A Future Past – Kraftwerk Uncovered

I went for a rather unique night out at the Science Museum on Friday, with fellow ‘music enthusiast’ Mark ‘Osymyso’ Nicholson no less. We were there to hear J. Peter Schwalm‘s reinterpretations of Kraftwerk numbers with the group Icebreaker in the IMAX theatre. Being a fan, and also a collector of cover versions of the band, it was a perfect evening out.

Kicking things off was a talk by David Toop, certainly one of my favourite authors where anything musical is concerned, his ‘Ocean of Sound’ is one of the best books I’ve ever read on electronic music. He didn’t dwell on the obvious, and pointed out that so much has already been said about the band that it was pointless to reiterate the carbon copy CV that the music press routinely trot out. Instead he attempted to recontextualise them by asserting that their roots were that of an R&B band. Citing The Isley Brothers as a parallel outfit in a clever, if somewhat unconvincing, set of examples he also made a sonic connection with the earliest incarnation of the band (and their pre-Kraftwerk ensemble, Organisation) and the electric era of Miles Davis‘ career. There were certainly similarities that I’d not considered before with this latter example but I wasn’t totally convinced with the former.

Thinking about it later I deduced that a better pairing might be Frank Zappa with Ralf & Florian – think about this for a moment:

Frank was influenced by classical composers like Boulez as much as the psychedelic rock underground but was never too keen to toe the line and be a part of a movement.
Zappa’s Mother’s of Invention were a rag bag jam band with a rotating line up of players with expert musical chops.
Zappa was a control freak who loved experimenting with the latest technology, quickly manouvering himself into a position with his label where he had full control. His early freak out experiments slowly streamlined into various concept records and, eventually, he went on to have commercial success too.
During the CD boom he went back to old master tapes and re-recorded new versions and parts of old songs with new inventions like drum machines and the Synclavier, replacing the original versions with new ones that he deemed superior (much to his fans’ dismay).
He largely left his past players behind but became a cult figurehead from a musical movement that stretched out to influence new generations after him.

All the above could be applied to Kraftwerk at one time or another – for instance, just substitute Boulez for Stockhausen in the first example and we’re off, but I digress…

In one of the main halls we filtered amongst the exhibits to hear The Balanescu Quartet play some of their versions of the band’s repertoire beneath a hanging bi-plane. As one of the first bands to release a record that heavily played on the fact that they had covered Kraftwerk it was fitting that they were on the bill, playing pitch-perfect versions of The Model, Autobahn and The Robots in a unique setting.

Then it was in to the IMAX theatre for the main event – Icebreaker – a 13 piece with two keyboard players flanking Schwalm in the center. Not as polished as Balanescu but more in keeping with the spirit of the works they were interpreting. They’d chosen an interesting set of pieces, some recognisable, some just reminiscent of – or influenced by – the Kraftwerk originals. It was a treat to hear mostly early to mid 70’s tracks, the sole 80’s inclusion being ‘Home Computer’ at the start. ‘Megahertz’, ‘Tanzmusik’, ‘Hall of Mirrors’ and a beautiful ‘Morgenspaziergang’ from the B side of ‘Autobahn’ were tackled, ending with a ‘driving’ (pun intended) version of the motorway classic which had me lulled into a semi-sleep before kicking in for a motorik finish.

We both really liked it and the performance was heightened by the split screen, black and white films of Sophie Clements and Toby Cornish that accompanied them. My only criticism was that it seemed too short but, altogether, it was a satisfying night out in a different venue, hearing old favourites in new contexts. The band are on tour in the UK in February and I’d recommend checking them out if you have a chance. More info here.

 

Posted in Event, Kraftwerk. | 1 Comment |

Sculpture ‘Plastic Infinite’ 7″ picture disc

Now available – a new release by Sculpture on a 7″ picture disc with zoetropic tendancies – BUY HERE NOW –  View with strobe 25 flashes per second or video camera 25fps, very high shutter speed, progressive.
Includes immediate download of 2-track album in the high-quality format of your choice (MP3, FLAC, and more), plus unlimited mobile access using the free Bandcamp listening app. It’s their best yet and the video below shows just how detailed and beautiful the disc can be when filmed spinning.

