Some more (better) images and a great little film shot by Anthony Dickenson and Dan Lowe of the Ninja Tune XX mural Chu painted outside the 333 in Shoreditch the other week. He’s painting something else special at the Ewer Street gig on October 2nd alongside She-1, can’t wait.
Trailer for a 15 minute CGI version of Shaun Tan’s book, ‘The Lost Thing’ – looks gorgeous.
More info at his site
I helped take down the Ninja Tune exhibition at Black Dog today, it’s all gone, wrapped up, shipped back to its owners. Thanks to all who came down and all at Black Dog, especially Marianne Templeton, who put in a ton of effort to make it happen.
Most of you will have heard, or at least heard about, the two new DJ Shadow tracks that officially came to light last week via his site, after being out and about, ripped from radio broadcasts for a bit. ‘Def Surrounds Us / I’ve Been Trying’ caused a stir last week which is no mean feat in this day and age from an artist who is approaching 20 years of official releases. In the digital age these things are easy to come by, not so easy is an actual hard copy, pressed onto vinyl, dark blue vinyl to be exact, with a unique handrawn front cover no less.
But they do exist and Shadow has been giving them away to DJs and fans via his site and posts on Twitter. There are rumoured to be only 100 copies at the moment, each with its own unique sleeve design and stamp bearing the legend ‘Handmade, because you’re worth it’ on the back. I was lucky enough to receive a copy earlier this week after a heads up from Joost over at the Sole Sides board and people have begun adding images of their copies to Discogs on the release’s entry page. Here’s mine but I have several other ‘handmade’ Shadow records I’ve collected over the years that I thought I’d share with you.
This is my copy of the ‘Enuff (DJ Fresh remix)/This Time’ single, this was a regular white label copy that I’m pretty sure I customised with a sticker from elsewhere. There are 100 copies of a fully sprayed and stencilled Paul Insect version that were sold through DJ Shadow.com but alas I don’t have one of those.
In Tokyo a few years ago I stumbled across a pile of these in the Shibuya HMV, supposedly a limited edition for Japan with hand silk screened covers and an extended version of ‘Roy’s Theme’ from the KeepinTime compilation.
Going even further back we have the ‘Monosyllabik’ promo 12″ that was sneaked out before the Private Press hit, confounding everyone. So much so that I found one in the local exchange for £1, some DJs obviously weren’t too hip to what it was or didn’t care and passed it on. I have three different copies of this: one I was sent as a promo, the other I found in the exchange and the third was from eBay. This is the best of the three, including as it does, all 10 stickers on the front (there were said to be 10 different sleeves designs out there at the time).
… and last but not least, my very own creation, one of five handmade (and mixed) CDRs of the ‘Press Cuttings’ sampler mix I made of selections from the Private Press in 2002. This aired on Solid Steel and I gave Shadow a copy after a gig which he was then kind enough to add to his official discography later. Each disc has a different image on it and the covers are all made up of graphics from old private press record booth sleeves. Hear it at the bottom of the page.
Press Cuttings (The Private Press Compacted) by DJ Food
PS: a section of a Quietus interview with Shadow about the making of the Def Surrounds Us sleeve artwork:
“On the 12”s, all of the sleeves are one-offs. When it was conceived, it was the purest way I could think of to let the music out of my hands and into the chance environment of society… in the most pure and unfucked with way. It wasn’t coming from the label, it wasn’t coming laoded with information. And if I’d had my way originally, it wouldn’t even have had my name on it. It would have been totally anonymous… It would have just let time and people’s own research and ideas determine what it was. I guess in a certain sense cooler heads prevailed and it has come out as a compromise where when you first look at it you’re not going to know what it is or who it is by. But for people like you and me who look at records every day you’re just going to stop and go: “What the fuck is this?” Because it’s removing the art from its proper context. In most cases I would have my kids doodle something and then when they got bored with it I would add my own hyper detail to it. I’m not a great illustrator but I like to draw and my dad was a graphic designer. I like spending a lot of time on pointillism and detail. It doesn’t really matter what the image really is and in fact I try and keep myself from representing anything. In some of them I’ve even added a little note that says, “Please add to the artwork before you pass it along.” We’ve added stickers on some. I like the idea that the art is never quite finished. It was inspired by a lot of other covers that I’ve seen. Obviously this kind of thing has been done before in the DIY scene and the minimal synth scene of the early 80s, so I’m not claiming to have invented the process but I intended it as the most honest and pure delivery mechanism that I could think of. “
So, Nigel Peake is in town, fresh from painting a mural and we’re wandering around Pimlico like a couple of tourists. Clutching an A-Z and an iPhone, we’re trying to find the Chelsea Space which is currently hosting the Barney Bubbles exhibition, Process.
