Long time heroes of mine, graffiti legends, absolute masters from back in the day whose influence is still felt. They have a show opening tonight in Soho, London. Can’t make it myself but will definitely check this out. See examples of their work here.
Grabbed from the excellent Retrowave tumblr site, don’t know who did it.
Here’s the Nuclear Dawn mural in Brixton as it was when it was first painted. Anyone who has ever traveled into Brixton on Coldharbour Lane from the East will have seen this, it’s been there since the early 80’s apparently and was painted by Brian Barnes and Dale McCrea.
30 years of wear and tear have not been kind to the image, especially the lower half which is partly covered with bushes and graffiti not to mention the condition of the paint in general. But there is a movement underway to try and restore the mural to its former glory on Facebook – please have a look, ‘like’ the page and see if you can help.
I’m lucky enough to have heard most of this album and it’s excellent, another step on and up for Eric. Set for release on September 18th, a limited version will come with a DIY card turntable and flexi disc plus interior drawings and paintings of kid koala’s studio, of which I contributed one piece.
Very much looking forward to this, available August 6th from ZTT
CD1: Frankie Goes To Hollywood in The Pleasuredome, a Zang Tuum Tumb singlette in five parts: Happy Hi! (All in the Body), The Soundtrack from Bernard Rose’s Video of the Welcome to the Pleasuredome single, Get It On, Welcome to the Pleasure Dome (How to Remake the World), Happy Hi! (All in the Mind); Relax (International); The Power of Love (I’ll Protect You From The Holocaust) can be read in various ways but, for the sake of CD indexing, has six distinct sections: The Power of Love (extended, singlette – as opposed to 12” – version), The World is My Oyster (Trapped), Holier Than Thou (FGTH’s Christmas message), The World is My Oyster (Scrapped), Holier Than Thou (further festive messaging), The Power of Love (instrumental, singlette version); The World is My Oyster (at its full length); Don’t Lose What’s Left, Rage Hard + ++ *.
CD2: Extracts from Relax, From Soft to Hard, Dry to Moist: Relax (Sex Mix), Later On (from One September Monday), Ferry Cross The Mersey (…and here I’ll stay); Music from and inspired by Two Tribes (Keep The Peace): Two Tribes (singlette extracts), One February Friday (singlette extracts), War (somewhere between Hidden and Hiding); Further elements from The Liverpool Look: Warriors of the Wasteland (Compacted), Do You Think I’m Sexy?, Watching the Wildlife (Voiceless).
This has been doing the rounds on the web, originating from SomethingAwful by the looks of it.
I so wanted it to be real but a quick search revealed it was a very good fake (see above).
Shame, here are some more ‘wish these really existed’ comic covers from the Relaunched and Comics Covered websites.
.
…coming this Autumn
Seen on Megatrip‘s blog via the Heritage Auctions site: Jim Steranko Infinity One Paperback Cover Original Art (Lancer Books, 1970). This mixed-media piece has an overall size of 11″ x 17.5″, and the art is in Excellent condition. Sold for nearly $10,000 in Nov 2008. Stunning work.
The first in a series of vinyl postcards from Six Ton Armour, sadly now sold out but check their Psychcast mixes.
I didn’t know who did this for a while because I found it online, it’s the work of Mike Alacantara – check out more of his stuff here.
I’m totally in love with the design of the new Tron Uprising cartoon that just premiered on Disney’s XD channel. Starting with a 30 minute pilot last month to set the whole thing up they have eighteen 20 minute episodes in the first season with only Flynn, Tron and Clu remaining from the films and a host of new characters to flesh out the story. The design cues are taken from Tron Legacy and ramped up with Aeon Flux-like proportions on the characters and hyper neon designs.
Looks promising, on set photos released so far have been a mixed bag, an R rating and a thumbs up from creator John Wagner are a good start but a trailer will be more telling. Up against the 1996 Stallone travesty the odds are in its favour but the proof will be in the pudding.
