Blimey it’s hot. Are you hot? The sun is shining. Glastonbury has landed, and our Friday Fix is all set to fire some stars into your headspace.
First up is some beautiful underwater photography from Italian photographer Nadia Moro. Based in Milan, Nadia’s fashion and portrait photography is well worth a look.
This is just one of the pictures from her series called ‘behind the surface’. It reminds us of mermaids – perhaps this could be what mermaids of the 21st century look like . . .
Next up is the exquisite new packaging for YSL’s fragrance Eau Énergisante.
Designed by German graphic designer Axel Peemoeller (who’s website we all love BTW)
It’s good to see such an established brand do something so totally fresh with their packaging. Liquid lovely.
And so to the sounds that we just can’t get loud enough this week…
All this sunshine is going to our heads, and that just whisks us away to Classic Summer Holiday Anthems, and here’s two songs vying for the title that have us hot under the (popped) collar…
Moldovian singer, songwriter, producer DAN BALAN’s CHICA BOMB sneaks up on you with its sensual groove and vocoded vocals… it screams ‘anthem’, if ever we heard one! Dan is no stranger to dominating the international charts all summer long. He was the behind the tour de force ‘DRAGOSTEA DIN TEII’ by Ozone which was THE cheesetastic holiday choon of 2004 – 14 weeks no.1 in Germany, 15 weeks in France… kind of says it all! It spawned the Numa Numa dance, the breakout lip-sync YouTube classic and was cooled-up when T.I. and Rihanna used it to form the basis of their 2008 global hit ‘LIVE YOUR LIFE’
The terrace at SPACE will be bouncing to this for weeks, nay, months – the groove-a-licious brains behind the cool Latino vibe and pumping bass are in fact wonderful wizards from Oz – we dare you to not toe-tap & booty-wiggle. Banger!
Last but by no means least here’s something for all you secret geeks . . . (and yes, Barn, that means you!)
While doing some research on Milan Fashion Week we stumbled across these illustrations by Hong Kong based John Woo .
Mixing designer fashion with the ultimate in Sci-Fi royalty… what’s not to like?!
Friday’s here again, all glittery and sparkly and giving us the eye, and here’s your regular fix of all the stuff that has set our spider-senses tingling this week. Marvellous.
The quintessential English Summer Season has begun, with the opening of the Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition. It’s a suitably eclectic mix of well-established artists such as David Hockney and Tracey Emin alongside work by some really exciting new talent. Unlike most shows, almost all of the work is for sale… and there were certainly a few pieces that caught our eye. Where did we put that Royal Academy discount card?
Talking of Great British institutions, the Grande Dame of fashion herself, Vivienne Westwood, is about to launch her collaboration with Lee Jeans. The 9-piece Vivienne Westwood Anglo mania + Lee collection takes it’s inspiration from the Westwood archives and includes references to her seminal Punk and Pirates collections of the 70’s and 80’s. We’ll be sure to check out both the men’s and women’s pieces when they hit the stores on 5th July. Vivienne Westwood and Lee Jeans. Anarchy.
On a completely different note we were very impressed with this alterative use for sticky tape. Winners of the DMY Awards at the International Design Festival Berlin, For Use / Numen, created this beautiful space in Vienna. The installation took just 2 days to create, and 530 rolls of transparent self adhesive tape. The work is based on the concept of a dance that evolves from the movement between the pillars, with the performance taking place within the structure. The dancers are stretching the tape as they move resulting in a (tape) recording of their movements. Clever and beautiful – our favourite type of work.
Last but by no means least . . .
Music!
Our FIVE33 ‘Tune for the weekend’ is an entire album of tunes! BLOC PARTY front man KELE goes solo with debut album THE BOXER. Out next week, it’s a first-round KO to our ears, burning the floor and sending the woofers into meltdown here at FIVE33 towers. The sweet science that is Tenderoni is officially released this week. Ring the bell!
None of you could have failed to notice that the FIFA World Cup is well and truly here.
Somali-Canadian poet, rapper, singer/songwriter K’naan is scoring goals all over the international charts with one of the finer football and music moments. Searing optimism that uplifts the 2009 original. Coca-Cola’s Official World Cup song has many a version:
David Bisbal sings for the Latin American countries and is our personal favourite.
A Chinese version which brings K together with ‘God Of Songs’ Jacky Cheung and China’s very own Mariah Carey: Jane Zhang has already reached no.1 there while Def Jam Japan’s Ai represents.
Audio sunshine that has us flying the flag of every nation. Don’t laugh.
And finally, ending on a World Cup note. We just wanted to share some of our favourite pictures from the opening ceremony. Certain to bring the sunshine of South Africa to your screens (even if it’s a bit cloudy outside!)
It’s been a busy week here at FIVE33 towers but we’ve managed to see a few things that have tickled our fancy . . . and our fancy is extremely ticklish. No… not there! Stop it! STOP IT!
That’s better.
Any of you who have spent some time in the office will know that chocolate is pretty high on our BFF list (brown gold, we call it), so imagine our delight when we saw this beautiful video. You’d be forgiven for thinking it came straight from a fashion house, but it’s actually an advert for Cadbury Flake!
It seems Flake can now add ‘coolest’ to a list of accolades that has so far been limited to ‘crumbliest’ and ‘flakiest’.
We were very excited to see that our favourite Parisian boutique Colette has joined forces with a number of superheroes to celebrate 75 years of DC Comics. Working with some of the world’s greatest designers of high-end fashion, they have created an exclusive collection of accessories and clothes for a bunch of DC’s best-known characters.
Taking it to the streets, we point you in the direction of New York this week and a street artist that caught our eye some time ago.
Aakash Nihalani is a street artist with a difference. He uses tape to create isometric rectangles and squares on the New York landscape, altering perceptions of the space around us to startling effect. His neon lines are also very reminiscent of the neon graphic language we’ve been working on recently, for a certain hotly-anticipated film… hint hint. Perhaps the original 80′s film influenced Aakash in some way!
Aakash’s work has been brought back to the spotlight recently with this video – a true master at work.
If you missed our tweets this week, firstly, what were you thinking? And secondly, you missed out on the Victoriana sci-fi sonic disruption of Losers‘ Flush. The video features the artwork of the brilliantly twisted Dan Hillier.
And secondly we have Breakbot‘s brand new funk hymn Baby I’m Yours, with a video composed of approximately 2000 watercolour images painted one after the other. Turn this one up and dance like no-one’s watching.
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