Cover of a recent issue of Cut Magazine

This weekend, Villa Sonsbeek in The Netherlands hosts O.K. Festival: 3 Days of Magazines, an event curated by O.K Parking.  The weekend promises workshops, lectures, more than 100 independent magazines and a dance party at the event’s conclusion. The festival’s mission statement feels like coming home: “Under the title ‘Welcome Magazines,’ O.K. Festival presents the energy and the visual explosion of strange, beautiful and original magazines. One by one they present an answer to the uniformity of the mass media. The printed media are falling victim to increasingly strict formats. Sales figures reign. In the gaping hole they leave behind the independent magazine manifests itself. Everything that is excluded by the mainstream media finds its place here.”

Panels include “On the Value of Independent Magazine Culture,” “What Drives Magazine Makers?” “Editor vs. Designer,” “Ten Moments in Magazine History”  and, of course, “Surviving in Print.” There are also a couple of hands-on workshops, such as “Making a Magazine with Stencilprinting.” If only we’d heard about this festival sooner! If we’re lucky, recordings of the panels might be available on the O.K. Festival Vimeo page, which currently houses a couple of interviews with festival participants.

Even if you’re nowhere near The Netherlands, the O.K. Festival website is still a fantastic resource for discovering new magazines. A couple of new-found brothers and sisters:

At first sight, Sang Bleu is all about tattoos, body modification and fetish, but Sang Bleu offers more than that. It provides a precise insight into modern urban society. That is why art, fashion, sociology and literature are also featured in Sang Bleu.

Dabireh is a Collective of young Iranian graphic designers who share a passion for calligraphy and typography and have a keen interest in the history and theories of Persian language and writing system.

Lumpen Magazine. lum·pen adj. 1. Of or relating to dispossessed, often displaced people who have been cut off from the socioeconomic class with which they would ordinarily be identified: lumpen intellectuals unable to find work in their fields. A member the underclass, especially the lowest social stratum. 2. Vulgar or common; plebeian

Anorak. The happy mag for kids.

Many more beautiful magazines listed here! [via Courtney Riot]

We’ve been going through the Coilhouse Readership Survey responses. They’ve made us laugh, think, and feel incredibly grateful. We’ll be tabulating the results over the weekend, and posting our findings (and maybe even a few choice quotes) early next week.

Some of you made requests in the comments, ranging from “can we have a mailing list to notify us when a new issue has been released?” to “more porn.” Just so you know, we’re all reading every single comment. This particular post is dedicated to the lone responder who requested more fashion. It’s true, with a handful of blogs now doing an incredible job of covering dark/bizarre/futuristic fashion and indie designers (Twisted Lamb, Haute Macabre, Dirty Flaws being my Top 3 faves), we’ve eased up on the fashion coverage here quite a bit. Your comment made me realize that I miss uncovering new designers, so I present you with Japanese label Somarta, the brainchild of designer Tamae Hirokawa. Hirokawa is known for her use of machine-made lace, a common thread through many Somarta collections. “Making full use of advanced Japanese textile technology,” wrote the Japan Times of a recent collection, “Somarta presented designs of which some were made with the aid of specially created knitwear computer programs and devices. Squinting past the blinding crystals, it was possible to pick out exquisite ’20s-inspired black- and nude-lace dresses.”

Some of Somarta’s designs, such as the ones above, can be found in Somarta’s online shop or another store called nuan+. If you have Japanese friends who could help you out with site navigation/shipping, Somarta’s tights can be yours for about $179, and the top for about $200. Pricey, but beautiful. The look for less would definitely be these cute $12.50 “Aristocrat Lolita” tights on Ebay. More favorite images from Somarta, after the jump!

Issue 01 contributor Eugenio Recuenco recently updated his portfolio with a striking series of 12 images that span very different eras and cultures, all of which are united by one main character: the violin. The larger images can be seen on Recuenco’s site, and the full series can be seen here, after the cut.

