A last minute announcement for next Thursday at Coventry Uni, School of Arts and Creative Industries – aka the Delia Derbyshire building. PuttyRubber will be providing visuals for a DJ set of mine after Andy Votel has cranked everything to eleven at the afterparty of Industry Night at the college. Admission is free if you register online
Event
It’s been an exciting week for Boards of Canada fans. News broke last Tuesday of a VHS tape sent out to selected people across the world containing a brief but garbled message, very much in the style of similar transmissions around the time of the band’s last album promo campaign for ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’. The fact that the tapes were sent from the same address used by Warp and Bleep for their distribution rang alarm bells.
Fans immediately set about trying to decode the tape and decipher the muffled spoken word or identify the brief visible images which include a sign saying ‘I Love Jesus’, images of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker and what appears to be a 3D rendeing of a hexagaon made up of smaller hexagaon, the same logo printed on the label of the VHS tapes. The audio seems to have been identified as coming from what may have been a radio advert for a magazine (Moody Monthly, that does exist) from the Moody Bible Institute AD, a religous organisation from Chicago, originating in 1886. Their website states; “Moody exists to proclaim the gospel and equip people to be biblically grounded, practically trained, and to engage the world through gospel-centered living. In short, we prepare people for their purpose and calling!”
The unconfirmed audio source also mentions hexagonal flexi discs several times but no trace of a flexi disc associated with the magazine has been located yet. What is odd is, as a collector of flexi discs (and odd formats in general) as well as religious records, I have NEVER seen a hexagonal flexi disc. I have a couple of hexagonal vinyl discs but not a flexi as you’d have to cut down a larger disc to achieve the shape and the largest flexi I have is a 10″. Is someone trolling us with this supposed interpretation of the muffled audio clip or have BoC inserted new audio into the ad to sow more seeds? Is a 7″ hexagonal flexi disc the next thing to look for? Possibly on Record Store Day this weekend? At the time of writing approx 30 VHS tapes had been identified, all seemingly the same in content but in both PAL and NTSC formats.
Friday night/Saturday morning saw pictures of four posters bearing distressed ‘children of the damned’ type images on them start appearing on streets in London, Barcelona and LA. Each poster had only the same hexagon symbol as the VHS tape in one corner, nothing else, seemingly confirming a connection at least. I spent part of Sunday afternoon in Soho, looking for posters with my partner and managed to snap these images, firstly sitting in plain sight on a hoarding on Oxford Street.
The posters below were some of the first to be found and posted online, nestling down St. Anne’s Court, a side alleyway off Wardour Street in Soho. To me, these could all plausibly be connected to a new release from Boards and I’m looking forward to what they do next…
The first of several gigs this summer under the banner of ‘Extended Turntablism’.
Graham Dunning: Mechanical Techno pioneer, building turntable towers that trigger an array of rhythms with each layer. Modular synths, light-reflecting prisms and even ping pong balls come into play.
Furrowed: The Vinyl Tattooist, literally at the cutting edge via homemade record cutters creating loops in real time.
Duplokit: Lathe cutting journeymen on a quest to further the exploration of rhythm, sonic groove theory and the boundaries of turntablism. Their UK debut, all the way from Aotearoa, New Zealand!
…and myself (with my Quadraphon turntable) will be descending on The Rose Hill Tavern in Brighton for a night of experimental turntablism
Ticket link : Extended Turntablismtherosehill.co.uk
We’re working on Bristol and London dates too and if you’re interested in putting on this line up in July or early August then please get in touch.
Three very exciting events are happening next month in London as part of the Open City Documentary Festival. On April 16th the ICA will show a selection of light show-related films curated by Sophia Satchell-Baeza whose book, ‘Sensual Laboratories’ has been on Strange Attractor‘s release list seemingly forever and may at last see the light of day this year. The selection ‘focuses on British and North American work from the 1960s and 1970s, bringing together early films by Barbara Hammer, John Smith, Jud Yalkut, Jerry Abrams, Scott Bartlett, and Mark Boyle and Joan Hills’ and is followed by a Q&A with Jarvis Cocker and John Smith. Tickets here.
