Originals #4 • Roger Mainwood – Autobahn animation cels

Autobahn 1Roger Mainwood – ‘Autobahn’ animation cels, Halas & Batchelor, 1979
(330 x 270 mm, pen and paint on acetate).

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In 1979 animation studio Halas & Batchelor were commisioned by EMI to make a video to accompany Kraftwerk’s song ‘Autobahn’ for a possible laser disc compilation of the label’s back catalogue. These are two original cels from the film, the background and goggle reflections are lost, the laser disc was never released.

You can watch the film in two parts on YouTube, this frame appears at approx 4.22 in Part 2.

Part 1 Part 2

 

Posted in Kraftwerk, Originals. | 2 Comments |

‘The Crow’ animation by Tom Webb

DJ Food – The Crow Animated from Tom Webb on Vimeo.

Tom Webb contacted me with this film he made as part of his 3rd year Illustration Minor project. It’s the first half of the DJ Food track ‘The Crow‘, written by PC, from our ‘Kaleidoscope‘ LP. Here are his comments about the making of it;

“I set myself the task of trying to illustrate the DJ Food album Kaleidoscope. Initially, I was trying to produce stand alone images but eventually decided to dive into the world of animation for the first time. I created a sequence for the first half of The Crow. I was hoping to animate to the whole track, I storyboarded a lot of it but the deadline got the better of me.”

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“The images were created as spontaneous responses to the sounds and atmospheres I was hearing inside some of the tracks. I started investigating ‘Full Bleed’, ‘Cookin’, ‘The Riff’, ‘The Crow’ and both the ‘Sleep Dyad‘s’ a lot because of their particular energies.

The idea was to finish making the image before the track finished, so I started painting with my hands to help speed things up and build a small library of personal reactions in texture. I then scanned the images at hi-res and chopped out suitable macro sections which were then imported into the animation. There was a lot of trial and error involved. It’s also the first time I’ve had a go at animating so I had to learn the program from scratch as well.”

I personally love the syncopation he’s got and the movements from dark to light corresponding to the moods of the track. You can see more of Tom’s work on his blog calamridropkick.com

Posted in DJ Food, Film, Music, Ninja Tune. | No Comments |

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen – 1969

550w_comics_league_of_extraordinary_gentlemen_1969Looking forward to this in April:

CHAPTER TWO takes place almost sixty years later in the psychedelic daze of Swinging London during 1968, a place where Tadukic Acid Diethylamide 26 is the drug of choice, and where different underworlds are starting to overlap dangerously to an accompaniment of sit-ins and sitars. The vicious gangster bosses of London’s East End find themselves brought into contact with a counter-culture underground of mystical and medicated flower-children, or amoral pop-stars on the edge of psychological disintegration and developing a taste for Satanism. Alerted to a threat concerning the same magic order that she and her colleagues were investigating during 1910, a thoroughly modern Mina Murray and her dwindling league of comrades attempt to navigate the perilous rapids of London’s hippy and criminal subculture, as well as the twilight world of its occultists. Starting to buckle from the pressures of the twentieth century and the weight of their own endless lives, Mina and her companions must nevertheless prevent the making of a Moonchild that might well turn out to be the antichrist.

Posted in Comics. | 3 Comments |

Originals #3 • Kid Acne – TTC LP Illustration (Full)

TTC LP Inner full

Kid Acne – ‘TTC – C’eci N’Est Pas Un Disque’ LP inside cover illustration (full piece), 2001-2

(640 x 380 mm, pen and pencil on paper).

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The full piece was created using photocopies of two A3 illustrations depicting the crowd characters. These were then joined and the club background added in thinner pen. The DJs were also added at this stage to complete the scene.

Posted in Art, Originals. | 2 Comments |

The Death of Output

DoO1-3 coverL3output logo webBack at the end of 2006, when Trevor Jackson‘s Output Recordings folded, I put together a 3 hour tribute mix of my favourite tracks. This went out as 3 separate mixes on Solid Steel and I even made a very limited number of facsimile Output CDRs of the mixes. I’ve recently had requests to upload it again so, by the miracle that is Soundcloud, it’s available. I’ve also edited it into one piece finally and the track list is embedded in the Lyrics section of the mp3. Being an avid collector of the label I thought I’d show off the screen printed promo releases and a few other choice pieces.

Further reading from early 2007 can be had on Mark E’s ‘ireallylovemusic’ site.

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The Death of Output by DJ Food

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Posted in DJ Food, Music, Records, Solid Steel. | 4 Comments |

Originals #2 • Kid Acne – TTC LP Illustration piece

TTC LP illo (Right) 650

Kid Acne – ‘TTC – C’eci N’Est Pas Un Disque’ LP inside cover illustration (right hand side), 2001-2 (420 x 297mm, pen and pencil on paper).

