An extended Buy Music Club Recommends this month as there’s so much great music out there.
From top to bottom, left to right – DJ Sofa – the next entry in the Swinging Flavors series from the Italian Beat Machine label on 7″, the new Clipping. album, ‘Dead Channel Sky’ – constantly evolving their unique template of rap music and Mike Paradinas‘ latest under his Kid Spatula alias, quality electronica from this UK legend. Yage remixes the ‘Translations’ album, itself a radical reworking of their classic ‘Papa New Guinea’, this is more in line with the Amorphous Androgynous and ladles on the sitars. Snapped Ankles – ‘Hard Time Furious Dancing’ – already contender for album of the year on the Leaf Label and then on the right, Sully with a two track club banger of a release on a beautifully etched 12″.
Tortoise have a new track out, preceding their next album, KiF pay homage to guess who with ‘Still Out’, up for pre-order on the Stroud’s Sound Records and Dylan Dylan delivers an EP of 90’s flavoured dance tracks on Pont Neuf. An oldie but new to me is Sir Psyche‘s ‘Bodies of Work 2011-2013’, a free download of properly psychedelic trip hop I recently discovered on a Bandcamp trawl and a recent cover design of mine adorns the first new Dan Curtin album in over a decade, ‘The 4 Lights’ on De:tuned. Last but not least, the long overdue re-issue of chill out classic ‘Dreamfish’ (by Dreamfish aka Pete Namlook and Mixmaster Morris) is here from Silent State Recordings.
The Timelords
I’m really loving the new Snapped Ankles album, their fourth for The Leaf Label, ‘Hard Times Furious Dancing’, it’s refreshing and genuinely exciting whilst chiming with the times we live in. People ask where all the protest songs have gone, well here’s an album of them without ramming the point home and set to furiously fizzing beats and basslines. The video above is an imaginary conversation between seventies era Conny Plank and Brian Eno talking about AI.
Available on LP, CD, download with different coloured vinyl variants for Dinked indie shops and Bandcamp. Grab it from Bandcamp to put more money in the band’s pockets. They are on tour but will make a loss so had to start a GoFundTrees Crowdfunder, this is the reslity for bands today in the UK.
I recently ran across this great piece of packaging on eBay on a lot for The Great Zoetrope made by the Adult Toys Inc company in 1966. They’ve really made the most of the box graphics here and I’m wondering if things like this being around helped influence the graphics of Sgt. Pepper a year later? They don’t make them like this anymore.
These last two were from a different auction but show more of the contents and some scale.
More images saved from various trawls around the web, above: Images for Learning (Science Research Associates Inc.) 1971, found on eBay.
From Andrew Sclanders’ Beat Books list: A large postcard with designs by Gompers Saijo publicising the benefit held for the Zen Mountain Center at the Fillmore, San Francisco, March 15, 1967.
22.5×14.7cm.
Apple Boutique ‘Upon Our Way’ poster by The Fool, 39.5cm x 57cm, 1967/68.
Upscaled repro Pink Floyd poster, 1967.
International Times graphic, 1968. Thanks to Neil Rice for pointing this out. From Hoppyx.com
Four sheets of Dave Roe designed ‘Polypops’ wrapping paper, originally sold circa 1968. Each approx 49 x 73.5cm
For anyone who missed it in January and wants a copy, Delic Records has repressed the expanded version of my Raiding the 20th Century tape – be quick, only 30 copies
https://delicrecords.bandcamp.com/album/dj-food-feat-paul-morley-raiding-the-20th-century-words-music-expansion-2nd-press
It’s seemingly been a month of losses so far and sadly news of another reached me this week, less than two weeks after I’d posted about him for the first time. Doug Lear, formerly one of the UK’s leading exponents of the Magic Lantern (both in performance and collection) passed away on March 6th. Bizarrely, on that very day, I met with friends Neil and Sally Rice who had known him for decades and Neil passed me a red photo album given to him by Doug some years before. Inside this treasure trove is a collection of press cuttings, flyers and other ephemera from his days of giving Magic Lantern performances alongside his then wife, Anita, on their two canal boats.
