R.I.P. Ewan Robertson 1985-2012

I was shocked to hear of the death of Ewan Robertson yesterday, one half of design duo Oscar & Ewan who created many iconic covers for Ninja Tune and Big Dada g others. Ewan also recorded as Offshore for Big Dada and had just released his first album only a month ago –‘Bake Haus’.  Alongside Oscar Bauer, Ewan created some iconic sleeves for the labels including Roots Manuva, Wiley, Bonobo and the recent Amon Tobin set housed inside a ‘flower press’.

I only met him once or twice – first at the exhibition for the release of the Ninja Tune ’20 years of Beats & Pieces’ book – and he was friendly, humble and easy to talk to. We’d corresponded over email many times in order to get his and Oscar’s work well represented in the book and he graciously agreed to show the plaster cast of Roots Manuva’s head they’d made for the ‘Slime & Reason’ LP campaign at the opening.

He was always super helpful and supplied many exclusive images from behind the scenes which showed the processes they went through when designing. My thoughts go out to his family and friends, he left a small but striking caché of music and visuals behind that will ensure he isn’t forgotten.

Posted in Design, Event. | 1 Comment |

First full look at Pacific Rim’s Jaeger robots

The first trailer drops on Dec 10th but here’s a look at the Gipsy Danger monster-fighting Jaeger bot from Guillermo Del Toro’s forthcoming Pacific Rim film, due out next July. The silhouette of a human at the bottom shows the scale of it.

And now there’s a second one, a Russian ‘Cherno Alpha‘ bot, there are also a couple of teaser films doing the rounds and ‘leaked documents’ relating to these blueprints.

And then there were four five: that’s some BIG robot action next year

Posted in Design, Film. | 4 Comments |

2000ad prog 1811

This is next week’s 2000ad with amazing wraparound cover by D’israeli (I subscribe so get it 4 days early). Not content with celebrating 35 years worth of publishing, the Dredd3D film and Prog 1800 in 2012, the comic has gone into uncharted territory in what is proving to be a golden year for them.

2000ad is an anthology title with four or five different strips running each week featuring characters in – usually – unrelated worlds. Without warning a month ago events in three of the strips suddenly began to intertwine and form a much bigger story which has grown to epic proportions since. Centered around Judge Dredd and the fallout from the equally epic ‘Day of Chaos’ story earlier this year, they’ve managed to outdo themselves AGAIN with this slice of storytelling.

Comics have crossed over before and plenty of universes and characters have fought with and against each other over the decades but the beauty of 2000ad is that they’re all contained in one place. To have several all suddenly tie together without even a single mention is genius. In any other comic this would have been trailed and trumpeted for months preceding its arrival in the hope of attracting press and attention for the title. Rather than underestimating their reader’s intelligence 2000ad has chosen to sneak this upon us with no warning and this is why they’re still the galaxy’s greatest.

Also this week, the other two strips not part of the tri-story arc have now concluded, leaving next week’s climax to play out across the whole issue! I’m looking forward to seeing how they intertwine the three strips and different artist’s styles – will they be separate stories or one huge strip with contrasting panels on each page? Whatever they do it will be the end of an incredible year for the title which concludes with their annual 100 page 2013 issue in 2 weeks before taking a break for Xmas. There’s never been a better time to be reading this, either physically or digitally.

UPDATE: There’s a fascinating post over on Pete Wells‘ 2000ad Covers Uncovered site about the making of this stunning cover.

Posted in Art, Comics. | 3 Comments |

Vangelis – Sex Power!

Being on a bit of a Vangelis trip recently I decided to check out his back catalogue on Discogs and see what I was missing. One of his first outings was this soundtrack to the French film ‘Sex Power’, starring Jane Birkin amongst others (makes mental note to track that one down).

More reasons why a resource like Discogs is so essential these days (something I touched on a few weeks back) – it may not be complete but it’s as indespensible to me as Wikipedia.

