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Andreas gursky

Products / Andreas Gursky’s new book: Architecture

German-born Andreas Gursky is a giant in the photography world. His masterpieces have consistently dazzled and bewildered, focused as they are on making the incomprehensible believable. Gursky’s photos theorizes how architecture can shape people’s life by having a decisive influence on their social and cultural structures, in the process underlying how fleeting and fictional today’s values are. His latest book — simply titled Architecture — is accompanied with lengthy essays about his works and is an engrossing introduction to this master photographer.

andreas gursky

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Paul Steel makes our top twenty musicians of 2008

Paul Steel has slipped into my top twenty artists for 2008, right at the bottom of the final innings. I heard one of his songs, In a Coma, via BBC radio, and I am still in paralytic shock. With all the absolute sludge being released over the last twelve months, it’s so refreshing to hear music that is colourful, melodic and challenging to listen to. Forget Vampire Weekend and Fleet Foxes, this album has come from a 20 year-old Brighton native, who has taken the best elements of Brian Wilson, Elvis Costello and XTC, and transformed his album into a world of delightful tunes and animated wonders. This is what one of Brian Wilson’s band members said when he heard In a coma: ‘It just @$%^&* freaked me out! Holy @$%^&* bananas!’ What’s so upsetting is that Steel was subsequently dropped from his major label after releasing this album, but that’s ok. He’s now a truly independent genius in music.

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Leadbelly: A Life In Pictures

A founding father of blues and a very influential figure for bands as varied as Led Zeppelin and Nirvana, Leadbelly lived his life to the absolute fullest (including singing his way out of prison after apparently murdering someone!) A new book of photographs and pictures commemorates his life in meticulous detail. This beautifully bound hard back book contains a ‘treasure trove of rare unpublished family and other photographs, news clippings, concert programs, personal correspondence (including letters from Woody Guthrie), record albums, awards, and other memorabilia.’ Forget the White Stripes, go an buy a Leadbelly CD. You won’t regret it, As the late, great George Harrison is quoted as saying in the book ‘No Lead Belly, no Beatles’. Need we say more.

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Alec Soth’s Dog Days, Bogota and Niagara photo books

Alec Soth is a huge inspiration on me, a contemporary American photographer who dabbles in the grim realities of life, but always manages to coat them just enough not to depress the hell out of you. Some of his photographs are openly unbiased views of the human race, while others are just statements about how we live and the environment that surrounds us. Two books I received recently take my breath away: one is Soth’s Columbian photographic memoirs Dog Days, Bogota; the other is his peculiar photo diary, Niagara. Both books mix deep elements of tragic realism molded with Soth’s own thumbprint of bold lighting techniques and wide exposures. Read more

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Well, it seems I’ve been in a vacuum of art since the spring. And now, its just a week or so out from the upcoming Young Blood exhibit, which features my paintings and opens at the Opera Gallery in New York. I find myself feeling both excited and nervous at the thought that this show is just around the corner. These past few months have seemed like one of the great feats of my lifetime. I have been working for five months on these two upcoming shows, immersed deeply in the studio, being on a complete mission to create what will be my debut show in Manhattan alongside a handful of other rising international artists. I would wake at once at 4:30 in the morning, to a strict regimen of coffee by five, and paint through the sunny summer days into late in the evening to complete these works. Read more

Silence. In this world of near constant noise and motion, it really has become a sadly neglected and undervalued commodity. Yet, as I sit, looking down on a bustling metropolis of speeding cars, people, and minds, I can’t help but wonder what impact this sensory overload will have on not just our generation, but on all those to follow. Read more


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Set in a remote Chinese village in the 1920s during a cholera outbreak and with a revolution bubbling in the background, The Painted Veil is a wonderfully tortured love story which excels on all levels. Based on the W Somerset Maugham novel, it was a labour of love for stars Edward Norton and Naomi Watts, who also produced the film. Read more

Aussie streetwear label Zanerobe create the most wearable t-shirts around. Not only are they soft like the fur off a particularly smooth peach, they look mighty sharp too. Read more

Where would we be without synths and drum machines? Probably still listening to Grateful Dead jams in the alleyways of Height-Asbury. Done well, the remix is a wonderful thing. Case in point is Royksopp’s rendering of the Kings of Convenience track I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From. And then there’s Riton’s version of the Mystery Jets song, The Boy Who Ran Away. A White Lines for the 21st Century? I think so.

[audio:http://pelski.brinkster.net/post22/210-mystery_jets-the_boy_who_ran_away_%28riton_re-rub%29.mp3]

A minimalist design hotel parked on Thailand’s Koh Samui island, The Library stole my attention as I wandered down Chewang Beach at sunset. Read more

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.


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Adult Hotel opens in Nanning, China

State-controlled news outlet Xinhua reports that a new ‘adult hotel‘ is opening in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi Province in southern China. Apparently state censors think homosexuals and tattoo parlors sully their nation’s image, but not establishments aimed at facilitating heterosexual unions. The owner is apparently worried his business will be perceived as a brothel. Hmmm. In any case, the photos of a staff member demonstrating the, uh, equipment is caption-worthy for sure.

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Alison Malone on her Daughters of Job photos

A couple of weeks back we featured the work of New York-based photographer Alison Malone, who went into the secretive environment of the Job’s Daughters to photograph the girls who are direct blood relatives of the Master Masons. This is the second part of that interview. Read more

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Julian Beever

People are always looking to push the boundaries of street art, perhaps fed up with seeing the same (wild) style of graffiti over and over again. So, like Blu and Dan Witz, Julian Beever came into our lives like a breath of fresh air. His work is stunning, mind-boggling stuff: he manages to create a world ‘inside’ a pavement with his 3D pastel illustrations, tricking the eye into believing a dimension exists right below our very feet. Read more

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National Geographic Best Wild Animal Photos of 2008

National Geographic just announced the Best Wild Animal Photos of 2008. They’re all stunning, but I’m particularly fond of the one of a frog refusing to become lunch for a snake. It looks like they’re eating each other. My number two is the black-crested macaque hanging out on a beach. Read more

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Andy Espinoza

Florida-based artist, Andy Espinoza, studies at the Ringling College of Art and Design, majoring in Illustration. His paintings are beautifully conceptualised, rich in narrative and technically impressive. Of his work, he says: ‘I see each human figure as a unique challenge. I am coaxed to find the unique relationship between the shapes and tones that give the particular subject its subtle appeal and unrepeatable vitality. My paintings are not photographic representations of my subjects, but rather are my elaboration of what I find to be of value in them’. Read more

Cassettes Won’t Listen is the brainchild of New York-based, multi-instrumentalist and producer Jason Drake and is the latest of an abundance of musical monikers he has realised over the years. Small-Time Machine is Cassettes Wont Listen’s first-ever physical release and is available for US$23.70.
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the faint

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Woohoo! We have five copies of the new Faint album, Fascination [Inertia], to give away to randomly selected Australian-based Lost At E Minor subscribers who leave a message under this post telling us about the last time they, ummm, Fainted.

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