Openmind designs

Items created by by design alter-ego, Openmind

Three helpings of DJ Food for Record Store Day 2014

As readers of this blog will know, I’ve been lucky enough to have records release on Record Store Day for the last two years and 2014 will be no exception. The difference will be that I’ll be involved in three different releases this year with only two of them being on vinyl.

Firstly there will some new music from me in the form of a remix I’ve done for The Amorphous Androgynous called ‘Tunnel Sequence’ from their spy-funk psychesploitation albums, ‘The Cartel’.

The two CDs are getting the remix treatment in vinyl form on April 19th in a nice reciprocal gesture as it was they who remixed me for my first RSD release back in 2012.

Secondly, more music but you might know this one. My version of The The‘s ‘GIANT’ with vocals by Matt Johnson himself is the only track from 2012’s ‘The Search Engine’ not to be released on vinyl (last year’s quadruple LP version only had the instrumental).

Now my version has been paired with the original on what’s being billed as the ‘GIANT2FACED12INCH’ – a double A-sided release via Sony. Not only do I provide music but I’ve also designed one side of the sleeve which is paired up with an original Andy Dog painting for the cover, see a preview above for the origin of the ‘2-faced’ title.

Thirdly, the non-musical release will be the Dust & Grooves book by Eilon Paz which I’m both featured in photographically and in the guise of writer/interviewer for a huge article about Four Tet‘s collecting habits. ‘Adventures In Record Collecting’ has been on-going for some years now and I got involved about 11 months ago when Eilon visited my studio for a mammoth photo session and Q&A which will see the light of day on his site at some stage.

There’s a strong Ninja Tune presence in the book with an interview with The Gaslamp Killer, photos of Ollie Teeba from The Herbaliser/Soundsci and Mr Scruff who actually makes the cover photo, (I also did an extensive interview with Scruff which didn’t make the deadline, maybe next time).

By a weird coincidence one of the photos shows me doing a sleeve face pose with the very same The The sleeve that features on the ‘GIANT’ 12″ cover, and by the same I mean, the very same. When Matt was putting together the sleeve for ‘GIANT’ he wanted to use the US version of the ‘Soul Mining’ LP sleeve but didn’t have a copy himself so I scanned my copy, the same one in the photo in Eilon’s book.

All three of these releases are a very big deal for me, being asked to contribute to releases by FSOL and The The, two of my all time favourite groups, is pretty special. Being involved in just a small part of Eilon’s book plus the on-going work we’ll be doing after it’s published is new and exciting too, I’ve seen the layouts of the book and it’s stunning.

Posted in Books, DJ Food, Openmind designs, Records. | 16 Comments |

3-Way Mix Tour poster graphics

DJ Cheeba, DJ Moneyshot and I are touring the ‘3-Way Mix’ this year. That being a 4 deck, 3 DJ reconstruction of the Beastie Boys’ ‘Paul’s Boutique‘ album made from all the original tracks that they, and the Dust Brothers, sampled + more.
Here’s the first round of tour dates (more to come) with a graphic I made featuring all the sources they sampled, can you spot the Beasties? I made several versions + several Facebook timeline headers. Click for large versions.


3 Way Mix logo ROUNDx2 web

Posted in Design, DJ Food, Gigs, Mixes/Solid Steel, Openmind designs, Poster / flyer. | 1 Comment |

Solid Steel 25: new website and extra London guests

The Solid Steel website has had a makeover to include a 25th guest mix playlist and the ability to step back in time to older playlists and mixes. We’ve also just announced two extra guests for the London party at Fire on December 6th.

Not only will Mr Scruff be joining Illum Sphere for a 4 hour back to back vinyl session but we’ll have Four Tet headlining the main room! Very excited to add both of these excellent DJs to the line up, Scruff recorded his own Solid Steel mix nearly 10 years ago and Kieran was our first guest at the London residency of our club night in 2004. Get tickets here...

Four Tet will also be taking over the whole show this Friday Nov 1st – something no guest has ever done before – for a 2 hour mix of exclusive DJ edits.

Posted in Gigs, Openmind designs, Poster / flyer, Solid Steel. | 1 Comment |

Ninja Tune label exhibiton in Pau, France

A new retrospective exhibition about Ninja Tune just opened in Pau in the Pyrénées, France at the André Labarrere Mediatheque. Curated by Fred Elalouf of the Ping Pong promotional agency in Paris, it also ties in with Ping Pong’s 15th year of existence. They have represented the label in France throughout their past decade and a half through thick and thin.

