This is a film I produced on Brisbane’s LoveLove Studio and one of its co-founders, Matt Johnson. As an artist, Matt is one of the most engaging and inspiring people I’ve met: his love of art and all things good is refreshing. Another co-founder/artist you’ll run into at LoveLove is Andy Harwood: he too is pretty damn cool. You can be expecting some dangerously good artsy happenings to be going on in the studio in up coming months.

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I made this short fan video for Bon Iver’s new single Holocene while road tripping with my little brother on the South Island of New Zealand this winter.

Having trouble finding what you’re after in the dating world? Brisbane girl Courtney Beck is, so she decided to harness the power of the web and social media to find herself a girl. And so the Tumblr Blog, Reasons to Date Courtney Beck, was born: ‘Lipsticks, femmes, straight girls, bi girls, I know what sort of women I like, but where are they in Brisbane? Reasons to Date Courtney Beck is my way of trying to find them, and date them. Who am I? I’m Courtney, 29, single for a year and a half, and my friends think it’s time i started bringing some girls to dinner’.

Courtney, one of our contributors, is documenting her journey on-line for all of us to experience, and all you’ve got to do to take part (other than being female) is submit a photo and why you think you and Courtney would hit it off on a date. Courtney is not limiting her search to her home town. With planes, buses and Skype, she believes that distance will not limit her search for the right girl.

Breeder, a motion graphics and animation studio in Brisbane, have created a short animation called Rising, which they hope will act as a powerful reminder for people to donate to the Red Cross Japan disaster appeal.

You’ve heard of a bird on a wire, right? New art entitled Here To Ear (v.13) 2010, by French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, is currently installed at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. The installation is both intensely seductive and aesthetically beautiful, whilst providing a fabulous re-use for thousands of wire coat hangers.

It works like this: right before your eyes, dozens of tiny finches (each a work of art in its own right) alight on coat hangers that hang in pods from the gallery ceiling. The movement of each bird triggers a sound. By capturing the movement of the finches and letting these random notes mingle with the birds’ own singing, Boursier-Mougenot has given us a great privilege, allowing us to briefly become part of their natural world.

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Drew Boyd is a Brisbane-based table artist, with creations that are the answer to those interior designers’ ‘stuck for ideas’ moments.

Plenty of fashion-PR-spam floods my inbox as we transcend into a new wardrobe season, but this week one Look Book caught my eye. New kid on the block streetwear label, One Hundred, launched this week in Brisbane with the mantra that the humble t-shirt should become an individualistic canvas.

I had stylist-envy over the fashion imagery for their first volume, The End Is Near, mainly because their concept was so simple yet clever — featuring gold spray-painted keyboards, skateboards, beer bottles and skulls as shimmering props throughout. Each design is produced in limited edition runs of 100 (hence the name) and every tee comes gift boxed and hand-numbered, making every piece a wearable collectible.

Karl Kwasny, also known as Monaux, has just embarked on a rather ambitious digital art book project - he’ll be publishing one illustration per week for two years. It’ll be one playful book when he’s done; you might recognise the Australian illustrator’s style from some recently released Insight51 and Mooks tees.

Based in Brisbane, Black Milk create very unique printed leggings, with artwork inspired by everything from Hokusai and Space Invaders, to pulp romance comics and Gerard de Lairesse!

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Forget everything you know about death metal. Forget there’s even a genre called death metal. Brisbane-based quintet Portal just made it completely irrelevant with their latest album, Swarth. Their avalanche of muddy, raspy, blown-out noise sounds like a thousand Roman torture devices used at once in a cave during an earthquake — sawing, crunching, growling, clanging, and evoking pretty much every bad thought you’ve ever had, every moment of agony. No clear riffs. No blast beats. Just unbridled, yet murderously and coldly precise mayhem. These guys are not to be messed with. There is no more bar to be set. It’s over. It’s done.

I love the subtle acoustic finger-picking which weaves delicately into the wistful storytelling lyrics on the track, Brown Shoes, by Australian songwriter Ange Takats. In the tradition of local female-fronted acts such as Blanche DuBois and New Buffalo, Takats creates a sparse instrumental base, the repetitive guitar motif providing the perfect accompaniment to her elegant and timeless vocals. The artwork for her album — Aniseed Tea — on which this track appears is equally as impressive, the work of Brisbane artist, Danielle O’Brien.

Says Takats about O’Brien’s painting: ‘I’ve spent the past six months touring the album across Australia at various music festivals, including Woodford, and what I’ve noticed is that a large percentage of people who come to my festival gigs were initially enticed to the venue due to Danielle’s captivating artwork, which I featured on all my gig posters. This truly is a case of two up and coming artists supporting each other’s creative pursuits and it is working really well!’ [photo by Alain Bouvier]


Listen to her track, Brown Shoes.

