More dates have been added through Feb-May for my 360º fulldome show, ‘The Search Engine’ at the WeTheCurious Planetarium in Bristol. Feb 27th / 23rd Mar / 20th Apr / 18th May – get tickets here: https://www.wethecurious.org/group/dj-food-search-engine-16
“Just had my mind blown watching @djfood‘s ‘The Search Engine’ at @WeTheCurious planetarium. SOOOO TRIPPY AND AWESOME! GO SEE IT!!” – Rebecca Evans, Bristol
“New release on Drumetrics”, a phrase that strikes fear into the hearts of hardened record collectors. How limited will it be? How dope will the drums be? How cool with the design look? How much will it cost plus shipping? The latest release, a 10″ by Mr Chop featuring Malcolm Catto is not cheap by any means but it is such a beautiful package you can just about swallow that side of things. A die-cut ‘D’ in the front cover shows through an op-art Chop logo printed on mirrorboard card. On the reverse side there’s an embossed Drumetrics D logo and the inner boasts a debossed Chop logo. I hate to think how much that must have cost but that’s one of the reasons it’s expensive. The music bangs of course, as do all Chop releases, no need to worry about that. Get one here before they sell out, only 500 copies but digital is coming soon
This beautiful object is the latest release from The Karminsky Experience Inc. – a four track 7″ with three tunes from the ‘Beat!’ album of last year plus a new collage and gorgeous sleeve art by Steve Millington aka Dry British. There are only 100 copies so be quick and order via their Bandcamp page.
Here we go, after last year’s ‘Selected Aphex Works’ shows, the next installment in my live AV Series premiere’s on April 6th at Archspace, London with a new version of my ‘O Is For Orange’ mix – chock full of Boards of Canada and their influences with psychedelic video accompaniment. Tickets available here
A new initiative just launched by Edzy from Unique 3 is Teach The Each, a pool of producers, artists, DJs, designers, promoters and music industry veterans with decades of experience to draw on in multiple disciplines. The aim is to create a one stop shop where these people can be booked to speak, teach and pass on their experiences and knowledge to up and coming students wherever they should be needed. I’m very pleased to be one of the people asked to take part, that’s some esteemed company to be in. More info here
The Out Of The Wood show is back, firing on all cylinders for 2018; each Sunday a local, invited guest or patron of The Book & Record Bar in West Norwood gets 2 hours live on the decks inside the shop, playing to whoever wanders or tunes in. It’s a chance to grab a bag of anything and play around for yourself, try things out and spread out. In my first show of the year I’m bringing a box of recent buys, gifts, samples, a few forthcoming gems and throwing out some improv soundscaping into the mix in places, something I’ll be building on all year.
Drew Tetz is another animator using Phenakistiscopes (not zoetropes, slightly different) to create beautiful looped films. Here’s his latest for L’Orange, the physical version includes a sheet to make your own which can be viewed through clear vinyl. I’d say ‘get one here’ but they’re all sold out. Follow Drew on Instagram for lots more.
One day last Autumn a mystery package arrived containing various Finders Keepers records and one very special, handmade 12″ of Jane Weaver‘s ‘The Architect’ single. One of an edition of 10, it’s a thing to behold; a test pressing hand-labelled with a paste up cover containing one of my favourite designs of last year (see this post).
Being one of the people urging the designer to make prints of one of his posters for Jane’s Manchester gig I was gutted when my copy got lost in the post over the Xmas period. Luckily a replacement is soon to be on its way. The ‘architect’ of these creations is one of my favourite contemporary designers, Andy Votel, who will be exhibiting some previously unseen self-initiated full size paintings / collages in Manchester from the 25th at Electrik in Manchester.
From the press release: “Writer, DJ, designer, broadcaster, label boss and anti-musician Andy “Votel” Shallcross displays a series of original personal works created, at home, in October / November 2017.
Based around contemporary “fakelore”, reducing influences of European science-fiction art, scholastic illustration, post-pop-art, Plakatstil and mid-century graphic design Andy uses simple methods of painting, collage, deletion and recontextualisation for these one-off, large format placards.
