A short glimpse into ‘one of my favourite gigs of last year’ (no, really) The Museum of Last Parties at the Museum of London. There’s a short glimpse of the set I played with Howlround in the room that houses Thomas Heatherwick‘s Olympic Torch too where we were largely oblivious of the shenanigans going on elsewhere.
Film
Stolen from a tweet by Dan Hayhurst of Sculpture (whose solo album I really must pick up). If you check their site you can watch Ruben Sutherland‘s zoetropes like this and more for hours and get hypnotized.
Unfortunately this is now over but Eilon Paz, founder and photographer of Dust & Grooves made a little walkthrough of the photo exhibition and used the instrumental of my cover version of The The‘s GIANT as the soundtrack.
Clocolan‘s album ‘Nothing Left To Abandon’ is out Jan 13th, it’s been on repeat here the last few days. Absolutely beautiful electronica in the same vein as Boards of Canada / Christ. Digital only on the Enpeg label at the moment, hope it gets a physical release too at some point, it really deserves it.
I took my boys down to the IMAX cinema in Waterloo a couple of days after we’d seen Rogue One as I’d heard there were two actual Death Trooper outfits in the lobby. They had no idea they were there until we walked in, they don’t disappoint either, great bit of design (seen here with added festive accessories).
Santa brought this beauty on Xmas day, lots of fun to make and great attention to detail. On sale now from Lego
After the amazing feast that was Foetus on Triple J – the John Jacobs plunderphonic interview with JG Thirwell from 1986 on Tim Ritchie‘s show – we rewind even further back to 1984. In a continuing series of lost Antipodean radio-phonic works unearthed by DJ HDD, and preceding a series entitled The Worx, we have another Jacobs piece, ‘Inside TV‘.
“A comedic cut-up/critique of Australian television thrown together by John Jacobs with a pair of domestic VHS decks… The edits are rough and jumpy, an analogue pause-button aesthetic. The sync rolls, the loops swing. The image is smeared and lurid as it goes down the grimey tube of VHS generations. Not having any outlet for these pre-Internet video cutups, John took the moniker ‘Built in Ghosts’ and secretly dubbed them back onto the ends of hire tapes for random late-night discovery by fellow video junkies.
Hopefully more to come…
I’ve been looking forward to this since I had a sneak peak about a month ago, the new Howlround album is also the soundtrack to a film called ‘A Creak in Time’. Two years in the making, “A Creak In Time is a film directed by Steven McInerney exploring the interrelation of the macrocosm and microcosm navigating its journey through time in two parts. The soundtrack has been composed entirely from creaking objects and manipulated on magnetic tape machines.”
The film is “…Taken from source material discovered in London, Yosemite and the Mojave desert, these sounds, through simple manipulation, gradually cast off their moorings and head into space, leaving their original identities far behind and chiming perfectly with the film’s recurring themes of transformation and altered perception, switching scale in a heartbeat from microscopic topography to the vast distances of the cosmos. Shot entirely on 16mm film with a musique concréte soundtrack, it’s both science and fiction and marks a dramatic new direction for all involved”.
Available to pre-order on McInerney‘s audio-visual Psyché Tropes label now, the LP comes with a download and link to an online stream of the full film. You can order it here or, if you want to see it and hear Howlround live they’re playing a launch party in London on Dec 10th at Iklectik as part of Pascal Savy‘s two day residence. The night after they’ll be doing a more traditional tape loop set at the Brunel Museum as part of the Film Sound Performance weekend – more info and tickets here (no tickets on the door).
I’ll be doing this next Feb at Echoes, something new with something old. Tickets here
Luc Besson picks up the sci-fi baton where he left off with The Fifth Element – looks amazing
A great film about an American AI super computer that holds its creator and the human race to ransom for its own good. Some great cinematography and a cracking score by Michel Colombier (as yet unreleased), recommended viewing but a tale that could easily become reality all too soon. Maybe it’s what we need right now though?
Finally, years after its initial announcement and nearly 18 months since the 7″ for Record Store Day, the pre-order for the full Moomins album on Finders Keepers is here.
Also – the label will be at the Jaarbeurs record fair in Utrecht this weekend, wish I was going too
Here’s a Kickstarter by a friend of mine, he makes some of the best, immersive gifs I’ve seen and we talked a bit some time back about bringing some of his work into my 360 dome shows. He’s now putting together a hi-res animated film of his work and trying to kickstart it to pay production costs.
COVERS – a book by ALEX BARTSCH from Alex Bartsch on Vimeo.
Sometimes someone comes up with an idea so simple it has ‘surefire hit’ written all over it. Here’s one coming now; photographer Alex Bartsch is taking the sleeveface craze to the next logical stage (‘sleevescape’ anyone?) by matching architectural aspects of London with record covers that feature them. Specifically it seems, reggae records, and the results so far are excellent. A Kickstarter for a book of the photos has just launched, you can pledge here and there’s an exhibition in the planning. Follow Alex on Instagram too 
Out today on LP, CD and DL – The Pattern Forms is a new Ghost Box supergroup formed of the mysterious, media-shy, man-who-can-do-no-wrong Jon Brooks and vocalists Ed Macfarlane and Edd Gibson of Friendly Fires. The album is gorgeous, full of beautiful, yearning songs of love and loss, perfect autumnal audio occasionally lifted by electro/disco stylings, it shouldn’t work but it does. I wasn’t sure at first, after the dark electronica of Pye Corner Audio‘s ‘Stasis’, it seemed quite a whimsical release, but the more I listen the more the songs seep into me and it may be one of the most accessible GB releases yet. Order here
Artwork comes from the ever-excellent Julian House as well as the teaser promo film above and there’s a Rough Trade exclusive version of the LP with an alternate cover and translucent green vinyl. The band will be playing tonight from 6pm at Rough Trade East off Brick Lane in London to launch the record and Julian will be DJing too. Check the special library records mix they knocked up the other week too for Radio Belbury.
Liking the look of some of these aliens from the forthcoming Rogue One film, nice and gritty, textured and real rather than clean CGI.
