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Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s ‘Two Tribes’ – one of the greatest pop singles of the 80’s and certainly one of the greatest 12″ mixes of all time – was released 30 years ago today. June 4th saw a 7″ and 12″ finally burst the bubble of expectation that ‘Relax’ had inflated after its 5 week run at the no.1 spot despite a BBC ban.
Six days later on June 10th ‘Two Tribes’ was also sitting at no.1 and would remain bedded in for another nine weeks with ‘Relax’ returning to the no.2 spot for a couple of those too. The 7″ and 12″ would be joined by three further 12″s, all sporting remixes of the title track or its B side, a cover of Edwin Starr‘s ‘War’, as well as 7″ and 12″ picture discs and a cassette compiling excerpts from all.
Add to that the phenomenon of the ‘Frankie Say’ T-shirts that swept the nation that summer and you had a roller coaster of pop product that no one could have predicted. Over on my ArtofZTT blog I’ve been adding sleeves, posters, adverts and picture discs daily to celebrate along with various quotes and info about the releases.
The ‘Inside The Pleasuredome’ box set I helped design is looking good at 83% funded over on Pledge Music and I’m waiting on the go ahead to post more photos from it. Over on his Failed Muso blog Rob Puricelli has written a great piece about the anniversary of ‘Two Tribes‘ and how it impacted on him as a teen in the 80’s, so much of it rings true to my experience too but he puts it so much better.
This looks incredible – a restored print of a little-known documentary of old early 80’s NYC. ‘Stations of the Elevated’ (1981) Directed by Manfred Kirchheimer.
“The first ever filmed document of graffiti, Manfred Kirchheimer’s richly chromatic 16mm tone poem sets images of the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn to a soundtrack that interweaves ambient city noises with the gutbucket gospel sound of jazz titan Charles Mingus. Long regarded by cinephiles and hip-hop heads as an obscure cult masterpiece since it premiered at the 1981 New York Film Festival, Stations of the Elevated is a celebration of a quintessentially urban art form—at a time when it was largely dismissed as vandalism. With lyrical shots of tagged trains, desolate rail yards, and other details of the urban landscape, it remains a priceless portrait of a bygone era of New York City culture. World premiere of a new restoration”
Released by Artists Public Domain/Cinema Conservancy
World Premiere New Restoration Friday, June 27 BAM Harvey Theater for BAM Cinemafest 2014
Tickets: HERE More information on Artists Public Domain
I’ve just been combing old discs for archived artwork for various Beat Delete reissues, forget vinyl, this is the new digging – byte digging. The first Herbaliser LP sleeve (‘Remedies’, 1995) and labels takes up just 5.4 MB of space, madness.
Above and to the right are unused designs for the first Cinematic Orchestra album and singles. Neither are for anything in particular, more playing around with the typeface I had created for the band and exploring different textures.
The top version was done by colour copying the logo at different sizes onto sheets of tracing paper which were then ripped, crumpled and overlaid under a scanner. The bright light of the scanner shone through the layers and the resulting scan had various filters applied to bring out the colours in the paper. No Photoshop layers there though, real layers of paper in one scan.
To the right is more playing with letter forms than anything else. The image behind the type is one of the photos from the Colourscape that later got used on my ‘Kaleidoscope’ LP. Below is a typeface I designed in college – check me out with my Fuse fonts, must have thought I was Neville Brody or something…
This original 2000ad cover by Mike McMahon recently sold on eBay for over £4000 after being in a collection for 20 years. You don’t see one of these very often, I only wish I could have afforded it myself.
‘Project 2501’, a short homage to Shirow Masamune‘s Ghost in the Shell is directed by Ash Thorp and stars freelance model Christine Adams in the role of Motoko Kusanagi. Thorp’s tribute to the classic anime masterpiece crowdsourced the skills of filmmakers across the globe, in San Diego, Poland, and Singapore. It couldn’t be nearer the anime version and is also timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the original. Apparently Dreamworks are making their own version, it already has a benchmark to live up to here. More info on this version here with some beautiful poster design too. *Warning* Nudity.
The Electric Hoax Pt.22 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
The Herbaliser finally release the remix companion album to their ‘There Were Seven’ LP with a cover remix by yours truly. ‘There Were Seven Remixes’ actually contains 16 of the buggers and a host of instrumentals if you get the digital version.
Unfortunately the original idea of having seven 7″s in a box has gone by the wayside because there is so much material and now they have a handy catch-all CD coming out on June 30th via their Dept. H label.
Remixes come courtesy of Gigabeatz Bonson, Coleman Brothers, Soundsci, Jenome and more. Pick of the bunch for me are the 2econd Class Citizen, No Sleep Nigel and the excellent Lopez remix, the latter of which you can hear below after the T-Power mix.
I bought this the other month because I liked the art, it’s a very quick ‘read’ being that there’s no text and it’s more of a portfolio / sketch book with no context to the images inside. I know nothing about the artist , Raymond Lemstra, but I like his level of detail and the way he flits between different styles.
