Drums of Death ‘Waves’ series cover art

Op-Art seems to be back in a big way in 2013. After seeing the odd example over the years (Trevor Jackson‘s Soulwax sleeves spring to mind) the floodgates seemed to open last year. Chris & Cosey‘s ‘Transcend’ sleeve was the one in all the end of year lists and I think I’ve featured more op art in the last year than ever before.

Drums of Death was one of them and his Waves trilogy of EPs (red, blue and black) are getting the remix treatment on the Civil Music label. Above are the cover of the remixed versions of red and blue with the original blue and black below. Whilst the music isn’t all my bag I can highly recommend ‘Bang The Drum’ from the Red Waves EP. The Blue Waves Remixed 12″ is released on March 4th.

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Calendar for 1970/71 and personal 2012 highlights

Fabulous Hallmark calendar from 1970-71, designed by Push Pin Studios and containing 16 months. Seen via the ever-excellent Voices of East Anglia website who, themselves cribbed it from the Flickr of Mewdeep who has the full thing.

2012 was a busy year for me, probably one of the best yet in terms of new things achieved and unique experiences. I’m always striving to do something different and at the end of each year I remember the line from The The‘s ‘I’ve Been Waiting For Tomrrow (All of My Life)’, “another year over and what have I done?”.

Thankfully 2012 has been a golden year in terms of ‘getting things done’:

Finally getting ‘The Search Engine’ out there was a good start as were the Greenwich Planetarium launch shows and exhibition with Henry Flint at the Pure Evil Gallery, all in January.

Featuring on a Cineola podcast, being interviewed by Matt Johnson alongside an exclusive remix of ‘GIANT’.

The Kraftwerk month and mixes I did on my blog going a bit viral in March.

Having The Amorphous Androgynous remix one of my tracks for a release on Record Store Day was a massive thrill. Hearing it played on 6 Music was great too.

Going to Montreal to learn about and present The Search Engine show in their SATosphere was one of the proudest points of my gigging career to date.

Having J.G. Thirlwell pop round for tea and a chat one afternoon.

The Food & Flint exhibition, hosted at the Factory Road Gallery in Hinckley by Sarah & Leigh was amazing fun.

The Sacrum Profanum concert in Krakow I took part in after an invitation from Skalpel was one of the most fantastic concerts I’ve ever seen and gig of the year for 2012.

The Beastie Boys’ ‘Paul’s Boutique’ mix I did with Cheeba and Moneyshot making waves on the web.

Playing a small part in some of ZTT‘s Element reissue series and getting to edit one particular master recording for a future issue.

Providing images, sleeve notes and audio for a reissue compilation of John Rydgren‘s work on the Australian Omni Recording Corporation label.

Instigating and then editing the results of a new meeting of Coldcut and The Orb for the 25 years of Solid Steel mixes in 2013.

With so much out there it was inevitable that some got missed.

Things that came out in 2012 that I still didn’t get to see or hear:

Berberian Sound Studio

Cabin In The Woods

Lone’s – Galaxy Garden album

The Amazing Spiderman

The B.P.R.D. hardback editions

Butcher Baker comic

Can : The Lost Tapes compilation

The last few issues of Godland comic

GOAT’s ‘World Music’ album

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My Life in The Bush of Ghosts variations

A couple of weeks ago I posted about buying a fifth copy of The The‘s ‘Infected’ album upon finding a test pressing secondhand. Whilst record shopping in Montreal this summer I found a new copy of the Nonesuch vinyl reissue of Eno & Byrne‘s ‘My Life In The Bush of Ghosts’ – another of my all time favourite albums. The CD reissue in 2008 with the bonus tracks is already in my collection but the double vinyl version added multi-track parts to two album cuts on the fourth side as well so I couldn’t help but pick it up.

Add to the bonus audio that the whole package was housed in a beautiful, heavyweight card gatefold sleeve with notes and it was an instant sale. Around the time of the reissue a special website was created with additional content such as extra sleeve notes by Paul Morley, recording session photos and discarded screen captures from the original artwork. Unfortunately it hasn’t been updated and now all you can get is the home page (possible out-dated Flash plug-in is my guess) so here are some of the artwork outtakes.


I now own five versions of this seminal record – the original vinyl (with the track, ‘Qu’ran’ which was later removed), original CD, Nonesuch reissue CD and vinyl. There’s also an Italian bootleg CD called ‘Ghosts’ with demos and original versions before samples were removed or tracks reworked which features a couple of things not on the reissues. I also have the two 12″ singles that were released originally in the early 80’s but not the ‘first edition’ vinyl bootleg of demo versions.

