M.I.A. will be back this summer with her as-yet-untitled third album, and she’s kicking things off in typically provocative fashion with this new tune ‘Born Free’. This ten minute video, full of violence, a bit of sex and some gentle swearing has already been banned on You Tube (nice PR) and the tune itself is all New York No Wave, which probably isn’t what most people were expecting – Paper Planes pt.2 this ain’t! Given that both Diplo and Switch, along with Rusko, are among the producers of the next album, however, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of sick tunes to bop along to and remix to death this summer.

The video was directed by Romain Gavras who also directed a couple of Justice videos and their 2008 tour documentary, ‘A Cross the Universe’. Nice work if you can get it.

The xx are a nifty little band and here’s their nifty new video for ‘Islands’. Play spot the difference between the apparently repeating sections.

Photo by Katy Stoddard

Once upon a time, in the gold old days, when everything was much better than it is now, advertisements and shop signs were painted directly onto brick walls by hand, with skill, beauty and craftsmanship. Then, along came the modern world (don’t you just hate it?) with its printed carbon-copy billboards, and hand-painted works such as the one above fell into decline and, ultimately, became redundant. The good news, however, is that a few of these ghostly, faded images still remain, clinging to their walls with great tenacity and providing a small glimpse into the past. I’m sure we’ve all spotted a few such faded images with great delight on our travels around the city, and now, thanks to the History of Advertising Trust, you can view an online archive of over 600 images from all around the UK. There’s a few more gems after the jump, but the archive and the Ghost Signs project blog really are worth checking out.

Mauricio Vargas and Miles Quillen run The Blaaahg out of New York and Richmond, Virginia respectively. Sharing many of the same interests as Out With the In Crowd, we thought it might be fun to do some post-swapping, so that we could all get a feel for what’s good in NY and they, for London. So over the next month look out for some exclusive posts from our American friends. By means of an introduction to what The Blaaaahg is all about, check out a little Q&A with Mauricio after the jump…

You’ve got to love Nike for this – they’ve only gone and made their 2010 world cup team shirts out of recycled plastic bottles! Saving 13 million bottles from being pumped into Japanese and Taiwanese landfill sites, as the press release proudly states, the plastic was then melted down and somehow converted into fabric for the shirts. Said fabric is lighter, allows sweat to evaporate faster, and has 200 tiny laser-cut holes in each shirt to keep players nicely ventilated. The USA will be wearing these shirts against England in our first match, and if we lose because John Terry’s sweat isn’t evaporating quick enough, I’m going to be livid. Why can’t we have a Nike kit? Thanks for nothing Umbro.

Alberto Hernández is a Spanish graphic designer currently living and working in London. Whilst completing his MA in graphic design at LCC last year, he came up with the idea for a ‘hybrid novel’, combining the text of a story with strong graphical elements, in order to embelish and enhance the reading experience. Appropriately taking on The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Alberto’s first hybrid novel is, simply put, a brilliant idea executed beautifully. I kind of wish I’d thought of the hybrid novel, but seeing as I didn’t, I got in touch with the man who did to find out more.

Continue reading for the interview and more images…

Oh God, is there anything more dull than the modern day tour-documentary? Five minute’s of self-congratulating backstage ‘antics’ cobbled together to help sell the super-special-limited-collector’s edition of Muse’s latest opus. Boring! When the tour in question is 2008′s ‘The Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno’, however, it’s rightly time to get excited. Having already made the second best concert film ever made, Stop Making Sense, (the first is The Band’s The Last Waltz!), this new film, entitled Ride, Rise, Roar, contains footage of rehearsals, the shows and, yes, behind the scenes stuff. I didn’t see the London show of this tour, but my girlfriend did and she said it was bloody amazing, so this film should be a real treat. It premieres in March at SXSW, along with The White Stripes documentary – another one to look out for perhaps.

Not content with being one of the best songwriters and lyricists ever, Bob Dylan has amused himself with various other hobbies over the past fifty years. Aside from having a go at acting, directing and writing fiction, with varying success, Dylan has also been a prolific painter and illustrator throughout his career. Whilst there are some well-known examples of his work, namely the covers of his own Self-Portrait album and of The Band’s Music From Big Pink, Dylan’s paintings reside firmly among the end-notes of his overall career.

A new exhibition of Dylan’s paintings on canvas at London’s Halcyon Gallery, then, offers a rare and fascinating look at this facet of his artistic output. Collecting about twenty pieces taken from drawings Dylan made on the road in the early 90s, the exhibition is brief (I went on my lunch break), but very worthwhile. Even if you don’t particularly rate his style or skill as a painter, a legendary figure such as Dylan commands your thought and attention with whatever he produces. Another bonus to your visit will be the beautiful space of the gallery itself, a five-story Georgian building given a contemporary make-over, whilst retaining beaultiful old features such as fire places and an incredible stone staircase. And it’s free. You literally can’t lose.

More images after the…

This amazing piece of 3D illusionary-projection art is the work of German artist Daniel Rossa. Amongst other things, Rossa works as a freelance creative director for Urbanscreen, a German company who love nothing more than projecting giant moving images on to large urban spaces. This piece, entitled ’555 Kubik’, was projected onto the huge, flat, grey surface of the Hamburg Kunsthalle with the aim of breaking through the building’s ‘strict architecture’. As Rossa more romantically imagines, it’s ‘how it would be if a house was dreaming’.

One of the best things I got for Christmas this year was a set of twenty books, forming the first collection of the Penguin Great Ideas series. Across four collections and a soon-to-be-published fifth, Penguin draw together works by influential writers and thinkers, emphasising the thesis that it’s ‘great ideas’ that shape the course of history. Fair enough. In series one, for example, you get everything from Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life, to George Orwell’s Why I Write, via Machiavelli and Marx, and a whole bunch of other familiar-sounding stuff that you should have probably read but actually know nothing about. Aside from being a fascinating collection of books, however, the real key to this series is in the beautifully designed covers, each one good enough to frame on your wall.

See more covers and continue reading after the break.