An event where seventeen audience members sleep while a sound artist mixes music for their snoozes? It could only happen in Australia, right? And it is happening. At the Basement, Metro Arts, in Brisbane between September 23 and 26. Sleep While You Snooze should be an event where you can do anything but.

One Last Ounce is an experimental project exploring surreal imagery on an abstract cut. Says designer Jake Jelicich on his creative rationale: ‘I wanted to make thin, unique, comfortable tees that flowed and moved with the night. And I wanted the art to be dark, but sarcastic, mystical and inspiring, all in the same glance. These shirts are about long nights with good friends, being spontaneous, and letting the street lights guide you home’.

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The perfect balance between shiraz and parmesan is what came to mind when we met Nat Denning, a fashion retailer and Michael, a retail shopfitter, who have combined to create Fallow, one of Australia’s most stylish and unique boutiques. Stocking the best of Australian and international labels including Friedrich Gray, Claude Maus, St Augustine Academy and Chronicles of Never, this boutique is a gem, hidden behind an anonymous door in Brisbane’s uber-hip area, The Valley. Fallow oozes style with a harmony of antique furniture and modern fashion. It is a rare retail space that has a soul and is an inspiration to those who come across it.

Brisbane band, Yves Klein Blue, as energetic a mash-up of styles and textures as you’re ever going to find, have a new video out. And it’s good. Fun.

We love Australian band The Grates. So much so that we asked their frontwoman Patience to write an exclusive diary for Lost At E Minor over the next week, giving us the inside word on what the band are up to. We’ll run a new posting from it each day. This is her entry from last Saturday: ‘Today nothing happened. Actually, that’s not true. Today by sheer coincidence we all went and saw Batman independently. Awesome. So good. Don’t see Batman because you want to, see it because you need to. I don’t care what you think, just see it. Spend your money. At the very least it will give you something to debate with your friends about. This is something we do all the time at Grates headquarters. It’s a fun way to find out more about your friends and also solidify your own opinions. Who knows when your already explored opinion on weather it’s okay to kick a robot dog will be challenged. Trust me, something like this will one day happen to you and if you take part in regular debates with friends you will be more than able to cope with the situation’.

Listen to The Grates track, Sukkafish.

Hot damn. Canvas Magazine makes the Brisbane design community look seriously sexy. It not only focuses on beautiful, innovative, simply spectacular design and the talent behind it, but also explores issues that many presume that don’t really concern the very pretty design world. It is basically a really hot girl with brains. Now, who doesn’t want to check that out? This little biannual comes as a PDF and their fifth issue — The Black Issue — is out now for your free downloading pleasure.

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Wow! So whilst Australia is quickly becoming known for its Ed Banger-styled modular stream of music, there is a little known Brisbane artist called Yeo Choong who is just insanely talented. His music is full of summer fun and Kanye West-Phoenix influences. Take my word on it, this is going to be Australia’s next answer to Sam Sparro, Mika or even Jamie Lidel, and he is only 21 years-old.

We’re big fans of the funk-hip hop hybrid that characterises the sound of Brisbane group, Resin Dogs. They’ve been around for twelve years now, so we thought it was time we caught up with Dave Atkins — one half of the group — for a chat as they prepare to enter the studio to lay down tracks for a new album with Britney Spears’ producer. Wait a minute! Britney’s producer? Any chance she’ll pop in for a guest vocal? ‘Who knows what will happen. She does only live down the road. If the opportunity does arise I wouldn’t turn it down. Who knows what could come out of something like that — especially for two cats from Australia. Remember she did have people believing in her from the start and it’s all media hype. We all know by the time it gets to them the real story is long lost’.

With all the distractions around the studio in Malibu, any chance nothing will actually be recorded? ‘No chance at all. We are well prepped for it and have a sack full of new tunes to go and work on. There is no reason at all to waste an opportunity like this. The only distraction for us would be which studio to record in and what gear we use next’.

Tell us more about the new management deal for Resin Dogs in India. Is hip hop catching on over there? ‘The management deal is basically a three year deal we signed, which will see us tour India in October. The vibe is super positive and we have already been presented with two separate contracts: one for licensing and one for a three album recording deal. Hip hop is really taking off over there as it has been every where else in the world. I think the target audience is around 356 million, which is not bad, all things considered’.

I first set eyes on the Brisbane quartet Yves Klein Blue during a stint as a music scout for an online music initiative. It took four seconds of the gypsy-brewed Polka to pull on my hillbilly-lovin’ heartstrings, and three minutes later I was doing the two-step around the staff kitchen. Two weeks later, and Yves Klein Blue had been signed to Dew Process (home to Sarah Blasko, The Panics and The Grates.) No mean feat for a bunch of lanky Queenslanders, huh? Draw Attention To Themselves is a glorious, blasphemous, indulgent 80s infused pop/fuzz indie release that sees these leather jacket clad folk floating high above the indie vacuum of their musical contemporaries.