Records

2022

The main thing I’ve been doing this year is learning new software, lots involving AI algorithms that still seem like some kind of strange magic.


It started last year with the Moises software that can split stereo sound files into individual stems which opens up all sorts of possibilities and continued with NightCafe Creator where you can create incredible images from inputting a line of descriptive text. This has yielded a huge bank of images to draw from, some that have already become record sleeve illustrations (I just didn’t tell anyone). It’s all old hat now because AI art is everywhere on the web with thousands of images flooding our feeds on a daily basis but when I first wrote these words in early 2022 it was extremely addictive, if at an infant stage in its development. Just in the last six months alone AI has taken huge leaps in definition and feels like a giant shift in the art of image-making even if still has trouble with hands, it’s certainly divided people’s opinions.
Another AI app is the Topaz suite of image enhancers, the foremost being Gigapixel AI, the best image enhancer / upscaler I’ve ever seen, this has become part of my daily usage now alongside Photoshop and Indesign as a necessary tool to clean up images along with its Denoiser and Sharpener sister apps.
I (finally) got myself an iPad so that I could learn Procreate and again, a whole new world opens up with the possibilities this incredible app gives you. I never could justify getting a tablet, but seeing one of my sons drawing on his, wanting to go digital with some of my comic-buying and having a decent surface to learn Ninja Jamm on made it a necessary piece of kit. Learning to paint on it with one of my sons was among one of my favourite moments this year.
In the analogue world another revelation was a record cutting process pioneered by Ben Soundhog at Plastidisc where software that can convert an image into a waveform then cuts that image as a playable disc. The possibilities are endless and you can make a record without even playing one note.

QMk3 set up
My own experiments with the refining of my Quadraphon turntable have made for a sleeker, more portable and adaptable design along with the fantastic 4 channel Omnitronic TRM-402 mixer and the Ninja Tune/Erica Synths Zen Delay FX unit. I can make analogue tracks via one deck on the fly and jamming with this set up can yield hours of material, a refreshing new way to make music. Also becoming an author on good old fashioned paper felt pretty good too, I think I might have the book bug now. I hope you all have a Happy New Year and a riproaring 2023…

Music 2022v2

Music:
Clocolan – Empathy Alpha LP (Redpan)
Brian Eno – The Lighthouse (Sonos HD)
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Omnium Gatherum LP (Flightless)
Twilight Sequence – Trees in General: and the Larch 12″ (Castles In Space)
WTCHCRFT – Drugs Here 12″ (Balkan Vinyl)
Ghost Power – Ghost Power LP (Duophonic Super 45s)
Dexorcist – Night Watch 12″ (Yellow Machines)
Project Gemini – The Children Of Scorpio LP (Mr Bongo/Garden’s End)
Regal Worm – Worm! LP (Quatermass)
The Advisory Circle – Full Circle LP (Ghost Box)
Fenella – The Metallic Index (Fire Records)
S’Express & Daddy Squad – Music 4 The Mind DL

Podcasts:
The Bureau of Lost Culture (Soho Radio)
Cartoonist Kayfabe (YouTube)
We Buy Records (We Made This)
The Jonny Trunk Podcast (Patreon)
Oh God, What Now? (Podmasters Prod.)
The Tone Generation – Ian Helliwell
Peel Acres – Tom Ravenscroft (BBC Sounds)
The Bunker (Podmasters Prod.)

Events 2022

Gigs / Events:
Lux @ 180 Strand, London
Victor Vasarely – Universe exhibition @ Selfridges, London
Premier of Who Killed The KLF? @ Leake St, London
The Orb play U.F.Orb @ The Fox & Firkin, London
Bring The Paint festival, Leicester
Staying in a restored Futuro House, Somerset
Fogfest @ Iklectik, London
Glissando Guitar Orchestra @ Club-85, Hitchin
Funki Porcini’s Lasarium @ Iklectik, London
Wheels of Light launch event @ Raven Row, London
The Trunk Groovy Record Fayre @ Mildmay Club, London
At Home With The Boyle Family film launch @ Iklectik, London
Magnetic Flow exhibition, @ LaVallée, Brussels

Design 2022

Design / Packaging:
Night Cafe / Midjourney – the most fun/frustrating web AI creation tools
Jed St. Christopher – The Further Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 10″ lathe cut (Buried Treasure) by Nick Taylor
Twilight Sequence – Trees in General: and the Larch 12″ (Castles In Space) by Zeke Clough
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Ominium Gatherum LP by Jason Galea
Sculpture – Malculus / Photo Synth 7″ + zoetrope pack by Rueben Sutherland
The Advisory Circle – Full Circle LP (Ghost Box) by Julian House
Clay Pipe Mini Pipe 3″ CD series by Francis Castle
Monochrome Echo – The City & The Stars LP (Castles In Space) by Nick Taylor
Drumetrics – Phuzzle 10″

Artists incorporating AI into their work:
Ko_Computer
Douggy Pledger
Alex Klim
Will Toulan
Scott Wetterschneider
Stuart Smith
Steve Scott (image below by Steve Scott)

