Pick n Mix
Stuff here, stuff here, come and get your stuff!
Hey hotties, how are you? I’m enjoying a long bank holiday weekend with Mrs Rat Depot, after celebrating our second anniversary on Friday! We made rugs together and then I surprised Mia with the Yayoi Kusama exhibition in Manchester. I was SWEATING as it had been sold out with for weeks and I’d struggled to catch resold tickets before they were bought up again. But it worked out!
As it’s been a busy week and we’ve been slamming the long-reads recently here at the depot, here’s a much shorter letter shouting out some cool stuff I’ve seen on my feed recently, as well as a special announcement right at the end.
Ilya Milstein
Italian-born, Australian-raised, New York-based illustrator Ilya Milstein has a lovely cartoonish style which reminds me of the Tintin cartoonist Georges Remi or the work of Where’s Wally creator Martin Handford.
The work above accompanied a New Yorker review of The Opéra de Paris’ revival of Les Huguenots, a grand opera about the historic massacre of French protestants in 1572. It’s incredibly violent but also feels like a Where’s Wally panel, one where we’re looking to catch Wally in the act of brutally stabbing someone rather than, sitting at the beach or something. He’s a man of many talents!
Another really fun project, Parallel Travels creates an alternate universe of hotels and cultures, using hotel luggage labels and 48-page guide booklet to explain the lore of each hotel. The scene above is accompanied by this description below, which adds a really fun narrative layer to the work.
But don’t let my selection here mislead you - Milstein’s work is varied and wonderful, with many scenes of love and urban tranquility, unique people living in harmony with each other in beautiful dense landscapes. You can check out more here.
Chippy
Graphic and motion designer Alex Futtersak aka Chippy, is definitely one of the coolest creators on my feed right now. Having worked with many elite clients, it’s bizarre that Chippy doesn’t have more of a following on Instagram and is surely likely to blow up sometime soon. Their work varies from music video direction and animation for artists like Crumb and Cautious Clay, to cute shit like this:
And this:
All of these works are animated, so make sure to click through to enjoy fully!
Touching Bass
For the last few months, I’ve been really struggling to discover new music - I find myself going back to comfort listens or big playlists I made when I was more engaged with exploration. But, thanks to NTS radio and the vast number of great shows on there, I’ve been able to find a lot of new tracks that I really enjoy. One show I love in particular is Touching Bass.
Lead by music curators Errol and Alex Rita, Touching Bass is a “musical community, record label, club night, staple NTS radio show and curatorial studio” based in South London. Their accolades are plentiful, from live events to their record label, which released the debut of Hiatus Kaiyote member Clever Austin’s debut record, Pareidolia an album I’ve been a fan of since release in 2019. Their NTS shows vary in terms of the genres of music in play and feature great guests who bring their own tastes into the fold. Here’s a few shows that I’ve enjoyed recently:
Here’s a great article released TODAY! About how Juggalos, the makeup-clad fanbase behind the Insane Clown Posse, have been targeted by the FBI as a makeshift violent gang for years. It’s as silly as it sounds and a fun read into how the US surveillance system is built on paranoia and convenient, classist, racist, fear mongering. Who knew?
And finally, we turn to…you! Our
Zine Contributors
At the end of October, we’ll be hosting another screening in Leeds. All details are coming very soon so stay tuned. At the event we’ll also be rolling out our very first ZINE! Rat Depot 001 is a celebration of you, the things you do and love. We’re looking for contributors to submit work to the zine before October 9th.
Artwork, photography, words, audio, you can pitch anything you like to us at paulieratdepot@gmail.com or in the dms on Instagram, here.
That’s all for this week, hope you enjoyed this shorter letter on a few of my favourite things from this week. I’ll be back soon with something else as you damn well know. Now get out of here you menace.
Love,
Paulie xx