(warning: most of the records themselves are terrible)
11.05am and I’m sitting on a train in Rotterdam Centraal Station, waiting to depart after leaving a grey, wet Brussels at 8.30 that morning. I’m in the silent carriage, with ear plugs in. When the train pulls out it’s so slick and quiet it feels like we’re running on silk. The silence is glorious, the sun is shining and the landscape filled with all manner of quirky, forward-thinking Dutch architecture. Solar panels, clean, modern angles, a half-built curved structure like a rising flower bulb just outside the station and two lifelike giraffe’s heads and necks sprouting from nowhere. The multi-colouredl graffiti that always forms like weeds around train stations tumbles out of the tunnels, gradually withering away as we leave the city. I spot a pristine white Delta piece on a rusted freight train not far from the city’s boundary. It’s so quiet I’m aware that my fingers typing are making a racket in the carriage. I’m seated on the top deck, a glorious view of the flat landscape before me and the train glides on, they even have free wifi – must resist!
I should be back in Brussels, getting breakfast and checking out to meet up with DK and Debruit for a car ride to The Hague but instead I’m on my way to Utrecht to slot an afternoon’s digging session in at the Record Planet Mega Record fair. Realising the night before that it was actually only a 35 min train ride away from Den Haag and on the insistence of Andy Votel via a Twitter conversation (‘it’s totally on route!’) I decided to forego the lie in and make the most of my time on the continent this weekend. The record fair at Jaarbeurs is reckoned to be the biggest in the world, certainly in Europe anyway and the scale of it just cannot be comprehended by viewing pictures online alone. Never has so much cardboard and vinyl been crammed into such capacious air craft hanger-like spaces. I’d been once, back in 2004, before my kids were born, thus since preventing me from returning on such a frivolous jolly as a weekend-long record shopping spree. But now I’ve got an excuse, even if only for a day, and an extra train ticket, entry fee and several extra hours of sleep are the only forfeits. The train pulls in to Utrecht Centraal 15 minutes short of midday.
An hour later and I’ve only just made it into the fair, despite it being located less than a 10 minute walk from the station. After queuing for a ticket the mission was on to find a cash point of which there are only two in the foyer, both with a line snaking across the entire floor. There were more back in the station but incredibly all but one of them are out of action. Ticket in hand I finally get through the barrier, past a group of cosplayers in full Stormtrooper garb (that’s new) and begin the daunting task of picking through what seems like the carefully chosen debris of the 20th Century.
To say that Jaarbeurs is big is an understatement that is so woefully inadequate it’s like saying Jeremy Corbyn has a bit of a job on his hands if he hopes to become the next Prime Minister. It is SO big that you reel as you find yet another aircraft hanger-sized space crammed with even more ephemera than the last one you just spent over an hour briskly jostling through. What I never realised, way back when I first visited the fair, was that the record part only accounts for roughly a third of the overall space in Jaarbeurs, the rest is packed with Europe’s largest vintage collector stalls selling virtually anything you can bring to mind.
Buttons, stamps, coins, vintage toys, new toys, animal bones, African statues, globes, stones, medical research statues, school teaching displays, stained glass windows, lamps, turntables, gramophones, books, magazines, comics, glassware, pottery, jewelry, badges, dolls, clothes, material, masks, cutlery, posters…
The place is like the most incredible museum you’ve ever been to coupled with the fact that you can buy every exhibit in what resembles the continent’s biggest car boot sale. Imagine Birmingham’s N.E.C. and quadruple it. Another misconception is that it’s all expensive, this isn’t true either, yes there are trophy pieces everywhere, bought by dealers the world over in the hope that they will sell to their biggest captive audience and pay for the trip. But equally there are boxes of cheaper stuff marked at €1 that simply need to be rifled through to find the gold.