The following night is the offical festival party at Rich Mix where I’ll be playing alongside NTS’ Mark Leckey with light shows from Insight Lighting, Turbulent Light and Heavy Flow – I’ve also designed the flyer you see here and it’s a pay what you want fundraiser for Gaza Formula Fund – book tickets here.
On Sunday 19th there will be a workshop with Sophia and light artists Julian Hand and Heena Song on the history and making of light shows. So if you want to get your hands dirty with ink and slides then that’s the place to be. Tickets are only £5 – book here for limited places https://richmix.org.uk/events/making-liquid-light-shows/
Steve Cook has now posted fourth and fifth installments of his trip to see the Jack Kirby retrospective currently showing in LA – but it’s ending in March so be quick! Check his Secret Oranges substack for much more in high resolution.
Here are some shots and footage from last night’s Laserium show, presented by Funki Porcini at the Limehouse Town Hall in East London. It was a fantatic event, full of interesting people who connected socially between sets and showcased several homemade visual and audiovisual creators working in the field, old and new.
Henry Rolls‘ Lumatron was present as a ‘chandelier’ in the stairwell and was very difficult to capture in full, I’d love to see it up close and in a darker space sometime. Sadly I missed Henry’s talk as it was earlier in the day but urge you to check out his Instagram for a timeline of his machines which he started during lockdown made from Lego. SDNA‘s projection mapping in between sets and during mine captured a whole wall, filling it with William Latham-esque animation to brilliant effect. I also missed Dr Reekie‘s talk about his Exploding Cinema which I’d ove to know more about, another book on the reading list is the history of the movement, published last year.
A Jack Kirby retrospective entitled Heroes & Humanity was been open since September at LA’s The Skirball Cultural Center and my good friend Steve Cook has been posting beautiful shots from it over three different entries on his Secret Oranges Substack.
Jack Kirby post 1. Jack Kirby post 2. Jack Kirby post 3
Being that he’s a skilled photographer, he’s managed to capture the original artwork perfectly in all its gritty, pasted up, whited-out, dog-eared glory. Below are just a selection that he graciously allowed me to repost but you should check out his original posts as well as his excellent Substack too. Even better, if you’re in the LA area you should get along to view the real thing before it closes at the end of March.
First gig of the new year and it’s only 3 weeks away! I’ll be doing some sort of AV DJ set at this on the 24th, possibly the O Is For Orange set or variation of. Funki tells me it will be a loose multimedia kind of vibe with workshops, Q&A with artists and performance. Tickets here
As is the custom on this blog, Dec 31st heralds my personal favourites of the year in various categories, leaving it until the last moment to make sure as much gets caught in the net before we flip to 2026. Despite the horrors we experience through the media daily, 2025 was a bit of a vintage year for me personally with new work and family milestones reached despite the hardships all around us. This year has been hugely productive and I’ve released a few things, designed a lot and contributed to several big projects that I’m super proud of. The Autumn was dominated by the Telepathic Fish compilation, something that out-performed our expectations by some way and rumbled into the winter months, making several end of year lists to our delight.
This is not the last word on the Fish…
Music:
Snapped Ankles – Hard Times Furious Dancing LP (the Leaf Label)
clipping. – Dead Channel Sky LP (Sub Pop)
Paten Locke – Dance On My Grave LP (Full Plate)
Hieroglyphic Being – Dance Music 4 Bad People LP (Smalltown Supersound)
Hieroglyphic Being – RE-SELECTED PSYBIENT JAZZ SOUNDSCAPES VOL. 1+2 (Mathematics)
Move 78 – Game Four LP (self-released)
Marshall Jefferson – Yellow Meditation For The Dance Generation (Joakim’s Horizontal Remix Instrumental) (Utter)
Stereolab – Instant Holograms On Metal Film LP (Warp/Duophonic)
Telefax Productions – Break This House Down 12″ (Classic Music Company)
Coastal County – II LP (Lomas Productions)
Kif Productions – Still Out LP (Sound Records)
Move 78 – In The Age of Data (self-released)
Group Modular – The Tunnel / Lonely Pylon 7″ (Delights)
Jo Johnson – Alterations vol.1 LP (Silver Threads)
Podcasts:
What Went Wrong?