Posted in Design, Music, Records. | 2 Comments |

Swamp Thing 60 John Totleben original art

One of the recent trends in comics has been the over-sized deluxe ‘original art’ edition of a book or artist’s work. These are reproductions of the original pages, sans colour, with all the pencil marks, printer mark up and notes, reproduced at the original size – usually ‘half up’ from the final printed size. Usually expensive (around the £100 mark) these beautiful tombs are fascinating artifacts and show how much detail is lost in the print process.

If there’s one issue that needs collecting in this way it’s Jon Totleben‘s work on issue 60 of Alan Moore‘s run on Swamp Thing from 1987. This self-contained story is a standalone in that it’s all collage rather than a straighter pen and ink style and features a sci-fi plot where Swampy is basically raped in space by an alien entity with the horn (I think).

Anyway, the terrible reproduction and flat colours flattened all the subtleties out of the art as these scans of some of the original art from the Cool Lines Artwork website reveal (where you can actually still buy some of the art if you have deep pockets).

Some of it has objects like metal chains and watch innards attached to it but it’s doubtful if this could ever be collected as the art is now scattered to different owners after Steve from Cool Lines bought the majority of it it from the artist. Maybe DC has decent quality scans of it with all the separations somewhere and will see an opportunity milk some more of the Moore cash cow at some stage.


Swamp Thing 60 p10
Swamp Thing 60 P11totleben_swamp_60_splash

 

 

 

 

Posted in Art, Comics. | 2 Comments |

‘Raiding the 20th Century’ is 10 years old

It’s been bought to my attention that the original version of my ‘Raiding The 20th Century’ mix is now 10 years old. Originally a 40 minute guest mix on Eddy Temple-Morris‘ XFM radio show, The Remix, it was my attempt to construct a rough history of ‘cut up’ music in the midst of the mashup up/bastard pop craze. Taking in Music Concrete, avant garde tape composition, radiophonic tape experiments, megamixes, edit kings, scratching, early sampling and of course mash ups, it was one of the most densely mixed and edited things I’ve ever done. When it debuted it was put up on the Ninja Tune site at the time and quickly went a bit viral, causing the server to melt down and the site to grind to a halt by the next morning. More info here and here.

Posted in DJ Food, Event, Mixes/Solid Steel. | 9 Comments |

A Goodly Company: Ethel Le Rossignol exhibition

I don’t know anything about Ethel Le Rossignol but just saw this on Twitter, posted by Dan Hayhurst of Sculpture. From the Horse Hospital site:

“Between 1920 and 1933 spirit medium Ethel Le Rossignol created a series of 44 paintings, 21 of which belong to The College of Psychic Studies and will be on display with accompanying texts describing what she refers to as the Sphere of Spirit.

Radiant, psychedelic and ecstatic, her vision of the spirit world is consistent, coherent and stunningly beautiful, depicting a luminous realm of kaleidoscopic colour, inhabited by elegant sylphs, bejewelled apes and astral tigers.

Ethel’s channeled paintings reveal a world of pure light, colour and energy. Incorporating aspects of Art Deco, popular playbills, Eastern mysticism, mandalas and miniatures, they radiate an ecstatic joy, and are prescient of the psychedelic art that would emerge several decades later.

As a medium Ethel took no credit for the actual work, identifying a spirit known only as J.P.F. as the real artist. J.P.F himself claimed to be channeling another group of spirits, who wanted to impart the secrets of the soul to those of us still on the physical plane.

At present very little is known about Ethel Le Rossignol’s life, though we hope that this exhibition might prompt new discoveries. There are clues in her writing that she lost a friend, perhaps relatives, in World War One, and that this encouraged her interests in afterlife communications, which boomed in the inter-war years. Certainly she had a great interest in mediumistic spiritualism, attending lectures and demonstrations on the subject in London.

Ethel died in 1970 and her paintings, and copies of her privately printed book, A Goodly Company, were donated to the College of Psychic Studies in South Kensington. The paintings have been on display in rooms at the College for many years but, as far as we know, this is both the first time that they have ever been exhibited outside the College, and the first time that they have all been seen together in one space.

