The, by now, ubiquitous Ghost Box post when they release a new record (they’re not paying me, honest). Hintermass – a collaboration between Jon Brooks and Tim Felton – just came out on LP, CD and DL and lovely it is too. Next up is an album by Belbury Poly (at last!), Jim Jupp‘s recording alias which is coming in May. Download these two posters HERE.
The vinyl heads among you may want to jump sharpish over to the Drumetrics store and secure a copy of this gorgeous op art-covered, die-cut triangular picture disc and sleeve (300 copies only). If you don’t know about Drumetrics then you need to visit their site
New Shadow album campaign starting, check the track on his site djshadow.com
The First Book Of Jazz (1955) is the third of five books that Langston Hughes (1902-1967) wrote for the Franklin Watts First Books series. “When boys and girls FIRST start asking why?…what?…and how? FIRST BOOKS are the first books to read on any subject.”
Cliff Roberts (1929-1999) was a cartoonist and animator. His cartoons appeared in magazines such as The New Yorker and Playboy. He worked as an animator on Sesame Street, and wrote and drew the short-lived Sesame Street newspaper comic strip.
Image and text cribbed from Ariel S. Winter’s Flickr where he has the full book scanned. For more information see this blog post
I do like seeing animated versions of graphics I’ve designed. This was done by Elliot Seeds from the Ninja Tune office and here’s this week’s guest mix version.
I’m very chuffed to have an interview with Savage Pencil aka Edwin Pouncey in the new Rough Trade book celebrating 40 years of the shop and associated labels. Just published by Thurston Moore‘s Ecstatic Peace imprint it’s packed with scrapbook-like anecdotes, photos, poems, drawings and interviews by a who’s who of the independent scene.
My piece runs to five pages and covers SavX‘s career from aspiring cartoonist and early employee of the Portobello shop to Blast First cover artist and abstract painter with Battle Of The Eyes. The interview was so long that I had to cut it down by more than half so I’ll publish the full thing here with many illustrations once the book has been out a while.
*Also – there’s a free John Grant one-sided 45 with etched B side if you buy the book from Rough Trade shops
The Hintermass LP arrived yesterday in all its summery glory, just check out that artwork, good enough to eat. As with all things Ghost Box it’s another piece of Julian House wonder, how he does it I do not know, always different but always quintessentially ‘House’. The music is a new collaboration by Jon Brooks (The Advisory Circle etc.) with lyrics on half the tracks by Tim Felton (Seeland / ex-Broadcast). A mixture of folk-tinged songs and ‘Krauty’ electronica, it’s too early to fully comment at the moment but on first listen I’d say it’s worth it for the last track alone. Listen and buy here
A few weeks ago, when I played the Resonance FM fundraiser at The Book & Record Bar, I gave Zoe ‘Lucky Cat’ Baxter a couple of Ultraman 45s from my collection as a present. I’d picked them up in Japan over 15 years before and had bought them in to an OST show with Jonny Trunk years ago, more to show him the sleeves than to play the music. I met Zoe for the first time there as she has the show before Jonny and she recently reminded me that she was wildly coveting the records back then as she loves East Asian culture.
They’d been sitting in my collection for years, unplayed and unseen, so I thought, ‘why not give them to someone who will appreciate them more than me?’, seeing as we were on the same bill. She’s already put them to good use by including them in an Ultraman special on her radio show and showing off the covers on her Instagram (see above and below). She has a wealth of information on the show and it’s nice to know that they’ve gone to a good home.
The Delaware Road is a psychological thriller & an audio-visual treat for fans of archived electronica, far out jazz & haunted folk grooves. Loosley based on the lives of influential electronic musicians Delia Derbyshire & John Baker from the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Compere: Dolly Dolly
Live perfomers: Howlround, The Dandelion Set, Ian Helliwell, The Rowan Amber Mill, Robin Lee, Loose Capacitor, Tim Hill, The Twelve Hour Foundation, Revbjelde.
Now booking for live shows in 2016. Contact: [email protected]
Also available as a 19 track compilation CD + download via Buried Treasure Records
Yes I am biased, as two of my closest friends are part of the group, but, true to the golden rule of this blog – that I don’t post anything that I don’t personally love – this needs to be featured. I was lucky enough to wangle a digital file of the B side, ‘All Hands On Deck’ out of the crew last summer and played it as the last track in a gig in Russia where it finished the night in fine style. An uptempo cut with a triple DJ cut jam between Ollie Teeba, DJ Woody and Mr Thing that should leave scorch marks at any B-Boy jam. You can preview & buy the 45 or DL now from here
Taken from the Audio Arcana blogspot: this is an incredible find in the discography of Ken Nordine; a 7″ EP of the original Fuller Paint Company adverts that went on to form the basis for his classic album, ‘Colours’. These versions are markedly different from the ones on the Philips LP and a new track, ‘All Colours’ shows up at the end. More info and full download HERE
Last minute gig addition, I’ll be playing some music at this on Saturday, it’s a local event for me and there have been lots of things going on in the area recently that threaten the livelihoods of local businesses in this community. A sudden 70% increase in rents to property by the local Dulwich Estate group has already caused one shop to close and the Half Moon Pub, already closed for over two years due to a flood, has had it’s music license revoked unexpectedly. There’s more about it here but basically it boils down to the seemingly unending desire to squash any life and vitality out of London and replace it with the dreaded luxury flats as property owners cash in and squeeze the people who made these areas desirable in the first place out.
