Damn! Any regular reader of this blog knows that this combines two things I dearly love. There are 5 Lego maps of the London Underground on display around the capital until the end of the summer. More details and locations over at BuzzFeed.
Josh from Posthuman put this excellent little compilation of clips together for to Boards of Canada-inspired night we’re doing next week. Attack magazine have just posted a feature with quotes and anecdotes from Josh, Tom Central, Mach V and myself about why we’re doing it and what we find so special about the world BOC have created and, in turn inspired.
Check this new track out by Toronto’s David Vangel. It closed out the forthcoming ‘Counter Future’ compilation on Berlin’s Equinox label, the third in their series of Sound Exposure showcases. It’s called ‘I Heard you Sing’ and it’s beautiful, there is a video but I would recommend just listening in headphones with the lights down or eyes closed and imagining your own private visions.
Those lovely people at Beat Delete have put the mix PC and I did alongside DJ Krush in ’97 – ‘ColdKrushCuts’ – up for a 3LP repress. Originally only available on CD, (aside from an ultra limited 2xLP version in Japan) they have set a 200 copy limit to be reached before the pressing is closed of which a third have been filled as of writing. Weirdly I only posted about the origin of the ‘The Bug in The Rug‘ sample from the same mix two weeks back.
Beat Delete have steadily been adding other labels to their repress roster too, you can now find selections from Tru Thoughts, KPM (The Big Beat!), Fat City, Mr Bongo, Brownswood, Leaf, Catskills, Ghostly International and Celluloid amongst others. I’m also in the process of curating a compilation of special oddities, offcuts and overlooked tracks for a possible future pressing with them.
A very special mix went up yesterday on the Solid Steel Soundcloud, something we’ve been angling for for months now and finally the stars have aligned perfectly. On the eve on the release of Boards of Canada‘s new LP, Peter Serafinowicz, actor, comedian, musician and voice of Darth Maul himself, has provided us with a BOC-inspired mix including some of his own compositions as well. It’s a beautiful collection of tracks and a perfect accompaniment to the albums which is hitting UK letterboxes all over as I type.
Also not to forget DK opening the show with his usual style and grace and another lovely guest mix from First Word artist Yosi Horikawa on the eve of his album release.
Here’s a trailer I put together to give a flavour of what’s in ‘The Search Engine’ full dome show, of course you can’t get the real surround sound feel of the dome but you get the idea.
To celebrate the release of the new Boards of Canada album and – purely because Josh from Posthuman and I would really love a space to play their kind of music all night long – we bring you ‘A Few Old Tunes’. We’ll be joined on the decks by Tom Central from Keep Up! and Mark Van der Vord on visuals.
The premise is simple: occupy the upstairs room of Catch on June 20th for a night of music and film by or inspired by Boards of Canada. Don’t worry, it won’t be back to back BOC, we want this to be more than a 1 band love-in. Expect plenty of Ghost Box, electronica and hauntological material with a fine set of suitably degraded visuals to go with it.
Looks like Boards of Canada and Warp will be streaming the new album this Monday night, 9pm GMT, via their site.
We went back to ’89 last week for United States of Audio‘s De La Soul ‘3 Feet High & Rising’ tribute mix and this week we slip another year to ’88 with Robin from Hexstatic. For this week’s Solid Steel 25th guest mix he takes us on a trip to Clink Street in London Bridge, here’s why…
“1988, 25 years ago, and the ‘Summer Of Love’ in London, little did I know how much this street would come to mean to me. An explosion of new music, new headspace, new ideas. The birth of Solid Steel on Kiss FM. It is highly coincidental that driving from the suburbs up to the infamous Clink Street raves for the first time we were listening to that exact show on the radio. To Borough, and down a side street,… at the time nobody went to this area. You could park your car on a double yellow all weekend and not get a ticket. And so into Clink Street, the RIP nights, run by Mr C and his merry cohorts. The sound here was always a bit ‘darker’, heavier beats, stripped down music and decor, the strobe and smoke. This place was definitely about the dance,..you couldn’t really hear anything but music and see anything but your hands in front of your face 
Evil Eddie and Kid Batchelor were my favourite DJ’s at the time and I’m pretty sure Coldcut played there too? Little did I know. The Jungle Brothers even came down once to do a PA of ‘I’ll House You’. They looked pretty bemused. There’s a video of it on Youtube somewhere, with Mark Moore jacking at the end. Skip forward nearly a decade of dance and I’m back in Clink Street, Winchester Wharf, a few feet opposite Clink prison, at Ninja Tune HQ, talking to Matt Black about animations for their forthcoming album. Who’d have thought it. I spend a fantastic few years there and later teamed up with Stuart (Warren-Hill) as Hexstatic, we hire our own studio in the building and embark on the task of making an AV album with a couple of pocket calculators. The building was great, full of music and arts people coming in and out all the time, (David Byrne and Jean-Jacques Perrey just dropped in once!) I was signed to a label, travelling and working with people who I greatly admired. I go past now and again. It’s luxury flats and a bloody Starbucks now 
