Out 10th October 2025
Film
I’m really loving the new Snapped Ankles album, their fourth for The Leaf Label, ‘Hard Times Furious Dancing’, it’s refreshing and genuinely exciting whilst chiming with the times we live in. People ask where all the protest songs have gone, well here’s an album of them without ramming the point home and set to furiously fizzing beats and basslines. The video above is an imaginary conversation between seventies era Conny Plank and Brian Eno talking about AI.
Available on LP, CD, download with different coloured vinyl variants for Dinked indie shops and Bandcamp. Grab it from Bandcamp to put more money in the band’s pockets. They are on tour but will make a loss so had to start a GoFundTrees Crowdfunder, this is the reslity for bands today in the UK.
On Sunday Hannah Brown, Heena Song, Julian Hand and I visited Optikinetics co-founder Neil Rice at his home to pick up some of his old projectors and talk general light show shop.
While we were there he gave us an impromptu light show using a four-projector, colour wheel and vintage Optikinetics Solar System set up he’d made then let us all have a play. Here’s a clip of just some of what we achieved using the kit with a set of custom slides I’d made under his direction. This is all analogue, no digital FX, shot against the wall in his living room by Hannah using her phone then edited in Premiere later.
The song is an edit of ‘Through With You’ by The Lemon Pipers, one of Neil’s favourites, they also have a song called ‘Rice Is Nice’, hence the title of this post.
I caught the amazing end montage sequence of this via the isolated graphics Instagram account the other day. You can watch the whole thing or skip forward to the 17.40 part where the montage begins. Another age but so much of this is more exciting to me than 99% of digital art out there.
Unbelievable work on this new video for Sculpture‘s ‘Cross Processor’ by Reuben Sutherland. High resolution needed and even then the detail in this is mind boggling. One of the album’s of the year packaging wise, ‘Max Ax’ comes as 2x 10″ zoetrope picture discs in a gatefold sleeve. Find a copy here
More gorgeous live macro painting by Akiko Nakayama in the video for Floating Points‘ new single ‘Key 103’ from the forthcoming album, Cascade on Ninja Tune. There’s also another similar video I missed for second single, ‘Del Oro’, these really need to be watched on the highest definition you can manage to get all the detail.
A couple of Sundays ago The New Obsolescents played live at the excellent Wow And Flutter record shop in Hastings. Chris Weaver, Robin The Fog and myself, improvised live for several hours in-store as people watched, listened and shopped. As you will see in the video, hanging above their heads were test printed sleeves for the second pressing of our debut LP that had been passed over in favour of the prism version we eventually used. These unique items have been retained by the shop and will be sold (with the vinyl) on a first come, first served basis to those who visit over the next month before the remainder go online to those who can’t make it down to the South coast.
Here’s a little snippet of our performance put together by the shop’s own Tim Scullion as a very early taster for our second album as we will be using some of the recordings made in the shop on the next release. Thanks to everyone who came down, Colin from Castles In Space and especially Tim and Susan from Wow And Flutter for having us. This is their 10th year in business and they are planning nine more in-store events over the year so give them a follow or better yet, a visit!
We also play at the Deliaphonic all-dayer in Coventry on May 2nd at the newly re-christened Delia Derbyshire Building University alongside… well, just look at that line up! Entry is FREE via the sign up here. I will also be playing a solo Quadraphon set with PuttyRubber on the visuals to close the event. By coincidence, Delia and I share the same birthday just a few days later.
The first (that I’ve ever heard of) exhibition of zoetrope art – TURN ON – ended recently at the Place des Rotondes in Luxembourg and they have made this short film of the event, directed by Raoul Schmitz. Sculpture played at the opening and my 2013 zoetrope of Bonobo‘s ‘Cirrus’ using animations by Cyriak was featured alongside discs by Reuben Sutherland, Drew Tetz, Tess Martin, Iloobia and more.
A note to cultural spaces – the exhibition is now available for hire and can’t wait to go on tour! A presentation kit is being finalised for interested art and cultural centres. Email Marine Deravet at Rotondes if you are interested in hosting the event in your city or town. Photos below by Lynn Theisen (first 3) and Mike Zenari.
Another ridiculously inventive video from iloobia – can’t say I’m that into the track but wow, that’s some work on the video, the mind boggles at how he achieves all this
The second edition of Brian Eno‘s turntable is showing at the Paul Stolper Gallery in London this month. Prices last time were eye-watering and actually went up as the edition sold out giving an incentive for early buyers.
Gary Hustwit‘s Eno film premiered at the Sundance Festival in January to rave reviews, it compiles a different film with each showing from 168 hours of footage. You can buy these limited prints or Sundance Poster, designed by Build, from Hustwit’s site
And if that wasn’t enough Eno for you, there have been more tracks added to his radio station, The Lighthouse, on Sonos. At the end of 2023 there were 424 but 447 and 448 cropped up today, The Lighthouse is a continuous stream of largely unreleased tracks from Brian’s archive that play randomly 24 hours a day – am investigating…
UPDATE: There are at least 25 new tracks from 2023 and 2022 added as of Feb 2024 bringing the total of tracks up to 449.
Here’s the performance Graham Dunning and I gave at Robin The Fog’s Fog Fest II this summer at Iklectik.
Totally improvised, we’d had a couple of rehearsals, and with visuals from PuttyRubber and Leon Trimble, it was exhilarating and felt like spinning plates rather than discs. Probably my favourite gig of the year along with the 10th anniversary of The Book & Record bar lock in.
A few highlights from Graham Dunning and my 40+ minute set on modified turntables at the Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava for the opening of the NEXT Festival 2023.
