The last showing of ‘The Search Engine’ 360 dome show is on this Thursday at Birmingham’s Think Tank planetarium. The remaining two shows have been cancelled as there has been a reshuffled in personal so August 22nd is the last date on the cards to see it at this moment in time. Dome Club will continue but outside of Think Tank in various other ways but with Mario Di Maggio at the helm.
DJ Food
This promises to be a pretty unique event, you’re not going to get a line up like this every day. Even more so once the Very Special Guests (3 in total) are announced. The end of the 25th year will be seen out in style and Cheeba, Moneyshot and I will attempt to recreate the Paul’s Boutique mix we put together last year.
Tickets can be bought here and we should be announcing similar events in Bristol and Paris very soon.
Two gigs back to back next weekend, Friday sees a FREE gig with DK, Jon More and Ross Allen just down the road from me in Herne Hill – should be fun. Saturday sees a return to Seignosse in France for another gig with ex-Ninja DJ Vadim, possibly the third time we’ve been billed together in the last year.
Just some of the labels now signed up to Beat Delete. Check out their site, there are all sorts of releases up for a repress once there are enough pledges.
Only 12 orders left until they repress the ColdKrushCuts mix on 3xLP.
If you missed any of the showings of my full dome show at Dome Club UK earlier this year then the second batch of dates has been announced. First one this Thursday!
Just found this, the special T-shirt we made after the first year of the Solid Steel night at Ruby Lo to thank everyone who played. Ruby Lo (short for Ruby Lounge) was a basement bar in London’s West End near Bond Street, down a side street by Selfridges. DK and I were the residents each month, the night was only £3 but we didn’t announce who was playing, you had to trust that we’d get decent guests. We really wanted to do a residency at a place where it was intimate, had seating and a DJ booth on the floor rather than a stage. As it turned out, the booth was in the middle of everything with a dancefloor on one side and seating directly behind so we were virtually in the round.
What a line up, 2005 was just as good, I need to find that list too. It would fill up with after work drinkers early on but they would clear out by about 9pm and our crowd would come down to see the set list pinned to the wall with who would be playing. I’m pretty sure this was Diplo‘s first ever London DJ appearance, he was playing Fabric the next night and we only got him because he wasn’t announced. For Luke Vibert‘s appearance he bought Aphex with him and for the December resident set DK and I gave away every record we played after we’d finished with it (pre-Serato days).
This week I decided to put down some of the set I made for ‘A Few Old Tunes’, the Boards of Canada-inspired night we did on June 20th. Because I’d edited so much video to go with it, I thought I’d finally get round to my first solo video mix too, so here it is.
(UPDATE: Vimeo closed the Solid Steel account that hosted this mix after three copyright strikes so it’s currently offline but some kind soul has uploaded it to their own ‘Solid Steel’ account here but I can’t embed it here)
‘O Is For Orange’ is the sound of weathered tape saturation, detuned analogue synthesisers, vinyl crackle and machine hum. It’s also the look of unfocused, flickering lenses, mirror image filters and blurry grain embedded into film. Unofficial fan films sit alongside experimental animation, public information shorts and even the odd official video. Material that BoC took inspiration from blends with their own work as well as many that they inspired.
I make no apologies for the quality of the vision here, some of it is only available via the web at frustratingly small sizes. In a couple of instances I’ve actually downgraded the look and quality of the image to make it blend in better and in others, even my best attempts at filtering can’t disguise the low quality of the source material. No HD or widescreen here, I’ve gone back to 4:3 for this one even though some of the clips were originally 16:9 or wider.
On the Vimeo page I’ve endeavored to list as many of the videos and their respective directors as possible alongside the track list. When we’ve done video mixes in the past we’ve repeatedly found that some film makers take exception to having their work used like this, whereas few artists would email you requesting that you take their track out of a mix. I can see why, especially if a promo they’re done for one group ends up being re-edited and bolted on to a completely different track.
