DJ Food

DJ Food – ‘The Search Engine’ Live at SAT, Montreal

DJ Food ‘The Search Engine’ live at SAT, Montreal from Solid Steel on Vimeo.

This is what I got up to in Montreal recently. Many, many thanks to Anne-Marie Bergeron who put this together at very short notice. If anyone seeing this works at a dome or planetarium, anywhere in the world, and are interested in hosting it in the future then please get in touch. I realise not every dome has a surround system or space to lay on the floor, it doesn’t have to, I will happily work with you to tailor the show to your needs. Contact details are up on the right there…

Posted in DJ Food, Event, Film. | 2 Comments |

1000th post! ‘The Search Engine’ at the SAT, Montreal

_MG_7195_sebastien_roy640_MG_6695_sebastien_roy640DJ Food-photo Susan Moss-57Ju_Graphee Foodmg_6632_sebastien_roymg_6717_sebastien_roymg_6765_sebastien_roymg_6847_sebastien_roymg_6871_sebastien_roymg_6961_sebastien_roymg_7007_sebastien_roymg_7010_sebastien_roymg_7195_sebastien_roy640mg_7400_sebastien_roymg_7416_sebastien_roymg_7591_sebastien_roymg_7596_sebastien_roymg_7603_sebastien_roymg_7688_sebastien_roymg_7718_sebastien_roymg_7741_sebastien_roymg_7759_sebastien_roy

As it always does, the day of the show came and went in a blur. By 7pm on July 19th we actually had everything in place, there was no last minute rushing around or ‘that will have to do’ decisions. The only thing I was worried about was doing a short introduction in front of the assembled press, I’ve never been comfortable being center stage, even less when speaking through a mic. By the time the first show kicked off there was little to do but sit down and play, or even lie down and shift sound around as much or as little as it needed for the 50 minute show.

I should have done this years ago, I get to lie down with the audience and just play with the sound, no one is looking at me up on a stage, they’re concentrating on the dome and I can watch it too whereas most projections are usually behind me when I DJ.

Sébastien Roy – the SAT‘s photographer – took an amazing set of photos that really capture the scale as well as working well with the low light levels (see above and below galleries).

_MG_7195_sebastien_roy640_MG_6695_sebastien_roy640DJ Food-photo Susan Moss-57Ju_Graphee Foodmg_6632_sebastien_roymg_6717_sebastien_roymg_6765_sebastien_roymg_6847_sebastien_roymg_6871_sebastien_roymg_6961_sebastien_roymg_7007_sebastien_roymg_7010_sebastien_roymg_7195_sebastien_roy640mg_7400_sebastien_roymg_7416_sebastien_roymg_7591_sebastien_roymg_7596_sebastien_roymg_7603_sebastien_roymg_7688_sebastien_roymg_7718_sebastien_roymg_7741_sebastien_roymg_7759_sebastien_roy

Sam from Vinyl Junkies made this video clip compilation. That’s his 6 year old daughter at one point at her first ever gig, she loved it. I also did an interview with him the day after about the shows which will be online soon.

[youtube width=”640″ height=”390″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIP1mAHZdOw&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

Thursday, post show comment: Thanks so much to everyone who came out last night, it was such a thrill to finally see it up on the dome. So happy to be hosted by the SAT in one of my favourite cities in the world, everyone who helped on this has been amazing, especially Olivier Rhéaume who helped me mix the sound all week. Looking forward to coming back for the Friday night crowd. Tickets have been selling so well that a Saturday show was announced too.

Here’s a review (in french) by Olash Bacon and a nicely put together set of pictures by Jü|Graphee

Friday, post show comment: Just back, another two down, we tweaked the sound during the day and it’s now sounding a lot better, less top end in places, the spoken word stuff cuts through a lot better too. One more show for Saturday at 8pm, tickets still left but selling fast, a lot who came tonight couldn’t get in and bought for tomorrow instead. I met so many cool people tonight and the posters are selling really well too.