Some Assembly Required
Tales From A Disappearing City
The Bureau of Lost Culture
What Did You Do Yesterday?
Oh God What Now?
Rule of Three
The Adam Buxton Podcast
We Buy Records
The Fanzine Podcast
Gigs / Events / Exhibitions:
Eno and Anne B @ the British Library, London
Mick Jones’ RRPL @ The Farsight Gallery, London
Visiting Neil Rice’s home with friends for a personal light show display
Linder Sterling @ The Hayward, London
Leigh Bowery @ The Tate Modern, London
Strangely Familiar – Photographer’s Gallery, London
The Dream House, East Dulwich, London
Future Language of the Ikonoklast book launch @ Greyhound Pub, Peckham
My 2hr gig turning into 3 hours @ Cabron Bar, Folkestone
The Epic Story of Graffiti, Birmingham
Telepathic Fish launch party @ Arch555, London
The Jonny Halifax Invocation play Ravi Shankar, Mildmay Club, London
Beautify Junkyards @ Waiting Rooms, London
The closing of the Penge street art gallery, London
Barry Kamen @ Graces Mews, London
Obey/Hirst/Invader – Newport Street Gallery, London
Welcome To The Pleasuredome LP Atmos playback @ L-Acoustic studios, London then pub visit with the Universal team + Holly and Ped!
Furrowed residency @ Rose Hill Tavern, Brighton
Factory Floor and Sculpture @ Simple Things festival, Bristol
The Audiovisual Assembly, @ Bath House, Hackney Wick, London
Packaging / Design:
Got to say, I’ve been a bit underwhelmed by a lot of the design I’ve seen this year, not a lot stood out. The fashion seems to be either surrealist photography in an attempt to ape Hypngosis or terrible painting. Typography on front covers is the exception rather than the rule. I thought maybe I’d just not been paying attention but googling a bunch of ‘best covers of 2025’ lists only reinforced my opinion. It’s all subjective though isn’t it? I didn’t see much if any AI in the lists which is good.
Various Artists – Rave Wars: The Acid Awakens 7″ + Star Wars figure (Rave Wars)
Field Lines Cartographer – Apeiron Anxiety LP (Castles In Space)
Drumetrics – DRB 001 4×5″ records in etched box
Kid Koala – Carpal Tunnel Syndrome reissue LP + flexi disc (Ninja Tune)
Krash Slaughta – B-Boy Mastamind 7″ (Krash Slaughta Records)
Sully – Model Collapse etched 12″ (Fabric Live)
Drumetrics – Drumetronome tablet
ES – Planet Beyond – Selected Cuts Vol.1 LP (Ruiger)
Artists:
Kurt Jackson (above)
Ray Tijssen aka 0010×0010
Odeith
Chris Bigg
Oritoor
Toor Pentel
Books / Magazines / Comics:
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Cartoonist – Adrian Tomine (Faber)
UltraMega – James Harren (Image)
Bowling With Corpses – Mike Mignola (Dark Horse)
Robot Tod – Farel Dal (Floating World Comics)
Absolute Martian Manhunter – Camp/Rodriguez (DC)
OK Okapi – Martin Andersen & Chris Bigg
Future Language of the Ikonoklast (Velocity Press)
The Editor’s Cut – David McDonald (Hibernia Books)
Absolute Batman – Snyder/Dragotta/Martin (DC)
Heatwave – John L. Williams (Monoray)
The Absence – Rian Hughes (Unpublished)
A Humument – Tom Phillips (Thames & Hudson) (A late but important discovery)
Granny Takes A Trip – Paul Gorman (White Rabbit)
Bedetruite – Samplerman (LDC)
The Absence – Budgie (White Rabbit)
Face The Music – Paul Stanley
Stephen Stapleton – The Formless Irregular (Timeless)
The Vaughan Oliver Archive (Unit Editions)
Instant Public Art – Ulrich Blanché (Arthistoricum.net) Read here:
Plunderphonics – Matthew Blackwell (Bloomsbury Academic)
Film / TV:
I just have to admit it, I really don’t watch much film or TV and what I see doesn’t do much for me evidently. I did see the Beautiful Losers documentary from 2008 and like it though.
