No.5 in an occasional series…
Oddities
Things that don’t quite fit
One of the internet’s most valuable resources IMO, we mostly look at Wikipedia but now you can listen to it too.
Various oddities clipped from vintage comics past: ‘Cassette Adventures’ – don’t remember these? ‘This Could Be Your Head’ – hmmmm, indeed. Some great original Star Wars toys ads, love the way they’re already billing it as, ‘the greatest movie of all time’. Check the Spidey-warns-against-sexual-abuse ad! Love the design of the Timewarp logo and the spread of vehicles on the ‘Vrrroooooomm’ ad.
No. 4 in an occasional series.
No.3 in an occasional series…
Working, recordable 4 track Moog on Google today in commemoration of Robert Moog‘s birthday – wish I knew how to control the thing. Click the image to go to the page, mess with the filters to control sound, numbers on your keyboard will play notes, click the red button to record track one, then play back or record track 2 as 1 plays back.
No.2 in an occasional series…
I found these whilst looking for something else – pretty amazing! It’s in the Atacama desert in Northern Chile and was made by Mario Irarrázabal in 1992 apparently.
The record for this so far is Anders with ‘about a minute’, can you beat that? The album is out today at long last, very happy to finally have that particular monkey off my back, just the exhibition to sort and hang for this Thursday and then it’s off to France for gigs, developing the dome show more and adapting the various elements to the regular DJ sets. You can buy a variety of formats of the album from here, it should also be available on iTunes, Amazon (it has explicit lyrics apparently), Bleep and through all the usual channels.
Got a message from Scott Klenske who runs the House of Hype Sound blog about an old Xmas mix I did back in 2003 for Solid Steel. I saw this image and nicked it, the mix may appear on my soundcloud page in the coming weeks…
And here it is! After at least 18 months since I supplied a quote to Noah Uman for his reissue of ‘The Medium Is The Massage’ celebrating 100 years of McLuhan‘s record of the book, it finally dropped through the letterbox this morning. It’s gorgeous, full deluxe mini LP style CD sleeve, 40 pg booklet and all in the style of the original (check my copies of the LP and books below).
I’m sharing page space with some pretty esteemed commentators too: Warhol, Woody Allen, Steinski, Don Joyce, Jello Biafra, DJ Spooky… The CD is out on Five Day Weekend (who also have releases from Edan, Mr Chop and the ’80 Blocks From Tiffanys’ DVD) on December the 12th. Well worth it, a unique record, history, literature, social commentary, cut and paste and comedy all rolled into one.
That’s my kind of house, plucked from the ever-random King Megatrip blog.
Last night I saw Kid Koala‘s new show ‘Space Cadet’ and it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen with a DJ at the helm before. Part gig, part story, part stand up comedy and a lot of audience participation, it was not your usual gig. I took my family and there was a moment when we thought the kids wouldn’t get in even though we went to the 7pm show but it was fine. Everyone sat down and there was no PA – only headphones for everyone.
Eric sat down for most of the show and chatted as much as he played, featuring musical excerpts from his new book and CD – ‘Space Cadet’, the forthcoming blues album on Ninja Tune, his Yo Gabba Gabba routine (where he donned his Koala suit) and the always awesome ‘Moon River’ routine. Members of the audience were invited to play bells, music boxes and Asteroids (destroying pre-photographed faces of themselves),whirl tubes to the music and thumb wrestle!
As well as this there was a collection of original art and a table full of 3D plants featured in the book, games, space echo and turntable recorder to play with and cookies to decorate. Go and ‘experience’ it if you can, you’ll not see anything like it for a long time again.
Ever seen one of these? Nope, me neither, a digger named Nigel Smith mailed me these pictures wondering what it was he’d found many moons ago.
I said: “I’m presuming it’s an original promo / test pressing of Zen1?”
Jon More replied: “that is the original zen brakes”
Matt Black said: “its the test pressing. this is what I meant by the ORIGINAL original Ninja which I drew!”
Peter Quicke commented: “ha yes, first white label run, fond, vague memories 
although before my time of course”.
Nice find Nigel
[vimeo width=”640″ height=”360″]http://vimeo.com/24504225[/vimeo]
Just amazing. Melvin the Machine.com
I recently came across a couple of new postcard records, people are suddenly reviving old vinyl pressing techniques the likes of which I never thought I’d see again. The first one was by The Stepkids, a massive favourite of mine after only one album, on the excellent Stones Throw label, and came free with online orders of the new record. It’s a short exclusive track called ‘Bitter Bug’ and the grooves are cut right into the cardboard so the sound quality is not far short of dirt (but that’s not the point, it looks great).
The second one I chanced upon on Facebook and is the creation of Markus Oberndorfer as part of an art project called Lenscape#02 for which he created 33 copies. I was lucky enough to secure the last copy and the difference between this and the Stepkids one is that the grooves are cut into a transparent slice of plastic and the postcard is fixed to this.
I have several records like these and most get filed along with the flexi discs I collect as they are usually 5 or 7 inches in size and square. These postcards are, well, postcard sized and have the space to write a name and address on the back.