Bubbles, born Colin Fulcher, sadly committed suicide in 1983 and has long been an unsung hero of British sleeve design but this has started to change in recent years after Paul Gorman’s book on his work, ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful’, was published in 2008. Quickly selling out and starting to command high prices on the web it’s now been updated and expanded in a new edition.
Possibly one of the reasons Bubbles isn’t as widely know as, say, Neville Brody, Malcolm,Garrett, Hipgnosis, Peter Saville or Jamie Reid is because his work spanned both both ends of the seventies and beyond – the hippy / prog / rock and the punk eras – and never conceded to one house style for anyone. The two things he’s probably most known for – Hawkwind and Stiff Records – couldn’t be much further apart. Looking at one of his Hawkwind sleeves and then an Elvis Costello or Ian Dury from later you’d be hard-pressed to see any sort of stylistic link, yet he did them both.
After walking up and down the street way too many times, asking in the Tate to a bemused attendant and eventually finding the space via a round-the-houses route through the College of Art we realise we’d walked right past it. Failing to notice the sign outside the inconspicuous door set back from the main road, we should have stopped yakking and paid a bit more attention.
Anyway, once inside we were greeted by walls pasted with vintage music paper ads and posters of late 70’s vintage, a couple of old record players sporting various vinyl rarities, badges, stickers and a gorgeous rack of Ian Dury ‘Do It Yourself’ wallpaper-sleeved LPs. Right in, no messing about. Along the bottom of one wall were various publications all sporting BB covers including a John Cooper-Clark ‘Directory 1979’ an issue of the NME, Nova magazine and a Hawkwind programme.
A long, thin, tall corridor then stretches up before turning into the main exhibition room and one wall is covered with posters and record sleeves, the Hawkwind ones unfolded flat to show off their wares. Frustratingly the sharp viewing angle meant that the higher pieces were hard to see properly, further compounded by spot lighting which caused glare on anything in a PVC protective sleeve.
Into the main room, past a giant hanging Chuck Berry sculpture and here’s the good stuff. Cases of artifacts, portraits, sketchbooks, paintings, paste ups, reference books, even materials like Rotring pens he left behind. One wall is covered in original art paste up sheets, tracing paper with notes covering some of them, all hung with big bulldog clips which is a nice touch throughout. Another wall is full of beautifully presented black and white art, logos, layouts – a mixture of paint, pen, Letraset and whiteout – all of which would have blended into one under the camera later.
It must have been a difficult task for the curators to hang the work because it was so random, finding obvious themes and connections is almost impossible with Bubbles because each piece is so different from the next. Sure he has various tricks and techniques that he employs, his mixture of abstract and 3D shapes to make words for instance, but it’s as if he was always starting from scratch with each new piece. His foldout sleeves for Hawkwind and Elvis Costello are placed behind perspex but even they jut out at points, unable to be contained in such a space.
I’m no expert on Bubbles but this looks like a goldmine of his work for anyone remotely interested in him or the groups he designed for. Also this is a great reminder of how things were done decades ago, pre-digital, everything is hand drawn, painted, cut and pasted and it’s beautiful to see, especially all the whited out parts. Although by no means a complete overview – several pieces are conspicuous by their absence – the curators intend this to be more of a stepping stone to bigger things later and the new edition of the book should help this.
The exhibition is on now until October 23rd at Chelsea Space,
16 John Islip Street,
London, Sw1P 4JU
More details here
and visit Paul Gorman’s excellent blog on all things Barney Bubbles
and a good, quick overview of his work at feuilleton
Love this cover for the Losers’ LP – out today. Losers are Eddy Temple-Morris and Tom Bellamy and the artwork is by Dan Hillier, see more of his work here
The Paris show on Friday was great fun, packed out, great to see Vadim and Yarah on a Ninja bill again too. During mine and DK’s set someone pulled the fire alarm and all the power went off on stage for more than 5 minutes. Unfortunately we were in the middle of a drum n bass section so that went down like a damp squib. Before the gig I went up to the Galerie Chappe to see the exhibition of Ninja art and sleeve design that had been put on, apparently 1,500 people turned out for the opening! Ping Pong, who have done promotion for Ninja for over a decade now under the leadership of Fred ‘DJ Oof’ Elalouf, did a great job of putting together a show which included original art, paste up sheets, sleeves, huge posters and specially made prints of selected covers. They also made exclusive T-shirts, seats and a huge banner for the gigs which greeted me when I walked into the venue. See photos from the exhibition here (warning, this is a Facebook photo album), and it’s on until October 2nd. There are 4 more gigs coming up in Paris over the next few weeks including a huge, long sold out line up at La Machine and two gigs at the Pompidou Centre.
Big mural being painted as I type by Chu down in Hoxton, this is due to go round the whole building – more later
and here’s some progress…
Black Dog Publishing open their doors on a Saturday this weekend for people who haven’t been able to make it to the Ninja 20th exhibition in the week. Between 12 and 5pm they will be open and Ninja will have a special pop up shop there selling selected items. I’m not entirely sure what will be available yet but there might be some of the new Ninja Tune XX releases and you will be able to buy the 20 years of Beats & Pieces book for £15 which is a fiver cheaper than the shops. It’s free and at 10a Acton Street, London,WC1X 9NG. This is the last week of the exhibition so it’s now or never…
Well last night’s book launch at Black Dog’s gallery in Kings Cross was a lot of fun, a huge turn out of artists, staff, friends and family made it a massive success. Thanks to everyone at Black Dog for a supreme effort in turning the exhibition round in three days, also everyone who came down, there were a few old faces I’d not seen in years and some who I’d only known via email but never met in person. Photos by Martin LeSanto-Smith, on form as ever to capture the event.
The exhibition is open to the public, free, between 12-5pm Monday-Friday until September 16th. It’s situated at 10a Acton St, London, WC1X 9NG, nearest tube is Kings Cross and then it’s a 5 minute walk, press the buzzer and you’ll be let in.
Black Dog Publishing, 10a Acton St. London, WC1X 9NG
There’s a buzzer to the left, you get let in when you ring
This dropped through the post last week, well, it actually arrived by courier, soaking wet, looking like it had been sitting in a puddle for some time, the cardboard around it literally falling off when I unwrapped it. Good job they wrapped it in bubble wrap, and it’s a heavy bugger too at 12″x12″ size. This is Entr3At – a visual celebration of the first 2 years of Ashley Wood and Kim Fung Wong’s 3A toy making company, makers of the best robot toys in the world by a long chalk. This is my kind of book, studio shots of the badly weathered toys, production designs, work in progress, box layouts and logo art for the individual figures. To think that they made all this in just 2 years is incredible and there’s already much more in the pipeline for a follow up later.
Their latest release is a ‘Heavy’ version of the popular Bramble bot, this time with huge bazooka and tougher build, coming in 4 different colourways. My good friend JP McCarthy managed to score me a Grave Digger variant this week and they sold out on pre-order in hours. Not cheap at $280 a pop but that includes shipping to anywhere in the world (and these bots aren’t small), some of the nicest packaging you’ll ever see and the most detailed paint jobs this side of a film set. These will doubtless not even turn up until around xmas time, if that, as they take a long time to make but a 3A package at the door is always a treat.
Saw this earlier in issue 5 of LSD (London Street-Art Design) magazine and it made me chuckle, next to it is the original image it was copied from. Click for larger verrsions
Here’s something interesting I stumbled across whilst perusing the Kraftwerk Facebook page that’s been set up by fans. A limited edition of the band’s Tour De France 12″ that comes with a built in player like those cheesy birthday cards you can get that play a tune when you open them.
The designer’s name is Woes Van Haaften and there are 5 different sleeve colours to choose from but they don’t come cheap let me warn you! Full info and a little film here
Opening in 2 weeks time will be Ninja’s first bonafide exhibition in the UK to celebrate the publication of the book, ‘Ninja Tune: 20 Years of Beats & Pieces’. Black Dog Publishing have generously offered to host a little showcase of the design and imagery that went into it and, after designing the book, the box set and all the paraphernalia that goes with it, I’m curating the exhibition too. It will feature lots of original artwork, models, posters, sleeves, flyers and promo bits from across the years.
It opens Friday, 20th of August at Black Dog’s gallery space, 10 Acton St. London, WC1X 9NG between 12-5pm weekdays and is only on for a month. There will be a special pop up shop on Saturday 11th September where there will be several special items for sale, hand picked from the Ninja archives as well as the new book.
One my oldest friends, Steven Baker, found this in a box of stuff this week. I painted it for another friend, Cliff Purtell, back in 1988 I think, maybe later, I don’t really remember. He was going to Donnington (the rock festival) and wanted to show his appreciation of the band. I can’t quite remember how long it took but it was somewhere in the region of 2 weeks I think due to the fact that a lot of it was painted with modeling paints watered down, you know, the tiny pots you can buy to paint up Airfix kits and the like. We didn’t have money for proper paints and figured that these wouldn’t run if the weather was wet. We also only had an old tablecloth or bed sheet to paint it on as you can see from the not-quite-finished-yet bottom corner.
Anyway, I would troop round to Cliff’s place each morning (it was the summer holidays) and he would furnish me with tea and biscuits all day and blast out heavy metal. This was my introduction to thrash metal primarily although I think I bought a fair bit of LL Cool J, Beastie Boys and Public Enemy with me to even things out. Anthrax, Metallica, Megadeth (obviously), Slayer, G.W.A.R. probably a lot more that didn’t stick too, all were played on repeat throughout the making of this banner, a tiny picture of which ended up in Kerrang the week after the festival. Cliff swore that, during their set, Dave Mustaine of Megadeth quipped, “You’ve got some fucking nice banners out there”.
Great cover by Arth Daniels for the new DELS single ‘Shapeshift’ on Big Dada. The video is decent too
[youtube width=”655″ height=”455″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjAnmqecMKI[/youtube]
There’s a lot of talk about Harper Lee’s classic at the moment being that it’s 50 years since its original publication and I’m going to jump on the bandwagon and declare my love for it. I read this in school and it was probably the first ‘proper’ book to affect me, even though I haven’t read it for 25 years or more I can still remember passages of the book and being enthralled by it.
The reason for this post though is that my friend Sarah ‘Inkymole’ Coleman was asked to illustrate the cover for the American 50th anniversary edition I just found out. Being that it is one of her favourite books, this is a lifetime dream and I was really pleased for her when I found out. Even more impressed when I saw what she’s come up with for it, love the detail of the hole in the tree trunk where Boo Radley leaves his gifts on the spine. More info with work in progress on Sarah’s site and you can buy the book from Barnes and Noble as well. I’ve included a selection of other covers from across the years too.
Just finished reading this short, 3 part series where everyone’s favourite wall crawler teams up with Dr. Strange in a story called ‘Fever’. I’m not a big superhero comics fan, Superman, Batman, X-Men etc. don’t do much for me. I generally prefer the more leftfield end of things, in fact I think this is the first Spiderman comic I’ve ever bought outside of the watered down kind for my boys. So, why the special occasion? Brendan McCarthy. One of the demi-gods of UK comic book art, 2000ad veteran and, in the last 2 decades, storyboardist and character designer to Hollywood.
I’ll buy pretty much anything with Brendan’s name on it as he’s a unique talent, rarely repeats himself but has a visual language all of his own. Sometimes copied – Jamie Hewlett’s early work owes much to McCarthy – but never bettered, he is one of the few comic book artists who can portray psychedelia effectively on the printed page, Savage Pencil being another example. He mainly left comics behind after getting his foot in the movie making door and who can blame him, I’m sure the pay is better. But recently he’s been active again here and there and this Marvel Team Up is his first major comic book for some time.
This time round he’s writing as well as illustrating too and seems to have been given quite free reign with the character, something he dives head on into conjuring up a Spider-themed story that incorporates magic, other dimensions, soul-snatching and even references Spidey’s origins quite neatly. It all serves to provide material for a great big acid trip of a story with nods to Steve Ditko and a thinly veiled Alistair Crowley. If you like your comics dark, camp and sporting all the colours of the spectrum then this is for you. In fact one of my only criticisms (aside from the shortness of it all) is the colouring ,which has been done via computer. Some of it works but, knowing McCarthy’s painted work from the past, there’s something lacking in some of the pages.