Another year over and what have I done?
Designed the Cobalt 60 LP release for Ollie Teeba & Jonny Cuba
Played at the closing of When Spaceships Appear record shop
Co-compiled and designed the Telepathic Fish compilation, booklet, Float III mixtape and Mindfood 5 fanzine for Fundamental Frequencies
Released the 20th anniversary cassette Raiding the 20th Century Expanded version on Delic Records
Continued my Electrik Collage radio show until April then paused to rethink
Designed the Dan Curtin ‘The 4 Lights’ album for De:tuned
Released the Locked Loop Group 8″ lathe cut zoetrope with Acid Lathe
Designed The Herbaliser Band’s ‘Rehearsal Session’ album
Contributed heavily to the 40th anniversary boxset for Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s ‘Welcome To The Pleasuredome’.
Collaborated with Al White on the Terrace ‘Branches’ LP design for De:tuned
Logo design and branding for OTA Recordings
Provided guest mixes for Oonops Drops on Brooklyn Radio and the 45 Live show on Dublab
Appeared on the Cheap Digs podcast with Moz, the Tales From A Disappearing City podcast with Controlled Weirdness, the Skinny E Media show with Mark, the Do!!You!!! Breakfast show with Charlie Bones and The Bureau of Lost Culture podcast.
Supported the Orb on a few dates of their UK tour
Held an exhibition of Openmind artwork at the Cabron Bar in Folkestone, then also Upside Down Records, Deptford
Contributed a track on the Rave Wars: The Acid Awakens 7″
Held a release party for the Telepathic Fish album at Arch555 in Brixton with Mixmaster Morris, Matt Black and KiF Productions
Taken charge of both the Orion and Pluto lighting archives Larry Wooden (RIP) and Micky Thompson (RIP) from respectively
Revived & updated my O Is For Orange video mix and provided a new version to Bleep for their September guest mix
Created two hour-long Float IV and V mixes for the guest spots on Dublab and Ransom Note respectively.
Finally finished and printed my collage comic, the All Colour, High Fidelity, Radio Cartoon, after 5 years
Designed two zoetropes for Disclosure’s ‘Caracal’ 10th anniversary reissue
Attended the Bound Art Book Fair in Manchester as a seller and speaker then DJed at YES in the evening
Played the Simple Things festival with Graham Dunning and Puttyrubber at the IMAX in Bristol at the behest of Steve Davis
Appeared at the first AudioVisual Assembly gig, performing O Is For Orange alongside The Light Surgeons, Bitvert, Pat Grimm and David Leister
Designed The Real Tuesday Weld’s Crow at Christmas 3″CD Xmas card
Designed Nate Krafft’s Crimson Arsenal/Man Machine reissue for Musique Pour La Danse
The Telepathic Fish LP earns Juno Daily’s and Rough Trade Compilation of the Year (with an exclusive blue vinyl edition for the latter) as well as mentions in the end of year polls by Bleep (with an exclusive T-shirt), Phonica, Resident, Brooklyn Vegan, HHV, Moonbuilding and the New York Times.
Frankie Goes To Hollywood’s Welcome To The Pleasuredome receives Reissue of the Year in Classic Pop magazine as well as compliments from the band.
Recorded an album’s worth of extended turntablism material with Furrowed for a future release
Designed the first cassette for my Infinite Illectrik label, Extended Turntablism vol.1 by Graham Dunning and myself. More to come in 2026…
RIP:
David Lynch, Micky Thompson (Pluto Electronics), Bill Ham (light show pioneer), Marianne Faithfull, Mike Ratledge, Rutherford Chang, Rick Buckler, Roberta Flack, Gwen McCrea, Gene Hackman, David Johansen, Mark Pawson (UK counterculture legend), Roy Ayers, Doug Lear, free speech in America and the UK, John Peck aka The Mad Peck, WH Smiths, Robert McGinnis, Alan Yentob, Sylvester ‘Sly Stone’ Stewart, Brian Wilson, Lalo Schifrin, Luis Jardim, Peter Shapiro, Ozzy Osbourne, Terence Stamp, JD Twitch (Optimo), Larry Wooden (Orion Lighting), Drew Struzan, Ace Frehley, Diane Keaton, Bunny Bread aka State of Art (Non Stop Artists), Dave Ball, Gary ‘Mani’ Mounfield, Pam Hogg, Frank Gehry, Martin Parr, Rob Reiner, Ken Downie (The Black Dog), Brigitte Bardot, Martin Jones (UK Hip Hop historian and early champion).