Adopting a recurring patchwork method found in all of Andy’s multi-discipline “magpaic” activities, the running narrative and aesthetic format used in STOP MAKING SÉANCE can be described as pictorial-anagrams, which Votel playfully refers to as Andygrams. Having designed over 200 record sleeves in over 20 years of his graphic design day-job these singular quick-fire situation-abstractions are not intended for large-scale reproduction or as communicative graphic-design thus retaining a freedom previously unexplored in Andy’s visual work and will be on display for short residency in Manchester, Gothenburg and Barcelona in early 2018.”
Check out this interview with Oi Polloi for more info and images
I should do a little round up of a few things I’ve had a hand in that have recently come to light:
The rarely seen 360 degree dome show version of my 2012 album ‘The Search Engine‘ is playing in Bristol at We The Curious, the Bristol Planetarium on January 30th and Feb 27th – tickets here. I won’t actually be at the shows, it’s a straight playback of the AV set I created in 2012. I was present at those but it’s always been a pre-rendered thing.
I did an interview for online magazine Fat Hipster – available in both English and Serbian.
Alex Fitch‘s Panel Borders podcast includes some of the talk about music and comics I was part of at the Caption festival in Brighton last December.
I’ll be supporting The Art of Noise (legends!) at The British Library in March! Tickets here
I’m on the bill again at the Eat Or Heat fundraiser at the Wild Card Brewery on Feb 17th – great cause, donation on entry. Talking of fundraisers – the Resonance FM fundraiser is on now – a radio station very dear to my heart for many reasons – support independent leftfield radio here.
And talking of radio – I’ll be on Out Of The Wood radio this Sunday (Jan 21st) – attempting something different. Taking place live at the Book & Record Bar, West Norwood between 12-2pm – tune in to WNBC.london here.
It’s nice to see a band come through who you caught early on. I think Riz Maslen (Neotropic) turned me on to Beautify Junkyards years back after she did some work with them. They had done an excellent cover version of Kraftwerk‘s ‘Radio Activity’ which I stuck on volume 8 of my Kraftwerk Kover Kollection mixes.
They released two albums and a 45 appeared on Ghost Box‘s ‘Other Voices’ single series, and now the label are releasing a third LP this March, ‘The Invisible World of Beautify Junkyards’. On first listen, the single, ‘Aquarius’ is their best yet and the video, directed by João Pedro Moreira, suits it down to the ground. Pre-order HERE
New from Buried Treasure is this 2 hr DVD of computer-generation animations and electronic music from Australian artist Jerry Siedler – for which I’m going to cut and paste the press release because, by the time I get round to watching the whole thing, they’ll be gone as there are only 100 copies.
“The late mathematician, visual artist, musician & EMS employee Alan Sutcliffe was fascinated by programmed randomisation. In 2013 he showed me specifications & sales brochures for a powerful but short lived EMS video device from 1975 called the Spectron.
Used by Tangerine Dream, Todd Rundgren, the BBC & others, the Spectron was, for its time, a powerful & ground breaking video synthesizer but sourcing footage of it in action for this DVD proved challenging.
Then I discovered the work of Jeffrey Siedler, an Australian academic conducting extensive research into the Spectron’s history & capabilities. Jeffrey’s own audio-visual work follows the logical methodology & synthesis techniques mapped out by original EMS designer Richard Monkhouse using emulation software and modular analogue equipment. The sounds & images produced are mesmerising & hark back to the ground breaking days of early computer generated visuals.
This DVD release contains over 2 hours of Jeffrey’s video work presented in a full colour, slim line package with an 8 page booklet of notes & images by Jeffrey & Richard.”
Limited to 100 copies and released 31st January, 2018. Pre-order here
All of a sudden there seems to be a ton of albums imminent for the new year that I’m very interested in…
Meat Beat Manifesto return after years away with a double entitled ‘Impossible Star’
Cavern of Anti-Matter just announced an album for March, ‘Hormone Lemonade’
Cut Chemist has finally got round to finishing ‘Die Cut’ after years of bits and pieces dribbling out
Jon Brooks has a new Library-sounding release on Café Kaput, ‘Applied Music Vol.2 – Plastics Today’ – available Jan 19th from his Bandcamp page.
