Van She: ‘My Secret Playlist’
Titled V, Van She’s recently released full length debut is a confident modern rock album, recorded in London with acclaimed English producer Jim Abbiss, who has worked with Arctic Monkeys and Placebo, among others. In this Playlist, bassist and vocalist Matt Van Schie, trawls his crates to give us a rundown on his current musical obsessions.
Kazino / Binary
One note riff my heart out! The bass, the guitars, and that synth line … oooooh. They’re all doing their jobs so well in this New Wave Italo Disco blast. And what a great start it has. It’s pure underground sex! I feel like I’m hanging out in an early 80s Paris nightclub with my drink resting on the stomach of painted naked lady, doing mesculine with less violent clockwork orangers.
Foster Sylvers / Misdemenour
So much soul, so much love, and the little dude was eleven! The Jackson 5 couldn’t do it better. This song makes me happy. It’s a funky drummer’s track. And one of the guitarists just sounds like he’s having a good old jam.
Skill 7 Stamina / 3rd Disco From Home
Speaking of Jamming, I love this short track because it takes me back to my sweaty garage jamming days. The female vocalist in this band also has a rad voice, but you won’t hear it on this song. London, why don’t you love these people more than you do?
Brothers Johnson / Stomp
Just YouTube this and you’ll understand. Let’s disco, baby! But in the good old fashioned way. This is music that you can dance to, without any help. And that bass playing and solo is assome (awesome combined with ass, one of my creations). Slap it hard.
Bush Tetras / Too Many Creeps
Okay, YouTube this one too. 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, 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!! Cool.
Peter Bjorn and John / Amsterdam
This takes me back to my travels down the canals of my motherland with my Uncle, a fat cigar in one hand and a raw herring in the other. These guys are great. They always have really interesting melodies and instrumentation. And really cool production.
Madness / Wings Of A Dove
This is another tune that makes me really happy, like, let’s celebrate living! It’s like no other pop song with its heavy detuned piano, steel drums, and gospel choir. It has an African vibe and it sounds different to all the other Madness I’ve heard. I like it when a band pulls their balls out and tries something new.
Schneider TM / The Light 3000
I don’t like many covers, and to think that I would like a Smiths cover? How could you do it better? Or at least match the genius? Well, I just think this cover of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out is brilliant. It somehow makes it sadder. It’s an electronic wonder. I just want to get my car and drive.
Tagged: Australian bands, electro music, My Secret Playlist
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Dappled Cities’ Secret Playlist
Australian band Dappled Cities have a new album, Wall Of Zounds, and a national tour of Australia underway. We checked in with bassist Alex Moore and asked him about the music that inspired the new recording. He started with the Mastodon song, Oblivion [listen below]: ‘I really like the new Mastodon record, Crack the Skye. This song is a real shout-out to where they are heading. It is pretty metal but also — disturbingly — 70s prog. Totally progarific’.
Paul Dempsey’s Secret Playlist
We asked Paul Dempsey, the frontman of Australian indie-rock band, Something For Kate, about the music that inspired his own soon to be released solo album, and he started by propping Brooklyn group TV On The Radio’s Dancing Choose: ‘This track has so much manic energy: buzzsaw synth-bass, mad shuffling drums and a rapid-fire lyrical rant that sounds like some kind of crazed public service announcement. Guaranteed to shake you from your mid-morning malaise’. Read the rest of Paul Dempsey’s Secret Playlist
The uber-hip French producer M83 has compiled a Secret Playlist for us in which he props Brian Eno, Julee Cruise, and Tears For Fears’ Head Over Heels: ‘This song was the biggest influence for my new album. Our track, Kim and Jesse, takes a lot of inspiration from 80s bands like Tears for Fears. This is one of my favourites’. Read the rest of M83’s Secret Playlist.
Also by ZOLTON
Crimea X is the coming together of two offbeat, disparate characters, DJ Rocca (Ajello, Super Sonic Lovers, Maffia Sound System) and Jukka Reverberi from 90s Italian glam cult rockers, Giardini di Mirò, who have often have been compared with the sound of Mogwai, Arab Strap, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. We asked them about their favourite music and they started with The Smiths song, Ask [listen below] ‘I saw them playing live on Italian TV. It was during the 80s when I was extremely young, and I’ve never stopped listening to this song’. Read the rest of Crimea X’s Secret Playlist.
