Superthriller

There’s no way I could ever be considered a connoisseur of contemporary music, most of my music collection pre-dates the 80’s.. But I have had a relatively modern band on high rotation at the moment so I thought they might be worth bloggin’ about in case any of you hadn’t heard them yet.

Superthriller make that rare kind of music that sounds great, but is so loaded with humour that it’ll crack up you up at the same time as you’re tapping your feet. The band is Andrew Roland and brothers Ben and Max Ringham, they formed on the back of their Avant-garde performance group at Shunt down at London Bridge (sadly soon to buried under a new skyscraper). As I’ve been looking round the web for info on them I’ve heard them described as like a cross between Prince, Beck & Tony Hancock! To be honest, I’d say that was a pretty acurate description ;) They also remind of The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band a bit. Their website seems to be down, but here’s their MySpace page.

The only album I haven’t got of their so far is The Blank Album – a beautifully presented, but entirely blank CD. You get a code and URL and have to download the tunes you like (from what sounds like a wide range of material) to burn onto the blank CD! A great idea I think, but perhaps a bit too much work for some people, this is what they say about it on their site – “ingenious idea that went down like a pork chop at a jewish wedding.. nobody paid the blindest bit of notice.. it is however a rather interesting album.

I’ve uploaded a few of their tunes to give you a quick preview. If you like them, get yourself a copy of Superthriller 1 & Superthriller 2 from iTunes.

Probably their best known track – Ahjustwannadance:
Ahjustwannadance

Me & you in heaven, like Tom Cruise but better – I Really Love You and Stuff:
I Really Love You and Stuff

You’ll get a geeky giggle out of this one – Upgrade:
Upgrade

Mini Goals Chalkboard

Me & Nicky have been thinking about getting an old chalkboard for the house. Now I’ve seen Mary Kate McDevitt’s Mini Goal Chalkboard set, I’m insprired to go out and customise themself one.

She did have some for sale on her etsy, but they’re all gone now.

Via: Drawn.

Kevin Dart

Kevin looks like he’s been busy drawing his 007 inspired character Kimiko Suzuki (Yuki 7), he makes up his own wonderfully titled (I’m sure Ian Flemming would be proud) fictitious movies and illustrates the posters, generally with a good amount of bikini clad Bond girls in ;). I’m loving – The Deadly Bikini Girls of Shark Island, Mr. Broccoli should take note and put a bit of sauce back into the Bond franchise. Check out his illustration portfolio & blog here. Also you can buy his prints from Fleet Street Scandal.

You can tell from his style that he used to work as a background artist – he did the BBC Olympics 2008 indents (the ones with Jamie Hewitt’s Monkey).

He’s working on a book of his Yuki 7 movie posters (not released yet) and is doing a unique poster style for each regional release. I love this French version, which he says was “inspired by an exhibition about street posters from the Paris rebellion of 1968, as well as a bit of Saul Bass.”

Piet Hein Eek – Scrapwood

I‘m really taken by Piet Hein Eek’s scrapwood collection of furniture, all the excuse I need to start collecting old bits of wood ;) The rest of this guys stuff is all top notch and this shed is two times awesome.

Via: Lark About.

Michael Jackson’s Auction

Wacko Jacko is flogging a load of his stuff, it’s pretty old news but still in time for the auction, set to take place in Beverly Hills in April 2009.

It’s interesting to see what someone like Michael Jackson has collected over the years, The Guardian have got some pictures of a small fragment of the 2000 lots. There’s the expected weirdness like the oil painting of him dressed up like a king, the way over the top stuff like his enormous Gaggia coffee machine. Interesting collectibles like the the prop ‘scissorhand’ gloves from Edward Scissorhands, also some nice normal stuff that I’d quite like to buy like that amazing red fire engine kettle.

The guide prices seem well lower than I imagined – Micheal Jackson’s red velvet cape for only $300-$500? I think not, surely this stuff will go for 10-20 times the asking price.

Colouring-in wallpaper

The online store NineteenSeventyThree have produced a repeating Jon Bugerman illustartion as a colour-in yourself wallpaper! Jon’s illustration style lends itself perfectly to this sort of thing, snap some up at £40 per roll (1000cm x 52cm).

Via: The Given.

Field Runners

I‘m currently addicted to the iPhone game Field Runners, basically there’s wave after wave of bad guys trying to get from one side of the screen to the other which you have to destroy using various weaponary towers.

The more people you kill the more money you get to build bigger and better towers. Super simple, it mainly plays itself (shoots people automatically) all you’ve got to do is decide what towers and where. You can get quite creative with the tower positioning to make the guys walk as far as possible so you’ve got plenty of time to pick them off.

Before I found Field Runners I was playing a very similar game called The Creeps, which is also great.

Incidently, if you want to screengrab something on your iPhone just hold down the home button then press the power button, screen will flash, job done.

Emptees

This site’s been around for a while, but it’s the first I’ve seen of it – Emptees is a t-shirt design showcase site where people can show off, talk about, and love tees. It looks like the general trend of the community is toward dark (subject noy colour) and highly detailed designs like Garbage Pail kids (not really may taste). But there’s plenty of gems on there too such as – Lucky Strike above and Noopin below.

The site was built by Indie Labs, who also make Big Cartel, the pretty handy online store service.

By the Gods

Amazing, a letter knife to rip through your junk mail with the stealth and fury of Zeus! Available in solid or silver–plated brass.

We’ve gone on holiday by mistake. We’re in this cottage here.

The remote Cumbrian farm used as location for Uncle Monty’s cottage in the Film Withnail and I is up for auction next month! It’s called Sleddale Hall and is near Shap (which is near bloody Penrith), the visit Cumbria site has more info. I don’t think it’s been lived in since the 1920’s (when a water utilities company bought it and surrounding land to build a reservoir) other than few Withnail and I fans paying homage to their favourite film.

The place is run down to say the least, love the grass growing in the yard though. But with an guide price of only £145,000 feels fairly cheap to me, well compared to London prices… Great location, I recon you could just about walk straight from the house (early), climb Helvellyn and then be back home before dark. Personally I’d love to buy it, although I don’t reckon the bank will be too keen on the idea. The auction is being run by Savills, although I can’t find any reference on their site, click here to register for a catalogue.

Via: Retro to Go