I can't remember quite when I was first contacted by Stéphane Courvoisier about this but his personal imagining of the track we did with Ken Nordine on the 'Kaleidoscope' album is pretty amazing. I think he wanted to ask permission to make a book of etchings that would illustrate the story and include a CD with the two different versions of the song to round off the package. He sent me some images of the seven different scenes he had interpreted and told me he was going to print these as etchings as he had access to a printing press at his college in Strasbourg. It was hard to understand how he was going to print them because he had very specific requirements for the paper and ink he needed to achieve the effects he wanted.

About a year later I met up with him in Paris at a Solid Steel show and he had the finished 'book' with him and it's quite something to behold. 10" x 10" in size, the slipcase has the DJ Food logo and his rebel character de-bossed into the front cover. Inside is a 3 page foldout which houses the etchings, reprints the words to the song and holds the two track CD. The etchings are held between sheets of tracing paper to keep them clean and the photos here just cannot do them justice. They are highly detailed and are printed on heavy paper that is de-bossed on different levels of the images due to the printing process.

I was amazed at the lengths he'd gone to from being inspired by the track and we talked about how we both interpreted the meaning and images of Ken's words which varied quite a bit from line to line. It turned out that he had interpreted certain elements very differently to me and we swapped notes. One of my biggest regrets is that we never did a video for this song as it lends itself so well to that medium.

At the time of release we nearly did and I even did a rough storyboard for an animated version. I dug this out and sent it to Stéphane as he was interested to know how I perceived it back in 2000.

I sent him lots of Ken’s past work on both vinyl and CD and occasionally I would get an email with attachments where he’d worked on variations of the etchings in his spare time. He also did the odd drawing of diabolic or alternate endings for the set as he wasn’t happy with the final image.

About six months later out of the blue I received Stéphane’s version of my storyboard via email. He’s taken some of my images and the general direction of the script and added his own take on things and it was beginning to take on the shape of a comic strip now. He even made his own storyboard for a short film for the rebel character based on the dots in the image. You can see his full storyboard in the gallery above.

These sets of etchings are not for general sale as they are custom made and printed by hand. They are not cheap but if you are interested in obtaining one maybe Stéphane can oblige. Or maybe you might want to commission him to illustrate something for you, he can be contacted here

all images © Stéphane Courvoisier 2002-2005

Co-written / written by PC, 'Reel Life' is the reversion of the Mr P remix of 'Evolution'

Part of the Simian typeface package from the House Industries type foundry. Two ape-‘themed’ tracks to accompany the font ‘Simian’ which referenced the shapes and typefaces in the Planet of the Apes films. These two short tracks came on a 3″ CD housed in a leather wallet, embossed with the Simian type logo. Probably the most expensive DJ Food tracks available

Specially made for Germany's Popp Comm industry bash in 1995, this was a joint Herbaliser / Food release given away at the event. The B side had a Ninja logo I hand etched into a blank plate. The tracks were 'Spiral' and 'Up 4 The Get Downs' but I heard The Herbaliser title wrong hence the spelling mistake.