Nice package of art from Henry Flint for our joint exhibition at the Pure Evil Gallery next January. There will be original art from elements of the artwork for my album plus drawings from his book ‘Broadcast’ as well as limited full colour prints, photos, a sound installation and other treats I’m working on. I might break out some of my original comic art collection too…
Art
The incredible Augustine Kofie returns to the White Walls gallery in San Francisco this weekend for a new show of 30 works called ‘Circulatory System’. This guy has to be one of my favourite artists full stop. Nice to see some of the big bag of Letraset I gave him on his visit to London earlier this year getting some use too. 
These pictures mostly taken from the excellent Graffuturism blog
The third 12″ EP and download, are out today at the Ninja shop and all other good retailers. You get a 5 track EP, full colour inner sleeve and wrapround A2 sized poster with it (see above).
The album, ‘The Search Engine’ – as I’ve already posted, is also up for pre-order now at the Ninja shop in a multitude of formats, not least the limited version with art book and flexi disc for a cheap early price.
Lots of exciting news to announce soon too…
My good friend Steve Cook has been going through his drawers and cupboards (and believe me he has a lot) and finding loads of ephemera from his days working as a designer for 2000ad, Dr Who, Starburst and many more. I know for a fact that he’s got tons of other interesting bits and bobs in his collection so take a look if the miscellania of comic history is your bag. The Secret Oranges title is a play on the Secret Origins series’ so beloved by comics publishers.
Love this cover of JRocc‘s new single, artwork by Gustavo Eandi.
The incredible line work of Henry Flint from the inner sleeve of the ‘Magpies, Maps & Moons’ vinyl.
The 12″ EP and download, out Nov 7th, is available to preview and pre-order at the Ninja shop.
Henry’s book of ‘doodles’, ‘Broadcast’ is supposed to be released today but is still on pre-order at Amazon.
The Magpie Music mp3 treasure hunt continues today with the second mp3 available on a certain site, use your search engine to find it.
The first segment, ‘Finders Keepers’ was here, pretty close to home, the second won’t be so easy.
Regular blog readers will have noticed a love for Ashley Wood‘s 3A toy company and its works and his legion of fans are putting on a custom show in the 1:AM gallery in San Francisco in two weeks time. A blank severed Bot head was given to each participant, to customise as they wish but it seems a few have gone outside the brief too with amazing results. Over at the 3A forum there has been a slow reveal of some of the custom creations set to appear and the overall quality and ingenuity of some of the pieces is staggering. Wish I could see some of these in the, er… plastic. More to come once the show opens hopefully.
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It’s time to unveil the second print in the series of my collaboration with Henry Flint – ‘Mad Man’, from the ‘One Man’s Weird Is Another Man’s World’ cover. As with the first print, it is printed to the very high standards of the Fine Art Trade Guild on 300gsm Somerset Photo Satin which is a 100% cotton paper. It measures 64.5cm x 47.1cm, in an edition of 33, all signed by myself and Henry and is available from Scraffer.com as a pre-order, to be shipped on Nov 12th.
The difference with this print (and the cause of a slight price hike) is that each one will come with an individual doodle drawn into the blank speech bubble in the centre by Henry himself, making each print unique. The quality is hard to convey without having them in hand but these really are the most gorgeously printed items I’ve seen in a long while, of course I’m biased but I can’t think of a better way to see these images. Really excited to see all the different things Henry draws for this one
Ninja Tune, Henry and myself are very pleased to be partnering with the Pure Evil Gallery in Shoreditch and Scraffer.com early next year to present artwork from my album and Henry’s forthcoming book ‘Broadcast’.
Ninja Tune, Henry and myself are very pleased to be partnering with the Pure Evil Gallery in Shoreditch and Scraffer.com early next year to present artwork from my album and Henry’s forthcoming book ‘Broadcast’.
The amazing Augustine Kofie returns to the White Walls gallery in San Francisco next month for a new solo exhibition called ‘Circulatory System’.
I was lucky enough to see his previous exhibition there last year and he has posted two pieces from the forthcoming show here.
Also Kofie makes music as 4×4 Tracktor and he posted a soundtrack to the show
Match made in heaven, looking forward to this.
More gorgeous work from Simon Bent at Volume2a. “Science Vs Delerium is a series of illustrations celebrating some of the greatest scientists in history. The series was created to re-popularise these iconic figures.”
by Dr FaustusAU via Live For Films
from the diary of David Vallade
Amazing work from the tumblr of Volume 2a aka Australia designer Simon Bent.
Loving the new Martyn album on Brainfeeder, you can listen to a stream of it on their site.
The cover art by Erosie from his ‘Horror vacui’ series’ is exceptional as well.
Today sees the release of DJ Shadow‘s new album, ‘The Less You Know, The Better’, in case you hadn’t seen all the press and publicity recently. He’s taken a fair bit of knocking these last few years, since ‘The Outsider’ rode into town and divided opinion, with the majority, unfortunately, not in its favour. It had its moments, others were tucked away on B-sides and extras on special editions too, but the mix of Hyphy Hip Hop and indie rock with too few of his usual beat workouts led to a very uneven record that would have worked better as a series of themed EPs in my opinion.
It’s a favourite pastime to build ’em up and knock ’em down in this country, and being a Shadow fan was almost a dirty word for a bit. His involvement in the DJ Hero game probably didn’t help that situation but the appearance of limited handmade records, a series of archive tape compilations via his site and then the Shadowsphere has helped rebuild his profile ready for the new release.
The new record has some great material on it and is a return to form whilst still taking steps outside his comfort zone. ‘Border Crossing’ and ‘I Gotta Rokk’ are as strong as any of his more guitar-led material like ‘The Number Song’ and ‘High Noon’ and ‘I’ve Been Trying’ is an update on tracks like ‘6 Day War’ and ‘This Time’, using a sampled vocal entirely as the voice of the song, a trick he seems to repeat a few times here. One of the highlights of the album is ‘Redeemed’, a female vocal-led number that, on first listen, didn’t do much for me but just gets inside your head. For those that love the Shadow of heavy breaks, spoken word and scratches, there’s plenty of that and we get possibly the first RnB pop ballad(!) in ‘Scale It Back’. The howling Beat poetry in ‘Give Me Back The Nights’ doesn’t quite work for me and, again mystifyingly, several bonus tracks are more worthy of album inclusion in ‘Come On Riding’ and ‘Let’s Get It’. I’d like to know how many get involved in compiling the running order for his records these days as album sequencing is an art in itself.
It’s a shame the UK media has wanted to focus on ‘Endtroducing’ so much in the press surrounding the new album rather than let it stand on its own merits but it has produced a couple of very worthwhile radio shows which you can hear below courtesy of the ever faithful Joost over at Solesides.com. Coupled with his live show, which I saw a few weeks ago, and the self-depreciating artwork by Tony Papesh, it’s a great return to form.
DJ Shadow – THE MUSIC THAT INSPIRED… by Solesides on Mixcloud