Ages ago, factory girls skipped across the heather and saw the textile mills making new material. In our new new industrial age, young-girls wear the heather greys manufactured and destroyed by our immaterial image economy. Our signs are wearing, and meaning is thinner than ever! Bringing together trend analysis and taste-signalling in light of the image economy, up and coming fashion writer Yoon Bang, begins in this essay to write a Gen-Z style overview in which the aesthetic is mutation itself. Thank you Yoon for your research... Mint-green, the colour of the asylum help us to reckon with the fact that dressing takes your whole life... I don't think we will ever be ready.

Brianna Perry's shows "confessional poetry" at Bonington Gallery and "Fantasy in Japan" at Michael Brown gallery close on August 17th and August 8th, respectively.

In The Feminine Century at Room 3557 in east Los Angeles, six variously dressed retail mannequins pose along a pink floor. It’s Brianna Perry’s ‘ready-to-wear collection that promises an impossible outfit’ (from the show notes written by the artist herself). The garments are sourced from thrift stores and her own closet—each one reanimated with surface alterations in the form of imprinted symbols, custom embellishments and illustration-like embroidery. Most tops feature an imprint of an image: potleaf and gun motifs; the Louis Vuitton monogram; the faces of Che Guevara and Bob Marley. It is anti-establishment chic that does more than just flirt with the political.

Each mannequin presents a look that is meant to be read. It’s the linguistic turn of fashion that Perry touches upon with titles like “Look 04: I Walk Around Reading People, Their Tshirts with Words and Images, Everyone is Text.” The body is a page; style is a code. For me, the pleasure in fashion comes from this process of decoding style and the opaque entanglement between the sartorial, the political, the Internet, and the image.

It is arguably impossible to see Perry’s looks as being isolated from the Internet. Each garment exists within a post-Internet context. But rather than overtly referencing some Internet trend, it is more so that a piece echoes some—albeit niche—Internet phenomenon. Take, for example, the “God Sailor Skirt” from “Look 01: I Am Ready and Therefore Nothing.” The navy blue pencil skirt features a discharge-printed Sanskrit Om syllable (ॐ) repeated across the front—a symbol repeating ambiguously but frequently in recent months across my Instagram, Depop, and Pinterest feeds. At one point it was @harmonytividad’s Instagram profile photo, and I remember innocently wondering if she is Buddhist.

This ambiguous adoption of the ॐ symbol is symptomatic of a larger phenomenon of 2016-coded spirituality (think yoga pose pic in Amaro filter captioned with the lotus flower emoji -type posts) that has become familiar as part of the personal brand of It Girls Of The Internet like Addison Rae. In similar fashion, Perry’s I Am Ready and Therefore Nothing reads like an empty prayer. Look 05: I Am Nothing, When Will I Be Ready? reopens this existential pendulum between Nothingness and Readiness. Look 05’s Evil Eye Acid Wash Rip Jeans hint, again, at another one of the Internet’s beloved spiritual symbols to appropriate.

But there’s a broader discussion to be had here about legibility. Being “early” to what eventually trends is an exercise in cultural cachet. Being “behind” implies some kind of aesthetic illiteracy. The microtrend is simply the outward manifestation of this accelerated cycle of taste-signaling and desire for social + cultural capital that fashion so easily caters to. What gets made in the offstream of this cycle is a class of products that resemble aesthetic mutations of each other and that have this uncannily hyperpresent quality to them. Look 06’s “Formalism vs. Sentimentalism Polo” is my favourite piece in the show because it converges several instances of this concept.

Perry’s Formalism vs. Sentimentalism Polo is made of a deconstructed Victorian blouse, dancer’s leotard and woven cotton. The polo ditches its typical collar for a gold sequined choker with a neck cutout (from the dance leotard) that is playfully kitschy. There is something so Girl Perfect about how the gold sequins work with the rest of the pink and heather grey striped material. The U.S. Polo Assn patch on the front and number 3 in collegiate lettering also play important semiotic roles here. The varsity-style number and the horse and polo player patch both evoke and make legible the aesthetic nostalgia for preppy Americana / “Ivy-League-core” (notably solidified as an aesthetic form in the 1965 photo book Take Ivy). This legitimization as a form denotes its ability to be referenced—this referential quality must exist in order for any subversive meaning to be built upon it. To me, this is what’s at work in Miguel Adrover’s Spring 2001 look that pastiches the Ralph Lauren logo.

Perry’s polo gestures at several Internet phenomena that I think can be described as three overlapping yet distinct phenomenons:

1. The Great Polofication of like every Internet-popular brand ever (circa 2025 to early ‘26). This is better demonstrated visually than in language, so here is an image surveying some of the polos released since 2025—notably also the year that Kim Petras released a single called Polo.

2. The dominance of heather greys and stripes (especially stripes combining greys with neons, butter yellow, pink, or mint green/blue) that is still being done by brands today.

3. The aesthetic mutation that blends together silver/gold metallics, heather greys, stripes/polka dots, and collegiate lettering into its own legible genre. This aesthetic mutation [might I add that I do not mean “mutation” derogatorily!] emerged roughly around 2024. This is specifically the year that the first three collections of Lucila Safdie were released: 01—Lick the Star, 02—Girl’s Don’t Cry, and 03—I Desire The Things That Will Destroy Me In The End that were the first iterations I saw, in my corner of the Instagram Universe, blending together these visual tropes (silver/gold metallics, heather greys, stripes/polka dots, and varsity lettering) all into one metamorphosed aesthetic.

In fact, these Lucila Safdie collections are a perfect case study for theorising the aesthetic mutation; coquette-core (the ruffles, polka dots, florals), Americana (the varsity numbers, metallics, red / white stripes), and Zooey Deschanel -esque twee all find themselves in one amalgamated form. I feel that this post-2024 era is marked by a plethora of Internet-popular brands making garments derived from this evolved visual genre that Lucila Safdie forwards. While the post-2024 boom of garments resembling Lucila Safdie designs may only be legible to those existing within the same Instagram Universe as mine, these garments are like fossils preserving the hyperspecific microtrends that produced them. They are fashion’s algorithmic backwash — byproducts of the Internet itself that we may look back upon in 20 years to remember the cultural milieu of this post-2024 era that birthed these styles.

Speaking of the Internet native styles we’ll remember in 20 years, what would a conversation on 2026 aesthetics be without a discussion of MINT GREEN / MINT BLUE / TEAL / TIFFANY BLUE / PASTEL MINT / all of the above?

I recently posted this Story to which a Genzennial-cusp mutual of mine replied to it saying she saw a group of three teenagers at the Palo Alto Brandy location fighting over the last pair of these teal Priscilla gaucho pants. She considered buying them off but figured it’d be futile (it is Silicon Valley after all). I’ve seen Reels of girls lining up for hours outside of the NYC SoHo flagship to get their hands on it or simply complaining about having visited multiple locations just for them to be sold out everywhere. The chokehold that this color has is undeniable.