Trevor Jackson has been chucking records out in themed chunks on his Pre- label, exhuming his archive of unreleased material before starting a new label, Post.
Beautify Junkyards release their next record on Ghost Box in March, no pre-order link as of writing but The digital single, ‘Aquarius’, taken from the album is out today
Nicklas Sørensen‘s ‘Solo 2’ is up for pre-order on El Paraiso Records‘ website as are new Mythic Sunship and Causa Sui LPs.
Chris Carter has a new album coming out on Mute, his first in 17 years, ‘Chris Carter’s Chemistry Lessons vol.1’
Of course, dare I say it? The 5th LP from King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – ‘Gumboot Soup’ is – despite all expectations – actually really good. More of an off cuts compilation of tracks that didn’t fit on the other four albums, stylistically it’s all over the place but it has some absolute killers on it.
I’m very proud to say that my set for the Soundsci launch party that Diggers Dozen put on last year won their most loved poll for 2017! “12 records each. Only 2 turntables play. No compilation. No bootleg. Always original vinyl.” is the DD ethos and that particular night saw myself guesting with Mr Thing, Ollie Teeba, Jonny Cuba, Jonny Trunk and Maxwell Pastor – who runs the nights. Listen to the selection above, I’d pulled out a particularly odd Library set, I think there’s at least one bit of dead air (because I was chatting) and at points, if you strain hard enough, you can hear that chatter through the head of the needle in the quiet parts..
The above photo was my brief from Bill Drummond for the set I was to play at the JAM‘s Welcome To The Dark Ages event in Liverpool. I stuck it above my mixer as I was preparing the set, it’s something to keep in mind as we go forward into 2018. I spent most of the year in limbo, waiting in a chain for a property to come through. When it finally did in mid September, I pretty much ate, drank and slept it in between jobs as it needed a lot of work doing, hence no posts for the past two odd months. I’m in now and can see the wood for the trees but it did mean I largely dipped out of social media for the latter quarter of the year (probably not a bad thing).
Seeing as 2016 was such a shitter, in 2017 I wrote down all the good things that happened as the year progressed:
Got implicated in the KLF/JAMMs/K2 comeback media scrum because of an innocent quote in my 2016 round up
Started Further with Pete Williams – a multimedia music & projection night playing non-dancefloor sounds with analogue-based visuals plus food and a record stall – and founded a studio/ HQ in S. London
Pete Isaac (45 Live) found me a perfect copy of a long time wants list staple, Bam Bam’s ‘Where’s Your Child’ on 7″ for free
Got asked to play as Further at The Orb‘s ambient evening at the Royal Festival Hall in April and lit up the 5th floor balcony with 20 projectors
Mixed a Death Waltz Originals CD which was given away free at Halloween with Mondo/DW orders
Appeared on the Big Mouth podcast and played at the opening of Orbital Comics‘ exhibition, both celebrating 40 years of 2000AD
Found a set of Thomas ‘Eclipse’ plates, cups and saucers for a bargain price from an eBay seller
Pete managed to find a broken 6k projector for free and fixed it for £50
My kids got into the secondary school we wanted them to go to and aced it in their first term
The first Further event at the Portico Gallery was sold out and a great success with Ghost Box and Howlround as guests
Played the first Big Fish Little Fish in Athens which promptly sold out
Played three different street food festivals in the summer, love those sort of gigs, more please
Found a huge Barbara Brown dinner service in the charity for £15 – find of the year
Played at The Delaware Road performance in July inside a nuclear bunker with a host of electronic artists – a very special night
Asked to play the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu happening in Liverpool, which turned out to be one of the events of the year – who’d have thought it? A career highlight that saw me playing many of the tracks they’d sampled in their career alongside acid house classics and ending at 3am with a version of ‘In The Ghetto’.
