Lovely poster, designed by Matt Needle, for the showing of ‘Slient Running’ at the Eden Project in Cornwall which happened yesterday. See Pete Thorton‘s review over on Front Row Reviews for more of what went down.
Poster / flyer
Just announced: ‘Crate Expectations’ – a celebration of vinyl through music, film and record shopping at The Lantern in Bristol on February 7th, 2015. Myself, Cheeba and Moneyshot will be performing our newly AV’d up 3-Way Mix reconstruction of ‘Paul’s Boutique’ alongside DJ sets from DJ Format and John Stapleton. There will be the Colston Hall record fair in the day along with a showing of the Stones Throw documentary ‘My Vinyl Weighs A Ton’ and a record collecting Q&A featuring some of the guests playing. There’s also an after party at Start The Bus which could have a very special guest playing too…
Before that, this Thursday to be exact, I’ll be at the Watershed to take part in the BFI‘s Sci-Fi season by presenting a Future Shock AV set before a screening of Sun Ra’s 1974 film ‘Space Is The Space’. Expect lots of space funk, solar system synth work and more with Cheeba helping Lumin on the visuals. This set is free but you have to buy tickets for the film and ticket holders will be given priority if the place is full. Also look out for Cheeba and Ollie Teeba live-rescoring Plan 9 From Outer Space and War of The Worlds respectively over the coming weeks too.
A month later and I’ll be going back to back all night with Boca 45 for an all 7″ vinyl set at the Big Chill Bar on the 29th of November.
Go HERE to buy the album and download this and another Julian House-designed poster for free.
This guy’s work is phenomenal, that perfect balance of 70’s and 80’s retro, vague sci-fi overtones, interesting lost fonts, saturated colours and a distinctly weathered texture all round. Check out his site, Signalstarr Portals for more.
I love these examples of early Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back posters with alternate logos and artwork. Even the finished film poster above has a rare shot of the heroes with Leia in Chewbacca‘s arms and the uneven red ‘crawl’ logo which is quite badly rendered when you look at it.
Below is an even earlier version with Ralph McQuarrie paintings plus an invite to one of the first public screenings.
Below are what look like poster prelims for Empire… with a totally different logo design that I’d never seen before.
Then another, more finished version of the logo with original SW poster art adapted. Love the way Leia is riding side saddle on the version above.
Actually, for all I know, these could be fan art but all the images are sourced from the Star Wars Archives page on Facebook which lends some sort of credibility to them.
Below we get yet another logo with a Luke on Tauntaun image.
Lastly, a preview poster for Empire with a big “BEWARE!” warning across it, this certainly looks real.
Whilst in Utrecht the other week for a gig I noticed that there’s now a second Mega Record fair in April as well as the Autumn. Finders Keepers just posted this great poster as they will have a stall there too. I’ve been before and it’s the largest fair in Europe, absolutely huge, you need days to go round it.
2001: Space Odyssey (1968, r.: Stanley Kubrick) – Grafika: Gyárfás Gábor, 1979
Amazing film posters from Hungary via this website – plenty more there too, including the Star Wars ones I featured a while back.
Fahrenheit 451 (1969, r.: François Truffaut) – Grafika: Kemény György
Eolomea (1972, r.: Zschoche Hermann) – Grafika: ismeretlen
Phase IV (1974, r.: Saul Bass) – Grafika: András Andor, 1980
A New Hope (1977, r.: George Lucas) – Grafika: Felvidéki András, 1979
Alien (1979, r.: Ridley Scott) – Grafika: Helényi Tibor, 1981 és egy ismeretlen művész
RoboCop (1987, r.: Paul Verhoeven) – Grafika: Helényi Tibor, 1987
Off to Australia tomorrow for 3 gigs in the sun – can’t wait to feel warm again and hook up with the likes of DJ HDD and others. Posts on here may be sporadic to non-existent for the next 10 days but I’ve just finished a mix of 80’s pop remixes and re-edits that may appear on Solid Steel at some point.
Still no idea when this is getting a proper release but I guess at some point this year we’ll see it in regular cinemas or on DVD. There’s a Facebook page for it now and a couple of posters with Chris Foss and Moebius artwork, possibly a book of some sort too maybe?
DJ Cheeba, DJ Moneyshot and I are touring the ‘3-Way Mix’ this year. That being a 4 deck, 3 DJ reconstruction of the Beastie Boys’ ‘Paul’s Boutique‘ album made from all the original tracks that they, and the Dust Brothers, sampled + more.
Here’s the first round of tour dates (more to come) with a graphic I made featuring all the sources they sampled, can you spot the Beasties? I made several versions + several Facebook timeline headers. Click for large versions.
After seven years and nearly 100 events, I Love Acid is set to finish this April as they concentrate on different things. Luke Vibert headlines with Plaid, Mark Archer, Affie Yusef, Placid and, of course, Posthuman. I’ve played for them a few times over the years and it’s always good fun with a top set of people and an up for it crowd. Sad to say I can’t be there as I’m already booked elsewhere but nice to see my name in the thank you list they put up. More info and tickets can be found here and there will be a very special acid-themed Solid Steel the week before the final gig.
BELOW IS NOT A FLYER LINE UP – THIS IS A THANK YOU LIST! (I think they are regretting not making that more explicit going by some online comments)
On January 11st, 1984, Radio 1 DJ, Mike Read took Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s debut single, ‘Relax’, off the deck, mid-song whilst live on air, reportedly calling it ‘obscene’ and stating that he wasn’t going to play it anymore. Despite the BBC having played it over 100 times, the band appearing in two sessions, having played Top Of The Pops the previous week and the single then residing at no.6 in the charts, the corporation officially ‘banned’ it from their playlist two days later.
