The word ‘legend’ gets bandied around a lot when someone dies, few would argue that Lemmy wasn’t one. His work with the early Hawkwind incarnations and later, of course, Motorhead sealed that deal by the early 80s. RIP
Event
A lovely package arrived just before Xmas from the people at the Cube Microplex in Bristol who recently put on the KLF-themed night. In amongst rafts of logos, printouts, programmes, DVDs and a USB stick was this packet of Million Mu notes I’d designed for the event. Two wads of 23 (nice) White and Black Room editions plus matches and a certificate topped off with part of a burnt fiver and the simple note, ‘enjoy!’. I have to say, the notes are beautifully printed and the same size as regular dollar bills. Top work all round.
The Flexibition is going to have to wait this week – it’s a huge one unfortunately – I’ve been busy doing other things, some of which will drop imminently. A last reminder that the ‘Cosmic Flush’ exhibition opens 6pm tomorrow evening at the Magda Danysz Gallery in London and if you want to go you have to RSVP here.
Yes, 20 years ago today (although it was a Thursday back then) Ninja hosted their second party at the Blue Note in Hoxton Square, London and the first with the title ‘Stealth’ (the original party was a launch do for the ‘A Recipe For Disaster’ album). Great times ensued, pretty sure I met my future wife that night too…
Just revealed yesterday, a cover mock up for the ‘Cosmic Flush’ box set by Will Barras (we’d seen the silhouetted version of this on the T-shirt earlier this year) and cover artists Poesia and Kofie for the final two releases. Poesia is paired with Sam Sever on the remix and Kofie provides cover for a Psychopab version on the final of seven 12″s. Both can be pre-ordered over on the Gamma Proforma website.
The exhibition of all this art – including She One, Futura 2000, Delta, Doze Green and Ian Kuali’i – opens this Thursday at the Magda Danysz Gallery, 61 Charlotte Street, London. Yours truly will be playing an all-Rammellzee set with a mix for Solid Steel premiering on the Quietus the same day.
Very saddened to hear of the death of Mike Allen yesterday after years of suffering Alzheimer’s disease. Mike was a legend in Hip Hop radio in the UK who schooled many people during the mid 80s via his weekend shows on Capital Radio in London. Without him many of us who lived outside London and couldn’t pick up the pirate stations would have had no weekly access to new releases, never known about Groove Records, the famous import shop in Soho, and never gone to events like UK Fresh ’86 or Freestyle ’85. His Capital Rap Show (aka Allen’s Army on Maneuvers) ran from late 1984 to July 1987. During 1985 it ran on Friday, Saturday & Sunday but changed to Friday & Saturday during ’86 and ’87
I first heard pretty much every now classic Hip Hop artist, group or track on his shows between 1985-87 alongside interviews with Mantronix and the legendary Word of Mouth & DJ Cheese session. After ’87 he moved to LBC and continued his show on a Sunday under the banner of ‘Street Talk’ as well as hosting a late night talk radio format and later still joined Smooth Radio. There’s a great interview with him over on the DiscoScratch site. I can’t speak for anywhere else but the South East of England but before Westwood or Dave Pearce on Radio London there was Mike Allen, flying the flag for Hip Hop in the UK. I owe a large part of my Hip Hop education to this man. RIP “The Boss In London”
The second of John Doran‘s ‘Vinyl Staircase‘ pieces went up Monday on The Quietus. The first one was a riot and this treads a similar path plus it includes a little interview with yours truly on the subject of flexi discs.
On Saturday I visited the opening of the X-Ray Audio exhibition at the Horse Hospital in London for the launch of Stephen Coates‘ book of the same name and a series of events related to the subject of Soviet ‘Bone Music’.
One of these events will be my own ‘A Night At The Flexibition‘ event this Saturday the 5th of December where I’ll be chatting to Stephen about various discs from my collection (some pictured above for the Quietus piece). We’ll be playing selections and talking to Alex, the engineer who cuts audio onto X-Rays for Stephen in performances. It should be very informal and there will be a small quantity of random flexi discs free to the first 20 or so people through the door, pulled from my own stash. The X-Ray Audio exhibition will be viewable so you can kill two birds with one stone and maybe even pick up early copies of the excellent book with free facsimile flexi while they last.