His voodoo / totem pole / robotic faces are my favourites for their clean lines and 3D appearance. You can find his site here and the book is available from Nobrow Press and other good comic shops.
No doubt they will have a stall at ELCAF – the East London Comics & Arts Festival – in a couple of weeks, their books are always interesting with great art and different formats.
Ian Gibson – Robo Hunter ‘Day of the Droids’ Ep 7, Pg 2, 1980
(640 x 450 mm, black ink and Letratone on art board).
2000ad Prog 158.
I’ve put one of the mixes I did for this weekend’s live streaming Altar Ego Radio on my Soundcloud so that it can kill two birds with one stone (pun intended) and promote my set at the Lunar Festival in Tanworth, Warwickshire on June 6th. The mix was done with that in mind being that it’s a psychedelic set for a gig of the same, check the line up below, tickets and other info available here.
A second hour of Magpie Music by 2econd Class Citizen is available here.
These Serato controller discs just arrived from 12inchSkinz in the US. They are clear 12″ discs with custom-made graphic pictures on the underside and a label over the top.
They are sanctioned by Serato but only playable on one side because of the image underneath. Expensive but well worth it as they are objects of beauty.
12inchSkinz also do stickers for your laptop and mixer and I highly recommend them as I’ve got stickers for both of those as well and they’re very high quality.
Went to an event at Brian Eno‘s studio last Thursday evening and on the way I found this Pop Annual from 1974 in the local book exchange with 4 pages about the man himself. Thinking that this was an Eno-esque bit of chance and how funny it would be to show it to him 40 years after the fact, I bought it. Managed to get him to sign it whilst chatting about his comedy turn interviewing himself in the guise of Dick Flash in an old promo video. I have now officially met God and obtained his autograph.
Friday at the Dust & Grooves book launch – so many lovely people, shame I had to jet early for another gig, will make up for it later today at the Vinyl Library get together. 
Last minute post I know but I’ll be on Altar Ego Radio at 6 – 8pm tonight with a show of electronica that sounds like the past predicting the future called ‘Future Shock’. You can listen live here – I’ll even be talking.
Then tomorrow, Sunday 25th I’ll be doing another show with 2econd Class Citizen called ‘Magpie Music’ – one hour each of heavy psychedelia and the like.
The Electric Hoax Pt.21 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
I’ll be playing from 6pm – all vinyl – alongside Ollie Teeba, Jonny Trunk, Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy, Dom Servini, Kid Dyno and Sheila B. It’s FREE and takes place at the Proud Archivist gallery in East London – more details here.
This is what the last post was all about, a project I’ve been working on for the last few months but feels like I’ve been working towards for over a decade. 10 years ago I actively started contacting and interviewing the people involved in the creation of the ZTT label’s artwork, starting with Paul Morley who I collaborated with on ‘Raiding the 20th Century’. Through the years after I met designers, illustrators and photographers who had all had hands in the late 80’s output of the label whilst collecting promo posters, magazine ads and in some cases original artwork and photos.
After starting my ArtofZTT site early last year and having been in contact with Ian Peel, responsible for the ongoing reissue series at the label, I was asked to collaborate with resident designer Philip Marshall on what would become the 30th anniversary of Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’.
Now re-titled ‘Inside The Pleasuredome’ this deluxe box set is available to pre-order via Pledge Music and will be released on the anniversary later this year at the end of October. The set will contain:
Re-mastered and redesigned original LP,
3 x 10″s of remixes, demos and alt. takes
a hardback Art of FGTH book with sleeve art, adverts, ultra rare promo posters, LP prelims and making of interviews
a cassette of multiple ‘Relax’ remixes with new artwork inside a card slipcase
a DVD with videos plus 5.1 audio from various singles and album tracks
3 x Prints of the original Lo Cole album artwork (with uncensored back cover image)
a digital only EP of instrumentals
a Pleasuredome TV ad flick book
a Tumbometer (fans will know what this is)
6 x cards with download codes for the remastered LP, the 3 10″s, the cassette and the digital EP
I’ll be sharing photos here during the pledge period of 65 days, I’d love to post it all now but there will be a slow roll out as items are unveiled to people who pre-order . Once the order / pledge period is up no more orders will be taken and once /if the target it reached that will be the extent of the number of sets made. Of the 10 ‘elements’ contained inside the box, half of them will be exclusive including the art book and 10″ featuring ‘Slave…’ It has already made a quarter of the target less than a day after going online but there’s still a way to go. You can pre-order here but once that window is closed that will be your only chance, the box set won’t be sold in shops.
Fans of Brandon Graham and Simon Roy‘s ‘Prophet’ (which is apparently ending soon) could do worse than grab a copy of this. A collection of short sci-fi stories from the last four years or so, some new, some not. They all have that off-kilter look at a future we’ve come to recognise in the pages of Prophet where the everyday mundanities of life are seen through deadened eyes and it’s a dog eat dog world.