Mattie Barringer (@nurse_stockings on Instagram and founder of Women’s History Museum with Amanda McGowan) had also posted about the color, saying “The Gen Z obsession with this hospital color speaks volumes of the collective mental state… It’s a color used to calm hospital patients which makes sense because we’re in an open air asylum.” I whole-heartedly agree with Barringer’s observation and believe that these pastel mint and teal colors not only attest to a collective need for tranquility and mental soothing, but also speak to a political fatigue, apathy, fragility, and emptiness. To exist at this moment is to exist within a myriad of intersecting, compounding crises; wars, genocide, climate collapse, stifling job markets, mass deportations, rising fascism, exploding wealth divide, global water bankruptcy, late-stage surveillance capitalism, proliferation of gambling / betting platforms, brainrot culture, the forced spread of (and investment into) AI into every facet of daily life… the list goes on. Personally, it feels like dissociation is my only means of staying sane these days. I have grown fatigued, apathetic, jaded, and numb as a way of surviving reality.

In an interview with Fiona Alison Duncan on their show Grisette à l’enfer (Women’s History Museum’s exhibition at Amant that concluded in February), Amanda McGowan mentions, “Fashion has always been a cultural temperature check. It reflects where people are at. I think fashion right now is speaking to a kind of spiritual and aesthetic emptiness.” To borrow a quote from media theorist Ruby Justice Thelot: “The place where chaos is felt most acutely today is the cultural world. The idea of new aesthetics is essentially taxonomization as a way of making sense of it, as a way of creating order in the cultural world.” Fashion is where the state of the world — for all its frictions, fissures, extremities, and uncertainties — materialises itself.

These mint green colors mean so much more than a passing microtrend. Their affective qualities are symbolic of our wider psychopolitical condition. Certain motifs that Perry engages are similar to mint green in this way.

In the show notes Perry writes, “I was a maladaptive daydreamer looking for an unconscious revolution.” Between Look 03’s potleaf sweater and Look 05’s Che Guevara tube top, I felt like I was standing in front of some kind of signification closet—one that offered this somewhat unserious thought “hm… revolution for today or just get high…?” While unserious, there’s something about this dichotomy that gets at the crux of what it feels like to exist within the imperial core—resistance vs. apathy presented as a mundane symbolic choice, proffered to us in this banal way as if we were just picking what to wear for the day. It’s less about where you sit on a spectrum between revolutionary and apolitical nihilist, and more about how terrifying the mundanity of that choice is—let alone its existence as a choice for us in the West where the pains of the world are felt less acutely; where I can retreat into the comfort of soft pastel blues and not think twice about wearing a Guevara tee.

The politically-charged symbols continue with Look 04’s “Murder Weapon Turtleneck”—a skyblue waffle knit with wooden beads and the faint outline of a pistol on it. I think about the guns I’ll see splashed on tanks by DIY-screenprinters and the girls on Depop tagging their listing as the brands Praying or O-MIGHTY for exposure. The gun is just one symbol from a whole arsenal of strong symbols seemingly emptied of any original meaning when pastiched onto a garment. In its transition from a device designed to kill into a sort of t-shirt appliqué, the gun experiences a remediation into a purely aesthetic symbol. But the violence in this aestheticisation is undone with the choice to call a gun for what it is: a murder weapon. There is something forgotten or ignored when a top with a gun on it is considered cute, but Look 04’s Murder Weapon Turtleneck calls on you to wake up from this cognitive dissonance.

“To wear” is to opt in, to occupy, embody, or externalise—impermanently. The sartorial enables a temporary act, identity, or alignment. What transpires within this idea of the political or the nonpolitical (which, in its denial of politics is itself a political statement) becoming externalised? Talking to Brianna via Instagram DM, I was particularly struck by her point, “I disagree with the common thesis that subcultural and/or political imagery is diluted in the process of mass distribution and mass manufacturing (Che T-shirts, etc). For me, all these symbols remain fanged and subversive.” While the post-Internet connotations I bring to my reading of the symbols may differ from the artist’s original intent in choosing them, there is no denial that these garments are imbued in a charged energy that make it impossible to ignore the imagery and symbols we may have become indifferent towards. The Feminine Century renews and reinvigorates a sense of cognizance to the emptiness of our aesthetic symbols.

When Tiqqun wrote their Theory of the Young Girl, some people pointed out that it was a bit misogynistic, using the assumed vacuity, emptiness, and ultimate energetic frivolity of women and girls in the West as both an analogy, a mode, and a mask that governments, men in suits and anyone (?) under late-stage capitalism can don at any moment. Why always dolls and not women, like cmon now.

As Lou Reid explains, Egner's paintings incorporate the mass-market with the acceptable pre-war pedo vibes of Balthus in a manner that could be read as "relatable" for contemporary femininity. But the young girl, or the doll, can't ever just be a vessel, and is more of membrane, bearing the trace of its observer, or theorist, or painter, who doesnt wash their grubby little hands before handling.

Anyway, post-impressionist paintings of dolls...

— Syd

There is desire, a burning passion for the all-too-real and ultimately unattainable, and there are one-dimensional figments of the imagination – undeveloped castles in the sky to be drooled over, lest any intricacy ruin the dream. Jeff Egner’s recent show “Guest Room” at Lomex dances the line between the former and the latter, conjuring scenes of strange, lurid intimacy with well-heeled influences and unrefined (yet enthusiastic) figurative techniques.

Across twelve oil paintings almost exclusively depicting dolls and feminine playthings, Egner oscillates between the high and low-brow, attempting to merge the (tastefully) suggestive language of Balthus’s children with the more brusque obscenity of the mass-market Temu sex robot. Take Untitled (Room III), 2025, a work depicting a seemingly inanimate girl bent over a table, offering a glimpse of her underwear as she looks directly back at the viewer. Her body is posed unnaturally – her club foot at the end of her outstretched leg bends at a bizarre ninety-degree angle, and her only visible arm twists around her back before disappearing behind her upturned second foot. At the bottom of her raised leg, a mass of thigh resting on the table accumulates into an abhorrent puddle. Two seams appear at the top and bottom of the contorted arm’s elbow joint, definitively marking the figure as a fleshy cast of silicone stretched around a Barbie-like series of pins and bolts. An easy comparison can be drawn between Untitled (Room III) and Therese Dreaming, 1938, a Balthus painting of a young girl daydreaming while exposing her underwear beneath her arched leg. This is a provocative theme, and any work influenced by the voyeuristic gaze of the adult male on the helpless girl must tread carefully lest it cross over into the realm of the flagrantly exploitative. Egner meaningfully tweaks Balthus’s unrepentant examination of his sitter with a healthy dose of self-admonishment, positioning the doll to look back at the viewer, implicating them in their overt sexualization of the figure. The tension (and thrill) of the Balthus work is absent, and instead replaced by the shame and contemplation akin to a fleshlight collector memorialising his own perversion, turning his urges inward and mixing his lust with an unshakable embarrassment. To so obviously fetishise the inanimate qualities of the doll is to take away from its uncanny appeal, and render an otherwise complex being disappointingly flat.