Earlier this year Fred visited the Ninja offices and my studio on a mission to gather as much original material as he could find for this event. Original art, promotional posters, sleeves, videos, slides and other ephemera are all present, some of it never exhibited outside the UK before. I have to say, he’s done an amazing job as you can see by some of these photos.

The exhibition just opened and is on for the next two months, closing on August 24th. It’s free (I think) so, if you’re in that part of the world, go and take a look as there are a lot of items that will go back into private collections when it’s over. Original Kid Acne, Mr Scruff and Kid Koala artwork hangs with cover proofs and promotional toys. The model robot that was projected on for the front cover of the ‘Funkungfusion’ compilation is on display as well as some of the original drawings for the now famous Ninja logos.

Posted in Design, Event, Ninja Tune, Openmind designs. | No Comments |

Bonobo ‘Cirrus’ zoetrope 12″

Finally, after a couple of teases by Ninja Tune, I can show this beauty off, something that’s been in the pipeline for a while now. Today is Bonobo‘s big gig at the Roundhouse, a full day of music curated by Simon Green and rounded off with a performance by him and his band. With the likes of Gilles Peterson, Machine Drum, The Invisible, Adam Buxton’s Bug, a Boiler Room-hosted space and Solid Steel broadcasting snippets of the event on the web, it should be epic. To make it even more epic 500 lucky golden ticket winners will each receive one of these 12″ zoetrope picture discs of his already classic track, ‘Cirrus’.

I took the original archive loops from Cyriak‘s incredible video for the track and broke them down into circular visuals to make a spinning animated version. Dating back to the first primitive animation techniques of our time, the zoetrope relies on a viewer to see the action happen. This is included with the disc along with assembly instructions so that people can watch while the disc plays. See the above film for an approximation of what the disc does when spinning.

This is all rounded off by a beautiful Leif Podhajsky design on the reverse side. Lovely.

Posted in Film, Ninja Tune, Openmind designs, Records. | 8 Comments |

Salon des Refusés V opens today, 1 week only!

Salon des Refusés V opens today at 201 Portobello Rd, London, W11, a pop up gallery and shop of 30 artists curated by Scraffer. Including work from names like Remi/Rough, Luke Insect, Pure Evil, Kid Acne, Inkie and James Jessop it should be a pretty diverse selection.

The overriding theme of the show is artists that are pushing boundaries, with the work of established artists hanging next to that of ‘up and comers’; there is something for everyone, both stylistically and fiscally.

I have an original collage piece on show called ‘Think of a Space’, one of the first of a new series I’m doing at the moment. The Scraffer site will also have two new colour versions of my ‘Skullstronaut’ print on sale shortly after the show.

The show will be on between 22nd to 28th April only and doors open between 10am and 7pm each day.

Posted in Art, Event, Openmind designs, Poster / flyer. | No Comments |

Record Store Day 2013 ‘The Search Engine’ 4×12″ repress

It’s Record Store Day again and Ninja Tune release a four disc vinyl repress of the EPs that made up my album, ‘The Search Engine’. These are straight represses of the original three EPs (One Man’s Weird…, The Shape of Things… and Magpies, Maps & Moons) plus the Amorphous Androgynous remix 12″ from last years’ RSD (on black vinyl this time though).

The first three 12″s have been out of print for some time now and contain extra tracks plus some different mixes to the CD album, with some tracks also being full length versions. If your bought these the first time round there’s nothing new musically here I’m afraid. The poster covers are replaced by an eight panel foldout sleeve though, with remixed artwork of which you can see more images here.

In the spirit of the title, and to add a little something for RSD, I’ve had ten unique pieces of artwork inserted randomly into the first 600 copies of the album. Six high quality prints of zoetropes that I made for the exhibitions last year and four unique collages as seen in this post. All are 12″x12″ in size, signed, stamped and protected by a transparent sleeve.
If any readers of this blog find one, please let me know, I will post a photo of you here with your find and it will be nice to see how far they go out into the world. Everyone going to a store has a chance to find one of the inserts, they’re completely random and could go out to whoever orders them at stores participating in RSD. Even if you manage to get a regular copy I’d appreciate photos and locations and will post the best ones like last year.

The Ninja Tune online shop will have another 400 or so copies for sale the Monday after RSD so don’t worry if you can’t get to a store.

Posted in DJ Food, Ninja Tune, Openmind designs, Packaging, Records. | 1 Comment |

The Image Duplicator exhibition at Orbital Comics

Here’s my entry for the Image Duplicator exhibition that opens next month in the Orbital Comics gallery in London. I posted about this last month, it’s been set up by Rian Hughes to highlight the original artists that Lichtenstein copied, uncredited, for his most famous Pop Art works. For mine I’ve chosen Tony Abruzzo‘s work that was used for two other ‘Kiss’ pieces. I wanted to give a nod to Dave Gibbons – the original artist on Watchmen – for his speaking out on the subject of appropriating imagery whilst also referencing the similar outcry when Watchmen was remodeled as Before Watchmen last year. Not quite the same thing I know but it makes for a tenuous link.