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Originally one half of a crowd scene to go on the inside of a gatefold cover for TTC’s first LP. The label couldn’t afford a gatefold sleeve so it was printed on the inside of a single sleeve, the left half is thought to be lost.

Posted in Art, Originals. | No Comments |

The Shamen, Synergy live on KISS 100 FM, 1991

I’ve just uploaded this from my archives to my Soundcloud account

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The Shamen doing a Synergy mix live on Colin Faver‘s show on Kiss FM from 1991. It’s essentially DJ Sticker and (I think) Mixmaster Morris /The Irresistible Force with Mr C. MC-ing. Only about 50 minutes long, the only tape I had was a free one from a magazine so the last 10 minutes is cut off. An excellent selection of tracks if you can put up with C’s terrible freestyling and patter/patois :).

A pretty influential set for me in my student days when I first moved to London (as were Colin Dale and Colin Favor’s shows). It indirectly hooked me up with Coldcut and Ninja Tune as I went to a Shamen gig because of this, met Mixmaster Morris there and he put me in touch with Matt Black.

Posted in Music, Radio. | 2 Comments |

3D comics

Biz 3D ZoneFurther to the post about 3D I did last week, I’ve dug out some of the comics I was talking about. Best find was ‘Bizarre 3D Zone’ which is almost Zap Comix in 3D form, including a strip by Robert Williams which works extremely well visually. There were a few underground comics in the the 60’s and 70’s using 3D it seems but not all of them work because the printing is so bad the red/green division can’t be seen too easily.

A company called Blackthorne Publishing spearheaded the 3D comics surge in the late 80’s, buying up licenses to lots of kids shows like Transformers, GI Joe and Star Wars. Their most successful line was, bizarrely, the California Raisins (!?) but they bit off more than the could chew when they acquired the rights to print Michael Jackson’s ‘Moonwalker’ in 3D. The film didn’t do the business expected and their comic flopped, costing them the company. Most of their titles only ran for 1 or 2 issues and the projected Star Wars line (surely a golden ticket?) only made it to issue 3 before the company folded.

In Bizarre 3D Zone there are a few singular page strips that crop up that are quite bizarre indeed, some don’t even work in the conventional 3D way as they are simply only either the green or red. But in amongst the other separated images they give an odd effect and you realise that this is the ultimate in psychedelic comics as it’s playing with your perceptions of the page. I can only imagine what it was doing to hippies on acid way back when.
Zone 3Robt WilliamsZone 6

Posted in Art, Comics, Design, Magazines, Oddities. | 3 Comments |

ZTT reissues out today minus Frankie…

Back in December I posted about three forthcoming releases on ZTT: Claudia Bruken‘s ‘Combined’ compilation, Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s ‘Liverpool’ expanded edition and ‘The Art of the 12″‘ overview covering the label’s famed 12″ remixes from the 80’s and beyond. They are released today but only two will be available due to an 11th hour pulling of the ‘Liverpool’ release for reasons yet to be explained by either the record label or members of the band. Speculation is rife on the Alternate ZTT board as to the cause of this last minute recall as copies have been around for a few weeks now in industry circles with a few even turning up for sale on the continent before the release date. The main culprit seems to be (and this is pure speculation based on what has been said online) the appearance of several tracks as bonuses which had both hardened collectors and members of the band scratching their heads in puzzlement as to their origins.

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In this internet age it’s rare that any scrap of information slips past uber-fans, some known for collecting every known foreign pressing of each release alongside demos, live recordings, session tapes and any scrap of print relating to their favourite bands. For instance it’s well known to the average Frankie fan that the band recorded a demo version of ‘Slave To The Rhythm’ before the song was immortalised by Grace Jones at Trevor Horn‘s hand, but few have ever been lucky enough to hear it. But when a track list for the expanded version of ‘Liverpool’ appeared last December, several tracks were complete unknowns to the legion of online fans, with one member of the band who frequents the boards even asking if anyone knew what they were or had mp3s of them.

Liverpool deluxeI was lucky enough to receive a copy over a week ago from an industry source and the tracks in question sound like demo ideas, jams or basic track building, including a vocal-less cover of the Rolling Stones‘ ‘Satisfaction’. Frankie did many cover versions, both released and unreleased, over the course of their short career. Some were for B-sides, some were simply a way to let off steam and take a break during recording sessions that stretched for months during the making of ‘Liverpool’. Holly Johnson tweeted last week that he had no problem with the release and a statement is promised soon, interesting…

Fortunately we are in the middle of the biggest archive reissue / remaster / repackage period of ZTT’s history at the moment – courtesy of Ian Peel –  and the other two releases can tide us over until any problems get ironed out with Frankie’s second coming (sorry, couldn’t resist). Art of 12"I’ve not received a copy of ‘Combined’ yet but ‘The Art of the 12″‘ 2xCD compilation is one of the best from the label, including several completely new and unreleased gems from the archives that add a few more pieces to the puzzle that fans of the label strive to unravel to this day. Newly unearthed versions of classic’s like Frankie‘s ‘Two Tribes’ and ‘Relax’, Propaganda’s ‘Dr. Mabuse’ or Nasty Rox Inc‘s ’10th Wonder’ sit alongside extended workouts of ‘Moments In Love’ and ‘Close (To the Edit)’ by Art of Noise, ‘Pacific’ and ‘Cubik’ by 808 State and Act‘s vastly underrated ‘Snobbery & Decay’.