In Swallow’s Nest, 2025, meanwhile, two women appear before a picturesque castle in a crudely painted scene, haunted by a floating male visage. Appearing somewhere between a reflection of a face on a glass pane and the ominous floating phallic rhino horns which crowd the female subject of Dali’s Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity, 1954, the face watches over the women with startling proximity, as though the cloud-like lines which define its hair and brow will soon be breathed in by the girls. The taller woman, wearing a crop top and short shorts, leans against a railing. The other sits on a stone ledge, crossing her bare feet and closing her eyes in a slump. While the painting overtly sexualises the Barbie-like figures of the two women, it is less a piece of toe and leg worship than a fetishisation of detachment, a work dedicated to the “cool girl” as a figure which can be observed yet never approached. Dali referred to Young Virgin as the most chaste of his paintings, in spite of the penis-dream’s paradoxically “erotic appearance”. Egner lands on a similar feeling in Swallow’s Nest, bringing a male figure into a painting in the most ineffectual, flittering manner possible – while the women could breathe in the wispy vapours of the face, they could just as easily turn and blow them away. The delicacy of this relationship is, however, jeopardised by the cardboard-cutout inertia of the women. Painted as placid amazons in fantasyland, they are frustratingly disconnected from the unstable encounter Egner is anticipating.

This is not to say that Egner is incapable of producing complex and captivating work: In Her Blue Dream, 2025, a female figure in a schoolgirl’s uniform looks longingly to her side, straining her right hand to play with the fabric of her sleeve. The woman’s pupil-less eyes do not rest on the viewer, but out a window, conveying disappointment or yearning for something outside the scene. Her face carries more emotion than any of the other inanimate personages here, and her body is posed in an avoidant stretch. The question of the figure’s animation is the painting’s greatest success, highlighting the importance of Egner’s rendering of his girls in the success or failure of his unsettling tableaus. Unlike the mottled and flat daubs which comprise the majority of the show’s works, Her Blue Dream is painted in long smooth strokes, emphasising the drape of the figure’s arms and floes of hair. It appears as though Egner has positioned his doll to reject his advances, engaging the productive tension between each inanimate yet uncannily attractive doll to question the root of his desire. Here – at last – Egner imagines the doll as being able to say no, and produces a portrait instead of another silicone still life.

Teo has the time and energy to go places in London that our editorial team (who are all ex-vice staff in their late thirties) do not. One of these places is Christ Dillinger and Acid Soulja Boy's jacked-up internet rap that really makes ur brain go WHUUUURRR WHUUUUURRR WHUUUURRRR. Keywords: Hikkokimori; Tung Tung, EDM Beats.

Christ, we know ur real name.

When Keir Starmer sucker-punched British teens with a social media ban, I was left paranoid about the future of music. Albeit uplifted by the rappers’ chimerical charisma, Acid Souljah and Christ Dillinger’s London show felt like a spirited requiem to a subculture epitomised by its severely plugged-in teenage fans and innovators.

Outside The Garage, himkimori’s are hitting vapes from the black market and crying “Tung Tung Tung Sahur is so leng” after he came out on stage for bloodonmybalmain’s set. The bouncers don’t bat an eye when my friend and I promise we’re on the guest list and sneak in while Acid Souljah is mid-verse, rapping every bar in a falsetto that makes him sound like a slacker yelling at his parents from his gaming set-up.

This doesn’t feel like the usual underground rap (whatever that means now) extravaganza; barely any phones are in sight and the moshing etiquette is surprisingly considerate, which also means it’s appropriately and absolutely frenetic in there. The compound of Acid Souljah’s hilariously cunning bars and the sheer bounce of the music draws a twisted grin on my face; there’s something exhilarating yet uncanny in seeing such a mythical subject from my fyp in the flesh. You can tell he’s been performing for years now, and when the music is so authentic, the swag follows: naturally.

Joining Acid, Christ Dillinger glides onto the stage in a green Vetements shirt that droops down to his ankles — his silhouette harks back to a faded memory of a 2000’s MC. Inaugurating his utopian American party is X MAN, which entices an eclipse in the enthusiasm of the crowd, charging in droves towards the rapper. As he waltzes and nods about, a colourful contrast is cast between his virtuosic, based flow and the infectiously funky EDM beats he’s barring on.

Whether he’s expertly listing drugs or flexing his after-hours endeavors, Dillinger injects his music with a fluency in online-humour that never betrays his integrity. In between songs, an edited version of the trapaholics tag warns us,“This song is fucking is horrible.” Freud believed that collective laughter occurred at the breaking down of authority — that seems to be happening a lot tonight.

I get goosebumps when a vulgarly ear-stimming trance beat drops after the MC candidly confesses: “The only opp I got is depression”. Diving into the mosh for a few minutes and fulfilling a kid’s request to end the show on the triumphant and familial note of “based world mansion”, Dillinger proves he is as unaffectedly committed to his fans as they are to him.

The rappers share the stage with their friends; they want the lights off; they pause the music for water breaks; and launch free Palestine chants. Based negative squad CEOs assured me that youth culture can only endure.

The Jaded cosmopolitan multiculturalists long for the orientalised pseudo-monoculture of ‘the north’, and what they come up with is “Club Nite” at Village Underground. This is not so much a review of Clubnite as a club night; Olivia Twist turns her attention to the club decorations, courteously provided by the so-eminently-crap-it-almost-goes-without-saying artist Corbin Shaw. What was the deal with this ironic nationalist boy’s club of a club night? - HSR

It's not often that people actually talk about the decoration of clubs anymore, since unfortunately we as a culture have succumbed to the plain black quasi-warehouse: boring bland and industrial. The idea that an artist would collaborate with a club night to decorate their walls is therefore an appealing idea. However, the delivery makes me wonder whether its worth even hoping for good things to happen. To think! at the time, the world cup was still a month away.

A note on the aural/oral before we get into aesthetics. The sets were good and fun: Mysrry (DJasianbarbie) made her debut set. A big highlight was Taylor Richardson’s featuring a mix of esoteric computer guided remixes with cassö, RAYE, D-Block Europe - Prada (STAR SEED & PIERCE Remix) and an EsdeeKid-4 Raws Budot edit, Rihanna Hit List (Bassline Remix) and I have Nothing, Big G. Drunk in Love Diplo Remi; Lancer Victorious Honey Buns; Murder Club Nirvana & Cardi B Remix, a set list rooted in the online, or as he likes say: “I just play music”. Big up Paritos’s set and organisational verve.

This was promptly followed by BoyPillow (1 of the three founders of premier e-girl and -boy clubbing event, Maxxxing) who downed a bottle of Henny while playing his signature High BPM High bass tracklist. The eminent if-you-know you know Bailey Holmes Music’s USB was corrupted, so the same track kept running back, over and over again, until he MC’ed over Jenny Spark’s dope two-hour set. The act of inviting memes like OGMeathead (who didn't even turn up) and mixing them with other artists smacks of this weird exotica-approach that people from London have about Bradford MC type music. It’s annoying.

I have been to insanely good MC type nights. I have seen Marky B kick the soundguy in the face after only one song. But these kinds of things do not happen in hipster-adjacent spaces.

