I took my boys down to the IMAX cinema in Waterloo a couple of days after we’d seen Rogue One as I’d heard there were two actual Death Trooper outfits in the lobby. They had no idea they were there until we walked in, they don’t disappoint either, great bit of design (seen here with added festive accessories).
Santa brought this beauty on Xmas day, lots of fun to make and great attention to detail. On sale now from Lego
The Star Wars Identities exhibition opened last month in London at the O2 in Greenwich. Over 200 props, models, costumes, paintings and designs are collected around a 10 step trail based on building your own personal characters within the Star Wars universe. There have been a few additions and subtractions since I first saw it in Montreal four years ago but it’s essentially the same. Just check some of the pictures below and you’ll get the idea, absolutely essential for any Star Wars fan and very child-friendly. So nice to go into an exhibition that doesn’t discourage photography too. It’s on until September 2017 and you can buy tickets HERE.
Four From Food Fridays – a weekly look at four things that have been doing it for me. They can be new or old, any style so long as it’s been getting some rotation in the studio. From top left:
The Karminsky Experience Inc. ‘Beat!’ LP (Patterns of Behaviour)
Various Artists – Selected Ambient Covers Vol.2 (Bandcamp)
David Sylvian – Gone To Earth (Virgin) LP
? – A Huge 54 Minute Mix Mk2 (unreleased) CD-R
Fishure
Daniel Barassi in LA has performed a miracle with a couple of old toy Fisher Price turntables… – rechristened the Fishure-Price check his site for more. This is strictly a labour of love, he’s not in the market to mod your kid’s toys 
Love this poster by Andy Votel for Gruff Rhys‘ live shows next year.
I visited the new Design Museum off High Street Kensington at the weekend and the permanent collection was full of lovely bits and pieces, including a new film by The Light Surgeons. Perhaps it was because it was teeming with people but the gallery spaces seemed very small and cramped next to the yawning atrium and the cafe was hidden round a corner, almost embarrassed to be seen but packed nevertheless. People were being told to queue as they ascended up the levels to the top floor but we just got in the lift and bypassed all this. An oddly disfunctional design of a space for a Design Museum.
I’ve been meaning to post about Matt Saunders‘ new(ish) Patterned Air Recordings imprint for a while now but work is taking over at the moment. Suffice to say that after The Assembled Minds’ debut release late last year he’s just released the second and third in the catalogue back to back. CukoO and Running On Air couldn’t be further apart stylistically but they make sense when tied together in the elaborate CD packaging that Matt assembles for each release. 
Taking up the baton from labels like The Folklore Tapes or A Year In The Country, each pouch contains multiple items that enhance the release in some way, hand printed, stamped, signed, numbered and then tied with a leather strip. They’re a nightmare to store and get into but there’s nothing out there quite like them and the label mission statement on their website reads like a ‘Hauntology 101’. “We are a record label interested in weird things. We like analogue synths, reel-to-reel machines, Radiophonics, music for children, music for falling to sleep by, early electronic experiments, folkloric eeriness, seances, electronic voice phenomenon, old techno, deteriorated music — in a nutshell, soundtracks to get us off this mundane plain and onto an elevated, if creepy, state of euphoria”.
I’ll buy that for a dollar but there’s more at work here than that – the music is just as unique as the packaging, sitting somewhere between earthy folk, spine-chilling electronica and the kind of melodic, stately British nostalgia found in Grasscut‘s records. Labels like this are always fun at the beginning because they’re full of ideas, idealism, experiments and no musical formula in place. These are all still available from the label’s Bandcamp page.
Earlier this year I reconnected with an old friend from the early Ninja Tune days, Shane Solanki, a writer and poet who was responsible for the original Ninja press releases and the lexicon inside the original Ninja Skinz packets. These freeform, punning, cut and paste definitions, profiles and prose helped define part of the aesthetic and thinking behind the label in the early years and gave voice to Coldcut and co.’s ideals. He’s currently constructing a hugely ambitious project involving a stage play, an album and a graphic novel based on a story he’s written called ‘Songs of Immigrants and Experience’.
I helped him visualize certain scenes for the play and put together a rough version of an extract from the novel to help present the complicated project to prospective publishers. Below you can see examples of the A4 handout at the last performance and shots from the show with some of the scenes as backdrops. For more info go to Lastmangoinparis.net
As you’ll be aware if you read this blog, I’ve designed the artwork for the new 6xLP ‘Brainbox’ compilation from Belgian label, De:Tuned. This was somewhat of a dream job in every sense as not only did I have multiple surfaces to play with but the design brief was an ideal one from the start. Ruben Boons, label manager, came to me over a year ago wanting something that jumped off from my work with Amon Tobin around the ‘Out From Out Where’ album sleeves which is one of my personal favourite designs and was exactly where my head was at this particular time. Using similar methods of assembly and composition I created a main image that everyone was happy with (which became the cover) and then remixed it mulitple times to form images for the rest of the compilation. Everything you see here stems from at least part of the cover image.