Steve Scott

Books comics 2022

Books / Magazines / Comics:
Grrrl Scouts – Jim Mahfood (Image)
99 Balls Pond Road – Jill Drower (Scrudge Books) – now reprinted in text-only paperback and retitled ‘The Exploding Galaxy: Performance Art, LSD and Bent Coppers in the Sixties Counterculture’ – an absolute must for 60s counter culture historians
Radio Spaceman – Mike Mignola & Greg Hinkle (Dark Horse)
Mental Hygiene – Kate Gibb
A-Z of Record Shop Bags – Jonny Trunk (Fuel)
Mud Sharks – Dave Barbarossa
Good Pop, Bad Pop – Jarvis Cocker (Vintage)
House Music – Andy Votel (The Modernist)
Judge Dredd – Brian Bolland (Apex Edition)
Contemporary Collage magazine (digital)
Defying Gravity – Jordan Mooney w. Cathi Unsworth
The Delaware Road deluxe edition – Alan Gubby, Dolly Dolly (Buried Treasure)
69 Exhibition Road – Dorothy Max Prior (Strange Attractor)
Judge Dredd – Mike McMahon (Apex Edition)
It’s Lonely At The Centre Of The Universe – Zoe Thorogood (Image Comics)
The Black Locomotive – Rian Hughes (Picador)

Film /TV:
The Book of Boba Fett (Disney+)
Get Back (Disney+)
Who Killed The KLF?
Pistol (Disney+)
The Boys (Amazon Prime)
In The Court of the Crimson King (Toby Aimes)

2022 Efforts2

Another year over and what have I done?
Finished The Real Tuesday Weld’s ‘Dreams’ LP/CD and ‘Late Night Reveries’ cassette artwork
Appeared on the Bureau of Lost Culture podcast, 45 Live show, mixed an episode of new online show, Genius & Soul (still not broadcast)
Re-designed an old classic logo for The Herbsmen
Adapted The Designers Republic’s Humanoid artwork for a FSOLDigital CD release
Designed Hawksmoor’s ‘Head Coach’ CD for Spun Out Of Control
Recorded with Dave Barbarossa for a future music project
Finished and published the Wheels of Light book for Four Corners Books with press coverage from The Quietus, Shindig!, The Observer, Velocity Books, Moonbuilding, Electronic Sound, Creative Review and more.
Had a track featured on the Diary of a Madman compilation on Bibliotapes in aid of Ukrainian Red Cross
Refined my Quadraphon turntable into a Mk.3 version
Got featured in the 2000AD Summer Special, music edition, talking about my love of the comic
Made a record by etching a playable image into a disc
Compiled, remixed and edited 30 years worth of games footage for DICE’s anniversary, making an 11 minute version then condensing it into 90 seconds.
Redesigned The Cinematic Orchestra’s ‘Every Day’ LP for the 20th anniversary edition from original design concepts
Designed Stasis, AsOne, Paul ‘Damage’ Bailey and Humanoid 12″s and reinterpreted Mike Dred’s ‘OverMind’ LP art for De:tuned
Also designed the AsOne2 LP for De:tuned
Had a collage featured in Contemporary Collage magazine
Mixed a new religious-themed set for the Tales To Enlighten 2 Kickstarter
Reformatted Dave Barbarossa’s Mud Sharks book for publication.
Interviewed Zoe Lucky Cat Baxter, Andy Votel, Alex Paterson and DJ Format for Dust & Grooves book 2.
Designed The Real Tuesday Weld’s 3″ CD Xmas card.

RIP:
Sidney Poitier, James Mtume, Meatloaf, Barry Cryer, Ian Kennedy, Douglas Trumbull, Bamber Gascoigne, Betty Davis, Jan Pieńkowski, Philip Jeck, Chantal Passamonte, Garry Leach, June Brown, Jordan, David McKee, Klaus Schulze, Neal Adams, George Perez, Vangelis, Rat Records, Alan Grant, Bob Rafelson, Bernard Cribbens, Olivia Newton-John, Lamont Dozier, Raymond Briggs, Queen Elizabeth II, William Klein, Jean-Luc Godard, Ramsey Lewis, Pharoah Sanders, Kim Jung Gi, Robbie Coltrane, Joyce Sims, Keith Levene, Nik Turner, Wilco Johnson, Tom Philips, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Manuel Gottsching, Terry Hall, Martin Duffy, Mike Hodges, Pelé, Vivienne Westwood, Anita Pointer.