So yeah, the Corbin Shaw Flags. The club was filled with them. One huge one behind the decks that said “Clubbing” then a bunch of others dotted throughout Village Underground emblazoned with phrases like “tart”, “Filler”, “2014” and “Klarna”. It was unclear if the DJs got briefed that they’d be playing beneath twenty St. George’s flags during a historic upswing of the Xenophobia-fuelled Reform party that is threatening to ‘deport’ or exile hundreds of thousands of our loved ones.

Corbin’s flags remind me of those nihilistic affirmation instagram accounts littered with phrases like “my country is so psychologically stable” or words like “lit” overlaying AI gen rainforests and squashed pics of Ed Sheeran. AI’s evolution from the visuals of DALLE-1 to realistic deep fakes relegated these affirmation pics to the internet graveyard. But these flags summon them back, reading similarly to Corbin’s recent AI-influenced campaign poster for SXSW festival that reads “REEL LIFE” over an image of Stone Henge filtered through the “impressionism” prompt on Adobe Express. They give nostalgia for recent years swiping at instagram affirmation images on an iphone 5c fused with some kind of affirmative pseudo critique painted on a crusader knights shield.

“Nobody knows what it means, but its provocative.” – Blades of Glory

What is more provocative is perhaps the feeling of being on drugs in a club with sexy people, in a sexy environment. Instead we were mired within empty, basic irony because of the flags, which people kept looking at, feeling weirded out by.

Exemplary of the power of instagram to give soft power to the most shallow and unresearched work, it sanitises the violence, suffering and anxiety endemic to contemporary British life. Shaw smoothes down anger into the barest of worded signifiers. Using the same dumbed-down visual language of his object of critique speaks to Corbin Shaw's poverty of imagination, that starves the brain like a nitrous oxide balloon, except in a bad way. In his world, we are fed only the rehashed codes of an easy liberal target: ‘nationalism’. Whatever that means for England, satellite state of Palantir.

It doesn’t help that Village Underground has the shape and feel of a WW2 bunker.

Not to labour the point too much, but it felt ketty-fascistic.

I love tarts and I love clubbing. Clubbing tarts should have far more power in this country. As concepts they shouldn’t be sloganised and put on a crap piece of bonehead art.

Superstar leaves you with two messages: Justice for my tartiness! AND, let’s respect clubbing! Leave St George out of it.

If you haven't already got with our flipping program, there is a 16 year-old spectre haunting the most tasteful musical events in London and abroad- it's Nico.

He took a trip to Paris to review an Atomiser show (oui!) but its our reporter's hilarious review of the mire of FakeMink that really set hearts alight across the globe.

The courtyard below the Marble Arch fountains has been fenced off since the year I was born, so it’s a nice alignment of the stars that Hollywood Superstar suggested I report on its Westminster council-approved return into the civic for one afternoon. London is still waking up as the orderly queue of longhairs in band tees descends into the disused exit to the train station; a stage has been set up in the centre of the pit, but everyone stops in front of it despite the staff’s innocuous requests to fill the whole space.

Two metres away from me, Lolina rises onto the stage wearing sunglasses, a thrashed leather jacket, zebra-print trousers and white air forces; it looks like she put on whatever she found littered around Marble Arch. Her mega hit single Gg (remixed by New York) starts playing and she’s already asking cold and daring questions on the concrete dancefloor. She’s expressionless while delivering the hook, “Who’d you throw under the bus? Who might you run over?” Her set is amorphous, covering a range of UK Bass sounds (also briefly recalling Chicago’s footwork) tainted with her trademark Londonese Hypnagogia that is as nauseating as it is ecstatic. If not a smoke filled basement, this dingy pit feels like her home ground.

YHWH Nailgun fist bump each other as they take their positions, only to dillydally with leads and microphones for five minutes. A screeching feedback needs fixing and the singer is teasing us with adlibs. The frontman begins to twitch and wave his mic around like a wand, casting the band to run through their fresh 11-minute album Magazine.

I’m immediately flinching at the drums which are appreciably louder than on the mix of the album. The pitched down rototoms give the drumming a primal feel (he’s also not wearing shoes) that reminds me of binging videos of early Death Grips shows- I saw at least two drumsticks snap throughout the set. The vocalist is certainly matching this ferocity, manically quaking with every unintelligible croon and roar.

It would be nice to see the other two members resemble the outrage of their instruments a bit more; the guitar and synth parts are indistinguishable, combining to resemble sharp sirens and hums of machinery, also merging with the industrial sounds of central London. In The Art of Noises, futurist Russolo hypothesised the modern ear would come to crave the sounds of the metropolis in music; indeed, the quieter moments in which this fusion is apparent feel surreal!!

I think these four New Yorkers should be an urgent reminder, for some of today’s rock bands, that you can still make compelling music when guided by pure intention rather than image (not naming names.)

Fifteen minutes is not yet sufficient to appease an audience and so the band play some old songs, setting off a mosh that carries a few crowd-surfers. The most eager call for an encore I’ve ever heard ignites the one-minute throwback of Hawk Violence which ends at five on the dot, precisely as promised by NTS.

A free show is an irresistible way to lure Londoners back into the exponentially unapproachable circus that is the city’s centre.

When we covered the show at the cause last year, a week after LV Sandals came out, we predicted the invasion of the UK underground into the mainstream. A year on, we have seen the mixed results of this success, epitomised in the success and unsuccess of Essdeekid post-Capitol records deal, and here with this alternately banging and uncertain, slightly pretentious release from Fakemink. We can hope for a British invasion, but we have to fear the possibility that Britain becomes a site of cultural extraction in service of the empty American imperial core.

Thank god we have Teo to guide us. Find here, the return of our high school music reporter. Here he dishes his opinions, as the superstar does: with panaché and natural online research-habitus.

Terrified is fakemink’s synthesis of the terror beneath the pride with which he lives his self-prophesied life. The Essex boy faked it till he made it; the fantasies of Hollywood and fragrances he seduced my generation with are real now.

Between the opening instrumental and spoken-word finale, he revisits his older sound – hazy beats, ranty verses and hypnotically jarring hooks – but with a confidence that was absent from the angst-punctuated songs he blew-up with. Retard Angel drowns a Tirzah sample under, like, a million layers of effects and bass; the haunted trap beat on Wrong Relief feels terrifying after the danceable fyp anthem Night, Blooming Jasmine (not-so-politely taking its name from Lynch’s grave); and 51 Ttashpel Pony Ave proudly recalls the jerk-beats the rapper used to release in industrial quantities. But underlying the aesthetic sensibility and chaos that mark the prodigal rapper so distinctly is an eerie feeling of fame-induced apathy. His unrelenting flex of having “lived out the chateau” testifies the extent to which he has been consumed by the LA lifestyle.

The occasional confessions, “Miss Marmont driving me crazy” and “fuck Sunset, really miss Mayfair” remind us of how distant the London Saviour has become. Essdeekid got an eye-watering deal when he entered the LA Capital Records deathstar and his music payed the price. He was immediately paired to prop up the acts of yesteryear aka. the floundering Yeat, dropping a god-awful track from a Rap Caviar type producer. Almost instantly, the vitality of his image became like the hair care gummies plugged by an ex-love island reality tv star. It’s a cautionary tale that Mink has yet avoided, but still creates a bad taste in the mouth by association. Indeed, there is a jarring contrast between the phone scrolling in a dark room night-time feel of Mink’s music and the much-publicised awkwardness of his bright sun-lit performances on the post-millennial mainstream festival circuit. How long does it take to get back from Rolling Loud to London Fields?