It is however, completely unrealistic to expect to be able to ‘do’ the whole thing even in a weekend let alone an afternoon. I’d decided I was going to go through the other halls before I hit the records as I’d previously walked straight past them and never investigated. Now older and with more than enough vinyl to warrant having the floor of my home studio reinforced because of it I decided to explore the other two thirds I’d previously dismissed.
It was slim pickings until the third hall, mostly for the fact that I was limited by what I could carry so had to bear in mind that those 20th century designer lamps were just going to have to stay there. Deeper into the throng and nearer to the record stalls that shore up the far end of the layout I started to find pieces to take home. A clutch of hardback bande dessinée of Philippe Druillet‘s best 70s work from a French seller, a Metal Hurlant special on the making of Alien, complete with multiple examples of designs by Giger, Moebius, Ron Cobb and Ridley Scott himself.
Two handfuls of vintage sci-fi paperbacks with Richard Powers covers from the delightfully named Magic Galaxies Intergalactic Book recycling Company. The bemused Dutch seller inquired what my criteria for buying was after watching me check every cover rather than just the spines of the books. 
Just before closing time I chanced upon Grant McKinnon from the West Coast peddling original psychedelic posters and flyers from the 60s Haight Asbury heyday and was caught up in a last minute whirlwind of bartering for a handful of genuine 60s bills bearing the work of Rick Griffin, Wes Wilson and Victor Moscoso.
Check them out on the web, SF Rock Posters, no fakes, reasonable prices considering the vintage and top guys to boot. As the security guards were ushering the crowds out I spotted the only record I bought during my visit on the next table, a luminous yellow 7″ promo of ‘Pocket Calculator’ by Kraftwerk complete with printed transparent sleeve. Well, I couldn’t go all that way and not buy a single piece of vinyl could I?
(Delta freight train photo by Chris Vos, taken from the Chrome Angelz Facebook group)
This album is gorgeous, two sides split between drums and dreams by JJ Whitefield of the Poets of Rhythm, Whitefield Brothers etc and Johannes Schleiermacher. This is a big departure from that sound though as the German roots of Krautrock and ambient music shine through. The Drum side charts similar territory to that trodden by The Heliocentrics, Natural Yoghurt Band or Chop but at a glacial pace, drums and guitars dripping with electronic FX. The Dream side is stone cold pure ambient bliss, in the best traditions of Tangerine Dream, Cluster and Popul Vuh, totally organic-sounding and calming. Both sides were the result of a 2 day studio lock in and enough vintage studio tech and substance abuse to keep anyone happy. I’m glad Now Again unlocked the door and let this beauty out – listen to the Drumside (although I rate the Dreamside even more) and buy vinyl, CD or DL.
Here’s also a 71 minute mix of German Space-Rock Classics they just put up on Soundcloud.
Acid, on a 7 inch? Flexi disc? In a box set? From Greece? Only 50 copies? Not something you find every day but I’m happy to confirm that such a delight exists. Not only do you get a clear 7″ flexi featuring 2 tracks but you also receive a CDr of same with two additional tracks plus stickers and a badge. All in a numbered, reassuringly Kraftwerk Computer World-esque yellow box.
Released on Record Store Day 2013, I ran across this upon finding DiMDJ‘s track ‘Kraftwork Radio’ on Soundcloud which uses samples from the ‘Radio Activity’ album. It’s included here (although sadly not on the flexi) on this split release with Cleon on Kinetik Records who have been operating from Thessaloniki for over 20 years now. All tracks are Acid in style, were apparently recorded live and you can still order copies online via their Bandcamp page for just €15. It appears that I have #3 of 50!
Speaking of Acid, the I Love Acid crew have a new(ish) bi-weekly radio show on Sub FM every second Thursday and I’ll be doing a mix for them shortly. If you’re reading this before 12 midday GMT then you can catch today’s show live here. Or if you want to listen to old shows then they have them archived on Mixcloud too.
