DJ Food supporting The The on forthcoming UK dates

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It gives me great pleasure to announce that I’ve been asked by Matt Johnson to open for The The on selected UK dates for their comeback tour this year. Matt didn’t want a conventional band support in the slot but asked if I would prepare something cinematic and ambient, incorporating his music from the last four decades. Fortunately this is exactly the place my head’s been at over the last few years and the chance to do this with Matt’s back catalogue is the stuff of dreams. Expect an improvised ‘cineolascape’ to greet you on arrival for the gigs, different for each night.

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I’ll be joining the band – who have video accompaniment from Vicki Bennett aka People Like Us and design by Kate Wilkins – on
May 27th – Leeds, LMUSU
June 5th – London, Royal Albert Hall
June 6th – London, Brixton Academy
June 7th – London, Troxy
Sept 3rd – Newcastle, Newcastle University
Sept 4th – Glasgow, Barrowlands
Sept 5th – Glasgow, Royal Concert Hall

Also just announced: the new band line up (see above photo by John Claridge), the long-awated biography by Neil Fraser release date and more screenings of The Inertia Variations documentary at the ICA.
Go to https://www.thethe.com/ for more info…

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Big Mouth podcast (with Infinity War spoilers)


I was a guest on Bigmouth last week – the weekly pop culture podcast – pontificating/nerding out on Avengers: Infinity War, Janelle Monae’s ‘Dirty Computer’ LP, new Sky Atlantic series, ‘Barry’ and the latest ‘Too Slow To Disco: Brasil’ compilation. There are masses of spoilers for Avengers so don’t listen if you’ve not seen it yet but it is at the end of the show so there’s plenty to listen to before we start giving the game away.

Sure Shot Tools custom 45 adaptors

Pablo+Food@PB I spent Record Store Day in sunny Krakow, Poland this past weekend, playing an instore at the excellent Paul’s Boutique record shop and later spinning at Club Alchemia.

IMG_7541Whilst I was there I was graced with a pair of custom made 45 adaptors by new kid on the block, Sure Shot Tools. Having recently invested in a pair of the SydDefJam 7″ middles I’m pretty much set up for life as far as centers go as they do everything you’d ever need an adaptor to do. The difference here though, is the personalised machine-finished logo on the top, which sets them apart from the Australian leader of the pack. Syd offers hand-punched lettering but it’s rough and ready whereas Sure Shot can take a logo and engrave it perfectly onto the top of the middle for that professional finish.

IMG_5681His centers are as heavyweight as Syd’s but lack the rubber ring that holds the records firmly in place. Another plus point for us Europeans is that the postage costs aren’t as prohibitive on the Sure Shot’s than on Syd’s but really it’s down to individual taste in the end, they both do the job admirably and look great into the bargain.

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Penguin Live at the Palladium

DJ Food at the Palladium - photo Liz CatchpoleI was recently asked by Penguin/Random House to go through their audio books and put together a 3 min piece for World Book Day. They then asked me to perform it onstage at the London Palladium! It’s at the end of the podcast here but I can’t seem to embed it so here’s a link.

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Crowds outside the Palladium beforehand, this was an employee’s only event, just after we’d had that huge snowstorm.

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Squid Soup‘s lighting rig with Ruth Jones on the video screen shortly before I took the stage.

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Emily Maitless gives me possibly the best intro ever…

DJ Food onstage Palladium

What you sadly can’t see is the animated video I also made to go along with it and the lighting by Squid Soup (who did the recent Four Tet gigs). The photo at the top was taken by an old friend of mine from the Camberwell College days, Liz Catchpole, who works for Penguin and had no idea I was playing until she saw me on stage. Massive thanks to everyone at Penguin / Random House who helped out on this, especially WiIliam Smith at Vintage and Richard Lennon from the audiobook dept.

Penguin podcast

Diggers Dozen DJ Food set

DD set
On March 13th I was invited to be one of the selectors at Diggers Dozen, a monthly get together at the Ace Hotel in Shoreditch, where each DJ is asked to play 12 records. The rules are: vinyl only, no reissues, no compilations – aside from that there’s no stipulation on music policy but it’s a sort-the-men-from-the-boys kind of situation in an age where anyone can have anything in digital format and a large proportion of what were once holy grails have been reissued or compiled over the last two decades or so.

Which of course isn’t to say there isn’t still plenty of gold out there, not all of it expensive either, you just have to know where to look, be patient and dig a bit deeper sometimes. Of late I’ve been getting into spiritual records and rock operas which have provided many unexpected treasures, especially from certain eras. Above are the records I played and the mix itself. Thanks to Maxwell, who runs the night, for inviting me and you can check out the other sets and more over on the DD website.