With Terrified, fakemink tries to evolve beyond the single, which he has mastered over the last 2 years, and arrives at a broader scale of storytelling - one which fakemink places Victoria Davidoff at the centre of. The 9-fingered Soundcloud princess clutching a pole and hiding behind the curtains of Chateau Marmont in the cover is a muse in fakemink’s tragedy. Her demented dance and grin at the end of the Like A Virgin music video reminds me of the Virgin in Jean-Luc Godard’s Hail Mary, who achieves liberation and transgression in the final scene by putting on lipstick. Victoria is a figure of fantasy in his Mulholland Drive-esque dream, and like Dante’s Beatrice, a remote crush deeply written into his lament.

It’s no surprise the self-proclaimed genius has directly named Lynch and Dante’s Inferno as inspirations. Comparisons are certainly not warranted, but they signify fakemink’s ambition which, much like the album, treads thin ice between visionary talent and self-indulged redundancy. It feels like fakemink has a tendency to be infatuated with things he can’t quite grasp, whether it be art, fame, Victoria Davidoff or himself. This perplexity is glaring on the sadistically titled Retard Angel, perhaps the most discordant moment on the album narrating a love story turned rotten as mink cries foul play.

Despite his claim that the tracklist simulates Dante’s Divine Comedy, beginning in hell (lustful subject matter etc.) and resolving in enlightenment (naively signified by the erasure of low frequencies and drums), the conflict at the core of terrified is not so easily resolved. The final song “Etna .” replaces Enzo’s bars with Victoria Davidoff’s uncanny attempt at a British accent, who warily considers:

“So here we are, a little older, a little wiser, and slightly embarrassed about the theatrics, but alive, which all things considered is not a bad outcome right?”

You wonder how self aware fakemink is of his own image, to invite both a muse and a creative director to collaborate with him so closely on an album that de facto ends up hiding its more thoughtful, introspective poetry behind her mystique. While hits scattered across the tracklist recall the swag the savant-level rapper bulldozed into the scene with, it feels like fakemink is asking himself questions he can’t answer as he takes a hubristic leap and, in the end, finds himself stuck mid-air.

Fashion is Alec Monopoly is Art

"Costume Art" is on view through January 10th, 2027.

Read her review of the Met Gala here, where she outlines that...

"I will review the costume institute show at face value, they got blood money and from what I can tell they used it to buy and display the best."

N.B.

—

On the second monday in may, I trekked to the upper east side, home to the most fabulous of art hoes of yesteryear (old angry wealthy ladies with puffy lips, hair teased high, and the tiniest frames being engulfed in Miyake’s Pleats Please) to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, whose facade and grand steps just a week before had been transformed into the backdrop that makes up the internet-drenched playground that has morphed into the celebrity/corporate-ego-orgy known as the Met Gala. As it has done since 1947 (although once a humble affair), the 2026 gala (spectacle) was held to celebrate (ego-gorge) the opening of the Met Costume Institute’s May exhibition Costume Art: ‘fashion is art’.

So let’s get into it… First and foremost highlighting the importance of the discussion that is Costuming Art. It has formed the crux of many artists' practices and works over the decades, myself included. First grounded officially in language with Anne Hollander’s Seeing Through Clothes aka a Fashion History 101 textbook and also my own personal bible: my copy a tattered, dog-eared-to-oblivion old thing, replete with highlights and embarrassing notes left in the margins by a girl in her early 20’s. I was pleased and surprised to see it in the giftshop, here she is in all her glory:

For the first time ever, the show pulled from the museums’ 15 other departments, juxtaposing works dating back as far as 5000 BCE, using said works to prop up (metaphorically, the overworked conservators would never!) the clothing displayed, instead of the usual other way around.

I must admit, despite the promise of a face-value review, I was still donning my hater cap, a grey felted beret with oversized deco hat pin, upon my arrival. The show was oversized with goods — a gluttenous display of pockets so deep, you had not 1 or 2 but EIGHT examples of tattooed garments. I could not shake the knowledge that the Costume Institute had blood money, which they so fittingly used in the display of a whole section of blood-related garb entitled the ‘Vital Body,’ (love…) from the second richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos along with his wife Laura Sanchez Bezos, to make the exhibition possible with a donation of ten million dollars to the institute. This amount is the Bezos-equivalent of finding change in your pocket, just saying! Anyways, I guess it is a discussion we can’t count on fashion to fix– but I think if we are trying to make a show that hoists fashion out of the realm of the superficial – the exhibition establishing itself alongside a new wing of the met — it's a pretty damning start.

In case you have not had the privilege of diving into this nerdy ass textbook from the 70s, upon entering the main gallery, there is an automated speaker a la robotic voice overhead, announcing “PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM THE ART,” anytime a viewer got to close to something… which was every goddamn five seconds because it's so crowded in that place. So yes, Fashion is Art, and security agrees. Speaking of surveillance, the mannequins are 1984 chic; something about their presentation-height combined with the chopped off profiles replaced with mirrors, that gives you the eerie sense you are actually the one on display, and those mirrors are, in fact, two way (or two-faced?). What was the conceptual decision for these over-the-top mirror faces? A physical manifestation of the way we project our own societal ideals and ideas onto dress and the dressed body? Sure, but there are pages and pages of pretentious placard text throughout the exhibition that really hammers this idea into your skull for you. It felt gimmicky… and creepy within the framework of amazon money.

Sidenote– drinking game idea: go through the exhibit with your friends: take a shot every time you see the words: liminal, allegorical, abstraction, allegorical abstraction, transcultural, temporal, dialectic, transcend, externalize… leave obliterated. I mean, I loved the text sometimes, but it was a bit much– not to mention even my seasoned in fashion-theory-reading brain had a hard time consuming the word salads with a robot yelling in one ear while simultaneously bopping and weaving between the very thick crowd, this type of culture ingesting is not for the faint of heart (or potentially for the sober).

Vionnet, Adrian and Madame Gres-clad surveillance systems watching down on you plebs!!!!!

Ok ok I can continue to nitpick.. Or, I can show you my favorite parts. I adore and learn so much from looking at fashion through the context of art history; I was a child, and the proverbial candy in the store was archive Vionnet, Madame Gres, 19th century undergarment structures, Archival Mugler, Iranian Iron-age sculpture, a whole section dedicated to the Grecian Stance, 15th century italian temperas, 18th century anatomical drawings, Albrecht Durer, old school Yves Saint Laurant, Miyake, a TON of Undercover, Victorian Mourning mementos, Mcqueen, 4th century BCE Etruscan Armor, and a lot of each. The pockets were DEEP and the show was massive. Please regard some of my own personal highlights- details that made full use of the limitless possibilities Andrew Bolton had to work with; So, I cordially present…. moments that had me forgetting that I was a hater:

Female figurine kneading dough(?)
Cypriot
ca. 600–480 BCE

The section on the Grecian Bend, a by-product of the freaky late 19th century. The lithograph is fabulously juxtaposed with a grecian sculpture from ~500 BCE. There is an entire section on the grecian bend and bodily apparatuses that helped women achieve the booty-as-shelf aesthetic synonymous with this fashion period, hotness is fashion is circular!