Above is the flexi disc that comes free with the limited edition version of Stephen Coates‘ new book on Soviet Bone Music, ‘X-Ray Audio’. The book and exhibition launches this Saturday at the Horse Hospital in London showing discs, films and images that tell the story of how these strange artifacts came to be.
On Dec 5th at the same venue I’ll be in conversation with Stephen showcasing some of my flexi disc collection, playing selections and telling the stories behind them. First through the door will get a random flexi and Stephen will also bring some of his Soviet 78rpm discs too no doubt.
Scenes from last weekend’s KLF-themed night at the Cube Cinema, Bristol. John Higgs gave a talk and there was an hour-long video montage by Mr Hopkinson of which this is but a short segment.
Below my friends Phil and Stuart prepare to burn part of their entrance fee which was given back to them upon entry. Jonathan Harris led several money burning rituals outside and writes about the experience on his blog here.
Several attendees purchased the One Million Mu notes that I designed for the night and posted their acquisitions afterwards, sorry for the lack of credits but I know the last one is DJ Moneyshot‘s copy. I’m still waiting for my copies in the post but will post shots when they arrive.
11.05am and I’m sitting on a train in Rotterdam Centraal Station, waiting to depart after leaving a grey, wet Brussels at 8.30 that morning. I’m in the silent carriage, with ear plugs in. When the train pulls out it’s so slick and quiet it feels like we’re running on silk. The silence is glorious, the sun is shining and the landscape filled with all manner of quirky, forward-thinking Dutch architecture. Solar panels, clean, modern angles, a half-built curved structure like a rising flower bulb just outside the station and two lifelike giraffe’s heads and necks sprouting from nowhere. The multi-colouredl graffiti that always forms like weeds around train stations tumbles out of the tunnels, gradually withering away as we leave the city. I spot a pristine white Delta piece on a rusted freight train not far from the city’s boundary. It’s so quiet I’m aware that my fingers typing are making a racket in the carriage. I’m seated on the top deck, a glorious view of the flat landscape before me and the train glides on, they even have free wifi – must resist!
I should be back in Brussels, getting breakfast and checking out to meet up with DK and Debruit for a car ride to The Hague but instead I’m on my way to Utrecht to slot an afternoon’s digging session in at the Record Planet Mega Record fair. Realising the night before that it was actually only a 35 min train ride away from Den Haag and on the insistence of Andy Votel via a Twitter conversation (‘it’s totally on route!’) I decided to forego the lie in and make the most of my time on the continent this weekend. The record fair at Jaarbeurs is reckoned to be the biggest in the world, certainly in Europe anyway and the scale of it just cannot be comprehended by viewing pictures online alone. Never has so much cardboard and vinyl been crammed into such capacious air craft hanger-like spaces. I’d been once, back in 2004, before my kids were born, thus since preventing me from returning on such a frivolous jolly as a weekend-long record shopping spree. But now I’ve got an excuse, even if only for a day, and an extra train ticket, entry fee and several extra hours of sleep are the only forfeits. The train pulls in to Utrecht Centraal 15 minutes short of midday.
An hour later and I’ve only just made it into the fair, despite it being located less than a 10 minute walk from the station. After queuing for a ticket the mission was on to find a cash point of which there are only two in the foyer, both with a line snaking across the entire floor. There were more back in the station but incredibly all but one of them are out of action. Ticket in hand I finally get through the barrier, past a group of cosplayers in full Stormtrooper garb (that’s new) and begin the daunting task of picking through what seems like the carefully chosen debris of the 20th Century.
To say that Jaarbeurs is big is an understatement that is so woefully inadequate it’s like saying Jeremy Corbyn has a bit of a job on his hands if he hopes to become the next Prime Minister. It is SO big that you reel as you find yet another aircraft hanger-sized space crammed with even more ephemera than the last one you just spent over an hour briskly jostling through. What I never realised, way back when I first visited the fair, was that the record part only accounts for roughly a third of the overall space in Jaarbeurs, the rest is packed with Europe’s largest vintage collector stalls selling virtually anything you can bring to mind.
