November 21, 2009 | New Art | by Gerry Mak |
My roommate is on a big Star Trek kick, re-watching the entire original series. I forgot how amazing and progressive and ahead-of-its-time it was. Actually, Star Trek: the Next Generation is also just as good. Hopefully Luke Butler will paint images from that series next or superimpose Captain Picard’s head on a nude body of Adonis. Read more
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November 21, 2009 | Video | 
by Gerry Mak |
This video for Nova Scotian gypsy folk-punk ensemble Tom Fun Orchestra is so effectively simple, matching the imagery to the song perfectly.
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November 21, 2009 | New Illustration | by Gerry Mak |
California-based artist Cheeming Boey makes super-wowza drawings on styrofoam coffee cups. He also keeps a web comic documenting his daily life that is at times hilarious at others rather touching. He reminds me of my friend Jon from high school. Read more
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November 21, 2009 | New Music | 
by Gerry Mak 
|
UK-based one-man-band Sieben has a new album out: As They Should Sound. Frontman Matt Howden builds songs with a loop pedal and a violin, which he uses for rhythm and melody. His sound is wonderfully sophisticated and cabalistic, with a particularly British sense of lyricism.
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November 20, 2009 | New Illustration | by Gerry Mak |
Anyone following my progress lately will notice that I am increasingly obsessed with masks, faces, textures, patterns, and repetition. Ryan Bubnis inspires some new ideas in me with his charming, richly-textured images. Read more
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November 19, 2009 | New Art | by Gerry Mak |
Joe Becker cites Baroque and Rococo painting as primary influences on his work, but the specters of more recent artists — Francis Bacon and Ivan Albright most prominently — also peer out from his grotesque images. Becker levels less-than-subtle indictments of man’s gluttony, violence, cruelty, and selfishness through his paintings, and while rarely using contemporary imagery, his commentary applies particularly to the current state of our civilization and the persistent human sense of entitlement. The wrath behind the snarling mouths and beneath the rot, decay, blood, and viscera of Becker’s pieces is almost tangible. Read more
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November 19, 2009 | New Music | by Gerry Mak |
As abstract as Paul Metzger’s hypnotic, thrumming improvisations are, they have recognizable influences from Middle Eastern, Chinese, and Japanese folk traditions with the Minneapolis-based musician seeming to summon an entire orchestra of ancient sounds and extinct instruments from his cymbal-rigged guitar and 24-string banjo, which he plucks, strums, bows, and taps.
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November 19, 2009 | Cool Websites | by Gerry Mak |
I never played Popopop 1, if there is one, but I can’t imagine a game much more simple than this. Just drop detonating balls next to balls of the same color to pop them. I feel like someone out there is getting way to much pleasure playing this game.
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November 19, 2009 | Video | by Gerry Mak |
Here’s a great animation by papercut artist Jen Stark, who we’ve mentioned a couple times here. It’s simple, yet beautifully hypnotic. She’s got a new website up, too.
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November 18, 2009 | New Art | by Gerry Mak |
Acrylic paints are made of plastic, but Emily Noelle Lambert achieves a fluid, organic, timeless feel with her large-scale paintings. The New York-based artist draws from her own psychic narratives to guide her brush, resulting in repeated imagery and shapes that take on weight with each iteration. Read more
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November 17, 2009 | New Illustration | by Gerry Mak |
Lisa Hanawalt’s drawings, with their humanoid animals showing off their flashy clothes and getting into crazy but distinctly human situations, seem to reflect the hyper-self-aware and petty culture of LA (and by extension the modern world), where she is based. The contrast she draws out is between the inherent nobility of animals and the absurd ugliness of humanity. Without the cartoonish humor of her drawings, Hanawalt’s paintings drive this point home more directly, indicting human behavior with sad, haunting images painted with muted colors. Read more
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November 17, 2009 | New Music | by Gerry Mak |
Named after a 1965 track by jazz pianist Stan Tracey rather than the album by King Krimson, Starless and Bible Black draw heavily from prog and jazz to create their spaced-out, stargazing sound that feels like novocaine to the brain stem. The band evokes dark forests and calling loons with Moog, guitar, and wood-nymph vocals, yet nothing threatening lurks in their woods, just glassy-eyed gnomes sipping cocktails.
