We’re SO stoked for Zo today! After a year in aesthetic stasis, her personal website, Biorequiem, has finally relaunched with a gorgeous new look. Our favorite cosmonomad is a busy bee; she barely has time to initiate her patented Zobogrammatronicambient energy battery recharge system, let alone find a spare moment to whip up sexy new design and code, so she enlisted Nubby Twiglet (our awesome Coilhouse Indie Ad Grid designer) and Star St. Germain to help her. And now the proud mama crows “here it is – hussied up, blushing and ready to be sent out center stage with a brisk slap on the ass.” Huzzah.
You’ll find all sorts of goodies at Biorequiem 5.0. Art! Photography! Illustration! Memoirs! Bewbz! Chihuahuas! Anthropomorphic cybercows! Go get some.
Are you ready to have your mind blown? If the answer is yes, prepare for the bass stylings of one Hyunmo Kim, a South Korean man who “hopes to be the world’s greatest stupid idiot bass player”. He does this in a dress. With pigtails. He is a pigtailed man in a dress with mad bass skillz who does not drink milk until he gags or examine his delicate faux-cleavage with the aid of his camera. You must be imagining things. It’s probably the awesomeness of his bass, frying your brain.
First off, I want to say thank you again to everyone who commented on my home decorating post. I haven’t found time to properly respond to all the helpful comments because I’ve been finalizing the move into that dream apartment I mentioned in the post. What I didn’t mention is that this dream apartment is actually in whole different country. More details on that to come! Incidentally, Mer is also moving to a another country on the other side of the world this summer. Coilhouse will soon be not just international, but TRI-CONTINENTAL. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, a short post about the lost photography of Dima Smelyantsev. Very little is known about him online. What I know of him, I’ve pieced together from what my cousin told me. He was originally from Russia, but lived in New York. He published one book, Untressed. The book contained vulnerable, fetishistic black-and-white portraits of women who had just shaved their heads (though, she notes, Dima himself had long, wild hair). My cousin appeared in the book, though she never signed a release. Sometime later, he died at a relatively young age – his heart just stopped. And with his death, the book gradually disappeared. The only traces remain on used book sites (on Amazon, a lone copy sells for $127) and on the graphic designer’s site. Thanks to the ever-useful Wayback Machine, I was able to find the original publisher’s page for the book, but that’s pretty much it. And that’s a shame, because I really enjoy the photo above. So admire it for what it is – a relic, your only glimpse of something that’s been lost to time.
Via the most brutal and unrelenting Ben Catmull. \m/
If a Speedo-wearing, paddle-wagging, KVLT AS FUCK individual and his demonic friend headbang in the forest, does it make a sound? Apparently not, save for the mesmerizing voosh voosh voosh of dewy black metal tresses sluicing through crisp mountain air (and some Attila-worthy bellowing at the very end, there).
Canadian YouTube user and Dark Overlord of the Perplexing Non SequiTORRR, esy87, explains: “the music is coming from a headset close to us but the camera hasnt picked it up. for natural perservation of the vid we didnt edit it to put the song on it, but for ppl interested it was ‘Decade of Therion‘ from Behemoth.”
Ah. Yes. That explains everything. Except the banana hammock. But in any case, well done, good sirs. I’d throw you some horns, but I’m still doubled over in hysterics.
Everyone say hello to Angeliska Polacheck from Austin, Texas! Angel attended SXSW earlier this year to cover some of the festival’s more enchanting performers for Coilhouse. First up, an interview with Au Revoir Simone. ~Mer
A.R.S. in Austin, TX for SXSW, 2009. Photo by Angeliska Polacheck.
The keyboard-playing trio Au Revoir Simone makes dreamy, lo-fi electro-pop music with wistful lyrics and dulcet harmonies that Spin Magazine aptly describes as “make-out music for your inner android”. The band’s name is a line from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, which makes them even more lovable! Heather D’Angelo, Erika Forster and Annie Hart have been together since 2003, recorded three albums, and recently completed tours with Air, We Are Scientists and Peter, Bjorn and John. Their latest album, Still Night, Still Bright, is the perfect late night/early morning soundtrack, filled with introspective melodies guaranteed to soothe a buzzing brain or keep one company at sunrise.
Chatting with the girls during SXSW last March, I was utterly charmed by their sweetness. Despite having played a whirlwind of shows over a handful of days during the festival (the Moshi Moshi Records showcase, the Brooklyn Vegan & Agency Group showcase and to a packed rooftop at Maggie Mae’s) they were remarkably serene. Peaceful respite from the hubbub was found in a hedge-maze on the haunted grounds of the French Legation, where we discussed kindred spirits, darkness, haircuts, and David Lynch.
A.R.S. press packet photo. Photographer unknown.
Coilhouse: I’ve been listening to your new album Still Night, Still Light a lot lately, and have fallen in love with it. What’s the title about?
Erika: We just came up with it in our practice space. We were asking ourselves, “What are these songs to us?” and we thought about the feeling of 5am, and the sort of clarity that happens when everything is quiet around you, and the stillness. It was free association, and just yelling out words in the practice space. Pretty much everything happens that way for us –our band name, our song titles– everything always happens that way, where we just kind of throw stuff out. We look around at each other and as soon as we’re all smiling, we know we’ve found the winner!
