Check out these great photos from our gig with DJ Format at La Sirene in La Rochelle, France last weekend by Max Chill. Even more excellence on his tumblr HERE.
There’s a Kickstarter that just, er… started for a new Tank Girl book. Maybe this is nothing special because Alan Martin has been churning them out with an revolving door of artists for a few years now.
This time though, Jamie Hewlett is back on board, = and no, this is not an April Fool. Firstly for a cover (two actually) but also for his first strip for nearly 20 years. Add to this a line up of Philip Bond, Jim Mahfood, Jonathan Edwards and more and you get what could be the ultimate Xmas present come it’s projected Nov 2014 release date.
This is only if they reach their goal of £57,000 in the next 29 days though. They’re off to a strong start with over £16k pledged already after less than a day but there’s a long way to go. You can check their progress and even pledge yourself HERE – the basic hard back book package is a very reasonable £23 + postage and there are all sorts of other extras and incentives to be had as add-ons too.
A few artists are conspicuous by their absence – Rufus Dayglo for one who helped (ahem) kick start TG back into the public eye all those years back as well as Ashley Wood and Mike McMahon. Check Hewlett’s Kickstarter-only cover below with a huge blue-veiner of a space ship.
*UPDATE* – Funded in 48 hours!
I love these examples of early Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back posters with alternate logos and artwork. Even the finished film poster above has a rare shot of the heroes with Leia in Chewbacca‘s arms and the uneven red ‘crawl’ logo which is quite badly rendered when you look at it.
Below is an even earlier version with Ralph McQuarrie paintings plus an invite to one of the first public screenings.
Below are what look like poster prelims for Empire… with a totally different logo design that I’d never seen before.
Then another, more finished version of the logo with original SW poster art adapted. Love the way Leia is riding side saddle on the version above.
Actually, for all I know, these could be fan art but all the images are sourced from the Star Wars Archives page on Facebook which lends some sort of credibility to them.
Below we get yet another logo with a Luke on Tauntaun image.
Lastly, a preview poster for Empire with a big “BEWARE!” warning across it, this certainly looks real.
Poster for my solo DJ gig at Musicbox in Lisbon, Portugal on April 17th.
This May I’ll be playing in Sheffield at The Harley for the Thirsty Ear 9th birthday party.
The Electric Hoax Pt.13 by Pete Milligan and Brendan McCarthy. This strip appeared in the weekly UK music paper, Sounds, in 24 parts sometime between mid ’78 and ’79. Click image for larger version
Black Channels, a new project featuring The Simonsound with not too much info other than that. Intriguing tumblr here. Soundcloud here. Main site here.
Mega Mecha trailers for the new Titanfall game.
and this went slightly viral earlier this week
“Well this is Phil talking…” first Human League cover after the split with Ware and Craig-Marsh and the recruitment of the girls, March ’81. (Below) Good Vibrations: JG Thirlwell aka Foetus getting creative with his press releases again from Sounds Dec ’81.
An original full page ad from the Melody Maker for the Beastie Boys‘ ‘Love American Style’ EP 15/07/89 and another Futurist chart with what looks like Matt Johnson being kicked in the balls.
I saw this is coming out for Record Store Day, the soundtrack to ‘A Field In England’ re-imagined by a band called Teeth of the Sea. No idea what it sounds like but I like the cover.
The Electric Hoax Pt.12 by Pete Milligan and Brendan McCarthy. This strip appeared in the weekly UK music paper, Sounds, in 24 parts sometime between mid ’78 and ’79. Click image for larger version.
Dark Horse Presents is currently running Brendan’s new creation, ‘The Deleted’ which is up to chapter 3. The latest Judge Dredd Megazine issue 346 has a huge interview with Pete Milligan about his writing career.
Trevor Jackson has a new exhibition opening today in Paris called ‘yesterday, today, tomorrow, forever’. It focuses on microscopic photography of some of his favourite records, zooming into the grooves and then blowing the images up to a huge scale.
This project has been gestating for years now, I remember it being featured in the Japanese +81 magazine over 5 years back. He’s finally found a home for it though at 12 Mail in Paris and has produced a soundtrack made from the records he’s photographed. There is a 500 copy 12″ and poster available at the show and it runs until the middle of May.
As readers of this blog will know, I’ve been lucky enough to have records release on Record Store Day for the last two years and 2014 will be no exception. The difference will be that I’ll be involved in three different releases this year with only two of them being on vinyl.