Apparently above is a scan of an earlier version of the album sent to the record label. Because of ‘sample-clearance’ issues (this was 1980, such a thing was unheard of) the record was delayed and later some of it was reworked by Eno and Byrne. Some tracks were dropped or titles changed, some mixes were redone and some new tracks were added. Most of the dropped tracks were reinstated on the reissues on Nonesuch. I never tire of this record and the reissue is the rare exception of the bonus material actually adding to an enhancing the original rather than just padding it out.

Much like Malcolm McLaren‘s ‘Duck Rock’ album this record is a product of its time and exists almost in a vaccuum, barely dating in the 30 years + since its release. You can hear echoes of the sounds Eno & Byrne created here on either side of their respective discographies around the time but they never fully reached the other-worldliness achieved on this album

R.I.P. Ewan Robertson 1985-2012

I was shocked to hear of the death of Ewan Robertson yesterday, one half of design duo Oscar & Ewan who created many iconic covers for Ninja Tune and Big Dada g others. Ewan also recorded as Offshore for Big Dada and had just released his first album only a month ago –‘Bake Haus’.  Alongside Oscar Bauer, Ewan created some iconic sleeves for the labels including Roots Manuva, Wiley, Bonobo and the recent Amon Tobin set housed inside a ‘flower press’.

I only met him once or twice – first at the exhibition for the release of the Ninja Tune ’20 years of Beats & Pieces’ book – and he was friendly, humble and easy to talk to. We’d corresponded over email many times in order to get his and Oscar’s work well represented in the book and he graciously agreed to show the plaster cast of Roots Manuva’s head they’d made for the ‘Slime & Reason’ LP campaign at the opening.

He was always super helpful and supplied many exclusive images from behind the scenes which showed the processes they went through when designing. My thoughts go out to his family and friends, he left a small but striking caché of music and visuals behind that will ensure he isn’t forgotten.

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First full look at Pacific Rim’s Jaeger robots

The first trailer drops on Dec 10th but here’s a look at the Gipsy Danger monster-fighting Jaeger bot from Guillermo Del Toro’s forthcoming Pacific Rim film, due out next July. The silhouette of a human at the bottom shows the scale of it.

And now there’s a second one, a Russian ‘Cherno Alpha‘ bot, there are also a couple of teaser films doing the rounds and ‘leaked documents’ relating to these blueprints.

And then there were four five: that’s some BIG robot action next year

Posted in Design, Film. | 4 Comments |

A graphic tribute to Pete Namlook and Fax records

I can’t begin to pretend I’ve heard even a couple of dozen releases on Pete Namlook‘s Fax +49-69/450464 label (to give it its full title). But those that I did hear, and own, have stuck with me. Releases like Air (not the french duo who came later), Alien Community, Silence, Dark Side of the Moog, Sequential, Sea Biscuit and Dreamfish are all part of the ambient resurgence of the early to mid 90’s. Dreamfish was the moniker of Pete Namlook’s collaboration with Mixmaster Morris, who was a huge champion of the label and got some of it licensed to the Rising High label in the UK.

Namlook (Kuhlmann backwards, see what he did there?) was releasing an album a week at one point, starting off at around 500 copies on CD and progressing to 1-2000 at one point. He had a bewildering array of colour coded releases on various sub-labels, at least half of which he either recorded solo or collaborated on. The poster above is only a select number of titles, probably ranging somewhere from the early to late 90’s and doesn’t include any vinyl from the same time. Constant collaborators like Bill Laswell, Klaus Schulze, Ritchie Hawtin, Dr Atmo, Atom Heart, David Moufang and Charles Uzzel-Edwards (aka Pure Evil) are just some of the names you can find in the credits on the many releases from Fax.

I’d been thinking of doing a poster like this for some time, just to see what it would look like to put a ton of the earlier Fax releases together. Unfortunately it took the early demise of the label’s founder and driving force to make it happen. At one time you could spot a Fax record a mile off by the circular design, the Bauhaus font and an image that usually had early Photoshop filter experiments :) When out-sourcing design work to other people (in the case of Daniel Pemberton‘s ‘Bedroom’ album that I laid out) there were strict instructions and templates that had to be adhered to, everything had to fit into the label look. These instructions arrived by fax of course…

R.I.P. Peter Kuhlmann / Pete Namlook.

Download a high-res version of the poster HERE

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Pepe Deluxé – Queen of the Wave Deluxe version

When Pepe Deluxé do anything they don’t do it by halves, in fact they go the whole nine yards and then add a load more into the mix for good measure. What emerges is music and imagery so multi-layered it requires repeat listens to pierce the surface and process the motherlode of information contained within.

One of the reasons I love Pepe is because there is genuinely no one like them, they are a one-off and a band seemingly working in and across separate time zones whose records sound so out of place you wonder if they’ll ever even find reappraisal 20 years down the line. This isn’t a criticism, it’s to be admired that a band can strike out so single-mindedly whilst ignoring any current forms of music that are deemed ‘hip’ and ‘cool’. In fact it’s testament to Pepe and Catskills for leaving off the many remixes they’ve had over the last releases as, with the exception of Husky Rescue‘s cover of ‘Supersonic’, none of them came close to Pepe’s vision and sounded like they were trying to force the band into a modern day setting (sorry guys, just my opinion).

