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Yesterday I finally had time to go back to the Pure Evil Gallery to take some photos of the work in situ, I didn’t have time on the night as there were too many people and we didn’t finish setting up until the last minute. There are a few reviews online of the show by Contemporary Talks, Scraffer and Inkymole with one promised by Art Review too.
Further to the 2000ad-related posts this week to mark the comic’s 35th birthday here’s a nicely timed gem that turned up recently on Pete Fowler‘s blog. In 2005 I took part in an exhibition in London curated by Playlounge called ‘Zarjaz’, the brief being for artists who were fans of the comic to reinterpret any character in their own way. I chose to do a fantasy cover that never was featuring Torquemada, a Terminator and the many tunnels of Termight, a homage to Kevin O’Neill and very influenced by this cover, which I later managed to acquire from him. In hindsight it’s a bit overworked but I included it as an oddity in the current exhibition at the Pure Evil Gallery as the timing seemed good.
Anyway, another artist in the ‘Zarjaz’ exhibition was Pete Fowler, who did a gorgeous T-shirt design featuring Nemesis as one of his wood sprites, which I love and still wear to this day. Amazingly he’s just unveiled a toy version of the same design (maybe as a tie-in to the anniversary?) that he’s done with Togetherplus. I’ll be wanting one of them then.
I’ve had a few inquiries about the limited prints available only through the Pure Evil Gallery for the duration of the show as I mentioned them in the recap from last Thursday. Sorry if it’s not been too clear but we decided at the last minute to make them available as they were going to be a one-off just for the show.
There are two giclée posters available from the Pure Evil gallery for the duration of the exhibition (on now until Feb 12th), the prints are as follows – ‘Octopus’ (from the ‘Magpies, Maps & Moons’ cover – above) and ‘Beats Per Second’ (from the ‘Shape Of Things That Hum’ – below).
These are both editions of 33, come signed by the two of us and anyone can order via the web or phone too here, you don’t have to go to the gallery personally. They measure 64.5cm x 47.1cm, cost £60 each and will be mailed out a few weeks after the exhibition finishes.
The previous three prints – ‘One Man’s Weird…’, ‘Life Cycle of a Machine’ and ‘Cosmonaut’ are also available to pre-order from the gallery or from Scraffer.com. ‘One Man’s Weird…’ is a signed edition of 33 at £65 and each one comes with a unique doodle in the speech bubble by Henry Flint. ‘Life Cycle of a Machine’ is a signed edition of 33 at £60 and ‘Cosmonaut’ is a signed edition of 100 at £55.
Here’s how they all look framed up at the exhibition:
Kevin O’Neill – original inks, Tom Frame – colours (unconfirmed) – ‘Nemesis The Warlock Book III’ Pgs 16-17, 1983
(53.7 x 35.5 cm, acetate overlay, watercolour on card).
Production artwork for colour centre spread, 2000ad prog 347.
I was 8 when I saw my first issue of 2000ad – Prog 61 to be exact, the start of the Cursed Earth saga, what a point of entry. Since then I’ve collected the missing 60 before it and read every issue including annuals, specials, the Megazine and even acquired about hundred pages of original art.
I’ve seen pretenders come and go (Starlord, Tornado, Crisis, Blast, Revolver, Toxic) and endured a mid to late 80’s slump as the graphic novel boom led writers and artists to other pastures. I’ve been lucky enough to work with artists like Henry Flint and Jason Brashill on record sleeves and meet others like Ian Gibson, Rufus Dayglo, Steve Cook and Rian Hughes.
The Judge Dredd film featuring Stallone might have been a turkey but the new one starring Karl Urban lined up for the autumn shows good signs. I love it, I read it ever week and it’s like a soap opera to me. Happy Birthday 2000ad!
There’s a month-long feature on downthetubes.net from contributors past and present answering questions on their time with the galaxy’s greatest and the birthday issue arrives in 2 weeks with one of two covers (one is featured above).