Looking forward to:
The Out in 2000AD
Supporting the Art of Noise at the Jazz Cafe on Jan 4th/5th
Conform to Deform – The Weird & Wonderful World of Some Bizarre – Wesley Doyle (Jawbone Press)
The The – 1$ One Vote 7″ (Lazarus)
The conclusion of The Real Tuesday Weld’s Swan Songs trilogy?…
Tales To Enlighten: The New Testament
The Kevin O’Neill Apex Edition (Rebellion)
The return of Rave Wars
Spider-Man – Across The Spider-Verse

The Out 2023

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Bandcamp Friday Openmind artwork selection

Yeti Janko cover
It seems it doesn’t rain, it pours, suddenly several releases I’ve done the sleeve design for are all on sale or pre-order this week. Above and below is Janko Nilovic and Yeti on the Pads 7″ I did during one of the Covid lockdowns using a collage from around 10 years ago as the front cover, this has taken years to come to fruition.
Buy hereYeti Janko back
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Next is a very new design that I’ve only just signed off for print, The Real Tuesday Weld‘s annual 3″ CD Xmas card is a buildable stereogram with mini vinyl effect 5 track CD. Order here There’ll be more from them next week…
MWM card
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DE038LTD-Cover-mockup Coloured Vinyl
At last Kirk Degorgio‘s ‘The Unveiling’ 12″ is revealed, this comes in black and black vinyl variants from those lovely De:tuned people. Take your pick here

DE038-Cover-mockup Black
TCO Every Day 20th front inside And, as previously mentioned, The Cinematic Orchestra‘s 20th anniversary edition of their ‘Every Day’ album went on sale yesterday, remade and revised from an original graphic concept I had when first designing the artwork in 2002. Pre-Order now

TCO Every Day 20th front
TCO Every Day 20th back

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The Delaware Road omnibus edition


The Delaware Road deluxe edition unwrapping, the omnibus edition is out today via Buried Treasure and neatly brings together years worth of work and research by Alan Gubby, aided by poet Dolly Dolly, designer Nick Taylor and illustrator Jarrod Gosling. Originally conceived as a documentary film by Alan 15 years ago then rewritten as a fictional account of the Radiophonic Workshop’s perhaps two most famous practitioners, Delia Derbyshire and John Baker, the Delaware project then expanded into a compilation album and live performance.

DR packageDR cover
I went to the first incarnation in Reading back in 2015, you can read about that here. For the second, more ambitious outing at the disused Nuclear Bunker at Kelvedon Hatch in Essex, I was on the bill – more about that here. The third incarnation then morphed into a mini festival in a Salisbury Plain army base which nearly didn’t happen but was an incredible collection of performers and people the likes of which haven’t been seen since, see photos from that here.

DR seal
DR postcards
A six part comic series that followed – illustrating the whole story as originally envisaged – and now the whole project has been collected into a smart omnibus edition with notes, photos, preliminary designs and more, all wrapped in a beautiful cover that brings to mind the Festival of Britain. Out today, I think the limited deluxe edition with 4″ lathe cut disc has now sold out but this book tells the whole story, both fictional and then from the inside, of this most amazing series of events.
Order it here, right now, plus it’s Bandcamp Friday so more of it goes to the artist and label.

DR contents
DR insides

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The Cinematic Orchestra – Every Day (20th Anniversary Edition)


Finally I can talk about this, it’s been in the planning since the summer and now it’s announced. A 3xLP reissue of The Cinematic Orchestra‘s ‘Every Day’ album with extras, revised artwork and a gatefold sleeve. I was asked by Jason Swinscoe to remake the album art from the original files but go back to an early concept (actually the first version) that I’d submitted in 2002.

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I was happy to do this as I’d never been entirely happy with how the original artwork finally turned out so this was a chance to have a second go and I am really happy with how it’s turned out. Pre-order yours here also here for Bandcamp Friday

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Quadraphon sighting

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The Ramsgate Music Hall have taken the chance to book me a headline set featuring the Quadraphon deck next February. I’ll be flying solo with this most experimental of turntables for the first time, four tone arms and a lot of locked groove records, this won’t be your usual DJ Food dancefloor set.
Tickets available here

Video from my recent support slot at Iklectik by Robin Reynolds

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The Groovy Record Fayre 2

GRF Jonny Trunk
The second Groovy Record Fayre, hosted by Jonny Trunk and Ian Shirley, took place on Saturday at the Mildmay Club on Newington Green, N16 and again, it was a blast. Pete Williams and I had a stall again and many friends and faces passed by. It was celeb central at points, from superstar DJs to stand up comedians and supermodel it girls. I missed a chance to chat to Stewart Lee who was looking through the Krautrock box because I was explaining what Go-Go and cut up mixes were to a younger buyer but Lee wasn’t buying anyway.

GRF Pete stall
Pete with our stall, notice my Wheels of Light book placed in prime position bottom left.

GRF Alan Gubby
Pete sleevefaces with Buried Treasure’s Alan Gubby

GRF Andy Higgs
Andy Higgs digs

GRF Mr Thing
Marc Mr Thing journeyed up from Hastings for the day

GRF Paul Putner
Paul Putner bought my book shock!

GRF Pete Karminskys
A right pair of tits, and Martin & James of The Karminsky Experience Inc.

GRF Richard Norris
Richard Norris also picked up my book and Children of the Stones (like everyone else)

GRF Ronan Philippe
Rat Records mini reunion with Ronan and Philippe

GRF SavX
Comix legend Edwin Savage Pencil Pouncey bought six of my underground comix, a true seal of approval.

GRF Simon Tony
Pop quiz winner (later on) Simon Gitter with smooth dancer and pop quiz secret weapon 2 Tone Tony.