Further went to Spiritland and we supported The Heliocentrics as part of the SYNthesis festival, both very special occasions even though we worked our balls off to set them up
The return of The The in musical, film and live capacity
Scoring a long time wants list LP – Yves Hayat‘s ‘Conversations Between The East & The West’ – direct from the archive of the composer himself and meeting him in London to receive the record.
Blade Runner 2049 was actually amazing and a worthy follow up to the original
The second major Further gig at the Portico Gallery featured Simon James playing a Buchla set to bespoke visuals we made and Sculpture slaying the place with their AV act.
Asked to support the Art of Noise at the British Library next March
Further featured twice in Electronic Sound magazine and I had an opening spread printed of my end of night image of the funeral pyre from the JAMs event in Liverpool
Taking my boys to the Colourscape on Clapham Common
Finally moved in and moved on
Asked to play a very special run of shows in 2018 that I’ll reveal soon…
Music:
OK, so 2017 was the year of the Lizard for me, I listened to more hours of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s music than any other band, but considering they released 5 albums this year alone it ‘s not surprising. Each album was different and they steadily got better with each release as the year progressed (disclaimer: I can’t speak for album no. 5 ‘Gumboot Soup’ as it came out today but ‘Polygondwanaland is probably my album of the year)
Brian Eno – Reflection (Warp)
Cavern of Anti-Matter – Blood Drums (reissue) (Duophonic)
Clocolan – Nothing Left To Abandon (Enpeg)
Run The Jewels – RTJ3 (Mass Appeal)
Revbjelde – Revbjelde (Buried Treasure)
Thundercat – Them Changes (Brainfeeder)
Jamiroquai – Automaton (the single)
The Dandelion Set – A Thousand Strands (Buried Treasure) (technically 2016 but copies got held up by distribution and it was more widely available in 2017)
The Heliocentrics – A World Of Masks (Soundway)
The Heliocentrics – The Sunshine Makers (Soundway)
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Flying Microtonal Banana (and still playing the hell out of Nonagon Infinity and It’s In My Mind Fuzz)
Klaus Weiss – Time Signals (reissue) (Trunk)
Vanishing Twin – Dream By Numbers EP (Soundway)
The Allergies – Entitled To That (Jalapeno)
Jane Weaver – Modern Kosmology (Fire Records)
Ulrich Schnauss & Jonas Munk – Passage (Azure Vista Records)
Ilia Gorovitz – Turmoil/Simmering With No End (Rassh Records)
John Brooks – Un Autre Directions (Clay Pipe Music)
King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard – Murder of the Universe (Flightless)
Markey Funk – Witch Doctor / The Brew (Delights)
Nevermen – Mr Minute (Boards of Canada remix) (Lex)
The The – Radio Cineola Trilogy (Lazarus)
Hans Zimmer & Benjamin Wallfisch – Blade Runner 2049 OST
King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard – Sketches of Brunswick East (Flightless)
King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard – Polygondwanaland (Flightless)
Exhibitions:
Future Shock – 40 Years of 2000AD – Cartoon Museum (London) / Paolozzi at the Whitechapel Gallery (London), Will Barras at Sector 25 (London) / Barbara Brown and Lucienne Day at the Whitworth Gallery (Manchester) / Franco Grignani at Estorick Collection of Italian Art (London), We Are Watching: Oz Magazine – Chelsea Art Space (London) / Delta – Mima Museums (Brussels) / Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains at the V&A (London), British Underground Press of the 60s at the A22 Gallery (London) / Can Graphic Design Save Your Life? – Wellcome Collection (London) / Snub 23 at the Boz Boz Gallery (Brighton)
Books / Comics:
Out Of Time – Miranda Sawyer / Ian Helliwell – Tape Leaders (Sound On Sound) Book + CD / British Underground Press of the 60s (Rocket 88) / The Process Is The Inspiration – House Industries / B.P.R.D.: Hell On Earth (Dark Horse) / Barbarella (Dynamite) / Swifty – FunkyTypo Graphix (Gamma Proforma) / Boris Tellegen – 86/97 – a black book (A Paper Book) / Batman: White Knight (DC)
RIP: Jaki Liebezeit, David Axelrod, Alan Aldridge, Dick Bruna, Clyde Stubblefield, Larry Coryell, Toshio Nakanishi, Chuck Berry, Skip Williamson, Jay Lynch, Mika Vainio, Adam West, Brian Cant, Pierre Henry, Anne-Marie Bergeron, Glen Campbell, Bruce Forsyth, Holger Czukay, Virgil Howe, Sean Hughes, Christine Keeler, Keith Chegwin, Dennis Dragon, Jim Baikie
Not long now until the final Further of the year on Nov 18th at the Portico Gallery, West Norwood, London – here’s a trailer and some little excerpts from shorts we’ve made for Simon James‘ Buchla performance.
