Lovely poster, designed by Matt Needle, for the showing of ‘Slient Running’ at the Eden Project in Cornwall which happened yesterday. See Pete Thorton‘s review over on Front Row Reviews for more of what went down.
Another great op-art .gif by Bill Tavis.
Here’s the 3hr all-star electronica mix I contributed to as part of Terminal Radio 22 – curated by Nmesh – and featuring FSOLDigital (aka Yage / Brian Dougans with an “Electric Brainstorm 10: Micro Edition”), Mixmaster Morris, Neotropic, Youth, Akkya, LMS and Surface 10. There’s a long 5 minute intro before the mixes start and my section starts around the 1:12:45 mark
Brian Eno‘s 90’s solo albums tend to get overlooked in the light of his 70’s and 80’s output even though his star was truly back on the map by the early 90’s due to the resurgence in Ambient music he helped pioneer. Typically whilst everyone else was looking back Eno had moved on and was looking forward, releasing (or not) a mixed bag alongside producing the likes of U2, James, curating interactive apps and installations and remixing Massive Attack.
He reissues ‘Nerve Net’, ‘The Shutov Assembly’, ‘Neroli‘ and ‘The Drop’ on December 1st – all expanded into 2 disc editions. Each comes in deluxe casebound packaging and contains the original album on the first disc alongside a second disc of unheard or rare music from his archives.
Arguably the strongest release is ‘Nerve Net’, a mixed bag that anticipated Trip Hop on certain tracks and contains some of his finest rhythmic works since ‘My Life In The Bush of Ghosts’. Most interesting of all though is that the 2nd CD contains the first release of the ‘lost’ album, ‘My Squelchy Life’, an earlier version that was aborted at the time.
‘The Shutov Assembly’ features a whole album of unreleased recordings from the same period and ‘Neroli’ – a concept album based around perfume – includes an entire unreleased hour-long ambient work, ‘New Space Music’.
Perhaps the weakest of the bunch is 1997’s ‘The Drop’ which is an odd release with a terrible cover that’s saved by the final track, ‘Iced World’ which is a beautiful 30 minute ambient piece worth the price of admission alone. This is expanded to include 9 tracks previously only available as a limited edition of 1,000 sold at an exhibition of Eno’s ’77 Million Paintings’ at La Floret in Japan.
Each album contains a 16 page booklet compiling photos, images and writing by Eno relevant to each release. Three of the albums are also being made available as gatefold double vinyl releases containing the original audio only, but accompanied by a download card and printed inner sleeves with the content from the CD booklets.
Pre-order each of the albums over at Enoshop.co.uk where you can also buy all sorts of editons of his work, oblique strategies sets, T-shirts and other obscurities like the ‘Curiosities’ compilations which are well recommended.
Love this retro take on the original Transformers intro with the new Angry Birds crossover game – ‘Birds Disguised as Robots in Disguise’.
Well that looks pretty great, wasn’t supposed to be released until next week but apparently ‘Hydra’ leaked it 
Another great op-art .gif by Bill Tavis.
Bonobo has a new EP out on Dec 1st with a lovely cover design by the ever-excellent Leif Podhajsky, someone who has really carved his own niché out over the past few years. Also responsible for ‘The North Borders’ artwork and the new live album covers as well as several others for Ninja (Kelis being just one). Check out the special website created for the release and you can download the title track if you use the Shazam app on it.
Here’s the unboxing of the Frankie Goes To Hollywood ‘Inside The Pleasuredome’ set I co-designed with Philip Marshall for Universal Music / ZTT. The 30th anniversary of its release is next week and these will ship out to pledgers on the 28th.
There is still time to pre-order one but they’re down to the last 30 of 2000 now it seems. A series of full, in-depth blog posts will follow soon detailing the various aspects of the designs which have been on-going since January this year.
Just announced: ‘Crate Expectations’ – a celebration of vinyl through music, film and record shopping at The Lantern in Bristol on February 7th, 2015. Myself, Cheeba and Moneyshot will be performing our newly AV’d up 3-Way Mix reconstruction of ‘Paul’s Boutique’ alongside DJ sets from DJ Format and John Stapleton. There will be the Colston Hall record fair in the day along with a showing of the Stones Throw documentary ‘My Vinyl Weighs A Ton’ and a record collecting Q&A featuring some of the guests playing. There’s also an after party at Start The Bus which could have a very special guest playing too…
Before that, this Thursday to be exact, I’ll be at the Watershed to take part in the BFI‘s Sci-Fi season by presenting a Future Shock AV set before a screening of Sun Ra’s 1974 film ‘Space Is The Space’. Expect lots of space funk, solar system synth work and more with Cheeba helping Lumin on the visuals. This set is free but you have to buy tickets for the film and ticket holders will be given priority if the place is full. Also look out for Cheeba and Ollie Teeba live-rescoring Plan 9 From Outer Space and War of The Worlds respectively over the coming weeks too.
A month later and I’ll be going back to back all night with Boca 45 for an all 7″ vinyl set at the Big Chill Bar on the 29th of November.