I love the curated selection of abandoned swimming pool photos on Feature Shoot today, featuring work by Carlo Van de Roer and Albert Jodar, amongst others.
Win a set of Sony personal audio prizes
Thanks to Sony Australia, four Lost At E Minor readers will win personal audio prizes, including the new 8GB Walkman S series video MP3 player and the MDRXB500 Extra Bass headphones. Read more
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Jessica Allan is working as a freelance illustrator in Shoreditch. Her work is a mixture of screen prints, etchings and mixed media, and she is inspired by dreams, narrative, meditation, Mexico, Japanese patterns, Aubrey Beardsley and M.C.Escher. Read more
Ok, so I’m a big fan of any show that features sparkles, feathers and nipple tassels. Which explains why I’m so excited about the London Burlesque Festival. Come April, the city will be taken over by scantily clad women, vaudeville acts, dimly lit evening burlesque performances, and more outright wackiness than you can poke an ostrich-feather tickler at. If you’ve never been to a burlesque show before, and are a sucker for a suspender belt flicking or two, get ready for some heavy handed glamour and an experience you’ll never forget. And if you, like me, love an excuse to dress up in full costume and then take it off again to crowds of appreciative fans – raid the London vintage stores now for a costume and apply through the website to put yourself on stage. Applications close 31st December. [photo by Lisa Kereszi]
Put simply, Sydney fashion label Andrea and Joen create the hottest shoes around. You’ll find a combination of pure sophistication and rock and roll attitude in every pair from their range. Their sexy style has become a must for contemporary women, including Gwen Stefani, Katy Steele and Pink, all of whom have been seen proudly flaunting them around town.
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.
Those old issues of Popular Mechanics that forecasted the wondrous technological developments of tomorrow now seem dated and more representative of the times in which they were published than the times they tried to predict. Read more
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.
You know that band you’ve always wanted to form, the one with the little-girl-lost singer with the mischevious eyes and the propulsive beats that drive bass hooks so catchy you want to bottle them up and sell them to Sting? That’s right, that fictional band that lingers just that little deeper in your imagination every time you saunter down Bedford Avenue, surrounded by girls in neon tights and guys in ruffed up converse. You know the one? Well, guess what, you’re too late. It’s arrived. It’s French. And it’s so damn good.
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Amazing cake designs by Charm City Cakes
Baltimore company Charm City Cakes produces the most innovative wedding and party cakes on the market. Inspiration for these creative bakers comes from everywhere: art, fabric, furniture, architecture, landscapes, science, and music, and each cake is individually designed to match your personality, and the theme of the occasion you are celebrating. Don’t miss these cakey engineering masterpieces. Read more
Hong Kong-based illustrator Man-Tsun draws dark and beautiful painterly images that look like they are straight off a high-end Japanese animated film. Read more
Creative advertising packaging
Despite the intentions of many, it’s not so often that advertising — as an industry — truly thinks outside the box. Yet, when executed well, clever eye-catching advertising actually works. It does. As these examples will attest to. Read more
Good thing Kris Kuksi channelled the trauma of growing up with an alcoholic stepfather, his disdain for ‘the typical American life and pop culture’, and his fascination with the macabre into obsessive, baroque assemblages, paintings, and drawings. Read more
Forget battery powered vehicles. Cars made from ice are the future of transportation: no pollution, no honking horns, no painful rap music blasting out of souped up stereos. And if they melt, they melt. You just swim the rest of the way down the slipstream.
Thanks to Sony Australia, four Lost At E Minor readers will win personal audio prizes, including the new 8GB Walkman S series video MP3 player and the MDRXB500 Extra Bass headphones. Read more
From an artist selection of t-shirts comes this limited edition David Bray illustrated silkscreened tee, distributed in a vinyl sleeve with a biography of the artist on the back of the sleeve. Every t-shirt is numbered and signed by the artist, and comes in organic American Apparel cotton. We like! Read more
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