The Pains of Being Pure at Heartt

Photographed by Richard Kelly

I stumbled into The Strongrooms to catch up with Kip Bergman and Peggy Wang from The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. For being in a band that has this year been hyped to the high heavens and critically praised, they have an incredibly easy personal presence. 

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, consisting of Kurt Feldman and Alex Naidus as well as Peggy and Kip came together for Peggy's birthday party at a big warehouse in Brooklyn a couple of years ago. Having roped in a few other bands that they all collectively admired, including The Manhattan Love Suicides and Titus Andronicus, the band formed a month prior to it with the goal of performing five songs that they'd written. It made sense that since they were throwing the party, they could play at it too; enjoying the low pressure that the party setting would give. Since they didn't seem to ruin anybody's good time too much, it was deemed a success.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart emerged from the very bosom of the Brooklyn music scene, and what I'm coming to look at as a communal, organic kind of garden in attitude. A plot of land that all the little plants share, growing amongst each other, not too worried about who the biggest or prettiest flower is, cause everyone is a bit of an odd vegetable anyway.

The duo had only answered a couple of other interviews that day, so they weren't too resigned to answer my questions. In fact they were lovely. Kip and Peggy gave all the right answers; and in another case I might have been more skeptical of their apparent ingenuousness, but because they just seemed so, well, normal and sincere with their outlook on their circumstance that I actually believed them.

Check the interview after the jump and mp3 >>

Sina Becker

And today we debut our latest background - this month, the mad skillz behind it is the supremely lovely German born, Dutch raised and London roaming Sina Becker.

How and when did you know you were going to be an illustrator?

I was about 3 or 4 when my older brother showed me how to draw hands (a circle with sticks pointing out in all directions). That was a life changing moment. Everything fell into place after that.

What have been are your biggest influences?

The Horniman Museum in South London - the way they've catalogued dead animals in spider diagrams on those pastel backgrounds is bizarre...yet surprisingly stylish. All I can say is that taxidermy has never looked sexier. Also old reference books on anything from flower arranging to learning how to wind surf, amazing. Then old cartoons from my childhood such as the Jetsons, Ghostbusters - and actually films from the 80's and 90's. They're just good old clean fun.

Who would love to work for or collaborate with?

My creative heaven would consist of Carson McCullers, Miranda July, Wes Anderson, Frida Kahlo and Marian Leatherby (who is a character in Leonora Carrington's 'The Hearing Trumpet'. I know she is not real but some of the things that little old lady gets up to are just fantastic). I'm not sure if they would all get along, but it's my fantasy.

What did you dream about last night?

It was a bit of an epic dream. The thing I remember most vividly is moving into my new house which just happened to be the home of the man who had invented the umbrella. Even in my dream I found that incredibly cool.

Favourite medium?

I like the scissor and blue tack. You see, it's not as permanent as glue - but still keeps everything together. It's perfect for the indecisive collager.

Girl's got a blog too, so go follow her musings there.

The Golden Filter // Penelope and Stephen

Photography by Santiago Felipe

The Golden Filter until now, have been made by the media a somewhat overly mysterious and elusive entity. Having recently dropped 'Favourite Things' on Kitsuné's latest compilation, this seemingly evasive pair first took the scene by storm when they released a faceless, somewhat prophetic and self-explanatory track 'Solid Gold' into the blogosphere. It had everybody talking about them, wondering, "Who the hell are The Golden Filter?"

The New York City based Penelope and Stephen (plus Lisa their drummer, who completes their live show) are the duo behind all the fuss and the brilliant bit of personal obscurity that inadvertently had the bloggerati abuzz. Whilst their tracks were slinking and gliding their way down headphones and out of speakers everywhere, the duo preferred to keep their heads down and let the stalking basslines and undulating electronica of their sexily hazy neo-disco do the talking.

But to part the curtains of myth and golden halos of hair and camera effects that they have hidden behind in photographs, I hung out with Stephen and Penelope for an afternoon, wandering the colourful streets of Williamsburg to talk it out. They were neither masked nor aloof despite previously having used  a vocoder in prior interviews and habitually hidden their faces in press pictures.

In fact, I found Penelope and Stephen to be thoroughly down to earth, pragmatic and frank; aware of themselves and the world that they're operating in, knowing exactly what they want and how to get it without losing themselves in the circus of The Biz that is the music industry.

Interview after the jump >>

MBAR

Say hello to Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson.

