The Legendary Pink Dots
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Confounding music critics is not the Legendary Pink Dots’ modus operandi, but it sure must amuse them to read the long lists of micro-genres, real and imagined, that writers come up with to describe the iconic experimental rock collective. For nearly three decades, the band has distilled the whole of recorded music history — tape loops, synths, folk elements, drum machines, electric guitars, and whatever else the perpetually rotating roster has at its disposal — into a cohesive, meditative, and apocalyptic whole. Plutonium Blonde,the latest addition to the Anglo-Dutch outfit’s enormous discography is as bleak and gloomy as anything it’s done before, with rays of major-key sunshine and jazzy goofiness poking through the creeping, goth-pop atmosphere.
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Tagged: goth-pop
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Also by GERRY MAK
I had to put up with some seriously obnoxious jocks and drunken highschool kids at a recent show featuring flavor-of-the-moment acts that did the whole ecstatic, 80s electro thing that’s so popular these days. Lots of fluorescent colors. I had to blast some death freaking metal when I got home, and Hooded Menace fit the bill perfectly with their doom-leaning, aural assault. Nothing pisses me off more than tepid, uninspired music, and nothing makes me feel more alive than real, gut-wrenching, skull-pounding, giddily sinister heavy metal.
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The bad boy persona in the art world is still alive and well in Australian-born painter and installation artist Anthony Lister. Posing for most photos slumped below his work, cigarette dangling from his lips, Lister is the latest in a long line of somewhat deviant figures in the art world. His work, which generally features superheroes — ‘misguided role models,’ as Lister puts it — has a jerky geometry to them, yet simultaneously a gestural quality reminiscent of 80s art deco, fitting with Lister’s ‘impulsive genius’ image and suggesting a bit of a nod to the cocaine-dusted, heroin-soaked downtown New York scene of 30 years ago. Read more
Heeb magazine founder Jennifer Bleyer recently interviewed me for an article about young creative types on food stamps. The editors at Salon.com decided that I am a hipster. I don’t really know what that means. Judging by the comments that the article generated, I’m some sort of lazy bum who can’t give up my artisinal chevre. I don’t need to go into detail defending my food choices, but all I’d like to say is that I try to buy healthy foods at the lowest prices. I never eat out. I love to cook, and I really need to control what goes into my food, so I cook every meal for myself. I often share with friends. I want to be healthy and I want my friends to be healthy because none of us have health care. Read more
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Taking inspiration from Lewis Carroll, Dr Seuss, and Salvador Dali, Rose Skinner creates vibrant installation art from candy, plastic, and toys. Of her work, she says: ‘my intricate compositions of eclectic materials play tantalizing games on your senses; you are bombarded with colors and textures sounds and smells, metaphors and iconography that are used often in ironic ways’. Read more
Much2Much is an exquisite ‘bourgeoise punk’ jewellery line crafted with unlikely bits and bobs. Read more
TIME magazine’s annual Person of the Year issue is coming out this week. I illustrated one of the runner-ups, but of course, I have to keep my mouth completely shut. I don’t know who is the winner though. On TIME’s website, you can see all the past covers of this most talked about issue of each year. It’s a good time to look back history and learn from it anyway, don’t you think?
I can’t make it to the Renaissance Festival this year, but this little flash game has been helping me let off some steam with some ‘olde’-fashioned fun. The object of the game is to destroy castles by aiming a catapult. You can even build your own castle!
Kirk brings Molly to meet his family for a pool party but she doesn’t have her swim suit. Kirk, an average Joe, can’t believe his luck when gorgeous babe Molly falls for him even though he’s the first to admit She’s Out of My League. In cinemas April 1.
What is it with these big fake islands that look like things from the air? We’ve had palm trees, a map of the world, and now an island that looks like Russia! Read more
Austin band The Low Lows are one of my most prized finds of the year so far. It’s introspective music — staggered harmonies delivered by a distant, agonised voice that filters through a wall of tranquil guitar distortion and measured drumming. Every instrument carries a powerful emotion, sometimes keeping their distance from one another, floating up and around the airwaves, and other times colliding and crashing back to earth.
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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
French installation artist Baptiste Debombourg made this mural of Icarus using 35,000 staples as a comment on American power. Read more
I live the upbeat, feel good tempo of the new single — A Hundred Hearts — from Philly group, The Swimmers. Off their latest album, People Are Soft, this song is a strangely fitting anthem for the blustery day outside.
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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
Scanners’ new single Salvation
I love this track by London based rock group, Scanners, which is off their latest album, Submarine. Having toured with acts such as The Horrors, The Wedding Present, The Charlatans, Electric Six, and Juliette & The Licks, Scanners could well blow up in 2010. Figuratively speaking, not literally. No, that wouldn’t be fun.
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Owning clusters of diamonds and a miniature dog named Tinkerbell sounds appealing, but one’s unaffordable and the other will do its business inside your vintage handbag. The Socialite is house-trained, stylish and custom-designed to block out the sounds of chasing paparazzi and teen boy band members. Read more
The new Runaways movie looks at the formation of the seminal girls’ group which spawned Joan Jett’s career. We have a Runaways prize pack to give away, including Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway, the Joan Jett and the Blackhearts Greatest Hits CD, the film’s soundtrack, and Joan Jett’s photobook with Todd Oldham. To enter, just leave the name of the city you live in! Read more
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