GRF Martin Jarvis
Everyone was packed up and out of the hall by 6pm and people disappeared for dinner. Around 7.30 the pop quiz kicked off and 90 minutes later the team Jonny Trunk happened to be on claimed victory to cries of ‘fix!, fix!’. The fact that there was a 10 point Trunk section might have helped. Martin Green and Jarvis took to the stage as tables and chairs were cleared in record time, the glitter ball ignited and the bar besieged. Much drink was drunk and dancing had until 1am with a packed dancefloor and singalongs to Plastic Bertrand, Bowie, The Beatles, Adam & The Ants, The Sweet, Prince, Double Dee & Steinski, Beastie Boys, Sparks, B-52s and so many more.

GRF Party crowd

Meanwhile in the toilets, Alex Chung had other things on her mind…

Alexa whats my best side

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The Groovy Record Fayre is this weekend

Trump Box 21mm
The Trunk Groovy Record Fayre is this Saturday! My Further partner Pete Williams and I are having a stall again at the Mildmay Club, Newington Green. I’ll have lots of dance 45s if that’s your thing, part of a huge collection recently bought by Michael from The Book & Record Bar, doubles from my personal collection including Ninja stuff and copies of my new book, Wheels of Light, among other things. Do stop by, the last one was excellent as was the pop quiz and party afterwards.
And it’s FREE!
October 29th, 11am until late, the Mildmay Club, Newington Green, London, N16 9PR.

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The second Trunk Groovy Record Fayre

Trump Box 21mm
It’s back! The return of the Trunk Groovy Record Fayre. My Further partner Pete Williams and I will be having a stall again this October at the Mildmay Club, Newington Green. I will have lots of dance 45s if that’s your thing, some records from my personal collection and copies of my new book, Wheels of Light, among other things. Do stop by, the last one was excellent as was the pop quiz and party afterwards.

Do stop by, last year’s was amazing (see photos here), from the daytime fair to the evening pop quiz and after party get down.
And it’s FREE!
October 29th, Mildmay Club, Newington Green, London, N16

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On the road with Dust & Grooves

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I’ve seemingly neglected this blog a bit this year save for a lot of the Mixcloud Select weekly entries but that’s because I’ve been so damned busy (which is good!). Last month my friend Elion Paz – photographer, dirt bike enthusiast and now marathon runner – arrived in the UK for three weeks of preliminary shoots and interviews for the second Dust & Grooves book. You may know the first book, a beautiful hardback tome to record collecting published in 2014 with Mr Scruff on the cover, perched atop some of his collection.

Way back then there weren’t many books like this about vinyl collectors and obsessives. Things have changed quite a bit since then it’s fair to say and the next book will cast the net even wider into other areas. While Eilon was here I helped him out with interviews, contacts and also featured in a piece myself focusing on Command record covers (see above).

cb85b245-fd5d-4491-a151-07473c081f95© Eilon Paz/Dust & Grooves

Our first assignment together was a visit to Zoe ‘Lucky Cat’ Baxter to check out her collection of reggae and Chinese records, here we are sniffing the acetate dubplates.

Eilon_Paz-153© Eilon Paz/Dust & Grooves

We then headed to West Norwood to The Book & Record Bar to speak to Alex Paterson of The Orb who pulled out one of his tour boxes, unopened for over a decade and walked us through the contents before we retired to his home to dig into his collection. Alex later told me it was one of his favourite interviews.

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Next up was a trip down to Brighton to dig with the ultra-hospitable DJ Format and take a journey through his career with a focus on odd religious records. Here we are messing about with his copies of Marshall McLuhan‘s ‘The Medium Is The Massage’.

Eilon_Paz-567© Eilon Paz/Dust & Grooves

Lastly, after much persuasion, we visited Stockport and the incredible collection of Andy Votel, someone Eilon had wanted in the first book but hadn’t been able to fit in. Oh the sights we saw…
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Eilon then went to Bristol for several days before returning to his home town on New York last week and running his first marathon at the weekend. His work ethic and vision are nothing short of extraordinary, I know the next book will be right up there with the first.

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New DJ Food 45 Live mix Fri/Sat night on Dublab

DJ Food 45 Live Mix 9th 2022 web
My now annual mix for those lovely 45 Live people goes out this Friday night (PST) or Saturday morning (GMT) depending where you are in the world. Greg Belson is still running the show which must be approaching its 150th episode soon. Airing on Dublab at 8-10pm every 1st and 3rd Friday, it’ll be available afterward via their site or Mixcloud. I’m again mining the late 80’s for early house, acid and freestyle (lots of Todd Terry productions). I thought I’d exhausted these theme a few years back but tracks just keep popping up and I have more than enough for two more mixes moving into the 90s.

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Mixcloud Select 113: The Monkees’ Head – DJ Food Rescore, 2001-2005

CD DISC ON BODY

This post is dedicated to Bob Rafelson, the director of Head, who passed away this week, RIP.
Back in 2001 I was asked to compose a turntable rescore for a film of my choice for a club night in Budapest, Hungary called Cinetrip. At the time I was really starting to explore psychedelia through digging trips in the US and Canada and thought this would an ideal way to soundtrack something weird and wild that would hold the attention without too much dialogue.

