ALEX BOX et RANKIN.

Alex Box is a visionary! Here are a few shots from her new book shot by Rankin. I feel so effing satisfied right this very moment. I feel a shoot coming on...

 

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IN MY ROOM.

ALBUM REVIEW!!!

I couldn't resist doing this pre-Top-Ten-Albums-of-2009 album review. I just have an itch that I need to scratch so bear with me.

Real Estate - Real Estate

This New Jersey quartet has fashioned this, there debut LP in an utterly transeasonal fashion. I'm listening to it as it shits itself with rain here in Melbourne and despite the summery song titles and the words following their myspace backslash ("let's rock the beach"), it is completely fitting. I've never loved a grey sky so much. In saying that, turn up the heat, and I could lay out in the scolding summer sun, drifting in and out of consciousness and I'll be damned if I should play anything else. This is all due to the band’s utter command of atmosphere—the way they’re able to conjure images of times past through their dreamy, evocative form. Each song contains in itself a world of its own. It's in this way that you could draw a comparison between Real Estate and Broken Social Scene. With trebly surf-guitar haze and a boomy undertow of drums with muted vocals, this is music that lives and dies on its own breeze. The chord progressions feel at once intuitive and also incidental.

After numerous spins (I'm up to my seventh consecutive...), you come to realise that the less immediate songs are ultimately just as gratifying as its standouts. “Green River” flows on carefree and with its strummy acoustic guitar providing a bed for the spangled six-string ruminations that ebb over it. Guitarist/vocalist Martin Courtney’s boyish request “[is] it all right if I walk next to you?” takes on added meaning underneath a blanket of fuzziness that suggests romantic uncertainty and yearning for yesterday as effortlessly as a zephyr. “Black Lake” bumbles along with a suppressed menace echoed in the bouncy bassline that carries the song, allowing it to breathe. Even the fully instrumental tracks, “Atlantic City” and “Let’s Rock the Beach”, act as effective palette cleansers. All aspects of songwriting and musicianship work in tandem here, cleverly suggesting endearing loose ends where there are none.

There is no doubt that this album is one if the most rewarding, satisfying and refreshing of this year thus far and I will be happy to rewrite this review as there is a sure-fire chance that you'll be seeing it again in my Top 10 Albums of 2009. [Watch this space]

CALIFONE - Funeral Singers [Dead Oceans]

All My Friends Are Funeral Singers companion film is about a psychic woman who lives alone in the woods in a house full of ghosts, until one day when the ghosts realize they’re trapped, and it is up to her to find a way to get them out of the house. When the woman hesitates, not wanting the ghosts to leave her, they start to destroy her life.

BECK AND CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG - Heaven Can Wait [Because]

LOFT.

Photography: Anna Mackenzie

http://www.somethingstartswithnothing.com/

Styling: Sunni Hart

This a shoot that we put together after I returned from New York. Inspired by said city and natural light. God bless Anna... she's a visionary!

(Apologies that the film borders have been cut off on the landscape shots.)

THE VEILS.

Finn Andrews is a walking Jesus. God bless them Kiwi's.

MOON RIVER.

This photo is by New York based photographer Ryan McGinely. The man is a visual genius. Check out more at http://www.ryanmcginley.com and be inspired.

DISCO, DISCO

A quote from The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chapter 3.

He smiled understandingly - much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quailty of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced - or seemed to face - the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistable prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

How it's done...

To have a horror of the bourgeois is bourgeois.

Porno brainstorm #3

Shadows filming themselves fucking.
People watching themselves as shadows fucking whilst they are fucking.
People watching themselves watching shadows fucking whilst they are fucking.

And so on...

Too much perfection is a mistake.

chris jordan, Seattle, 2008

Skull With Cigarette, 2007 [based on a painting by Van Gogh] – 98X72″
Depicts 200,000 packs of cigarettes, equal to the number of Americans who die from cigarette smoking every six months.

WHERE IS THE CAT, WHERE IS THE CRADLE?

El Topo.

Porno brainstorm #2

ROOTS ON UTES
Self-explanatory. Typically Australian made.