Posted in Uncategorized. | 1 Comment |

New DJ Food mix of Israeli esoterica and radiophonica

On a recent trip to Tel Aviv I was given a huge amount of music, both new and old, from Israel and was knocked out by the quality of it. These form the bulk of a new mix for Solid Steel and you can see a heavy bias towards the Mordy Laye and the Group Modular record I posted about the other week which is now out on vinyl and download.
Hear and buy the album in full here or hop over to group member Markey Funk’s Mixcloud page to digest one of his great Modular mixes. He, along with group partner Mule Driver, will be putting together a special Solid Steel guest mix soon…

Posted in Mixes/Solid Steel, Solid Steel. | 1 Comment |

The Octoplayer

[vimeo width=”640″ height=”350″]http://vimeo.com/50267638#[/vimeo]

Created by Mark Taylor and Thad Povey. Love the painted records creating sounds when the needle hits, what fun you could have with this although it’s not immediately obvious how you could change each record.

 

Posted in Records. | No Comments |

Transfusion – Vampires vs Robots from IDW

This looks promising, we’ve had vampires vs werewolves, vampires vs zombies, vampires vs vampires, now… vampires versus robots.

Actually it seems that the tagline here is a bit misleading and the robots are actually vampires (not sure how that works).

Nevertheless, the art – by Menton3 –  is gorgeous, reminding me of Ashley Wood‘s work back when he was in his comic prime or the old Kent Williams/Jon J Muth Wolverine book.

Forget Transformers, this is Transfusion – a 3 issue series, written by Steve Niles. that just debuted from IDW, I’ve not read it yet but it looks pretty bleak as it’s set in the future where the remnants of the human race are hunted by robots who need blood to survive.

There’s a short preview from issue 1 over on CBR.

Posted in Comics. | No Comments |

A graphic tribute to Pete Namlook and Fax records

I can’t begin to pretend I’ve heard even a couple of dozen releases on Pete Namlook‘s Fax +49-69/450464 label (to give it its full title). But those that I did hear, and own, have stuck with me. Releases like Air (not the french duo who came later), Alien Community, Silence, Dark Side of the Moog, Sequential, Sea Biscuit and Dreamfish are all part of the ambient resurgence of the early to mid 90’s. Dreamfish was the moniker of Pete Namlook’s collaboration with Mixmaster Morris, who was a huge champion of the label and got some of it licensed to the Rising High label in the UK.

Namlook (Kuhlmann backwards, see what he did there?) was releasing an album a week at one point, starting off at around 500 copies on CD and progressing to 1-2000 at one point. He had a bewildering array of colour coded releases on various sub-labels, at least half of which he either recorded solo or collaborated on. The poster above is only a select number of titles, probably ranging somewhere from the early to late 90’s and doesn’t include any vinyl from the same time. Constant collaborators like Bill Laswell, Klaus Schulze, Ritchie Hawtin, Dr Atmo, Atom Heart, David Moufang and Charles Uzzel-Edwards (aka Pure Evil) are just some of the names you can find in the credits on the many releases from Fax.

I’d been thinking of doing a poster like this for some time, just to see what it would look like to put a ton of the earlier Fax releases together. Unfortunately it took the early demise of the label’s founder and driving force to make it happen. At one time you could spot a Fax record a mile off by the circular design, the Bauhaus font and an image that usually had early Photoshop filter experiments :) When out-sourcing design work to other people (in the case of Daniel Pemberton‘s ‘Bedroom’ album that I laid out) there were strict instructions and templates that had to be adhered to, everything had to fit into the label look. These instructions arrived by fax of course…

R.I.P. Peter Kuhlmann / Pete Namlook.

Download a high-res version of the poster HERE

Posted in Design, Music. | 20 Comments |

R.I.P. Pete Namlook

Very sad to hear the news of Pete Namlook‘s passing (aka Peter Kuhlmann) artist and founder of the Fax +49-69/450464 label from Germany. Back in the early 90’s a lot of his releases were very big in both Telepathic Fish and my early Solid Steel sets through his hook up with Rising High in the UK.

All his label sleeves had a distinctive house style for many years and were colour-coded to alert the buyer to the music contained within. I even laid out a sleeve for one of his releases once, a debut album by a young kid, just out of school called Daniel Pemberton – I wonder what happened to him?

