If you missed any of the showings of my full dome show at Dome Club UK earlier this year then the second batch of dates has been announced. First one this Thursday!
These are pretty old now but I’m a sucker for Dan McPharlin‘s work. Such beautiful examples of image and typography evoking a certain era perfectly.
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).
There’s been a tidal wave of posters for Pacific Rim this week, particularly like that they’re doing city-specific ones like these for London and Tokyo.
There are now some mighty banner ads too.
Also the Kaiju monsters are getting in on the poster action.
Lastly there are some very nice fan posters cropping up – lots over here as Blurppy.
Adam Pobiak did these great posters for GOAT‘s London gig last weekend in 4 different variations. They are nearly all sold out but you can grab the last ones here.
Yes that is a real photo, not computer trickery, Lemmy from Motorhead loved The Nolans.
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.
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)
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.
A seller (inddes)has put some seriously rare Syd Mead books up on eBay – a lot of them signed, with very low starting prices. Most of these books rarely come up for sale and when they do will start at around the £100 mark. Marvel at his beautiful design work, if I had the money I’d bid on the lot.
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.
Hauntology super group? John Foxx, Belbury Poly and The Advisory Circle – forthcoming on Ghost Box.
You get the impression that Jim Mahfood can pull these kind of illustrations off in his sleep, even though, some days he’s just on fire. Did you know he also has a podcast – The Beat Bee sessions – with Jane Dope and they just passed the 50th edition?
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.
Now a design cliché whilst highlighting just how adaptable those old designs were, the object as Penguin book gets another outing here. We’ve had record sleeves, film posters and more but now it’s the turn of comics to get their chance in the spotlight. When they’re done as well as these then I don’t mind at all, more examples by Fonografiks over here.
Really enjoying this at the moment, by Sinoia Caves aka Jeremy Schmidt, who was also responsible for the soundtrack to ‘Beyond The Black Rainbow’. Said film was flawed but visually and sonically gorgeous, due in no small part to Schmidt’s dark and terrifying electronic score.
This album is a lot lighter, much spacier and, with a couple of tracks over the 15 minute mark, much more of a cosmic trip. The 16 minute ‘Dwarf Reaching the Arch Wonder’ is the missing link between Tangerine Dream and Vangelis and wins title of the week by a mile.
I’m well behind on this as it was officially released in 2006 (after a self-release in 2002!). I can only hope that the constant fan rumblings for a proper release of the ‘…Black Rainbow’ soundtrack will be heard some day.
I found this excellent piece on Matt and Jon‘s beginnings and studio techniques in an old copy of Melody Maker this week. Jon wheels out a classic line, calling SAW ‘Slop, Fake It and Water Down‘, and for Matt, several things are just ‘a bastard’.
A Field In England – They’re over here Devil! from Rook Films on Vimeo.
Not sure how I missed this so far, looks great though. I detect the animation techniques of Julian House there. Interesting that this debuts on all platforms, including cinema, Channel 4, DVD and Blu-Ray, on July 5th.
A package dropped through the door last week and I instantly knew it was from Nigel Peake. He always addresses packages to ‘Master K. Foakes’ in the old tradition my grandmother used to. Inside was a new book, something of a departure for him as it’s a story this time rather than observational illustrations based on a theme.
Drawn during the winter month in Austria and Switzerland between 2012-3, ‘In The Dark’ tells of a boy’s fear of the dark and can be enjoyed by adult or child alike. With all the current talk of ‘Supermoons’ it seemed apt that the moon featured large (literally) in the story too. It’s self published and available from his website for £14, as are several other of his books and his Ninja Tune family tree poster. Check out Nigel’s equivalent of a ‘Fragile’ sticker too, ‘careful please’.
