Pacific Rim – the verdict

I should have written about Pacific Rim over last weekend but didn’t find time, but I’m happy to report that it was excellent for a big summer sci-fi blockbuster.  Whilst not perfect, it certainly lived up to the promise all those posters I’ve been putting up. As far as giant robots fighting giant monsters goes, it will take some beating (no pun intended). The Jaegers (the bots) looked incredible, with each one having its own distinct visual personality to tell them apart and they had weight when they moved even if the science behind them was shot through with holes. In fact, don’t even try to start picking apart that side of things as the film would just fall down immediately. The Kaiju (the monsters) are also not your run of the mill brainless city-destroying cannon fodder, they have a few tricks up their sleeves that you don’t see coming along with a reason why they’re there in the first place.

Character-wise it was full of stereotypes with some seriously clunky dialogue at times, my main gripe being that we didn’t need two kooky scientists, one straight man to play against the oddball would have been more effective. Sometimes I wanted it played a little more seriously than it was, Ron Perlman hammed it up for all he’s worth which, along with the aforementioned scientists, made it seem a lot less terrifying in light of what was happening. Idris Elba was very good though as the first in command with a couple of great lines.

The 3D was decent 99% of the time, not forced like the Star Trek: Into Darkness trailer I saw some months back where it was so unnatural as to be virtually unwatchable. Compared to it’s nearest rival – Michael Bay’s Transformers trilogy – it beats all three with a rocket-powered punch, and that’s just in the first 20 minutes. This is how to do big budget mech movies, less of a hasty, blurry washing machine battle, Del Toro brings something more visually coherent. It’s been said that this could start a new franchise as there’s enough scope before and after the storyline here, let’s hope he’s on board if they do continue (and that he somehow slips in Hellboy 3 along the way).

Not much of a deconstructive critique I know, but I got exactly what I was expecting and loved it although I did feel a little shell shocked as the credits rolled in the IMAX, watching it at that size is really the way to do it. Next films I’m looking forward to are the sci-fi epic Elysium, then Gravity which I’m told has some of the most ground-breaking sequences and cgi ever seen (and this comes from someone who worked on it at the Framestore).

Posted in Film. | 1 Comment |

Cyriak does Bloc Party’s new video


The ever-brilliant Cyriak takes his Photoshop scalpel to Bloc Party for his latest piece, combining footage from two existing videos apparently. As with all his work, he just keeps going, long after most people would have stopped and repeated an earlier clip again, he takes it another step further. Incredible.

Posted in Film. | No Comments |

Solid Steel line up T-shirt 2004

Just found this, the special T-shirt we made after the first year of the Solid Steel night at Ruby Lo to thank everyone who played. Ruby Lo (short for Ruby Lounge) was a basement bar in London’s West End near Bond Street, down a side street by Selfridges. DK and I were the residents each month, the night was only £3 but we didn’t announce who was playing, you had to trust that we’d get decent guests. We really wanted to do a residency at a place where it was intimate, had seating and a DJ booth on the floor rather than a stage. As it turned out, the booth was in the middle of everything with a dancefloor on one side and seating directly behind so we were virtually in the round.

What a line up, 2005 was just as good, I need to find that list too. It would fill up with after work drinkers early on but they would clear out by about 9pm and our crowd would come down to see the set list pinned to the wall with who would be playing. I’m pretty sure this was Diplo‘s first ever London DJ appearance, he was playing Fabric the next night and we only got him because he wasn’t announced. For Luke Vibert‘s appearance he bought Aphex with him and for the December resident set DK and I gave away every record we played after we’d finished with it (pre-Serato days).

Posted in DJ Food, Gigs, Solid Steel. | 4 Comments |

More postcard records from Postmanlove

These two 5″ postcard records have been available for some time now but I missed them the first time round. The first is by 2econd Class Citizen (above) and the second by Glen Porter (below). Artwork on these is by Toobz and the music is exclusive.

They are the first in a new series by the Postmanslove label, from the people behind Vinyl Postcards in Austria. Now up to no.5, they come in an editon of 200 with 50 in an even more limited edition with a personalised stamp.

Grab one from their online shop.

Posted in Music, Records. | 1 Comment |

Henry Flint at the San Diego Comic Convention 2013

News hot off the press concerning 2000ad’s line up for SDCC 2013 – the biggest comic book convention in the world: “We are pleased to announce that our very special guest for the event will be Judge Dredd artist Henry Flint, who is drawing the hotly-anticipated comic book sequel to last year’s DREDD movie. He will be signing and sketching at the booth throughout the weekend.