“
To the music. We start with Nitro Deluxe and a track that bridged the gap between eclectic clubs like the Opera House and the start of Acid House, a few years old but was still getting played years later on the scene. Cultural Vibe’s ‘Ma Foom Bey’ had such a heavy slow sound, coupled with the African chanting it was the first time I’d heard a mix like this,..early Tony Humphries on the cut. Next up Sueno Latino, the first ‘Balearic’ track I came across, it would always send the floors into a trance wherever it was played. ‘Voodoo Ray’ was arguably the first UK ‘Acid House’ record, it sounded so fresh when it came out, fusing an almost ‘electro’ sound with the 303, people would always dance a certain way to that record, freaky like. Another UK record and Baby Ford’s ‘Oochy Koochy’, this was the straight up sound of the early scene to be sure. Next, one of several from Todd ‘The God’ Terry in his ‘Black Riot’ moniker. I loved this record so much I danced to it in a car park in Kingston once. ‘Big Fun’ was termed ‘techno’ on release,..seems funny now,..but it was also a big hit in the UK, Inner City even shot the video in London to capture the vibe of the time. Fallout’s ‘The Morning After’ had that lovely, slightly melancholic vibe that always felt refreshing, especially early in the morning. Think Tank and WestBam, were those freaky records that would spin everyone out,..turning to a friend with a massive grin and gesturing,..”what the hell is this?!”. Jungle Brothers get their ‘House’ in order next and then into more Todd product with a reworking of the classic ‘Weekend’. Next, the all time hands in the air anthem of anthems, ‘Let The Music Use You’ just brought a super smiley, almost spiritual vibe to dance floors,..I think most DJ’s tried to judge the ‘peak’ moment to drop it,..matey Next up, probably my favourite proper ‘acid’ track of all time, Bam Bam’s ‘Give It To Me’,.. 25 years later I still can’t decide if it’s pure genius or complete rubbish, followed by two more ‘Acid Trax’ classics from Charles B and the mighty Adonis. Stakker next and the video game sampling ‘Humanoid’, another track with that distinctive UK sound, fusing break beats with acid and crazy samples that later spawned FSOL. KC Flightt bringing a hip hop vibe to house without the cheesy ‘Hip-House’ tag and into another mix of ‘UK centric’ elements with the Afro Acid mix of Mory Kante’s ‘Yeke Yeke’,…and we finish on the upbeat sound of Longsy D and the reggae acid of ‘This Is Ska’,..yes mate.”
This era (or slightly later) was highlighted by Vice magazine in a surprisingly non-smug fashion when Clive Martin wrote an article on the YouTube comments made by partygoers under classic rave anthems. Read the comments under his article as well. We didn’t think about it at the time, same with music in the 90’s, it was just everywhere, classic after classic release, week after week. All of these tracks stand up there with any of the acknowledged Rock and Pop classics we’re constantly bombarded with on radio and in the press. I wonder when the music magazines are going to wake up and start writing features on these artists and their legacies rather than recycled the smallest piece of information on the Beatles, Stones, Who, Dylan, Hendrix et al into features for eternity?
Beautiful new video and song by The Heliocentrics from their new album, ’13 Degrees of Reality’ on Now Again. The video reminds me of old Len Lye animations, make sure you watch it in HD for the best quality. It was done by Plastic Horse apparently.
Many times I’ve been asked what the origin of the story of ‘The Bug In The Rug’ was, a spoken word piece that was overlaid in the ColdKrushCuts mix that PC and I did in 1997. Until recently even I didn’t know where it came from because the original source was one of PC’s inclusions, possibly sourced from Jon More‘s record collection.
Patrick took a monologue from this record, ‘Four Dreams of Man’ by Dr. John Furbay, heavily edited it and laid it over Hex‘s track, ‘Harmonic’. The record is a kind of lecture and motivational speech about man’s place in the world released on Lecture Recordings in, I guess, the early 60’s.
This is my copy, it’s actually signed by Furbay, who was an international traveler and speaker at many schools, institutions and companies. He believed the world was getting better and could foresee greater integration of different races and cultures in the future. You can hear the original section of the mix below, the speech starts about 2.10 mins in.
I did this on Friday night because – for purely selfish reasons – I wanted the original to go on longer. It’s ‘Reach For The Dead’, the first track made available by Warp Records from the new Boards of Canada album, ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’. The album is out on June 10th and you can pre-order it here.
“Now waaaaaiit a minute!” People are really pulling out the stops for the Solid Steel 25th year anniversary guest mixes at the moment. Last week Gilles Peterson not only made a Brit Funk mix but also a special video promo to go with it.
