Photo by Jude Greenaway
It’s been a very busy month, revitalising my O is For Orange audio visual set for the gig at Faith in Strangers in Margate last week and doing promo for the Telepathic Fish album which is out in just under a month. There’s so much going on that I can scarcely keep up at the moment. I’m just finishing my annual 45 Live mix which airs a week today and starting on a guest mix for Bleep next whilst making final tweaks to the video files for last week’s gig. My longtime friend David Vallade had the premiere of a project he’d done with Great Ormond Street Hospital this Thursday at Outernet, the huge corner video screen at Tottenham Court Road station. He’d provided illustrations that had then been animated for the campaign which aims to raise money to build a children’s hospital. It’s on all month on a half hour loop for all to see free.

Doug Shipton‘s monthly night at the Tate Modern corner bar continues with Malcolm Catto and Paul Sinclair dropping fuzz funk bombs last Thursday, there’s no August one as we’ll be gearing up for the album launch party but it’s back in September. The Mindfood 5 fanzines are back from the printers, the badges arrive any day and the LPs are currently in customs with the mixtapes being made this week, just the cover inlays to make for those. I’ve ordered a special liquid wheel for the party and will be foraging in the loft for original banners this weekend, David has already found two from 30 years ago which will be making an appearance at the party. Tickets can be found here

I’m posting a slightly depleted Buy Music Club Recommends this month and it’s a week late, mainly because I’ve also been doing a lot of mixes over the month of July and didn’t have much time to listen to new music outside what I was wrangling into a new form for the Telepathic Fish mystery mix cassette, and a guest mixes for Dublab alongside Doug Shipton – forthcoming soon. Also dropping this month are features in The Guardian and Electronic Sound magazine among others.

The lack of updates on here recently really does point to the fact that I have been super busy recently, not through lack of wanting to share stuff. One day I won’t have a pressing deadline that doesn’t allow me the luxury of uploading all manner of wonderful content to this blog. Or needing some downtime to let off some steam. Last week was all accounts, mortgages and life stuff and this week it’s all light shows. Plans are afoot in many camps, some of which I still can’t reveal, also the heat doesn’t help.

There’s been a lot of carbooting this summer and I seem to be picking up esoteric badges here and there along with picture frames, art materials for my kids and even the odd record. Find of the year so far was this battered but beautiful copy of the limited edition Robert Rauscherburg-designed Talking Heads LP, ‘Speaking In Tongues’.

I made it to Birmingham to see the Henry Chalfont exhibition, caught up with Snub and Sprite contributing to the 2000AD-themed wall at the Hi-Vis graffiti jam and managed to score some lovely original comic art from Hunt Emerson all in the same day.

Given the weather we’ve been having it’s appropriate that I’ve just finished ‘Heatwave’ by John L. Williams, a look at British news and culture during the long hot summer of ’76 – very good it is too.

Finally, the Telepathic Fish enamel badge samples have arrived and look amazing, lucky purchasers of the deluxe edition of the compilation will be getting one of these come September 5th.

Currently there is no time to do a radio show because I’m engaged in preparing mixes elsewhere for others, no doubt they will all arrive at once in a musical glut after months of gestation. Speaking of which, here’s this month’s recommendations from the ever-flowing sea of sound. The Natural Yoghurt Band have put out two albums this year already, ‘Parasol’ is the newest, Markey Funk is back for another Delights 45 with the excellent double-header as The In Sound Company. Awkward has collected a load of beats under the title, ‘Hardcore Restoration 2’ and Hawksmoor has been experimenting with tape loops in the style of Howlround or Paul Cousins for Castles In Space‘s new CD imprint, Lunar Module.

Album of the year contender is from Coastal County who follow their superb debut from 2018 with ‘II’ – that’s it in the centre of the pic at the top. Fans of Axelrod, Gainsbourg, Schifrin et al should check it – also RIP Lalo, we’re losing so many greats at the moment. Tortoise get remixed by all and sundry and the mysterious Telefax Productions hip houser from last year gets a set of remixes – I know who’s behind it but am sworn to secrecy. Ternion Sound make the kind of dubstep I like, and look at that logo, beauty. Last but not least, I may have had something to do with the (may the) fourth part of the Rave Wars saga, ‘The Acid Awakens’, which sold out very fast due to each 7″ coming with an attached Star Wars figure.

An extended Buy Music Club Recommends this month as there’s so much great music out there.
From top to bottom, left to right – DJ Sofa – the next entry in the Swinging Flavors series from the Italian Beat Machine label on 7″, the new Clipping. album, ‘Dead Channel Sky’ – constantly evolving their unique template of rap music and Mike Paradinas‘ latest under his Kid Spatula alias, quality electronica from this UK legend. Yage remixes the ‘Translations’ album, itself a radical reworking of their classic ‘Papa New Guinea’, this is more in line with the Amorphous Androgynous and ladles on the sitars. Snapped Ankles – ‘Hard Time Furious Dancing’ – already contender for album of the year on the Leaf Label and then on the right, Sully with a two track club banger of a release on a beautifully etched 12″.
Tortoise have a new track out, preceding their next album, KiF pay homage to guess who with ‘Still Out’, up for pre-order on the Stroud’s Sound Records and Dylan Dylan delivers an EP of 90’s flavoured dance tracks on Pont Neuf. An oldie but new to me is Sir Psyche‘s ‘Bodies of Work 2011-2013’, a free download of properly psychedelic trip hop I recently discovered on a Bandcamp trawl and a recent cover design of mine adorns the first new Dan Curtin album in over a decade, ‘The 4 Lights’ on De:tuned. Last but not least, the long overdue re-issue of chill out classic ‘Dreamfish’ (by Dreamfish aka Pete Namlook and Mixmaster Morris) is here from Silent State Recordings.