People Like Us ‘Dreaming’ 8″ postcard record


Just in time for Xmas Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us has release an extremely limited edition 8″ postcard record featuring her track ‘Dreaming’ which samples from various versions of ‘White Christmas’. The words slowly change in tone, especially when watched with the accompanying video (see link >>). You can buy a copy here, not cheap but these are all hand cut individually on a lathe somewhere in Sweden. Having made a postcard record myself I know that it’s a whole lot cheaper than buying a machine and making my own.

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Graffiti: Kings on a Mission documentary

Here’s a really good half hour documentary from the BBC World Service about graffiti which interviews original NYC writers and has a great selection of relevant music rather than the usual well-worn tunes. Unfortunately they won’t let you embed the programme so here’s the link.

There are quite a few vintage New York-centric graffiti items popping up at the moment. The ‘Training Days’ book is out which I mentioned a while back, a ‘where-are-they-now?‘ book which interviews old writers and finds out what they’ve done in the past 40 years.

The Seen book, ‘They Call Me The Godfather of Graffiti’, finally shipped out last week too and it’s a treasure trove of unseen images or different views on old classics from one of the undisputed Kings. Also the restored ‘Style Wars’ Blu-ray is finally ready after years of work on the original reels which adds 40 minutes of unused footage from the original shoot.

 

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Rave Wars 3 ‘The Return of the Old School’

Now the circle is complete. Just in time for the launch of the first Star Wars 7 teaser trailer (you may have heard about that) comes the final installment of the Rave Wars trilogy. You should know the drill by now – 7″ vinyl, this time in Sith Lord black or Tatooine orange, packaged with a random character from the original series of SW figures (nothing after ’83). Two rave tracks with Star Wars themes, this time by Luke Vibert and Killa Productions. Available now from Balkan Vinyl – be quick, very limited!

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Punks The Comic original art by Kody Chamberlain


I recently bought some original art from Kody Chamberlain, the artist on Punks -The Comic. I managed to get in early and nab the Dimension X variant cover which is an homage to The Incredible Hulk 181 where he battles Wolverine. Kody also did another homage to Superman‘s first appearance on the cover of Action Comics and there’s Peanuts and Spiderman ones forthcoming.

The art is a beautiful mess of Xeroxed, distressed photocopies and Scotch Magic tape complete with creases and no attempt to keep things clean in the best tradition of DIY Punk artists like Jamie Reid. I also got page 1 of issue 1 and a trio of Nutpuncher games cards featuring the character, Skull (see gallery below).

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Punks #1&2 are out now from Image Comics, #3 is out this month sometime and you can buy original art from Kody’s site. There are also two previous issues, a Summer and Winter special although these date from 2007 (!) and are mostly being reprinted in part in the back of the new issues. The Summer special is well worth tracking down for an interview with Art Chantry who talks about collage work, David Carson and the age of the computer in the design world which is no less relevant now than it was 7 years ago.

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Andy Partridge ‘Powers’


I’m not so up on Andy Partridges‘ solo work (I mainly know him from his XTC days) but this album swam into my field of vision the other day after a search for the book of collected Richard M. Powers‘ artwork. Apparently Partridge was fascinated by Powers’ book covers as a kid and later made a whole album of ambient / electro-acoustic sound pieces to soundtrack the fantastic worlds he saw on his library loans. The 500 copy CD is long sold out but you can still buy the 12 tracks as downloads from his Ape House imprint. Think Raymond Scott, Louis & Bebe Barron or Tod Dockstader and you’re in the right area.

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Jeff Soto

Nice to see Jeff Soto reintroducing some of his old characters back into more recent work, the Walker and the Builder were what attracted me to him in the first place but he’s since largely moved on from them. Maybe one day we’ll get the Walker toy they were always going to do…

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Jane Weaver ‘The Silver Globe’ LP


Thought I’d mentioned this before but I don’t think I have. Jane Weaver‘s latest album,‘The Silver Globe’ is still on my turntable after a month of first receiving it. A rarity in this day and age, I would recommend this album to almost anyone as it’s all killer and no filler, each track merging into the next to form a complete work. Definitely going to be on the ‘best of 2014’ list in a month’s time. Buy it direct from Finders Keepers here.

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