WE'RE SUPPORTING

If you’re a sucker for good strong figurative work with a flair for the unexpected, you’ll like the work of New York illustrator, Michael Camarra for sure. I’ve known Camarra since our days back at Pratt, when he still painted with a brush and a tube of paint. Now that Camarra has moved on up into the realm of digital painting, I’m amazed at how, incredibly, the digital paintings lose almost none of the raw spontaneity his traditional paintings possessed but instead introduce a somewhat cleaner edge overall, which lends itself to his cleaner graphic sensibilities. Read more

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

While Flushing is still the place to go for the best Chinese food in New York City, those for whom the hour-long subway ride on the 7 is simply out of the question on most nights can now get their mapo tofu fix right in Manhattan. While the masses queue out the door at Joe’s Shanghai across the street, Famous Sichuan offers real-deal Sichuanese food such as cold sliced beef tendon in chili sauce, braised fish fillet with napa cabbage and roasted chili, and the most delicious cumin lamb this side of the East River. Read more

WE'RE WEARING

Converse kicks off its hundredth anniversary with 1HUND(RED), a special artist series with proceeds going to the Global Fund. The project is a year-long release of shoes designed by notable artists, including Auckland-based illustrator, Dennis Juan Ma, whose shoe [above] is number twenty in the series.

WE'RE THINKING

Sure, President Obama is just as human as the rest of us, and there is a certain excessiveness to the extent to which he’s been idealized, but I’d rather have a President the world views as a secret agent ninja than one the world views as a bumbling, ignorant fool. Can you imagine an action figure like this one by Hong Kong-based DID Corporation made of Dubya? If they did make one, it’d probably be along the lines of Maxwell Smart.

WE'RE READING

Some might argue that the team behind People of Walmart are elitist snobs poking fun at the working masses, but is there really an economic rationale behind an ‘I Hate Queers’ t-shirt? Read more

Back in the day, when I was a skinny teenager on the great pedestal of life, I had a real obsession for the understated, low-fi, deliciously melodic and somewhat blurry sounds of the New Zealand Flying Nun bands. I would pool my meagre savings and canvas the local record shops, scouring the racks for the latest cassettes from The Bats, The Chills, The Clean, and, later, The Straitjacket Fits. Read more

WE'RE LISTENING TO

Lindstrom, the man who single-handedly coined the term ‘minimal space-disco’ (well, perhaps nudged in the right direction by Orbital et al), recently released a new, rather ambitious, album, Where You Go I Go Too. Weaving between ambient trance and breakbeat-flecked disco, the producer responsible for the mesmerizing reworking of that tune we all secretly love, Roxy Music’s Avalon, has produced a worthy follow-up to his 2006 album, ‘It’s A Feedility Affair’. This time, however, there’s only three tracks, ranging between 10 and 29 minutes in length, and the Eno/Ferry influence is thankfully clear to all.