Tag: london

Radio Cascabel

Radio Cascabel is a musical and visual project started by Argentines Estefi Panizza and Diego Jalfen. Curating the most exciting Latin American sounds, Radio Cascabel offers playlists, sound design, live DJ sets and other musical and visual services. We talked to its two founders to find out more about how this project started, their recent move to London and the Latin American bands we should be listening to right now.

www.radiocascabel.com

How did you meet and how did Radio Cascabel start?

We met on a night out when we both went to see a cool DJ play at a bar in Buenos Aires. It was love at first sight 🙂

Diego worked for a big radio station in Buenos Aires and in advertisement. I, Stefi, was working as a psychologist and was also starting to show my work as a photographer.

Spring of 2013 marks an inflection point for us. The idea and concept behind Cascabel was born when we were living in Barcelona. We were at a party and we took a microphone which was on the stage, and started dancing and singing over the music. Everyone at the party was very excited and the day after that, our musical project started.

Tell us a little bit about all the different things you do with Radio Cascabel.

Have you ever imagined a platform that curates emerging Latin-American music and visual art? A Radio that spreads local sounds with a global spirit and timeless sounds? A radio that could provide a space for experimental music? These questions inspire us to keep on developing our project.

We search for new sounds and emerging visual artists all around Latin America. We develop an archive of the new, undiscovered and the impossible. We schedule all this music and broadcast a fresh streaming where new stuff can be listened to and artworks that have no place in traditional broadcasting can be enjoyed.

Cascabel is our world – the way we live, think and feel. It is also a lab for music experimentation.

You’ve recently moved to London to open a second office. What made you expand to the UK?

We wanted to have the opportunity to show all the new Latin American music we work with and to experience living in another country. London is a really musical city and it’s giving us the chance to connect countries, people, and languages through music. We’d like to change some stereotypical ideas of the music of our region. We love to offer an unexpected selection of music where listeners can discover new sounds.

What Latin American musicians should we be listening to right now?

We recommend all the artists we broadcast in Radio Cascabel. This is just a small selection: Bahía Inútil (Chile), Lucrecia Dalt (Colombia), Little Jesus (Mexico), Candelaria Zamar (Argentina), Nicolas Melmann (Argentina), Salt Cathedral (Colombia), Sobrenadar (Argentina) and Helado Negro (Ecuador/US).

What are your plans for the upcoming months?

We’re starting a monthly show on NTS Radio with some of the best tracks from our selection. Also, some others radio stations have shown interest in having the most exciting sounds from Latin American and the Southern Cone. We are so happy to find Londoners interested in our curated music playlists.

We also expect to increase our own audience on Radiocascabel.com and visit some friends in Ibiza and Madrid for New Year’s Eve.

November 9, 2015
Brothers We Stand

Founded by Jonathan Mitchell, Brothers We Stand is a new online retailer selling ethical menswear. Conceived as an alternative for the customer dissatisfied with fast fashion and its questionable practices, every product on the website features a footprint tab providing information on its social and environmental impact. Brothers We Stand stocks a stylish and sustainable range of products from its own brand and other like-minded labels.

We tried on some of its pieces and spoke with Jonathan about what made him start Brothers We Stand, working with friends and his future plans.

www.brotherswestand.com

What made you start Brothers We Stand?

I noticed that there was a growing number of menswear designers working to sustainable standards but that they were often hard to find. So I had the idea that it would be cool to bring them together. That’s it really!

Our aim is to provide a solution that allows style loving people to build a wardrobe made up of stylish and sustainably made menswear.

What’s the main criteria for a brand to be stocked at Brothers We Stand?

For us the product comes first, it’s got to be a great product. We search out pieces that are aesthetically pleasing, created to last and ethically and sustainably made.

Every product on the site has a different story but all have something about their manufacture that sets them apart from the norm. It could be that they are made from recycled materials, that they are made in a wind-powered factory or perhaps that they are hand-made in London.

