Unbelievable work on this new video for Sculpture‘s ‘Cross Processor’ by Reuben Sutherland. High resolution needed and even then the detail in this is mind boggling. One of the album’s of the year packaging wise, ‘Max Ax’ comes as 2x 10″ zoetrope picture discs in a gatefold sleeve. Find a copy here
More gorgeous live macro painting by Akiko Nakayama in the video for Floating Points‘ new single ‘Key 103’ from the forthcoming album, Cascade on Ninja Tune. There’s also another similar video I missed for second single, ‘Del Oro’, these really need to be watched on the highest definition you can manage to get all the detail.
A couple of Sundays ago The New Obsolescents played live at the excellent Wow And Flutter record shop in Hastings. Chris Weaver, Robin The Fog and myself, improvised live for several hours in-store as people watched, listened and shopped. As you will see in the video, hanging above their heads were test printed sleeves for the second pressing of our debut LP that had been passed over in favour of the prism version we eventually used. These unique items have been retained by the shop and will be sold (with the vinyl) on a first come, first served basis to those who visit over the next month before the remainder go online to those who can’t make it down to the South coast.
Here’s a little snippet of our performance put together by the shop’s own Tim Scullion as a very early taster for our second album as we will be using some of the recordings made in the shop on the next release. Thanks to everyone who came down, Colin from Castles In Space and especially Tim and Susan from Wow And Flutter for having us. This is their 10th year in business and they are planning nine more in-store events over the year so give them a follow or better yet, a visit!
We also play at the Deliaphonic all-dayer in Coventry on May 2nd at the newly re-christened Delia Derbyshire Building University alongside… well, just look at that line up! Entry is FREE via the sign up here. I will also be playing a solo Quadraphon set with PuttyRubber on the visuals to close the event. By coincidence, Delia and I share the same birthday just a few days later.
The first (that I’ve ever heard of) exhibition of zoetrope art – TURN ON – ended recently at the Place des Rotondes in Luxembourg and they have made this short film of the event, directed by Raoul Schmitz. Sculpture played at the opening and my 2013 zoetrope of Bonobo‘s ‘Cirrus’ using animations by Cyriak was featured alongside discs by Reuben Sutherland, Drew Tetz, Tess Martin, Iloobia and more.
A note to cultural spaces – the exhibition is now available for hire and can’t wait to go on tour! A presentation kit is being finalised for interested art and cultural centres. Email Marine Deravet at Rotondes if you are interested in hosting the event in your city or town. Photos below by Lynn Theisen (first 3) and Mike Zenari.
Another ridiculously inventive video from iloobia – can’t say I’m that into the track but wow, that’s some work on the video, the mind boggles at how he achieves all this
The second edition of Brian Eno‘s turntable is showing at the Paul Stolper Gallery in London this month. Prices last time were eye-watering and actually went up as the edition sold out giving an incentive for early buyers.
Gary Hustwit‘s Eno film premiered at the Sundance Festival in January to rave reviews, it compiles a different film with each showing from 168 hours of footage. You can buy these limited prints or Sundance Poster, designed by Build, from Hustwit’s site
And if that wasn’t enough Eno for you, there have been more tracks added to his radio station, The Lighthouse, on Sonos. At the end of 2023 there were 424 but 447 and 448 cropped up today, The Lighthouse is a continuous stream of largely unreleased tracks from Brian’s archive that play randomly 24 hours a day – am investigating…
UPDATE: There are at least 25 new tracks from 2023 and 2022 added as of Feb 2024 bringing the total of tracks up to 449.
Here’s the performance Graham Dunning and I gave at Robin The Fog’s Fog Fest II this summer at Iklectik.
Totally improvised, we’d had a couple of rehearsals, and with visuals from PuttyRubber and Leon Trimble, it was exhilarating and felt like spinning plates rather than discs. Probably my favourite gig of the year along with the 10th anniversary of The Book & Record bar lock in.