[singlepic id=4017 w=640 h=480 float=left]

Also, more fantastic photos: this time by Susan Moss

_MG_7195_sebastien_roy640_MG_6695_sebastien_roy640DJ Food-photo Susan Moss-57Ju_Graphee Foodmg_6632_sebastien_roymg_6717_sebastien_roymg_6765_sebastien_roymg_6847_sebastien_roymg_6871_sebastien_roymg_6961_sebastien_roymg_7007_sebastien_roymg_7010_sebastien_roymg_7195_sebastien_roy640mg_7400_sebastien_roymg_7416_sebastien_roymg_7591_sebastien_roymg_7596_sebastien_roymg_7603_sebastien_roymg_7688_sebastien_roymg_7718_sebastien_roymg_7741_sebastien_roymg_7759_sebastien_roy

I should take this opportunity to thank everyone who helped me, especially people who supplied some of the footage and gave invaluable advice before I even got to Montreal. Jan Zehn and Stefan Berke from Germany for their CymaSonics sequences, very happy to have their input. Paul Bourke, something of a legend in dome projection, and the sequences he sent, very generously at the last minute. Thomas English for the Red Epic footage, again donated very kindly. Phil Mayer and Ben Stern at Fulldome UK for advice and who will be staging the next version of this show in Leicester this coming November. Also Mario Di Maggio from Thinktank‘s Digital Planetarium in Birmingham for a special preview show which opened my eyes to several possibilities.

At the SAT it’s thanks to LP, Dominic (it was a boy!), Olivier, Guillaume and Alex that it all went smoothly. Evelyn at Evenko for helping stage it, Jeff Waye and Danna Takako Hawley at Ninja Tune N. America for setting it up and doing all the nitty gritty stuff. Finally a big man hug to Pat Hamou (that’s him below) who initially suggested it, helped out and designed the poster to boot – thanks all. I hope to make it back soon with a better show, each one is a learning process and there’s still work to do and plenty more domes to visit.

Posted in DJ Food, Event, Film. | 4 Comments |

Setting up at the SATosphere

Some of this content appeared on the Facebook page for the event as this was the most direct way to explain what was happening to the people who were going, so apologies for any repetition.

Pre-gig article by Lucinda Catchlove for CBC Music on what it’s about and what I intend to do.

Now some background on the process of getting it to the screen:

July 9th: Currently rendering footage from both After Effects and Final Cut Pro as well as preparing images in Photoshop. To show films ‘full dome’ (ie covering the whole surface of a dome) you need to have an image between 3000 and 4000 pixels square. Only Red cameras can shoot over the 4k image size but this is only on the long side, and the raw footage for one frame this size is 36MB. As a result most full dome films are animations and I’m attempting to make a 50 minute sequence to go with my mix of the album.

July 12th: Another late night, nearly ready to put the whole thing into the final arrangement. Most of the animation is done in After Effects but AE isn’t too great for synching visuals and sound together, especially a 50 minute sequence. So image sequences are loaded into Final Cut Pro for an easier handle on editing to a timeline although low res versions are made because of the huge file sizes needed for a dome and not a regular projection screen.

Once everything is in it’s correct place an XML file of the session is exported BACK to AE so that a plug in that simulates a 3D dome environment can be added in various different ways to sections. More on that later, that’s the really tricky part where you go from thinking in 2D to 3D and start placing things in space…

Trying to render FX on 2700×2700 pixel footage from a R3D Epic camera inside a 3600×3600 pixel video sequence. “Computer says no…”

July 9th: Animating images is largely done in After Effects then rendered to Image sequences of huge jpegs at 30 fps (frames per second). That’s 30 jpegs per second x how ever many seconds in a sequence. I’m making a 50 minute + show: 30 x 60 x 50 = over 90,000 images. Here’s one below…

I’ve already broken the whole soundtrack down into ‘stems’ (each instrument or part isolated onto a separate track) and this has been sent to the SAT where they are busy making ‘sound maps’ for each song in the mix. With over 150 speakers inside the dome we can place each sound from each track wherever we want. Even better, once the show has begun I should be able to move sounds around the dome manually as it plays using a program on an iPad.

So if you wonder what I’m doing if you come along, I’m not surfing the web or checking email, I’ll be moving sounds around to mess your head up. The song I’m most excited about for this is ‘A Trick Of The Ear’ – this track was actually written with the intention of each part panning around a sphere. Besides various polyrhythms working in tandem throughout the track, I wanted it to feel like you were inside a gyroscope when you listened to it. Hopefully we’ll get somewhere near that next week.

