Wonders of the Underwater World covers

Jonny Cuba WOTUW
I want to start a post to document photos of the Jezz Woodroffe covers I see that have been decorated with the sticker sheet provided inside. This fantastic electronic synth soundtrack is available now on Trunk Reords and only the first pressing will have the stickers so if you want a copy get it here before they’re gone.
The above cover is by Johnny Cuba (he promises to do the back soon) and the couple below are by Jason Applin.

Jason Applin back
Jason Applin front
SusansLegPolicy goes for the minimal details below and we finish off with animated Jonny Trunk‘s film…

SusansLegPolicy back 2
SusansLegPolicy back
SusansLegPolicy front


Jonny sent me this stunner from Darren Hall that has a little story to go with it;
“I fought my record nerd urge to keep my copy pristine, and i won, so i gave it to my 11 year old to apply the stickers. He tells me there is a story. The two lower divers are being menaced by pointy toothed sharks so a third diver is coming to their rescue. Meanwhile two other divers, evidently not arsed at all about the perilous situation of their colleagues, are filming some cool fish”.

Darren Hall cover
This just in from Davidboyt84… nice use of fish wrapping round to the back cover there

Davidboyt84
Simon Bowker Heighes has gone a step further and saved sharks for the labels as well as having divers explore the Jezz Woodroffe logo and some nice fish pairing up on the back cover.

SBH A
SBH B
SBH cover
SBH back
This just in from Jolyon Green

Jolyon Green cover

Tomi Ungerer’s Electric Circus posters

EC Bra
Tomi Ungerer isn’t a name that’s normally associated with the psychedelic poster movement but he illustrated these posters for the Electric Circus nightclub that existed between 1967 and 1971 on St. Marks Place, Manhattan, New York. The club was a multi-media environment with light shows that hosted the psychedelic bands of the day to the avant garde minimalists and everyone in between. Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable was there as were Jackie Cassen and Rudi Stern‘s ‘Theatre of Light’ shows (also revived some 30 years later).
Ungerer created six posters and one advert in 1969 for the club – subtitled ‘The Ultimate Legal Entertainment Experience’ – focusing on people using electric items in odd ways. His playful work swung from children’s books to political critiques to people interacting with perverse sexual machines – check out his Fornicon works if you can find/afford them.

EC Bulb
EC Buttplug
EC Lamp
EC plug
EC Toaster
EC Vacuum
There are many ads and other posters for the Electric Circus on the web but few are in high quality unfortunately. The main logo typeface (and possibly a lot of the ad layouts) was designed by design company Chermayeff-Geismar, a world-reknown practice who are still in business today.

EC opening
EC Hand
EC Muddy Waters
EC student takeover
ElectricCircus-w-magenta-on-cyan Chermayeff & Geismar
Also just premiering is a new documentary about the club entitled Psychedelicized: The Electric Circus Story which can be watched in person if you’re in NYC or online at the end of the month https://www.docnyc.net/film/psychedelicized-the-electric-circus-story/

Jezz Woodroffe – Wonders of the Underwater World

IMG_6740This one’s been in the pipeline a while now but finally its time has come. Jonny Trunk asked me to repackage the cover to Jezz Woodroffe‘s 1981 album, ‘Wonders of the Underwater World’ over a year ago now but to turn it into a seascape that stickers could be used on to make your own scenario in the style of those old rub down tranfer books from the 70s. He looked for the old Letraset style transfer-makers but to no avail so we plumped for a transparent sticker sheet holding all manner of fish, divers and a SP-350 Denise mini sub as featured in the Jacques Cousteau documentaries.

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Elements of the seabed were generated using AI (well over a year ago now) and then collaged together for the cover and labels. We chose to keep the original typography as it’s so of its time and the insert with the album notes apes the wavey countours of the original back cover. The album is a synth-heavy soundtrack to a documentary about the Truk Lagoon, an infamous battleground which is now home to numerous sunken military vehicles; planes, tanks and boats which are slowly rotting on the sea bed.
You can order it right here and now
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Wheels of Light now out in the US

WOL cover
Not only was my book ‘Wheels of Light’ published a year ago by Four Corners Books but it’s now available in the US with free UPS ground shipping from D.A.P. – they are also supplying bookstores too if you want copies for your store. Order here
Wheels of Light Oil Wheel Optikinetics
WOL8
In other related light show news, Optikinetics are close to fulfilling the Kickstarter for their new Kino projector, a mini home projector that takes 6″ wheels and includes several options to back including one with my book and vintage Pluto wheels.
You can back the campaign and get your own home projector here

Kino projector
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Opti launch their Kino projector


Opti(kinetics) have launched their mini projector the Kino via Kickstarter including an array of wheels, mirrors and even my Wheels of Light book as added incentives. One of the wheels on offer is an original vintage Pluto wheels from the 70s, the company bought the remaining stock from the company many years ago and once these are gone they’re the last of the surviving stock. You can pledge your support here for this lovely little projector that will take magnetic 6″ FX wheels and can be controlled via a phone app. I’ve used a prototype and they are beautiful and work straight out the box, perfect for home use rather than clubs and gigs.

Kino projector

Zodiac posters by Bruce Krefting, 1969

Zodiac Aquarius-Pisces
In my periodic searches for graphic material from the late 60s I came across several sellers on eBay offering these long zodiac door posters from 1969. Designed by Bruce Krefting, printed by Wespac Visual Communications Inc. from San Francisco and standing at 70 inches tall, they form an impressive set of psychedelic typographic designs. Wespac was one of the printing houses that sprung up at the end of the 60s in San Francisco and they produced a number of psychedelic black light posters as well as these. I’ve pieced these together as best I could from various sources on the web but it took a long time to find these in any kind of decent quality. July (Leo) and Nov (Sagittarius) have so far alluded me in any kind of usable quality but I’ll add to the post if I find them.

Zodiac Aries-Taurus Zodiac Gemini-Cancer Zodiac Libra-Scorpio8-12 Zodiac Virgo Capricorn credit 2 Credit

Middle Earth posters

Middle Earth poster colour
Continuing the occasional overview of British psychedelic club advertising I’ve been compiling over the years…
I’ve not come across too many posters for the Middle Earth club, the psychedelic happening in Covent Garden that sprung up and eventually succeeded the UFO club in 1967 through to 1969. Michael English illustrated possibly the most famous poster for the club above and the original art was sold some years ago at auction.
From the auction blurb: “Michael English’s detailed explanatory letter explains that this was the last, and technically the most sophisticated, poster created under the Hapshash name. Printed by offset lithography rather than the usual silkscreen process, the image takes its theme from J.R. Tolkien’s books, from which the Middle Earth derived its name.

Middle Earth poster original canvas
“In typical post-Freudian Hapshash style the content was heavily sexualized but the less explicit version of the two lovers was printed and used for promoting the club’s concerts. Above the lovers, entwined in foliage very much in Alphonse Mucha style, are two windows into two worlds, one of darkness, one of light. Locked in eternal balance, they are a symbol of the symmetry of space-time, as are the lovers – a reflection of each other, independent, yet inter-dependent. English recalls that, at the time, he felt it was somehow dishonest to hide the boy’s genitals in the printed version as it somehow diluted the force of their love and consequently weakened the message.”

Below is the background colour printing plate and below that a rather aged example of an original print.

Middle Earth poster colour plate
Middle Earth Mar April
There’s little info about this landscape poster except the credit at the bottom and the names Marc Tracy and Paul Bennett hidden in the hair. The V&A hold a copy in their archive, originating from 1967 but despite the title, ‘A Trip To Middle Earth’, it’s not clear whether this was for the club or just a Tolkien reference.

Middle Earth poster
Below is a strange anomaly I found; a minute scan of a Middle Earth poster or advert – now upscaled – that cribs its main image and type from an American poster by Clifford Charles Sealey for the Summer of Love festival in San Francisco, dated March 1, 1967. From the dates on the British poster it must be from late 1967, over six months after the American event, I guess the similarity of the name was too good to pass up and they swiped it.