Head Flyer - Size1

Sometime around the late 80’s I’d taped The Monkees’ freak film flop from TV as it intrigued me when reading the blurb. I was pretty confounded by it, this wasn’t the squeaky clean boy band with the ‘here we come…’ hi-jinx of their Saturday morning TV series. This contained cut up sequences, solarized freak outs, Vietnam war commentary and more fourth wall-breaking than you could shake the dandruff out of your hair to. It made no sense, consisted of an ever-changing series of completely different scenes designed to link songs and concepts together before looping back on itself and returning to the start. There was little plot to follow, just The Monkees as they jumped from genre to genre, location to location, costume change to character evolution.

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Music choice ranged from present day right back to the 60s, a psychedelic flavour of course but elements of library, soundtracks, jazz, electronics, trip hop and spoken word to fill the few talking moments all fitted over an over-evolving selection that was refined each time I played it. After the initial performance I severely reworked the parts for The Big Chill Festival where it had evolved into a three turntable and FX performance that was so complex and stressful to perform that my legs weirdly seized up the minute I’d finished the set! I did another nine performances – mostly in the UK and Ireland but also playing at the Portuguese short film festival to a bemused audience – until it was retired in 2005.

Head DVD front:backHead DVD contents

After this I decided to preserve the set by making a DVD with both the original and my alternate soundtrack selectable via the audio menu, adding in some of the original film dialogue in the edit to mesh the sound and vision together a little more. The disc came wrapped in mirror board card to mimic the original soundtrack LP packaging and included a random flyer from one of the nine different cigarette card-sized ones made for the Dublin performance. These were sold online via the Ninja Tune forum and later on I uploaded the whole thing to the Internet Archive for posterity. This mix has never been put up solo on the web and I’ve never done a track listing for it, preferring for people to have to work it out. Sometimes it’s good to have a mystery to dig into, although a lot of tracks are fairly obvious to anyone with a decent musical knowledge. Also I sampled a few bits later on…

Head1

So here it is, sans the film of course, but that’s out there if you dig a little

end credits (final)

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Andy Votel House Music exhibition at The Modernist, Manchester

House music poster

Andy Votel has an exhibition of record sleeves containing architecture at The Modernist in Manchester. Taking inspiration from his sleeve for Jane Weaver‘s ‘The Architect’ he has created a poster and book to accompany the show. The book features records from his own collection including plenty of his own designs with intimate details that will have most running to Discogs or Google to find out more. Both the book and poster are available from The Modernist and the exhibition runs until September.
Below is my copy of a super rare hand made copy of Jane’s ‘The Architect’ which features an alternate version of the original cover.

House Music and JW 12

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Yasushi Takayama interviews – Mo Wax Japan, Toys Factory and more

Kev and Yasushi-Sharpen web

The DJ Shadow Reconstructed website has just published the second of two very indepth interviews with Yasushi Takayama – an old friend who worked for the Toys Factory record label in Japan in the 90s. Toys Factory manufactured and distributed both Ninja Tune and Mo Wax back in the day and did some beautiful releases with bonus tracks as well as bring acts from the labels to Japan for tours and concerts. Yasushi was instrumental in dealing with the labels and would be on hand to help and hang out with us when we visited the country.

Above is a shot of a much younger Yasushi and I during my first visit to Japan in 1996 and I have many fond memories of meals, record shopping and special visits to secret stores with him during our times out there. I put him in touch with Jon at the website who is diving deep into the people and places around Shadow’s career and supplied some personal photos from the time. Whilst the interviews are mostly Mo Wax-related they also give a behind the scenes look at the times and Ninja Tune is mentioned in relation to Yasushi’s role at the label. For collectors and music history fans these interviews are full of rare flyers, previously unpublished photos and show how unique the Japanese versions of these releases were.

Yasushi and DJ Vadim Vaccuum Records 1997-web
Yasushi with DJ Vadim at the Vaccuum Record shop, Tokyo in 1997.

Interview Part 1
Interview Part 2

Posted in Music, Records. | 1 Comment |

Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head – 30 today

Check your Head

30 years old today – Check Your Head by Beastie Boys
This album has such bittersweet memories for me, I listened to it constantly throughout the summer of ’92 on a tape recorded from someone at college. I was ridiculously poor and had recently split from my long term girlfriend at the end of the second year of Camberwell college.
I moved into a house share in East Dulwich where I met Mario Aguera and Lou Carroll and they helped save my sanity. I would troop about the streets of south London looking for a summer job in newsagent windows with Check Your Head on my Walkman until the batteries ran out.
It was a low point in my life for sure but this album helped me through it and things all came good from starting again in that house. Sometimes you have to rip it up and start again and what better soundtrack than this record? A perfect balance of sample-heavy rap tracks but with a new live band edge in the mix. They were so cool as well, playing basketball and skating in their own studio, running a label, putting out a magazine and clothing line. Ah, the 90’s…
Over the years I picked up all the singles but only grabbed the album on CD – weird. So What’cha Want is still one of the best rap tracks ever recorded but there are so many moments on this album. Big record for me and my homey, David Vallade who would later move into the same house share and then things really got going – “yeaaaah, you can’t front on that”

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Work in progress

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Way too much going on at the moment, loads of graphic design jobs ongoing, off to print or at the pressing plant. A few other bits ready to start, music simmering in the background and all sorts of things on the horizon. Not many gigs until the summer but that’s fine at the moment. Here are some things I’ve put my hand to recently, the image below is a Designers Republic design that I’ve been reformatting.