This Louise Bourgois Drawing paired with a Marine Serre body suit, I don’t think Louise would have liked Marine Serre Body suits very much… but I do think they were starting to scratch at something here.

This ultra special boil-chic cotton muslin number from the early 19th century, god bless you all for letting this 1981 acquisition see the light of day!!!

Victorian hair mementos; Victorians were true freaks (Valerie Steele writes extensively on their horny weird freak-ness if you are interested), and one of many death-obsessed rituals that came out of this weird time/place are hair mementos. Missed opportunity to incorporate the Mcqueen line from the 90s where Lee incorporated locks of his own hair into the garments, BUT I love any opportunity to see these high drama mementos in real life.

Pairing Munch with fashion… I think Evard would have LOVED the Dress and Psychoanalysis show at the Museum at Fit last year, but I think knowing his work was propping up the fashion lords in the skull section at the Met Fashion exhibit would have the expressionist absolutely furious!!! Which I find charming.

Jacques Fabien Gautier Dagoty (French, 1716-1785)
Plate, from Joseph Guichard Duverney's Myologie Complette en Couleur et
Grandeur Naturelle, 1746

Andy Warhol's torso shot by Irving Penn juxtaposed with a dress by NY contemporary Susan Ciancolo. The scars from surgical sutures mimicking the hand-basted work done by the seasoned artist/designer was highbrow new york.

Wooden carved prosthetic limbs by Alexander Mcqueen

There were lots of beauties not making it into this image carousel- custom Michaela Stark, a plethora of contemporary designers, mannequins displaying underrepresented bodies in fashion, a section on the corpulent body educating one on fat theory- all great things saturating the internet if it's sparking your interest.

The Chopping Block

Ok time to put my hater hat (black cloche adorned with rooster feathers) back on, for just a couple things that I need to get off my Kamali-Clad chest.

Starting with the most literal chopped, how can you show a silhouette like this with a profile like that?? It was so close to being so good. The lack of a profile/face from this victorian dame is in an attention-argument with the shelf-like derriere synonymous with 19th-century dress and a focus point of the Seurat work. In my humble opinion, NOTHING should be distracting from the majestic booty-popping of the bustle.

I also wanted to share an interesting parallel of this display from a mere month ago at the Museum at FIT Art X Fashion show:

Although I do think the victorian dress the Met chose to parallel the painting was much more successful than the Museum at FIT’s, I am most likely hating on the Met’s display because, as my work was curated into the FIT’s show, I am biased and potentially jealous that the Met got a real study from Seurat, and we got an LED display. Alas.

This iconic Margiela tattoo top from 1989 had the CI using the term “liminal space” (drink) to describe the area of skin between arms and shoulders.

Nobody asked them to show Anselm Kiefer paired with Joseph Thimister’s collection addressing the lasting effects of WWI on modern society. You really want to go there? With a current war raging and genocide we are witnessing real time through our phones? To include this, almost as an afterthought, as an element/way to look at the mirror that fashion holds up to society, rips whatever it was you were trying to do right back down, in super-sonic speed, to the superficial realm. Maybe this mannequin's face was chopped after falling flat on it.

Typo alert– Quote from placard on this dark pairing: The disembodied female head emerging from the permafrost suggests a chthonic haunting, recasting the land as a vessel for historical indictment. Yikes.

The copious amounts of dust everywhere… The Costume Institute accomplishing dusty in every sense of the word

The Skims Section

The last room the exhibition ended on was the “Epidermal Body” aka the skims room. This room looked at fashion recontextualizing what the term or color “nude” represents- shifting away from a singular (and white) definition mainstream fashion has adopted for hundreds of years, to one that takes on the multifaceted meaning that it should, seen here for example with Louboutin's “Nude collection.” Also featured were different nude colorways of Telfar Bags. I thought it was extremely interesting to not include Skims, the entire room looking like it had been plucked from the brands’ instagram. I think the Skims brand holds enough cultural relevance in terms of what a contemporary interpretation of undergarmenting looks, the history of “second skin” being one that dates thousands of years, and Skims being the most prominent reflection of how we as a western society approach our once-unmentionables. Certainly not a tragic oversight, just an interesting one is all.

But, I will say, with the “Epidermal Body” room, they did end on a beautiful installation of Miyake’s brand, APOC (or A Piece Of Cloth), and this mid-17th century sketch, so it I was immediately distracted by said shiny object before being ejected back into the museum lobby.

Author Caspar Berthelsen Bartholin Danish
Editor Thomas Bartholin Danish
1651

Martina Cox reviews the event on the first monday in May, celebrating the opening of the costume instiuttes Spring exhibition, from the perspective of fashion historian, a fashion designer, an artist and an all-round fantastic seer of sartorial history.

Proposed timeline for the Met Gala in coming years —

Fashion is Art (2026)

Fashion is AI (next year)

And then, group suicide (2028)

While Billionaires for a dead planet gathered in May, in the City Capitol donning no budget replete with massively heavy ballgown trains and the peasants that carried them (queue video montage of peasant train-movers, including the five masked models Madonna hired to carry hers, and the unforgivable walk of shame back down the steps they were forced to make when she reached the top, we see you masked angels!! But also Madonna I still love you), I gathered with my lovely studiomates (shout out to Robbie Stinchcomb for many of the one-liners and title) to watch and belligerently shout at the television “FASHION IS ART!!!!!!!” while piled onto a couch giggling and eating Cheez-It Duoz Sharp Cheddar & Parmesan Crackers ™ (we may not have healthcare but this kind of joy is something money can not buy). Sidenote, did you know Ozempic was developed from a hormone found in a Lizards saliva?

Allen Jones (b. 1937) *Hatstand, Table and Chair (i) Hatstand (ii) Table (iii) Chair

Allen Jones (B. 1937), Table, Acrylic paint, glass, metal, mirror, mixed media and tailor made accessories Executed in 1969, this work is from an edition of six plus one artist's proof

The theme licenses that you can literally wear anything. I am a fashion historian, I can historicize and artify the sweatpants I am wearing to write this (but I am also at an unfair advantage because said sweats are 80s Norma Kamali sweatcouture). Some celebs had lovely little anecdotes about paintings their look referenced no matter how abstract, some looked like they were going to kill a dog when they got home, and many had multiple additional limbs mounted atop their person. So I will throw ONE bone- Kylie Jenner was my favorite look.. The look is Schiaparelli (RIP Elsa, if Mae West’s bust-to-waist proportions shocked you, I suggest you look AWAY). Ky’s dress was ripped off (ode to bodice ripping perhaps?), the top half of the dress folded down over her waist, a surreal tan flesh-colored torso emerging hard nips ablaze- a pertinent nod to the Skims dynasty. Another sidetone, the nips of all three sisters are an active part of their looks; I think I freed the nip first when configuring this algorithmic workaround to the automation of nipple detection (See here) but I am glad these girls have caught up and found a way too. The inside of a couture dress, aka the guts, is by far the most beautiful and interesting part, to have it on display while simultaneously wearing the gown, is the craft equivalent of having your cake and eating it too, so Daniel Roseberry I commend you, but also you dress fascist billionaires so you might be going to hell.