With Neil’s permission I’m posting some of the contents as a record of their activites in the 80s and 90s, hopefully people will find them along the way and they’ll be useful for research. Also included were four copies of The New Magic Lantern Journal by The Magic Lantern Society from the late seventies / early eighties. This was a reactivated version of an original publication that ran around the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s – several issues of which can be perused on the Internet Archive. I hope you enjoy these pieces of history as much as I do, RIP Doug.
With a growing family, the couple opened a museum, tea room and theatre in Wales in 1991, leaving the boats behind. For more information, see my previous post on the Lears. 
Show #13, a Baker’s Dozen is how I’m finishing this first run on ROVR Radio. There’s a lot of instrumental downtempo beats in this episode courtesy of the Legacy Echo label run by Chilla Ninja in Manchester, thanks for the records guys. More Monastry, a couple of old Linkwood tracks from the now defunt Firecracker label and a vintage megamix in the form of a 1987 Trax selection from a promo tape I found last summer. For some modern reconstructions of old classics check out Disco Police‘s stunning recreation of Tom Browne‘s ‘Funkin’ For Jamaica’, Magic Source‘s cover of ‘Voodoo Ray’ and my own deconstruction of Roy Ayers‘ ‘We Live In Brooklyn Baby’ – RIP Roy.
Listen back via the archive here
It’s been a year since I started this and this is my last show for ROVR for the moment. I will be carrying on under my own steam each month but the show will take on a slightly different form, I doubt it’ll be two hours each month for one thing. I loved being asked by ROVR to do a monthly show but when I signed up it was on the provision that it would be a test for a year. My main worry was the way the shows were constructed for the station which involves uploading the individual tracks directly to a back end area where you order your show selection, adding metadata etc. so that tracks can be indentified online once playing. Once the two hour limit has been filled you then choose an option that auto-blends the start and end points of the songs for a seamless transition, not beat matching, just fading. This was hit and miss for me and not the way I make mixes, being more of a mix DJ who layers tracks and samples up. I was assured that they were working on a DAW for this that would give DJs more control over how they blended tracks together, unfortunatley this hasn’t materialised after a year and I don’t feel I’m doing good work here as a result. I also had no way of knowing listening figures for either my shows or the station in general so I have no idea what sort of audience I was getting. But no bridges have been burnt, if the DAW materialises and works well then I may be back.
But, the year is up and I’m keen to construct things in my studio as I always have and hopefully provide listeners with a better show as a result, getting back to mixing, away from the digital playlist format whilst hopefully being more creative. I’ll upload to Mixcloud and that will allow listening figures and comments as well as a trackmarked playlist. It won’t be behind a paywall like the archive uploads I’ve been doing so everyone can listen and it will be easier to share and embed into websites after it’s published. The Electrik Collage shows have all been about getting back to doing radio with an empahsis on current music like Solid Steel used to be (I estimate at least 75% of each EC show is contemporary releases from the last year or so) but I also want to experiment with the format too. What that will entail I’m not sure but we’ll see next month, until then, enjoy the new show.
DJ Food – Electrik Collage #1
Linkwood Family – Piece of Mind
Monastry – Respite
Linkwood – Hear The Sun
Disco Police – Jamaica (Sir Dancealot Deconstructed Regroove)
Chop – Monolith
Magic Source – Voodoo Ray (Radio Edit)
Various Artists – Trax Megamix 1987
DJ Food – Electrik Collage #15
Deadchannel9000 – Concrete Science
2S.Beatz Productions – L.Y.W.B.
Kristian Gjerstad – Drops, Slops & Chops
Chop – Psycho Bubble
Chilla Ninja – Good Time All The Time
Atoribeats – Whoz Da Mann!?
