Transformers 3 posters

Going to see Transformers 3 at the Imax on Friday (after TF2 I’m not expecting much but, giant robots in 3D can’t be ignored). Here are two variants on a poster that will be given away at the Arclight cinema, Hollywood for the midnight screening tonight. The artist is Jesse Philips and the gold variant will be available to buy sometime Wednesday online.

Augustine Kofie in the UK

Finally Augustine Kofie will be making it to the UK and showing work in two shows, one in Glasgow, one in London. First off he is part of ‘Rudimentary Perfection’ with work by: SheOne / Duncan Jago / Jaybo Monk / Matt W. Moore / Poesia / Nawer / Derm / Morten Andersen / Mark Lyken. It’s at the Recoat Gallery 323 North Woodside Road, G20 6ND,  Glasgow and opens July 1st.


The second is Scream presents West End Rebellion, a group show featuring urban and contemporary artists including;
Faile, Retna, Banksy, Futura, Swoon, KAWS, Giles Walker, Aroe, Antony Micallef, Adam Neate, Os Gemeos, Herakut, Chaz Bojorquez and Shepard Fairey. At the Scream Gallery, 34 Bruton Street, London WIJ 6QX, UK and it also opens July 1st and runs for a month.

More info on both HERE

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Cutting and mastering

Spent the day at Soundmasters in Latima Road, West London, cutting my third EP before the album gets compiled. Kevin Metcalfe was again in control and Aaron Thomason aka 2econd Class Citizen came down to oversee the track we had collaborated on. It all went well until the Analogue to Digitial converters started playing up, causing a drop out as we were cutting the actual disc. I had to leave before the end but I’m assured it won’t be on the final cut. Here’s a few shots of the mastering room, the kit and cutting the disc.

This is the third of three EPs which will form the DJ Food album proper, this one totals about 27 minutes over 5 tracks. That means I have nearly 90 minutes of music to choose from for the album, some tracks from the EPs won’t make it, four from the previous two EPs have been reworked or remixed so will be in different states when it’s all finished. I’m mastering these four next week and then compiling a running order for the CD which will be all mixed, with the downloads as separate tracks.

 

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Unarchiving old work

I am periodically asked by Ninja to find designs and artwork for old releases as they’ve been lost over time and they need to repress them. In order to do this I have to go through an ever lengthening process as time and technology marches on.

First of all I have to find the files amongst folders of CDr‘s

Then boot up an old G4 Powerbook that has the classic environment installed, the file formats are too old to be read by current Mac’s.

Transfer the files onto the laptop so that I can use the Extractor program to decompress them, hoping they haven’t corrupted in the ensuing years.

Bounce the files back to the Mac Pro and open them in Freehand 10, making a note of any fonts or files that haven’t been archived with the set.

Find said files and fonts, reload them and open the files.

Cut and paste the whole lot into InDesign to tweak and make print-ready for today’s environment. There is usually a bit of work to do as old files never convert exactly, certain details have changed over time (address, distribution etc) or things need tidying up as my design skills were lacking back in the day.

Convert to a Postscript PDF for the printer

Sorry for possibly the most dull post ever but I’m sure some designers will sympathise.

DJ Food – 3rd EP finally finished

It’s been a productive week for music, I finally finished the 3rd EP in the trilogy that will make up my album. Plus the cover version of The The’s GIANT featuring Matt Johnson on vocals that I’ve literally been working on for years. The keen-eyed among you will also have spotted that Matt’s friend and sometime musical collaborator, JG Thirlwell appears on one track too.

I have one more track that I’m reworking from a previous EP to finish for the album and then I have to sequence it all for the CD version and do artwork. Also next week I am remixing Loka for the first single from their second LP, due out this autumn on Ninja Tune. 2econd Class Citizen, whom I collaborated on this EP on one track, has also turned in a remix for this which is a nice touch.

Posted in DJ Food, Music, Ninja Tune. | 5 Comments |

Smash Hits & The Kraftwerk Kollection

I’ve been waiting for this issue to crop up on Brian McClosekey‘s excellent ‘Like Punk Never Happened’ blog – the 1981 issue with Adam Ant on the cover –  one that I strongly remember, being mad about anything with an Ant attachment at the time. Brian posts complete issues of Smash Hits, every two weeks, 30 years to the day they were first published and he’ll continue until his collection stops. The pages are viewable via Flickr and are slowly forming an excellent time capsule of late 70’s and 80’s pop, in context, as it happened. I was eleven when this was published and 1981 was Adam Ant’s year, he was everywhere, from the pop charts to TV to the daily newspapers. He looked and sounded great, gave good copy and they couldn’t get enough of him.

