Hasta La Ideas

The iconic Antwerp style of one of fashion’s most beloved photography duos

Almost as legendary as their subjects, creative husband-and-wife duo, Inge Grognard and Ronald Stoops are steeped in Antwerp’s fashion scene heyday of the early ’80s. With Stoops behind the lens and Gorgnard supplying the make up direction, the pair have created shoots, catwalk shows and spreads for some of the world’s biggest magazines, and indeed some of the icons of contemporary fashion.

“Inge Grognard/Ronald Stoops“, the new book from publishers Ludion, acts as an anthology of over 30 years’ collaboration between the two. Twisting the format slightly, the tome focuses on the non-commercial work, giving readers a better insight into the influences, outlook and their relationship as creative partners.

“This book starts and ends with a scream,” says Grognard, conjuring up an emblematic visualization of their work if there ever was one. “The scream symbolizes how Ronald and I communicate. To outsiders the way we work together must come across as very harsh. We tend to yell at each other a lot and discussions can easily get out of hand,” she continues.

The approach must work though, with a clear tension running through the narratives of the resulting imagery. It’s this same emotional pressure which runs through the book itself, seizing the viewer as they navigate through the fragile, beautiful and the brutal.

As far as elevating the importance of taking in outside influences into ones creative work, the title “Inge Grognard/Ronald Stoops” reinforces just how tightly-knit the Antwerp fashion scene was during its formative years. Stylists, designers, photographers and graphic artists all fed into each other to create that now-recognizable Antwerp style, its progression captured perfectly in this fine title.

“Inge Grognard/Ronald Stoops” hits bookstores at the end of October 2010 with a sticker price of €40.

The folk rock sounds of over a hundred instruments on British band Stornoway’s first album

Five years in the making, Stornoway‘s recently-released debut album Beachcomber’s Windowsill like so many records before it, is the story of a homegrown musical enterprise. The band of Brits, named after a town on the Scottish isle of Lewis, met and honed their earnest, folk-rock style at the University of Oxford, where an eight-track recorder served as their primary means of laying down songs.

But for whatever they lacked in recording equipment, the quartet made up for in sound. Fast-forward to Beachcomber’s Windowsill, an album delivers over a hundred various instrumental notes—from the echoing chimes of a church bell and the signals of a Morse code message to the indecipherable sound of carrots being chopped.

Sensationally disorienting, the love song “Zorbing” kicks off the album, leading with a choir-like effect that builds to an excitedly robust crescendo. Frontman Brian Briggs explains the title, which takes its name from a slightly madcap activity involving a person rolling down hills inside a large, transparent ball, “I thought zorbing would make a good metaphor for how I was feeling at the time when I wrote the song.”

“If you listen closely, you can hear stuff like various band members muttering, lots of hiss and funny little details that you would normally clean up if you were in a studio,” Briggs says of the album’s audible quirks, which he and the band deliberately chose to preserve. While an amalgamation of sounds, the album is a thoroughly complete work, featuring 11 tracks of mostly-acoustic offerings ranging from fast-paced and riff-heavy (“Watching Birds” and “I Saw You Blink”) to gently wistful (“Long Distance Lullabye”).

Look out for the band on tour in the U.S. starting mid-November 2010. Beachcomber’s Windowsill sells online from Stornoway (where you can also get a hacky sack to go with it), Amazon and
iTunes.

Cheer on Cool Hunting as our videos compete for Vimeo’s best Original Series

The first-annual Vimeo Awards and Festival showcases the talented roster of producers, editors, directors and more that create the oft-entertaining and -beautifully shot motion pictures hosted on web’s premier alternative channel.

We’re thrilled and honored to announce that Cool Hunting has been selected as a finalist in the Original Series category. Included among an accomplished group of challengers, we invite you to come out to see all the films and cheer us on to victory.

The festival takes place in NYC on 8-9 October 2010. Tickets sell through Vimeo’s website for $120 and $90 for students, enter discount code “COOL” upon checkout to receive 20% off the ticket price.

New book pays tribute to 25 years of the best sound and package design of the 7-inch

Assigning themselves with the heavy task of sifting through a whopping 15,000 indie records from the last 25 years to find the most interesting albums, editors Brian Roettinger, Mike Treff and Diego Hadis of “Touchable Sound: A Collection of 7-inch Records From the USA,” narrowed the selection down into the 300 that fill this 412-page compendium, available tomorrow from Soundscreen Design.

Organized by region, “Touchable Sound” is interlaced with chapter dividers and essays printed on various stock paper, giving the book its unique feel and look. Among the discerning criteria for inclusion in the book was how the record was made (e.g. screen-printed, handmade or sewn) and the impact of the final result. The editors also considered the history behind the making of a record, such as was the case of Black Dice’s Peace in the Valley, in which Three One G label head Justin Pearson (who also is part of the San Diego-based band The Locust) exchanged six months of work at Kinko’s to pay off his debt for printing a 64-page art book that came with the record.

While most of the bands and records might not be immediately recognized by casual listeners of the indie rock and punk genres, a few other groups’ names do stand out. The Melvins land a few pages, most notably with the screen-printed jacket for the band’s Starve Already record and a five-fold, offset-printed jacket of its 666 7-inch.

A more unconventional creation comes from the Long Beach, CA-based band Le Shok, whose S&M has an aptly-placed hole in the jacket so that it can be played directly in a record player, and loses quality each time the record is played.

The book retails from Soundscreen Design or Amazon. See ten more images from the book in the gallery.

Dave Eggers’ clever new book of drawings

Dave Eggers, author and founder of the indie publishing house McSweeney’s recently unveiled yet another creative talent: the knack for drawing. His oversized “It Is Right to Draw Their Fur: Animal Renderings” arrives in McSweeney’s book release club members’ mailboxes this week and his first collection of drawings.

Packaged in a delightful cardboard portfolio, it consists of 26 posters on heavy and regular stock in three sizes of animals Eggers drew with China marker in the late hours of the evening at the end of 2009 into this year. Most are accompanied by nonsensical sayings as imagined by him, an attempt to put words to the animals’ staid-to-confused expressions.

Eggers explains in the enclosed booklet that his drawing background stretches back to his childhood days, when he aspired to become a painter after his hero Manet. He later made extra money through his illustrations. The pictures he’s drawn of animals are simplistic, but the detail lies in the fur. Strokes upon strokes create a coat that you can almost feel with your eyes.

For non-subscribers, “It Is Right to Draw Their Fur’s” official release date is 1 October 2010, but it’s already available from McSweeney’s online store or from Amazon.