Funkychild – Iguazu
Jon Fu – Revival
Champagne Dub – Thuggin
DJ Food – Electrik Collage #10
The In-Sect – Brooklyn (DJ Food Restructure)
Hot Chocolate – Sugar Daddy
Mandrake Handshake – Emonzaemon
The Psyclops Trees – Oscars Groove Part 2 (Alt. take)
Space Drum Meditation – Water Sirens
Djrum – Frekm pt. 2
Monastry – Destination
Kosmologic Research Society – Rift
D.K. – Untitled Pt.6
Another musical giant gone – the incredible Roy Ayers has left the building. I probably first heard snatches of his music via samples in 80s hip hop by the likes of the Jungle Brothers but caught up with the real thing in the 90s. He was on the same bill at a French festival once when I toured with The Herbaliser so we had a view of his set from the side of stage, the photos of which I’ll add here if I can find them.
By weird chance I used parts of the Roy Ayers Ubiquity track ‘We Live In Brooklyn Baby’ only last month whilst experimenting with some software. This is what resulted, not a normal remix. I played it to PC and he commented, “Cellular restructure. Certifiable.” which I took as a compliment. RIP Roy
Very sad to hear of the passing of Mark Pawson today. A unique figure on the counter cultural art and publishing scene who I would regularly see at zine fairs and the like. His was always the most interesting stall with the most bizarre underground books and comics from all over the world. I’d end up buying some beautifully screen printed French comics from him, the likes of which you’d never see anywhere else and would never see again if you didn’t buy them there and then.
I first got to know Mark in the early 90s when he was around on the scene when I worked at Ambient Soho, he was the badge man who would make all sorts of badges for the shop, and our Telepathic Fish parties. I still have a load of badges he made using my Openmind logo and was going to get him to make more this summer for the release of a record. He’d sell artbooks and badges he made of his own work using photocopiers and also made badges featuring Negativland and Bob Dobbs.
His classic ‘Mark’s Little Book of Kinder Eggs’ and book of plug wirings were always in print and I think the ‘Assume This Phone Is Tapped’ sticker was also one of his. There are phrases I’ll always associate with his work like ‘Aggressive School of Cultural Workers’, ‘Demolish Serious Culture’, ‘Book Shops Not Bombs’ and ‘N©’. He belonged to the anti-establishment DIY scene who used whatever they could to make art, was involved in The Exploding Cinema early on as well as the international mail art scene. It’s shocking to know he’s gone, a truly one of a kind figure. I’m sad I won’t bump into him at the fairs any more. RIP Mark
I bought some badges at the weekend at my local carboot; two lovely Epcot Centre ones – Disney’s futuristic science centre from the 80s, a Freak Out one which I’m unsure is original or not and another named ‘Lears Magical Lanterns’. The last one had piqued my interest as magic lanterns are the original light shows from Victorian times, a now obsolete curio of the past that still retains a devoted following online. I wasn’t familiar with the name but thought I’d add to my small collection of light show-related badges and look it up when I got home. This fascinating 1983 BBC documentary on the Lear family and their travelling magic lantern show (via two canal boats!) was the first to appear. It’s a beautiful look back at an idyllic age where the young family pursue their passion, preserving the outdated artform for audiences whilst travelling the UK’s canals. There’s a particularly good Chromatrope display around the 16 minute mark.
My good friend Neil Rice knew the Lears well and visited them at their home in the 80s, fuelling his fascination with the history of projection in the process. He remembers they had, “Lanterns of every shape and size which they knew the life history of. Plus circa 10,000 slides, hand painted and early photographic. 3000 of them mechanical.” The Lears also visited his Optikinetics lighting business in Luton and even performed at the dealer launch of their early ‘80s Mode/Optikinetics roadshow.