Another page in this issue caught my eye later on though, a half page advert for five Kraftwerk albums. They had a freak number one in the UK with ‘The Model’ in February 1982 – a traditional post-Xmas quiet spot for record releases. It seems Phonogram were eagerly flooding the market with reissues of their back catalogue at this point though because they’d just released the Computer World album. When I first saw the ad (obviously, re-reading the mag later) I thought, “What? how can they have five albums?”, little knowing that there were another four at least to add to this list. Unfortunately none of these made it to my local record shop but I did manage to get copies of ‘Computer World’, ‘The Man Machine’ and ‘Trans Europe Express’ – all on cassette – the latter of which I took back to the shop, complaining to them that the tape only had one track on side 2 when it listed four. Again, little did I realise all four tracks segued into one so there weren’t any breaks in between (!) I love the way they’ve spelt picture with a ‘k’ in the text and my god do I wish I’d been old enough to see them on that tour.

Posted in Kraftwerk, Magazines, Music. | 2 Comments |

Crazy scenes at the last ever Mixed Bizness

I played in Glasgow last night as the special guest at Boom Monk Ben‘s last ever Mixed Bizness night at the School of Art. After my 90 minute AV set Ben played the final hour and the crowd went progressively crazier until he ended with Beck’s ‘Mixed Bizness’ (what else?) and a full on stage invasion. Predictably ‘one more song’ was requested to which he responded with Chaka Khan’s ‘Ain’t Nobody’ at which point there was full on crowd surfing! Another stage invasion occurred and demands for one more ‘one more song’ were granted by Roots Manuva’s ‘Witness’ and the place erupted. I think Ben feared the whole table and laptop were going to be pushed over at one point from the amount of people on the front of the stage and behind the decks.

It was a great end to years of regular nights Ben has been doing at the Art School, which is due for renovation and will be closed for at least 2 years while they rip everything out. The week before, I did a phone interview with Shaun Murphy for Mixed Bizness about the forthcoming show and my forthcoming album, which you can listen to here

I stayed in the lovely Citizen M hotel when I was there which is full of great designer furniture by the likes of Panton and Eames with compact rooms that resembled Japanese pod hotels.

Posted in DJ Food, Gigs. | 2 Comments |

Jon Brooks – Music For Deiter Rams

I don’t know how he does it but here’s another one from Jon Brooks on Café Kaput. “Every sound on this record, from the melodic sounds to the percussion, the atmospheric effects to the bass lines originates from the Braun AB-30 alarm clock.”

Listen and buy here

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RIP Martin Rushent

Martin Rushent, the man behind The Human League‘s incredible ‘Love and Dancing’ remix album from 1982, has passed away.

Rushent described working on Love and Dancing during an interview in 2007:
“The dub mixes started because we didn’t have time to do ‘B’ sides, We’d send Virgin Records a track and they’d want to rush-release it. I’d been listening to Grandmaster Flash and played it to Phil (Oakey). He liked it so I suggested doing a remix of “Love Action” by chopping it up and adding effects, then we could get Virgin off our backs!

When it was all finished I had four or five remixes. Phil wasn’t sure about releasing them on an album and left me to make Love and Dancing on my own. It was mixed on a board, so I had the multitrack of Dare feeding in, a Harmonizer on send one, delay lines and phasers everywhere and I’d flick it about. I’d do a section and if I liked it I’d make a tape cut and splice it in. There were thousands of edits on the master and it took forever to do.”

This album was a major inspiration when I was young and continues to be today. Synth pop twisted and remixed before the genre really existed and any rules were set in stone. This predated the Art of Noise and Trevor Horn‘s remix frenzies and, I’m fairly certain, could probably lay claim to being the first remix album. Certainly one by a chart-topping band at any rate.

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The Quietus interview with JG Thirlwell

I’ve recently completed a track with long-time musical hero JG Thirlwell, aka Foetus, Manorexia, Steroid Maximus and many more, for my new record due out in Sept. To say it was an honor is an understatement as well a dream fulfilled. Since first being given a cassette of seminal album’s ‘Hole’ and ‘Nail’ in the 80’s I’ve been hooked on his music and always checked for new releases. He’s been on the list of collaborators I’ve wanted for this new record for years and, to add the icing on the cake, I’m pleased beyond words with the resulting track – ‘Prey’. It will kick off my third EP this autumn, before the album compiles the trilogy shortly after.

If you’re not familiar with his work, the Quietus have just published this piece by my good friend Mark Emsley of ireallylovemusic. It’s as good a place as any to start. I’ve also put together a visual discography of all his many guises – Foetus, Wiseblood, Steroid Maximus, Manorexia, Garage Monsters, Stinkfist, Clint Ruin, The Flesh Volcano, Baby Zizanie, Hydroze Plus and of course, JG Thirlwell. Three decades’ work and that’s just his own productions, not including remixes, collaborations and four season’s worth of scores for The Venture Brothers TV series. One of the joys of any JGT production is that the artwork is always excellent, with themes and colours recurring to form a visual identity.

If this has piqued your interest but you don’t know where to start, I suggest the 80’s albums ‘Hole’, Nail’ and ‘Thaw’. ‘Sink’ is a great catch-all compilation of a lot of the surrounding singles and compilation tracks of the era. Noughties albums ‘Flow’, ‘Damp’ and ‘Hide’ are amazing and, if vocals aren’t your thing, any Steroid Maximus album is worth a try.

Posted in Music. | 3 Comments |