Encountering the whole Goodly Company assembled in one gallery promises to be a powerful exposure to the astral light and the love that she and her spirit friends so wanted to convey.”

The Horse Hospital, Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD
PRIVATE VIEW: Friday 21st February 2014 7pm. EXHIBITION: Sat 22nd Feb – Sat 22nd Mar, Mon – Sat, 12 – 6pm

Posted in Art, Event. | No Comments |

A Book of Drawings by Ian McQue

I’ve featured Ian McQue‘s work before on here, his glorious colour work mostly, and now he’s produced an A4-sized book of B&W sketchbook drawings subtitled ‘Robot, Space Dudes, Flying Ships etc’.

His work is populated by flying barge-type ships, usually moored to buildings or futuristic dockyards, small insect-like craft and boxy rough-terrain vehicles. His human characters come in all shapes and sizes and his robots are of the thin, lanky variety or sometimes like spider mechs.

There are even a few deviations in the book to more fantasy countryside scenes, a page of Hellboy studies and a certain Judge costume that features here a fair bit.

The book – and several colour prints – are available from his bigcartel shop and some come with a personal sketch in the front.

Posted in Art, Books, Robots. | 4 Comments |

The Shaolin Cowboy by Geof Darrow

Just finished reading The Shaolin Cowboy* (no.4 of 4) and all I can think is that Geof Darrow (the writer and artist) is insane. There is no book out there like this and to give the plot away would be pointless, to even tell you what vaguely happens would spoil the experience completely.
I take my hat off to him because only a madman would have drawn what he has drawn, to say it’s an achievement is an understatement but to what end I have no idea. I don’t even know if I enjoyed it as, once it gets going, it’s relentless in pace and action and leaves far more questions than answers. This is something that will divide people who read it – although it’s more about looking than reading – and it’s almost too much to read in one go.
The man is insane, but in the most creative way, few can do what he can and even less would choose to do what he’s done here.


* this is a new series of 4, just released by Dark Horse, separate from the 7 issues previously released, which are equally as impressive but, maybe, not quite as insane.

Posted in Comics. | 1 Comment |

New Food mix + Markey Funk Trish Keenan tribute

Solid Steel this week features an exclusive hour of Kid Koala live in Victoria, Canada. The second hour brings a mix from yours truly coupled with a tribute to Trish Keenan and the music of Broadcast by Markey Funk.

It’s now three years this week since Trish passed away and last year Markey put together a new soundtrack to the 1966 Jonathan Miller TV version of Alice In Wonderland made entirely from the music of Broadcast. We feature half an hour of that mix but it’s best watched with the film in full which you can see here or here.

My mix kicks things off though and takes the distorted drums and fuzzy electronics route with a detour into James Murphy‘s recent David Bowie remix in the middle.

Posted in DJ Food, Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | No Comments |

Abbey Road studios yesterday

Abbey Road Studios yesterday with Matt Johnson (right), engineer Alex Wharton (left) and the Neumann VMS 82 DMM cutting lathe (far left), the only operational one of its kind left in the country.

Oh! Gear porn! Big, clunky machines with real knobs and buttons that scream, ‘ANALOGUE!’. But what were we doing there? Cooking up something for Record Store Day but that’s all I’m allowed to say. You’re welcome to make an educated guess though…

Posted in DJ Food, Event. | 3 Comments |

Lasstranaut 3A 2014 members set

This wonderful piece of design is Lasstranaut, part of the Popbot Universe created by Ashley Wood and his company 3A. She’s a much talked about but seldom seen character in a world that seems to live largely in Ash’s head rather than on the printed page these days. Rumour is that she created the world of Popbot but I could have that wrong, there’s some info here and yes, she’s not wearing any pants. She’s currently up for sale on Bambaland for $200 which will also net you a book, T-shirt, poster and other goodies plus access to exclusive figures and money off all 3A products for the whole of 2014.

This blurry beast below is called Mars, a 24 inch take on the Shogun Warriors of old for a new line called World’s Best Robots. It’s modeled by a friend of mine from Ash’s designs and I’m eager to see the final paint job, just take my money why don’t you?

