(via branduponthebrain)

(via branduponthebrain)

“Winter Blues”, New Yorker cover, issue of 30 Jan 2012

Here’s one I quite like.

“One senior and one undead” — New Yorker cartoon (issue of 30 Jan 2012)

More from that issue => HERE

[Zombie humour ftw]

Today and Tomorrow:

Still Life by Scott Garner is an interactive gallery piece that takes traditional still life painting into the fourth dimension with a motion-sensitive frame on a rotating mount.

Awesome proof that still life doesn’t have to make for dull art. Choosing Ratatat for the vid’s soundtrack doesn’t hurt either. 

Fixers - Iron Deer Dream

Guardian’s new music:

Let’s start by dealing with the elephant in the room. The opening 30 seconds of “Iron Deer Dream” by Oxford quintet Fixers brings to mind Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion, featuring synth washes, multi-track harmonies and non-sensical lyrics. Still, it’s not a bad place to start and the rest of the song – the latest taster of their forthcoming debut album, We’ll Be the Moon – gallops along nicely, the nonsense chorus becoming a big singalong by the end. For the video – premiered here exclusively – the band are charged with helping an elderly gentleman who seems to have a terrible case of Rice Krispie-itis. So they fly him to a deserted island where he then grows vegetables under his armpits, but after eating some magic jam he is miraculously cured.

“Iron Deer Dream” is due on 12 March. We’ll Be the Moon will follow on 14 May.

inevitablefragments:

Benjamin A. Vierling - Portrait of Joanna Newsom (2006)

oil and egg tempera on panel

(via branduponthebrain)

Yoyogi Village is a pocket of zen and tranquility not easy to find among the surrounding urban chaos, even with your phone’s GPS on and a Tokoyite to lead the way.

The center piece of the complex is a phenomenal vertical garden inside the restaurant “Code Kurkku”.

The Coolist:

Tokyo is a city electric and a jungle concrete, a massive metropolis on the forefront of modern technology. The words “retreat”, “sanctuary” and “natural” aren’t often used to describe Tokyo, but they aptly define the new Yoyogi Village in the Shibuya ward. Yoyogi Village is a small commercial development that is designed as a natural escape from the neon bustle of Tokyo. It features bars, restaurants, art galleries, spas and retail split between the “village section” and the “container section”, the latter of which comprises a series of upcycled shipping containers.The design of the village is the work of the Wonderwall architecture group, landscape designer Seijun Nishihata and others. Nishihata installed a massive, living green wall in the lounge of Code Kurkku, a restaurant and bar in the village. Code Kurkku’s white walls, natural wood floors and ceilings recall the vintage, rural architecture of Japan, and Nishihata’s green wall presents a lush forest backdrop. It’s a refreshing change of pace from the lightning-speed world around it, one that those in the Shibuya ward will surely cherish. Since we’re a thousands of miles away, a stroll through the pictures will have to suffice for us… [via inhabitat and KNSTRCT]

N.B: contrary to what you might thing, Tokyo has lots of “urban retreats” so you never never feel overwhelmed and clostrophobic.

(Photographs: Wonderwall Studio)

Dan Deacon - Of the Mountains

Dan Deacon @ Shibuya O-Nest, Tokyo, 25 Jan 2012

Deacon is a crazy multi-tasker: he can simultaneously produce great sound out of his shambolic tech-gear, sing (kinda), work his own light effects and direct the crowd into fun choreographed games. Wild and entertaining. Great crowd too. 

Highlights: the sing-along on “Silence like the wind overtakes me” + the audience performing an interpretive tribal dance led by Deacon’s merch girl on “Of the mountains”. 

nmemagazine:

Check out the new Arctic Monkeys video, ‘You And I’, featuring fellow Sheffield resident Richard Hawley

bbook:

Then he ran. He never looked back at the fire. He just ran. He ran until the sun came up, then he couldn’t run any further. And when the sun went down, he ran again. For five days he ran like this…until every sign of man had disappeared.

“I’ll have the dressing on the side in a handblown glass container on a bamboo cloth with a sprig of something delicate placed gently nearby” — New Yorker cartoon (issue of 23 Jan 2012)

More from that issue => HERE

— New Yorker cartoon (issue of 23 Jan 2012)

More from that issue => HERE

(via newyorker)