Happy Chinese New Year everybody! Hopefully you celebrated with a load of fireworks and copious helpings of steamed buns. Celebrate some more if you’re in Auckland - the annual Lantern Festival is on in Albert Park next weekend. It’s always magical.
As you all know it’s now the year of the Tiger. Raowr!
In the case that we (hello, me), have become complacent in the last 6 weeks with our goals, the lovely Tiger has given us a fresh start, yippee! It’s a chance to reenergize and remember what you want to do this year. Whether or not le tigre is the animal of your birth year, can you please do me a favour? That is, remember it is YOUR year. Get out there and take it all on, even if it mean getting up every morning and playing Eye Of The Tiger by Survivor really really loudly to pump some energy into your system before skipping off to school or work.
Risin’ up, straight to the top
Have the guts, got the glory
Went the distance, now I’m not gonna stop
Just a man and his will to survive
It’s the eye of the tiger, it’s the cream of the fight
Risin’ up to the challenge of our rival
And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night
And he’s watchin’ us all in the eye of the tiger.
Currently devouring Jack Kerouac’s On The Road… on the bus, in the studio, in bed, when I should have been editing a film, eating toast. Consuming.
This week I finally picked up a collage from the framers. It’s called ‘Haircut’ and it’s by my very talented friend Jonas Besson. It’s now hanging above my desk. Good day for a trim!
I recieved an education in the best Japanese made fake eyelashes money can buy.
Happiness is an afternoon wine after a day of hard work on the balcony of your favourite bar, a summer breeze tickling your face.
A sign for the Harold Pinter play currently being put on in Auckland. One can’t even buy tickets on the black market. The sign and a ‘Honey Bear’ cocktail placated me.
These are a few of the recently released albums that have been punctuating my days of late. Design observation: it’s funny how many of them (and other new releases) feature head shots… of sorts. The profile pic is back.
Hot Chip: One Life Stand. My favourite electro-pop band from London has finally released a fourth album! A fun fact I recently learnt – the boys from Hot Chip went to the same school in Wandsworth that produced Burial and newcomers The Xx. Favourite songs thus far include Thieves In The Night, Alley Cats and the title track One Life Stand. Pleasingly the vocal quality has drastically improved since the days of Over and Over in 2006. Not that they were bad then, but Alexis and Joe now seem to have a lot more control over their chords.
Warpaint: Exquisite Corpse. I do love an all girl experimental-art-rock band! Hailing from Los Angeles, Warpaint ticks most of these boxes; with Jenny Lindberg on bass and vocals, Emily Kokal on vocals and guitar, Theresa Wayman rocking the vocals, guitar and keys, and Josh “Jocelyn” Klinghoffer on drums. There’s only 5 songs on the Exquisite Corpse EP and they are all stellar, but my favourite isBillie Holiday. It’s a sweet, quiet song and the name of our heroine is chanted letter by letter.
Vampire Weekend: Contra. NYMag cleverly suggested “Now your little cousins may very well be rocking “Horchata” while they’re tacking up their Taylor Lautner posters” – indeed Vampire Weekend are doing well for themselves in the ‘mainstream’. They deserve it. Contra is a slick album, with more calypso and sharper lyrics. My picks: Horchata, Cousins and CaliforniaEnglish: “Blasted from a disconnected light switch / Through the condo that they’ll never finish
Bounced across a Saudi satellite dish / And through your brain to California English”.
Dead Man’s Bones: Dead Man’s Bones. We know Ryan Gosling is a hot piece. Turns out he is an accomplished musician as well. With his best friend Zach Shields, they have released a concept album under the name Dead Man’s Bones. The single Pa-Pa-Power seems to be permanently playing in my house. Often I see children’s choirs as gimmicky but on this record, it really works with the spooky pseudo “Halloween soundtrack” theme.
Charlotte Gainsbourg: IRM. IRMis Charlotte’s third studio album. The daughter of Serge and Jane Birkin released her first album in 1986 and the second in 2006 – a long time between records. 2010’s IRM was produced by Beck, and he duets on a couple of songs, including the lovely Heaven Can Wait. My other favourites are Master’s Hands and Time Of The Assassins – but the whole album is rather nice – you can imagine it as the soundtrack to a bildungsroman film set in the outskirts of Paris shot in cracked, flaking 16mm. Or something.
Yeasayer: Odd Blood.Yeasayer’s sophomore offering is a gem. Could this be another Merriweather Post Pavilion – the best album of the year, released at the first breath of the calendar? ALL THE SONGS ARE BRILLIANT. I’m looking forward to sampling a few remixes – so far enjoying Ambling Alp (The Very Best ‘Mulomo’ Remix).
What have you guys been cranking on the stereo of late? Feed me new noises please!
I’ve found true love just in time for Valentine’s Day. LOOK AT THE MAJESTY. Thanks so much for reading Code For Something. I love you, have a wonderful weekend.
Burning question: Who do you want to be when you grow up? Fever Ray, Shirley Manson and the Pussy Cat Dolls all have uh, different dreams. I think when I grow up I totally want to writhe on some scaffolding, wearing combat boots. Possibly looking like Fever Ray.
I am really excited by Stafford Wilson’s art – he’s taken op-shop bargain paintings and added to them – creating surreal futuristic scenes. Excellent concept. I’d love to hang something like ‘Venice’ above my desk.
Great podcast on 95bfm: Annabel Youens, digital strategist for Musichype, discusses the concepts behind starting such a multi-faced musical project, which prompted The Mint Chicks to ditch Warner for their next release, “Bad Buzz”.