In its algorithmic wisdom YouTube served up this later programme from 1992 directly after the first, revisiting Doug Lear nearly a decade later. Times have changed and their marriage is on the rocks with Anita filing for divorce, bringing dire consequences for the magic lantern show. They now have a museum for the lanterns and optical toys in Wales but financial burdens facing Doug mean he might have to sell their collection of antique projection equipment to pay the bills. It’s not a straight forward documentary like the first, but contains flashback period pieces inserted to illustrate the golden age of magic lanterns. It’s an all too familiar tale of technology slowly but surely evolving to make way for the latest innovations, mercilessly leaving yesterday’s practitioners in its wake as audiences move on to the latest thing. We’re left hanging at the end as to Doug’s fate as he walks into the light and ponders what to do as next.
After the Lears split up, Christies auctioned their collection in the mid 90s, fetching circa half a million pounds with most of it going to the Getty Museum. Anita pursued a career in laser-cut marquetry with customers like Stella McCartney while Doug studied the Turin Shroud at Birmingham University, continuing his musical career before eventually meeting a new partner and settling in North West Wales. Doug and Anita made their peace before she passed away in 2017 and there is more about the Lears in her obituary on the Magic Lantern Society website. Amazing what the purchase of one small badge can uncover.
I visited Mick Jones‘ RRPL exhibition at the Farsight Gallery on Friday courtesy of Stephen Coates (seen above at the magazine kiosk inside the venue). For anyone who doesn’t know, Mick is a collector, an understatement when you realise that the amount of ephemera, memorabilia and esoteria on display is possibly only 5% of his archive. Although I can’t claim to be a huge Clash or B.A.D. fan there’s no denying that the collection on display is impressive and wide-ranging. From toys, games, comics, magazines, records, tapes, clothes to art, posters, projection equipment, videos, music gear and pop culture artifacts, it seems there is very little that Mick doesn’t collect.
Primarily of interest to me were his pieces of hip hop ephemera including several by Futura from the early 80s when he and Mick wrote ‘The Escapes of Futura 2000’ with The Clash as backing band. Inside one of the glass cabinets I noticed Futura’s handwritten lyrics to the song, beautifully enscribed in his recognisable style. In another was a customised boombox with drawings by Dondi and Zephyr, a Rammellzee flyer and Beastie Boys tour pass – what a time to be in New York!
Of course there is loads of Clash-related memorabilia too, from equipment to tapes, toys to merchandise, press coverage to what appears to be a Futura-sprayed canvas.
Fanzines were a huge part of the punk movement and there are plenty here although most have been photocopied and pasted up as wallpaper at various points to aid ease of display.
There are also a number of huge colour-themed collages of all manner of ephemera, an ingenious way to display many of the items that were found without an obvious home.
And it goes on and on… there’s even the first in a projected series of magazines devoted to highlights from the collection on sale inside. I highly recommend you try and visit if you’re in the centre of London with an hour or two to spare. It’s free, open daily from midday – 7pm and the gallery is at the end of Denmark St. tucked round the corner by St. Giles church, nearest tube, Tottenham Court Road. Be quick though as it’s only on until March 16th – more info here www.rocknrollpl.com and on Instagram @rocknrollpl
More fabulous music to wrap your ears around – the Legacy Echo label conduct a tribute to ATCQ‘s Midnight Marauders album and Magic Source magic up a disco version of ‘Voodoo Ray’ as Disco Police twist Tom Browne‘s ‘Funkin’ For Jamaica’ inside out for eight and a half minutes on their Crate Diggers album. Visioneers conjure up new version of tracks from the recent album and there’s a version of UFOrb sitting on Bandcamp from a source you wouldn’t expect. New music in the form of Space Drum Meditation, Syon Ward and Mandrake Handshake who come over like a kind of King Gizzard meets Stereolab in places. Jungle Boogie (JB) is my old friend Bunky K Brown improvising long bass meditations with percussionist bandmate Britt Walford.
My next ROVR radio show featuring some of these will air on Friday March 14th and the shows are available to listen back to now via the ROVR live app AND the desktop player (at last!) APPLE or ANDROID
Selections from the Jasper 52 auction of psychedelic posters which closes on March 9th. Above: rare Family Dog poster by Rick Griffin.
