Top Herve Leger

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The Diguised Jing Young Yu, 2009.

It’s not every day that an artist is able to stake her claim in the art world using an invisible medium. Yet with each pigeon-toed, see-through figure she creates, that is exactly what Korean sculptress, Jin Young Yu has done. Constructed entirely out of a self-formulated PVC (glass and clear plastic just weren’t transparent enough), each invisible man, woman, and child is a three-dimensional examination of hypocrisy, domestic secrets, and the ongoing battle between a private versus public self.
Created in full scale and often standing four feet tall, the translucent sculptures are as awe-inspiring as they are painstakingly conceived. Every limb, smock, and random accoutrement is created individually before being reassembled and woven together with transparent thread, taking Jin Young around forty days to make one figure.
     Much like each somber-faced character, the artist has nothing to hide when it comes to sharing her worldview. “My figures express the loneliness of people living today. The transparent body means a perfect shield that makes it possible to hide itself anywhere, while the crying face represents a warning: ‘Don’t come towards me!’  I intend to remind viewers of the loneliness of people in this modern society, where there is little of true communication.” And as for an overall theme?  “I want to get away from the plastic smiles and fake facial expressions,” she says. Thus is the essence of Jin Young’s stoic army.
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Photography by Radioclit

The Very Best’s sound is a difficult one to pin down. Even TVB’s singer, Esau Mwamwaya, concurs: “It’s done out of freestyles,” he says, “without looking at the boundaries in music. Just experimenting and things like that.” Some sort of futuristic Afro-electro-pop hybrid, perhaps? In any case, The Very Best’s music is a true product of the digital age: unlikely combinations of traditional African melodies and rhythms with modern electronics, vintage samples, orchestral flourishes, and synthesizers. Add in a few guest vocalists, including Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend and M.I.A., and you begin to get the idea. The resulting compositions blend together seamlessly and effortlessly, and the end-product is electrifying.
     The group comprises 34-year-old Malawian frontman, Mwamwaya, and European production duo, Radioclit (Etienne Tron and Johan Karlberg). Formed in 2007, they first captivated the blogosphere with their acclaimed free mixtape, Esau Mwamwaya & Radioclit are the Very Best, which clocked in a remarkable 200,000+ downloads without promotional assistance or label support. And now the group has returned with their debut full-length, Warm Heart of Africa.

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The Very Best (with Ezra Koenig) – Warm Heart of Africa (Alan Wilkis Remix)
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Most of us would regard a months-long, 1,800-mile commute a chore, an undue burden. For Painter William McKinnon, though, the long drive from his home in Melbourne, Australia to his post in the Northwestern town of Fitzroy Crossing — a cross-continental trip — was a creative goldmine.
     A Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship laureate, MacKinnon spent months on the road, fulfilling the terms of the award by working with local Kimberley schools and tribes at a latitude and longitude so far from his urban digs that he logged days, not hours, on the road each time he went to teach painting classes or provide local groups with cultural outreach programs. Perhaps a less attentive, imaginative, or industrious driver would have spent the time calling, emailing, video watching, iPod browsing, or all those other pursuits that have made their way into our driver’s seats over the last decade. Instead, McKinnon kept his eyes on the road and, through that inspiration, delivered a series of oil paintings and collages that capture the velocity and constantly changing inner landscapes inside the driver’s eye.
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Vice Records

In And Out Of Control is the Raveonettes’ happiest album to date. The Danish duo, whose adulation of the surf rock of the ‘60s and the shoegazing rock of the ‘90s is well documented, shrugs off both those characteristics this time around. Instead of Everly Brothers harmonies and twanging guitars, there are big choruses and bubblegum pop. The subjects broached on In And Out Of Control are uncomfortable in nature and read like public service announcements: “Boys Who Rape (Should All Be Destroyed)”, “Suicide”, “D.R.U.G.S.”, and “Breaking Into Cars”. But the goofily upbeat way the two deliver their messages disguises serious lyrics in a haze of sing-along-able fun and lightheartedness.