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November 16, 2009 | Cool Websites | by Gerry Mak |
Let them sing it for you is a web widget that allows you to type in a sentence which is then played back using the same words culled from a library of popular songs. For instance if you type the word “I” it will play Chris Isaak singing that word in the song Wicked Games. If a word cannot be found, you can enter a song which contains the missing word and expand the library.
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November 16, 2009 | New Art | by Gerry Mak |
Mark Powell makes amazingly horrific little dioramas that remind me of old Tool videos and certain scenes in Pan’s Labyrinth. The grotesque little creatures in Powell’s world are monstrous versions of ourselves, going about their business eating, defecating, dissecting things, and playing music with their slimy, vein-y appendages, reminding us viewers that we are all just piles of pulsating meat. Read more
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November 16, 2009 | New Illustration | by Gerry Mak |
It’s windy, cold, and raining out. On days like this, looking at the intricate work of artists like Kristopher Ho feels like re-reading an old book that you loved as a kid but forgot about in your more cynical adulthood. Read more
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It must be in the jeans. The offspring of musical hedonists Richard and Linda Thompson, Teddy Thompson is one hell of a talented songwriter. Since his debut self-titled album came out in 2000, Thompson has been busy working on collaborative projects (including the ‘I’m Your Man’ tribute to Leonard Cohen) and solo recordings. His latest album, Up Front & Down Low, is a typically skittish and melodic collection of folk tinged melodrama. We spoke to him recently. Read more
While the Belizean Islands are some of the most beautiful and tranquil in the world, Belize City is one of those uninspiring places that most people travel in and out of very quickly. However, if you do find yourself stranded there, as I did, the city does have one redeeming attraction. Approximately twenty kilometres west of the centre, you’ll find the Belize Zoo — which the founders call the ‘best little zoo in the world’. It relies on charitable donations and has gained huge respect for housing native Belizean wildlife, such as jaguars, howler monkeys, tapirs, ocelots and toucans, in natural, tropical surroundings. If you’re there on the first Friday in April, you can even join hundreds of visitors in celebrating the birthday of the zoo’s resident tapir, April. The zoo has an awesome rasta-vibe, and the hand-written information posts are guaranteed to make you giggle.
Luxury goods have been getting a bad rap lately, and for good reason. Now I don’t know how you roll, but we don’t know many people who enjoy covering themselves head-to-toe in someone else’s initials. Yet for some reason designers think that diamante logos and monogrammed tapestries are the best mediums to communicate their brand. So it’s just as well LA based eyewear label Barton Perreira doesn’t play by the rules. Starting out less than a year ago, you won’t find their designs getting over-excited by insignia. Instead, these guys hand make their frames in Japan to rely on precision, fit and design. And that’s the way it should be.
Will Cotton would have to be about the most appropriately named artist around. On this cold, windswept New York evening, I just want to crawl inside one of his saccharine sweet compositions and nibble on one of the clouds. Read more
Print Liberation is an exceptional Philadelphia-based creative visual agency whose website showcases a variety of deisgn styles, each immaculately executed. Read more
In my next life, I want to sing like Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison. Oh, and grow a lush beard, so I can play in their band. Better start cracking.
Caught The Dust Dive the other night at Glasslands. They’re a bunch of hippies, but even I have to admit, they’re atmospheric live show – consisting of violin, gently strummed guitar, a few piano and sampler twinkles here and there, and sound samples from the found footage projected behind the band – is really powerful, like the warm rush of fond memories that hits you an instant before the mushroom cloud annihilates everything. Frontman Bryan Zimmerman even plays the musical saw, and you really can’t argue with that.
Listen to their track, Claws of Light.
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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
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.
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
Trip out with Sparrow Vs Sparrow’s retro illustrations, I love their aesthetic, color use and sense of humor. Read more
Our celebrity-saturated culture makes many of us irrationally hateful of the faces we see on our TV screens and magazine pages. Good thing there’s Celebrity PunchOut to let off some of that steam.
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
The Pasta and I print belongs to New York illustrator Fernanda Cohen’s personal series, Food Affair, which focuses on her passion for food and love. The archival pigment print is available for $75 through the Lost At E Minor store. Read more
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