Look at those stunning eyes! Gaggle are flipping great, and this is their first video – I Hear Flies:
Cool and fool from Something Changed. Yes, yes, yes.
And finally (but not least) my friend Pete is serialising/blogging a novel. A blovel? No matter, A Fucking Awful Weekend is off to a good start. Can’t wait to read more; and in an unprecedented deal he is publishing another chapter tonight in return for this plug. Better catch up with the story now.
A couple of shots from a video shoot I worked on (styling and assisting) with this gorgeous girl! Can’t wait to see everything minus the green screen of death, and share the finished product.
Karen Walker has just released a new fistful of sunnies under her Karen Walker Eyewear range. The ‘Sun Gods’ collection builds on previous shapes (retaining the popular circular frames) and introduce a pretty coral colour. The look-book is golden too, a Ra inspired series shot by Derek Kettela, who is behind her previous years’ advertising too.
It’s the fashion equivalent of cuddling up to a SAD lamp! I just feel so joyful looking at these pictures.
Nicolas Henry is a filmmaker, photographer and artist. Usually based in Paris/Marseilles, he is currently working on a major photographic series – Les Cabanes de nos Grands Parents. This has seen him traverse the world from Marrakech to Moscow, meeting and engaging with all sorts of grandparents.
Henry travels to the home of each of his subjects (he says a friendship is sealed when you visit a home) and invites them to make a hut or play-space with their personal belongings. Inspired by their childhoods, the resulting huts are intimate glimpses into their strikingly rich and diverse lives.
Delightfully, Henry had the good fortune to meet and photograph my wonderful grandmother in New Zealand. As I understand it they met while she was volunteering at the local visitors centre of her seaside village.
Here she is in her much beloved but wild sub-tropical garden – click for a larger view. The picture above Betty’s head is one of her crocheted woolen blankets and a portrait of her as a young girl. Note the teaspoon collection in the back! I love this photograph so much.
Another summer, another Waitangi Day. Here in New Zealand we annually celebrate the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840. Most of us take a holiday, go to the beach, some people drive to Waitangi. I spent my weekend swimming, snorkeling, walking, visiting friends and drinking coffee.
We also celebrated by having a hangi at my flat on Sunday night. We live in the city, so it was non-traditional of course – no pit-digging and playing with stones in the back yard. Rather we used a contraption that steams the food baskets in metal keg, heated by a burner attached to a gas cylinder.
Still, the warm feelings of sharing with your whanau are present; and all the food is prepared the same way my grandmother does it, carefully wrapping everything in cabbage leaves. We even added manuka chips to get that smoke-on-the-tip-of-your-tongue taste.
Perfection. I hope you had a lovely weekend too, no matter where in the world you may have been.
Daniel Johnston’s recent outing at the fantastic Laneway festival reminded me of a little something I saw at the end of last year.
It’s hard to believe at first, but in our iPhone obsessed world there is even an app dedicated to the music and art of Johnston. It’s entitled, ‘Hi, How Are You‘; and suprisingly is not just a vanity project, but a well thought out puzzle game that is pretty fun to play!
Hi, How Are You the game features classic Johnston characters like Joe Boxer and Jeremiah the Innocent; the stalk-eyed-froggy-creature who is famously depicted on a mural in Austin, Texas, Johnston’s adopted home. The game focuses on a couple of motifs common to Johnston’s work – fighting the evils of the outside world, and searching for the girl of his dreams through that quagmire.
The game itself was created by two Austin based developers and costs around US$0.99 (or a more splashy NZ$4.50) – it’s an affordable, fun experience for any technologically endowed Daniel Johnston fan.
Dinner with Murakami is a 2007 documentary directed by Yan Ting Yuen about the life and work of legendary Japanese author Haruki Murakami.
“Largely structured round Murakami’s enigmatic absence, the film dramatizes Murakami’s impact on his readers and takes the camera into the hinterland to determine what is “Murakamian” in the Japanese landscape. The resulting film has a beautiful sense of form and poetic structure.” [Indie Flick Pick]
In the film everybody from groupies who hang outside Murakami’s old jazz club to schoolchildren, share their piece on the publicity shy writer. Norwegian Wood has been likened to the Nippon equivalent of J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye; so it is unsurprising most Japanese people have a story to tell about their relationship with Murakami’s work.
Weary legs. Who hasn’t wished for somewhere better to perch while wasting away the hours at a the airport, bus stop or train station? Well Dutch designers Nieuwe Heren (the New Gents) took 4 suitcases, added a dash of ingenuity and some sweet styling to create the Suited Case.
A comfortable solution for the times when you’re tempted to sit on your suitcase (I broke my dear travel bag last year by doing just that). If I wasn’t always in transit by myself I’d snap the set up! Perhaps their next move can be the solo traveller’s armchair.
Would you use something similar? Do you have any ingenious temporary seating solution that you use on the road?
Australian & New Zealand friends -Yen Magazine and their surfy mates at Rip Curl are running a fashion blogger competition. Dip your toes in the frothy sea of fashion power scribing.
This worked, I tried it! “Nearly-instant mood lifter: throw 5 cinnamon sticks & some orange peel in a pot. Add lots of water. Bring to a boil. Simmer. You’re welcome.” – Emma Alvarez Gibson.
Weary legs. Who hasn’t wished for somewhere better to perch while wasting away the hours at a the airport, bus stop or train station? Well Dutch designers 