Currently there are several projects lining up for 2026, I could do with some more DJ gigs and I want to find time to revive the Electrik Collage radio show and make it better than the version that was on ROVR radio. There will be more cassettes from Infinite Illectrik too including a long-projected compilation and an album from Duplokit. Thanks to everyone who read this old-fashioned blog over the year, it may finally get an upgrade in 2026, I hope you all had a great Xmas if you celebrated and wish you all a prosperous New Year. See you on the other side.
Looking forward to:
Foetus’ final LP, ‘Halt’
An Openmind exhibition in Krakow?
More Infinite Illectrik cassettes
Sophia Satchell-Baeza’s The Sensual Laboratories book, finally?
Cineolascape…?
Andrew Humphreys’ ‘I’d Love To Turn You On’ book
The Rogue Trooper film
The Audiovisual Assembly is coming to Hackney Bath House on 21st November – The Light Surgeons are performing ‘The Consensual Hallucination’ which is one of the most incredible things I’ve seen them do in the 30 years I’ve known them. Bitvert is also performing with liquid visuals from Pat Grimm and I’ll be doing my Boards of Canada-centric ‘O Is For Orange’ audio visual set. Tickets: https://ra.co/events/2276158
This weekend (25/26th Oct) I’ll be at the Bound Art Book Fair at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester with a table selling my latest collage comic, the All Colour High Fidelity Radio Cartoon. This was started in lockdown in 2020 and worked on intermittently for five years until recently when I exhibited some pieces in Folkestone and decided I had enough to assemble a comic/zine/whatever at last.
That had always been the goal but there was no deadline so I just continued to work on pieces for years, slowly building each page to a point where they were ‘finished’. With the Bound Art Book Fair invitation for Saturday, I decided that would make a suitable deadline to compile a first version of these works.
Unless I’ve got a deadline I can tinker with things forever (hence no new DJ Food music in years) and this has been on the Infinite Illecktrik release list since 2020 (ii03 – to be accompanied by an album of the same name but that will come later now). Talking of which, I am also readying some new releases for the label which will take physical form soon…
But I digress, the comic – I’m calling it a comic because a large proportion of it is taken from comics and you can ‘read’ some pages, but really I have no idea what it is – is 32 pages, full colour and includes a free pair of 3D specs to view the centre spread. The first 50 come with a random sticker applied inside and I will have a random selection of badges free for buyers at the fair this weekend.
I’ll also have the new Mindfood zine (issue 5) and very limited original copies of #1,3 & 4 for sale as well as copies of the Float III mixtape and a handful of the Telepathic Fish LPs. Also there will be copies of my Wheels of Light book, the comic book version of my Search Engine album and whatever else I can find.
In addition to that I’ll be giving a talk at 1pm on the Mezzanine about the Telepathic Fish parties and the zines we made at some point on Saturday and in the evening I’ll be playing at YES alongside my good friend Moz. That’s quite an itinerary for Saturday. The comic will go on sale online next week via Bandcamp for those who can’t make the fair.
Bleep are running a competition to win one of two deluxe Telepathic Fish sets – just order the album or sign up to their newsletter to be entered into the raffle before October 2nd. Those who already ordered from Bleep will automatically be entered.
A runner up prize of original Mindfood fanzine issues 1,3 & 4 is also on offer (these are actually rarer than the main prize). We have also just launched a dedicated Telepathic Fish Instagram account for photos, stories, info and upcoming events connected with the parties.
And the Telepathic Fish album press rolls on, apologies for the info dump but I’m trying to keep track of it all.
