DJ Food
Took the bus, train, cab, ferry and bus down to Bestival on Saturday morning, left at 11am, was on site by 3.30. The weather was fantastic and one of the first things I saw on arrival was Lily Allen backstage, looking stunning in an open-backed Barbarella-esque outfit with glitter across her eyes. She looked like the kind of girl the word ‘minx’ was created for. I stopped dribbling and got my wristband.
The theme this year was outer space and this is one festival that exists for fancy dress. Every, and I mean every, permutation of space character, hero or villain, minor or major was represented. From the usual Darth’s, Stormtroopers, Boba’s, Leia’s and even a Millenium Falcon to Daleks, Thunderbirds, Trekkies and Transformers. People had gone to town and there was enough silver and baking foil to make a thousand spaceships. Amongst the less obvious characters were the Yip Yip aliens from Sesame Street, the Black Oblisk and Hal from 2001, the 3-eyed aliens from Toy Story, Clangers aplenty and quite a few Flash Gordon’s (the 80’s version though*).
I was playing in the Bollywood tent, sandwiched between Ross Allen and Appleblim. When I arrived Ross has a posse of Stormtroopers getting down but the crowd were a difficult one and it was mid afternoon with the sun blazing outside. I went for a walk and immediately got pushed aside as a parade of costumed space cadets marched through the site. My favourties were a guy and his girlfriend dressed as a Scout Walker and Princess Leia respectively, some girls on amazing space bikes in the parade and a couple dressed as Roland TB-303’s made from foam – definitely the most original and creative I saw.
Back in the tent for my set I decided to throw the usual one out the window and start with some funky bits before quickly winding into some stompy 4/4 electro/techno. Then into dubstep and breaks and finally a touch of drum n bass for the last 20 minutes. After a slow start with people standing and watching it worked a treat and I was surprised to see Diplo pop his head around the booth to say hello at one point.
After a quick drink and chat with Ross it was back on the bus, ferry, cab, train and bus to London, arriving home at midnight. I’m currently in the middle of Bill Drummond’s book ’17’ which is gripping me with his mania like all his books do. I can relate to some of what he says – the main jist of the book is that music has run it’s course – but that’s a blog for another day.
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*I have a particular affection for this version of Flash Gordon, my dad was bought up on the original and I was 10 when they did the remake so he took me to see it and I loved it. The soundtrack (on cassette) was the first album I ever bought with my own money, definitely seduced by the film connection and the great logo on the cover rather than any love of Queen. I liked some of their music but could only get into the faster guitar-driven tracks rather than the incidental, slow-paced stuff, although I’ve come to appreciate these over time.
What I also liked was that there was loads of dialogue from the film mixed into the music and the record ran in sequence with the events in the film. Freddie Mercury was sporting a Flash T-shirt on the inside cover and I wanted one so badly for years but those sort of merchandise spin-offs were the things of promo only back in those days. Years later I watched it round a mate’s house with the sound down and some terrible Mike Oldfield album as the soundtrack whilst coming down off acid. At one point some bagpipes kicked in and it ruined the whole thing, I had to get him to change the record.
PC just dropped round his remix of ‘All Covered In Darkness’ – a real treat! Don’t know what release it’s going to be on yet but it’s awesome and changes the tone of the original a lot whilst still keeping some of the key elements. Well pleased Currently speeding towards Manchester to play at Moho Live tonight…
“As we leave you now…”
A trip through the new DJ Food EP ‘One Man’s Weird Is Another Man’s World’ featuring tracks, samples and influences that make it what it is.