A few highlights from Graham Dunning and my 40+ minute set on modified turntables at the Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava for the opening of the NEXT Festival 2023.
A couple of new episodes of James In Real Life’s video diaries on the build of his Duplokit turntable –
Tonearms:
The Chassis Pt.1:
There’s also the recent announcement of the Obscure label boxset that sees all ten albums on the label from the mid to late 70s run via Island records re-issued with an 80 page book, I’ll be writing more about this once I’ve devoured it.
Meanwhile I’m still trying to listen to everything on Eno’s Sonos radio station The Lighthouse, now with 424 unreleased tracks from between 1989 and 2023 streaming randomly 24 hrs a day but that algorithm just isn’t playing certain tracks. Of course Brian also plays London tonight with the Baltic Sea Philharmonic to perform his Ships show that’s been doing the rounds in Europe.
I was struck by the cover art to Floating Points‘ new single, ‘Birth4000’ the other week as it resembles the liquid light shows I so love. On further investigation, it seems that’s not far off as the artist, Akiko Nakayama, projects her ‘Alive Painting’ onto huge canvases from microscopic sizes. Her website is well worth some investigation and she made a video for the single which you can see below as well as a billboard that Ninja Tune showed off somewhere in London recently.
I made a video for my Magnetic Cartridge Quartet ‘Polykicks B’ track from the Buried Treasure ‘Decapod’ compilation – all made using a vintage Strand Patt theatre light with 18″ glass optical effects discs, patterned glass or coloured gel inserts.
The label’s 10th anniversary party is tonight, Sat 14th at The Couch in Bracknell – compilation and ticket here
https://buriedtreasure.bandcamp.com/album/decapoda
The track was made live using my Quadraphon turntable, edited down and given a sonic scrub on the mix by Osymyso. The video footage was filmed using an original Strand theatre light with 18″ rotating glass disc attachments and other visual tricks. Thanks to Rob Halliday for access to the lights and for working the FX.
I have to say, this is very well done, the fact that the AI can’t render everything ‘perfectly’ just adds to it for me.
“Welcome to the future! Where the pursuit of unending joy comes with hidden costs. This retro futuristic metropolis has many hidden wonders you won’t want to miss out on! “
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Visuals Assisted By: Midjourney, @Pika_Labs & GEN 2
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KLF and Justified Ancients of Mu Mu watchers will have been excited by the news a few weeks back that not only had Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty delivered their entire recorded output to the British Library, warts and all, for the public to trawl through at will but they also announced a DVD of most of their film and video work which will be released in November. This is exciting enough but I was tickled to see the cover of the DVD featuring their classic ‘T Speaker’ on fire at night which bore more than a passing resemblance to a couple of the fake KLF posters I made back in 2003 to accompany Mr Trick‘s and my mix, ‘The Sound of Mu(sic)’. I messaged Jimmy and he confirmed that it was the inspiration which is mighty fine by me :). With the transferral of the KLF Re-enactment Society to the hands of fans (an online repository for any KLF-related homages or fan made artifacts) could this be the first case of a re-re-enactment instigated by the band I was spoofing?
Incredible AI-generated video for the new Richard Norris remix of the Tomorrow Syndicate‘s ‘Hyper-receptive’ from their latest album, ‘Higher Resolution’ on Feral Child. Channelling everything from Moebius‘ The Time Masters designs to pulp sci-fi, the album is available from all good indie stores like Piccadilly Records, Norman, Juno, Rough Trade etc. This single will be available Friday 14th via Bandcamp with all proceeds going to MND Scotland.
Back from a whirlwind weekend in Stroud and Bristol – primarily to talk about my Wheels of Light book at Klang Tone Records in Stroud on Friday night as part of the Pop Up Subculture festival. The event went very well with an engaged crowd and many new friends made. Met up with old acquaintance Bill Brooks who introduced me to bonafide light show legend Sid Fossil who had come to the talk! Seen here next to yours truly with friend Craig in the middle and Bill on the right.
