I found myself in Penge today, which is a rarity, and there was plenty to see in the quiet South East London suburb. The Penge / Pengeuin paste up above doesn’t really trip off the tongue but it’s always nice to see the orange logo. A little further down the road was a fascinating shop, with a colourful mural outside, that looked like it had been shut for many years. Inside the grilled window were old lamps, bottles, heads and all sorts, stuffed to the rafters but locked up and inaccessible.
Next were a brace of shops with fresh murals on side walls and shutters.
The local charity shops threw up a couple of fabulous covers, brilliant in their unstyled glory.
Later, up the road in Crystal Palace, I came across this amazing stained glass window on a church.
I think a projected record of this title (based around John Tottenham‘s writing) was in the works when I first met Matt Johnson back in 2003, but finally, he and director Johanna St. Michaels have put together a documentary of ‘The Inertia Variations’. In the intervening years it has morphed into a film about Matt, not a musician with a copious output during the last 15 years (although by no means dormant, he just quietly ‘left’ the music business without telling anyone) and his struggle to write new songs. It follows him in the run up to his 12 hr Radio Cineola broadcast from his ‘War Room’ that culminated in a set of reinterpreted classics and the debut of a new song.
The premiere is happening next week in Copenhagen at the CPH:DOX festival with Matt and Johanna attending a Q&A on the 23rd at Cinemateket and on the 25th at Kunsthal Charlottenborg. Hopefully there will be a UK showing soon
Nice little explanation of the original Black Devil ‘Disco Club’ record and Bernard Fevre‘s discovery by a new generation of music makers.
Four From Food Fridays – a weekly look at four things that have been doing it for me. They can be new or old, any style so long as it’s been getting some rotation in the studio. From top left:
The By Cracky Beat (Lowrey’s Chocolate) 7″ – groovy freakbeat promo for chocolate bar
Klaus Wiess – Time Signals (Trunk) LP – Drums & electronics, old library in new form on Trunk
Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury – Drokk (Invada) 2×10″ – alternative synth-heavy soundtrack to the Dredd film
Paul Reid – The Sounds of Expo 67 (Sonologue) 7″ Travelogue montage around Montreal’s Expo 67
The Diggers Dozen vs Soundsci ‘My Boosey Weighs A Ton’ launch party at Joyeux Bordel in Old Street the other week was as nerdy and bloke-centric as you’d expect with frequent outbreaks of ‘breakface’ and clusters around the decks as library oddities were pulled out left, right and centre. Various old heads were in attendance and new acquaintances were made until 1.30am when it wound down. Much chatting obscured indepth appreciation of the musical treats going down but Maxwell from DD has kindly snipped some of the sets out of the melee and uploaded them to the cloud of mixes. If you listen carefully you can even hear the faint sound of chatter coming through the needle in the quiet parts. First up, Jonny Cuba (above left, below right) with his ‘spy jazz’ set, then Jonny Trunk (above right).
My mix, alongside more from Ollie Teeba and Mr Thing can be heard here
Not particularly interested in the film or music but that cover design is lovely
Announcing a new venture put together by myself and old friend Pete Williams (Eikon / Out Of The Wood) – a collision of Light, Sound and Design… Further.
An irregular event held in different places, it’s not a club night, it’s not monthly, there’s no dance floor. It has got all the things we love in it though: experimental music and film, food and drink, socialising and a bit of record hunting.
The first event is on May 6th at The Portico Gallery, a hidden treasure in the heart of West Norwood and a venue very dear to us that offers an extremely adaptable space to project, perform and present our guests in.
We have Jim Jupp (Belbury Poly) and Julian House (The Focus Group) from Ghost Box Records playing an audio visual set and Howlround sound tracking Steven McInerney’s short film, ‘A Creak In Time’.
Pete and I will be pulling all manner of projections, films, slides and FX out to illuminate the gallery at the beginning and end of the evening to compliment our DJ sets.
There will be food on sale from local café Pintadera, a fully licensed bar and plenty of seating. Michael from the nearby Book & Record Bar will also have a stall selling hand-picked stock for the event.
Venue: The Portico Gallery, 23 Knights Hill, West Norwood, London, SE27 0HS
Doors: 7.30 and we’re all done by midnight. Let’s go Further…
V. limited early bird tickets are on sale now through Eventbrite
Facebook event page here
Insane line up for this gig, not sure how Buried Treasure are going to pull it off but they did last time. Over half the tickets are sold – get yours here
This compilation of jazz bandleader / electronic pioneer Raymond Scott first surfaced in 2000 on the Dutch Basta label as both a 2xCD with hardback book and 3 separate LPs in gatefold sleeves. It’s now getting a new reissue as a triple set with booklet and coloured vinyl in a slipcase at a very affordable price by Music On Vinyl. To say that this is an essential release is an understatement, Scott was a pioneer and, along with the Louis and Bebe Barron‘s Forbidden Planet soundtrack, one of the first people to place electronic music in the commercial sphere outside of the avant garde. Composing for adverts, short films and working with Jim Henson prior to the Muppets, this collection is a treasure trove of tones, collages, early electronic compositions, sometimes in an array of versions. J Dilla famously sampled a track from this on Donuts (“The name of the game is Lightworks”) and the vinyl has become expensive now.