Friday 13th: Last day putting the finishing touches where I can before bouncing it all over to After Effects and applying the full dome plug in to certain sections. Off to Belgium today for a gig too so going to leave stuff rendering no doubt but some will have to be done at the SAT next week.

Monday 16th: Well, I’m in Montreal, about to head down to the SAT and plug everything in, still need to do work on parts today before we push the ‘render’ button. Had to pull an all-nighter Saturday in order to make sure everything copied over to 3 external hard drives. Today should be a pivotal day in getting this from my machines into the SAT. For anyone thinking of getting into dome projection in the future, I’d say… think very carefully. But if you’re determined you’ll need a very fast machine / graphics card, huge amounts of hard disc space and lots of time on your hands…

It’s 9.40pm and I’m still at the SAT, today has been trying to say the least. The Mac to PC file exchange got off to a flying start when trying to copy 300GB to their servers was going to take 9 hours. Luckily they have a Mac Drive program now which enables them to read drives formatted in HFS+ (Mac read/writable) and we needed the time to finish fine tuning the show.

Dominic, who is helping me with all the visual side is about to be a new dad, I mean imminently, not any day, but any hour or minute. He was giving me tips by mobile whilst at the hospital :) The initial render time direct from my drive for the 50 minute piece was over 30 hours so we’ve stop that and are now copying the files needed to the server for a multi-machine render tomorrow. Here’s a shot of the mini dome that they have in their computer lab and the bar and terrace on the second floor outside the dome.

On the audio side we have 164 separate tracks to sort out and bounce to a manageable amount before ‘spatializing’ them into different parts of the dome for each song. This will create song maps unique to each track and enable me to move certain parts around at will. For everyone back in the UK, the sun was out this morning and I’m in shorts and a T-shirt. But lo and behold, what happened this afternoon? It pissed down, exactly like London, I couldn’t quite believe it.

Oh yeah, I forgot to say, at one point the master drive I’d bought as back up with EVERYTHING on it wouldn’t show up on my laptop after being pulled out of the SAT server. ‘The drive could not be found, would you like to reinitialise it?’ Luckily Disc Utilities saved the day.

Tuesday 17th: Day 2 in Montreal: Woke up to rain at 5.45am – WTF? I’m beginning to think I brought the bad weather with me from the UK. Monday was full on, got home around midnight with ‘homework’ on the audio to do. Couldn’t face it so got up super early this morning to get a few hours in before heading out.

Dominic was here (still no baby arrived) and set the visuals up on 6 machines to render, he thinks it will be done by tomorrow morning when it then has to be re-rendered for the various projectors in the dome. Making sound maps and spatializing all the tracks this afternoon hopefully – I need some lunch.

Wednesday 18th: Mixing, mixing mixing, all day and into the night with Olivier Rhéaume… The downstairs floor of the SAT is open plan and there’s been a full orchestra ‘practicing’ most of the week. Insanely good players, completely perfect to my ears, we’re working on the 2nd floor and hearing Holst‘s piece ‘Mars’ from The Planets suite wafting up the stairwell was amazing. Apprarently we really pissed them off with the volume we were mixing at unfortunately. Had a midday break to go and record a mix for CBC (see last post) and do an interview for La Devoir paper then dinner and back to the mix until 11pm.

Thursday 19th: Show day – last minute emergency, some donut (me) left a reference film in place of the last sequence. When we watched the whole thing through we got to the end and it looked like someone had used an animated gif in place of a hi res image sequence, not a good way to end the show. Currently re-rendering from the proper source files…

Posted in DJ Food, Event, Film, Gigs. | No Comments |

Poster for the SATosphere shows

Only a week to go until the full dome shows at the SATosphere in Montreal and here’s a poster that Pat Hamou has worked up to be sold at the venue. These will be printed in metallics, can’t wait to see that!

*UPDATE: you can now purchase the remaining posters here from Pat via Etsy.

There’s still work to do before I press the final render button but here are some screen shots I’ve been posting on Facebook.