In this series, the violin travels from the plains of Africa to an Indian bazaar, from an Elizabethan parlor to a pirate ship, from the hands of a white-clad nun to the laps of two conjoined Geisha twins. While it’s certainly a tribute to the universality of music, many of the images also seem to contain messages about culture, gender and inequality. In the image of Africa, the violins are represented as crops barely growing out of the parched soil. In the image depicting the Islamic world, one burqa-clad woman wearing black gloves points her violin bow accusingly at her fellow player, whose bare hands are exposed – a reference to the modesty police found in many countries in the Middle East, including Israel.  The American image seems to represent a two-party system orchestrating a rigid conformity. Interestingly, many of the images feature a visibly artificial background. In the Eskimo image, the sky is merely a cheap-looking painted sheet. The wallpaper in the Elizabethan image is stitched out of old rags. In fact, the images that appear to look the most “real” are the ones rooted in fantasy, such like the pirate, modern primitive, and fiddler on the factory roof.

Meet Teagan White, a 20-year-old Minneapois-based college sophomore originally from Chicago. Her work is the visual equivalent of warm milk and madeleines before bed. It has the same calming effect on me as Amy Ross, Finn Family Moomintroll, and Gnomes by Will Huygen/Rien Poortvliet.

Pictured here are some of Teagan’s illustrations on the topic of “animals doing people things,” inspired by J.J. Grandville’s animal art. After the cut, a motley assortment of favorites, taken from Teagan’s site and her blog. In addition to illustration and fine art, Teagan is also a typographer, sculptor and graphic designer. So young, so talented! One to watch. In fact, watch closely, because Miss Teagan will be collaborating with Coilhouse on something unique in the very near future. You heard it here first! Stay tuned.

Ah, the legendary 14th episode of Nu Pogodi (“You Just Wait!”), a ’70s/’80s children’s cartoon outlining the tormented, love-hate, co-dependent relationship of Zayatz and Volk (bunny and wolf), the Wile E. Coyote & Road Runner of the USSR.  Their relationship spanned 16 “classic” episodes (from 1969 to 1986) and included plenty of substance abuse, violence, “bad touches,” and one very awkward romantic dinner.

The 14th episode – with its murderous rabbit simulacrum, metrosexual hair-cutting/pants-pressing robots, junky schteeempunk Volkswagon (YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!), and zero-G flight simulators that play Space Race-inspired Soviet pop music. Episode 14 – my first exposure to electronic music of any sort. The techno kicks in at 2:57, when the main Space/Technology portion of the episode begins. In this episode, the wolf chases the rabbit around the “Dom Yunogo Technika,” which translates roughly to “House/Society of Young Tech-heads.” (That’s my best 5 AM translation, at least).  Before 2:57, there’s a short mini-episode in which Rabbit & Wolf share a dinner together – the aforementioned date, which ended in hilarious tragedy and made the show go down in Russian gay animation/film history, as both Rabbit & Wolf are male.

As with all episodes of Nu Pogodi, which can be found on YouTube, the wide-ranging music is one of the best parts. This episode is one of the best examples of that. The tracklist of Episode 14, which includes some appearances by Western artists, is this:

1. Alla Pugachova – Million Alyh Roz
2. Digital Emotion — Get Up, Action
3. Digital Emotion — Go Go Yellow Screen
4. Bonnie and Clyde – Leroy Holmes
5. Methusalem (Empire) – Black Hole (Bavarian Affair)
6. Digital Emotion — The Beauty & The Beast
7. Zemlyane – Trava u Doma
8. VIA Leisya Pesnya – Kachaetsya Vagon

These cookies first made a cameo appearance (YOU SEE WHAT I DID THAR?) over at our now-closed Tea & Cookies with Coilhouse Q&A session at Whitechapel, prescription but I feel that they deserve to be immortalized on the blog as well. The cookies are crafted by Chicago-based Amber Spiegel. Amber sometimes sells batches of her cookies at her SweetAmbs shop on Etsy, but currently, her shop is on hiatus. However, you can still see the cookies in full glory over at her blog! Monogrammed cookies. Brush embroidery cookies. Edible cameos. Tea set, antique shoe, ballet slipper, Houndstooth pattern and polka dot button cookies. In addition to the cookies, Amber chronicles her experiments in cake decorating and occasionally shares recipes, such as this one for cocoa meringues. A sight for sore eyes!