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The Raveonettes – Suicide

In a lineup of socially conscious programming, the Sundance Channel’s “Man Shops Globe” sticks out like a finely manicured sore thumb. While the Newark-based civic crusaders of “Brick City” struggle and strive, “Globe” protagonist Keith Johnson raids far-flung caches of time-weathered furniture to fill Anthropologie’s stores (the show is both a revealing look at high-end retail and an advertisement for the clothing and curios chain). Refreshingly devoid of the made-for-tv attitudes of his reality-show peers (“The Rachel Zoe Project”, “Flipped Out”), Johnson lacks the guile to make himself a pre-packaged star or wax romantic on the provenance his targeted bookcases, tables, and fashionable bric-a-brac. He
calls himself a “treasure hunter”, though he is less Indiana Jones than a pitiless hyena scrounging for ver-di-gris flowerpots and wire bed frames. Naturally you begin to plunder along with him, wondering how that wardrobe from Provence would look under your television. Bookended by socially conscious programming like “Brick City” and “The Lazy Environmentalist”, “Man Shops Globe” comes off as proudly irresponsible–the “finds” that give Johnson a brief contact high are bound for mall stores and not a second is granted to self-conscious grumbling about commercialism, psychological motivations, or anything other than where to find the next watercolor painting or cup of strong coffee. Regardless, at a time when shopping for shopping’s sake is no longer an acceptable pastime, “Man Shops Globe”offers sophisticated, heedless jollies without a credit-card statement. Dig in.

Man Shops Globe premieres Wednesday October 7th.

XL Recordings

The Ivy League’s favorite Afro-pop-inflected foursome has released the first song off their upcoming album Contra. The guys reportedly just submitted their sophomore record to their label XL, so the LP won’t see the streets until January 12, 2010. Nevertheless, the new song, “Horchata”, does offer an exciting preview of what’s to come. The track maintains the wistful swoon pervading VW’s 2008 self-titled debut, but, as the title might suggest, the delicious tropical rhythms explode into a sumptuous feast of harmonies and strings. Listen to the track for yourself (streamed below) and be sure to look out for the band’s mini-tour through California next month.
     As a bonus, check out PLANET’s past coverage of Vampire Weekend, before they came to dominate stages and pages everywhere.

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Vampire Weekend – Horchata

Too often a promising new CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist will buckle under the pressure that the distinction begets and produce a disappointing post-win collection. It’s the Britney Spears Condition played out at Bryant Park — too much praise, too little guidance. Happily, for every ten let downs there’s one remarkable triumph — on September 12, the young label Ohne Titel proved they were well equipped to meet the industry’s demands with a spectacularly confident collection that bellied their years. Like so many of fashion’s most powerful duos (think Marc Jacobs and business genius Robert Duffy), Flora Gill and Alexa Adams met at Parsons in 1999, where they bonded over a shared love of geometric design influences and architectural garment construction. After cutting their teeth under the tutelage of reborn cult-favorite Helmut Lang, and universal crowd pleaser Kaiser Karl, the girls reunited in 2006 to cofound a label dedicated to “intelligent design for a strong and modern woman.”
     Their Spring 2010 collection, which, according to the show notes, took “the graphic lines, lush textures, and bold colors in Egyptian reliefs and sculptures” as inspiration, allowed Gill and Adams to perfect their signature body-con technique within the limits of more intellectual — not to mention more difficult — design parameters.
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IAMSOUND Records

In the past, fusing African music and Western rock was truly a novelty — the crossover pioneered perhaps by Paul Simon’s enduring classic Graceland and Peter Gabriel’s “Biko”. But nowadays there is a movement of indie bands embracing and resurrecting African influences as the basis of their sound: BLK JKS, Extra Golden, Foreign Born, and Vampire Weekend, to name a few. LA-based Fool’s Gold has released their debut this week, and it’s as worthy as any of the aforementioned. This ten-plus-member collective utilizes tropical guitar work, saxophones, intricate percussion, and call-and-response vocals to take the rock blueprint to a higher level. Singer and co-ringleader Luke Top alternates verses in both English and Hebrew with a confident vocal presence, distinguishing the album from its contemporaries by also including a Middle Eastern element. In description this might sound overtly cross-cultural but it’s no mere gimmick — Fool’s Gold uses these disparate sounds to benefit a strangely cohesive, celebratory, and exotic album.

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Fool’s Gold – Surprise Hotel

One of the great things about being in college is that you’re not required to produce practical work. Your pseudo-intellectual essays might get a B- if the professor is generous. I was once given an A for a tedious, poorly researched paper on mid-20th century Irish folk music that will never benefit a single person. But some wholly unnecessary, unsolicited work can be great — especially in architecture schools. And double good if it makes it past the pipe-dream phase and is actually built. Case in point: Evolver, a spirally wooden structure near Lake Stelli in Zermatt, Switzerland. It was designed by the students in ALICE, an experimental architecture studio at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. No one actually needed Evolver, but I think I’m glad it exists.
     It’s surrounded by some of the most Romantic nature in Europe. Altitude: 2,536 meters. Visitors are supposed to walk up and then down the ramp and experience different vistas through the wood slats. The idea being that the slats make you focus on one spot. It’s controlled nature-loving. Ideally the views are enhanced by Evolver: gazing at the nearby Matterhorn again and again from different angles should drop your jaw even lower. But will it? My initial impression was: What’s so awful about looking up at mountains from grass?
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