Amazing Rick Griffin billboard poster for a Mama Cass gig that I found online at the excellent Far Out Company website.
Poster / flyer
(images and text adapted from the pbagalleries website)
A complete set of original 12 Zodiac Astrology Star Sign Posters, commissioned by Jack Leahy (“Funky Jack”), of San Francisco’s Funky Features, in 1967. Funky Features was originally a home recording studio in an Edwardian house that quickly became a popular recording location for Big Brother and the Holding Company, Cold Blood, Steve Miller, and others. Leahy also went on to do artwork for a number of motion pictures, airbrushing the Starship Enterprise for the first Star Trek film. Each poster is by a different artist, uniquely capturing the heyday of San Francisco’s counterculture. Artists include Dick Moore, Tommy Dixon, Lee and Shirley Goddard, Robert McClay, Fred Adams, Primo Angel, Jim Blashfield, and others. Complete sets of all 12 posters are extremely rare, especially in this condition.
In my periodic searches for graphic material from the late 60s I came across several sellers on eBay offering these lovely zodiac posters for sale. I did some digging and found decent resolution copies of most of them and a bit of info about their origins. In 1969, Poster Prints commissioned Simboli Design – Gerry & Joe Simboli – to create a line of graphically strong and colourful zodiac posters, which were sold worldwide. There seems to have been two different designs for Gemini for some reason but finding an original of the fire-headed twins seems impossible, their website seems to suggest it’s a new design.
Paul Smith, the UK fashion designer, found the posters on a website and used them for a line of casual clothing for Neiman Marcus in 2004. Recently, the posters were also used on the set of the HBO series, Vinyl, produced by Martin Scorsese and Mick Jagger.
Simboli have a website and they sell some of the originals and Gicleé repros via Etsy, dimensions are 12″x18″ with additional 1″ border for matte. They also have other sets themed around Anti-War, Tea, Coffee, some great logo designs, toys and this lovely robot which was created at some point in the 70s.
There are several more zodiac set by different designers from this era out there that I’ll be posting as I find complete sets.
Alex Winter’s new Zappa documentary is an amazing treasure chest of delights and essential for any fans of the man and his music. Given access to his legendary vault, Winter spent 2 years transferring and restoring films and tapes of every kind to build the visual elements and it’s incredible. Along the way he also came across lots of Frank’s original artwork including flyers and greeting cards he drew as a jobbing artist in the 60s. This is another string to his bow that is rarely acknowledged but always a treat to see. Below are some screen grabs, check out the doc if you can, go here to find it www.thezappamovie.com plus there’s a soundtrack available.
PS: I know this last one is a Cal Schenkel illustration – for more Zappa art go here and here
It’s that time of year – the La Boca poster for Beyond Fest – which is happening at a drive-in in Clairmont – go here for more details
I’m very aware that all I seem to post at the moment is a succession of mixes but there’s actually lots going on that I can’t show yet including two album’s worth of new material and several graphic projects which are creeping along through the manufacturing channels for full reveals soon. The images featured here have been on my desktop or phone for some time, sourced from the web and took my fancy for various inspirational reasons. Above is an original poster that was posted on the Psychedelic Light Show Preservation Society group on Facebook.
Below are two photos of Julio Le Parc reflective sculptures, a typographic detail from The White Noise album back cover and something Ameet Hindocha posted on his Instagram the other week, he’s always doing interesting stuff including incredibly complex folding patterns recently.
There’s a King Kong, All Jazz African Opera LP cover that I spotted in The Book & Record Bar the other week and finally an old poster by Build (aka Michael C. Place) that I pulled out of storage recently.
Circles In Squares from Adam Bell Film on Vimeo.
A film about the different aspects of record collecting that I appeared in some years ago, ‘Circles in Squares’ has just been made available to view online. Unfortunately, one of the contributors, Naoki E-Jima recently lost his battle with cancer and any proceeds from the pay per view stream will go to Naoki’s family. It’s £4 for a 48 hr viewing window and it’s a really well made little film https://vimeo.com/ondemand/circlesinsquares
There are a lot of good memes, slogans and piss takes surrounding this election, here are some that have caught my eye. The slogan above, using the same fonts at the mastheads of the right wing press, is by spellingmistakescostlives.com aka Darren Cullen. He has a pop up Museum of Neo-liberalism in Lewisham right now that’s worth a visit to find out the origins and architects of how the UK is in the state it is now.