Speaking of, another Roseberry look worth mentioning is that of the lady of the hour, the madame who fronted the bill, Mrs. Laura Sanchez Bezos. The gown is in direct reference to Madame X by John Singer Sargent, Sanchez-Besoz’s dress an ode to the ORIGINAL painting that had one sleeve falling off, this suggestive detail painted over post-salon, after Paris was up in arms about it, pun intended.

Vergenie Amelie Avegno Gautteau aka Madame X was a fierce american born parisian socialite who powdered her skin lavender, hennaed her hair and eyebrows and rouged her ears, need I say more? I am probably eager to think this homage to Virgenie is referencing the shared outrage they both sparked, but whether intentional or not, the parallels are certainly there. The comment section of any costume institute social media post is absolutely gorged with malice since the sponsors’ announcement, and similarly to stand in front of the portrait in the 1884 salon was to hear every profanity/vulgarity/obscenity uttered under the sun in the french language. Singer Sargent is a god send in capturing the ephemeral nature of the stuffs known as textile— and in this case freakishly pale skin— but it was the scandal that propped up the success and history making of a decent painting. The outrage of the Parisian public in 1884 was one of a canonized art history phenomenon: Singer-Sargent was ahead of his time, after 20 years in hiding the painting was brought out to the adoration of a new public, ready to face what it hadn’t been able to do before, embracing it with unexpected hunger too. There is something about looking back a generation to see what upset everyone so much— what had everyone’s metaphorical or literal panties in a bunch— and laughing in the face of it. See, this is where the two diverge: will we be looking back in 20 years to laugh? In a fever dream in a parallel universe is this the fate of Sanchez-Bezos and her contribution to the art world? Certainly not. The only canonization I foresee in her future is of the literal kind, from the impending revolutionaries.

But what if the work doesn’t get to enjoy the privileges of time? Fastforward to London in the 1970s, and we have the public in an uproar again— Allen Jones's Hatstand, Table, and Chair were exhibited;

In 1978 his work was attacked by stink bombs. Unlike Madame X, 40 years later and our reactions to these sculptures have not softened, time has not packaged them with a neat little bow of adoration. He said what I was trying to pointpoint with Madame X far more eloquently:

“Fetishism and the transgressive world produced images that I liked because they were dangerous. They were about personal obsessions. They stood outside the accepted canons of artistic expression and they suggested new ways of depicting the figure that weren’t dressed up for public consumption.”

In the interview, Jones cites his favorite word as ‘Grabbable.’ Enter Kim Kardashian, donning the pinnacle of pointy boob a la Allan Jones, her life diligently documented on camera, and one that is far from grabbable. People have rushed to the internet full speed to comment on the shared imagery and references her eskimo sister Bianca Censori has been mining through Allen Jones-esque performance art. But for Kim, she gets to triumphantly step over (stepstool style) Bianca fixed as a furniture object and mainline the OG artist himself. Kim's legacy of exploring sex iconography through an insatiable capitalistic framework leaves much to unpack (will not open up this can of worms here but rec the IG page @kardashian_kolloquium for more), and working with artists like Nadia Lee Cohen or Jurgen Teller warrants a complexity and level of cultural engagement that, whether you like it or not, is aligned with the art world. Bianca’s performance work comparatively is one of shock and silence, saying little to back up a life that can be compared to one big performance piece. I think there is more nuance, conversation, and years of honing that backs up what Kim’s (and Nadia’s) collaboration with Allen Jones does. Kim has been doing this since Bianca was in the womb, taking hit after hit from a patriarchal public like a cyborg walking through a battlefield, and she still infuriates us, at least now from the top.

Allen Jones, Stand – By Me, 2024, Patinated bronze outline with acrylic infill, patinated bronze head, 165 x 58 x 58 cm. Courtesy of Almine Rech Gallery / Photo credit: Manuel Obadia-Wills.

We project our fears, angers and frustrations about the femme torso, sex and power onto these sculptures, honestly, much in the way we have towards Kim over the past two decades as well. This fear is the threatening what society is comfortable with, the objectification of the femme, subverted through using sex, autonomy, and literal casts of the femme torso to turn conservative and deeply objectifying norms onto itself. And at the end of the day, society’s fury over S&M furniture or the suggestive fall of a strap, indicates tragic horseblinders are on– don't look over there at the gross levels of resource hoarding off the backs of thousands of injured amazon workers, free the nipple, just not too much…

Ok, I have spilled the vitriol that are my feelings towards the gala, thank you for bearing with me as I did so, I am a garb lover and like many feel that this event is devoid of magic in the face celebrity delusion and a burning planet- we are in a war, committing a genocide, and here in USKKKA Amazon web services has a contract with and provides the platform ICE uses to store its data…. the people are pissing in bottles at work for christ sake. But, I will review the costume institute show at face value, they got blood money and from what I can tell they used it to buy and display the best.

Dirk Diggler reportage-d their mega cafe oto gig here. Pregnancy are going to lead the roaring 20's, as Chloée says, the evil warlocks and the supernatural are dragging away the world, so we must scream and make a new one! Lfg! Pregnant with ambition, verve at the forking paths of art and music...

Is life what you expected when you were a kid?

G: yes. I was aware that i’d have more responsibilities and life would get more stressful as i aged and that happened. i think that’s a neutral thing and somehow i still feel like the summer of my life has yet to begin.

C: As a child, I was immersed in playing with Barbies, creating stories and entire worlds. I also grew up with a lot of ghosts in my house, so there was this supernatural element that seemed to participate in the world around me—an invisible layer of the unknown. It gave me the sense that anything is possible, even if we can’t see it but can still feel it.

My first day of secondary school was cruel and bizarre. The world I had created in make-believe—once colorful and beautiful—shifted into a dark folklore, painted with nightmares and warlocks. Even then, I knew there had to be more to life than this and there certainly is. But again, it is a world that I have created through the act of making art and music - it's definitely a form of resistance to it all.

However, I didn’t think that, when I grew up, the world presented to me would resemble the one we’re living in now. I dreamed that after hardship, there would be a light at the end of the tunnel for everyone—a future filled with peace, warmth, and sunlight. But instead, it feels as though the evil folklore of warlocks and the underworld that I had feared has become our reality.

Still, I hold on to hope that the world will eventually heal.. as the sky falls and the day breaks.

Did the mix of the driven hyper pop sound and punk/hardcore vocals happen immediately when you started working together, or did it evolve over time?

C: I sort of had this sense of knowing beforehand... I don't know. I just knew it would be a good idea when Governor Vomit and I joined forces... we live not too far from eachother so it was an organic partnership.. we would listen to music all the time and show one another a lot of different things.