Here at IM//UR we prefer to do interviews the old fashioned way; face to face. But in this international day and age, with the internet at your every convenience and inconvenience, it simply must be used. So I'm putting this interview down to virtual (mis?)communication. Daaaaang I must have been in some kind of wonderful mood when I wrote these questions. Maybe I'd taken too much in of his press bio and the interviews I'd read. Maybe I was just in the mood to provoke. Either way, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson is most definitely an entity to be reckoned with, musically and, well, email-ably.

With a wry grin and a somewhat weary shrug at life, a devil may care kind of whimsy in a musical smirk, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson is full of a shuddering kind of strength and a tough tenderness. So we rumbled via email.

Check the interview after the jump >>

Antoine & Marco

Petevstoby are actually two guys called Marco (Zirov) and Antoine (Ryan) who work together on their clothing label out of Sydney, Australia. These are the brains behind the 'Remember when Paris was just a city' tee, and 'Another fucking Kate Moss T-shirt'. So of course we had to shoot them some intercontinental emails to check who the hell is responsible for the latest slew of t-shirts ironic and clever enough to actually be worn without receiving a cringe-face from all who sight them.

Oh gay Paree

HIYA PARIS HAVE A T KTHANXBYE

Turns out that Marco is the lovechild of a designer and a Macedonian poet. He studied of all things, Sexual Psychology in the USA and his personal meditation is that "Meaning is meaningless". Partner in crime Antoine is a former model who moved to France in '05 to pursue it before moving back to Sydney to do Civil Engineering - not just pretty faces designing tshirts you see! Antoine abides by his personal statement that "If you do, you do. If you don't, you don't".

Wise words all around. And here's a bit from the horses' mouths themselves.

Petevstoby, innit.

Your names are Marco Zirov and Antoine Ryan... so who the hell are Pete and Toby?
Pete and Toby is your mind in a nutshell, conflicting truths that are arguing, trying to make sense of this beautiful crazy existence. Pete and Toby are Yin and Yang, Fire and Water, Swine and Bird.

Ha! Swine and bird....Can you give me a short history of how you guys got together and started petevstoby?
We started screenprinting Cool Kids Say Yes shirts in our hometown Byron Bay and all our friends said we should go to the big smoke (Sydney) and take on the big guns, so we packed our swags, put on our stubbies and jumped in the ute with a handful of joints for the ride, 2 years later and we are now addicted to coffee, silk screens and finding the best sandwiches Surry Hills has to offer.
 
Did either of you go to design school? What difference does it make having gone/not having gone to your process and success as a label?
Thankfully neither of us went to any design school, in fact we are both university dropouts. Before dropping out was cool. We both feel that schools are mini prisons, especially for creativity. Why can't class be held outside in the sunshine? Does anybody know..?

What are you influenced by?
Usually something comes in my dreams, early morning snoozes, once you have pressed the snooze button, its like all the creative juices start rumbling in your belly. We feel that drug enduced hallucinations help - Samuel T. Coleridge was an early inspiration for that matter...

How do you feel Australian design in general measures up from an international view?
Australian design is like our trip to the Olympic games. We do alright, but some other countries take more drugs and have more gold...but I guess we are doing alright for a bunch of convicts who destroyed the oldest cultural civilisation on earth.

On that note, what's in the future for petevstoby?
After the last question...Hmm I'm just a guilty conscious who feels the need for a creative/cultural revoloution. We want to keep our movement going, keep being ourselves and working with like minded folks. Hopefully we can stop using the word hope...

Here's a peak of some of our favourites from their current AW 09 collection, Recession, Depression, Expression available online HERE NOW

GALLERY

Covetable, no? The lads also have a blog. To follow their often trippy and psychedelic adventures, pensive thoughts, creations and labours, go HERE.

Mica-shoes

What is it with bands on the roof of buildings? I always end up talking to various different bands on top of them. Not that I'm complaining about the actual rooftop or the talking to bands part, both are wicked; but when you gotta climb up life endangering ladders carrying co-ordination eroding drinks to do it, it's a little dangerous. But I managed it and gave Micachu and her onstage side-kicks, The Shapes, a grilling...

WhoMadeWho - I'd so go there.

So, I feel like there's this weird correlation between WhoMadeWho and the Oompa Loompas of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory fame. I went and tried to explain this to the guys in person, and I'm not sure if they liked the comparison...