Anyway, enough guff, thanks to everyone who inspired this mix, especially Boards of Canada, and everyone who requested that we recorded our sets for ‘A Few Old Tunes’ last week. Josh from Posthuman‘s is already up in audio form (here) and I’m reliably told that Tom Central has his waiting in the wings for next week.
This week’s Solid Steel has a definite African slant and I kick things off with a mix of music I call ‘Afreaka’. Percussion heavy funk with a tribal feel, from Madlib sample grabs to Malcolm McLaren or Eno & Byrne‘s imagined ethnic soundscapes. For part two we welcome Melt Yourself Down into the guest slot for a whole world fusion of flavours from Ali Hassan Kuban to the Mad Decent stable.
The band release their debut album on June 17th via the Leaf Label after a trio of killer singles that fuse post-punk Pigbag skronk funk with acid electronics. Catch them on tour across the UK right now with a must see live show that recently ripped Jools Holland‘s ‘Later’ show a new one. Check out their site for date, music and merch.
Jon More fills the Solid Steel 25th slot with a mix of African music proper. Over the past quarter of a century, if there’s one continent that has been well represented since day one, it’s Africa. Coldcut have always dug deep into it’s rich musical heritage and Jon More displays another fine selection of Afrobeat and African inspired music. There’s Bala Miller from Nigeria, Alemayehu Eshete from Ethiopia and Julien Babinga from Congo, plus music from Ocote Soul Sounds, Shina Williams and Troubleman.
Those lovely people at Beat Delete have put the mix PC and I did alongside DJ Krush in ’97 – ‘ColdKrushCuts’ – up for a 3LP repress. Originally only available on CD, (aside from an ultra limited 2xLP version in Japan) they have set a 200 copy limit to be reached before the pressing is closed of which a third have been filled as of writing. Weirdly I only posted about the origin of the ‘The Bug in The Rug‘ sample from the same mix two weeks back.
Beat Delete have steadily been adding other labels to their repress roster too, you can now find selections from Tru Thoughts, KPM (The Big Beat!), Fat City, Mr Bongo, Brownswood, Leaf, Catskills, Ghostly International and Celluloid amongst others. I’m also in the process of curating a compilation of special oddities, offcuts and overlooked tracks for a possible future pressing with them.
Here’s a trailer I put together to give a flavour of what’s in ‘The Search Engine’ full dome show, of course you can’t get the real surround sound feel of the dome but you get the idea.
To celebrate the release of the new Boards of Canada album and – purely because Josh from Posthuman and I would really love a space to play their kind of music all night long – we bring you ‘A Few Old Tunes’. We’ll be joined on the decks by Tom Central from Keep Up! and Mark Van der Vord on visuals.
The premise is simple: occupy the upstairs room of Catch on June 20th for a night of music and film by or inspired by Boards of Canada. Don’t worry, it won’t be back to back BOC, we want this to be more than a 1 band love-in. Expect plenty of Ghost Box, electronica and hauntological material with a fine set of suitably degraded visuals to go with it.
Shortly after Storm Thorgerson died I did an interview with Matt Meuse of CBC Music about why sleeve art matters and where it will go next. Also in the interview are Jeff Jank who designs for Stones Throw and David Jones (pictured) who owns the Vinyl Records store in Vancouver.
The Image Duplicator show opened last night at the Orbital Gallery and was a great success with artists and punters out in force. The standard of work was excellent and centre stage was Dave Gibbons with his take on Lichtenstein‘s ‘Whaam!’, retitled ‘Whaat!?’ He graciously signed and chatted to all and was a thoroughly top bloke. Rian Hughes and Jason Atomic did a fine job organising everything, as did Mark Blamire in getting all the prints made and packaged up for people to buy. 
Prints of selected items are available to buy online here.