This had the effect of generating enough publicity to push it up to the No.1 spot less than two weeks later on 22nd January and the band and their record company, Zang Tuum Tumb, claimed their first hit single. With a video that was already not deemed fit for TV broadcast, promo photos of the group in S&M gear and two of the band being were openly gay, it was all the press needed to have a field day.
In a stroke of good luck, the band’s producer, Trevor Horn, had remixed the song for a 3rd 12″ that was released just before it hit the No.1 spot. Multiple mixes being a novelty at the time, this version replaced the original ‘Sex Mix’ with a more club-friendly ‘New York Night Mix’, inspiration for which was taken when Horn visited the Paradise Garage club the previous Autumn. ZTT were quick to fan the flames of the ‘ban’ (it was only banned on BBC channels but freely played by other commercial stations) and adverts and posters appeared, flaunting the band’s outlaw status. I vividly remember seeing a huge fly poster proclaiming ‘Big, Banned & Beautiful!’ pasted up in the little town of Reigate where I grew up. In fact, I tried several times, unsuccessfully, to steal it but posters being what they are I just ended up ripping it.
I was fortunate enough to track down the original photographer of the poster’s image – Steve Rumney – for my Art of ZTT blog last year and he’s promised me access to a whole raft of exclusive, unseen/unpublished images that he took back stage at the band’s Camden Palace performance the previous November.
Stephen Rumney: “I used to take photos at the Camden Palace in the mid 80s and I was there the night that Frankie did their first ever performance of ‘Relax’… I think it was the actual release party and as far as I remember I was the only photographer to have back stage and dressing room access. …the pics are pretty wild as they were all drinking champagne and very high spirited as you can imagine… I was right in the thick of it and clicking away madly… there was something in the air that night and you could really tell this was the start of something big…
The photo was not posed … I just caught them before they went on stage… or just after… I may have asked them for a group shot but it was not ‘staged’ as in ‘let’s do a photo shoot’… its why it has that edgy spontaneity… Holly already the gun as he was carrying it around for his performance.
The story is that shortly after the gig I dropped a print off with the Island press office thinking they may like to use it for press… They had commissioned me to do a couple of photo shoots when I was still at college as they had seen my portfolio featured in ‘Blitz’ magazine so I dropped the Frankie photo off with them when I delivered prints for the other photo shoot they commissioned… a week or so later I saw my photo being used all round town on the giant street posters!!!”
‘Relax’ was a pretty big deal for me personally, one of those records that connected on first listen and had to have repeat plays, much to my parents’ annoyance. A song I never tire of and that, with the follow-up, ‘Two Tribes’, probably ranks as one of my top 10 singles of all time. I didn’t hear the ban as we rarely listened to Radio 1 in our house, instead hearing it on Capital Radio who didn’t hold quite such draconian ideals as the BBC. I taped it and would have to play it at least four times in succession after school for weeks on end.
In fact, some of my first pause button tape ‘remixes’ were of the song, made from the various different mixes floating around. It was this too that was one my first exposures to ‘the Remix’ on multiple formats and, coupled with the cryptic sleeve notes and images, it made for a very exciting package to a 13 year old. It was the beginning of a love affair with both the band’s music and their label, ZTT, that has stayed with me to this day. Nothing was more exciting to me in 1984 that Frankie and the other artists on ZTT’s roster – Art of Noise and Propaganda.
‘Big, Banned & Beautiful’ poster design: XLZTT photography: © Stephen Rumney 1983 The photo was taken 24th November ’83 by Steve Romney backstage at a promo gig for the single at the Camden Palace in London. The ‘girls’ in the photo were Ange and Juicy Lucy (the latter actually a man in drag), friends of the band who featured in the original video for ‘Relax’.
You can also read my interview with Anne Yvonne Gilbert – the illustrator of the iconic image on the cover of ‘Relax’ – on ArtofZTT.com
February 14th sees the release of yet another 12″ of the single for the 30th anniversary, this time with a recently discovered remix from ’84 which was lost in the vaults. More info HERE.
This is a new poster for Transport for London, drawn by Thibaud Herem as part of the 150 years of the London Underground birthday. TFL now have an official Tumblr that they will be filling with images for the anniversary. Talking of posters on the Underground, there is a great series running currently, drawn by French illustrator, McBess. They are general safety warnings with poetry written by members of the public and are all over the place in various sizes. I think we’re in a new golden age of design for the London Underground.
If you didn’t know better you’d swear this was on original old sci-fi B Movie soundtrack that had been long forgotten, a Logan’s Run or Space 1999 cash-in from the late 70’s or early 80’s. But it’s not, although I’m sure that was the intent, and the design by Luke Insect for his new Dark Seed collaborative project with Richard Norris, is spot on in nailing the tone.
I’ve already featured this cover a few months back but the whole package is great from the reverse side to the Ohmega logo to the nice detail of the centre hole for the head on the label. Dark Seed was the name of an old sci-fi / horror computer game which used elements by HR Giger in its design by the way and this sleeve reflects that perfectly with a touch of Beyond The Black Rainbow thrown in for good measure.
To top it all off it comes with an A2 foldout poster (complete with crease lines already printed on) and the minimal electronic ‘score’ ain’t bad either. One of my sleeves of the year for sure. You can get a copy here as well as all good digital distributors (NOT to be confused with Metal band Darkseed)