Another recent reissue saw Scott’s triple LP ‘Soothing Sounds For Baby’ set get a silver vinyl repress and while not as essential is an intriguing listen given that it was supposed to be an ambient record for newborns when it’s actually quite unsettling in places and far from what I’d term soothing. But as an extended work of electronic music from the early 60’s it’s often overlooked because of its novelty nature. BUT! Continuing the triple album theme, this was just posted on the Raymond Scott website:
“The long awaited second collection of Raymond Scott electronica is finished. The album, titled Three Willow Park: Electronic Music from Inner Space, 1961-1971, will feature over 60 previously unreleased recordings by Scott from the decade before he left to work for Motown in L.A. Most of the tracks were recorded on devices he invented, and the Motown Electronium will be heard for the first time on disc. The 3-LP set, which serves as a companion to the Y2K 2-cd set Manhattan Research, Inc., is scheduled for release in 2017 on Basta, and will include a 20-page LP-sized booklet and a 300-page downloadable pdf of archival artifacts.”
Just take my money… follow @_Raymond_Scott_ on Twitter for forthcoming info
Four From Food Fridays – a weekly look at four things that have been doing it for me. They can be new or old, any style so long as it’s been getting some rotation in the studio. From top left:
Temples – Volcano (Heavenly) LP/CD/Cass/DL
Thundercat – Drunk (Brainfeeder) 10″ box set/CD/DL
Vermont – II (Kompakt) LP/CD/DL
Rob Thomsett – Hara / Yarnandoo (Now Again Reserve Series ) LP / CD
Love this Kong: Skull Island poster for the IMAX, riffing off the classic Bob Peak Apocalypse Now poster – anyone know who did it?
This is an amazing glimpse at old New York and possibly the first ever graffiti documentary (see also ‘Watching My Name Go By’). Originally taken from the Mass Appeal website which has an interview with the director.
The #WeeklyGroove Series & #Giveaway Week 5: Strictly Kev (DJ Food)
This week Dust & Grooves have made me the subject of their Weekly Groove giveaway series
By end of week, they will give a fine-art print from their photo archives, signed by @eilonpaz and a signed, quadruple 12” version of my album ‘The Search Engine’.
To participate in the giveaway, tag a friend on the #WeeklyGroove posts on @dustandgrooves Instagram account ONLY.
Ladies and Gentlemen – Anatoly Fomenko – wow! Don’t know anything about him aside that he has Soviet connection and is also a mathematician. Incredible, thanks to Jamie Tilley for hipping me to him.
Continuing the Paolozzi love on this blog, I visited the new retrospective of his work at the Whitechapel Gallery in East London. Over 250 of his works are on display and it’s more than worth the price of admission. Prints, sculptures, paintings, textiles, photos, films and collages stretch over two floors and the breadth of his work is amazing. What’s also apparent in most of it is that it’s barely dated and is quite timeless, his early Pop Art collages being the only exceptions which can be forgiven as he was one of the originators. The technical level achieved in the screenprints is beyond anything I’ve seen as well, I would love to see the original screens for these or the prints that went wrong. Two mediums I hadn’t seen his work in before really stood out: the textiles and a couple of works in wood, the latter, made with different kinds and varnishes, were gorgeous. Highly recommended.
Four From Food Fridays – a weekly look at four things that have been doing it for me. They can be new or old, any style so long as it’s been getting some rotation in the studio. From top left:
Major Force West – 93-97 (Mo Wax) LP – RIP Toshio Nakanishi – otherworldly productions
Children of Alice – Children of Alice (Warp) LP – Mindbending audio collage
Bigmouth podcast – #42 (Audioboom) Podcast – The Magnetic Fields, SS-GB and 40 years of 2000AD
Ian Helliwell – Tape Leaders (Sound On Sound) Book + CD – Indispensable history of British electronic pioneers + compilation of electronic/concrete obscurities
Next Thursday – going to be a fun night!
This is the second part of a special exclusive on the new Soundsci album, ‘My Boosey Weighs A Ton’, the music of which is made completely (and legally) from samples provided by the Cavendish music library (formerly Boosey & Hawkes). Below are photos and recollections by Darrell Krum who also designed the album artwork, he focuses on the details during their visit to the archive to search for material to sample. You can see more photos in part one here and order the album here, freshly released today – only 500 copies and half of them are already spoken for apparently.