The Level Collective t-shirt

The Level Collective t-shirt

Please tell us a little more about the different brands you stock at Brothers We Stand.

Seeing as you’re repping a Level Collective tee, let me tell you a bit more of them! Mark Musgrave is the creative head behind the brand and he collaborates with emerging illustrators to co-create prints for his bamboo and cotton tees and sweats. Mark’s designs are inspired by his personal love of the great outdoors and I love the gentle simplicity to his work. The garments are good quality and his bamboo tees are some of the softest t-shirts we’ve come across.

Elvis and Kresse are another brand and provide a good example of the diversity of materials the brands we work with use. They make phone cases, wallets and bags from upcycled fire hose and military parachute silk. Kresse’s had a fascination with waste since childhood and their story began when Kresse and her partner James met some people from the fire brigade and were invited to come and view their waste. They were brought to a ‘fire hose landfill’ where hoses which can survive for up to 25 years of active service are scrapped when they are too damaged to repair. Kresse says she fell in love with the ‘rich, lustrous coils of red.’!

James is a skilled craftsman and together they began experimenting with the hoses and started to make bags and wallets. Due to the hard exterior of the material it is hard to work with but they found the effort to be worthwhile and the resulting products highly durable. The couple have now been working with the material for ten years and perfectionism doesn’t even come close to describing how they’re constantly refining their products. Elvis spent an incredible five years perfecting a billfold wallet which apparently he still thinks can be improved further! Their pieces are beautiful and have a narrative to them that’s unrivalled due to the history of the fire hose.

These are just two examples but all the brands we work with have inspiring stories and it’s a privilege to work with them and sell their products.

Brothers We Stand sweatshirt

You’ve built Brothers We Stand alongside a group of friends, can you tell us more about them?

Brothers We Stand has got to where it is today thanks to the hard work and talents of a lot of people! Whilst I was planning the business I was working as a waiter with an agency which meant I met a lot of new people. One of the guys I got to know was Alex, a Romanian computer science student, and he ended up helping out with some of the coding I needed doing for the website. Luca Iiriti was the housemate of another waiter friend and he designed our pre-launch material which was crucial in getting the first brands on board. Then Gary, a long-time friend, designed our logo. Gary’s gone on to be a huge support and many a day I’ll interrupt his work at Sparks Studio asking him if he can help out with this or that!

Since we launched, Delia has organised brilliant parties, Rachel has taken really strong photos, Ashley has super charged our Twitter and Lisa has stitched labels for our own brand collection. Alex has repped us at parties and events and Jack has written copy (and is just about to start a fortnightly Brothers We Stand newsletter which I’m really excited about).

There are many others who have contributed and continue to do so and Brothers We Stand is the product of a lot of people’s imagination, insights and hard work. We hope that the end result is something that people love and can take as much enjoyment of being part of as we do.

What are Brothers We Stand’s future plans?

Our aim at Brothers We Stand is to provide a brilliant service that helps people build sustainable and ethical wardrobes. We just want to continue taking that forward and seek to continuously improve our service.

We’re also keen to work on interesting creative projects to show what a sustainable and ethical future for the fashion industry can look like. We’ve got a project in the works now and it’s set for launch March/April 2016 so watch this space!

Visit Brothers We Stand.

November 4, 2015
The Poundshop

Founded in 2010 and currently run by George Wu and Sara Melin, The Poundshop is a pop up shopping project based on the idea of selling quality designer products at affordable prices.

The Poundshop’s mission is to make design accessible to a wider audience and all products are sold within the £1, £5 and £10 price bands. Working with a wide range of designers, most of whom are new to making products, The Poundshop is the perfect testing ground for them to experiment with new and interesting products. Over the years, The Poundshop have organised pop us shops at numerous spaces across the world, including Selfridges, Somerset House, Loft Tokyo and Science Museum in London.

We talked with its founders to find out more about the project and what makes a perfect submission to the Poundshop.

www.thepoundshop.org

Could you tell us a little bit about your background and what you do apart from running The Poundshop?