Come down from 7.30-midnight for food, drink, a record stall and lots of leftfield music and visuals – Tickets here
You should definitely check out Sculpture‘s amazing site too as it’s full of stuff like this
and this
How do they do it? They must just live and breath music. This is from King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard‘s 4th album THIS YEAR (!) (they’ve said they’ll release 5). Not content with releasing ‘Flying Microtonal Banana’ containing the instant classic, ‘Rattlesnake’ they then released ‘Murder of the Universe’ with the astonishing prog-rock ‘Altered Beast’ and all sorts of references to existing King Giz records. Then just a couple of months back they collaborated with Mild High Club on ‘Sketches of Brunswick East’ which showcased a mellower jazz vibe and now this, apparently from an album called ‘PollyWollyGonnaWannaDoodleAllDayLand EDIT: (never believe YouTube comments) ‘Polygonawanaland’. None of this is simple music, the time signatures are all over the place and it’s played ridiculously tight, if they don’t go down as this generation’s Hawkwind or Zeppelin it’ll be a crime. No idea when this one’s out but check out the previous album if nothing else as it’s been on repeat when I can get near a record player.
Hi there, sorry for the lack of posts recently, the home renovation continues as does the 2 week (!) half term my kids have been bestowed with and many other things like preparation for the next Further at the Portico Gallery on Nov 18th. The mix that I made of material both released and unreleased from the Death Waltz Originals label run by Spencer Hickman has materialised as a free CD available with all orders of Death Waltz or Mondo releases while stocks last. It should also be available at selected independent record shops too and you can also listen to it here via Soundcloud. The spoken word throughout is from a private tape where my friend Steve Cook is interviewed by John Tomlinson about experiences he and his family experienced growing up in a haunted house.
The next Further at The Portico Gallery is on Sat Nov 18th. Pete Williams and I are very excited to be joined by Sculpture for one of their incredible live AV sets and Simon James (Simonsound / Black Channels /Akiha Den Den) will be performing a live set from his Buchla easel system. Early bird tickets on sale now
We’ll also have the Book & Record Bar stall with releases from both acts and a hand-picked selection to compliment plus delicious food and plenty of seating. See below for what to expect on the night.
Sculpture
Simon James
The last Further at the Portico Gallery
Pete Williams and myself set up our Further environment in support of The Heliocentrics at the Synthesis festival at Stanley Halls in South Norwood at the end of September. The group were utterly spellbinding with their vocalist tying everything together with an incredible vocal range somewhere between Roisin Murphy and Shirley Bassey. They played for two hours with visuals by Innerstrings and for a Thursday evening in deepest South London (nearly Croydon if we’re honest) it was pretty mind blowing.
Back in 1999 I went to Colourscape on Clapham Common and took a ton of photos, some of which ended up on the cover of the ‘Kaleidoscope’ album. 18 years later, with my two children in tow, I revisited it and was as wowed as I was nearly two decades before. If you get the chance, it’s a beautiful environment to wander around in for an hour, there’s contemporary classical music in the centre chamber and these photos don’t do it justice because it’s impossible to photograph and sends camera phones into convulsions. For more info where Colourscape is going to be next ,check them out on Facebook.