I’m not sure where the Tories Over if you want it originates but the Heavenly Social posted it and I thought I’d Photoshop it into a picture of John and Yoko to bring the reference full circle.
The Monopoly box rearranged to No More Tory is by Andy Votel and I’m unsure about the rest but the sentiments either ring true for me or make me laugh. Please remember to vote on Thursday, unless it’s for the Tories.
I’m super-pleased to round out the year with these designs for both De:tuned and Bleep on the first day of their advent calendar countdown to Xmas. For those unfamiliar with my work for Belgian label De:tuned’s tenth year anniversary, there have been nine 12″s released monthly in 2019 which can be seen below.
We’ve reached the 10th and final release and saved the best for last; Lone, Plaid, Steven Rutter, Erik Van Den Broek and Humanoid feature musically, which should be enough to have you hitting the ‘buy’ button alone. But we’ve pushed the boat out on the sleeve for this one with extra silver ink and foil on top of the full colour process.
This one nearly broke me as version after version was sent to the printer only to be returned with changes to the artwork files before they were happy to run it on the press due to the nature of the inks and foil. The Bleep website have the absolute exclusive on it, De:tuned have pressed it on silver vinyl in an edition of 300 and there’s a tote bag and print to go with it, only from Bleep.
The print is something I’m immensely proud of, an A2 five colour images featuring the full modular from the covers, designed to showcase all the artists in the series, screen printed by the exceptionally talented Jonas Ranson at Blacklist Editions London in an edition of 100. This also took a lot of trial and error to achieve with Jonas running many tests with inks, paper samples and screen densities to achieve the print quality we desired. See the detailed photos below for the quality, this is not your regular promo poster, this is suitable for framing, the silver is hard to show in these photos. Everyone has worked so hard to pull all this together with the posters being hand-delivered to Bleep on Friday, thanks to Jonas for the fantastic job and for De:tuned for being patient and trusting me to do things a bit differently.
The items here are available individually or as a bundle with a free Bleep X tote bag – BUY HERE (Bundle)
(Also the posters are an absolute steal at £12.99 each, other prints of this kind would be more).
Poster link
Tote link
12″ link
Only a month to go…
A huge night coming up on November the 29th in East London, Psyché Tropes celebrate the release of the 5″ picture disc of locked grooves Sculpture have done with them by putting on a gig of avant garde turntablism. Janek Schaefer, Mariam Rezaei and Sculpture themselves will be headlining and interspersed will be a 26 turntable ensemble made up of: A’Bear, Arran Bolders, Ben Rodgers, Billy Pleasant, Bjorn Hatleskog, Blanca Regina, Chloe Frieda, Chris Thomas Allen (The Light Surgeons), Dan Hayhurst (Sculpture), Daniel WJ MacKenzie, DJ Food, Graham Dunning, Hems, Horton Jupiter, Janek Schaefer, Lia Mice, Mariam Rezaei, Merkaba Macabre, Odd Lust, Pierre Bouvier Patron, Rado Bogasch, Reuben Sutherland (Sculpture), Robin The Fog (Howlround), Spatial, Tida Bradshaw, Tom Richards.
I doubt the same people will ever be in the same place on 26 turntables ever again – should be a riot!
The record is great and available here and tickets for the event are available here for the absolute steal of £5.
(above poster by Rob Fitzpatrick / @_rf82)
When discussing psychedelic poster art from the 60s and 70s you often read about ‘The Big Five’, namely Rick Griffin, Victor Moscoso, Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley. Of course there were many more; Martin Sharp, Nigel Weymouth, Hapshash & The Coloured Coat, Bonnie MacLean, Peter Max… all and many more can lay claim to have contributed to a new movement in poster art that took from Art Nouveau, Op Art and Surrealism.
With a new wave of psychedelia in music prevalent for a good decade now, who working today is pushing the envelope in the same way as these graphic giants? There are plenty of illustrators and designers creating very passable versions of the 60s style across record sleeves, posters, T-shirts and videos but, rather than rehashing the past glories of the 60’s greats, who is approaching the psych era in the 10’s with a fresh eye? Here’s my stab at calling who will be remembered for their work in this arena in decades to come.
It’s fairly evenly divided between Brits and Americans (with the exception of Sweden’s Robert Gnista and South Africa’s Simon Berndt) and the UK brings more photo collage and attempts to convey the analogue process’ of print to the table whilst elsewhere designers adopt a more illustrative approach, slavish to the original 60s ethos.