From the off it seemed that Ruben and I was on exactly the same page and any suggestions he made always bettered the designs and, as I’d been given pretty much free reign over what to produce, this made the whole process even more enjoyable. There’s nothing worse that presenting a client with multiple variations of a job and them picking the weakest one. From experience I try never to send any examples of prospective designs on a job that I ultimately wouldn’t be happy to see in print but there are always favourites. No such worries on this job, it was bliss from beginning to end and I couldn’t be happier with the final result. There are only 300 box sets out there (I know mine says 304 below, that’s part of a small overun for the artists involved) and each comes with a download code for those who like their music digital – there is no CD though, another godsend as one of the most boring parts of a job like this is reformatting a design down to a small version for a CD.
You can hear excerpts from it and more above in this Solid Steel mix I made and buy it from the many links below:
Juno: bit.ly/2eD3NzG Bleep: bit.ly/2dsrXzY Hardwax: bit.ly/2f51Tdr Rushhour: bit.ly/2eN9dsN
Norman: bit.ly/2errQmc Japhy: bit.ly/2eaHxOU Decks: bit.ly/2emIWni Deejay.de: bit.ly/2eN2VwO
NB: Each disc was given a subtitle as well as a number, referring to different parts of the brain: Frontal, Cerebellum, Parietal etc. also, the last image below is of a sticker that comes with the box.
Lovely sleeve for the excellent new The Comet Is Coming single, ‘Final Eclipse’ on Leaf.
A great film about an American AI super computer that holds its creator and the human race to ransom for its own good. Some great cinematography and a cracking score by Michel Colombier (as yet unreleased), recommended viewing but a tale that could easily become reality all too soon. Maybe it’s what we need right now though?
Love this Clipping. fan poster by berfie, if I had spare time I’d be cobbling a fan film together from sci-fi film clips to visualise the album.
I had such a good time last night at the Museum of Last Parties event at the Museum of London – improvising with turntables and FX alongside Jonny Trunk and Howlround‘s tape loops in the room that houses Thomas Heatherwick‘s Olympic Torch. Moon rock beanbags and video compilations of psychedelic space film clips set it off nicely – my favourite gig of the year so far.
We recorded 3 hours of the set so now have to go through it and see if any bares repetition / broadcasting. After the event we trooped over to the Lo & Behold event at the State 51 HQ in Shoreditch and caught Jon Tye and Pete Fowler‘s DJ sets. Sadly we’d missed The Pattern Forms and Grasscut plus a screening of the Delia Derbyshire soundtracked ‘Circle of Light’ film, supplied by Jonny. Speaking of film soundtracks, I was treated to a sneak preview of a film, ‘A Creak In Time’ that Howlround have soundtracked for their next (imminent) record, and it is beautiful, all macro/microscopic imagery and perfect for their eerie soundscapes. I’ll be featuring it here when it’s due for release for sure.
You can now pre-order and listen to parts of all the tracks for the forthcoming ‘Brainbox’ compilation that I have provided the artwork for on De:tuned records from Belgium. The line up is immense and all the tracks are exclusive, this has taken a long time and a lot of care to put together. The box consists of 6 vinyl LPs, each in full colour inner sleeves with unique artwork and is limited to 300 copies. There is a digital DL version too but no CD, the box set also comes with a DL code and a sticker. The line up reads like a who’s who of 90s electronica: Plaid, As One, FSOL, Scanner, Meat Beat Manifesto, Speedy J, MuZiq, B12, Mike Dred, David Morley, Christian Vogel… and the quality of the content is very high. Pre-order here
Here’s a Kickstarter by a friend of mine, he makes some of the best, immersive gifs I’ve seen and we talked a bit some time back about bringing some of his work into my 360 dome shows. He’s now putting together a hi-res animated film of his work and trying to kickstart it to pay production costs.
This looks promising – the first new Karminsky Experience record in as long as I can remember – out Nov…
Spotted these at the Spitalfields record fair yesterday, beautiful cover designs, how to speak Hindi language course.
Out today on LP, CD and DL – The Pattern Forms is a new Ghost Box supergroup formed of the mysterious, media-shy, man-who-can-do-no-wrong Jon Brooks and vocalists Ed Macfarlane and Edd Gibson of Friendly Fires. The album is gorgeous, full of beautiful, yearning songs of love and loss, perfect autumnal audio occasionally lifted by electro/disco stylings, it shouldn’t work but it does. I wasn’t sure at first, after the dark electronica of Pye Corner Audio‘s ‘Stasis’, it seemed quite a whimsical release, but the more I listen the more the songs seep into me and it may be one of the most accessible GB releases yet. Order here
Artwork comes from the ever-excellent Julian House as well as the teaser promo film above and there’s a Rough Trade exclusive version of the LP with an alternate cover and translucent green vinyl. The band will be playing tonight from 6pm at Rough Trade East off Brick Lane in London to launch the record and Julian will be DJing too. Check the special library records mix they knocked up the other week too for Radio Belbury.