A couple of infamous ‘lost’ ZTT groups have tracks presented for the first time too – Instinct, who only had one track appear on the label previously before disappearing into the vaults, have what was to be their first single debuting 25 years later. Also another piece of the Art of Noise puzzle is here for the first time to tantalise us – a glimpse of what Paul Morley and Trevor Horn did next after the rest of the band jumped ship and played the Pop game. The group Art & Act were bandied about in various press releases at the time but nothing was released until an AON box set a few years back yielded a few snippets. Here we get 8 minutes of a group that could have been but wasn’t destined to be until over a decade later with the reformation of three of the Art of Noise proper. Both absolutely essential for any ZTT fan.

Art of 12" inside

Posted in Music. | No Comments |

3D Art Book by Tristan Eaton

Last year I had an inexplicable yearning to buy more comics again after largely dipping out of the medium for a few years (save for the weekly dose of 2000ad thrill power and a few others). I also started to dig in the 50p-£1 boxes for older things I read as a kid or just liked the look of. Along the way I picked up a number of 3D comics from the boom in the late 80’s as well as a couple for more recently. When they work they’re great but frequently the writing never matches up to the standard of the imagery. There’s a whole blog post to be had out of some of those but that’s for another time.

This week I’ve been experimeting with 3D analyphs on a project – converting a 2D image into 3D when you look at it with those red and blue glasses. It’s not that hard, fun, if not a bit frustrating, and involves a bit of guesswork. I’ve managed to make one successful image so far but I can’t post it yet as I’ll get in trouble if it’s available to all at this stage.

BOOK_PICBut what should turn up on Jim Mahfood‘s Facebook stream today? News of a new book by Tristan Eaton (he designed the Dunny & Munny figures for Kidrobot) full of 3D images by a ton of different artists.  Four years in the making, the 224 page book, published this Spring by Prestel, features a little bit of his work and a lot of Tristan-curated images from 100 artists across a multitude of disciplines: graffiti, illustration, contemporary art, graphic design, etc.

Check some images that I found online at animalnewyork.com and you can pre-order the book here.

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The full artist list (with the ones I’m excited to see in bold): DRIAN JOHNSON, ANDREW BELL, ANTHONY AUSGANG, ASKEW, BASK, BILL MCMULLEN, BLOKT, BOOKS, BUFF MONSTER, CALMA, CASEY RYDER, CATALINA ESTRADA, CEY ADAMS, CHRIS MARS, CRAOLA, D*FACE, DABS & MYLA, DALEK, DAVE COOPER, DAVE KINSEY, DAVE NEEDHAM, DAVID FLORES, DEMO, DR. REVOLT, DARREN ROMANELLI, EBOY, EDATRON, ERIK FOSS, ERIC WHITE, ERIC HAZE, ESAO ANDREWS, FILTH, FLORENCIA ZAVALA, GARY BASEMAN, GARY TAXALI, GLENN BARR, GOMEZ BUENO, ISABEL SAMARAS, JAMES JEAN, JEFF SOTO, JEREMY FISH, JEREMY MADL, JERRY ABSTRACT, JIM HOUSER, JIM MAHFOOD, JOE SORREN, JON BURGERMAN, JULIE WEST, JUNKO MIZUNO, KANO, KATHY STAICO SCHORR, KENZO MINAMI, KEVIN BOURGEOIS, KEVIN SKINNER, KID ACNE, KOBIE SOLOMON, KRISTIAN OLSON, LAURA BARNHARD, LOGAN HICKS, MARK BODE, MARK DEAN VECA, MARK JAMES, MARK RYDEN, MATT CAMPBELL, MATT EATON, MAYA HAYUK, MICHAEL DE FEO, MISHKA, MINT AND SERF, MISS VAN, MORNING BREATH, MR JAGO, MYSTERIOUS AL, NATHAN FOX, NATHAN JUREVICIUS, PETE FOWLER, POSE MSK, RAY ZONE, RENATA PALUBINSKAS, RICH JACOBS, RON ENGLISH, ROSTARR, SHEPARD FAIREY, SKET ONE, STANLEY CHOW, STASH, STEPHEN BLISS, TARA MCPHERSON, TES ONE, TODD SCHORR, TOKIDOKI, TOM THEWES, TRAVIS LOUIE, TRAVIS MILLARD, TRISTAN EATON, TRUSTOCORP, UNKL, UPSO, AND WINSTON SMITH.

Posted in Art, Books, Comics, Design. | No Comments |