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Below; I’ve been working on upgrading my Quadraphon turntable for a gig on March 10th at BSMT Space in Dalston where I’ll be soundtracking the private view of .EPOD‘s first solo exhibition.
RSVP [email protected] for free entry on the night – 6pm to 9pm

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EPOD BSMT flyer

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2021

Sample City cropAfter ending on a bummer in the final hours of 2020 as MF Doom‘s death emerged on social media, we awoke to the news on January 1st of The KLF re-entering the music industry via Spotify and YouTube with remastered material in the form of the first of five compilations. By Jan 6th though any hopes of a better year were dashed, despite the historic swing for the Democrats in the Senate and Congress, with the scenes at Capitol Hill and 1k daily deaths reported in the UK. No surprises on Trump‘s acquittal after the second impeachment hearing in February either.

Surprise of the year was that the UK’s vaccination programme rolled out fast and with few hitches – amazing what can happen when you don’t pump billions into untested private companies and instead let a trusted national institution handle it. I won’t go on, it was pretty much downhill from there and some of those promised KLF albums are still yet to emerge.

Anyway, as is usual on Dec 31st, here are some favourites from the last 12 months in no particular order. There’s been an avalanche of amazing music and art again this year, some coming out of the lockdown months, let’s hope it continues and the virus eases up in 2022. Please check out and support these artists if you like their work, Bandcamp is an excellent way to put a large chunk of money straight in musicians and label’s pockets and buying a print, T-shirt or piece of merch at a gig really helps too. Even a share or piece of positive feedback on someone’s post can give them a boost to know that people are watching or listening out there and they’re not shouting into the void.

LPs 2021

Music:
Concretism – The Concretism Archive Vol.1 LP (CiS Subs Library)
Steve Roach – Tomorrow LP (Behind The Sky)
Snow Palms – Land Waves LP (Village Green)
Jane Weaver – Flock LP (Fire Records)
Stereolab – Switched On vol.4 LP (Warp/Duophonic)
Robert Fripp – Music for Quiet Moments (DGM)
DJ Format – Devil’s Workshop LP
Trevor Jackson – Underdog 1993-1998 radio mix (NTS)
The Hauntologists – Tales From The Scary Magic Field 7″ (Bandcamp)
Various Artists – BLE-EP 12″ (Yellow Machines)
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Butterfly 3000 LP (Flightless)
CAVS – CAVS 12″ (PHC)
Various Artists – Infected Machinery EP 12″ (Downfall Recordings)
The Nevermen – Treat ‘Em Right (Boards of Canada remix) DL (Lex)
Vanishing Twin – Ookii Gekkou LP (Fire Records)
Jay Glass Dubs – Jungle Shuffle 12″ (The Wormhole)
Brian Eno – The Lighthouse (Sonos HD)
Regal Worm – The Hideous Goblink LP (Quatermass)
Ternion Sound – Dovetail (Kursa remix) 12″ (Next Level)

Podcasts 2021

Podcasts:
Chris Atkins – A Bit of a Stretch (Apple podcasts)
The Alexei Sayle Podcast
Martyn Ware – Electronically Yours
Ed Piskor / Jim Rugg – Cartoonist Kayfabe (YouTube)
Stephen Coates – The Bureau of Lost Culture
We Buy Records (Apple podcasts)
Matt Black – Pirate TV (Twitch/FB/YouTube)
The Bunker/Culture Bunker (Acast)
The Adam Buxton Podcast (Acast)

Events 2021

Gigs / Events:
Vanishing Twin – Pensiero Magico live stream Jan 20th
Alice In Wonderland @ The V&A Museum, London
Savage Pencil @ OrbitalSpace, London
Eno @ Paul Stolper Gallery, London
The Light Surgeons ‘Atemporal’ @ Iklectik, London
Funki Porcini @ Common Ground, Coventry
The The’s Comeback Special premier @ Troxy Cinema, London
Jonny Trunk’s Groovy Record Fayre @ Mildmay Club, London
Vanishing Twin @ Kings Place, London
Levitation Festival, @ Flowergate Hall, Whitby
People Like Us – Gone, Gone Beyond @The Pit Theatre, Barbican, London
Pye Corner Audio @ State 51, London
Anicka Yi – Aerobes @ Tate Modern, London

