Tumblr finds x2

I love that I can find things like this on someone’s Tumblr site but what really pisses me off is that the site strips away any title the original file had. If the person putting it up then doesn’t credit the image (which few seem to) then that info is lost or takes an amount of detective work to find. It’s exactly this that exasperates me when the copyright laws making the use of ‘orphaned work’ (ie images found online with no discernible author attributed) then give users a better legal position to exploit it rather than protect the original owner.

Posted in Design. | 6 Comments |

Photos from A Few Old Tunes last night

Photos by Emma Gutteridge from last night’s Boards of Canada-inspired do, ‘A Few Old Tunes’.
A great time was had by all, the atmosphere was relaxed, unhurried, the DJ booth set up shambolic at times, people drank and chatted, some even danced. A hell of a lot of great music was played with enough decent visuals to draw attention away from the fact that we were in a very basic bar in the middle of Shoreditch.
Of the four of us playing, Mach V, Tom Central, Josh Posthuman and myself, there were absolutely no expectations, no money involved and no idea how it would be received. Which is what made it so nice when people turned up and stayed, some until 2am, and packed the place out with smiles and familiar faces everywhere. Some had come quite far, I heard of people trekking from Oxford and Kent, one guy was in town with friends from the West Coast too. Complete ambiance and spoken word skits were dropped in the middle of the dance floor and no one batted an eyelid, there were no requests for Daft Punk and it was one of the most enjoyable London gigs I can remember since the old Solid Steel days at Ruby Lo.

Posted in Gigs, Photography. | 7 Comments |

Pat Hamou Osheaga poster set 1-4

The Osheaga festival in Montreal, Canada is just coming to a close and Pat Hamou has created these 4 posters for different concerts across the month. Released one a week they also all join up to form a landscape featuring the bands’ names – beautiful work from Pat although I think he’s probably sick of drawing bricks now.


and here’s one of them all together…

Posted in Art, Poster / flyer. | 2 Comments |

Kid Acne – Council Pop 10th anniversary edition

Check these out, Kid Acne has unearthed a pile of his old ‘Council Pop’ LPs and given them a makeover inside and out, added new material and more. He’s got them on sale in a very limited edition over here in a package that includes an extra disc of instrumentals and a customised ‘Radio Music’ 12″, the original single from the album. Three customised discs in an edition of 33 for £33 plus postage – bargain.


He made this 10 years ago with fellow artist Req One and it’s a possibly one of the most honest British rap albums you’ll ever hear. Totally unpretentious, Ed writes about what he knows and sees on the street rather than pretending it’s all about bitches, bling and being bad, he’s more likely to rap about dogs, dracula and going down the dole office.

Below is the piece Ed and Req One did that features on the back of the album cover.

Posted in Art, Records. | No Comments |

Edit* – 2nd version of ‘Semena Mertvykh’ video

http://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/BOC-Semena-Mertvykh-2-web.mov
I decided that the imagery in the Boards of Canada video I made for ‘Semena Mertvykh’, in the post before, was all wrong. Whilst both being excellent clips, the tone was over-bleak with too much grey and black and there wasn’t any warmth in the film. This track has really captured me from the new ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’ album – it’s dark and bleak but there’s warmth, hope and beauty there too, an incredibly hard thing to pull off. I thought it deserved a different approach and decided to make a new edit using the opening scenes from Richard Stanley‘s 1990 film, ‘Hardware’.

Posted in Film. | 3 Comments |

A Few Old Tunes – this Thurs at Catch, London

http://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Semena-Mertvykh-web.mov

This Thursday is a special one-off night that Josh from Posthuman and I came up with called ‘A Few Old Tunes’. This is a Boards of Canada-inspired night of music and visuals that we’ll be doing alongside Tom Central and Mach V at Catch on Kingsland Road. It’s free and we’ll be playing BOC and various things that either inspired them or that they inspired from 8pm until 2am.

The video above is something I edited up this morning using footage from Mischa Rozema‘s ‘OFFF Barcelona 2011 Main Titles’ and a film called ‘Forgotten Places’ by Zac Boyet, both sourced from Vimeo, over the final track from ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’, ‘Semena Mertvykh’.


Posted in Film. | No Comments |

African-themed Solid Steel with Melt Youself Down

This week’s Solid Steel has a definite African slant and I kick things off with a mix of music I call ‘Afreaka’. Percussion heavy funk with a tribal feel, from Madlib sample grabs to Malcolm McLaren or Eno & Byrne‘s imagined ethnic soundscapes. For part two we welcome Melt Yourself Down into the guest slot for a whole world fusion of flavours from Ali Hassan Kuban to the Mad Decent stable.

The band release their debut album on June 17th via the Leaf Label after a trio of killer singles that fuse post-punk Pigbag skronk funk with acid electronics. Catch them on tour across the UK right now with a must see live show that recently ripped Jools Holland‘s ‘Later’ show a new one. Check out their site for date, music and merch.

Jon More fills the Solid Steel 25th slot with a mix of African music proper. Over the past quarter of a century, if there’s one continent that has been well represented since day one, it’s Africa. Coldcut have always dug deep into it’s rich musical heritage and Jon More displays another fine selection of Afrobeat and African inspired music. There’s Bala Miller from Nigeria, Alemayehu Eshete from Ethiopia and Julien Babinga from Congo, plus music from Ocote Soul Sounds, Shina Williams and Troubleman.

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

David Vangel ‘I Heard You Sing’

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.

Posted in Music. | No Comments |

ColdKrushCuts up for repress at Beat Delete

Reissued Beat Delete 3xLP version

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.

Posted in DJ Food, Ninja Tune, Records. | No Comments |

Peter Serafinowicz mix on Solid Steel

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.

Posted in Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 5 Comments |

BOC-themed ‘A Few Old Tunes’ night in London

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.

Posted in DJ Food, Film, Gigs. | No Comments |