Animator, brand buff and design devotee Giuseppe Demaio has got so many projects on the go it makes the rest of us look like we're swinging in hammocks. Shortly winging his way to Paris for the Rock en Seine music festival where he'll assemble an installation at Levi EU's behest, he'll also be launching the tee shirt range he's designed for said label.
Add to that a trip to South America and impending fly by night meetings with the crème of Europe's brand creatives (an undisclosed global giant) and you¹'e only getting a whiff of what this wunderkind's got cooking.

Glitter smattered, with Ukulele in hand, musical wunderkind
Patrick Wolf finally made his first sojourn to Australia after 6 years of prodigal song-smithing.
With a beatific mix of old albums and new material from The Magic Position, Wolf brought whoops of delight and welling eyes. Humble, humorous and ridiculously talented, the cherubic Wolf, resplendent in Austro-Hungarian inspired attire with a sideways burst of flame for hair, moved from raging piano to gently plucked viola, treating us to the bare bones of his craft. With anecdotes of East London gypsy diasporas and drag queen advice for 13 years olds, his promise to return in October brought cries of sheer joy. Only 60 something sleeps!

Many would say 60,000 “flying rats”, or pigeons, as they’re more commonly known, swooping and scavenging around Melbourne’s laneways and lunch spots was more than enough. But as winter really hits, our feathery population has increased by a further 200 immigrants. Thanks to artist Omega Goodwin and his Pigeons of Melbourne project, a host of pink fibreglass pigeons have come to roost on the city trees with the aim of inspiring some optimism in us sombre Melburnians. "In America, some prisons paint the cells pink to make the inmates happier and I've heard of gridiron teams painting their changing rooms pink to relax opposition players before games.” Goodwin explains, “I'm hoping the pink pigeons will have the same effect."

I'm glad for Melbourne winter's enforced house arrest, for the closing dark that stirs one's imagination. It really encourages bouts of serious, fireside introspection. Yet while the black windows act as blank canvases for your dreams, nothing stirs the soul quite like a good soundtrack. Perfectly mesmerising, Dior Homme darlings These New Puritans have a way of making the outside world seem splendidly redundant. Replete with their very own 13-minute indie-Homeric saga, the enfant terribles' "band I wish I was part of" art-rock is the rug I intend to be wrapped in.

With his band Betchadupa on ice, the bearded Liam Finn (yes of that Crowded House/Split Enz 'Finn' DNA), has finally emerged from the Albion capital, where he¹s been
laying down tracks like the Romans did roads.
Showing off an erudite quality that belied his age, his recent show at Melbourne¹s Toff In The Town sure was a lesson in immediacy and charisma. With beat
perfect, frenzied drum solos (a flying drumstick narrowly missed my eye),
quicksilver guitar licks, even Jack White would've been impressed by the way he held it all together.
Check out his amazing new video set in Bath's Roman aqueducts