Here Matt Black remembers the New Years Day party we co-hosted inside the derelict Roundhouse for Juno Daily by Ben Willmott.
Next there’s a Bandcamp piece I took part in where Andy Thomas neatly encapsulates our story, expanded in the booklet that comes with the LP.
Here’s Mario’s opening set from the Telepathic Fish launch party at BoSi on 31st August.
The Bleep Album of the month campaign is in its third week and here’s an exclusive Q&A I did for them if you scroll down.
I also did an interview with Mark from Skinny E Media about my O Is For Orange video mix, the image isn’t too clear but you get some insights into the intentions behind it and my thoughts of Boards on Canada.
Still to come; a piece for Record Collector and mixes for Dublab and Ransom Note. The repressing of the album is due back at the end of the month I’m told.
Very saddened to hear that Larry Wooden passed away today after a short battle with cancer. Here’s a photo I took of him just over a month ago, through a lens we found whilst sorting through boxes of Larry’s life. He was an amazing man, full of ideas, sharp as a pin with a super dry wit. For a 70+ year old I’d regularly get messages from him at 1am and his telephone calls were always long ones.
He was born 1st Feb 1950 at The Limes, Norwich Road, North Walsham, Norfolk. A lover of photography from an early age – something that would influence a lot of his later interests – Larry started drumming lesson at ten years old after wanting to play them since he was seven. At 11 he swapped a previous interest in Hornby trains for a chemistry lab that he would then turn into a photo lab two years later in 1963. The same year, he first saw Dr Who on TV – a show he would love for a lifetime and name his lightshow after. Photographing the Doctor and Daleks directly from the TV, the enterprising Larry would sell the photos at school and make himself a miniature Dalek by studying the images at just 13 years old. During a stint helping him sort through his belongings we chanced upon this model, wrapped up in a box, not too worse for wear despite the 60 years since its creation.
In 1967 he gave up on his A Levels, learned to drive and his family moved to Longs Farm, Tollenshunt Major near Maldon in Essex where his dad was in charge of the Goldhanger Fruit Farms. He saw The Equals live at the Gaiety Theatre in Ramsey and joined his first band, D’Arcy Spice in 1968 alongside Jerry Arnold, Alan Valentine, Alan Jolly and Tony Loton. The same year he founded Orion Lighting and starting making lighting for the band. Their first gig was in 1969 at the Embassy Suite, Colchester with District Line, The Shey and Jimmy Pilgrim & the Classics and then Larry formed Nature’s Way in the summer who gigged relentlessly throughout ’70-71. Larry’s Doctor Who Lighshow was unveiled at the Felixstow Pier Pavilion on 24/04/71 and he would light the likes of The Groundhogs, Van Der Graaf Gernerator, Mott The Hoople, Osibisa, Uriah Heep, Keef Hartley, Desmond Dekkar, Dave & Ansell Collins, Geno Washington, Fleetwood Mac, Hot Chocolate and many more before quitting his day job at the tax office on Xmas Eve of 1971.
Nature’s Way promo shots, Larry in shades, beard and snazzy trousers.
Light shows and gigs continued throughout the early seventies including lighting The Sweet, Queen, Thin Lizzy, 10cc, Cockney Rebel, Suzi Quatro, Screaming Lord Sutch and Emperor Rosko among many more. Somewhere along the way Nature’s Way morphed into Peppermint Way and in early ’74 Larry retired the lightshow to concentrate on his lighting company. Orion made the first picture wheels, custom made control equipment like the 10 Way Chaser and the Spirochaser as well as manufacturing wheels for David Hone’s Solar Prism Lighting. He attended the BADEM (British Association of Discotheque Equipment Manufacturers ) lighting shows in ’76, ’77 and ’78, the latter of which would feature a four page colour Orion leaflet inside the centrefold of the Disco International program.