 

Posted in DJ Food, Gigs, Poster / flyer. | No Comments |

Worldwide mag design article extras

When I did the interview on design for music in the digital age for Gilles Peterson‘s Worldwide + magazine I submitted a lot of extra images that weren’t able to be used for space reasons. I thought I’d put them up here as I love them all and they illustrate some of the people I talk about who didn’t get featured visually.

The mag is now available on iTunes to download for the iPad.

Top to bottom, left to right:

Julian House / Ghost Box label,

The Designers Republic / Emigre magazine cover,

Michael C. Place / Build poster,

Vaughn Oliver & Chris Bigg – V23 / Lonely Is An Eyesore deluxe LP,

Pete Fowler / The Magic Numbers LP,

Mr Krum / The Simonsound mp3.


 

Posted in Design, DJ Food, Magazines, Packaging, Records. | No Comments |

Castles made of Sound

In the last week I’ve played in the grounds of three castles – well, two were Forts actually – in Italy, France and the UK. Salerno was the first, actually playing on a rooftop terrace overlooking the sea on the Italian coast (above). Secondly the Nuit Carrées festival in Antibes, France, playing on a stage by a small amphitheatre next to the Fort Carré (below). The sound at this festival was unbelievably clear, most probably due to the acoustics of the amphitheatre and the fort was lit up as a backdrop.

Finally, last night, I played at the Kelburn Garden Party in Scotland on a stage overlooking Kelburn Castle, an incredible site being that two sides are completely covered in art from Brazilian artists Os Gemeos and Nina & Nunca. It is quite a sight to behold, Sau Paulo street art meets Scottish heritage, and was completed in 2007, a year before the same artists covered parts of the Tate Modern in London. Sadly it seems that the render on the castle is being affected by the paint, which is causing it to crumble, so the mural will be lost soon much to the dismay of the owner Patrick Boyle, The 10th Earl of Glasgow.

Apparently parts of the castle are haunted, Tara, one of the organisers who picked me up from the airport, told me she’d been woken the night before by the feeling of being cuddled in bed by something unknown. When he told it to go away she’d been scratched three times on the back of her head and other guests had reportedly had their ribs squeezed and bum pinched whilst staying in the same room. Another time a handbag had flown across the room and hit her on the head and it’s widely believed that the ghost is a mischievous female who was a guest at the castle at one time and liked it so much that she didn’t want to leave. Supposedly there is some kind of vortex in one corner of the room through which spirits can come and go and the temperature is noticeably lower in that part.

Talking of vortex’s, to add to the incredible scenery surrounding Kelburn and nearby town Largs, out between two islands just off the west coast is one of the world’s largest whirlpools. Called The Corryvreckan Whirlpool, it is formed around a single rock jutting up from the seabed, several small whirlpools exist, occasionally widening to form one giant vortex which has been deemed unnavigable.

The grounds of the castle are something to behold, recent winds have caused several huge trees to crash down, one of them taking out a bridge across a stream just a week before. Plans to project my AV set onto the castle were unfortunately scuppered when it appeared that my technical rider hadn’t made its way to the right people and the right cables weren’t available. After my set I got a cab to the hotel in the next town, only to find that everything was locked up and I had no key (we hadn’t checked in, going straight from the airport to the festival). Fortunately a couple with a key arrived shortly afterwards and let me in and I managed to find an unlocked single room to crash in.

Posted in DJ Food, Gigs, Photography. | 2 Comments |

Worldwide Festival Magazine Summer 2012 design article

Late last year I wrote an extensive piece in response to an interview by Miguel Angel Rolland for Gilles Peterson‘s Worldwide Festival magazine about design for music in the digital age. It’s finally been published over on Issu and it’s 16 pages long (!) You can order a print copy or just download a digital version and physical copies should be available at the festival this summer. Not sure why they didn’t credit Miguel or photographer Steve Cook for the studio shot either but I’m very pleased to have been given the chance to air my views.

Posted in Books, Design, DJ Food. | 1 Comment |

DJ Food – The Search Engine at the SATosphere, Montreal

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

Posted in DJ Food, Event. | 3 Comments |

Flint & Food at Factory Road

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.

tea towelsSpace Chocolateset-up-1set-up-2set-up-3set-up-4set-up-5set-up-6set-up-8set-up-9

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.

