Washed Out’s new album is a true revelation for many people in this world. While his numerous counterparts are still playing in the chillwave’s sandpit, Ernest Green stepped up and produced an album which literally says in each and every track – here comes the next big thing, labels aside.

 ’Within and Without’ boasts the whole set of dramatically melodic songs resembling of bathing in a lonely swimming pool left intact in an abandoned hotel on North Sea island. It’s meditative and very, very cold which can be rather annoying if you listen to Washed Out for too long.

Russian Internet mogul Yandex has never been short of surprising ideas. It has recently bought a service called ‘The Tweeted Times, which basically arranges tweets into a newspaper-like board giving you an illusion of reading a ‘quality paper’.

It has been said somewhere that the first man to synthesize social networks with media styled interface will become as big as Zuckerberg and Brin combined which means that Yandex might be already balancing on the verge of conquering the world.

Recent festival of advertising in the USSR showed how little we know about day-to-day life of our communist ancestors. It’s commonly accepted that there were no traces of market economy in a totally controlled system of socialism, but it seems even back then certain people were able to buy imported brands and certain state-owned manufacturers still wanted to advertise their products to a wider audience.

Here are just a few bizarre banners promoting Guinness, toothpaste ‘Chlorodont’ and cheap, locally produced cigarettes.

For afters take a look at the hilarious video advertising juices as opposed to sparkling water.

Filmmaker Gary Hustwit has introduced his new design-oriented documentary called ‘Urbanized’ which would close his trilogy comprising of critically-acclaimed docs ‘Helvetica’ and ‘Objectified’. Hustwit’s latest film is focused on urban planning and city patterns affecting our ways of lives in numerous ways.

It’s a beautiful and intellectually challenging piece disclosing some of the hidden rules which determine our relationships with the cities we live in. I’ve been always wondering why most of the cities are so chaotic and sporadic regardless of their age and cultural status, while others might be so much better planned and generally more suitable for living. It’s a never ending process of transforming landscapes and waste of our activities, and Hustwits shows that there is a beauty in organizing disparate human tribes into a conscious society.

Here comes the major breakthrough in paper versus e-readers battleship.

Most of Moscow schools will be equipped with British-produced touchscreen e-readers which would allow schools to save millions of dollars they spend every year on traditional textbooks. The major difference between pupils’ e-readers and major tablets is that e-reader would be deliberately cut off the web concentrating solely on its standard set of textbooks and extracurricular reading packed in one device. The reader will be extremely light, durable and cheap. I wish I had the same fifteen years ago when I had to queue for hours to get those bloody folios in a smelly library and then bring them every day for the classes.

Debating about fashion is a weird thing, though occasionally you might find nuggets of profound thinking in fashion-related threads.Latest NT Times’ talks about the impact of riots in Cairo and London on the youth culture gave a lot of food for thought with the top journalists and cultural experts contemplating on the interconnection between politics, globalisation and style across the world. It seems that fashion is becoming increasingly responsive to the radical political shifts allowing ‘revolutionary’ outfits to penetrate into the designers collections. Some might say that quality design stems from an inner artistic vision, but I’ve been always inclined to believe that environment, especially the very dynamic one, defines the way we position ourselves. It would be great if this new Arab Spring – or whatever is unfolding now in so many countries in Europe and Asia – would bring us a new obscure fashion which would fuse revolutionary idealism with the brutality of rapid changes.

Pop-up markets continue its rapid expansion across central Moscow with the recent addition called Lambada-Market taking place in the strategically important spot Red October island situated just next to the Kremlin.

Regardless its prime location, the market is one of the most democratic among its counterparts, it’s open not only to the DIY-designers, but to anybody who needs to sell some bric-a-brac for little money. The crowd is just the same – a bit eclectic, cheerful and always laid back. Perhaps Lambada-Market has been missing side activities in a way, but its organisers promise to throw out a couple of parties with a good selection of local bands for the next time.

Fashion collaborations usually work according to the formula which rather peculiarly states that one plus one gives one and a half, not two. However sometimes you may find exceptions to the rule, and the recent collaboration between Pringle of Scotland and Central St Martins is one of those exceptional cases.

Students were given a task to contemplate on the outstanding features of the 195-year old brand focusing on vintage or, at least, vintage looking items. To me the results have exceeded all expectations because this new ‘Archive’ collection (which sounds a bit like an oxymoron) looks as authentic and robust as if it was created in the mid 20th century by young visionaries of that time. The whole project and its outcome is a really powerful message to all the other forward-looking brands who are up to exploit collaborative opportunities without falling into a conventional trap of going overboard.

Watching an intriguing trailer for the new film directed by Greg Barker and called ‘Koran by Heart’ is a genuinely thought-provoking experience and I already can’t wait its full scale release.

The film’s plot is pretty straightforward, though it sounds like Barker got hell loads of extraordinary insights from the people whom he met at the annual Koran-reciting competition in Cairo. He was talking to the kids who went to Cairo from all over the world to flaunt their knowledge of the holy book and found out things you’d never expect from 10-somethings who have actually seen little beyond their religious ‘medrese’ back in the home countries. What can we learn from the young prodigies who know 700 pages of abstruse verses by heart and think that the world order needs to be a bit revised?

Getting shortlisted for the annual Red Bull Music Academy is equivalent to Olympic gold for the aspiring music makers from Russia. Being the only available platform which regularly picks up young talents from unusual places and ejects them onto the global orbit, RBMA is praised by those who otherwise have no chance to get noticed.

This year it is Saint-Petersburg based musician Signor Mako who has been selected to showcase his experimental tunes on the international stage (aka electronic Eurovision). Signor is playing meditative ambient with the subtle folk twist which might have appealed to the RBMA jury which is easily seducible by the authentic roots of its regional participants. If it sounds peculiar enough for you, click on the link to check out more from almighty Signor.