The Orion shop opened in 1978 at 20 Wethersfield Road, Colchester and ’79 and ’80 saw appearances at the Discom lighting shows in Paris where he demonstrated prototypes of the Galactic Floor – a light up disco flooring. The eighties weren’t kind to Larry though, Orion went bankrupt after the financial crash (like Pluto Electronics and many others), his marriage ended and he worked a succession of jobs and played in several bands to little success. But by the end of the eighties things were looking up; he was doing laser shows at the Andromeda Club, earning the nickname ‘Laser Larry’ and working the lights at the Hippodrome in Colchester, mixing the likes of Sister Sledge and the Drifters when they passed through. He booked the Rock nights there for a while, opened the Chaplins sandwich bar next door and even tried to unsuccessfully buy the venue at one point.
By 1992 he had moved on and was still gigging, briefly ran both an embroidery business and a dating agency, was once the UK’s sole developer of 3D stereo photographs and a keen practitioner of lenticular animation. He had interests in magic tricks, sci-fi and fantasy, family trees and gadgets of any kind – I’ve never met a man with so many watches and laptops. I only knew him for the final years of his life, tracking him down for my book on projection wheels and interviewing him about his Dr Who Lightshow and Orion Lighting years. After that we became friends and he graciously took part in the launch party, showing off his original wheel art and taking questions all night. He certainly didn’t waste a moment, a keen member of the lighting community and a very unique man.
RIP Lawrence ‘Larry’ Michael Wooden (1950-2025)
The Telepathic Fish party last Sunday was a proper fishing trip down memory lane. Not only for the tunes we played and the old decor we dug up but the people who came from far and wide, some of who we’d not seen in decades. The CDJs and Matt Black‘s AV set up may have been state of the art but the projectors were classic old school with liquid wheels, rotating prisms and op-art FX. The floor was covered with matting, rugs and cushions and our original inflatable ‘amoeba’ was revived, pulsating away in a high corner all night. There were reflective fish hanging from the tunnel walls, David‘s badge-making corner under UV lights that illuminated the flourescent paint of some of our original banners and a jar of free fish sweets to take.
Mario played his first public gig in years, Doug Shipton ably followed with a blend of deep digs into the German end of his collection and I spun multiple decks with a retro set drawing mainly from the early 90s. KiF Productions arrived as doors opened and performed a live soundtrack to their ‘Still Out’ ambient road trip film homage to the KLF and Mixmaster Morris closed with two hours of his usual eclectic brilliance. Below are just some of the highlights – thanks to photographers Mike Sumpter, Nancy Brown, Mario and Larissa Aguera, Chiara Acanfora and Simon Wright for pooling their photos. My short sweep of the room above gives you an example of the every-moving nature of the space.
If you visit Upside Down Records over the summer you’ll be able to see a selection of my design work for Ninja Tune, De:tuned, Castles In Space and more as you browse the racks. The selection comes from some of the work I recently exhibited in Folkestone but concentrates mainly on record-related designs so there’s none of the collage work that I previewed there, I’ll save that for when that project is ready.
The shop deals exclusively in used vinyl with a few racks of CDs and a small selection of vintage cassettes, they also deal in vintage hi-fi so if you’re in the market for a turntable, speakers or an amp, then they might have something for you. If you’ve not visited the shop before then they’re one stop from London Bridge on the overground or a 15 min walk from the heart of Greenwich. They’re open Wednesday-Sunday, check times online. Thanks to shop owner and good friend, Philippe for hosting my work and for the speedy install today.
It’s with great excitement that I can announce the launch party for the Telepathic Fish album in association with Fundamental Frequencies! It’s on August 31st, at a unique venue in Brixton, the home of some of the original parties and keeping a similar vibe.
Mixmaster Morris will of course be gracing the decks, as will Doug Shipton, and myself and original Openmind DJ partner Mario Aguera will also be doing sets. Special guests will be KiF Productions who will DJing the soundtrack to the film of their ‘Chill Out’ homage, ‘STiLL OUT’.
Matt Black will be back on visuals, digging out some period animations for the event and we’ll be dragging a few choice pieces of original Telepathic Fish decor out of storage to give it the feel of the old parties. You’ll have a chance to pick up the album five days early too along with other assorted merch.