Cover Designs 2021.2

Design / Packaging:
Hattie Cooke – The Sleepers LP (Spun Out of Control) by Eric Adrian Lee
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – live bootlegs series LP (Fuzz Club)
Krashslaughter feat. Phil Most Chill – Rebel Base 7″
Sync 24 – Inside The Microbeat LP (Cultivated Electronics) by Will Barras
Une – Spomenik LP (Spun Out Of Control) by Eric Adrian Lee
Cos – Mix LP (Finders Keepers) by Andy Votel
Castles In Space Subscription Library series LPs (Castles In Space) by Nick Taylor + more
The Third Man Records shop in Soho, London
Pepe Deluxe – The Phantom Cabinet vol.1 LP (Catskills) by Vilunki/James Spectrum
Thundercat – The Golden Age of Apocalypse 10th anniversary edition (Brainfeeder)
The Zen Delay (Ninja Tune / Erica Synths)
Roger Webb – Shadows of Fear 7″ (Trunk) by Julian House
Kingston University Stylophone Orchestra – Stylophonika (Spun Out Of Control) by Eric Adrian Lee
Brian Eno’s turntable

Comics 2021

Books / Magazines / Comics:
Rain Like Hammers – Brandon Graham (Image)
Breaking Open The Head – Daniel Pinchbeck
Bedroom Beats & B-Sides – Laurent Fintoni (Velocity Press)
Decorum – Jonathan Hickman & Mike Huddleston (Image)
Ultramega – James Harren (Skybound/Image)
Anatomie Narrative – Samplerman
The Black Locomotive – Rian Hughes (Picador)
Cruisin’ with the Hound – Spain Rodriguez (Fantagraphics)
Kane & Able – Shaky Kane & Krent Able (Image)
Tales To Enlighten – Matt King & James Edward Clark (Kickstarter)
The Out – Dan Abnett & Mark Harrison (2000AD)
Electronic Sound magazine
99 Balls Pond Road – Julie Drower (Scrudge Books)

Artists 2021
Artists:
Savant
RX Skulls
Pablo Fiasco
Donk
ZombieSqueegee
Karoline Rerrie
.EPOD
FiftySevenDesign
Minty
Stinkfish
Perspicereartist
Tamar Cohen
Hoxxoh
Lovepusher
Artyom Trakhanov
Prentler
Soda
Smitheone
Raymond Lemstra

Film /TV:
Bathtubs Over Broadway (Netflix)
Wandavision (Disney+)
Dead Pixels (Ch 4)
Grayson’s Art Club (Ch 4)
Sisters With Transistors – Lisa Rovener (BFI)
Loki (Disney+)
What We Do In The Shadows Season 3 (BBC2)
Martha: A Picture Story (Projector Films)
Records – Alan Zweig (TVO)
Big Mouth (Adult Swim)
The Book of Boba Fett (Disney+)

Work 2021

Another year over and what have I done?
A second mix of religious rock for Megatrip‘s ‘Tales To Enlighten’ comic kickstarter
Stuck 300 foil covers to 300 LP sleeves for The New Obsolescents album on Castles In Space which ended up selling out in 25 minutes and went for a repress.
Finally finished the design and packaging for The Real Tuesday Weld‘s ‘Blood’ and ‘Tape Dust Memories’ releases, the first in a trilogy as Stephen Coates winds up his recording project.
Released the Celestial Mechanic LP on Utter with music by Saron Hughes and myself and design by Rian Hughes
Appeared on the Big Mouth, We Buy Records, Sleevenote‘s Under The Covers, KTMusic Online and Bureau of Lost Culture podcasts, had guest mixes featured on the Jonny Cuba & Friends and 45 Live shows
Released the Kaleidoscope/Companion reissue 4xLP on Ninja Tune subsidiary Ahead Of Our Time
Designed the Lo Recordings’ 100th edition library album for a limited edition lathe cut LP
Started the Openmindesign Instagram account for current designs and archive ephemera
Continued the DJ Food Mixcloud Select weekly upload series
Saw designs for Steven Rutter, Amon Tobin, Clocolan and Humanoid released on De:tuned, Ninja Tune, FSOL Digital and Castles In Space
Written the forward for a book about light show picture wheels for Four Corners Books
Remixed The The’s ‘Global Eyes’ for The Comeback Special live box set
Designed a Janko Nilovic & Yeti On the Pads 7″ sleeve
Collaborated with Imeus Designs on a second book of Forgotten Graphics Command LP sleeves
Edited hours worth of Pirate TV audio visual broadcasts for Matt Black
Remodelled my Quadraphon turntable for live performance
Oversaw the repressed New Obsolescents LP with screen printed black prism board
Contributed the singles column to MU magazine each issue
Designed a Hey Duggee zoetrope LP for the BBC
Designed a 25th anniversary Stealth T-shirt for 1 of 100
Mixed a preview CD of Touched Music‘s ‘Project OO’ – ‘DJ Food’s Oona Selecta’
Designed a 3rd fold out Xmas card, ‘Solstice Songs‘ for The Real Tuesday Weld
Finished my Cineolascape mix for The The, due for release in 2022