Kid Koala previews his new 12bit Blues album (I’ve heard it, it’s another step up) and I provide support with support from another Ninja act who I can’t name yet. Tickets can be bought here
An amazing, but very hard to photograph, mural dedicated to Moebius that wraps round three sides of a building in Shoreditch, London. Featuring many scenes and images he created in his lifetime and also a little MCA dedication too, I tried my best to join the images together fluidly but had to take some of these standing in the middle of the road. UPDATE: The mural was painted by JimVision / Probs over 9 days, check some much better photos over at the End of the Line blog.
I’ll be playing at the Société des Arts Technologiques in their SATosphere in Montreal, as part of the Osheaga Festival of Music & Arts 2012 this July. Bringing a revised and remixed version of The Search Engine show I presented at the London Planetarium in January to North America for four performances. Not only will the dome be bigger but the sound will be controllable with over 150 speakers providing a 25:4 surround sound system which I will be operating during each show. Here’s a short I did with the Evenko team, who are putting it on, whilst I was in Montreal recently – marvel at my inability to describe what it will be like.
[quicktime width=”636″ height=”380″]http://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/DJ-Food-–-The-Search-Engine-evenkoTV.mp4[/quicktime]
On sale at the SAT box office, Atom Heart and La Vitrine
July 19 & July 20 – 7pm + 9pm shows – $22,50 advance ($25 at the door)
The SATosphere is located at 1201, St-Laurent Blvd, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
I finally got to the Tate Modern to see the Damien Hirst exhibition yesterday and his butterfly ‘paintings’ are stunning. Kaleidoscopic, geometric mandalas, some of which glow like stained glass windows, they are quite breathtaking to behold. I’m no particular Hirst fan, I can take or (usually) leave him but occasionally he comes up with a winner and this is definitely one of them.
I came across these on Facebook the other day, does anyone recognise the artist? I think it’s all the same person judging by the tags I can see but I’m not certain. My first thought was that it was Replete but I’m not sure.
UPDATE: This is the guy who did these – Made514 – plus a whole lot more, check out his site here.
My brain hurts.
So much to say about the last few days and the opening of the DJ Food & Henry Flint exhibition at the Factory Road Gallery in Hinckley, Leicester with my friends Sarah (aka Inkymole) and Leigh. I’ve known them for around 15 years now and always enjoy their company so it was a no-brainer when they asked if they could host the work I’d got together for the Pure Evil Gallery earlier this year. What’s unique about this is that the gallery is in their own home, on the corner of a quiet suburban street, not in the middle of a hip part of a big city. A few years ago they did some major architectural restructuring and turned the downstairs of their home into a workspace cum gallery, dependent on what was on at the time. This is the third or fourth exhibition to be held there and, with the help of their intern, Brook, and amazing chef Jed Smith, they managed to make it a very unique event.
The difference between this and the Pure Evil show is that they were keen to feature a sort of retrospective element of my design work with Ninja Tune over the years alongside work that Henry and I had generated for ‘The Search Engine’ album, his book ‘Broadcast’ and past comic work. This took the form of a whole wall running the length of the downstairs plus a tabletop collage under glass of all manner of flyers, sleeves, proofs and other ephemera. Two sides of the central supporting wall were taken up with Henry’s past comic work with prints and original art from the album near the entrance. Near the rear of the gallery we set up a turntable and zoetrope disc to project animations that were also meant for London but didn’t happen as well as a 55 minute mix with visuals based on my planetarium show of the same time.
To add to this Sarah and Leigh always do special merchandise to go with each show, a regular item being a tea towel – or rather a visor / helmet polishing cloth (ooer) – printed locally and hemmed by Sarah’s mum. Also for sale was a limited edition ‘Skullstronaut’ giclee print and locally sourced chocolate bars, cleverly playing on the outer space theme and packaged like freeze-dried astronaut food.
Speaking of food, the killer addition of the night was Jed Smith in the kitchen, whipping up amazing bite-sized, space-themed eats for everyone. The cubed chips, baked pea shells and sauce were the hit of the night, a bowl of ‘space dust’ (homemade sherbert) looked like a moon surface and the dried rice and beetroot dip was literally out of this world (sorry). Everyone who came looked uncertainly at it all, took the plunge and were instantly in for seconds.