Posted in Toys. | No Comments |

‘Relax’ – and suddenly there came a ban!

On January 11st, 1984, Radio 1 DJ, Mike Read took Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s debut single, ‘Relax’, off the deck, mid-song whilst live on air, reportedly calling it ‘obscene’ and stating that he wasn’t going to play it anymore. Despite the BBC having played it over 100 times, the band appearing in two sessions, having played Top Of The Pops the previous week and the single then residing at no.6 in the charts, the corporation officially ‘banned’ it from their playlist two days later.

This had the effect of generating enough publicity to push it up to the No.1 spot less than two weeks later on 22nd January and the band and their record company, Zang Tuum Tumb, claimed their first hit single. With a video that was already not deemed fit for TV broadcast, promo photos of the group in S&M gear and two of the band being were openly gay, it was all the press needed to have a field day.

In a stroke of good luck, the band’s producer, Trevor Horn, had remixed the song for a 3rd 12″ that was released just before it hit the No.1 spot. Multiple mixes being a novelty at the time, this version replaced the original ‘Sex Mix’ with a more club-friendly ‘New York Night Mix’, inspiration for which was taken when Horn visited the Paradise Garage club the previous Autumn. ZTT were quick to fan the flames of the ‘ban’ (it was only banned on BBC channels but freely played by other commercial stations) and adverts and posters appeared, flaunting the band’s outlaw status. I vividly remember seeing a huge fly poster proclaiming ‘Big, Banned & Beautiful!’ pasted up in the little town of Reigate where I grew up. In fact, I tried several times, unsuccessfully, to steal it but posters being what they are I just ended up ripping it.

I was fortunate enough to track down the original photographer of the poster’s image – Steve Rumney – for my Art of ZTT blog last year and he’s promised me access to a whole raft of exclusive, unseen/unpublished images that he took back stage at the band’s Camden Palace performance the previous November.

Stephen Rumney: “I used to take photos at the Camden Palace in the mid 80s and I was there the night that Frankie did their first ever performance of ‘Relax’… I think it was the actual release party and as far as I remember I was the only photographer to have back stage and dressing room access. …the pics are pretty wild as they were all drinking champagne and very high spirited as you can imagine… I was right in the thick of it and clicking away madly… there was something in the air that night and you could really tell this was the start of something big…

The photo was not posed … I just caught them before they went on stage… or just after… I may have asked them for a group shot but it was not ‘staged’ as in ‘let’s do a photo shoot’… its why it has that edgy spontaneity… Holly already the gun as he was carrying it around for his performance.

The story is that shortly after the gig I dropped a print off with the Island press office thinking they may like to use it for press… They had commissioned me to do a couple of photo shoots when I was still at college as they had seen my portfolio featured in ‘Blitz’ magazine so I dropped the Frankie photo off with them when I delivered prints for the other photo shoot they commissioned… a week or so later I saw my photo being used all round town on the giant street posters!!!”

‘Relax’ was a pretty big deal for me personally, one of those records that connected on first listen and had to have repeat plays, much to my parents’ annoyance. A song I never tire of and that, with the follow-up, ‘Two Tribes’, probably ranks as one of my top 10 singles of all time. I didn’t hear the ban as we rarely listened to Radio 1 in our house, instead hearing it on Capital Radio who didn’t hold quite such draconian ideals as the BBC. I taped it and would have to play it at least four times in succession after school for weeks on end.

In fact, some of my first pause button tape ‘remixes’ were of the song, made from the various different mixes floating around. It was this too that was one my first exposures to ‘the Remix’ on multiple formats and, coupled with the cryptic sleeve notes and images, it made for a very exciting package to a 13 year old. It was the beginning of a love affair with both the band’s music and their label, ZTT, that has stayed with me to this day. Nothing was more exciting to me in 1984 that Frankie and the other artists on ZTT’s roster – Art of Noise and Propaganda.

‘Big, Banned & Beautiful’ poster design: XLZTT photography: © Stephen Rumney 1983 The photo was taken 24th November ’83 by Steve Romney backstage at a promo gig for the single at the Camden Palace in London. The ‘girls’ in the photo were Ange and Juicy Lucy (the latter actually a man in drag), friends of the band who featured in the original video for ‘Relax’.

