Filter news by category Features Fashion Music Art Film Culture Caprice Diaries Photography Issues Latest News - Page 106

Following on from Emily's post re: unexpected musical pairings, comes the above video of Rhianna performing "Umbrella" at last night's Brit awards. "So?", I hear you say, "doesn't Rhianna perform Umbrella at, like, every awards show?". Yes - but not with The Klaxons!

So a little thing called 'the internet' is stopping people purchasing music legally hey? What better way to persuade the public to buy your music than offering signed hard copies of your new CD? That’s what The Presets and Cut Copy have done with their latest albums due to be released in the coming weeks. The Presets’ “Apocalypso” and Cut Copy’s “In Ghost Colours” are both available over JB Hi-Fi online. So you’ll probably need to order two copies of each… one for the mantelpiece and one for actually taking out of the case and listening to. Loudly. 

Janet Jackson and Daft Punk go about as well together as cheese and pancakes. Yet a quick glance at your local Pancake Parlour menu will tell you that plenty of people actually prefer cheese (and potato, and ham, and pineapple…) on their pancakes just as Janet Jackson has sampled Daft Punk in her new song “So Much Betta”. So Janet follows the path led by Busta Rhymes, will.i.am and Kanye West by dropping beats from the French electro powerhouse in her latest single. And you thought Daft Punk fever left with Nevereverland! Which leads us to ask the question, who will be next to sample Daft Punk? Radiohead? Ying Yang Twins? The Veronicas? All three and more? Probably.

If your Myspace account is anything like mine, you tend to get a few friend requests from random bands/ musicians etc; while I totally appreciate what they are doing, a lot tend to be pretty ho-hum. Not the duo that requested my acquaintance this morning though. They are called Pretty Penny - two, as yet unsigned, little ladies who appear to split their time between Toronto and London and who make extremely pretty and lo-fi songs that seem inspired by all the things that inspire me also. Things like whimsy movies, airports, nostalgia, new cities, rain on windows, old things, found things etc. Also, when I say Lo-fi, I mean Lo-fi; the tracks on their Myspace pages are very fuzzy demos that sound closet-recorded. But that’s why I like them so much!

Recently opened Glebe hair salon, Stevie English, is possibly the most environmentally friendly hairdresser in the country. Owner Steve Corthine has been working with sustainability organisation, Climate Friendly, to measure his salon’s carbon footprint (a not insignificant 4.72 tonnes) and set about neutralising it through the purchase of renewable energy carbon credits from a wind farm in northern India. Although most businesses will find that neutralising their carbon offsets in an extremely simple change to make, Stevie English has taken an even greater stride toward sustainability by installing efficient instantaneous gas heating for warm water and using low-toxic O&H hair products, low-energy fluorescent lighting and recycled and ‘compacted’ furniture; as well as wallpaper printed on recycled paper sourced from sustainable forests. Hopefully more hair and beauty institutions will follow suit – then we can all feel a bit less guilty about treating ourselves!

This afternoon YEN's editor, Kristy, recieved a package - not at all that unusual, she gets a few of those. However this one happened to contain both the full box-set of Twin Peaks and a copy of it's movie prequal, Fire Walk With Me. I cannot hide my jealousy. A couple of days ago my flatmate introduced the house to David Lynch's tele-visual masterpiece and we've been living in a most short-tempered and edgy abode since - everyone fighting and scheming over who gets two watch disc three next, getting jumpy at the mere notion that someone should spoil episode five's cliff-hanger. We are simply that obsessed. For those who haven't seen it; google it, whoah is it F*****d up. February 24 is the day that The 'peaks fictional highschool sweetheart Laura Palmer is found dead - thus forming the elaborate plot of the series - so guess what I, my housemates and Kristy shall be doing come Sunday? Not seeing sunlight, thats for sure. We have a date with the DVD player.

I don't like Jennifer Lopez; I never have. Not only is her music crap as but there is just something about her - perhaps that self-absorbed, dive-lite aura that floats like a supernatural orb in all her photos - that turns my stomach. I thought it impossible to despise her even more until I read that she is being paid 6.5 million dollars to whore out her - as yet unborn - babies to a hag-rag. Now it's like the two celebrity commodities I abominate most; the full-time self-promoter, some-time "performer" sensibilities of Lopez and the spawn-sploitation industry, have combined just to make the world a much shittier place. But really, I am looking forward to the softly-lit spread and the inevitible, gushing sound-bite of "I have just become so much less selfish" because "the baby is just, like, this helpless little person!". A "helpless person" whose magical selflessness- rousing abilities are apparently no match for the kryptonite like glow of an open cheque-book. Seriously, 6.5 million? How much of that do you think "Jenny from the block" will give to charity? My guess is nada.