Heather: It’s hard enough to get two people to agree on something, so getting three people to agree… it’s never a fight, but if somebody’s like “hmmm” then you don’t feel as good about it.
In under the wire, we’d like to wish the incomparable Lene Lovich a very happy birthday! The New Wave/Death Disco diva was born on March 30th in 1949. At some point when we’re not all scrambling to meet deadlines, this virtuosa deserves a big, juicy feature on Coilhouse. We’ll get ‘er done, promise.
For now, here’s the “Bird Song” video, feauring Lovich in all her eye-popping, spookylicious glory:
Kermit coat by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, “ready-to-wear” outfit by Lie Sang Bong. Below: Pepi’s-inspired hair action by fashion students from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana.
NBC has pulled together a lovely gallery consisting of 100 crisp, large-sized images from various recent fashion shows, titled: “Would You Wear It?” I love finding outlandish new designs, but quickly tire of sifting through hundreds of dull runway photos on places like Style.com in order to find them. So these kind of galleries – which usually have names like “Looks You Won’t Be Caught Dead In” – are extremely helpful. All the images in this post are from the NBC gallery except for the muppet one – that I found here. I also enjoyed NBC’s crystal-clear Gaultier and McQueen galleries. I’d seen photos of both these collections before, but the photography here is the best. The makeup in the McQueen collection is terrifying!
Uber-hot mask by Lydia Delgado. Imagine wearing that with these shoes! And nothing else.
Not like that, you perverts (though, I admit, she is my type). But here’s a photo I took of my beautiful Coilhouse co-editor Meredith Yayanos, which I’ve been dying to post for quite some time. We did this shoot back in December, and it was pretty much my only big shoot of 2008. We did two looks that day, light and dark. Above is Angelic Mer, but there’s also the more sinister Rocky Horror-meets-Caligari Mer (“Mergenta Mernau”), which you may have seen before on my site, her Flickr or via Warren Ellis (drink up, bitches!). Note the necklace in this picture; Mer made it herself out of keys that she’s been collecting all her life (here it is, up close). Mer did her own makeup, the hair here was done by the inimitable Holly Jones – who also did the styling for our Issue 02 cover – and the ruffalicious garment was styled by Mildred.
Mer is a total chameleon. I’ve done a lot of shoots in my life, and it’s hard even for me to believe that these two pictures of the same person were done literally within an hour of each other:
There will probably be more from the white set on Mer’s Flickr on the days to come. Stay tuned!
Revelation du jour: as much as I adore all things Ye Olde (read: stained, blanched, sepia-tinted, distressed, Dover-collagey… or just plain black) and will undoubtedly continue to incorporate time-honored neo-Victorian aesthetics into my decor and wardrobe, an internal plate has shifted. Lately I’m finding myself –possibly for the first time since I was a toddler cutting my teeth on primary-colored Legos and rubber balls– infected by an entirely different strain of retro: mod-futurism.
Rest assured, no one’s about to run out and buy some garish, orange one-piece pantsuit (though I’ll freely admit to a burgeoning obsession with the OVALIA “Egg Chair”). What I am doing is poring over every last Peggy Moffitt/Rudi Gernreich photo book I can find. Via FIDM:
Hers is the face that launched a thousand ripples through the fashion world when she wore the world’s first topless bathing suit. “Designer of the future” Rudi Gernreich considered Peggy Moffitt to be his muse and model of choice for his controversial designs. With her Kabuki-inspired face painting, Peggy created her own unique look in the Sixties. Gernreich collaborated with super hair stylist Vidal Sassoon to create Peggy’s trademark hairstyle. He gave her a short helmet haircut, with precise geometric bangs cut right to her eyebrows. She also created her own makeup style with heavy black and white eyeliner and long false eyelashes to exaggerate her huge dark eyes. She took the term “strike a pose” very seriously in front of the camera. She made Gernreich’s clothes all the more extreme with her striking presence.
Peggy Moffitt is an icon and innovator of fashion who didn’t just wear designs, she inspired them. Even super sixties model Twiggy said, “She taught me how much more a model puts in her work than just a pretty face.”
A few of those frocks look hideously dated now, but more often than not, Gernreich’s colorful, daring designs read to me like peals of laughter in a musty tomb. And Moffitt always looks smashing; an updated technicolor incarnation of Lulu Brooks; fearless and versatile. I don’t know that 95% of these pieces are something I would ever want wear, but they sure do make me happy.
Click below for more smile-inducing images of the Muse of Mod after the jump.
Dontcha love it when we get it right? I love high-budget, haute-goth fashion editorials and seeing big-name designers go dark on the runway, but there’s something especially satisfying about seeing designers “of the scene” really pull off something spectacular from start to finish, from garment to finished photograph. It’s a pleasure when designers not only produce gorgeous garments, but really get involved in presenting them in a certain way. In this case, Tea Bauer, creator of Slovenian fashion label Degenerotika (previously featured here), borrows a page from Vintage Vogue to give us the wonderfully classic, textured and geometric “when-Leeloo-met-Irving-Penn” fashion image above. I love everything about it! More large-size images from this series, after the jump.
Yellow hair? Yum! Coat’s not too shabby, either. Degenerotika is definitely one to watch.