It’s rare to attend an opening and to ask the guests if they’ve been to the toilet yet (unless it’s for some sort of nose up) but the bathroom had it’s own charm in the form of Will Cooper-Mitchell’s press shots of me in an astronaut suit, alongside a hand-painted shuttle (by Sarah’s sister, close family ties going on here) and a short musical loop of space-themed sounds.
This, alongside a big barrel of local ale for refreshments, rounded the whole event off beautifully and added to the homely vibe of the exhibition. A steady stream of visitors arrived, both local and from further afield from 6pm until midnight and I talked to everyone from fans to friends, university professors to the local record store owner. Having been there since Thursday afternoon setting up and rearranging things I was beat by then and we had an early start the next morning but that’s another story.
Thank you so much to everyone who came but especially Sarah, Leigh, Jed, Brook and everyone who helped to make it such a success, some of the photos here are by their friend, Nigel, who was also the architect who helped them build the gallery. We realised, once it was all hung and arranged, that we’d fitted in twice the content than in London, in a smaller space too so there’s twice the reason to go and have a look. The show is at 71 Factory Road, Hinckley, Leicestershire, it’s free and on until June 15th, all merchandise is on sale on the Factory Road Shop now.
Well, the day came and went, and I chose to see Prometheus in 3D at the IMAX for the full monty. I’d been looking forward to this film more than any other this year and the hype and expectation had already built up to unreasonable levels before it opened. I realised this, had actively tried to avoid reading spoilers, scripts, watching the more recent ‘here’s the film all laid out for you’ trailers and the odd online opinion beforehand but this proved harder as the release date neared. I went in knowing that it couldn’t possibly live up to expectation but hoping that I hadn’t see or heard EVERYTHING about it and that there was still some mystery left. There was, not as much as I hoped, but enough so that there were surprises, a couple of revelations and more questions left unanswered than tied up neatly.
One aspect that virtually everyone who’s seen it is unanimous about is that it looks stunning, the sets, design and landscapes are as beautiful and richly detailed as you’d hope. There are lots of references to H.R. Giger’s classic Alien designs, it’s fleshed out, maybe not so creepy in the harsh light of day, but there is a strong lineage between the film and the original Alien. There are also some lovely designs for some of the interiors of the Prometheus ship although they look vaguely 70’s retro but are then juxtaposed with Minority Report-style touch screens which jarrs. The main failing point is that the characters aren’t particularly loveable, you don’t care about them enough, although Fassbender turns in a great performance as David, the artificial human, you’re never quite sure where his loyalties lie. Charlize Theron‘s character could have been put to much better use I felt and the last third of the film is a bit of a mess with no really satisfying pay off in the final scenes.
Overall it’s good though, I recommend you see it and make up your own mind, it will get people talking, disagreeing most likely, about the whole Alien universe. As far as prequels go and as an attempt to inject some new life into a franchise that’s had diminishing returns since Aliens, it succeeds admirably compared to something like The Phantom Menace or The Thing and I’d hold it above Alien 3, 4 and both AVP films (not hard) by a long way. It’s good but not great, I’d give it a 7 or 8 out of 10 but I didn’t enjoy it as much as The Avengers (I realise how ridiculous this comparison is though). I think it will bear repeat viewing and could be appraised differently once everyone’s calmed down with their reactionary conclusions and maybe given it a second chance. Look at Blade Runner‘s initial critical reception, I’m not suggesting it’s anywhere in that league as it’s not, but opinions differ when expectations are high. The 3D is good but not essential, I imagine it would be just as good without, but a big screen will make you appreciate some of the locations more than a small one.
Here’s the ‘Skullstronaut’ print, specially made for Friday’s exhibition opening at the Factory Road Gallery, Hinckley, Leicestershire. Taken from the cover of the recent DJ Food vs The Amorphous Androgynous 12″ single and measuring a hefty 55cm x 55cm this giclée print on Somerset Rag paper will set you back just £25 at the show. It’s an edition of 25 and will be signed by myself, any unsold stock will be on the Factory Road shop once the exhibition has finished.