David Bray t-shirt

WE'RE SUPPORTING

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

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

The Highline railway track is a 30 foot high, 1.45 mile long disused piece of infrastructure threading its way through 22 blocks of downtown Manhattan. Read more

WE'RE WEARING

Omar Seluj [pronounced Oh-ma Sir-luge] is a boutique sunglasses operation created by two Sydney guys who wanted to craft original designs in limited numbers for the sunglasses aficionado. The result is the debut range consisting of two styles in three different colours. All Omar Seluj sunnies are hand-crafted acetate, have spring hinges and boast UV 400 lenses. There are only 100 pairs of each colour. Read more

WE'RE THINKING

The Obama campaign was one of the most visually effective in recent history, brilliantly tapping modern marketing concepts and design to get its message across. The deceptively simple logo they chose stemmed from an amalgamation of a lot of different concepts the Obama designers came up with. Logo Design Love just posted all the different looks that weren’t used.

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.

Heavy metal and hip-hop are perhaps the most popular forms of rebellion for kids the world over. In Malaysia, metal — particularly black metal — has taken such a strong hold that the Fatwa Council there banned it, fearing that the music would compel listeners to rebel against religion. Contrary to the council’s intentions, black metal is as popular as ever in Malaysia, and is a recognizable cultural touchstone there, as indicated by the above clip from the 2005 film Filem Rock.

WE'RE LISTENING TO

Castevet are a promising new experimental black metal band out of New York. They have a much more complex and technical approach than other bands of this ilk, revealing post-hardcore and death metal influences as evidenced by guitarist Andrew Hock’s work in deathgrind outfit Biolich and Boston jazz/death/doom band Ehnahre.