Lost AT E Minor

WE'RE THINKING

We’ve been featuring some interesting guest contributors on Lost At E Minor over the past six months. Included among them are Angus Andrews, from The Liars, Ben Lee (who wrote about his festish for vintage Rolexes, amongst other things), Brendan Canning from Broken Social Scene, designer Deanne Cheuk, artist Sam Weber, singer-songwriter Laura Veirs (who brought Juana Molina to our attention), and Tegan from Tegan and Sara.

WE'RE LISTENING TO

If you ever happen to find yourself riding across the mid-west on horseback with an iPod jangling about in your holster, be sure to let Calexico soundtrack the experience. They’re cleverly fusing a range of genres, mixing some good old country with US indie, a bit of jazz and even, in 2003’s Feast of Wire, some smatterings of electronica. Lead singer Joey Burns gives a healthy amount of cowboy twang and the soaring orchestral background and sweet country guitar licks add a real atmosphere to the music.

Listen to the Calexico song, Convict Pool.

Australian group Pivot have recently signed with the mighty Warp label and — even better (well, for us anyway) — have written a fun Secret Playlist for us. You can see where the many disparate influences have seeped into their latest recording, the beautiful and colourful, O Soundtrack My Heart.

WE'RE READING

We have a bunch of new playlists up on our sister site, My Secret Playlist, a music discovery website and weekly email publication in which we invite our favourite bands and musicians to give us the rundown on their eight favourite songs right now. Over the past few weeks, acts such as The B52s, Team Genius, Pivot, Jukebox the Ghost, Moby, Katy Perry, and the Dandy Warhols, among many others, have written about the music that inspires them. To sign-up to receive the weekly My Secret Playlist publication, just enter your email address into the website’s subscription box.

WE'RE SUPPORTING

Brooklyn-based artist, Katie Yamasaki, did a Bachelors of Arts degree at Earlham College and a Masters of Fine Arts degree in Illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She now ‘teaches 4th-8th grade art at Ballet Tech, The New York City Public School for Dance, and shares a studio with fellow illustrators and friends John Hendrix, Marcos Chin, and Yuko Shimizu’.

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

I just came back from teaching a week-long illustration workshop in Venice, Italy. After finish up the class each evening, the students and I often ran to our favourite gelateria in town, Nico. Read more

WE'RE WEARING

The new Melbourne-based football themed t-shirt collection — GFUNK&BATZ — is a lot of fun. Driven by the designers’ passion for the game, the shirts will have you leaping around like Kewell or Beckham (if that’s what you want) in no time. Read more