 

O Is For Orange teaser

I’m working away on this at the moment after creating a three minute track for Penguin Books from audio book samples for World Book Day and last week’s support slot mix for the Art Of Noise. The new ‘O Is For Orange’ AV set will take the mix I created in 2013 as the starting point but add plenty of new material, not least tracks from ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’ and newer songs influenced by the group. It won’t be 100% Boards of Canada like the Aphex Twin set of last year, more using their sound as a basis for the tone of the set and visuals.

Tickets for the Deaf Institute gig are available here. Final tickets for the London premiere at Archspace here

Updates on here are still sporadic as I slowly get my house in order after last year’s move but I can see the wood for the trees now so hopefully things will get back to normal. I’m more visually active on Instagram at the moment as it’s more, well… instant, so you can follow me there and see what I’m up to with lots of incidental stuff that doesn’t make it to this blog. The premiere of this mix is only three weeks away and there will be a second in Manchester at the Deaf Institute in June. Hopefully there will be more bookings to come, keep an eye on the column on the left or my Facebook or Twitter feeds for more info.

Art Of Noise, live at the British Library


Last Friday I was thrilled to be asked to play before Dudley / Jeczalik / Langan aka The Art of Noise at the British Library in London. I put together a set consisting entirely of music they had written, remixed, reworked or had a hand in – careful not to play any obvious tracks that they would be playing as they rebooted their In Visible Silence album plus some of their biggest hits. I recorded my mix and you can hear it above, complete with exclusive edits made specially for the show and a rare appearance from AON fan Kenneth WIlliams at one point.
Witness the group below at the soundcheck performing ‘Moments In Love’.

AON soundcheck
Highlights were thundering versions of ‘Beatbox’, ‘Close (To The Edit)’, ‘Legs’ and ‘Peter Gunn’, a beautiful ‘Moments In Love’ (with blink and you’ll miss it ‘In The Army Now’ interjections) and lots of story-telling in between. Many friends and familiar faces from ZTT fandom were present and I had the pleasure of chatting to Anne Dudley‘s husband before the show about her early library recordings for Amphonic (some of which are soon to be reissued by Buried Treasure). JJ Jeczalik strolled up and introduced himself before my set and, during an airing of Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s ‘Pleasurefix’ (a fan favourite remix of the epic album cut by Gary Langan), I turned around to see Langan himself watching and listening only a meter away with keen interest. “Hi, I’m Gary”, he said, leaning over to shake my hand. :)

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The whole evening was a fan fest with signed prints, records and T shirts on sale, people watching from the stairwell’s and balconies and an incredible Bowers and Wilkins sound system that made everything shine. I chatted to ex-ZTT artist Andrew Poppy after the main set who regaled me with tales of rescuing his artwork from a skip outside the label one day! Big thanks for the ‘Where’s DJ Food?’ crowd photos above by Peter Williams and shots of me by the stairwell below by Mark Nicholson. Another one for the CV and highlights of 2018.

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More Search Engine 360º fulldome shows in Bristol

More dates have been added through Feb-May for my 360º fulldome show, ‘The Search Engine’ at the WeTheCurious Planetarium in Bristol. Feb 27th / 23rd Mar / 20th Apr / 18th May – get tickets here: https://www.wethecurious.org/group/dj-food-search-engine-16

“Just had my mind blown watching @djfood‘s ‘The Search Engine’ at @WeTheCurious planetarium. SOOOO TRIPPY AND AWESOME! GO SEE IT!!” – Rebecca Evans, Bristol

DJ Food AV series #2: O Is For Orange

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Here we go, after last year’s ‘Selected Aphex Works’ shows, the next installment in my live AV Series premiere’s on April 6th at Archspace, London with a new version of my ‘O Is For Orange’ mix – chock full of Boards of Canada and their influences with psychedelic video accompaniment. Tickets available here

Teach The Each

Teach The Each
A new initiative just launched by Edzy from Unique 3 is Teach The Each, a pool of producers, artists, DJs, designers, promoters and music industry veterans with decades of experience to draw on in multiple disciplines. The aim is to create a one stop shop where these people can be booked to speak, teach and pass on their experiences and knowledge to up and coming students wherever they should be needed. I’m very pleased to be one of the people asked to take part, that’s some esteemed company to be in. More info here

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DJ Food – Out Of The Wood show #92

The Out Of The Wood show is back, firing on all cylinders for 2018; each Sunday a local, invited guest or patron of The Book & Record Bar in West Norwood gets 2 hours live on the decks inside the shop, playing to whoever wanders or tunes in. It’s a chance to grab a bag of anything and play around for yourself, try things out and spread out. In my first show of the year I’m bringing a box of recent buys, gifts, samples, a few forthcoming gems and throwing out some improv soundscaping into the mix in places, something I’ll be building on all year.