No.7 in an occasional series…
This Sunday at The Cube microplex in Bristol there will be a very special event centered around The KLF and their burning of a million pounds over 20 years ago. Entitled ‘KLF : Chaos, Magic and the band who burned a million pounds‘, the night takes its name from John Higgs‘ recent book and he’ll be talking about Discordianism, Doctor Who, ‘The Illuminatus! Trilogy’, Alan Moore’s Idea Space, the number 23 and more amidst ‘talks, screenings, loops and rituals in The Black Room‘. More info here, tickets are limited.
I was asked to provide some sort of musical accompaniment but this weekend’s gig schedule means I’d never make it back to the gig in time unfortunately. Instead I’ve fashioned this fictitious One Million Mu note for them to ‘do what thou wilt’ with. Click each note for a larger version and see how many easter eggs I’ve put into them – whoever spots them all wins something interesting.
Those merry pranksters Cheeba and Moneyshot have a new, irregular ‘thing’ – Journeys By DJs – inane in-car chat in transit to and from gigs. This is a peek into the world of the superstar DJ, touching on all the exciting things we like to talk about in the run up to the big gig you’ve been looking forward to for weeks. You’ll learn about Anal Caravan, what DJs eat on the road and thrill to the latest news of that Serato update last week. Looking forward to catching up with Cheeba on Dec 4th at the Videocrash Rich Mix gig in London for our AV night with Robin Hexstatic and Tom Central.
The 45 Live crew notch things up a gear with the first release on their own label and a new bi-weekly radio show. Boca 45 takes the first release slot with a double whammy of ‘Soul On Top’ / ‘Diego’s Theme’. Listen and buy a copy here. Over in LA, 45 Live member Greg Belson has set up a radio show on Dublab that will air on the first and third Friday’s of each month and feature a guest mix from one of the 45 Live roster on each show.
Departing South London on a rainy Saturday evening we travelled to Reading for the launch of Buried Treasure‘s new compilation, ‘The Delaware Road’, at the South Street Arts Centre. Bumping into Jonny Trunk at the parking meter was fortunate as we’d run out of change and, after a battle with an unruly £1 coin which refused to stay inside the machine, we entered the packed room. Promised a night of radiophonics, tape loops, vintage synths and spoken word we braced ourselves for an eight band line up held together by a narrative from Dolly Dolly. Seated at a table under angle poise lamp to one side of the stage for the entirety of the gig and looking for all the world like a broadcast announcer of old he was a revelation, holding the audience captive between acts as the night and story unfolded. Written by Dolly aka David Yates and label manager Alan Gubby, the tale of The Delaware Road is loosely based on two members (‘the man’ and ‘the woman’) of a sound studio reminiscent of the Radiophonic Workshop. The clues are all there, the BBC being referred to as ‘the corporation’, and the tale includes shades of The Stone Tape Theory, the occult, the swinging 60s, orgies and demonic powers released through sound recorded on copper wire.
The evening was an ambitious production including visuals, smoke and lighting to compliment the soundscapes for the three hour duration. Proceeding chronologically from the late 60s through to the 80s, each act soundtracked the period in time perfectly, kicking off with Robin the Fog‘s Howlround project of tape loops strung around mic stands, mirroring the early tape experiments of the Workshop. The Twelve Hour Foundation duo tickled us with synth-heavy ditties redolent of the many radio and TV themes produced for the BBC by John Baker and repopularized by the likes of The Advisory Circle today.
Ian Helliwell‘s set up consisted of a small pub table crammed with small boxes (i’m sure I saw an alarm clock too) which throbbed and pulsed with all manner of devilish tones as he bent sine waves out of shape, accompanied by his own amazing animations. As the narrative moved into the swinging sixties it was the perfect moment for The Dandelion Set’s first public performance, oil wheels revolving and Op-art shirts waving. Despite a technical hitch with the Moog during the first track, a setback which had the crowd cheering once fixed, they didn’t let it phase them and ran through several tracks from their forthcoming album, ‘A Thousand Strands‘.
