Jesse Leroy Smith

According to Thao Nguyen, she has two talents: her first is she has a knack for beat-boxing and humming at the same time, and her second, and in her opinion finest, is that she had a capacity to watch so much TV as a kid, she’s convinced her personality is made up of several different sitcom characters. The 23 year Virginia-bred songwriter, is forgetting her unique voice, clever lyrics, skilful guitar plucking and her dry sense of humour. Sounding like Cat Power in cowboy boots,  with her perky guitar, bluegrass tinged banjo, and uninhibited vulnerability, Thao manages that rare combination of songs that are exuberantly happy yet on closer inspection tinged with sadness. With her brilliantly named band The Get Down Stay Down in tow and her cheeky humour lightening the gravity of her words, we're eagerly awaiting her debut album- out early next year.

         
Six swarthy young ladies with long dark locks are tinkering and attempting to organise themselves on a stage, which is almost too petite to carry their armoury of gear as well as six (usually seven) moody sirens.
London label Trial and Error have once again brought us some lovely left field sonic offerings, this time from across the pond. The clan of women that call themselves Effi Briest (taken from a 19thC German novel about a young woman ostracised from society for doin’ the dirty on her hubby) hail from Brooklyn, Noo Yoik. They make shimmering kaleidoscopic songs that are as comfortably punk as psychedelic, and lead warbler Kelsey has a voice that comes cauterwauling, spiky and strong like Grace Slick or Ari Up (she’s tired of the comparisons but, you know, she really does sound like them).
If cultish on appearances, with their rattley instruments, dark clothing and pagan-esque rope insignia’s, then live their chanting and spectral psych journeys continue the theme.
Though vocals suffered at the hands of dodgy sound, and a couple of them looked fairly uncomfortable on stage (perhaps due to the fact they couldn’t wiggle their toe without knocking something over), these women and their intoxicating sounds, left a lasting impression.

Tangled within the white corridors of King’s College in London is a Materials Library, a library for doing rather than reading. Here are shelves and drawers filled with interesting things – from aerogel, the lightest solid in the world, to prosthetic breasts.

Run by an artist and scientist, the Materials Library is somewhere between a gallery and a laboratory. They use scientific equipment like microscopes and Bunsen burners to carry out strange experiments like testing to see what ‘Art’ is made of for the Tate Modern including testing what paintings sound like and whether Piero Manzoni's Can of Shit really is what it says on the can. Their upcoming workshop, presided over by a butcher, surgeon and flesh artist from Madame Tussauds, probes the materiality of human flesh .

WORDS BY KATE KILALEA

             
Try not drool on your keyboard as you survey the stunning Autumn Winter collection from London-based Australian lass Katherine Pont's ladies clothing label Mine. With gorgeous greys, plums and rusty hues it tells the story of a 'Damsel In This Dress', a girl whose long tangled locks get swept by salty waves as she rides her parasol across the sea top. Brimming with whimsy and interchangeable layers, stay tuned for Spring Summer oh 8, entitled "I Gave my Love a Papercut". The fairy tale continues with the story of a paper doll, who wakes from her sketch pad and climbs into the dress up box that is Mine. Kewp as pie and sweet as sugar plums!
Available now at Dobry Den Sydney amongst others.

Curvy contributor Paula Castro exhibits her dark and detailed drawings this week in a Nike collective show at Centro Cultural Recoleta Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Checked Vans shoes, fluo striped socks and manga-styled hair are the uniform for a new French teenager species : the Tecktonik dancer. Started a bit more than a year ago in a club in the Parisian suburb, La Tecktonik has spread everywhere thanks to videos on YouTube. Teams of wild dislocated kids are now taking by storm streets, subways, and commercial centres dancing like mad puppets under the spell of a stoned electro God in skinny pants. This cultural movement appears to be the suburban alternative to Parisian foppish rocker kids. It goes fast with an intriguing choreography of mimed gestures such as knotting a tie or combing hair on techno music beats. Weird. Meanwhile, old people in their early-20s are sneering, dubious.

WORDS BY PAULINE AUZOU