Posted in Art, Comics, DJ Food, Event, Ninja Tune, Openmind designs, Packaging, Photography, Records. | 3 Comments |

Factory Road Gallery goodies #2 – Skullstronaut print

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.

Posted in Art, DJ Food, Event, Openmind designs. | 3 Comments |

Factory Road Gallery goodies

Only 3 days to go until the DJ Food & Henry Flint show reopens, revitalised at the Factory Road Gallery in Hinckley. I sent a last load of sleeves, posters, flyers and other assorted memorabilia off for it today and there will be more of Henry’s old 2000ad artwork than we had in London, different pages too – all from my personal collection.

Also on sale there will be these space-themed chocolate bars in requisite silver foil packaging featuring the ‘skullstronaut’. There’ll be more exclusive merch on sale but I’ll post about that later. Sarah and Leigh, who run the gallery from their home, really take care and go to extra lengths to make bespoke items for their shows so that each one is a unique experience. I’m so pleased to be doing something with them after knowing them for over 15 years.

Posted in Art, Comics, DJ Food, Event, Packaging. | 2 Comments |

SATosphere, Montreal – a small preview

The reason some of the posts this week have been coming from Montreal is that I’ve been spending a week there working with people at the SATsosphere in the downtown area. They’ve been giving me lessons and advice on creating content for their dome, where I will be presenting a newly remixed version of The Search Engine planetarium show I did in London for them in July. Getting your head around the software is mind-boggling and forget 5.1 sound, theirs is 25.4 (!) Here are a few shots – you can’t get much of an idea of what the dome stuff will look like because it’s such an expanse and there’s no way to get it all in the frame.

Posted in DJ Food, Event. | 5 Comments |

Flint & Food at Factory Road

On June 1st I’ll be traveling up to my friends’ Sarah and Leigh‘s place in Hinckley, Leicestershire for the opening of a rejigged version of the DJ Food & Henry Flint exhibition that we held at the Pure Evil Gallery in January.

Their Factory Road Gallery will host a lot of the posters and original art and there will be local ale, special food and prints, CDs and books for sale. More details here.

There will be special limited editions available at the show, a 20 copy giclée print of the recent 12″ cover, printed tea towels (!) and chocolate bars in silver space-type wrapping. There will also be food on the opening night, local ale and I’ll be around to answer any questions.

Posted in Art, Comics, DJ Food, Event, Openmind designs. | No Comments |

New DJ Food track and video – ‘Sunspot’

Here’s something I did last month in conjunction with Carling Zest, a new drink being promoted this summer. The idea was to take three producers, myself, DJ Yoda and Jaguar Skills, and give everyone sights and sounds of summer to incorporate into a track that had the feeling of summer to it. I called mine ‘Sunspot’, after one of my favourite Vaughn Bodé strips, and used some of my home made phenakistoscopes as elements for the video in conjunction with the footage Carling supplied.

[youtube width=”640″ height=”375″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_8Nx1TmC1o&feature=relmfu[/youtube]

I was left to my own devices and incorporated a lot of my own melodies into the track, using their bee sounds and lots of percussive elements to form the basic beat of the piece. Making a track that evokes a ‘summer’ feeling is a lot harder than making something dark and moody, especially without stepping into cheesy territory but I’m really pleased with the outcome.

During the process I was filmed going through samples in my studio and generally talking about records I thought bought out the summer feeling in me. This quickly degenerated into what seemed like a massive advert for Boards of Canada‘s back catalogue :) with other shouts to the Orb (Little Fluffy Clouds) and The The (This Is The Day). The film crew, who were great fun to work with, shot for a whole day and then crammed it all into 2 minutes, so, if the editing seems a little fragmented here and there, you’ll know why. Big thank you to Ash for getting the shots and Tom for doing a great job on helping me with the last touches on the video edit.

[youtube width=”640″ height=”375″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQFCJtD7S1w&feature=relmfu[/youtube]

Wish they hadn’t put that ice cream bit in :) Spot the ‘Rave Wars’ 7″s and 3A robots everywhere :) There’ll be an online competition to remix this track and win tickets to the V festival and other goodies coming up on May 23rd so I’ll post about that when it’s online.