I used to perform a lot more, but I focused behind the scene as a director over the last five years.. which i love with all my heart. But I returned to it when working with Nkisi in 2024 unlocked performing again - felt more urgent somehow, that it has been important to create a direct response to the world we are currently living in in a live way alongside film-making. its been a cathatric experience.

G : At first Chloée was just gonna do guest vocals for one of my shows - so it was mostly a sound i was already doing- as i’ve gotten to know her more and we’ve shared musical influences it’s really expanded what i felt like i could do with the beats. i feel like a lot of the production is me trying to impress chloée and make beats that are worth her vocals.

Who are you currently listening to?

G: total wife, glockteau twins, and trick daddy

C: Reject All latest mix on NTS & Katie Shannon NTS shows <3

What do you wear when you want to be comfortable onstage?

G: A belt

C: Barefoot

Exhibition curation with anyone, dead or alive.

G: I don’t like art

C: Ruth Angel Edwards, Adam Gallangher, Solomon Garçon , Dan Mitchell, Abella D'adoro , Keira Fox, Derek Ridgers, Chelsea Young, David Hoyle, Mike Kelly, Andy Warhol, Sylive Flury, Valie Export, Liz johnson Arthur, Steven Cuffie, Eric Kroll, Ivana Vladislava and myself - would be a pychedllic exlopsion.

Why should people come to your gigs?

G: I'm fun, and the music is good.

C: If you're in the mood for love... and some unadulterated, hard hitting yet beautiful production...

Worst to fave artwork?

G: I don’t like art

C: I wish I could find a picture of the worst painting, it is, in fact, my own painting. Truly diabolical...I dont think I can find a picture but I have it imprinted in my mind... forever. It is shocking artwork I made at art school that I presented to a crit and it was soooo shit... I was kidding myself... I remember I made after this comment by a tutor - 'not everything has to be epic' and tried to do something minimal... it was rotten... truly rotten. Imagine pigs flying but shit.

I can only do artists I love not really ones i don't lol

Barbra Kruger; Jenny Holzer; Stephen Cuffie Portraits, Matt Gess, Ruth Angel Edwards, Alice Fraser

A historical figure you’d dom?

C: King Henry the 8th

G: Ulysees S. Grant

Did you have Tumblr? If so, what kind of image would you reblog? Did u use it to watch porn or not?

C: Yes, I did - probs some unknown from the 80's with a lot of make-up on and cool hair, smoking

G: Yes, mostly Simon Pegg

We gotta ask the question....... I mean, we don't have to, but we are going to.... How did you name your band?

G: Chloée was doing guest vocals for my show. We got really merry, i really had to take a piss, and while taking a piss i thought we should keep doing stuff after that show, and pregnancy would be a really good name for us.

C: We usually rehearse and make our music in Governor's studio in the basement... and we always have a good time... I remember Governer Vomit returning from the loo and, in pure ecstasy saying PREGNANCY!!! pregnancy is the name... it was genius and totally made sense. i think he fell pregnant in the loo or something... we were both pregnant that day... the rest is history.

Is there much of a difference between the NYC audience and how things go down in London?

G: Not really. It was really fun.

C: I would say its not fully different but its more how nyc is different to london in terms of the art music scene... in london its merged in nyc its seperated with a few cross over.. but the feeling is very similar in both... <3

Did u have to give Governor Vomit a do's and don't's guide to London?

C: I wanted re write the urban myth that London and the Uk has bad food...I know it's not true but it has a bad rep in NYC and governer also was believing it... the food in london is wicked. and yum!!! So gave a lot of recommendations to him and we had some delicious food from greggs to french house lol...

G: Chloée guided me really well with where to eat. Turns out black pudding is amazing.

What's next in your pregnancy?

G: actually release music.

C: We are going to make some wicked music videos... to go alongside those releases...

Nico, our teenage MUSIC reporter, ventures across to Paris... to attend an Atomiser gig! Many such cases.

You know what they say: you can take the boy out of London but you can't make him listen to shit music!!!

We're trying to expand our music coverage and he appeared like a guardian angel referencing Branzi's writing and talking about hurdy gurdy's and shit. He's writing part diary and part research- we couldn't have asked for a better music nerd if we tried.

Go off nico!!!!

HE NOTES: "Valentin Clastrier does not play. He is the best."

Before we met nico online these were our notes on music:

So far on my 3 day vagabondage of Paris, I have reunited with old friends and cousins that have accompanied me on wanders around the lovely and bait spots of the city’s centre; but on this rainy Sunday, I embark on a solitary expedition to the musical underworld of the city - which on this occasion, assembles in a garden.
It’s 4 when I arrive (ticket unchecked) and B2E are playing with an ipad for their soundcheck.

It feels like I’m intruding on a family function as the early-comers politely and quietly lounge in the veranda outside the main hall. This is a foreign, initially awkward dynamic to a London night-concertgoer like myself, that I will soon reconsider to be a charm to Atomiser’s afternoon.

Considering Italian designer Branzi’s writing on “Contemporary Music and Space”, Le Sample can be seen as an example of musical territory rather than specialized space; an ex-industrial ground, claimed and repurposed by artists, that is void of acoustic function and impositions- granting musicians and curators like Atomiser the artistic freedom today’s music needs.

A Chinese-whisper goes round warning the music will begin shortly and so we enter the main room where B2E stand on a carpet, ready to perform. You can tell the back2egg shell is just starting to crack as their presence gradually shifts from shy to sly. Persevering through a streak of technical difficulties, the band perform cloud-rock ballads over chops of speech and field-recordings that seem to marry the loud rainfall, acting as a convenient low end. Boy-girl two pieces are the most beloved acts right now and B2E is a cool French variant.

Around 6, Daisy Ray opens her set by larping as a bee; does some impressive looping; raps over her guitar (used as percussion) and then camouflages back into the crowd. Occasionally silly, sometimes very fun - as outsider music tends to be- the performance felt warm and clearly stated the unrestrained nature of the afternoon.

The flux of tension, comic relief and awe makes the sequence of acts into a circus. Atomiser’s project to conceive seemingly implausible conglomerates of artists is the reason I always feel an urge to buy a ticket - it has atmosphere, regardless of the execution.

Interrupting Lucia Kagramanyan’s clubby remixes of Armenian music, we applaud as Valentin Clastrier climbs onto a stool and - with chivalric prowess - arms himself with his ridiculous weapon of choice: an electro-acoustic hurdy-gurdy. The French luminary used to kick it with the likes of Jacques Brel as a guitarist in the 60’s, before getting bored and deciding to become one of “the great masters of the hurdy gurdy”: title of his 1987 album.

Within the first minute of music, it sounds like a whole orchestra is evoked by the single instrument. Using his right hand to generate either a ceaseless groove or drone, his virtuosic melodies played by the left, blaze through, achieving that real Dionysian effect. Valentin’s resurrection of a medieval folk instrument with his own electronic amendments is magical to witness live, as the success of a life long mission.

I am sitting on the Eurostar back to London as I finish writing this souvenir for my trip. Somewhere along the English channel I ask myself: What has the weekend taught me?

I note:

1. It’s nice that venues like Le Sample are still kicking (bittersweet as it is being forced to close)
2. Valentin Clastrier does not play. He is the best.