The 30 minute mix* I did for The Selector is now on Soundcloud featuring a section of the forthcoming Amorphous Androgynous remix of ‘The Illectrik Hoax’ plus a new unreleased 2econd Class Citizen track amongst others
Show 547 – DJ Food in the mix by British Council
Tracklist:
Neil Norman – Re-Entry
DJ Food Vs The Amorphous Androgynous – The Electric Images In My Mind (Never Die)
DJ Food – Prey feat. JG Thirlwell
2econd Class Citizen – Stop 2 Wonder
Jane Weaver – The Fallen By Watchbird
Plug – Mind Bending
Fracture & Neptune – Trapped In Time
*This is actually only half of the mix, the full, hour-long mix will go online in two weeks
I found an hour to visit the Jean-Paul Goude retrospective at Les Arts Decoratifs whilst in Paris over the weekend (two gigs in France and I managed to forget my Serato controller discs!) after a tip off from Steve Cook. You will probably know Goude’s work from the iconic images of Grace Jones he produced in the 80’s but he has photographed and mutated everyone from Bjork to Naomi Campbell to Vanessa Paradis. The retrospective features original photos, models, clothes and a huge steam train in the main hall (that looks like it was made for a parade of some sort if I understand correctly).
His cut up images are simply stunning, where he slices people up and repeats parts of their body, turning them into graphic works of angular abstraction. My biggest thrill was seeing the original cover photo for Grace’s ‘Slave To The Rhythm’ album, a record that I adore and have held the master tape of, all I need now is to see her perform it live and my life will be complete (or something).
Anyway, I’ll let some of the images do the talking and just recommend you try and catch it before it ends on March 18th.
Goudemalion from Temporal An0maly on Vimeo.
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The day had finally arrived and the first problem to be solved was the audio/video one, re-exporting wasn’t an option as there wasn’t the time so I decided to copy both parts to an external hard drive and just hope Charley (Pure Evil gallery owner) had enough kit to play both back separately. Next was the name cards, they were printed but had to be mounted on foam board and then cut out, also there was the matter of framing one of the postcard records I’d made specially for the show. They’d arrived the week before but, with the planetarium gig and others, I’d not had time to put them in for a mount to be cut so that they could be framed. I tried several different backgrounds but decided in the end to just screw the card to the wall and hang a frame around it sans anything else.
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Anyway, time ran out and I left for the gallery, when I got there it was looking fantastic as Charley and Molly had done a great job with the painting and hanging, just the AV thing to sort now and, with the help of Aneek and Mark, who I’d met through Matt Black, we set about trying to find the best combination with the laptop we had. Downstairs was a little stark so the guys hired in oil projectors and it was nearly time to open when we finally got the audio and video projection to synch. The Ninja staff had arrived to set up banners, beer and merch tables but no sign of Henry yet as he’d said he’d be there around 6pm with a box of forty ‘Broadcast’ books.
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Just time to frame one final piece that I’d found and give the pictures a wipe before people started coming in and a queue quickly formed to buy the postcard records. As with every event like this, the rest is a blur of beer, catching up with friends and people asking questions, all the while keeping an eye on the artwork, straightening the odd picture or resetting the audio. Matt Johnson popped by with his girlfriend, Nathaniel aka Natural Self turned up, Matt Black from Coldcut and Pete Quicke, Ninja Tune label manager, with his boys in tow. Tons of friends I’d not seen for a while and a few I knew but had never met in person too. Steve Cook, Rian Hughes and David Hine turned up to represent the comic contingent and soon Steve was tapping me on the shoulder to tell me Henry had arrived. It was great to finally meet him in person as we’d only ever emailed before and he is the nicest, most unassuming guy you’ll ever meet, so good to meet your heroes and not be disappointed.
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The whole thing went on way past 9pm and, right at the end, Mat Ducasse from Skylab, an old friend of Charley’s, dropped in having jut played a 6 minute gig round the corner. Drunk and on cloud 9 with relief that it had all come together, I staggered home and watched the new Noel Fielding luxury comedy which was just what my addled brain needed after the previous four days. I crashed out, only to be woken by a steaming hangover at 6am before getting ready to go to France for two more gigs.
Thanks to everyone who helped out to make it happen and came down to have a look and wonder what it was all about. Most of all I’ve got to thank Charley and Molly at Pure Evil, Will Cooper-Mitchell for his outstanding photos of me in the astronaut suit and of course, Henry Flint, for his amazing artwork which kicked all this off and his continued help and support (donating personal work for the event). Also thanks to the various people who let me use their photos here: Matt Black, Steve Cook & David Hine but if anyone else has shots I’d love to see them.
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It’s on for three more weeks, the last day is Feb 12th and you can pre-order the gicleé prints there, including two which are exclusively available from Pure Evil during the exhibition – ‘Octopus’ (from the ‘Magpies, Maps & Moons’ cover) and ‘Beats Per Second’ (from the ‘Shape Of Things That Hum’ – below). These are both editions of 33, come signed by the two of us and anyone can order via the web or phone too, you don’t have to go to the gallery personally. The previously released prints are on sale too, including the new ‘Cosmonaut’ one featured on the album cover that made its debut last week, plus limited copies of Henry’s book, ‘Broadcast’, which features the original drawings and tons more – on sale for £12.99 which is a bit cheaper than retail price.
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In addition to the prep for the Pure Evil gallery exhibition I was playing at the Pepe Deluxe album launch party at the London Aquarium on Monday night, mixing water, sea and surf inspired music before and after their ‘Queen of the Wave’ LP play back. Out came everything from Jaws, James Bond and The Deep soundtracks to Led Zep’s ‘The Ocean’ and Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke On The Water’. The gig was held in the Ship Wreck Room which has a whole wall of glass looking into a giant fish tank populated by all manner of sharks, fish and three huge Easter Island heads. It was fun to play to an audience who didn’t make requests and gently bobbed their heads to even the most obscure surf soundtracks.
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I finally met Jari and Paul too (Pepe Deluxé) and they gave out mini books containing all the album companions they’d been posting on their site a well as nice little lunch boxes for the post-work crowd to chew on.
Not only is their new album, ‘Queen of the Wave’, (finally) out today but they have a new mix on this week’s Solid Steel too which you can listen to and preview some of the album right now. Buy it here (physical) and here (digital)
There’s also a great grindhouse-esque trailer for the record to give you some sound AND vision – seriously, you need to hear this album, it’s going to be a love it or hate it affair but if you love it you’re going to LOVE it. If you liked ‘Spare Time Machine’ then this is a worthy successor but also even deeper in detail, it takes a fair few listens but will have you humming tunes out of the blue before you know it.
In case you hadn’t already guessed, I love this band and record.
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What a week it’s been, after the planetarium shows on Thursday 19th, straight off to gigs in Amsterdam and Brighton on the Friday and Saturday and back home for a brief respite on Sunday. Monday 23rd saw the release of the album in Europe (Feb 7th in N. America) and final preparations for the show opening with Henry Flint‘s work at the Pure Evil Gallery in Shoreditch. I’d done a fair bit of framing over the Xmas period so some of the larger pictures were ready but there was still a lot of smaller pieces to finish and the show to hang. In addition to this I was playing at the Pepe Deluxe album launch party at the London Aquarium that night (see upcoming post for more). It was an early finish (mercifully for a Monday only 9pm) then it was back home to try and get some more done for the exhibition but I had to give up after half an hour as I was falling asleep.
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The first setback was on Tuesday morning when I picked up the huge front cover image from the framers and realised that it just wasn’t going to go in the car. That would have to wait another day while I worked out how to get it there. The rest of the day was spent at the gallery with the owner, Charley and his assistant Molly, working out where to put things, audio and video considerations and lighting.
When I returned that evening I still had a load of framing and mount cutting to do and ended up pulling an all-nighter to get it done. As I set off for another day at the gallery, after less than 3 hours sleep, I set the audio visual piece off rendering and figured it would be done by the time I got home. The problem of the huge picture was solved by hiring a cab driver I know with a Range Rover to deliver me and the last batch of pictures to the gallery, even then, the picture only just fitted inside. Second setback was upon arriving at the gallery I found it all locked up and no answer on any phone numbers I had. After waiting an hour in the car, dodging traffic wardens with the meter running, texting and calling everyone who I could think of with no joy, I phoned my agent whose office was down the road to ask if I could drop the pictures at his place.
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After doing that and a quick post-planetarium meeting to go over future options I went back to the gallery to find Molly and Charley there apologising profusely. Turns out Charley had to go to the American Embassy for a visa and had to leave his phone behind in the office, Molly had had a little too much to drink the night before and didn’t have my number but all was fine (although Charley got refused a visa, despite living there in the past). We’d lost the morning though and there was still a lot to painting to do where the walls had images in the past that needed covering up.
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Also there was the fact that all my pictures were sitting down the road but luckily Ninja had sent an intern up to help and we took three trips back and forth to ferry them all to their intended destination. By the end of the day we’d nearly got it all in place or had an idea where it was going. I got home to find that the AV file was still rendering and set about designing the title cards for each piece now that I knew exactly what was going in the show. Eventually the AV piece finished after 13 hours but had inexplicably only rendered the video, not the audio. Shit, I tried all sorts to embed the audio or re-export it but was so tired I was falling asleep at the machine (again).
There are limited quantities of the Japanese exclusive mix CD, ‘Solid Psyche’ available in the Ninjashop right now. I did this as a freebie for independent stores alongside the domestic CD version of ‘The Search Engine’ for Japan. The tracks are all taken from Ninja, Big Dada, Counter & Brainfeeder releases and Ninja have a limited amount for sale so don’t hang around.
You might also notice a little digital release called ‘The Good Food Guide’ in the link too. This is a 23 track retrospective compilation spanning the DJ Food canon from 1990-2001, sort of a catch up for people jumping on at the new album.
New print from Scraffer.com.
The third in our series of Henry Flint x Strictly Kev prints.
This time it’s a standalone image of the cosmonaut that features on the cover of the new album, ‘The Search Engine’.
Signed by both artists and printed on 300gsm Somerset Photo Satin cotton paper, the gicleé print measures 64.5cm x 47.1cm.
The edition is limited to 100 hand numbered prints, at £55, comes unframed and rolled in a sturdy cardboard tube and will ship sometime in February.
Two more prints will be available for pre-order only from the Pure Evil Gallery during the 3 week run of the exhibition which starts tomorrow.
As previously mentioned, I am featured in interview with Matt Johnson on a special ‘Deep Space’ edition of his Radio Cineola podcast. In 2010 Matt produced twelve podcasts, one a month, usually themed and sometimes featuring a guest – all revolving around new and old The The music. All the episodes can be found in the newly revamped shop on TheThe.com
Most of the selections were either unreleased work, demos or alternate mixes as well as cover version and collaborations. We met up in New York, just before the infamous police raid on the club we were about to play for the Ninja Tune 20th anniversary, to conduct part of the interview. Things being what they are with us slow workers, plans changed and thus, here is the lost in (deep) space episode of Radio Cinéola.
Ninja have put a radio edit of my album version of ‘GIANT’ up on their Soundcloud too.
DJ Food – ‘GIANT’ (Album Edit) feat. Matt Johnson by Ninja Tune
Sometimes with a release, gig or event, there are reviews that stand out, where the person has delved a little deeper than the first impression or copied the press release. Here are two, one from someone who knows me (Inkymole – reviewing the planetarium album launch) and one from someone who doesn’t (Kris Needs via Data Transmission – reviewing the album). Also here are some photos by Emma Gutteridge of the foyer outside the planetarium during the launch, photography inside was difficult because of the darkness but I’ve just picked up film footage which I’ll be editing into a short next week.
With courtesy of the Royal Observatory Greenwich
The record for this so far is Anders with ‘about a minute’, can you beat that? The album is out today at long last, very happy to finally have that particular monkey off my back, just the exhibition to sort and hang for this Thursday and then it’s off to France for gigs, developing the dome show more and adapting the various elements to the regular DJ sets. You can buy a variety of formats of the album from here, it should also be available on iTunes, Amazon (it has explicit lyrics apparently), Bleep and through all the usual channels.