A couple of new episodes of James In Real Life’s video diaries on the build of his Duplokit turntable –
Tonearms:
The Chassis Pt.1:
Just listened to the third David Coverdale episode of the Rockonteurs podcast and made this from a short section.
Hear the full episode here: S5E6: David Coverdale 3
Enowatch pt.48271 – I’ve been fair obsessed with all things Eno of late, not least because the recent Gary Hustwit and Brendan Dawes AV piece, ‘Nothing Can Ever Be The Same’, premiered at the Venice Biennale last week. This 168 hour installation takes Eno’s video and music archive and uses it as material to feed the generative engines they’ve built whilst also serving as a kind of trailer for Hustwit’s ‘Eno’ film due next year. See examples of it below.
There’s also the recent announcement of the Obscure label boxset that sees all ten albums on the label from the mid to late 70s run via Island records re-issued with an 80 page book, I’ll be writing more about this once I’ve devoured it.
Meanwhile I’m still trying to listen to everything on Eno’s Sonos radio station The Lighthouse, now with 424 unreleased tracks from between 1989 and 2023 streaming randomly 24 hrs a day but that algorithm just isn’t playing certain tracks. Of course Brian also plays London tonight with the Baltic Sea Philharmonic to perform his Ships show that’s been doing the rounds in Europe.
I was struck by the cover art to Floating Points‘ new single, ‘Birth4000’ the other week as it resembles the liquid light shows I so love. On further investigation, it seems that’s not far off as the artist, Akiko Nakayama, projects her ‘Alive Painting’ onto huge canvases from microscopic sizes. Her website is well worth some investigation and she made a video for the single which you can see below as well as a billboard that Ninja Tune showed off somewhere in London recently.
I made a video for my Magnetic Cartridge Quartet ‘Polykicks B’ track from the Buried Treasure ‘Decapod’ compilation – all made using a vintage Strand Patt theatre light with 18″ glass optical effects discs, patterned glass or coloured gel inserts.
The label’s 10th anniversary party is tonight, Sat 14th at The Couch in Bracknell – compilation and ticket here
https://buriedtreasure.bandcamp.com/album/decapoda
The track was made live using my Quadraphon turntable, edited down and given a sonic scrub on the mix by Osymyso. The video footage was filmed using an original Strand theatre light with 18″ rotating glass disc attachments and other visual tricks. Thanks to Rob Halliday for access to the lights and for working the FX.
I have to say, this is very well done, the fact that the AI can’t render everything ‘perfectly’ just adds to it for me.
“Welcome to the future! Where the pursuit of unending joy comes with hidden costs. This retro futuristic metropolis has many hidden wonders you won’t want to miss out on! “
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KLF and Justified Ancients of Mu Mu watchers will have been excited by the news a few weeks back that not only had Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty delivered their entire recorded output to the British Library, warts and all, for the public to trawl through at will but they also announced a DVD of most of their film and video work which will be released in November. This is exciting enough but I was tickled to see the cover of the DVD featuring their classic ‘T Speaker’ on fire at night which bore more than a passing resemblance to a couple of the fake KLF posters I made back in 2003 to accompany Mr Trick‘s and my mix, ‘The Sound of Mu(sic)’. I messaged Jimmy and he confirmed that it was the inspiration which is mighty fine by me :). With the transferral of the KLF Re-enactment Society to the hands of fans (an online repository for any KLF-related homages or fan made artifacts) could this be the first case of a re-re-enactment instigated by the band I was spoofing?
Incredible AI-generated video for the new Richard Norris remix of the Tomorrow Syndicate‘s ‘Hyper-receptive’ from their latest album, ‘Higher Resolution’ on Feral Child. Channelling everything from Moebius‘ The Time Masters designs to pulp sci-fi, the album is available from all good indie stores like Piccadilly Records, Norman, Juno, Rough Trade etc. This single will be available Friday 14th via Bandcamp with all proceeds going to MND Scotland.
Back from a whirlwind weekend in Stroud and Bristol – primarily to talk about my Wheels of Light book at Klang Tone Records in Stroud on Friday night as part of the Pop Up Subculture festival. The event went very well with an engaged crowd and many new friends made. Met up with old acquaintance Bill Brooks who introduced me to bonafide light show legend Sid Fossil who had come to the talk! Seen here next to yours truly with friend Craig in the middle and Bill on the right.
Stroud is lovely and sports three excellent record shops – Sound Records, Trading Post and the aforementioned Klang Tone which sits above the Pagan Vintage shop. All well worth your time, many treasures were found, not least a clutch of original International Times newspapers in stunning condition.
After a day’s digging I jumped on the train down to Bristol, met up with my video cohort, PuttyRubber, and went to the first Holotronica weekend at the disused IMAX cinemax. Hosted and opened by DJ Cheeba, Solid Steel family of old and now working with Stuart Warren-Hill’s Holotronica outfit, it was great to see old Bristol crew from our days doing regular nights with the Detectives of Perspective. The Light Surgeons played their excellent ‘Atemporal’ AV set, newly expanded into a 2.0 version and then Funki Porcini presented his incredible Laserium show which absolutely wowed people in the theatre. I’ve seen this three times now and it just gets better and better, there’s nothing like it and it’s impossible to convey via photos. Equally impossible is Stuart’s 3D Holotronica set (for obvious reasons) which was some of the most eye-poking 3D I’ve ever seen. All in all a triumph for audio visual gigs and I hope they do more.
Photos below are from Stuart Warren-Hill (Holotronica) and Christopher Thomas Allen (The Light Surgeons)
Crew photo L-R: DJ Cheeba, Stuart Warren-Hill, Funki Porcini, Chris Allen – missing in action Tim Cowie, the other Surgeon who provided an excellent live soundtrack.