Alan Gubby’s own band, the unpronounceable Revbjelde, produced a stunning set with bow scraped cymbal, metal percussion and lute, unleashing a Wickerman-esque medieval suite for the releasing of spirits. Loose Capacitor paid thrilling homage to the golden age of TV, climaxing with the joyous ‘Theme From Robin’s Nest’ which had part of the crowd clapping along whilst Tim Hill’s sax and FX pedal set up changed musical tack again. Each performer bought a new dimension to the story as images of vintage synths, solarised landscapes, 70s Britain, Morris dances and electronic components were projected overhead. A compilation of seventies celebrities flashed by to the glam beat of ‘The Shag’ by Trouble & Strife – Basil Brush, David Essex, Keith Chegwin – ending in Gary Glitter and Jimmy Saville to the collective gasp of the audience.
As the night and narrative wound to a close we entered the eighties of ‘suits’, buttons replacing dials and microchips on the ends of fingers with Robin Lee‘s synths perfectly capturing the cheesy ‘business funk’ of many library albums of the era. Finishing with a second set from Revbjelde, this time accompanied by Tim Hill, the band closed with a storming rendition of ‘Tidworth Drum’ from the new compilation to huge applause and a heartfelt thanks from Alan, surprised at such a turnout for such an esoteric event. It was presented with such love and care that it felt like a family occasion where the label had found a common ground amongst its roster – so far a mix of reissues and original material – that pointed the way forward. All in all a genuinely unique night with many unknown names now firmly lodged in the subconscious, seek out the compilation and keep an eye on the Buried Treasure label, still not even up to their tenth release.
This is on in Reading TONIGHT! Pretty sure this is a never to be repeated line up to launch the excellent new compilation from Buried Treasure, ‘The Delaware Road’. If you can’t make it then I urge you to check out the album (for about the third time on here, I know) as it’s full of all sorts of goodness from many names that were new to me.
Post Contemporary was/is the home of The Legion of Green Men out of Toronto, Canada – Alexander “Lex” Addicus and Rupert “Ru” J. Lloyd, who also recorded under many other aliases for the label. We did several gigs with them back in the good old 90s and they gave me a copy of this at one of them. The group frequently included ‘lock grooves’ at the end of their records, a technique where the cutting engineer makes the final groove on the record into a continuous one rather than the spiral the rest of the disc plays through thus endlessly locking the needle into a repeat cycle. To get a rhythmic lock groove that repeats cleanly rather than jumping as the needle turns a full rotation the tempo needs to be 133 1/3bpm (or divisions thereof) when played at 33rpm (180bpm at 45 vinyl fans).
At the end of the track on this disc, ‘Decay’, they put their one hundreth lock groove – or ‘eternal opuscule’ as they called them with the idea that the low quality flexi would slowly wear if left playing and thus slowly change the sound. The concept also extended to the sleeve material too which was printed on photo-sensitive blueprints that would also decay if left in sunlight – see below for their full explanation from the sleeve and insert.
Here’s the audio – the ‘eternal opuscule’ (or loop to you and me) starts around the 2.30 min mark. Earlier this year, after releases on Post Contemporary had ceased in 2007, a new 2xCD 20th anniversary version of the Legion of Green Men‘s ‘Spatial Specific’ album suddenly arrived. The original was released in 1994 on Ritchie Hawtin‘s Plus 8 Records and the new ‘Redux’ has many more tracks and ‘eternal opuscules’ as well as a transparent overlay that produces moire effects when rotated with the inner artwork.
Andy Votel collects all his artwork for cassettes together for an exhibition opening tonight at Electrik in Chorlton, Manchester for the next 3 weeks. He talks to John Doran at the Quietus about it here and they preview both sides of a new tape he’s made entitled ‘RAISING HELELYOS’.