Some Food excursions coming up

I should do a little round up of a few things I’ve had a hand in that have recently come to light:

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The rarely seen 360 degree dome show version of my 2012 album ‘The Search Engine‘ is playing in Bristol at We The Curious, the Bristol Planetarium on January 30th and Feb 27th – tickets here. I won’t actually be at the shows, it’s a straight playback of the AV set I created in 2012. I was present at those but it’s always been a pre-rendered thing.

I did an interview for online magazine Fat Hipster – available in both English and Serbian.

Alex Fitch‘s Panel Borders podcast includes some of the talk about music and comics I was part of at the Caption festival in Brighton last December.

I’ll be supporting The Art of Noise (legends!) at The British Library in March! Tickets here

Eat Or Heat flyer

I’m on the bill again at the Eat Or Heat fundraiser at the Wild Card Brewery on Feb 17th – great cause, donation on entry. Talking of fundraisers – the Resonance FM fundraiser is on now – a radio station very dear to my heart for many reasons – support independent leftfield radio here.

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And talking of radio – I’ll be on Out Of The Wood radio this Sunday (Jan 21st) – attempting something different. Taking place live at the Book & Record Bar, West Norwood between 12-2pm – tune in to WNBC.london here.

Diggers Dozen Most Loved 2017

I’m very proud to say that my set for the Soundsci launch party that Diggers Dozen put on last year won their most loved poll for 2017! “12 records each. Only 2 turntables play. No compilation. No bootleg. Always original vinyl.” is the DD ethos and that particular night saw myself guesting with Mr Thing, Ollie Teeba, Jonny Cuba, Jonny Trunk and Maxwell Pastor – who runs the nights. Listen to the selection above, I’d pulled out a particularly odd Library set, I think there’s at least one bit of dead air (because I was chatting) and at points, if you strain hard enough, you can hear that chatter through the head of the needle in the quiet parts..

2017: WTF was going on?

DJ Food Bill brief

The above photo was my brief from Bill Drummond for the set I was to play at the JAM‘s Welcome To The Dark Ages event in Liverpool. I stuck it above my mixer as I was preparing the set, it’s something to keep in mind as we go forward into 2018. I spent most of the year in limbo, waiting in a chain for a property to come through. When it finally did in mid September, I pretty much ate, drank and slept it in between jobs as it needed a lot of work doing, hence no posts for the past two odd months. I’m in now and can see the wood for the trees but it did mean I largely dipped out of social media for the latter quarter of the year (probably not a bad thing).

Seeing as 2016 was such a shitter, in 2017 I wrote down all the good things that happened as the year progressed:

Events 2017

Got implicated in the KLF/JAMMs/K2 comeback media scrum because of an innocent quote in my 2016 round up
Started Further with Pete Williams – a multimedia music & projection night playing non-dancefloor sounds with analogue-based visuals plus food and a record stall – and founded a studio/ HQ in S. London
Pete Isaac (45 Live) found me a perfect copy of a long time wants list staple, Bam Bam’s ‘Where’s Your Child’ on 7″ for free
Got asked to play as Further at The Orb‘s ambient evening at the Royal Festival Hall in April and lit up the 5th floor balcony with 20 projectors
Mixed a Death Waltz Originals CD which was given away free at Halloween with Mondo/DW orders
Appeared on the Big Mouth podcast and played at the opening of Orbital Comics‘ exhibition, both celebrating 40 years of 2000AD
Found a set of Thomas ‘Eclipse’ plates, cups and saucers for a bargain price from an eBay seller
Pete managed to find a broken 6k projector for free and fixed it for £50
My kids got into the secondary school we wanted them to go to and aced it in their first term
The first Further event at the Portico Gallery was sold out and a great success with Ghost Box and Howlround as guests
Played the first Big Fish Little Fish in Athens which promptly sold out
Played three different street food festivals in the summer, love those sort of gigs, more please
Found a huge Barbara Brown dinner service in the charity for £15 – find of the year
Played at The Delaware Road performance in July inside a nuclear bunker with a host of electronic artists – a very special night