The new Deluxe version of their ‘Queen of the Wave’ album is no different, in fact it ups the ante considerably and throws everything AND the kitchen sink at you over 2 CDs, a DVD and a 64 page booklet inside a hard backed book. The original album is present but the ‘Esoteric Pop Opera In Three Parts’ has suddenly expanded to three discs, the second with versions, new and unused tracks and an easy-listening style EP of selected songs. The DVD includes videos for singles both new and old as well as stems for budding remixers. Everything about it says EPIC, the original album is one in itself but bolstered by the 2nd disc, DVD and a book that has crammed enough material for 100 pages into 64 then the deal is sealed.

No space is left un-filled and we learn everything from recording history to how they shot the video for ‘Night & Day’ with real magic tricks and all. The book shouldn’t work, it breaks so many rules of what good design is with up to 10 different fonts competing for space on any one page and a layout that’s more scrapbook than grid. Yet it does work and adds to the music is so many ways, placing the album visually between steampunk and psychedelia with nods to Tiki and Analogue electronics from the golden age. One minute you think you’re looking at an issue of Practical Electronics then it’s a poster in the style of a traveling circus or a Richard Hamilton-esque collage.


Anyway, enough of me blathering on, check the video below as it’s another brilliant Pepe production with the classic ‘Virtual Chicken Little Funk Operator’ set to become legendary. You can BUY the deluxe package from Catskills HERE.

Posted in Books, Design, Music, Packaging. | 1 Comment |

Felt Mistress – Creature Couture book and talk

Felt Mistress aka Louise Evans has a book coming out of her creature designs from the last 18 years. 400-pages feature over 1,650 photographs, previously unseen drawings of her partner Jonathan Edwards’ original design ideas, details of every Felt Mistress collaboration with other artists and more. With in-depth interviews with Loiuse, Jonathan, Jon Burgerman, Pete Fowler, Ben Newman, John Knox, Nobrow and more, it looks like the definitive article.

If you pre-order the book from the publishers Blank Slate you’re in with a chance to win an actual Creature made by Louise which is featured in the book. One book will come with a felt ‘You Win’ ticket as seen below and details of how to claim your prize.

There are also versions of the book with Mr Tippy characters in regular and gold editions and, if you still can’t get enough creature love, you can hear Louise and Jonathan talk about the book at Foyles on Charing Cross Rd. on Dec 11th at 8.30pm. The talk is free but you have to book a place online and Jonathan will be doing creature portraits on a first come first served basis.

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Shepard Fairey ‘Sound & Vision’ – StolenSpace, London

Obey-Sound-and-Vision-London-invite-flatI finally got to see the Shepard Fairey ‘Sound & Vision’ show at StolenSpace over the weekend and it is highly recommended. There was a vast amount of work pitched between two galleries with a shop in between for good measure and as a body of work it’s very impressive. I’ve been a fan since seeing his early paste ups in New York in the mid 90’s and attended his first London show in ’99 at the Horse Hospital. That he was doing a music-themed show was music to my ears (sorry), given that he’s designed sleeves and videos for a number of acts over the years and knows the language, always inserting musical icons into his work. For those that know Fairey’s style – it’s not a massive departure visually, the red, cream and black colour scheme dominates throughout and that’s fine because it’s a classic. He really doesn’t need to mess with the formula as there’s more than enough here to see and it gives everything a certain coherence.

He’s experimented with other ways of presenting though, a series of A2 images are repeated on brushed metal in one part of the gallery and there’s an underlying collage feel to some of the pieces where he’s pasted several layers of paper together before printing over the top, much like the fly-postered surfaces he goes over on the streets. Elsewhere multiple copies of the same print have been dissected, mixed up and reassembled so that geometric patterns are present from the different print and paper colours. These are stunning to see in the flesh, like some ancient scrolls unearthed from an Eastern archive, each one is dirty as if layers of varnish and glue have been applied and their edges remain ragged. Elsewhere he has ‘retired’ stencils pasted into collages, edges thick with paint and given a new lease of life as the tools become exhibits in their own right.

