Sigue Sigue Sputnik – ‘History Will Prove Us Right’

[youtube width=”640″ height=”480″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-emKstoheQ0[/youtube]

In a weird bout of synchronicity, King Cannibal posted, “Dear music industry. I bet It’s kinda embarrassing that Sigue Sigue Sputnik guessed it right.” on Twitter, late on Friday night. Being a SSS fan, I replied, asking him to elaborate, “the whole bit about the music not being important. Global branding, advert space on albums. Looking like Gaga”, he said. Mark Emsley from ireallylovemusic chimed in with a timely reminder of their, “history will prove us right”, catchphrase which sometimes adorned their adverts.

I have to admit, he’s got a point, and then tonight, Thrift Shopxl posts an obscure B-side of theirs on Facebook and this: “Check out what Degville says in this Japanese interview from 1986 about the brand and how it’s about the stuff around the music – it’s like a blueprint for today’s label deals:” and the video above. Like everyone else at the time, I thought they were just having a laugh, and they probably were, just playing the pop game and seeing what would happen. But what Degville’s saying, (and he was only towing Tony James‘ line), is eerily prescient and looking at the fashion sense of a lot of K Pop bands you wonder if they were influenced by Sputnik along the way, although this is probably more to do with SSS’s wholesale theft of many Japanese manga elements for their look in the first place.

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The Reprisalizer

Garth Marenghi (of Dark Place fame) has a new site up for a series of fictitious pulp detective novels called ‘The Reprisalizer’ in ‘the violent paperback worlds of Terry Finch‘. The Reprisalizer, aka Bob Shuter, is a throwback to the 70’s in the same way as Life On Mars was, think The Sweeney crossed with The Equalizer, set in Kent. There’s also a gunslinger character called Draw too – ‘one man whirlwind of the west’.

The site is beautifully realised with excerpts from old novels on yellowing pages, reverse covers, a biog of Finch with ‘praise for the author’ and even vintage fanzines from the 80’s supposedly commemorating the books. Apparently the recent ‘A Gun For George’ film is also tied into this but I’ve not seen it yet and there are ebooks and podcasts promised as ‘coming soon’ too.

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Pepe Deluxé – Night & Day video

[youtube width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfYw9nxQdB8&feature=youtu.be[/youtube]

I’ve been sitting on this for a few weeks now, completely nuts video to ‘Night & Day’, the first release from Pepe Deluxé‘s new album ‘Queen of the Wave’. The album comes out on Jan 30th via Catskills Records and they will be having a release party at the London aquarium on Jan 23rd with films, an album playback and your truly spinning some sea-themed tunes. The band’s website has a nice 8 page download about the making and history behind the record too.

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Two shorts by BLR _ VFX

[vimeo width=”640″ height=”280″]http://vimeo.com/33030265[/vimeo]

Two amazing short films (well, one is a trailer actually) by Big Lazy Robot – incredible effects and design, Amon Tobin‘s remix of Noisia‘s ‘Machine Gun’ features in the first as well. More on the K3loid film here

[vimeo width=”640″ height=”400″]http://vimeo.com/33025640[/vimeo]

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DK – Cymatic Frequencies II Part 1

Check this exclusive preview of DK‘s new AV mix – ‘Cymatic Frequencies II’. This is, hands down, the best intro to any video mix I’ve seen yet. Yes the main footage is taken from the film ‘The Third & The Seventh’ but the way he’s overlaid the footage of the speaker into each scene is beautiful, watch it twice, I missed a couple the first time round. Also the minimal placement of the typography within the frame perfectly compliments the clip. It’s like an issue of Wallpaper come to life (sorry DK).

[quicktime width=”636″ height=”380″]http://www.djfood.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Cymatic-Frequncies-II-intro-web.mp4[/quicktime]

This is the kind of thing I want to see in video mixes, high quality, well designed and thought out sound and vision, he’s raised the bar here and it has been steadily rising all year with Mr Armtone, Hexstatic and DJ Cheeba helping put Solid Steel at No.1 in the iTunes video podcast chart. Debuting on Friday via Solid Steel you’ll be able to see and hear his best of the year round up, and this is only part 1! There’ll be a second session coming before the year is out.

The keen-eyed among you might have also noticed that there’s a new Solid Steel logo book-ending this clip, this has been in the works for nearly a year, batted back and forth and through all sorts of changes in between a million other projects and we finally nailed it last week. Here are a few of the myriad of versions we discarded.