Penn and Teller do a magic trick with James Randi. Unrelated… but cute.

Via John Brownlee, who posts on Twitter, “my hero James Randi just came out of the closet… although I wonder why he waited this long, or chose to come out now.” Normally, a famous person’s coming-out announcement wouldn’t really feel like big news to post about here, but something about Randi’s news struck a cord. Perhaps it’s his age; James Randi is 81 years old, and, according to his blog post, this is the first time he’s officially told even his closest friends. Perhaps it’s the fact that he’s also originally from Toronto; an antidote to Margaret Wente.

James Randi dropped out of school at age 17 to perform in a carnival roadshow as a turban-wearing stage magician and escape artist. He holds two Guinness records: one for being encased in a block of ice for 55 minutes, the other staying locked in a casket for 1 hour and 44 minutes, breaking Harry Houdini’s record from 1926. Bigger than his accomplishments in magic and escapology is his career as a skeptic/author. He entered spotlight for challenging the claims of spoon-bender/psychic Uri Geller in the 1972. Since that time, he’s made it his business to debunk those who prey on gullible people, especially for financial gain: televangelists, psychic surgeons, dowsers, vibrational healers, and the like. Randi runs an educational foundation (the JREF), which offers scholarships to a younger generation of skeptical thinkers. An excerpt from Randi’s coming-out post:

From some seventy years of personal experience, I can tell you that there’s not much “gay” about being homosexual. For the first twenty years of my life, I had to live in the shadows, in a culture that was — at least outwardly — totally hostile to any hint of that variation of life-style. At no time did I choose to adopt any protective coloration, though; my cultivation of an abundant beard was not at all a deception, but part of my costume as a conjuror.

Gradually, the general attitude that I’d perceived around me began to change, and presently I find that there has emerged a distinctly healthy acceptance of different social styles of living — except, of course, in cultures that live in constant and abject fear of divine retribution for infractions found in the various Holy Books… In another two decades, I’m confident that young people will find themselves in a vastly improved atmosphere of acceptance.

Before publishing this statement, I chose to privately notify a number of my closest friends and colleagues — none of whom, I’m sure, have been at all surprised at this “coming out.” I’m prepared to receive the inevitable barrage of jeers and insults from the “grubbies” out there who will jump to their keyboards in glee to notify others of their kind about this statement, which to them will be yet further proof of the perfidy of the rationalist mode of life that I have chosen. Those titters of joy will be unheard over the murmur of acceptance that I confidently expect from my friends.

This declaration of mine was prompted just last week by seeing an excellent film — starring Sean Penn — that told the story of politician Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California. I’m in excellent company: Barney Frank, Oscar Wilde, Stephen Fry, Ellen DeGeneris, Rachel Maddow, are just a few of those who were in my thoughts as I pressed the key that placed this on [the JREF blog] and before the whole world…

I should apologize for having used [this blog] as the venue to publish this note, an item that is hardly the focus of what we promote and publish here, but I chose the single most public asset I have to make this statement. It’s from here that I have attacked irrationality, stupidity, and irresponsibility, and it is my broadest platform. Here is where I have chosen to stand and fight.

And I think that I have already won this battle by simply publishing this statement.

It just goes to show that it’s never too late to step forth, never too late to declare visibility. Thank you and congratulations, James Randi!

In the past two months, seven clips have appeared on YouTube under a mysterious account titled iamamiwhoami. Two days ago, the first full-length music video appeared – and many are claiming that, based on a few clues in the video, the identity of the author (widely rumored to be Goldfrapp, Trent Reznor, Lykke Li, Lady Gaga, The Knife and, seriously, Christina Aguilera) has finally been uncovered. But first, a bit of background by Leila Brillson to underscore the sheer amount of gematrical/Fortean weirdness packed into this haunting viral endeavor:

In December, a 55-second clip of a hyper-saturated, eerie (Scandinavian?) forest appeared on YouTube. No information was given, just the title “Prelude 699130082.451322-5.4.21.3.1.20.9.15.14.1.12.” The set of numbers following the dash, when matched to their alphabetical correspondents, spell “Educational.”