“Our visit to the Boosey & Hawkes archives; quite literally, for a nerdy, nostalgia obsessed, record collecting geek like myself, the type of experience dreams are made of! And I’m not even joking – I actually do have dreams about discovering places like this! From the minute Jonny told me we’d been granted access to the B&H vaults my mind began racing, excitedly picturing this mythical little world I’d had a brief glimpse into through the Whosampled “2014 Samplethon” promo video. I was really quite envious watching that footage of Jonny and the other guys digging through boxes and boxes of Library music in some dingy old basement so couldn’t wait to get in there and start rooting around for myself!
My recollections of the day itself are much like Jonny’s – I’d describe it as some what of a sensory overload! Within a matter of 30 seconds or so, we’d transitioned from a hive of noise and activity up on the manic Holborn high street, through a very bright, plush reception area, down to this dark, damp, underground vault hidden away amongst a labyrinth of corridors. What we stepped into was exactly what I had imagined and hoped for – a mass of seemingly organised chaos! That lovely musty smell was rife throughout, with walls saturated in mould; ideal conditions for treasure hunting – diggers know! The tranquility of the place as well, such a huge contrast to hustle and bustle of the busy streets just a few meters above our heads. If given the choice, I know where I’d rather be!
I must admit, from a record collectors point of view, it was some what of a bitter-sweet experience; on the one hand an amazing, once in a lifetime opportunity to explore these historic archives, but on the other, slightly frustrating knowing we couldn’t take anything away with us! Kinda like putting a kid in a sweet shop and telling him he can look and marvel at all the delicious treats on offer but unfortunately can’t eat any! From that perspective I always knew it was going to be a tease, but essentially we were there to do a job, and the objective of that job was to document the Boosey / Cavendish archives with the aim of utilising some of the photos for Soundsci’s album cover. So while it was hard to resist the temptation of spending the whole day listening through the huge catalogue of vinyl at our fingertips, we were very aware that our time was limited and an opportunity like this couldn’t be wasted. I think we were down there for five or six hours but could easily have spent a couple of days sifting through everything, and still not scratched the surface!
Simon’s focus was predominately on the wide angle shots, trying to capture the vastness of our surroundings, while my attention was drawn to some of the finer details contained within. Besides the thousands of records, there were endless amounts of original reel-to-reel masters (who knows, maybe some great unreleased material amongst it all?), account ledgers, publishing contracts and payment receipts (I loved reading through these, seeing the names of many legendary Library musicians and composers written on general admin documents – was a real buzz!), copyright manuscripts, etc, etc, just tons of really interesting artefacts… some of it dating back hundreds of years. And the patina… Wow! That was attracting my eye as much as anything else! Using the word “patina” is a very nice, fanciful way of putting it – basically we’re talking about some serious, heavy duty rot and decay! Many of the reel-to-reel boxes were damp and riddled with mould, some falling apart at the seems. Obviously not great for the tapes stored inside but the subject of absolute beauty to me! So, while Simon was working his way round the rooms with a camera and tripod snapping scenes of a broader nature, I was feverishly rifling through the shelves and boxes scouting out material to use for more detailed close-ups. Included here are a selection of photos I took on my iPhone, some of which were used for reference when directing shots of a higher quality on Simon’s Canon.
It was a real privilege experiencing what was probably the closest I’ll ever get to a working space within the 1970s music industry. Like being in a time capsule, and surely one of the last of it’s kind. Such a shame that pretty much everything contained within those walls is now packed away in cold storage, unlikely to ever be seen, or appreciated in the same way, again.
I’d just like to say thanks to Arun Sethi at Cavendish, and of course Jonny and the Soundsci crew for the such a great opportunity!” – Darrell Krum
Thanks to Darrell for sharing these photos and thought and you can get your hands on the results now! The LP is released today and I’m pleased to announce a launch party in conjunction with Digger’s Dozen on March 9th at the Joyeux Bordel bar in Curtain Rd, Shoredtch on March 9th. Ollie and Jonny will be playing as well as Chris Read (Who Sampled), Jonny Trunk and myself. Each DJ gets twelve records only and the theme will be library of course.
I was very pleased to be asked to guest on one of my favourite podcasts: Bigmouth, talking about 2000AD’s 40th anniversary, the new Magnetic Fields album and the first part of new BBC drama SS-GB alongside guest Matt Allen and regular hosts Andrew Harrison and Matt Hall. Also hear which track of the week I chose and what closing time chatter gem I dredged up.
UPDATE: Annoyingly I go the date of the Orbital Comics closing party gig wrong at the end, it’s March 10th, not 9th.