One of my favourite artists and certainly my favourite toy-making company – Ashley Wood and 3A – launch their new book range today on the eve of a massive art and toy show in Beijing. Two hardback books with work from Phil Hale and Ashley Wood are available for $25 each but the one I’m most excited about is ‘Entr3At’, a 282 page celebration of the first 2 years of 3A toys. Packed with paintings, photos, works in progress, designs and box art, it’s going to be one of my books of the year for sure. Order any or all of them from bambalandstore now.
Books
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It was my better half’s birthday yesterday and a friend of ours got her this lovely Heston Blumenthal cooklbook. The big difference between this and any cookbook I can think of it that it’s illustrated by Dave McKean, he of Arkum Asylum, Signal To Noise, Cages and the Sandman comic covers amongst many others. This has to be a first surely? The book is gorgeous both in content and quality and very heavy too! Check the gallery for some of the spreads, there are many more although I’m not sure how much my wife will actually be attempting to serve up.
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Starting tomorrow, because it’s Record Store Day, a week long, series of daily posts on vinyl worth buying for both the cover and content.
For the hundredth post: the first in an occasional series, miscellaneous shots from around the studio…
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Bought this book for my boys yesterday (I’m a sucker for beautifully designed childrens books) Such a unique way of presenting the old tale and at the end her eyes close after she eats the horse. We also have another version by Jan Pienkowski (who did Meg & Mog and the classic Haunted House pop up book) in which she turns into a ghost on the last page!
This book though is illustrated by Jeremy Holmes and available from Chronicle Books from San Francisco, presumable available online but I got mine from Tales on Moon Lane in Herne Hill who have re-installed part of my Where the Wild Things Are Window display.
I was in the Ninja office today, sifting through boxes of press archive, found some amazing things, hilarious photos of old and some situations I don’t even remember. Lots of weird and wonderful people have passed through Ninja over the years and there are a lot of memories attached to it for me. I’m currently deep into the design and ongoing picture research for the Ninja Tune book which will be published this summer by Black Dog Publishing.
It’s a gargantuan project and one that we are not taking lightly – don’t expect the usual spread of press shots you’ve all seen before, we’re digging deep for lots of unseen material and it turns up in the most unlikely places. There’s no way it will all make it into the book but I promise to share some of the bits and pieces that don’t make it at a later date via this blog.
Also, these turned up today… 
Better res than Vimeo, I promise.
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Capsule is a new venture from Rob Lynam – the man who bought you online design magazine Multilink. It comes in the form of a slim A5 perfect bound volume packed with some of the finest illustrators around. Artists like France’s Duster, the UK’s Doug Bowden (aka Pandayoghurt) and my good self all have space to showcase designs past and present in full colour.
Rob plans to do prints of some of the selections at some point and if you want to sample the kind of exquisite taste he has then take a look through the free online magazines on his Multilink site.
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I’ve been having a reacquainted love affair this year with all things analogue, seventies and sci-fi. It seems to happen every few years and all I want to look at are curved edges, computer fonts, muted tones and airbrushed images from the days before computers made everything virtual. I’ve been doing a T- shirt design based on the Moog and whilst doing some research I stumbled upon this site.
Someone has scanned several issues of a synth mag from the mid seventies called Synapse. It contains interviews with people like Eno, Zappa, Kraftwerk, Herbie Hancock, George Duke, Bob Moog, Pat Gleeson and a whole lot more. In amongst all this are reviews, how-to’s and loads of ads for what are now vintage synths.
The Kraftwerk interview is great, at one point they talk about a comic they’ve made where small plug-in systems try try to make contact with all these inputs and outputs, coming together to make a group. They talk about doing a book where they present more of their work to people in ways it can’t be shown on record. Shame it didn’t materialise.
What has materialised at long last though is the fabled reissues of their albums from 1974 -2003 – known to fans as ‘the catalogue’ – and originally meant for release in 2004. Some promo copies even slipped out but then nothing, now they are finally available via Mute in the UK. Now that’s one set of remasters I’ve been looking forward to whilst everyone else bangs on about the other Fab Four.
Just arrived at the door, what a lovely package, congratulations to all involved and Happy 20th Warp. My only gripe is that I could have been part of the package as they asked me to do the mix last year but I simply didn’t have the time so I passed them on to Osymyso. Looking forward to digesting it all.
Just received a bumper package from my man Jim Mahfood aka Food One in LA. We did a swap of goodies and he really outdid me with the contents of his box. Aside from the comic books, T-shirt, stickers, cards and mix CD he also signed the inner covers of all 3 Mixtape collections AND included the limited edition Paul’s Boutique comic he did about the Beastie Boys’ classic album. Yep, I’m gloating here…
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I just finished Bill Drummond‘s book 17 at the weekend, it affected me quite a bit and opened up a can of worms I think will be a running theme for some time. The third DJ Food EP – ‘Finyl : The Death of Vinyl’ – was already going to deal with some of these thoughts but I feel it will become much bigger than that.
Been a bit quiet recently mostly on account of being on holiday with the family and knuckling down on the music.
The next EP is nearly in the bag, featuring a collaboration with DK – mixed by King Cannibal no less, a remix of ‘All Covered In Darkness’ by PC, a cover version and more artwork by the excellent Henry Flint. Mixdowns take place next week, mastering the week after, release should be Oct / Nov.
Kid Koala just sent me the new record he did with Dynomite D – ‘The Slew’ and it is stunning, a mix of rock, blues and scratching, you won’t have heard much like this before. Download it for free here – don’t worry, I’m not into music piracy, this link comes direct from Kid Koala himself with the message “Feel free to pass it on to anyone you think would enjoy this noise. ;)”
DJ Moneyshot’s September Solid Steel mix is floating around on the web already, it’s a collection of all the tracks the Beastie Boys sampled on their ‘Check Your Head’ album and has been on constant rotation here since I got it.
I’ve raved about him before but I just finished ‘Totally Wired’ by Simon Reynolds, the companion to one of my books of the year in 2007 – ‘Rip It Up And Start Again’. Essentially a series of interviews made during research for the first book, it is fascinating reading for anyone interested in music circa ’78-84.
Ashley Wood has some great new robots out, just a shame I’m broke after the taxman reared his annual head.
This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages, Finnish guitarist StStanders strips the track’s audio and inserts his own, complete with off key music and silly lyrics.