The Vinyl Factory published this extensive article last Friday about Kraftwerk‘s influence on electronic music and I was asked to contribute. Alongside 19 other artists including Jeff Mills, Kevin Saunderson, OMD, Moire, Malcolm Catto, Goat and more we were asked to pick our favourite release and how it changed our lives. I chose ‘Autobahn’ which, by coincidence, is 40 years old next month apparently. Read the full piece here.
Bill Tavis ‘Fractal Thinking’ via Trippy Visions Daily We will control all that you see and hear…
Scarey as hell, voice reels and foley sounds from the film within a film from Berberian Sound Studio. 10″ via Death Waltz which is sadly sold out at source, but who have just begun reissuing their original back catalogue in remastered and expanded form. Cover by House from the outtake posters he designed for the original film.
The Discovering Scarfolk book arrived today and it’s a beautiful object, perfectly realised and presented. The dark humour that runs through the website of the same name is here in physical form, looking just like a government handbook from yesteryear as is the intention. Having not had time to fully digest it I can see that pieces from the website are reprinted but there’s possibly other new material too. Well worth a look and no doubt a read too. Perfect Xmas present fodder.
Following on from the insane God Hates Astronauts from last month it seems now is the season for really very silly / funny / un-PC comics as Joshua Hale Fialkov and Kody Chamberlain bring you ‘Punks – The Comic’.
Essentially a series of scenarios involving four housemates – Skull, Abraham Lincoln, Fist and Dog – in various surreal episodes that recall the Young Ones mixed with the irreverence of Tank Girl more than anything else.
The difference here is that the artwork is all rendered in a beautiful sepia collage style which is what drew me to it in the first place. Skull seems intent on punching Dog in the balls but is thwarted by his protective Wunderpants, Dog is whacked through the ceiling and has to fight for his life after accidentally killing a roaming garden gnome.
There’s also a few pages of games with a cut out card game which ends with the winner getting a punch in the nuts and a page of puzzles which have no easy winners. Any comic that can include the lines “Your balls will be mine! For me to smash with my hands!… That came out wrong” is fine with me. Out now from Image, very silly and NSFW, my new favourite comic, can’t wait for issue 2.
I was Virgil Howe‘s guest on his Hidden Level radio show on Soho Radio last Saturday – we chatted and played music for 2 hours and swapped stories and tunes in the tiny studio in the heart of Soho. I’d not met Virgil face to face before but we’d been in contact and remixed each others material via The Amorphous Androgynous who he drums for. Virgil’s had his hands in loads of bands from the Killer Meters to Little Barrie to his own work on the Breaking Bread and Scenario labels. He’s the son of Steve Howe, guitarist for Yes and Asia and his brother Dylan also plays drums and has just released an album of jazz versions of Bowies‘s ‘Berlin’. He’s also DJed since the mid 90’s and can eat 12 cream crackers in 1 minute (I may have made this one up).
Virgil Howe’s Hidden Level Radio Show (11/10/2014) by Soho Radio on Mixcloud
Anyway, top bloke with skills and great taste in music and we chatted and played two hours away in no time, taking in recording stories, mutual friends, even comics and at one point Virgil told a tasty little anecdote about a recording session that his dad disrupted whilst Trevor Horn and co. were constructing Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s ‘Relax’. Yes, the world is that small. Anyway, here’s the podcast and look out for Virgil’s name, he’s everywhere and has a new solo album called ‘Hidden Level’ on the way soon which is excellent. Also check out his three Drum Series 7″s on Breaking Bread where he teams up with Malcolm Catto, Shawn Lee and Mark Claydon.
Very happy to be a part of this all-star line up for a 3 hour mix on Terminal Radio on Oct 24th. The Terminal Radio mixes were started by members of the FSOL board as curated sets of 15 minute duration and have slowly amassed a decent archive.
In the next one they go all out even have a contribution from Brian from FSOL alongside mixes from Youth, Mixmaster Morris, Neotropic and more. I’ve submitted a couple of sections from my Future Shock mix, it will be interesting to see which is used and how it fits into the overall set. More info and an event page can be found here with details on how to tune in.
This is out now and exceeding all my expectations – fantastic collection of tripped out space jazz and astral poetry. Truly a lysergic set out cosmic jams, every track is killer – buy it in regular forms or with extra instrumental discs here.
Yes, that is the original Bagpuss puppet and an original Clanger with what looks like a bootleg friend. All were at the Art of Smallfilms book launch I attended on Tuesday night, hosted by Jonny Trunk at the Raven Row gallery in Spitalfields.
The book is excellent, huge and heavy with chapters ranging from Bagpuss and the Clangers to Ivor The Engine and Pogles’ Wood and beyond. The photos are beautiful as you can see from some of the spreads below. Many of the props and puppets have survived and have been sympathetically photographed to show how they were animated as well as the skill with which they were made.
Peter Firmin, who made and designed most of the objects, was also in attendance along with the little girl, Emily, who featured at the start of each Bagpuss – now obviously a grown woman.
And here’s me with my friend Liz who I went to college with over 20 years ago, in the style of the old Bagpuss titles. Photo by David Vallade. The book should be out now, priced £25 for a 320 pg hardback from Four Corners Books – bargain.
