, is a typically crackling collection of songs, ‘a pulsing antidote to the ordinary’. Formed in 2000, the electronic duo of David Best (guitars and vocals) and Steve Lewis (synths, beats, programming), have since added bass player Matt Hainsby to the mix (in 2004), and now have an album in their catalogue which is ‘littered with fragmented images, anecdotes from the sublime to the ridiculous, blurry stories that you feel you shouldn’t have overheard’. The guys have given us the inside word on each track from the album, starting with the opener, Knickerbocker: ‘A vibration of words that sound good, touching on lost innocence, child star Lena Zavaroni, the very first tragedy of X Factor-style excess, and the joy of multi-storeyed ice cream sundaes at Woolacombe Bay. Knickerbocker mixes my sister’s and my memories of watching Lena Zavaroni on TV, whilst eating ice cream as children’. Read more
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There’s a radiance about the creative work emanating from Brooklyn, New York right now; a glistening, velvetine glow that seeps through the illustrations and art and tickles the melodies of every hipster four-piece. Read more
Music isn’t necessarily a serious venture. It’s almost funny when you find some you know will grate to dust the stiff upper lipped critics of the world. Every now and then I like the type of sound that hops around the edge of your ears without working its way into your brain and messing up the seratonin levels. And Californian 16-piece tropical-ska-pop group, Still Flyin’, do just that for me. It’s a good laugh, quite catchy, and an awesome live experience so I’m told: especially with the sun out, a can of cider in your hand and a bunch of grinning faces skanking around you.
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.
I really really dig the busy, fragmented paintings of Jason Jagel. It’s full of colourful stencil-like shapes and free form doodles and it’s all crammed together into the claustrophobic quarters of his paper like an oversized sketchbook come to life.
In Los Angeles, in the gas guzzling centre of the Universe, BP has enlisted Office dA to embrace the paradoxical task of creating a green petrol station. Read more
The latest in the Stephanie Simek jewellery collection is the Powder necklace, a pearlized Turbo Cinereus shell with tiny holes drilled into the bottom and filled with a sparkling silver-colored powder. Read more
WE'RE POSTING / SOME OF THE BEST
Some friends and I serendipitously stumbled across the work the artist Hiro Kurata the other night and we have been jointly obsessing over it since. Kurata’s work is torrid, moody and fragmented like a restless dream. Bursting with texture and patterns, it’s simply brilliant. As my friend Andrew Degraff accurately put it, ‘It’s like Savador Dali thrown through a plate glass window’. Indeed. Read more
The directorial debut of John August, a writer who was worked on films such as Go, Big Fish and Corpse Bride, is a complex and thought-provoking arthouse feature crowned with a spectacular performance by Ryan Reynolds in the lead role. Like most films, it is in three parts. However, these are three distinct parts with the same actors all playing different roles. Read more
Located on a mountain in country outside Mudgee, in New South Wales, Australia, a permanent camp designed by Casey Brown has been set. A timber structure clad in copper has been designed to have a closed state and an open state. From the closed position, the flanks of copper are hoisted and capture views across the valley. With an imagery of structures, materials and mechanics of old, there is something romantic about this foothold on the hill.
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The Grind 2.0, a charity auction show to fund construction of the Swift-Cantrell Skatepark in Atlanta, opens on Friday, October 10 at Atlanta’s The Rabbit Hole Gallery. The show features more than 60 hand-painted skate decks painted by some of today’s top underground artists from across America and Europe, and I couldn’t be more excited to be part of it! Other artists include Amy Sol, Dave Kinsey, Chris Stain, Jason Limon, Tara McPherson, Tessar Lo, and many more. The gallery is even offering an online bidding through their website.
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Happy, happy, joy, joy! We have a TV On The Radio poster designed by Tunde, as well as Dear Science on vinyl, to give away to a randomly selected Lost At E Minor subscriber who leaves a comment under this post telling us why they simply must have it.
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The secret diary of The Grates — Lost At E Minor: For creative people said | 22 August, 2008
[...] few weeks back we asked Patience, frontwoman of Aussie pop starlets The Grates, to write about a typical day in her ever-hectic life. Today, it’s drummer Alana’s [...]