A few weeks later, a second video emerged, with a dirt-covered blonde girl seductively licking trees to a slow, driving electronic beat – the message this time, “Its Me.” Each video ended with the outline of an animal: a goat and an owl, respectively. The next video, accompanied by a funkier and more cheerful song, featured the painted girl again, up-close, with freakishly large eyes… this time, it spelled “Mandragora.”

The next video (“Officinarum”) increased the count to five (the featured animals, at that point, comprised of a goat, owl, whale, bee and llama). Then, on Friday, [James Montgomery, a music editor] received a package from a messenger service. “It was a thin, brown envelope with my name and floor typed on the front, and no return address.” Inside was a strand of hair from the blonde wig, some bits of wood, and what Montgomery calls a codex.

The project is not without a sense of humor. Each of the videos has a hyperlink in its description to another random but zoologically relevant YouTube clip –  Spit On by a Lllama, Screaming Monkeys, Bumble Bee on a Sunflower, to name a few. The new music video, which you can see below, links to this terrifying monstrosity.

So, yes! Now that the new music video has been posted, people have been started putting together the pieces. The most compelling evidence is here – while it does take a bit of magic out of the whole thing, it’s an impressive piece of internet sleuthing.

Yep, she’s a weird one. Please, please let it be her, and not some overproduced pop star. I mean, look at what she did to Nitzer Ebb. Jonna, if this is you, you have arrived!

Some more Serious Journalism from my time in Japan (see also: cat cafes). I previously mentioned Yaso Magazine in a post about Neon O’Clockworks – as promised in that post, here are some snapshots of Yaso for you to see! It’s a beautiful, hefty magazine with themed issues, published and distributed almost exclusively in Japan. I took some photos of three issues with the following themes: Vampire: Painful Eternity / Heartrendingness, Victorian: Influences & Metamorphoses of Victorian Culture in Today’s Japanese Sub-Cultures, and Sense of Beauty: Japanese Aesthetic. Other themed issues I didn’t get my hands on: Svankmajer (yes, an entire Svankmajer-themed issue), Gothic, Monster & Freaks [sic]. I also had a fourth issue called Doll, but gave it away to Ross because he is a doll fancier before I got a chance to snap some photos.

It’s a stunning magazine. Paging through it feels like like falling into a paper-fetish world that’s at once completely alien and intimately familiar.

The small pictures don’t do it justice, so click on through to the Coilhouse Flickr Set to see the full, annotated collection of images. This magazine cost around $15 in Japan, but I’m only finding it priced at $35 for those of us living in the US or in Europe. I’ve even seen copies appear and disappear for about $45 on Ebay. The magazine is almost entirely in Japanese, as is their site.

We are so inspired to see others publishing the kinds of things that we love, all over the word. We don’t know the people who do Yaso, but we are so, so grateful for them.

Who wants to see the kawaii-est wide-eyed fuzzy meow-meows? If you said “yes,” venture quickly beyond the cut for some serious Investigative Journalism that I did for you all while I was in Japan. Yes, dear readers, I took time out of my precious vacation to conduct some intensive research into the fascinating phenomenon of Tokyo Cat Cafes. It was extremely taxing work, and I’m pleased to report the results of my findings: fat kitties, skinny kitties, airborne kitties, funnel-wearing kitties, and much, much more.

It’s known that holding or stroking a cat reduces blood pressure and improves one’s general state of mind. For Tokyo residents, the level of everyday stress faced by the average worker, coupled with the fact that most apartments forbid pets, has created a niche industry: a set of cafes where, for an hourly rate, one can bask in the blissful company of felines. Of these cafes, Calico is one of the most popular. An exclusive look, full of kitty shenanigans, after the jump!