Above: Mouse & Kelley Family Dog poster, 1968, below: Randy Tuten Family Dog poster, 1968
Above: Victor Moscoso Jungle Juice comic, below: Eye Ball poster and Ripped Van Winkle poster, 1988
Above: Bob Fried Memorial Boogie by various artists, below: Wes Wilson, The New Mobilization March anti-war march in San Francisco, 1969.
Above: East Totem West head shop poster, below: Neon Park Family Dog poster, 1968.
On Sunday Hannah Brown, Heena Song, Julian Hand and I visited Optikinetics co-founder Neil Rice at his home to pick up some of his old projectors and talk general light show shop.
While we were there he gave us an impromptu light show using a four-projector, colour wheel and vintage Optikinetics Solar System set up he’d made then let us all have a play. Here’s a clip of just some of what we achieved using the kit with a set of custom slides I’d made under his direction. This is all analogue, no digital FX, shot against the wall in his living room by Hannah using her phone then edited in Premiere later.
The song is an edit of ‘Through With You’ by The Lemon Pipers, one of Neil’s favourites, they also have a song called ‘Rice Is Nice’, hence the title of this post.
My latest radio show is streaming from 2pm today wherever you are in the world on ROVR radio. I’m constantly amazed at the amount of great new music that’s out there and this month features new tracks from Awkward, LF58, Create-A-Mess, Apta, the Cheeba Cheeba label and some great reworks by Disco Police. There’s a classic megamix in the form of Cuco‘s Disco Breaks re-edit of Martin Circus ‘Disco Circus’ and a little trio of versions of Malcolm McLaren‘s ‘World Famous’ classic, it’s quite beat-heavy this month and, dare I say it?, a little trip-hoppy in places (not a bad thing in my book).
Listen back here https://www.rovr.live/show/4699
Show #12 Feb 2025
DJ Food – Electrik Collage #7
Monastry – Origin
Type Raw, Alcynoos & Parental – Poetry
Create-A-Mess – Denmark Hill (DJ Food slight re-edit)
Dr.Doppler – Gardens in Spain
David Beast – Racial Riots
Awkward – The Shift
Monastry – In the Machine
Disco Police – Masterpiece (Bop Gun Slow Blow Mix)
E20 Trio – S950 Is a Verb
131 – I Cant Find My Way Home
DJ Food – Electrik Collage #44
Martin Circus – The Circus (Disco Breaks mix) (The Cuco re-edit remastered)
Disco Police – Caramel (Bop Gun Primordial DISKO Tech Mix)
Akufen – Play (Never Work Till Monday)
DJ Food – Electrik Collage #39
Chop – Oscillo
LF58 – Radials Part Two (excerpt 3)
Anne Dudley – Close (To The Edit) diverted with World’s Famous
DJ Koco – World’s Famous feat. 45trio
Malcolm McLaren – World’s Famous
Run DMC – Peter Piper (Brat mash-up DJ Food Re-edit)
Redman – Dont Wanna C Me Rich
Create-A-Mess – Fly Humans
Disco Police – God Make Me Funky (Bop Gun Cosmic Regroove)
DJ Food – Electrik Collage #18
Djrum – Frekm pt. 1
Chop – Rioflection
Lone Bison – Origin Story
Awkward – Last Fiend
ill-sugi – rah
Apta – Sink
Apta – Meniscus
LF58 – Radials Part Two (excerpt 4)
After the longest month of the year we finally hit February, Bandcamp Friday is on the 7th so fill your baskets in readiness for that day when 100% of the profits go to the artists and labels. Hieroglypic Being has released three albums so far this past month, not a bad start for him and two from Inhmost feature in this list as they were a new discovery for me. Talking of older records I’d missed, the ‘Collage’ album by Monastry is a sample-filled trip hop winner from an Australian duo that dates from last summer, as does the (Mr) Chop album on Madlib Invasionz.