- Tracklist:
DJ Food feat Natural Self – The Illectrik Hoax (Ninja Tune)
Rare Bird – Hammerhead (ABC / Dunhill)
The Black Keys – Have Love Will Travel (Alive)
The Broken Keys – Razorblade (Tru Thoughts)
Mr Chop – The Infinity Machine (Now Again)
Oasis – Falling Down (Amorphous Androgynous Exploding Bubble remix) (Big Brother)
DJ Food – extract from Stolen Moments (Ninja Tune)
The Dragons – Soul Teacher (Rural Records)
Ken Nordine – Manned Satellite (Dot)
DJ Food – All Covered In Darkness (Ninja Tune)
The The – Giant (Some Bizarre)
Keno-1 and the Hermit – Heavy Heavy (Breakin Bread)
Grace Jones – Corporate Cannibal (Wall of Sound)
DJ Food – Tricky Little Ears (The Cheech Wizard Pays Respect To All Living Creatures Who Inhabit Dark Places remix by Bundy K Brown) (Ninja Tune)
DJ Food – A Trick of The Ear (Ninja Tune)
Grace Jones – Hurricane (Wall of Sound)
Bundy K Brown – Soldier of Fortune (Thrill Jockey)
Dr Rubberfunk – Sunset Breakdown (GPR)
Paul Weller – Sunflower (Lynch Mob dub) (Go Discs)
DJ Food – All Covered In Darkness Pt 2 (Ninja Tune)
DJ Food – Colours Beyond Colours (Ninja Tune)
Lots of things going on at the moment:
DK and I played the Ninja night at the ICA last Friday with Grasscut, Juice Aleem, Daedelus and King Cannibal, it was great to see so many familiar faces, including most of the Ninja staff, thanks for coming down. Saturday was headlining one of the tents at the Lounge On The Farm festival in Canterbury alongside Tom Middleton, Roots Manuva, The Dub Pistols and Mr Scruff.
Very busy with the next EP, a little behind but making progress, mixing what I have the first week of August.
Still waiting on a vocal from one of my musical heroes – very exciting and scary at the same time.
Natural Self is going to do a version of ‘The Illectrik Hoax’ in a very different style apparently.
Emailing Henry Flint about a possible future cover image.
Going through the archives for this site and another project.
Still got to send the King Cannibal CD off the the printer.
need more hours in the day or less sleep…
(photos © Martin LeSanto-Smith 2009)
DJ Food – ‘One Man’s Weird Is Another Man’s World’ (Promo) by Ninja Tune
It’s spam week Here are 3 of the 6 tracks on the EP. The Ninja night at the ICA yesterday was really fun, saw loads of people I’d not seen in ages. Canterbury Lounge on the Farm festival tonight.
Check the Ninja Tune Soundcloud page for previews of all the lastest releases.
A little gif animation from the German Zero-inch site – thanks guys!
It’s here, you wait for ages and then three come along at once. Yes I finally got round to releasing another record and it’s out today, a 30 minute EP on Ninja Tune called ‘One Man’s Weird Is Another Man’s World’. It features the vocal talents of Natural Self (yes, I said vocal) on lead track ‘The Illectrik Hoax’ and the nifty drums of Dr. Rubberfunk alongside the sampled vocals of Ken Nordine and The Dragons on ‘All Covered In Darkness’. Bundy K Brown is behind the board for ‘A Trick of the Ear’ and an old collaboration with PC makes it’s first appearance in the form of ‘extract from Stolen Moments’. 2000ad artist Henry Flint graciously provided drawings for the cover art to make it something worth having and holding when it folds out to an A2 sized poster. It’s available in the form of a 5 track 12″ with poster cover and download code or a 6 track mp3 bundle.
You can hear selections from it on my Soundcloud and buy it from iTunes / DJ Download / Play.com / Spotify / we7 / Ninja shop / HMV Digital / Bleep / Tune Tribe / 7 Digital / Juno / Boomkat
There’s an interview in the new Clash Music magazine including a free mp3 and a very nice review by Mark E on Ireallylovemusic
Not only is there a new record but the near mythical DJ Food site is finally ready, choc full of stuff from my Openmind alter ego design work past and present and a full DJ Food discography stretching back nearly 20 years. If you want to know anything about the records connected to this moniker over the years then it will be there along with gig dates, blogs, playlists and more. The site is divided into 4 sections: Diary, Design, Discography and Downloads and you can subscribe to the blog without going through myspace at last. It’s still a work in progress as there is so much to present, especially on the design side of things as most entries provide stories, alternate artwork and release info. A big thanks to Dean at Safe As Milk for all his hard work on making it what it is.
And finally, it’s a Solid Steel takeover this week with an hour long mix from myself based on the EP with tracks from all the contributors, some original sample sources and various things I that inspired the making of it. The second hour is a fantastic mix from The Broken Keys – aka Natural Self and Nostalgia 77 – called ‘Engine Oil and Elbow Grease’, stuffed to the brim with old funk, rock breaks and psyche. You can listen here.
I just did my top 10 Food related records for the data transmission site – check ’em out here
Pretty difficult to get a good shot of this, it’s a clear varnish on a black background, a trick I’ve done a few times before with my own releases. CD promos came in last Thursday and the vinyl is due today – *excited*
And here’s a teaser poster for the forthcoming King Cannibal LP I knocked up last night… thanks to grohs for pointing out the cut-asses double entendre, it will be changed on the final poster.