RIP: Phil Spector, Larry King, Ricky Powell, Double K (PUTS), S. Clay Wilson, Chick Corea, Victor G. Ambrus, Frank Thorne, Lou Ottens, Orbital Comics, Malcolm Cecil, Shock G, James Prigoff, Captain Rock, Ken Garland, Eric Carle, Gift of Gab, Peter Zinovieff, Jon Hassell, Peter Rehberg, Chuck Close, Charlie Watts, Lee Scratch Perry, Sir Clive Sinclair, Richard H. Kirk, Alan Hawkshaw, Orbital Comics, Lionel Blair, Andrew Barker, Mick Rock, Alvin Lucier, Robbie Shakespear, Chris Achilleos, Michael Nesmith, Richard Rogers, Desmond Tutu, Janice Long,

New Year’s resolution: Use less black in my work

Looking forward to:
The return of Saga comic
The Soundcarriers‘ new album, ‘Wilds’
King Gizzard remix album
A mixer to complete my Quadraphon set up
Collaborations…
EpoDJFood teaser

Posted in Comics, Design, Event, Film, Gigs, Music, Records. | 2 Comments |

Mixcloud Select 86: DJ Food at Stealth – The Blue Note, Dec 7th 1995 – Part 2

Stealth tape 2 Dec 7th 1 Here’s part 2, DJ Food – PC and myself – on 4 decks at The Blue Note, Dec 7th, 1995 – a more drum n bass led set coming out of some Ninja business from Up, Bustle & Out and The Herbaliser. It’s possible, listening back, that these first two tracks aren’t PC and I but the end of either The Herbaliser or Coldcut’s DJ set and we start with the breakdown sample of Dirty Harry from the end of The Real Killer Pt.2. There are also sudden stops or breaks in the recordings where tapes must have run out and by the time they’re changed the music has moved on so I’ve crossfaded a couple of bits so there are no sudden stops or jump edits. The levels on a lot of it were up and down so I’ve done my best to make volumes a bit more consistent across the mix.

This is available as part of my Mixcloud Select subscription – £3 a month gets you an archive mix a week every Friday morning with tracklist and notes – you can sign up here and leave any time

At a couple of points there’s what seems to be a theremin being played over the top of the set, I’d completely forgotten about this but it lit a dim recollection of someone doing something like this, not Patrick or I though I hasten to add. The mix is rough and ready, straight from the central mixer we were both plugged into with no crowd noise sadly so it’s a little dry. Every rough mix, distorted level and jumping record can be heard but you get the sense that this is very live, improvised on the spot with vinyl and the occasional spoken word overlaid from CD. For some context, this is very early days of this kind of music being played in a main room of a club, not the back room/chill out, on a four deck set up with DJs facing each other on a club stage in London. There are a lot of unknown tunes in these sets, some PC’s and some mine, lesser known break beats and DnB tunes that Spotify can’t recognise and the old braincells won’t remember, I’m hoping people can spot some and fill in the blanks.
Stealth tape 2 Dec 7th 2
There was an odd jump at the end of this tape, from DnB to a sudden 130 tempo, the DAT must have either stopped or ended and there was a sudden change at Bushflange. We probably did the 45-33rpm trick and turned the deck off for a second so the tempo ran down and landed at a more techno pace then mixed into that at the slower speed. Bushflange have come up numerous times during these mix excavations and their tracks were always solid, strange that they weren’t remembered in the scheme of things. Owners of the Sunday At Bundy’s mix tape will probably recognise a couple of sections from this set as they were featured on that tape back in 1996.
Below is the original print file layout for the flyer, this was printed on gold card so the purple came out more a burnt umber brown as you can see by the tape inlay above that I made from a flyer.
blue note flyer 7th - AI55 web

Stealth T shirt crop
Remember, if you want a 1 of 100 commemorative Stealth T shirt then I think there are some left, follow this link, choose you colour, size and T shirt number from the ones left and place an order, once the 100 are sold there won’t be any more.
https://weare1of100.co.uk/limited-edition/dj-food-openmind/
Stealth ecru 242 sqStealth black white2 sq

Track list:
Up, Bustle & Out – Revolutionary Woman Of The Windmill
The Herbaliser – The Real Killer Pt.2 (Rooftop Prowler)
Larceny – Who Are You? (Aquasky mix)
Unknown
Unknown
Unknown (acappella on 33rpm)
Alex Reece & Wax Doctor – Detroit
DJ Vadim – Call Me
Photek – The Rain
The Pharcyde – Passin’ Me By (acappella)
Unknown
The Shamen – Transamazonia (LTJ Bukem mix)
Unknown
Incognito – Still A Friend Of Mine
Squarepusher – Male Pill 5
Dream Warriors – My Definition Of A Boombastic Jazz Style (acappella)
Fatboy Slim – Weekend Bonus Beats
Rae – Free Rolling
KRS One – Uh Oh
Cypress Hill – Scooby Doo
Unknown
Unknown
Bushflange – Cloud Cover
Plastikman – Helikopter
DJ Shadow – In/Flux
Colourbox – Baby I Love You So

Posted in DJ Food, Gigs, Mixcloud Select, Mixes/Solid Steel, Music, Ninja Tune, Openmind designs, Records. | No Comments | Tags: , , , ,