Special mentions for Garry Leach who turned up with a newly finish Popeye piece called ‘Plop Art’, complete with toilet roll, and Michelle Amir‘s Barbie car hosting a couple apeing ‘In The Car’. Massive thanks to Karl and everyone at Orbital Comics as well for hosting it at their gallery and providing hospitality. I was so pleased to be a part of it and even managed to sell my piece too! Second comic-related result of the week. The show is on at the Orbital Gallery inside Orbital Comics, 8 Great Newport Street, London, WC2H 7JA until May 31st after which it moves to the A&D gallery in Chiltern St.
For more photos see Steve Cook’s ever-excellent Secret Oranges blog or Rich Johnston‘s Bleeding Cool feature
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I’ll be at the Image Duplicator show in London tonight for the opening of the 2 week run but I’ll be at Dome Club in spirit, eating the free popcorn. It’s highly likely that I’ll physically be there for the June 6th showing though.
Well, this was unexpected! Reading the latest Judge Dredd Megazine (issue 336, out today) with my kids the other day and I open it to find my name splattered on the wall of Mega City 1! Not only am I now immortalised as a minor gang (now sadly defunct) in the tangled history of the Meg but a certain Matt Black (Coldcut) and PC (DJ Food) get a mention as street names in the left hand panel too.
The story is a spin off in the world of Dredd for disgraced ex-Chief Judge Dan Francisco who has been demoted back to street duty after the events that led to the recent Day of Chaos story. Francisco – a Judge who had the rare distinction of being a prime time TV star whose popularity led to him being elected Chief Judge – is investigating multiple murders of The Kev Gang in this scene. It’s a humorous aside but a chance for the writer, Arthur Wyatt, to use my name as the basis for the gang’s rules of entry. Artist Paul Marshall drew the strip and it’s featured in the monthly Megazine which is out today.
It’s that time again, this Thurday at Dome Club, the return of my Search Engine full dome show – this time with free popcorn!
Mine and DK‘s track, ‘Sentinel’ is now available as an in-app purchase from Ninja Jamm. Long in development by Coldcut’s Matt Black, Ninja Jamm lets you intuitively remix tracks on your iPhone or iPad (it’s Mac only at the moment, Android will be coming soon).
The app is free, and you can buy ‘tune packs’ from various artists on Ninja Tune and associated labels. The ‘Sentinel’ pack is 69p and there’s also a ‘Dark Lady’ pack as well as a free Coldcut ‘Beats & Pieces’ pack to get you started.
On April 15th I welcomed Eilon Paz into my studio to photograph some highlights of my record collection for his excellent Dust & Grooves site. 6 hours later I bid him farewell and returned to a decimated room with records everywhere.
We went through a lot in that time including my earliest influences, favourite albums and also special packaging and graphic design highlights. This is a preview, a full entry will be coming with more images and a Q&A session – also check Jonny Trunk and Ollie Teeba’s collections. When it drops I’ll post it here but until then, if you don’t know Eilon’s site, there’s enough material to waste a day on there.
Peep Rooks sent me this photo of one of the zoetrope prints I’d had inserted into the 4×12″ version of ‘The Search Engine’ for Record Store Day. He wrote, “I wanted to let you know that the zoetrope nr. 4 ended up in Estonia.
I ordered the record online about a week ago from a shop from the capital Tallinn and it found its place on a record player in the middle of nowhere near Viljandi.
… I did not have any idea what it (the zoetrope) was until a few days ago and now i am thinking..hehe – what are the odds? I wonder where will the other artworks end up…”
Another one turned up in Finland – Mikko posted on this site on May 1st,“I am one of the lucky ten who got one of the artworks, ‘original master’ collage!
I live in Helsinki, Finland.
Thank you!”
So, that’s two accounted for out of the ten, (see the 4 collages and 6 zoetrope prints here), if you have one or hear of someone with one – bear in mind some buyers won’t even know about them until they discover them – please let me know.
UPDATE 19/12/15: Today Christoph Chilli G from Nürnberg emailed me these images of the collage he found in his copy of the album!