Earthlets should visit Booth #2806 for exclusive limited edition comic art posters by Flint, as well as limited-edition Judge Dredd and Zenith T-shirts!”

Now, that’s good news, Henry finally making a star appearance overseas and being confirmed as the artist on the Dredd sequel comic too! Also check out his stunning cover to one of the stories of the year in 2012 – ‘Trifecta’. The triple-plot whammy that unveiled without warning last year in the pages of 2000ad to massive acclaim. It’s finally collected into one volume with this great *EDIT -LENTICULAR* cover. (Animated gif, stolen from the Everything Comes Back To 2000ad site – check them out, well recommended)


Posted in 2000ad, Comics. | No Comments |

Doug Shipton mix and Hocus Focus night

There’s a new mix available by Doug Shipton from the Finder’s Keepers collective that was recorded for the Cinefamily gig in LA recently (or it may be a recreation of his set). It’s a half hour mix of spacey New Age electronics, the new love of the digging set it seems. Great poster here too, featuring Suzanne Ciani with a head full of wires, presumably by the man Votel, he really should do a book of his work some day.
And here’s another for an event coming up, a Hocus Focus night featuring Andy’s missus, Jane Weaver, re-scoring ‘Belladonna of Sadness’ live as well as a screening of ‘Vali The Witch of Positano’ (no, me neither). Love what these guys are doing, wish they would do more down South but then we’re pretty spoilt anyway.

Posted in Design, Event, Film, Poster / flyer. | No Comments |

Ninja Tune label exhibiton in Pau, France

A new retrospective exhibition about Ninja Tune just opened in Pau in the Pyrénées, France at the André Labarrere Mediatheque. Curated by Fred Elalouf of the Ping Pong promotional agency in Paris, it also ties in with Ping Pong’s 15th year of existence. They have represented the label in France throughout their past decade and a half through thick and thin.

Earlier this year Fred visited the Ninja offices and my studio on a mission to gather as much original material as he could find for this event. Original art, promotional posters, sleeves, videos, slides and other ephemera are all present, some of it never exhibited outside the UK before. I have to say, he’s done an amazing job as you can see by some of these photos.

The exhibition just opened and is on for the next two months, closing on August 24th. It’s free (I think) so, if you’re in that part of the world, go and take a look as there are a lot of items that will go back into private collections when it’s over. Original Kid Acne, Mr Scruff and Kid Koala artwork hangs with cover proofs and promotional toys. The model robot that was projected on for the front cover of the ‘Funkungfusion’ compilation is on display as well as some of the original drawings for the now famous Ninja logos.

Posted in Design, Event, Ninja Tune, Openmind designs. | No Comments |

‘O Is For Orange’ AV mix for Solid Steel 25


This week I decided to put down some of the set I made for ‘A Few Old Tunes’, the Boards of Canada-inspired night we did on June 20th. Because I’d edited so much video to go with it, I thought I’d finally get round to my first solo video mix too, so here it is.

(UPDATE: Vimeo closed the Solid Steel account that hosted this mix after three copyright strikes so it’s currently offline but some kind soul has uploaded it to their own ‘Solid Steel’ account here but I can’t embed it here)

‘O Is For Orange’ is the sound of weathered tape saturation, detuned analogue synthesisers, vinyl crackle and machine hum. It’s also the look of unfocused, flickering lenses, mirror image filters and blurry grain embedded into film. Unofficial fan films sit alongside experimental animation, public information shorts and even the odd official video. Material that BoC took inspiration from blends with their own work as well as many that they inspired.

I make no apologies for the quality of the vision here, some of it is only available via the web at frustratingly small sizes. In a couple of instances I’ve actually downgraded the look and quality of the image to make it blend in better and in others, even my best attempts at filtering can’t disguise the low quality of the source material. No HD or widescreen here, I’ve gone back to 4:3 for this one even though some of the clips were originally 16:9 or wider.

On the Vimeo page I’ve endeavored to list as many of the videos and their respective directors as possible alongside the track list. When we’ve done video mixes in the past we’ve repeatedly found that some film makers take exception to having their work used like this, whereas few artists would email you requesting that you take their track out of a mix. I can see why, especially if a promo they’re done for one group ends up being re-edited and bolted on to a completely different track.

Anyway, enough guff, thanks to everyone who inspired this mix, especially Boards of Canada, and everyone who requested that we recorded our sets for ‘A Few Old Tunes’ last week. Josh from Posthuman‘s is already up in audio form (here) and I’m reliably told that Tom Central has his waiting in the wings for next week.

Posted in DJ Food, Film, Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 18 Comments |