Been busy doing all sorts of things and not had time to post much but I did a short interview with the Keep Up! guys a month or so ago and it’s on their site right now. It’s about the making of the King Cannibal 12″ cover which is just out and available to buy here. The Keep Up! interview is here
On the subject of my own release, i’ve posted the artwork on my Flickr page and the release is now July 6th I’m told, by which time I should be well into the second EP for delivery a month later.
I’m currently finishing artwork for The Herbaliser‘s ‘Session 1’ (reissue) and ‘Session 2‘ (all new live recordings of Herbs classics) and starting King Cannibal‘s LP art
…and they did. I just played my first AV set in Ireland at Twisted Pepper in Dublin and local DJ Kormac and crew organised a special DJ Food cake for me. Props to him as he played a great set and passed on a mix for a forthcoming Solid Steel show. Also thanks to Mark Cantwell of ItIsOn, who is nearing completion on his ongoing Raiding the 20th Century, film for the photos.
It’s been an exhilarating and frustrating couple of weeks recently. I’d been having mysterious computer problems, random freezes, beach balls of doom and general start up problems with my main Mac Pro machine. I just managed to finish the artwork to my EP when it really went into meltdown and I spent days trying to find the source of the problem. Finally a random forum post pointed to a faulty batch of video cards shipped with my generation of Macs. Apple – to give them credit – agreed to replace the card without question or cost and the machine was shipped off to the nearest workshop for a week.
At the same time I got the proofs back to much ooh-ing and aaah-ing (see last post) and the mythical DJ Food website is under reconstruction (this is mk 2 – mk 1 in all it’s guises is officially laid to rest). I’m pretty confident that this incarnation will be operational within a couple of months minimum although it’s got a hell of a lot of content for me to upload.
I’ve spent the past week messing about in various situations with photographer Martin LeSanto-Smith trying to get some interesting press shots out of my horrendously unphotogenic form. We’ve got some pretty nice stuff but there’s still a lot of Photoshop work to be done on some so you’re spared for the moment. Got some pretty interesting shots by pointing two MacBook Pros at each other, ichatting via the video link and generating video feedback from the inbuilt cameras. Not sure if Ninja will go for them but I think they’re the best of the bunch so they’ll end up somewhere.
Promos of the EP should be going out this week to press, I’m in the middle of artwork for The Herbaliser’s ‘Session 1 & 2’ release(s) for !K7 and about to start the King Cannibal LP art which will possibly be the weirdest thing I’ve ever done. As soon as that’s finished work resumes on the next Food EP…
New EP art for the promo CD up on my Flickr
This is more of a teaser picture for the final cover which is in full colour and will reveal more than twice as much again of the image. The 12″ comes wrapped in a poster cover…
Kev
Yes, I know, I can’t quite believe I’m typing that either. Yesterday it was issue 3 of Alan Moore‘s ‘Big Numbers’ and today news of a new DJ Food record, whatever next?
Today I cut the first of three 12″ EPs which will make up the bulk of an album early next year, the first one is called ‘One Man’s Weird Is Another Man’s World’ and is out late May/early June on vinyl and download.
The vinyl will have 5 tracks with a playing time of just over 30 minutes and the download package will have a remix by Bundy K Brown that won’t be available on the vinyl or album when it drops. There will possibly also be an extra instrumental and a cappella of one of the tracks too + a digital booklet to go with it.
More details soon but here’s a sneak peek at part of the artwork, done by one of my favourite comic artists, Henry Flint.
Well, the second Videocrash was on Saturday night at Koko in London with a line up of Hexstatic, Bomb The Bass, Cheeba, Octavcat and yours truly amongst others and it was a blast if a little bit of a shorter one than before. Seven acts on a bill, including two bands with drummers, is a bit much to cram into 8 hours which was cut down to 7 when the soundchecks overran.
Most sets were cut including ours and new Solid Steel member Cheeba‘s. Poor guy had travelled down from Bristol to soundcheck a full 12 hours before his set – he only had an hour and had the graveyard shift from 3 until 4am – only to get 30 minutes before closing time.
DK and I slashed nearly half of our set and added some new bits in we’d been working on the past week which worked pretty well. All photos here were taken by the inimitable Martin Le Santo (thanks again mate)