Posted in DJ Food, Film, Music. | 3 Comments |

On the horizon…

A quick update on things on the DJ Food front these coming months…

Aside from the usual round of DJ gigs and festival appearances >>> over there on the right hand side column >>>, I’m going to Montreal in less than 2 weeks to research and train at the SAT Dome on the best ways to make full dome content for my planetarium show. This will be followed by a performance over several nights in Montreal mid July. This will be a remixed, updated version of the show I did at the London Planetarium and I’ll be bringing it back to the UK for the winter months before the year is out too.

On the music front, I’ve just finished a mix for 2econd Class Citizen‘s album, a couple of mixes for a DJ Shadow project premiering this summer (not the MPC archive one), there’s a 3 DJ tag team mix on the agenda for a July release and an AV project in conjunction with Carling that will go online at the end of May. The response to the Amorphous Androgynous remix release for Record Store Day has been fantastic, thanks to all who bought copies and sent pictures, the repress should be in next week so all those waiting for copies should get them.

Design-wise I’ve just started work on The Herbaliser‘s 7th studio album artwork which I’m really excited about, there’s also talk of a remix if I can fit it into the schedule. I’ve also just been asked to chair a discussion between two 80’s sleeve design heroes of mine which will be quite mind-blowing if it actually happens. I’ll also soon be announcing a second round of the exhibition of mine and Henry Flint‘s artwork for ‘The Search Engine’ which will be taking place in the UK within the month.

Posted in DJ Food. | 1 Comment |

2econd Class Citizen album preview megamix

May I present for your delectation: a personally mixed, sliced and diced preview of 2econd Class Citizen‘s forthcoming album – ‘The Small Minority’.

I’ve been lucky enough to hear it in progress over the last 2 years and it’s changed and developed to a point where it really all holds together as a complete album rather than a collection of separate tracks.

This is definitely up there alongside DJ Format and Pepe Deluxé as one of my albums of 2012 already. It will get compared to DJ Shadow‘s older work but the folk stylings and Aaron’s violin playing set it apart. If you enjoyed 2009’s ‘A World Without’ album – available to listen to in full here – then this is the logical progression.

This mix is available to download from Bandcamp but it’s only streaming via Soundcloud at the moment. It was a real labour of love and I think I managed to get elements from all the tracks in there at some point including a remix of the single ‘Outside Your Doorway’ – see if you can untangle it all when you listen to the LP.

The full album is available on Equinox Records on May 25th, on CD and double vinyl with a gatefold sleeve plus digital download (Juno will have it a week early). The artwork you can see below is by label boss Gunter Stoppel, the man responsible for the overall look of the label as well as the day to day running of it.

 

Posted in DJ Food, Mixes/Solid Steel, Music. | 1 Comment |

Solid Steel Record Store Day round up

Last night I did a Record Store Day round up on Solid Steel on Strongroom Alive radio, you can listen again here

or, if you prefer less chat, catch the non-vocal version with no RSD section here later on today.

I thought I’d put up some pictures of the releases I was chatting about so here you go. Wicker Man 7″ photos nicked from Stuart Ford‘s blog. More on the Vinylmania film here.

 

Posted in DJ Food, Radio, Solid Steel. | 1 Comment |

DJ Food vs AA RSD 12″ Repress details

OK – due to high demand, a database cock up at Ninja Tune – meaning that the record looked like it was in stock when it wasn’t – and people putting them on eBay for silly money, Ninja are repressing another 500 copies of my 12″ – ON MULTI-COLOURED MARBLED VINYL.

The people who ordered it from the Ninjashop will get one, no black vinyl copies are being pressed, so if you are one of the ones who asked for a black vinyl copy you will get coloured.

This will be the last pressing on coloured vinyl though. It will be the same (or as near as can be) as the RSD one, once orders are fulfilled the rest of the pressing will go up on the Ninja shop.

This will take approx. 2 weeks, sorry for any cock ups, and thanks for your patience. If you still want a refund then contact the Ninja shop, otherwise hold tight and they will contact you when this is all sorted.

Photo above taken from Carl Schalck‘s Facebook page.

Posted in DJ Food, Ninja Tune, Records. | 5 Comments |