A new all-45s mix I did for the 45/7 Vinyl Club (not to be confused with the 45Live crew but the aims are similar). Each guest is asked to provide a mix made from vinyl 45s only, answer 5 questions and choose a unique hand-painted cover which they are then sent with a special 45/7 Vinyl Club 7″.
Click into the mix link for the interview and, as there’s no track list provided, here it is below
Dr. Donald B. Louria – Is Marijuana really dangerous? (Teach Records)
DJ Shadow – This Time (I’m Gonna Dub It My Way) (Universal / Island)
Sixtoo – Incedental 1 (Bully)
Dr. Donald B. Louria – Does LSD increase creativity? (Teach Records)
Controller 7 – Wandering Song (Bully)
Primal Scream – Kill All Hippies (Creation)
The Giallos Flame – Vultures feat. Wolf People (Analog Screams)
Cavern Of Anti-Matter – Total Availability and the Private Future (Peripheral Conserve)
Blues Explosion feat. DJ Shadow – Fed Up & Low Down (Edit) (Mute)
The Go! Team – Grip Like A Vice (Memphis Industries)
Paul Weller – Rip Up The Pages (Lynchmob mix) (Island)
The Protein Bros – Drainpipe (Rural)
The Edgar Winter Band – Frankenstein (Epic)
John Rydgren – The Noise (Teach Records)
Beck – Mixed Business (Geffen)
Chaps – Ascension To Virginity (Decca)
The Zutons – Why Won’t You Give Me Your Love? (Deltasonic)
Ocean Colour Scene – Hundred Mile High City (MCA)
The Soundcarriers – Boiling Point (The Great Pop Supplement)
D.O.T. – Say Your Prayers (Twisted Nerve)
The Dirty Feel – Get Down (No Label)
Toolshed – Pazuzu (Theme From Exorcist II) (Black Deck)
The Giallos Flame – Italia Violenta (Analog Screams)
Alan Copeland – Mission Impossible/Norwegian Wood (ABC Records)
A new 13 track album mixed and produced by YAGE, all sounds created using the legendary EMS Synthi AKS.
MP3 / Flac / Wav / CD. Released 4th March 2016. Available from FSOLdigital.com / BLEEP.com
Synth and FSOL fans unite! a very Hieronymous Bosch-esque cover as well.
This Sisters of Transistors LP had passed me by when it was released in 2009 although I remember hearing a remix of one of the tracks by Hot Chip that really floated my boat. It was a project featuring Graham Massey and four female organists if the sleeve notes be believed and there a fair few of them, weaving a tale of lost music and organ quartets that goes back to the second world war. It comes encased in a white plastic sleeve with sealing sticker and silver logo screened on the front. The design is by ehquestionmark who you might know from all the amazing work he’s done for the Skam and Lex labels and the attention to detail, as with all his work, is second to none.
Inside we have a sleeve with a front cover like some vintage classical performance document and a back showing a the band setup with Graham at the center and the four organists circling him in a sea of swirling wires. The real treat is the large insert which comes with it though, loose leaves with punched out ring binder holes, library stamps and the cheesiest set of band photos ever. Straight out of some 70s accountancy firm or teachers end of year book, the players – all given aliases – couldn’t be more convincing with muted green/brown tones and outfits and hair to match.
The music is a real mix, almost uncategorisable, of course organs feature heavily but it’s more complicated than that. There’s distorted grooves, fuzz, female chants and harmonies, lots of live drums and the whole thing has the air of a mass or seance about it. The pieces are all reputedly from different eras of the 20th century so styles flip constantly. All in all I think this will become one of those overlooked curios, collected and coveted by those in the know in the future. You can buy it digitally from iTunes as the label seems to have no obvious shop, or Discogs is a good bet for physical copies. See the covers being assembled in the video below, including the special undies randomly inserted into some copies
This is a really well researched and put together piece by Matt Anniss (and I’m not just saying that because I’m featured) with all the major players present. It’s nice that sometimes, with hindsight, someone writes a history of a movement and gets it right. It can never be complete of course but this is a very accurate account of how it played out.
I put this pile of 45s down in a mix last week, possibly the world’s first all 7″, all-Acid mix? I’ve been collecting acid tracks on 7″ for a while now and, when Josh from I Love Acid asked me to do a mix for his I Love Acid Radio slot, I thought this would be the perfect slot to showcase them. The mix is due to debut on March 10th, I’ll post a link here when it does. Pete Isaac from 45 Live is also a big acid 45 collector and we’ll be doing something in that vein later this year…
Acid on 45 is a pretty niche area, a lot of the releases are UK pressings as several tracks made the charts at the end of the 80s and record labels were still pressing 7″s alongside the 12s to get radio play. There are also a lot of european singles from around that time too, tracks that were big in countries like Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain but won’t maybe be known elsewhere. In the 90s a lot of acid on 45 is confined to the more uptempo almost gabba-techno kind and there are slim pickings to be had until the 00s when the sound made a resurgence back into techno.
The second part of Robin The Fog & Hannah Brown‘s ‘Neat Mint’ show for Resonance FM just aired tonight with the continuation of their peek into the odder end of my record collection. Hear what these records sound like below.
Also we’ll all be playing at The Book & Record Bar in West Norwood on Friday alongside the landlord Micheal (not listed below) and Zoe ‘Lucky Cat’ Baxter who, I just found out, is the daughter of Glen Baxter! Come down, the shop is less than a minute’s walk from the West Norwood train station. £5 entry in aid of Resonance FM who have their annual fundraising drive on at the moment to keep them on the air for another year. Some very unique prizes to be auctioned off in a very good cause, truly independent radio with no playlist.