Porno brainstorm #1

A couple are trekking through the forest. Scantly clad, fit as fish. They hear a growl and quickly spin around to see a 300 pound black bear with it's arms raised and salivation dripping from it's pearlies, advancing on them. The man of the couple takes his double barrel shot gun and with two shots knocks the bear to it's demise. Taken with the strength and courage of her male companion, the leading lady throws herself upon him and with her legs wrapped around him he carries her towards the dying carcass of the bear. This is where the sex takes place. Right on top of the bear.

Dénouement is the end of your days.

6am Post Lit.

Images courtesy of Hobo at http://hobogestapo.com/

NOTHING COMPARES TO THIS.

This is ULTRA VIVID SCENE.
Just try and beat it... It's fucking Perfect.

Based on Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka.

From under this grey
I feel cold
Cold yet comforted
Comforted because I know that from
Under this heavy grey
Is an openness.
An openness that will expose
Me; my only possession
To the entire world
A world unbeknown to such a creature
A creature of comfort.

This heavy grey
This heavy and cold grey
It is a burden on my being
Bearing down on me below the surface
Amongst the anemone
Amongst the crustaceans
Haven't you heard of Personal Space?

My limbs are free
They flail haphazardly
Hopelessly
Straining to break the crystal surface above
Momentarily achieving such a feat but for what, huh?
I never asked for cold extremities
That's why I buy gloves.

I can raise my head
Only just slightly off the pillow of sand beneath it
It's a strain on my spine
It's a strain on my mind
Lay it back down
Down on the sand

(unfinished.)

Mother of the Earth.

I've gone down the river of sadness I've gone down the river of pain in the dark, under the wires. I hear them call my name

I gave you the key to the highway and the key to my motel door and I'm tired of leaving and leaving so, I won't come back no more

Oh, my dark-eyed friend I'm recalling you again soft voices that speak nothing speak nothing to the end

Oh, Mother of Earth the blind they call but, yet stay behind the wall their sadness grows like weeds upon my thighs and knees

Oh, Mother of Earth the wind is hot I tried my best, but I could not and my eyes fade from me
in this open country

BOOSH!!!

It's a curious thing.

Telepathe and Time Killing.

All Points West. 07.31.08

Top image by Adam Green, bottom by Sunni Hart.

An accurate depiction I would say.

Heels on fire!

THE PAINS OF BEING PURE AT HEART

I bought an 8mm hand held video camera from the Woodstock flea market the other week. This is some good inspiration.

DAISIES.

I'm going to write an album review of your life.

I want to keep you by my side
And then you're all around me

I want to take you by the hand
And then you're hands inside me

I feel your eyes all over me

I can't even look.

TWEED SUIT.

If I were a man
What would make me a song
Would it start in an outfit made of tweed
Could I say some words that would fade into the moon

Oh, oh, oh, a man made song.

Vonnegut.

If I were a younger man, I would write me a history of human stupidity I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and I would lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.

Babe, I'm gonna leave you.

BEST BEST BEST.

Text message conversation between Sunni and Jiss.

Approximately 12:45am on Wednesday 2nd July.

Sunni: I think those girls want to be witches... little do they know that we actually are witches... not some cheap imitation! By the way, I think I'm actually losing my mind. X

Jiss: In a good way? Me too though. When our husbands die, wanna live together and grow weed and tomatoes and dye our hair purple?

Sunni: I don't think I have a choice in the matter really. Although, I think I just put myself into rehab so not to prevent it (because, let's face it, that's impossible) but maybe to just avoid serious damage where I'll have to wear a Tenna Lady for the rest of my day. That'd suck!

Jiss: HA. That would never happen to you. Trashy as you may think you are, you really are not. You are too beautiful to ever be considered trashy. Shine on me crazy diamond.

Sunni: You just made me cry-laugh!

Jiss: Hahaha you just made me laugh/smile goofy.

"Great is the hand that holds dominion over man by a scribbled name."

PROSPECT PARK.

Brooklyn's Central Park. I LOVE IT VERY MUCH.