WE'RE SUPPORTING

I’m so digging the work of Copenhagen illustrator Michael Rytz, with his spontaneous, sketchbook-like work. Characters, like vintage cartoons, parade around, fleshed out through glorious textures and scribbles punctuated with the occasional clean, bold, illustrator-like element for contrast that hits the spot.

WE'RE THINKING

Though artistic genres from the last couple centuries inform Marc Burckhardt’s style, he is not a period fetishist. The playful way in which he incorporates visual jokes and modern themes has a simplicity to it, making each of his images self-contained and elegant. Read more

This interview with James Lavelle gives a fascinating window into the making of the latest UNKLE opus, End Titles, Stories for Film.

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

On the roof of Bangkok’s Banyan Tree Hotel is a dining experience like no other. The Vertigo Bar sits sixty one floors up, and serves delicious gourmet meals and cocktails. These are expensive by Thai standards, but cheap enough for shoestring travellers to indulge in now and then (a cocktail costs around AUD$12). I’ve spent hour after hour in the bar, drinking and smoking and taking in the amazing view. Most nights at Vertigo end the same, with fast-moving storm clouds rolling in without fail at about eleven pm. While wait staff scurry to move tables, and drunken diners navigate the steep stairs down to the safety of the hotel, the more hardy can sit and watch the clouds race closer and closer towards the building, soaking in both the atmosphere and the rainwater until the lightning gets too close for comfort.

WE'RE READING

DM Stith recently signed to Asthmatic Kitty, the same label as Sufjan Stevens, and has a new EP out this week titled Curtain Speech, featuring contributions from Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond), Rafter, Sebastian Krueger and the string quartet Osso. Think Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear meets Arthur Russell. We got the rundown from him on his eight favourite songs right now and he kicked off with The Shangri-Las’ Out In The Streets [listen below]: ’1:22 – 1:43 is a miracle. I’ve never been so obsessed with twenty seconds of high-hat and high school girl shrieks: it’s a raging teenage fantasy that all the composition notebooks in all the lockers of 1965 couldn’t write better. That the singers have managed to preserve their naivety perfectly in this three minute song may be the reason I feel recording pop music is worthwhile’. Read the rest of DM Stith’s Secret Playlist.

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WE'RE LISTENING TO

I’ve yet to find out what they put in the water in Germany that generates such a consistently rich stream of good electronica. Carrying the torch at the moment is Hendrik Weber, aka Pantha du Prince, whose early 2007 release, This Bliss, landed on my doormat with a deep bass-kick and hasn’t left my iPod since. Read more

WE'RE WEARING

With the recent financial qualms, a moment of reflection takes over as we begin to wonder how we all became so out of touch with reality. Somehow Luxury lost its way and mistook itself for decadence, joining the Bling-Bling parade and gravitating towards the streets of self-indulgence. Yet, the true essence of Luxury, as the divine Coco Chanel states ‘is not in the richness and ornateness, but in the absence of vulgarity’. Bravo, I say! Read more