The part of the show that I thought most successful was the gallery with the records in racks, (part of Fairey’s own collection), customised turntables and 12″x12″ prints. Copies of sleeves he’d designed were randomly inserted throughout the vinyl as well as a tantalising selection of 7″ custom ‘Obey Recordings’ laser-cut sleeves and record labels. These were beautiful objects and the fact that you could touch them just added to the experience, sadly they weren’t for sale and I wanted to steal one so badly but resisted. Various vintage record and tape players were dotted about with stencils and stickers added to personalise them in the Obey way, you could even play the records on some of the turntables which was a nice touch. A lot of the prints in this gallery were fictional Obey record sleeves using advertising logos and jargon from the classic Stereo Test record era mixed with Fairey’s usual propaganda-type slogans. There was repetition of the imagery but each design held it’s own and it was hard to pick a favourite as they were all beautiful. Above the record racks sat a wall of black & white gig posters, except they weren’t. Fairey had taken existing images and posters and retooled them with his own logos and messages and this is where I start to have issues with some of the work.

Before everyone pulls me up and says, “Shepard Fairey using other people’s work? surely not!? Next you’ll be telling me bears shit in the woods?” I’m pretty well versed in his history. He’s always appropriated the imagery of others, subverted existing logos and messages to his own needs, he’s by no means the first or the last to do this and various lawsuits have been filed as with any successful artist – ‘where there’s a hit there’s a writ’. The whole argument for and against appropriation could fill books and I’m not about to go into it at length here, also given that I use others materials in my own work there’s an element of the pot calling the kettle black. However I have my own yardstick for how much of something is used, abused or hinted at in any work and far too often he goes over the line with parts of his designs here. I find this work to be the weakest and it cheapens the rest of it somewhat as it’s a quick and easy thing to take an existing image or logo and reinterpret it – it’s lazy for the most part, a quick artistic crowd-pleaser.

I find it more interesting to take the benign and turn it into something beautiful by re-contextualising it like Warhol‘s Campbell’s Soup tins or Lichtenstein‘s comic art appropriations (although this still doesn’t discount the matter of copyright infringement). Fairey does this well with the various nods to the design language of 60’s and 70’s era record graphics: turntable speeds, 45 adapter shapes, retro fonts and patterns – you’ve seen it, or something like it, before but it’s not a complete rip. But by taking existing gig posters and redesigning them into more gig posters in his own image he’s not bringing anything new to the medium, just basking in the reflected glory of others’ work. Chuck D‘s Public Enemy logo is modified so that the silhouetted figure in the crosshairs now has a pasting brush, Lichtenstein’s pop art is parodied with a grenade as spray can adding an ‘er‘ to a ‘POW!’ speech balloon, Jamie Reid‘s ‘No Future’ Sex Pistols tour poster is modified and Joe Petagno‘s Motorhead logo is just used straight in a couple of pieces. Another one takes Jasper Johns‘ multi-layered number paintings as inspiration and just changes the typeface, again using the collaged bed for texture that worked far more successfully on the previously mentioned pieces where he’d used his own designs.

By parodying other artists’ work I feel Fairey is cheapening his own art, I think he’s better than this, well, I know he is because of all the other work in the show. It is littered with cultural bookmarks and (mostly Rock) icons – Joey Ramone, Lennon & Yoko, Lemmy, Iggy, Cash, etc. – again taken from existing (uncredited) photographs and homogenised in the clean, smoothed out style he made famous with his Obama ‘Hope’ poster. 80’s graffiti heroes like Haring and Basquiat feature alongside enough punk and post punk legends to fill an issue of Mojo. And that’s fine but I’m not sure what he’s trying to say by including these aside from the inherited ‘cool’ factor and the rebel nature of a lot of the subjects, linking into the subversive attitude and message in many of the other pieces no doubt. Grenades feature in several pieces and the grenade as spray can image from the ‘PowER’ piece is an extremely strong icon which he should revisit and exploit in future works rather than have relegated to a Lichtenstein pastiche.

I found the upstairs of the main Stolen Space gallery the most uneven of all the work including a few larger pieces that looked like they were experiments in a new direction but with little visual direction apparent. Interestingly, whilst virtually every piece had sold throughout the exhibition, these had not, possibly more due to their high price tag than the virtual absence of anything that said ‘Obey’ about them. It was this elevated section that seemed to have the left overs in it, odd sized pieces which didn’t fit elsewhere so had been clustered together when a few less and a bit more surrounding space would have given them more impact and taken any filler out. The best here were the retired stencils – one of his classic Andre The Giant with painting instructions – and the design for the show poster itself which greeted you when you walked in. Overall though there was way more good than bad and to have such high quality throughout with that number of pieces – there must have been around 200 or more – is some feat.

The show ends on Nov 4th so you have less than a week to check it out and we feature Z-Trip‘s soundtrack mix for the exhibition on this weeks Solid Steel.

 

Transistor Tube Map Radio

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Is it a circuit board? Is it a map of the London Underground? Is it a radio? It’s all of the above apparently.

I don’t usually go for things like this – one household object adapted to form another, like those vinyl record bowls – but the Tube map is a design classic and I have a thing for circuit boards.

Designed and built by Design Museum artist-in-residence Yuri Suzuki, these images come via the DesignBoom website. More info and a short film over there.

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