Anticipating the return of Little Barrie and Malcolm Catto‘s new album this April I was checking out the album Barrie had made with Shawn Lee under the name Ultrasonic Grand Prix last year – an intriguing mix of vintage guitars and drum machines. DJ Koco‘s take on the Malcolm McLaren classic, ‘World’s Famous’ was out late last year on a 45 and will endure all year whilst Jonny Cuba‘s first solo outing under the name Create-A-Mess is finally released after literally years in production limbo.
My next ROVR radio show featuring some of these will air on Friday Feb 14th and the shows are available to listen back to now via the ROVR live app AND the desktop player (at last!) APPLE or ANDROID
This Saturday I will be playing at Brvtvs in Marlow, a hi-fi listening bar/restaurant. Not only that, support will be from my old partner in crime, DK!
We’ve not played together on the same bill for over a decade but I’m really looking forward to hearing what he pulls out for a mini Solid Steel reunion. I think you have to book a table if you want to come before 10pm so maybe contact them to check availability if you’re planning to travel far.
Hard to believe, this is 20 years old today. My 59 minute extension of the history of the cut up, featuring Paul Morley‘s narration, largely adapted from his book, Words & Music. Between creating the original 40 minute version for The Remix’s guest spot on XFM in 2004 I’d read Paul’s book and there was so much crossover between the contents that it sparked an idea to rework the mix out of it’s original constraints into something more definitive. Part mix, part documentary, all copyright-infringement, so much so that I eventually received a cease and desist letter from Universal about a year later after the horse had bolted.
The Delic Records label, a bastion of all things sample-based, cut up and collaged, released the original mix in a cassette edition a year ago and now they offer the expanded version on its 20th anniversary. Each cassette has been designed by yours truly with a QR code on the back that opens some exclusive material like a key to all the people on the inside image, the full tracklist (updated and corrected although I still managed to miss a couple of mistakes) and my original handwritten making-of notes. Sadly I couldn’t find the cease and desist letter…
Order a copy from here, also grab a copy of the MagicTouch 45 while you’re there.
UPDATE – these sold out super fast, they still have the earlier 40 minute edition if you want to pick up a copy, only 8 left I think.
My latest radio show is streaming from 2pm today wherever you are in the world on ROVR radio. Kicking off with another vintage megamix from the vaults and new music from Disco Police, Awkward, MagicTouch, Space Drum Meditation, the Cheeba Cheeba label and more.
Listen back at https://www.rovr.live/show/4589
Show #11 Jan 2025
DJ Food – Electrik Collage #42
MagicTouch – Kyousoku 3
Awkward – The Grand Deal
Dr.Doppler – 00.Ocimum
Kentorako – BarbedWireStew
Alcynoos & Parental – Chase
Beautify Junkyards – Sonora
DJ Food – Electrik Collage #21
Awkward – The Subway And Rammellzee (refix 24.6)
Disco Police – Disco Queen (Bubbling Minds DISCO Mix)
David Beast – Endurance Test
Nebulon Systems – Music Is (DJ Food Radio edit)
Silvia Sommer – Tinguely
LF58 – Radials Part Two (excerpt 1)
DJ Food – Electrik Collage #34
Crazy John – Electro 1984 (Hully Gully Mix)
Disco Police – Space Is The Place (Bubbling Minds Proto Detroit Techno Mix)
Midnight Heist – Shiny
Akufen – My Blue House
Paul Funk – Don’t Make Me Wait For Acid
Nebulon Systems – Orangutan (DJ Food Radio edit)
DJ Food – Electrik Collage #8
Lone Bison – Origin Story (Paul Cousins Remix)
Beautify Junkyards – Sister Moon
Kosmologic Research Society – Hippocampus
James Adrian Brown – Limbic System (Demo)
LF58 – Radials Part Two (excerpt 2)
Space Drum Meditation – False Dawn