I’m pleased to announce that I’ve collaborated with the good people at The Vinyl Factory for a monthly look through the weirder reaches of my record collection. After the short film on flexi discs they made this summer we’ve got together to produce an irregular look at the weird & wonderful world on vinyl and the myriad forms of pressings and packaging it can come in, dug directly from my collection. The first post just went live and focuses on 3D sleeves, photographer Michael Wilkin shot the sleeves.
It’s hard to keep up with all the new music out there at the best of times so here’s a quick round up of some things that I’m really liking at the moment.
Floating Points ‘Elaenia’ album
Just a great late night jazz album, deep, dark, dreamy. You’ll have read about this one in the press, believe the hype.
House of Black Lanterns ‘You Were Telling Me Of Mountains’ (Bandcamp)
Long time coming album from Dylan Richards aka King Cannibal – synth soundtrack stylings rich with Carpenter, Vangelis and Tangerine Dream influences as well as more contemporary beats.
The Comet Is Coming ‘Prophecy’ EP (Leaf)
Sax-heavy cosmic space jazz – Sun Ra meets Can
Jacco Gardner ‘Hypnophonic’ (Polyvinyl)
Well late on this one, glad I picked it up though, great singer, beautiful off-kilter arrangements
Black Channels ‘Two Knocks For Yes’ (Castles In Space cassette)
The spookiest mixtape you’ll hear this year with extra B side instrumentals, proper Hauntology.
Eagles of Death Metal ‘Zipper Down’ album
You know what these guys do, unashamed, straight up Rock n Roll. The reason I love them so much is because of things like the video below. Just skip the Duran Duran cover version though.
Black Devil Disco Club ‘H Friend Dance Remixes’ (Alter K)
Many, many remixes of ‘H Friend’ from the original Black Devil EP – head for the Andy Weatherall, Turzi or Loframes ones first.
Den Sorte Skole ‘Indians & Cowboys’
I can’t describe this album, it encompasses so many styles but the basis is collage, I’d call it ‘sampledelia’.
Various Artists ‘The Delaware Road’ CD compilation (Buried Treasure)
A radiophonic, tape collage, jazz and a million other things journey through an illusory soundtrack
The Dandelion Set ‘A Thousands Strands’ (forthcoming LP on Buried Treasure)
Another one long in the making, after several digital releases the Set finally pull an album together of new and old material and cajole none other than Alan Moore to voice one of their sonic looks back in time to a summer rich with the simplicities of childhood.
Ollie Teeba ‘Short Order’ LP (World Expo)
Teeba takes his time but serves up a 10 track banger of all styles Hip Hop for the mature B-Boy.
Annabel (lee) ‘By the Sea.. and other solitary places’ LP (If Music / Ninja Tune)
Still one of the best releases this year, a unique record that mixes female vocals with tarnished soundtrack and string samples, torch song jazz with the patina of time etched all over it. Could have been made anytime in the last 50 years.
Really liking this album by Italian group Calibro 35 – a real mix of analogue space-scapes, spy soundtrack stylings, funky psychness and more. Think early Harmonic 33 with bits of Pepe Deluxe referencing all the greats like Schifrin, Morricone, Zappa and more.
The space theme only really plays over about half the record despite the titles, at least half of them could be soundtracking The Impress File or Mission Impossible – regardless it’s excellent. They kick off a tour to support the album (their 5th) next week which finds its way to the UK in February 2016 and the album is available on vinyl from their website.
Readers might remember me featuring the first Metal Made Flesh kickstarter a couple of years back. Now the team is back for book 2, expanded with a second artist and bigger goals, two of which they’ve smashed, and they’re approaching the third with 12 days left. Taking liberally from all manner of sci-fi from the last three decades and managing to find new angles on it the book tells three different tales of a trio of characters and their place in the future cityscape of Tuaoni. You can get both books, T-shirts, original artwork or even appear as a character in the book in the new Kickstarter.
