george mackay brown

not every day you expect to come across a new story by george mackay brown but there's one here

chris akrigg

chris krigg shows how it should be done when the prancing pony mountain bike boys give up their suspension and their dropper posts, their addiction to wide bars and wrong sized wheels and do cycling as it should be done. *

*in fairness to the fragile egos of certain of the baggy shorted mob it should be pointed out that i'm a rotund fellow of a certain age who conforms to many a mountain bike stereotype (except i don't own an audi, work in i.t., don't need to stop every five minutes and have never, ever had a conversation about tyre suitability). also i should point out that every time chris akrigg is jumping a log or whatever i;d would be variously over the bars, headbutting a tree or otherwise floundering about on my backside.

cyclocross is the business tho.

trance anthems

one for the (not so) old schoolers

aphex twin

one of the more unusual and better aphex covers

john cale

proper brilliance

the slits

electrelane

genius

corduroy

arab strap

i can't just have one version of that. here's some music from home

bing ji ling

what, no posts for a while? ah but that's a story. anyway i'm getting into listening to cover versions this last few days so it's going to be a bit of a musical week. starting here...

akihito takuma

big black streaky canvases. now ay i'm not going to like that. see more of akihito takuma's work here

linda carreiro

so, linda carreiro uses text as a material of itself/ how am i not going to be into that!?

taisuke koyama

which just goes to show inspiration is where you find it. take a bottle of soy sauce, some light and a bit of patience and you're off. these pictures by taisuke koyama and just the thing for a grey day in scotland!

frank quitely

i was going to be putting some comic art today but when i had a look at the artist's back catalogue it was like a caricature of the treatment of women in comics.

step up then frank quitely to sort this out. for a couple of days only you can see a really good wee documentary about him here. despite my many, many misgivings about illustrators this shows all the reasons why i want to make an illustrated work and also why the form is criminally under-rated as well as (see above) subverting itself at the same time.

if like me, you're not that up for the superhero thing then maybe check out we3. maybe not the best graphic novel i've ever read but an interesting topic an quitely's illustration really does the job

dale vn marshall

 if i was living around coventry i'd be gatting me down to the herbert for a look at the dale vn marshall exhibit walls with wounds

landays

the poetry foundation totally comes up with the goods with this article on the poetry of pashtun women. great photography, great writing - worth taking your time to read this