R.I.P. Pete

Posted in Event. | 3 Comments |

Jim Mahfood ‘Ask For Janice’ Paul’s Boutique mag

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A new remix edition of Jim Mahfood’s classic, out of print 2007 mini-comic all about the ‘Paul’s Boutique’ album has just been released (see cover of the original version, left). For serious music heads and comic book fans alike, the man who did the illustration for our ‘Caught In The Middle Of A 3 Way Mix’ has updated his ode to the Beastie’s classic LP.

Each track is dissected with lyrics, samples and making-of facts alongside illustrations referencing the subject matter. It’s a beautiful tribute to the album, which Jim has said he listens to at least once every week, and made him the first choice for an image when we were compiling our mix.

The new version features a brand new wrap-around cover, new inside front and inside back cover art, 32 pages, black ink printed on light yellow paper. Signed and numbered by Jim. Also available, the new ‘Paul’s Boutique’ Limited Edition Giclee Print and the ASK FOR JANICE Funk Pack. Dig it! Available here…

Posted in Comics, Music. | No Comments |

Pepe Deluxé – Queen of the Wave Deluxe version

When Pepe Deluxé do anything they don’t do it by halves, in fact they go the whole nine yards and then add a load more into the mix for good measure. What emerges is music and imagery so multi-layered it requires repeat listens to pierce the surface and process the motherlode of information contained within.

One of the reasons I love Pepe is because there is genuinely no one like them, they are a one-off and a band seemingly working in and across separate time zones whose records sound so out of place you wonder if they’ll ever even find reappraisal 20 years down the line. This isn’t a criticism, it’s to be admired that a band can strike out so single-mindedly whilst ignoring any current forms of music that are deemed ‘hip’ and ‘cool’. In fact it’s testament to Pepe and Catskills for leaving off the many remixes they’ve had over the last releases as, with the exception of Husky Rescue‘s cover of ‘Supersonic’, none of them came close to Pepe’s vision and sounded like they were trying to force the band into a modern day setting (sorry guys, just my opinion).

The new Deluxe version of their ‘Queen of the Wave’ album is no different, in fact it ups the ante considerably and throws everything AND the kitchen sink at you over 2 CDs, a DVD and a 64 page booklet inside a hard backed book. The original album is present but the ‘Esoteric Pop Opera In Three Parts’ has suddenly expanded to three discs, the second with versions, new and unused tracks and an easy-listening style EP of selected songs. The DVD includes videos for singles both new and old as well as stems for budding remixers. Everything about it says EPIC, the original album is one in itself but bolstered by the 2nd disc, DVD and a book that has crammed enough material for 100 pages into 64 then the deal is sealed.

No space is left un-filled and we learn everything from recording history to how they shot the video for ‘Night & Day’ with real magic tricks and all. The book shouldn’t work, it breaks so many rules of what good design is with up to 10 different fonts competing for space on any one page and a layout that’s more scrapbook than grid. Yet it does work and adds to the music is so many ways, placing the album visually between steampunk and psychedelia with nods to Tiki and Analogue electronics from the golden age. One minute you think you’re looking at an issue of Practical Electronics then it’s a poster in the style of a traveling circus or a Richard Hamilton-esque collage.


Anyway, enough of me blathering on, check the video below as it’s another brilliant Pepe production with the classic ‘Virtual Chicken Little Funk Operator’ set to become legendary. You can BUY the deluxe package from Catskills HERE.

Posted in Books, Design, Music, Packaging. | 1 Comment |

Jonanthan Edwards’ Imagined Landscapes book

Jonathan Edwards has a few new books out as well as featuring in the upcoming ‘Creature Couture’ book by Felt Mistress. This one is called ‘Imagined Landscapes’ and features all sorts of weird and wonderful locations in his unique style.

If you follow his twitter you’ll have seen these popping up over the last year or so and he’s collected them together in a 32 page sketchbook. I love the colours on the cover and wished there was more colour inside but then again it is a sketchbook.

He has copies in his online shop as well as more sketchbooks, prints, original art, comics and he’ll even do a bespoke portrait of you.

Posted in Art, Books. | No Comments |