These are ads for a Brazilian insurance company by Jose Luiz Benicio I believe, posted by a user on the Syd Mead Facebook group, definite influence (Bob Peak too), love the way there seems to be a whole world and race of beings worked out.
Lovely labels
Black and white beauties
A couple of weeks ago I was in Amsterdam, taking part in discussions about ‘The Art of Curation’ with Mixcloud co-founder Nikhil Shah. The chat was hosted by the electronics company Sonos as part of the annual ADE music conference that takes place there, the biggest in Europe. I chose five tracks that linked with the subjects of Music, Art, Sci-Fi, Comics & Design which largely tie into the things I collect and post about on this site. This is the part where the blog eats itself as I blog about myself talking about blogging and readers will hear some familiar names and sounds during the interview.
The trip was a fruitful one in terms of digging for new things in my time off and I went with a mission for 45s, underground comics and sci-fi paperbacks. Things got off to a poor start with my first stop at Record Palace (Op Art -themed wall display at the top) which is on the outer rim of the centre of the city. I’ve shopped there a few times and it’s always yielded treasures but this time it wasn’t to be. Of the two 7″s I bought (a substandard late 80s Dickie Goodman break-in record and Raze‘s ‘Break 4 Love’) when I returned home to play them I discovered that the disc inside the Raze cover was in fact a Thompson Twins single. My fault for not checking the disc but they were only 50c and there was a strict ‘no playing’ rule on records from the cheap bins. The only good thing about it was the Trevor Jackson-designed cover which, when you look at the ‘dancing’ figures, is actually quite dirty.
From here I visited Lambiek a few roads away, the oldest comic shop in the world if their website is to be believed and, on the strength of their stock, I can believe it. The shop is about to move to a new premises and their usual gallery space was now a large dumping ground for what looks like all manner of random stock. Very little of it was priced apart from the odd penciled number on an inside cover and many of the piles can contain anything, very little order exists as you can see below.
But there was some gold there and I soon had a little pile building, the owner unable to direct me to the undergrounds as everything was mixed up due to the impending move. They closed at 5pm and at approximately 4.45 I glanced under a shelf and saw a box that looked like it was exactly what I was looking for. Going through it my suspicions were confirmed and I started pulling out handfuls of British and American underground and independent press comix as fast as I could, some in not-so-good condition but still a lot that you only find on eBay these days.
This copy of Oz magazine was nestling in the box, looking like a Robert Crumb comic, copies usually go for £10-20 and up.
These three Subvert comics by Spain were a bit water-damaged but I’d never seen copies before aside from being reprinted in other mags.
No.s 1 and 3 of Mother Oats Comix by the late, great Dave Sheridan.
They had five copies of this Radical Rock comic, all badly water-damaged but readable. You can easily find these for about $5 on eBay, but the postage triples the price as they’re always from the States.
I wasn’t going to leave a comic behind with a cover like the Bizarre Sex one, the issue of Tasty has some really nice abstract acid trip visuals inside although the cover isn’t up to much.
That Dutch NIMFKE comic on the right is probably one of the filthiest things I’ve ever seen in comic form.
There was more but here’s a lot of it. I’d been tempering my choices, thinking that this was adding up to quite a bundle but some of this stuff just doesn’t come around in Europe that often, even in this condition. Upon taking them to the counter I couldn’t quite believe my luck when the assistant proceeded to charge me one Euro for each comic with only two for some slightly over-sized books like Imagine and Heavy Metal. Digs like that don’t happen every day.
On then, with a spring in my step, to a couple more comic shops further north near Centraal station. On my way I passed a shop with a big sign outside, ‘Used Books, English Language’, and took a quick peek to see what it was like. Once inside I inquired if they had any vintage sci-fi paperbacks and the guy at the counter pointed to eight large apple boxes stacked in the aisle. “Four for ten Euros“, he quipped, “How long until you close?”, “20 minutes!”. I probably got through about two thirds of them, given that they were two rows deep inside but it was worth it.