Tickets available here:https://ra.co/events/2218194
Omega Auctions have taken on the task of disposing of some of John Peel‘s incredible collection and I can’t think of anyone better. It’s odd seeing objects that I’ve actually held in my hands up for auction and fascinating to see some of the items that I’d not seen when I visited Peel Acres for the Dust & Grooves 2 book – I feel very lucky to have seen it before it was broken up. Here are just some of my favourties from the catalogue, the auction takes place on July 28th.
This has been a long time coming, I’ve been wanting to do something like this for a few years now and at last its time has come. I was approached by Doug Shipton of Finders Keepers / Fundamental Frequencies last year about doing a compilation based around the Telepathic Fish parties I co-founded in the early 90s with Chantal Passamonte (later Mira Calix), Mario Aguera and David Vallade. The four of us shared a house in East Dulwich between 1992-1995 when David and I were in our last year at Camberwell College of Art before leaving to make our way out into the world. What started as a house party grew into a series of ambient events called Telepathic Fish under the name Openmind, an alias I still use to this day for my design work.
Doug’s enthusiasm for the project got Mario, David and I back together (Chantal sadly passed away in 2022) to compile an album of tunes we’d all played and loved at the parties as well as digging in our respective archives for photos, artwork and memorabilia from the time. This was a pivotal era for all of us, a formative intersection before we split and went off in our various directions, and the people we met and partied with remain friends to this day. The double album – Telepathic Fish: Trawling the Early 90s Ambient Underground – includes music from the timeframe above by Caustic Window, Global Communication, Spacetime Continuum, No-Man, Tranquility Bass, Nightmares On Wax, Insides and remixes by The Irrestistible Force, The Orb and David Morley.
It comes in a gatefold sleeve with a 20 page booklet that tells the full Telepathic Fish story and features Mixmaster Morris, Coldcut’s Matt Black, Aphex Twin, Orbital, the Leaf Label’s Tony Morley, the Ambient Soho shop, Megatripolis, The Roundhouse and a disused gas tanker in Amsterdam. All lavishly illustrated with loads of unseen photos and art.
Also available exclusively through Fundamental Frequencies will be a limited bundle that includes a 44 page zine, Mindfood #5 (we also made an ambient fanzine back in the day) that features material from the first 4 issues plus additional unseen ephemera plus a 60 minute mystery mixtape – ‘Float III’ – and an enamel badge of the Telepathic Fish logo too if that kind of thing floats your boat. Pre-order is up now for a release date of September 5th and we’re looking at the prospect of re-enacting the old Fish parties with some of the original participants and decor around that time for a launch party.
It seems things are coming full circle at the moment, what with me supporting The Orb the other weekend. Ambient music is where I first cut my teeth in London as a DJ and these parties were greatly influenced by Mixmaster Morris aka The Irrestistible Force. They were the springboard between college and a career in music and design, where I met Coldcut and in turn ended up jumping on board the Ninja Tune ship for the next three decades. Coinciding with the launch announcement today, Mixmaster Morris, Doug Shipton and I are playing tonight at the Tate Modern Corner bar in London, giving you a flavour of what to expect from the compilation.
It’s seemingly been a month of losses so far and sadly news of another reached me this week, less than two weeks after I’d posted about him for the first time. Doug Lear, formerly one of the UK’s leading exponents of the Magic Lantern (both in performance and collection) passed away on March 6th. Bizarrely, on that very day, I met with friends Neil and Sally Rice who had known him for decades and Neil passed me a red photo album given to him by Doug some years before. Inside this treasure trove is a collection of press cuttings, flyers and other ephemera from his days of giving Magic Lantern performances alongside his then wife, Anita, on their two canal boats.
With Neil’s permission I’m posting some of the contents as a record of their activites in the 80s and 90s, hopefully people will find them along the way and they’ll be useful for research. Also included were four copies of The New Magic Lantern Journal by The Magic Lantern Society from the late seventies / early eighties. This was a reactivated version of an original publication that ran around the late 1800’s to the early 1900’s – several issues of which can be perused on the Internet Archive. I hope you enjoy these pieces of history as much as I do, RIP Doug.
With a growing family, the couple opened a museum, tea room and theatre in Wales in 1991, leaving the boats behind. For more information, see my previous post on the Lears. 