Buttons, stamps, coins, vintage toys, new toys, animal bones, African statues, globes, stones, medical research statues, school teaching displays, stained glass windows, lamps, turntables, gramophones, books, magazines, comics, glassware, pottery, jewelry, badges, dolls, clothes, material, masks, cutlery, posters…
The place is like the most incredible museum you’ve ever been to coupled with the fact that you can buy every exhibit in what resembles the continent’s biggest car boot sale. Imagine Birmingham’s N.E.C. and quadruple it. Another misconception is that it’s all expensive, this isn’t true either, yes there are trophy pieces everywhere, bought by dealers the world over in the hope that they will sell to their biggest captive audience and pay for the trip. But equally there are boxes of cheaper stuff marked at €1 that simply need to be rifled through to find the gold.
It is however, completely unrealistic to expect to be able to ‘do’ the whole thing even in a weekend let alone an afternoon. I’d decided I was going to go through the other halls before I hit the records as I’d previously walked straight past them and never investigated. Now older and with more than enough vinyl to warrant having the floor of my home studio reinforced because of it I decided to explore the other two thirds I’d previously dismissed.
It was slim pickings until the third hall, mostly for the fact that I was limited by what I could carry so had to bear in mind that those 20th century designer lamps were just going to have to stay there. Deeper into the throng and nearer to the record stalls that shore up the far end of the layout I started to find pieces to take home. A clutch of hardback bande dessinée of Philippe Druillet‘s best 70s work from a French seller, a Metal Hurlant special on the making of Alien, complete with multiple examples of designs by Giger, Moebius, Ron Cobb and Ridley Scott himself.
Two handfuls of vintage sci-fi paperbacks with Richard Powers covers from the delightfully named Magic Galaxies Intergalactic Book recycling Company. The bemused Dutch seller inquired what my criteria for buying was after watching me check every cover rather than just the spines of the books. 
Just before closing time I chanced upon Grant McKinnon from the West Coast peddling original psychedelic posters and flyers from the 60s Haight Asbury heyday and was caught up in a last minute whirlwind of bartering for a handful of genuine 60s bills bearing the work of Rick Griffin, Wes Wilson and Victor Moscoso.
Check them out on the web, SF Rock Posters, no fakes, reasonable prices considering the vintage and top guys to boot. As the security guards were ushering the crowds out I spotted the only record I bought during my visit on the next table, a luminous yellow 7″ promo of ‘Pocket Calculator’ by Kraftwerk complete with printed transparent sleeve. Well, I couldn’t go all that way and not buy a single piece of vinyl could I?
(Delta freight train photo by Chris Vos, taken from the Chrome Angelz Facebook group)
This Sunday at The Cube microplex in Bristol there will be a very special event centered around The KLF and their burning of a million pounds over 20 years ago. Entitled ‘KLF : Chaos, Magic and the band who burned a million pounds‘, the night takes its name from John Higgs‘ recent book and he’ll be talking about Discordianism, Doctor Who, ‘The Illuminatus! Trilogy’, Alan Moore’s Idea Space, the number 23 and more amidst ‘talks, screenings, loops and rituals in The Black Room‘. More info here, tickets are limited.
I was asked to provide some sort of musical accompaniment but this weekend’s gig schedule means I’d never make it back to the gig in time unfortunately. Instead I’ve fashioned this fictitious One Million Mu note for them to ‘do what thou wilt’ with. Click each note for a larger version and see how many easter eggs I’ve put into them – whoever spots them all wins something interesting.
This is on in Reading TONIGHT! Pretty sure this is a never to be repeated line up to launch the excellent new compilation from Buried Treasure, ‘The Delaware Road’. If you can’t make it then I urge you to check out the album (for about the third time on here, I know) as it’s full of all sorts of goodness from many names that were new to me.
Andy Votel collects all his artwork for cassettes together for an exhibition opening tonight at Electrik in Chorlton, Manchester for the next 3 weeks. He talks to John Doran at the Quietus about it here and they preview both sides of a new tape he’s made entitled ‘RAISING HELELYOS’.
London. 1968. Two pioneering musicians compose electronic themes for television & radio. They discover a recording that leads to a startling revelation about their employer. Fascinated by the occult nature of the tape they conduct a studio ritual that will alter their lives forever.
The Delaware Road is a psychological thriller & an audio-visual treat for fans of archived electronica, far out jazz & haunted folk grooves. Story written by Alan Gubby. Words by David Yates. Trailer audio & video synthesis by Jeffrey Siedler. For those with a taste for Radiophonics, Hauntology and Tape loops then this gig is a must.