For those of you wondering what the Planetarium launch night was like, well, it was one of the proudest moments and most memorable gigs of my career so far. It all went so well, considering the awkward travel arrangements and the margins for error with the sets, that I couldn’t quite believe it. Whilst the shows were by no means perfect they were better than at the rehearsal a few days before and I could happily hold my head up and say it was all a great success. Ninja Tune did a great job organising the whole event, PC, DK and 2econd Class Citizen all played space-themed tracks in the foyer, there were drinks and bowls of flying saucer sweets and the people from the Royal Observatory did a great job too.
Outside was an astronomer with a telescope and you could actually see Jupiter and several of its moons, coupled with the stunning night time view over South East London and the great setting for the shows amongst the galleries of the observatory, it was just perfectly pitched. I’m not going to try and describe the shows because it’s kind of redundant and I wouldn’t be able to do it justice but the feedback was overwhelmingly positive afterwards so I was pretty relieved, considering I think I knew at least half the people at the gig! I have to say a big thank you to Ed Bloomer, the astronomer I worked with on the show, as it couldn’t have happened without him and he really pulled it out of the bag in as far as building the elements into a cohesive set.
Adrian Williams sent me the image above that he took before the show started, if you click the image you should be able to pull it about a bit too. It’s hard to convey the scale of what you’re seeing, imagine sitting in half a dome, with the screen 360 degrees around you, joining at the top – that image was stretched across it when you walked in (the red/pink was the lighting so that people could see where they were going). I’m waiting on both photos and film of the event so I’ll post more when I have it. Below, the amazing view that greeted everyone when they left the Planetarium (by Jonny Cuba)
Here’s the Soundcloud stream of the interview I did with Dexter for the Ninja Tune podcast, talking about the new album, collaborators and choosing my top 5 favourite records
Solid Steel Radio Show 20/1/2012 Part 3 + 4 – DJ Food interview by Ninja Tune
Just in time for next week’s exhibition opening, Henry Flint has posted a new concept in story telling on his blog – the 1 page graphic novel. Click here then click again for a HUGE version.
Nice piece by David Hine (The Bulletproof Coffin, Batman, Spawn, Strange Embrace) on his Waiting For Trade blog – great that some of the keen-eyed comic community is picking up on the record thanks to Henry’s involvement – thanks David 
I’ll be featuring on several radio shows and podcasts in the coming weeks – around midnight on the 19th, BBC 5 Live had a short post-planetarium piece too with Jamie Stangroom
Listen again here at about 46.00 minutes in.
Friday 20th I’m featuring on Solid Steel, talking to Dexter on the Ninja Tune podcast about the new album, artwork, collaborations and picking my top 5 records. I’ve heard the final cut of the show and it’s all seamlessly arranged by DK, a real labour of love. Solid Steel.net. iTunes podcast non iTunes
Monday 23rd should see a special space-themed podcast from Radio Cineola to relaunch the new TheThe.com. I’ll be talking to Matt Johnson via a satellite link up and previewing the ‘Deep Space’ version of our cover of his song, ‘GIANT’.
Next I’ll be talking to Ben Eshmade on the Arctic Circle Radio show on Resonance FM on Friday 27th at 9pm.
Arctic Circle Radio. Resonance 104.4FM. Friday 9pm to 11pm. It’s also on Chill FM (on digital) on Tuesdays at 10pm-midnight. It will be podcast a few days after the event as well. All ACR shows and mixes are available via jointhecircle.net/radio – Download the podcast here!
The Selector – again Friday 27th – The British Council/NME Radio will debut a 25 minute mix of UK-based artists with a 55 minute mix on their The Selector worldwide channel two weeks later. These mixes will feature exclusive new material including part of the Amorphous Androgynous remix of ‘The Illectrik Hoax’, plus unreleased tracks from 2econd Class Citizen and DJ Format‘s forthcoming albums.
On February 11th I’ll be dropping in to Jonny Trunk‘s OST show, again on Resonance, and playing space-themed records and nonsense, probably nerding out and talking all sorts of trainspotter stuff as I’m want to do whenever Jonny and I chat.
The OST Show. Resonance 104.4FM.
Saturday 4:30pm to 6:30pm. Repeated Wednesday 3:00pm to 5:00pm. Listen again here