Firstly there will some new music from me in the form of a remix I’ve done for The Amorphous Androgynous called ‘Tunnel Sequence’ from their spy-funk psychesploitation albums, ‘The Cartel’.
The two CDs are getting the remix treatment in vinyl form on April 19th in a nice reciprocal gesture as it was they who remixed me for my first RSD release back in 2012.
Secondly, more music but you might know this one. My version of The The‘s ‘GIANT’ with vocals by Matt Johnson himself is the only track from 2012’s ‘The Search Engine’ not to be released on vinyl (last year’s quadruple LP version only had the instrumental).
Now my version has been paired with the original on what’s being billed as the ‘GIANT2FACED12INCH’ – a double A-sided release via Sony. Not only do I provide music but I’ve also designed one side of the sleeve which is paired up with an original Andy Dog painting for the cover, see a preview above for the origin of the ‘2-faced’ title.
Thirdly, the non-musical release will be the Dust & Grooves book by Eilon Paz which I’m both featured in photographically and in the guise of writer/interviewer for a huge article about Four Tet‘s collecting habits. ‘Adventures In Record Collecting’ has been on-going for some years now and I got involved about 11 months ago when Eilon visited my studio for a mammoth photo session and Q&A which will see the light of day on his site at some stage.
There’s a strong Ninja Tune presence in the book with an interview with The Gaslamp Killer, photos of Ollie Teeba from The Herbaliser/Soundsci and Mr Scruff who actually makes the cover photo, (I also did an extensive interview with Scruff which didn’t make the deadline, maybe next time).
By a weird coincidence one of the photos shows me doing a sleeve face pose with the very same The The sleeve that features on the ‘GIANT’ 12″ cover, and by the same I mean, the very same. When Matt was putting together the sleeve for ‘GIANT’ he wanted to use the US version of the ‘Soul Mining’ LP sleeve but didn’t have a copy himself so I scanned my copy, the same one in the photo in Eilon’s book.
All three of these releases are a very big deal for me, being asked to contribute to releases by FSOL and The The, two of my all time favourite groups, is pretty special. Being involved in just a small part of Eilon’s book plus the on-going work we’ll be doing after it’s published is new and exciting too, I’ve seen the layouts of the book and it’s stunning.
Whilst in Utrecht the other week for a gig I noticed that there’s now a second Mega Record fair in April as well as the Autumn. Finders Keepers just posted this great poster as they will have a stall there too. I’ve been before and it’s the largest fair in Europe, absolutely huge, you need days to go round it.
Unlike the photo-shopped LP covers I posted a couple of months back, this one is actually made out of Lego. Taken from the Brickwares blog, check it out for more info.
Another week of clippings from Sounds magazine 1981, I’m getting through them slowly but keep getting sidetracked and have to go off to listen to or find some obscure record I’ve never heard of. A very young Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode gets his first (?) magazine cover above and two of Landscape advertise Roland products in their best Futurist garb below.
(above and below) Bow Wow Wow ad for the ‘See Jungle…’ LP with free ‘Mile High Club’ magazine at Virgin stores (strangely the same name as an Adam & The Ants song of around the same time). Anyone ever get this? Was it the dodgy one McLaren tried to push as ‘Chicken’ with the band members in various states of undress?
‘Lieutenant Lush’ was actually an early incarnation of Boy George who was briefly in the running as co-vocalist with Annabella in the group but didn’t make the grade. Probably had a lucky escape.
Next we have a couple of charts – Hippy and Obscurist – I think they were just filling space with this stuff.
Lastly, a Futura 2000 – designed advert for a Clash residency at The Lyceum.
Here are two new Jamie Hewlett images made especially for the British Library which will be running a comics history exhibit from May 2nd.
“Comics Unmasked: Art and Anarchy in the UK, runs from May 2nd to August 19th 2014. Comics Unmasked traces the history of the British comic book and explores how comics and graphic novels have uncompromisingly addressed such subjects as violence, sexuality and drugs, breaking social boundaries with the innovative form that marries literature and visual art.
The exhibition highlights the trend set internationally by British comic creators, whereby comics are used to subvert and challenge stereotypes. It features original artwork and video montage of Jamie Hewlett’s most celebrated creations, Tank Girl and Gorillaz, alongside other exciting examples of original British comic art.”
More info from Paul Gravett who helped curate the exhibition.
Exactly what is says in the header – staggering work of course and including some of Kirby’s collage work too – view them all here.