Further 2017

Asked to play the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu happening in Liverpool, which turned out to be one of the events of the year – who’d have thought it? A career highlight that saw me playing many of the tracks they’d sampled in their career alongside acid house classics and ending at 3am with a version of ‘In The Ghetto’.
Further went to Spiritland and we supported The Heliocentrics as part of the SYNthesis festival, both very special occasions even though we worked our balls off to set them up
The return of The The in musical, film and live capacity
Scoring a long time wants list LP – Yves Hayat‘s ‘Conversations Between The East & The West’ – direct from the archive of the composer himself and meeting him in London to receive the record.
Blade Runner 2049 was actually amazing and a worthy follow up to the original
The second major Further gig at the Portico Gallery featured Simon James playing a Buchla set to bespoke visuals we made and Sculpture slaying the place with their AV act.
Asked to support the Art of Noise at the British Library next March
Further featured twice in Electronic Sound magazine and I had an opening spread printed of my end of night image of the funeral pyre from the JAMs event in Liverpool
Taking my boys to the Colourscape on Clapham Common
Finally moved in and moved on
Asked to play a very special run of shows in 2018 that I’ll reveal soon…

Music 2017

Music:
OK, so 2017 was the year of the Lizard for me, I listened to more hours of King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard’s music than any other band, but considering they released 5 albums this year alone it ‘s not surprising. Each album was different and they steadily got better with each release as the year progressed (disclaimer: I can’t speak for album no. 5 ‘Gumboot Soup’ as it came out today but ‘Polygondwanaland is probably my album of the year)
Brian Eno – Reflection (Warp)
Cavern of Anti-Matter – Blood Drums (reissue) (Duophonic)
Clocolan – Nothing Left To Abandon (Enpeg)
Run The Jewels – RTJ3 (Mass Appeal)
Revbjelde – Revbjelde (Buried Treasure)
Thundercat – Them Changes (Brainfeeder)
Jamiroquai – Automaton (the single)
The Dandelion Set – A Thousand Strands (Buried Treasure) (technically 2016 but copies got held up by distribution and it was more widely available in 2017)
The Heliocentrics – A World Of Masks (Soundway)
The Heliocentrics – The Sunshine Makers (Soundway)
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Flying Microtonal Banana (and still playing the hell out of Nonagon Infinity and It’s In My Mind Fuzz)
Klaus Weiss – Time Signals (reissue) (Trunk)
Vanishing Twin – Dream By Numbers EP (Soundway)
The Allergies – Entitled To That (Jalapeno)
Jane Weaver – Modern Kosmology (Fire Records)
Ulrich Schnauss & Jonas Munk – Passage (Azure Vista Records)
Ilia Gorovitz – Turmoil/Simmering With No End (Rassh Records)
John Brooks – Un Autre Directions (Clay Pipe Music)
King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard – Murder of the Universe (Flightless)
Markey Funk – Witch Doctor / The Brew (Delights)
Nevermen – Mr Minute (Boards of Canada remix) (Lex)
The The – Radio Cineola Trilogy (Lazarus)
Hans Zimmer & Benjamin Wallfisch – Blade Runner 2049 OST
King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard – Sketches of Brunswick East (Flightless)
King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard – Polygondwanaland (Flightless)

Exhibitions 2017

Exhibitions:
Future Shock – 40 Years of 2000AD – Cartoon Museum (London) / Paolozzi at the Whitechapel Gallery (London), Will Barras at Sector 25 (London) / Barbara Brown and Lucienne Day at the Whitworth Gallery (Manchester) / Franco Grignani at Estorick Collection of Italian Art (London), We Are Watching: Oz Magazine – Chelsea Art Space (London) / Delta – Mima Museums (Brussels) / Pink Floyd: Their Mortal Remains at the V&A (London), British Underground Press of the 60s at the A22 Gallery (London) / Can Graphic Design Save Your Life? – Wellcome Collection (London) / Snub 23 at the Boz Boz Gallery (Brighton)

Books / Comics:
Out Of Time – Miranda Sawyer / Ian Helliwell – Tape Leaders (Sound On Sound) Book + CD / British Underground Press of the 60s (Rocket 88) / The Process Is The Inspiration – House Industries / B.P.R.D.: Hell On Earth (Dark Horse) / Barbarella (Dynamite) / Swifty – FunkyTypo Graphix (Gamma Proforma) / Boris Tellegen – 86/97 – a black book (A Paper Book) / Batman: White Knight (DC)

RIP: Jaki Liebezeit, David Axelrod, Alan Aldridge, Dick Bruna, Clyde Stubblefield, Larry Coryell, Toshio Nakanishi, Chuck Berry, Skip Williamson, Jay Lynch, Mika Vainio, Adam West, Brian Cant, Pierre Henry, Anne-Marie Bergeron, Glen Campbell, Bruce Forsyth, Holger Czukay, Virgil Howe, Sean Hughes, Christine Keeler, Keith Chegwin, Dennis Dragon, Jim Baikie

Further is getting closer

Not long now until the final Further of the year on Nov 18th at the Portico Gallery, West Norwood, London – here’s a trailer and some little excerpts from shorts we’ve made for Simon James‘ Buchla performance.