This week though, sees the return of United States of Audio aka Dave Trigg with what I’m already calling ‘Mix of the Year’. Riffing off the same idea as our ‘Paul’s Boutique’ reconstruction last year, he takes on De La Soul‘s classic ‘3 Feet High & Rising’ LP. I’ll turn it over to Dave for the explanation:
“Several years in the making (well it’s an idea that’s been knocking around for a while anyway!), and including around 100 tracks, this is my personal tribute to De La Soul’s ‘3 Feet High and Rising’. Using original sample sources, album tracks, interviews and rarities, ‘How High’s The Water Mama’ tells the story of one of hip hop’s most influential albums.
When De La Soul’s debut album dropped in 1989 I was ten years old. Yet, by some stroke of amazing good fortune a cassette copy of ‘3 Feet High and Rising’ found its way into my hands thanks to my best mate’s older brother (though I’m pretty sure said brother had no idea of this fact!). The music was a revelation and had a significant influence in shaping my musical tastes – in fact I can’t think of any other album that has had such a profound effect on me as this one. Thus ‘3 Feet High and Rising’ holds a special place in my musical affections. Now, some twenty-five years after its original release, it’s time to pay my respect to Pos, Dove, Mase, and Prince Paul…”
The pace and flow of this mix is a masterclass in how to put songs together and the ease with which he balances the sonics of a huge number of vastly different genres can only have meant hours of mixdown time. The reconstruction of the ‘Cool Breeze On The Rocks’ section is worth the price of admission alone (with a great nod to Solid Steel too). It gives a fresh take on ‘3 Feet…’ and reminds you of how many great songs they recontexualised within it. It’s also a history lesson, with interview segments where the band talk about the making of the album, the hippy tag and the sample lawsuits.
This is the one to beat in 2013. Also, in a bizarre coincidence, the latest issue of Wax Poetics features De La talking about the making of the very same album.
If you haven’t already pre-ordered then go here.
Fantastic flyer for a Sun Ra gig from an excellent set of old Post Punk flyers I found on the reinvigorated Flickr the other week.
It’s difficult enough to get a handle on the various activities and schemes of Psychedelic Satanism that Jason Atomic has his hand in.
Just to say that this weekend sees the first of his Super Satanic Saturdays at the Resistance Gallery.
Go to the Satanic Mojo blog for more background info on the upcoming comic and exhibition based on his exploits. The video above gives you an idea of where he’s heading, sounds right up my street.
Finally, after a couple of teases by Ninja Tune, I can show this beauty off, something that’s been in the pipeline for a while now. Today is Bonobo‘s big gig at the Roundhouse, a full day of music curated by Simon Green and rounded off with a performance by him and his band. With the likes of Gilles Peterson, Machine Drum, The Invisible, Adam Buxton’s Bug, a Boiler Room-hosted space and Solid Steel broadcasting snippets of the event on the web, it should be epic. To make it even more epic 500 lucky golden ticket winners will each receive one of these 12″ zoetrope picture discs of his already classic track, ‘Cirrus’.
I took the original archive loops from Cyriak‘s incredible video for the track and broke them down into circular visuals to make a spinning animated version. Dating back to the first primitive animation techniques of our time, the zoetrope relies on a viewer to see the action happen. This is included with the disc along with assembly instructions so that people can watch while the disc plays. See the above film for an approximation of what the disc does when spinning.
This is all rounded off by a beautiful Leif Podhajsky design on the reverse side. Lovely.
Shortly after Storm Thorgerson died I did an interview with Matt Meuse of CBC Music about why sleeve art matters and where it will go next. Also in the interview are Jeff Jank who designs for Stones Throw and David Jones (pictured) who owns the Vinyl Records store in Vancouver.
The Image Duplicator show opened last night at the Orbital Gallery and was a great success with artists and punters out in force. The standard of work was excellent and centre stage was Dave Gibbons with his take on Lichtenstein‘s ‘Whaam!’, retitled ‘Whaat!?’ He graciously signed and chatted to all and was a thoroughly top bloke. Rian Hughes and Jason Atomic did a fine job organising everything, as did Mark Blamire in getting all the prints made and packaged up for people to buy. 
Prints of selected items are available to buy online here.
Special mentions for Garry Leach who turned up with a newly finish Popeye piece called ‘Plop Art’, complete with toilet roll, and Michelle Amir‘s Barbie car hosting a couple apeing ‘In The Car’. Massive thanks to Karl and everyone at Orbital Comics as well for hosting it at their gallery and providing hospitality. I was so pleased to be a part of it and even managed to sell my piece too! Second comic-related result of the week. The show is on at the Orbital Gallery inside Orbital Comics, 8 Great Newport Street, London, WC2H 7JA until May 31st after which it moves to the A&D gallery in Chiltern St.
For more photos see Steve Cook’s ever-excellent Secret Oranges blog or Rich Johnston‘s Bleeding Cool feature
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