Stroud is lovely and sports three excellent record shops – Sound Records, Trading Post and the aforementioned Klang Tone which sits above the Pagan Vintage shop. All well worth your time, many treasures were found, not least a clutch of original International Times newspapers in stunning condition.
After a day’s digging I jumped on the train down to Bristol, met up with my video cohort, PuttyRubber, and went to the first Holotronica weekend at the disused IMAX cinemax. Hosted and opened by DJ Cheeba, Solid Steel family of old and now working with Stuart Warren-Hill’s Holotronica outfit, it was great to see old Bristol crew from our days doing regular nights with the Detectives of Perspective. The Light Surgeons played their excellent ‘Atemporal’ AV set, newly expanded into a 2.0 version and then Funki Porcini presented his incredible Laserium show which absolutely wowed people in the theatre. I’ve seen this three times now and it just gets better and better, there’s nothing like it and it’s impossible to convey via photos. Equally impossible is Stuart’s 3D Holotronica set (for obvious reasons) which was some of the most eye-poking 3D I’ve ever seen. All in all a triumph for audio visual gigs and I hope they do more.
Photos below are from Stuart Warren-Hill (Holotronica) and Christopher Thomas Allen (The Light Surgeons)
Crew photo L-R: DJ Cheeba, Stuart Warren-Hill, Funki Porcini, Chris Allen – missing in action Tim Cowie, the other Surgeon who provided an excellent live soundtrack.
Well, last Friday was a blast in Ramsgate, a packed room with an up for it crowd is all you could want but to have that crowd open to experimental turntable jams was even better. Myself and PuttyRubber overcame our pre-gig nerves and rattled through an hour plus of the set with a few hiccups but ultimately a banging show. Andre, Al and Conner at the venue bent over backwards to make it as easy as possible for us and Pleistoscene Megafauna did a fine job warming up for us. They really have a great venue and a good scene going on down there.
Some great photos came out of this, not least the one above taken by Pete Woodward which has to be one of my favourites ever taken.
We’re actively looking for gigs for this audio visual set up so please get in touch if you want to book us.
I was watching a Jamiroquai video – NO, stay with me! Why was I doing that you ask? Well, the song is a bit of an electro pop banger and Jay Kay is some sort of robot coming out of hibernation in a post-apocalyptic world who just wants to see the sun. It’s supposed to be a warning against living a digital life and that we should get back to nature, which is fair enough really. To make you believe he’s an automaton (the title of the song) he has an automated headdress that lights up and at one point stops in a subway to focus on an old poster on the wall.
Weirdly it’s a joint Madam Tussaud’s / London Planetarium poster, designed in the style of Peter Max or Milton Glaser, that popular pop style made famous by Heinz Edelmann’s Yellow Submarine. I very much doubt it was done by either Max or Glaser because they generally sign their work but it looked cool enough for me to google it as I’d not seen it before. Typing in ‘Madam Tussauds Planetarium poster’ only netted two results, different shots of the same poster, on the wall in a subway in the disused Aldwych underground station. One of the shots, by Payne & Gunter, was very well framed so I downloaded it.
On close inspection it was pretty obvious that it was the same poster, so we all know where parts of the ‘Automaton’ video was shot at the very least. The wear and tear of time, coupled with what looks like a few people stubbing cigarettes out on parts of the image (that dates it!) mean that the poster isn’t in the best condition. So I couldn’t resist cleaning the image up and restoring it to some of its former glory. What an amazing design!
Talking of Milton Glaser, there’s a stunning looking book of his work coming out next month via Phaidon.
Pre-order here
And talking of Peter Max, I just acquired this set of his Book of Red, Blue and Yellow from the excellent Book Cellar in Camberwell. Max is sadly embroiled in a guardianship case in the US whilst suffering ill health, his daughter has been trying to extract him for some time now, for more info follow Free Peter Max