Middle Earth poster 2-low_res-scale-4_00x-gigapixel
CTME orig 1967

Donna Summer zoetrope


It’s not every day that you get a text message saying that Donna Summer‘s estate has approved your design’ but that’s what happened a few months back after I designed a zoetrope for the reissue of her ‘Another Place And Time’ album. I even shot and edited this little promo video, yep those are my hands and turntable. The album’s out today on picture disc with die-cut front cover – order here
Use the third party app StroboScopeApp to view it through an iPhone https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/stroboscopeapp/id1260603638

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Nicole Claveloux posters

Nicole C pill 1970
Recently found whilst looking for something else, four posters by French illustrator Nicole Claveloux ranging from 1970 to 1973. Above appears to promote taking the pill from 1970 and below is an Aviation Tourism poster for the UTA Company from the same year in collaboration with Bernard Bonhomme.

Nic Clav Aviation- Tourism - UTA Company., 1970
N claveloux LOVE
The Love poster above is from 1973 and was Danish in origin, as was the Romeo & Juliet poster below, both designed for a Dutch bank, Sparekassen. The former was for the annual ‘Savings Day’ in 1973, the latter as a giveaway for new account openers in 1970 and published by Minerva Poster, Copenhagen. Ahhhh, the 70s…
N claveloux R&J

Kaleidoscope flyers and badges

Kal1.2 Apr 14 67
The Kaleidoscope was a psychedelic rock venue run by the management of the band CANNED HEAT. It only lasted about a year from 1967 into 1968 and was one of many unsuccessful efforts to create a viable Fillmore type venue in Los Angeles. A mixture of police pressure and bad management did for it in the end but it had some fantastic posters, which were always circular, mostly numbered and designed in all manner of styles of the day. The strong typographic design of the logo was used liberally across their advertising, sometimes being sliced in half or half hidden but so readily recognisable that it didn’t matter. I’ve tried to find as many of the posters as possible and put them in the order the nights appeared in below.
(images sourced from around the web including RockPosters.com and Heritage Auctions).

Kal2 Apr 22 67

Kal3 May 12 67
After the first three nights in 1967 the club took a break and relocated to 6230 Sunset Blvd where it reopened in 1968 and stayed for most of the year, the venue was renamed The Aquarius Theatre starting with the LA residency of the musical HAIR.
Kal4 Mar 22 68

Kal5 Mar 28 68

Kal6 Apr 5 68

Kal7 Apr8 68

Kal8 April 12 68

Kal9 Apr 22 68

Kal10 May 17 68
There seems to be no visual record online of posters numbered 11 or 12 but the dates suggest maybe whoever was numbering them made a mistake as no.10 is only a week before no.13

Kal13 May 24

Kal14 May 31 68

Kal15 Jun 7 68

Kal16 Jun14 68
Below is a promo postcard which had a couple of months worth of dates on the back, whilst it was not numbered as #17 in the series the time frame suggests it would have filled that spot.

Kal17 Jun-Jul 1968 Postcard - Kaleidoscope Hollywood
Kal17 Jun-Jul 1968 Postcard back

Kal18 Jun 28 68

Kal19 Jul 4 68

Kal20 Jul 6 68
After poster #20 there seem to be no visual references for physical posters but these newspaper ads in the Los Angeles Free Press featuring circular designs with one numbered ‘No.24’ suggest that the series was ongoing.

Kal21 Jul 14 68

Kal22 Jul 27 68

Kal24 Aug 23 68
Below is a rare promo sticker for the club which came up for auction a while back, similar to the promo badge I posted before, this is pretty rare.

Kaleidoscope club stickerSnapinsta.app_339813615_751759136570533_5852692975519633638_n_1080
Unconnected but in a similar vein, the promo badge below was also auctioned recently, I love oddities like this.

Jefferson Airplane - 1966 Promo Button

Rock Posters shows off original art

Wes Wilson - 1966 Ink On Poster Board - w  Artist Notations
Rock Posters.com has opened up their archives and is selling some of the original art to some classic posters by Wes Wilson and Lee Conklin.

Wes Wilson Wailers poster
I love seeing original art of any kind, it gives a further look behind the curtain at the process and prowess of the creators. None of this is cheap, mind, but given these are one of a kinds it’s no surprise. I’ve included the originals alongside the posters here.

Haight Ashbury Festival - Wes Wilson - 1969
TROTAges poster
The printing plate (or one of them) was sold some years ago at auction for this too, seen here in red on metal, the poster was in purple and green inks.

TROTAges printing plate
Lee Conklin - 1969 Ink on Paper - Fillmore West
Lee Conklin poster

Oddities: Desktop Image dump

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Wheeling around the internet (as I do) you pick up all sorts of interesting things, here are some that have been cluttering up the desktop with nowhere to go this month. Above is a promo badge – or button as they call them in the States – for the opening of The Kaleidoscope club in 1967, apparently the Grateful Dead played – taken from a RockPosters.com post.

Screenshot 2023-04-19 at 17.55.12
The cover of the Sexedelic LP, most of which became one half of the Vampyros Lesbos Psychedelic Dance Party compilation on Crippled Dick Hot Wax. Despite owning said comp since the 90s I’d never seen this cover.

IT newsagent poster
International Times newsagents poster, sent to me by Drew Mulholland

Robt Williams web

Robert Williams illustrated header card for a bag of weed! Not sure the year but looks 70s.

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Gorgeous box design for a Philips projector lens.

Alex Nino Star Reach #6
Original art for an Alex Nino spread from Star Reach magazine no.6 from Heritage Auctions

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Beautiful Odyssey computer box design plus computer inside, look at those huge chips! Seen on Facebook Marketplace.

WRNTDP LP4

New Warrington Runcorn New Town Development Plan LP cover – possibly by Nick Taylor? Out next week…

Openmind artwork dump

UNE CD front
It’s Bandcamp Friday today which means that 100% of the revenue goes to the artist or label if you buy music (physical or digital) from the Bandcamp site. Several releases that I designed artwork for are out today or up for pre-order. Check them out below.

Une – ‘Whirl’ CD on Spun Out Of Control
UNE CD inside
Paul ‘Damage’ Bailey – Subsurface’ 12″ on De:tuned
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Up For Pre-order:
AsOne – ‘AsOne2’ LP on De:tuned
0031573489_10
Humanoid – ‘Sweet Acid Sound’ 12″ on De:tuned
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Also recently released:
The Home Current with Peter Wix – ‘Controlled Sparks’ CD on Spun Out Of Control
Home Current CD

AsOne – The Unveiling 12″ on De:tuned
DE038LTD-Cover-mockup Coloured Vinyl

The Real Tuesday Weld – ‘Blood’ CD edition on Antique Beat
Blood CD expanded again

And if you want to support my music then there’s plenty to go round:
DJ Food page on Ninja Tune
https://djfood.bandcamp.com/
The Celestial Mechanic album I created with Saron Hughes to soundtrack Rian Hughes’ book, ‘XX’ on Utter
https://celestialmechanic.bandcamp.com/album/citizen-void
Infinite Illectrik – my digital-only label for Quadraphon turntable experiments (new music coming soon!)
https://infiniteillectrik.bandcamp.com/music
The New Obsolescents – my collaboration with Howlround on Castles In Space
https://thenewobsolecents-cis.bandcamp.com/album/the-superceded-sounds-of

Random images from the desktop

Michael David Brown
I’ve had these images cluttering up the desktop for too long, seen whilst browsing the web, downloaded and researched later, let’s have a tidy up. Above is something I saw just the other day, an amazing illustrator, Michael David Brown, an American artist who I wasn’t familiar with at all. There’s not too much of his stuff on the web but it’s all good.

R-259819-1258296715
Above is a sleeve from the Italo group Easy Going from the late 70s, I love it with the Shatter typeface and the star in the middle placed just so. The track ‘Fear’ is excellent too if you like a bit of electronics with your disco. The original cover is embossed too apparently.

Franz Altschuler CoverSpread

Monster Tales CoverSpread
The two covers above were by Franz Altschuler, a German artist who emigrated to America, these seem to be the only examples of this kind of style within his work, very 70s Heinz Edelmann.

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The only info I can find on the above is that it appears in an exhibition catalogue, ‘Revolution et Cinema’ and is by the Cuban artist Antonio Fernandez Reboiro, seen in the 70s Sci-Fi Art group on Tumblr. ‘Siempre es 26’ translates as ‘It’s always 26’.

The six images below were created by an artist using AI and I stupidly didn’t retain who it was so if anyone recognises them then please leave a comment. They’ve nailed the collage aspect of the medium which is difficult from experience.
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Madam Tussaud’s / Planetarium underground poster

Automaton 1
I was watching a Jamiroquai video – NO, stay with me! Why was I doing that you ask? Well, the song is a bit of an electro pop banger and Jay Kay is some sort of robot coming out of hibernation in a post-apocalyptic world who just wants to see the sun. It’s supposed to be a warning against living a digital life and that we should get back to nature, which is fair enough really. To make you believe he’s an automaton (the title of the song) he has an automated headdress that lights up and at one point stops in a subway to focus on an old poster on the wall.

Automation 2
Weirdly it’s a joint Madam Tussaud’s / London Planetarium poster, designed in the style of Peter Max or Milton Glaser, that popular pop style made famous by Heinz Edelmann’s Yellow Submarine. I very much doubt it was done by either Max or Glaser because they generally sign their work but it looked cool enough for me to google it as I’d not seen it before. Typing in ‘Madam Tussauds Planetarium poster’ only netted two results, different shots of the same poster, on the wall in a subway in the disused Aldwych underground station. One of the shots, by Payne & Gunter, was very well framed so I downloaded it.

MT Pt orig
On close inspection it was pretty obvious that it was the same poster, so we all know where parts of the ‘Automaton’ video was shot at the very least. The wear and tear of time, coupled with what looks like a few people stubbing cigarettes out on parts of the image (that dates it!) mean that the poster isn’t in the best condition. So I couldn’t resist cleaning the image up and restoring it to some of its former glory. What an amazing design!

MT PT Restored-Recovered 2 web

Talking of Milton Glaser, there’s a stunning looking book of his work coming out next month via Phaidon.
Pre-order here
Milton Glaser book
And talking of Peter Max, I just acquired this set of his Book of Red, Blue and Yellow from the excellent Book Cellar in Camberwell. Max is sadly embroiled in a guardianship case in the US whilst suffering ill health, his daughter has been trying to extract him for some time now, for more info follow Free Peter Max

Max Books x3

High Meadows psychedelic poster site

HM - Mainline Love, artist Unknown. 1969
Mainline Love, artist Unknown, 1969

High Meadows is a new account showcasing an incredible collection of psychedelic posters inherited from a lifelong collector who has many obscure examples I’ve never seen before. As well as prime examples of classic posters by the likes of Hapshash & The Coloured Coat there are many uncredited images including black light posters that would have been sold in head shops and Op Art designs that rarely crop up in the usual exhibitions or books. Well worth checking out on Instagram and Facebook, they’re posting new examples daily at the moment – all images and info here are taken from their site.

HM Ass Id Egg by Nick Nickolds, 1967
Ass Id Egg by Nick Nickolds, 1967

HM Cyclops by LeRoy Olson, 1971
Cyclops by LeRoy Olson, 1971

HM Electric Pig by Joe Roberts Jr, 1969
Electric Pig by Joe Roberts Jr, 1969

HM Inner Zonk, Artist Unknown, Year Unknown
Inner Zonk, Artist Unknown, Year Unknown

HM International Image by Ian Andrew Galbraith, 1967
International Image by Ian Andrew Galbraith, 1967

HM Orange Eye Circle, unknown artist 1968
Orange Eye Circle, unknown artist, 1968

HM Untitled, Asher Ein-dor, 1972
Untitled, Asher Ein-dor, 1972

HM Ziggy Stardust by Joseph Pentagno. 1972
Ziggy Stardust by Joseph Pentagno, 1972