WE'RE SUPPORTING

The very funky Lindsey Kuhn designed Classic Poster Tin contains fifteen hand-printed handbills of posters, along with a six color signed and numbered four piece serigraph.

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

While I’m definitely not into the whole Lord of the Rings thing, I’m convinced Tolkien stole his inspiration from Göreme, in Turkey’s central Cappadocia region. After a mammoth volcanic eruption around 2,000 years ago, the landscape eroded to form a series of valleys, filled with peculiar, phallic-shaped tufts that the locals call ‘fairy chimneys’. Early Christians hollowed out the tufts and turned them into houses, churches and monasteries. These days, most of them are still in use and a few have been converted into cute hotels and hostels. If you’re not too claustrophobic, I’d highly recommend doing the hobbit thing and spending a night in one.

WE'RE WEARING

New York-based designer Ryan Sullivan’s shirts are printed in his studio in low runs. His latest batch works with geometric space on silky cotton poly blend shirts.

WE'RE THINKING

Multimedia art group Raqs Media Collective create striking installations dealing with their complex relationship to the changes happening in their home country of India. Their categorization based on national identity, however, would make them chafe, as they reject traditional notions of nation state. The main concept scrutinized by the group is modernity itself, and the so-called progress it embodies. Read more

WE'RE READING

DJ Spooky — That Subliminal Kid — is just about the deepest crate digger around, trawling the barrels of long-lost record stores for choice vinyl to spin in his wickedly dubby sets. He gave us the inside word last week on his eight favourite songs right now via our sister website, My Secret Playlist. This is what he had to say about Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s Panic in Babylon: ‘If there’s anything that the twenty-first century has told us, it’s that dub is the real original hip-hop. Lee Scratch even had to make it clear in 1965 by adding “Scratch” to his middle name. Take that, Grandmaster Flash!’ Read the rest of DJ Spooky’s Secret Playlist.

Oh man, my eyeballs feel like they’re dropping out of my head. This clip is pyschedelic in a way that platform shoes and polyester shoes could never be. The Faint are the shizz, and that’s the truth.

WE'RE LISTENING TO

The Kevin Ayers record Joy of a Toy from 1969 was released by Harvest Records and sits somewhere between Nick Drake and The Byrds. A record slightly ahead of its time, it was filled with enough interesting and clever arrangements and instrumentation to never bore. Girl on a Swing is my favorite tune for the tremolo guitar.