THE DELAWARE ROAD – LIVE! SAT 14TH NOVEMBER
Debut performance on Sat 14th Nov 2015 @ South Street Arts Centre, Reading, Berks.
Live performances by: Howlround, The Dandelion Set, Ian Helliwell, The Rowan Amber Mill, Robin Lee, Loose Capacitor, Tim Hill, The Twelve Hour Foundation & Revbjelde.
DJs: Jonny Trunk & The Séance (feat. Pete Wiggs from Saint Etienne)
Tickets: £15 advance, £13 concession; £16 on the door. Available here:
Price inc. free poster & advance DL code for ‘The Delaware Road’ compilation album on Buried Treasure Records. Seriously, check this album via the preview on the link, so many great tracks, if the live event even lives up to half of the album’s content it’ll be awesome.
Three exhibitions that have recently opened in London, all highly recommended, tickets are timed on the Escher and Cosmonauts ones so book ahead. Unfortunately no photography is allowed at any of them otherwise this post would have been full of images. The Escher has 6 rooms stuffed with originals pencils sketches, litho and woodblock prints and even some original finished illustrations plus other ephemera and the gift shop content is compact but enticing.
The Cosmonauts exhibition has original and mock-up vehicles, pods, landers, sputniks, all forms of space suit and space wear as well as films, artwork, propaganda and more. The gift shop is so overwhelmingly stuff with Soviet art and design it’s hard not to want to walk out with half of it. The Eames I’ve not visited yet but plan to soon…
I’ll be taking part in this this coming weekend, an afternoon of interviews on the art of curation where I’ll be talking about the thinking behind this very blog and how I go about selecting its content. The interview should be streaming live but bear in mind that the Netherlands is one hour ahead of London.
Yes, that’s what it says on the flyer above. 20 years ago today Ninja Tune held a launch party for the DJ Food album ‘A Recipe For Disaster’ at a small club called The Blue Note in a little known part of London called Shoreditch. Metalheadz hosted a club there every Sunday and a few others had done nights there at the time but such was the success of this one-off it was decided that the label should make it regular. Two months later ‘Stealth’ was born and Ninja became the second label to host a regularly monthly night at the club which, it’s no exaggeration to say, brought people to Shoreditch and spearheaded the interest and popularity of the area as we know it today.
Simon James (Black Channels/The Simonsound) will be performing Two Knocks For Yes at Saint Andrews Church, Waterloo St. Brighton (UK) on the 23rd of October. Shrouded in secrecy, Two Knocks For Yes will incorporate talks, music, theatre and photography. Get tickets here.
You may remember me posting the Two Knocks For Yes mix last Halloween, now the “Radiophonic investigation into the poltergeist phenomenon gets a limited cassette release on Castles in Space, just in time for Halloween. The Buchla 200e Electric Music Box is used to haunting effect providing otherworldly tones, presences and vibrations. The B side features instrumental incidentals for ghost stories. Available mid October. Pre-order here.”
My last album cover (The Search Engine, 4-panel vinyl edition) that I collaborated on with Henry Flint is the first cover you see in an exhibition of record sleeves by comic artists entitled PHONO+GRAPHIC, curated by artist Sean Phillips.
This is a bit of a dream come true for me, to be one of 60 sleeves displayed alongside artists like Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons, Brett Ewins, Hunt Emerson and Moebius!
It opens next week at the Kendal Museum and will be on until the 20th October, including the weekend of the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. Many thanks to Sean for selecting the cover completely unbeknownst to me until he’d announced the exhibit and framing it so nicely.
Photos taken from Sean’s blog and here’s more info
Kid Acne delves into his archives for a week-long exhibition at Unit 26 of the Boxpark in Shoreditch this week. For opening times please check the BOXPARK website + join them on October 1st from 6 – 9pm for #FirstThursdays + beer, music, animation and art.
Also out now is a Ltd. Edition 10″ six track EP from Mongrels (Kid Acne & Benjamin). The sleeve is screen-printed by Edna and all 300 copies have been signed, stamped and numbered on the back plus each record comes with a vinyl sticker and lithograph insert. BUY IT here and see the sleeve being made below:
