Bec Winnel

WE'RE SUPPORTING

We checked with with legendary Australian designer Vince Frost and asked him when he felt he was usually at his most productive: ‘First thing in the morning. I am alive and excited about the new day. I have built an amazingly diverse team around me and I know that we can do anything that comes our way’. Read more

WE'RE THINKING

Riffing on the idea that ‘eating was tending toward breathing’, Harvard professor David Edwards, in conjunction with design studio Le Laboratoire, has created Le Whif, the breathable chocolate. No chewing, no calories, and it comes in mint, rasberry, mango, and plain chocolate flavors. The product may just be a fancy scratch-and-sniff sticker, but it looks so sleek and design-y.

Sufjan Stevens creates autistic music for introverts — soft, shy, naive, full of shadows, windows, and insecurities. Yet it all sounds slightly forced, his enigmatic songwriting as comforting as it is unsettling.

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

The Suit Up exhibition comprises a number of artworks from various Australian street, comic, and illustration artists, each of whom has applied their unique style to that ubiquitous — yet, rarely tapped — canvas, the playing card. The designs have been produced as giclee prints, signed and numbered by the artists, and are limited to 10 prints of each design. Real-size decks of cards have also been produced for sale. The Suit Up crew is a close-knit group of predominantly Melbourne-based artists who are passionate about Australia’s ‘low-brow’ art scene, which is more collaborative and less ego-driven than much of the the high-brow art world. The exhibition runs between February 13 and 25.

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.

WE'RE LISTENING TO

Macedônian brutal doom outfit Potop, whose name means ‘flood’ in Polish, is one of the most anguished, despairing, dirty, hateful bands of the genre since Burning Witch. Their down-tuned, down-tempo sludge is virulently anti-life, oozing out of the speakers like poison gas. Read more

WE'RE WEARING

Ninety percent of the time, you can pick a Scandinavian brand from a metric mile away, which is not necessarily a bad thing considering that the Scands have such a refined, clean approach to thinking about clothes. Read more