Come down from 7.30-midnight for food, drink, a record stall and lots of leftfield music and visuals – Tickets here

You should definitely check out Sculpture‘s amazing site too as it’s full of stuff like this

and this

DJ Food vs Death Waltz Originals mix CD

DWOvsDJFoodCDHi there, sorry for the lack of posts recently, the home renovation continues as does the 2 week (!) half term my kids have been bestowed with and many other things like preparation for the next Further at the Portico Gallery on Nov 18th. The mix that I made of material both released and unreleased from the Death Waltz Originals label run by Spencer Hickman has materialised as a free CD available with all orders of Death Waltz or Mondo releases while stocks last. It should also be available at selected independent record shops too and you can also listen to it here via Soundcloud. The spoken word throughout is from a private tape where my friend Steve Cook is interviewed by John Tomlinson about experiences he and his family experienced growing up in a haunted house.

Further at the Portico Gallery – Nov 18th

Further Portico 2.5 Poster A3 portraitThe next Further at The Portico Gallery is on Sat Nov 18th. Pete Williams and I are very excited to be joined by Sculpture for one of their incredible live AV sets and Simon James (Simonsound / Black Channels /Akiha Den Den) will be performing a live set from his Buchla easel system. Early bird tickets on sale now

We’ll also have the Book & Record Bar stall with releases from both acts and a hand-picked selection to compliment plus delicious food and plenty of seating. See below for what to expect on the night.
Sculpture

Simon James

The last Further at the Portico Gallery

Further & The Heliocentrics at the SYNthesis festival

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Pete Williams and myself set up our Further environment in support of The Heliocentrics at the Synthesis festival at Stanley Halls in South Norwood at the end of September. The group were utterly spellbinding with their vocalist tying everything together with an incredible vocal range somewhere between Roisin Murphy and Shirley Bassey. They played for two hours with visuals by Innerstrings and for a Thursday evening in deepest South London (nearly Croydon if we’re honest) it was pretty mind blowing.


Following dates featured DJ Krush, Andrea Parker, Juice Aleem, Beak and more in a hugely ambitious three day event – all the brainchild of Rob Swain, owner of the Gamma Proforma label and the local Sector 25 bar/gallery. If you check out the streets of South Norwood now you’ll see all sorts of new murals and paintings adorning walls and hoardings by international artists like Mode 2, Delta, Kofie 1, SheOne, O-Two, Will Barras and more.

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FourFromFoodFridays #17.33

FourFromFoodFridays 17.33Four From Food Fridays – a weekly look at four things I’ve been loving in the last seven days. Old or new, whatever’s been on in the studio. From top left:

David Sylvian & Holger Czukay – Plight & Premonition (Virgin) – One of my favourite ambient albums ever, RIP Holger

Acidalius – Acidalius (Acid Waxa) Cassette – Fantastic modern acid from 2014 on Newcastle label Acid Waxa

Videodrones – Nattens Haevn (El Paraiso) LP – Second album of 80s-inspired synth workouts from the Danish duo.

Various – DJ Food at Emotion Wave (Mixcloud) Mix – Live improv on two turntables, sampler and FX, an alternate ‘Chill Out’ if you will

Further at the Synthesis Festival and Spiritland

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Myself and Pete Williams have two Further gigs this month – firstly at Spiritland to celebrate their first birthday this week. On Sunday 10th we’ll be taking over in the evening – it’s a very limited ticketed affair but will be a perfect setting for what we want to do.

On Thursday Sept 28th we head to Stanley Halls in Norwood Junction to be a part of the Synthesis festival, a three-day happening of music, street art and food. We’ll be sharing the bill with the Heliocentrics so it should be a suitably lysergic evening.
The festival is run by Rob Swain, head guy at the Gamma Proforma label and just look at the line up. DJ Krush, Beak>, Delta, Mode2, Swifty, sheOne, O.Two, Will Barras, Mr Jago, Augustine Kofie, Howie B, Andrea Parker, Heliocentrics, Juice Aleem, DJ Food, Ofeliadorme and more TBA!

Tickets available here

Further at Spiritland