You can also read my interview with Anne Yvonne Gilbert – the illustrator of the iconic image on the cover of ‘Relax’ – on ArtofZTT.com

February 14th sees the release of yet another 12″ of the single for the 30th anniversary, this time with a recently discovered remix from ’84 which was lost in the vaults. More info HERE.

Posted in Event, Music, Poster / flyer. | No Comments |

Robin Barnard’s Images Degrading Forever

What Man, the PointRobin Barnard makes comics, he draws them, writes them, then copies, folds and staples them before distributing them amongst various people he knows. At a quick glance they look like comics that you might have seen before but closer inspection reveals…

Let’s start again; Robin Barnard REmakes comics, he REdraws them, REwrites them, then copies, folds and staples them… You HAVE seen these before, but you’ve not read them like this before. His ‘What Men’ facsimile takes sections of Moore & Gibbons‘ classic ‘Watchmen’ and rewrites it into a critique of the spin-off ‘Before Watchmen’ franchise and the people responsible – Gibbons included.

Barnard redrew each panel in Gibbons’ style and you’d be hard-pressed to spot that it wasn’t just a scanned copy of the original with new lettering. The book is structured in the most incomprehensible way too, it took me a few goes before I cottoned on that you could read it in four different directions. Starting from the back, front or center pages, various pages read in or out of the book, all in landscape format, it’s a bit hard to describe in writing.

In his own words, “What Men is (just) Chapter V of Watchmen: Fearful Symmetry, which is both completely symmetrical and full of mirrored images. I purposely took all the mirrored images and put them all opposite each other and then also put in mirrored dialogue with references to the opposite page as well. What was in my mind was to take those previously seen mirrors rearrange them into an infinite mirror maze and use them to reflect on the Before Watchmen thing.”

There are levels of meaning here and he makes probably the nearest thing to a readable comics mash up that I think I’ve seen and you can find out more on his Images Degrading Forever site. There’s plenty more food for thought concerning ‘What Men’ in the post about reflections on the same site. These are comics ABOUT COMICS or at least indirectly about the comics industry, Barnard is using the medium to comment on the medium rather than write a blog about it.

Another one of his projects takes the Marvel comics Preview Catalogue and lampoons the never ending solicitations of forthcoming series’, character cross-overs and final, FINAL, F-I-N-A-L issues with self-referencing in-jokes that fold in on themselves as ‘The Point’ of it all is sought. It doesn’t all make immediate sense if you don’t have a keen interest or knowledge of certain areas of the comics world and its internal politics, which sometimes read like a superhero cross-over series in themselves.

His newest is a comics mash-up proper: ‘Super Spidey Man’ or ‘Star Jaws’ (I’m not sure which) is a mixture of Spiderman, Star Wars, Sesame Street and Dr Doom among others (I won’t spoil where Jaws gets into the mix). This is part 1 of a 4 issue series which may or may not be available from Orbital Comics in London. I don’t know where he’s going with this one but it’ll be interesting to see how it unfolds as the mysterious packages arrive in the post. He does make some physical copies but these are very low runs (‘What Men’ was 10 copies I believe) – but all this material is available to view online at his site, Images Degrading Forever.

Super Spidey Man, star jaws

Posted in Art, Comics. | 1 Comment |

Exclusive new mix by Chop on Solid Steel


Very pleased to have commissioned this mix from Chop for the latest installment of Solid Steel and it’s something slightly different from him too. Here’s what he said about it;
“I’ve been listening to quite a lot of French, Japanese and electronic library music of late. This mix for me has been about discovering and re-discovering some fantastic artists/music from around the globe.  Whether its the eccentric French sounds of Marc Moulin‘s – Telex, mutations from YMO genius Haruomi Hosono or the influential proto-electronica of Manuel Gottsching I think there’s something here for everyone from diggers to digesters of great music.”
His last album, ‘Illuminate’, came out in August 2013 on Now Again and is available here

Posted in Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | No Comments |