Well, that’s the Xmas present sorted
The prints of ‘The Life Cycle of a Machine’ arrived this morning, and are now all signed and ready to be posted out by Scraffer.com. Thanks to all who bought them so far, there are still some left if you missed it first time round and we will be announcing the second print soon. For more details see here, all prints are high quality giclee and come signed by myself and Henry Flint.
After posting this the other month I was contacted and sent this lovely item by Mat Ducasse himself from Skylab. It’s an excellent mix of French pop, psych rock, electronics and soundtracks, packaged beautifully with inserts and a unique CD sleeve. No idea if you can buy it anywhere but there’s a Disqo Conqrette page with a free mix here (different to this CD) and a sparse Facebook page here
Sent by my good friend David Vallade. 
Not for general sale but I bet there will be a few out there as journalists hear it, go ‘WTF?’ and sell them to their local record store. The 12″ should be at the label later this week, full photos when I get it. This is the final of 3 EPs and is released on 12″ and download on Nov 7th. ‘The Search Engine’ album will be out Jan 16th, 2012 and features versions of 12 tracks taken from the EPs, plus some exclusive bits.
Gorgeous work by Franco Spagnolo
A couple of projects JG has been involved with recently have really caught my eye on the artwork front, both have a medical angle and lean on the black, white and red colour palette.
The first is Manorexia – ‘Dinoflagellate Blooms’, a double disc pack with X-rays and syringes. Click for larger versions. Buy it from JGT’s site here. It’s a double CD with regular and 5.1 surround sound version.
The second is a lovely 4 track 10″ under the name Hydrose Plus, a collaboration with Fred Bigot. The cover shows a face from a medical encyclopedia in profile but when you take the clear vinyl 10″ out of the sleeve you realise that the eyeball is printed on the label and fits perfectly into the eye socket on the front. Not only that but you also get an insert with the inside of the face cut away.
Buy it directly from the label here.
Both Henry and I are very pleased with this final image, a true collaborative effort in every sense. I came up with the concept of a cosmonaut hanging in space, strapped into an unfeasibly large backpack, the kind you could only wear in zero gravity. He was originally to be suspended from the huge cylinder from the ‘Shape Of Things That Hum’ cover but we needed a bottom to the piece.
I asked Henry to illustrate all sorts of protrusions to attach to the image and additional pipes attaching the cosmonaut. In typical Flint style we went way above and beyond and illustrated a whole circular machine! This changed the whole composition as I felt it would be stronger with the cosmonaut suspended in the centre and then set about colouring both elements.
I bounced a myriad of different versions back and forth to gauge his opinion, some very rough and messy, others clean. We both agreed there was something missing at the end and, upon hearing the ‘Colours Beyond Colours’ track from my album, Henry suggested some sort of light beam or prism. I went away and tried a ton of lens flares and light effects to finish it off.
Release date: Dec 3rd (Japan) / Jan 16th (Rest of the world)
Some images culled from graffiti books of pieces by Boris Tellegen aka Delta aka Mess
Well I wasn’t expecting that, Ralf Hutter guest editing Wallpaper magazine and a multi-page preview of their forthcoming 3D book. Even more surprising is that Christian Marclay features as well (there is an alternate cover by him on some issues too). The issue comes with a free pair of 3D glasses and you can see some of the spreads above.
[youtube width=”640″ height=”480″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwVadnNTWVY[/youtube]
[youtube width=”640″ height=”480″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35HtLs50Lbc[/youtube]
Check these out, a friend of mine made them, lovely work and tribute to Rydgren radio.
Oh BTW, that was the 500th post too.
Awesome show from Shadow at Village Underground last night, the Shadowsphere was great and his mix of old and new from his back catalogue was always entertaining.
Anyone else up for this? See you there