Sara: I am from Sweden originally , but have now been here for 14 years! Studied at St Martins and then RCA in London, where I met George and Sarah. We pretty much set up The Poundshop shortly after leaving RCA .

I do a lot of different things but most of it runs backs to The Poundshop. At the moment I am working as a consultant for a charity putting together a new product range for their online shop and also designing a pop up shop for them. I am also planning two workshop that will be take place in Brazil in October.

George: I am originally from Manchester and studied graphic design in Bath before moving to London for work. A few years later I took part in the BB New Music Shorts and decided to switch to film so went to the RCA where we met. Now besides creating Poundshops, I am a director at Nexus Productions creating videos and installations. Currently I’m working on a new short film in collaboration with photographer John Short which should be coming out at the end of September.

What inspired you to open The Poundshop?

Sara: The credit crunch I think and wanting to do something together.

George: I always had the dream of having my own shop one day. Pretending to be shop keeper and stocking shelves! I think it’s because my family has always run businesses, it must be in me!

What makes a perfect submission?

Sara: Cleaver solutions to a small problem, beautifully designed with the minimal usage of materials to keep costs down.

George: Something that you would definitely use yourself that’s has a real purpose which is a challenge at such a low price point.

How do you approach the interior design and visual merchandising of each of the spaces you use for The Poundshop?

Sara: Generally I collect lots of images of things that I like the look of as a start. Shop interiors, patterns, colours etc. George is definetely the better one at coming up with ideas and she has a more graphic design / installation background than me, so she tends to take the lead on the design and then we discuss it.

George: Yeah I think usually we have a big brainstorm. Because we don’t work together all the time it’s good to get to know what the other is into at that moment. Then the starting point can either be the venue: The Science Poundshop was inspired by equipment transit cases. Or by the function of the shop: The ICA shop needed to be set up in a very short space of time so we created it out of repurposed ladders. The most important consideration is that the materials are all low cost to compliment the idea of low cost design shop.

What are your ambitions for The Poundshop? How do you see it developing in the future?

Sara: At the moment we are discussing a few changes and new routes but we tend to not plan to far ahead… So we will just have to see where this year will take us!

George: I think our next challenge and always the biggest is the Christmas Poundshop, but the most exciting (and intimidating) is our forth coming appearance on Poundshop Wars on BBC 1!

All images, courtesy of The Poundshop

August 26, 2015
LAW Magazine

LAW (Lives and Works) is an independent bi-annual magazine based in London. LAW is concerned with documenting the overlooked and portraying the beautiful everyday, giving people a sense of belonging and recognition. We visited LAW studios in Hackney and photographed Editor-in-Chief John Joseph Holt and Creative Director Joseph Prince in their working space.

Photographs by Jack Johnstone.

www.law-mag.com

August 10, 2015
If You Leave Magazine

If You Leave is an online photography gallery started in 2009 by London-based Laurence Von Thomas, with more than 500 contemporary photographers featured and 4 books published in the past few years. We recently talked about If You Leave showcase, the photography exhibition that If You Leave organised in London in October 2014, which coincided with the release of the project’s first issue of its bi-annual magazine.

If You Leave #01 doubles as a show catalogue for the showcase and includes 10 prints by the artists featured in the exhibition. The magazine’s first issue is beautifully designed, with a hard cover containing a folder with the prints and the magazine itself printed in 100gsm recycled paper. The magazine is supported by the app that If You Leave created for the exhibition, allowing the reader to access interactive content on some of its pages.

With a focus on online photography and how photographers use online platforms, the first issue features selection of photographs taken from Instagram and Tumblr profiles and conversations on Facebook between If You Leave‘s editor Laurence Von Thomas and photographers Clemens Fantur and Luke Byrne. If You Leave #01 also dedicates some of its pages to photo books, including a selection of independent publications curated by London-based distributor and publisher Antenne Books.

www.if-you-leave.tumblr.com

March 1, 2015