Luke Insect (UK) www.lukeinsect.com
Nate Duval (US) www.nateduval.com
Mishka Westell (US) www.mishkawestell.com
Rob Fitzpatrick & Christian Bland (US – Levitation Festival)
Andy Votel (UK – Finders Keepers label owner / designer, formerly Twisted Nerve records)
Robin Gnista (Sweden) www.robgnista.com
Simon Berndt/One Horse Town (South Africa) www.onehorsetownillustration
Weird Beard (US) www.wb72.bigcartel.com
Julian House (UK – Ghost Box label owner, designer at Intro)
Fez Moreno (US – artist for The Electric Church) @fezmoreno
Nick Taylor – www.SpectralStudio.co.uk
If, like me, you’re following King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s current world tour to support their new ‘Infest The Rat’s Nest’ album then you’ll be aware that ‘8th member’ Jason Galea who provides all their artwork is making individual posters for each headline show of the tour. Galea, who has made videos, sleeves, T-shirts and more for the band since they started out has long put repeated motifs and characters into the artwork and is drawing on much of this for the subject matter of the posters.
He continues to knock it out of the park with new posters almost daily and the quality threshold is high, see examples from the US tour here. I saw the band in London recently and he was doing the visuals for them as well! You can follow him on Instagram 
I chanced upon these beautiful new posters for the Royal Opera House down in the London Underground this weekend. Shot by Giles Revell and designed by Atomic – they captures the motion of ballet dancers to stunning effect.
The annual Beyond Fest post featuring La Boca‘s poster for the film festival in LA is here. Full details of this year’s programme here
If, like me, you’re following King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s current world tour to support their new ‘Infest The Rat’s Nest’ album then you’ll be aware that ‘8th member’ Jason Galea who provides all their artwork is making individual posters for each headline show of the tour. Galea, who has made videos, sleeves, T-shirts and more for the band since they started out has long put repeated motifs and characters into the artwork and is drawing on much of this for the subject matter of the posters.
Drawing different designs and screen printing 100 copies per show, only to be sold at the gig on the night, this is going to test even the hardest of hardcore fans in ways such as the 180 and counting formats of their ‘Polygondwanaland’ album that they gave permission for anyone to press would. The Australian leg of the tour is already done and they’re now well into the North American leg before heading to the UK and Europe in a month’s time.
I’ve included just a few of the posters so far here, there are about as many again and grows weekly with an estimated 40 different designs being made by the end of the run. My tickets for their London show just arrived in the post, i’m looking forward to seeing what Jason cooks up for that gig.
(above) The line up for Saturday’s event, I’ll be on before Steve Davis, playing acid/kraut/electronica to get you moving.
(below) Event guides, one for each audience member. Some ticket options have now sold out. Visit FIXR, Bandcamp or Ticket Tailor for availability:
Ticket Tailor: https://
FIXR: https://fixr.co/event/
Bandcamp: https://
(below) Exclusive Spectral Studio merch by Nick Taylor, available at the event, there should be plenty of goodies for sale so bring cash (no wi-fi on site so no card payments) and Frances Castle of Clay Pipe Music will be selling her wares too.
#throwbackthursday
Back in 2002 I designed the cover for Funki Porcini’s ‘Fast Asleep‘ album (with additional photography by Martin LeSanto-Smith). Ninja Tune then blew the image up to 1m square fly posters to advertise it. You can see one in the living room above the decks in Shaun of the Dead and one hung behind the counter in my local, Rat Records in Camberwell, for years.
Now, Funki’s made a limited edition reproduction of that poster (on better paper too) available from his Bandcamp. While you’re there check out his back catalogue including brand new album, ‘Studio 59’.
South London posse – FREE this June in Crystal Palace, I’ll be performing a long form rendition of Kraftwerk‘s Radio Activity track alongside Howlround, Kumo and more – great flyer too
The new Sister Corita Kent exhibition has been on at the House of Illustration in Kings X now for a month, expanded from the version shown in Ditchling last year. It’s still small but packed with lots of beautiful prints, books, posters and ephemera that she created during her lifetime both in and outside of the church. I urge you to go and see these beautiful prints in the flesh and pick up a free copy of her ‘rules’ taken from an art department classroom.