Creating a fake cover for a comic called Before Lichtenstein was the first part, I then made this into a ‘real’ distressed comic that looked like it might have been the sort of thing Lichtenstein copied from. I chose to do one of the Kiss images because of the visual link to Watchmen – the iconic silhouetted kissing imagery that crops up throughout. If I have time I’d love to do a ‘variant’ version with the same image in X-ray, aping the ‘nuclear kiss’ image.

The list of participants in the show so far is shaping up with Dave Gibbons, Shaky Kane, Rian Hughes, Steve Cook, Mark Blamire, Jason Atomic, Graham Ross, David Leach and, possibly even… Howard Chaykin (!) David Barsalou has pitched several pieces as well, his site being the Deconstructing Lichtenstein reference everyone has been using to compare and contrast images from. The show opens May 16th-31st at the Orbital Gallery (inside Orbital Comics, 8 Great Newport Street
London, WC2H 7JA).

Posted in Comics, Openmind designs. | 1 Comment |

The Search Engine – 4×12″ repress for RSD 2013


On Record Store Day this year (April 20th) Ninja Tune will release a four disc vinyl repress of the EPs that made up my album ‘The Search Engine’. These are straight represses of the original three EPs (One Man’s Weird…, The Shape of Things… and Magpies, Maps & Moons) plus the Amorphous Androgynous remix 12″ from last years’ RSD (on black vinyl this time though).

The first three 12″s have been out of print for some time now and contain extra tracks and some different mixes to the CD album, with some tracks also being full length versions. If your bought these the first time round there’s nothing new here I’m afraid except the poster covers are replaced by an eight panel foldout sleeve, similar to the original limited edition ‘Paul’s Boutique’ LP.

Each disc has its own sleeve and the spine measures a tasty 13 mm in width, easy to find in the rack for sure.
In the spirit of the title and to add a little something for RSD I’ve had ten unique pieces of artwork inserted into random copies of the album. Six high quality prints of zoetropes that I made for the exhibitions last year and four unique collages as seen below.
All are 12″x12″ in size, signed, stamped and protected by a transparent sleeve. If any readers of this blog find one, please let me know, it will be nice to see how far they go out into the world. I’m sure the Ninja Tune online shop will have copies the Monday after RSD so don’t worry if you can’t get to a store, everyone has a chance to find one of the inserts, they’re completely random and could go out to whoever orders them, not just stores participating in RSD.

Posted in DJ Food, Ninja Tune, Openmind designs, Packaging, Records. | 11 Comments |

New Food & Flint prints on the revamped Scraffer.com

Several prints have just hit the Scraffer.com site shop, all collaborations between myself and Henry Flint for ‘The Search Engine’ album and related EPs. ‘Sentinel’ (top left) and ‘Octopus’ (above) make their first appearance in the shop after being available in a tiny run for last year’s Pure Evil Gallery exhibition. Both are the same size as previous editions – 64.5cm x 47.1cm, come signed by Henry and myself and cost £60. Close up details in the gallery below.

Octopus printPlanets printsentinel-detail-5sentinel-detail-3sentinel-detail-2sentinel-detail-1sentinel-detail-4octopus-detail-2octopus-detail-3octopus-detail-4octopus-detail-1

‘Planets’ (top right) is a completely new print in a new size – 47.0cm x 34.7cm – again signed by both of us and at a wallet-friendly £35. All are printed to the very high standards of the Fine Art Trade Guild on 300gsm Somerset Photo Satin which is a 100% cotton paper. Scraffer also has copies of the ‘Cosmonaut’ print, a version of which featured on the cover to ‘The Search Engine’, at £50. The last copies of ‘Mad Man’, which was used on the ‘One Man’s Weird Is Another Man’s World’ EP sleeve, are also there, each one with a unique doodle from Henry in the speech bubble.

‘The Secret Life of A Machine’ print is now sold out unfortunately, as is the ‘Skullstronaut’ which was done for the Factory Road exhibition although this may get a reprint later in the year. For those still waiting for the 4 x 12″ repress of ‘The Search Engine’ EPs in fold out sleeve – it’s coming! The vinyl is pressed and the sleeves are being printed now after going through three different design changes to make the package better. It also may be with us sooner rather than later as the planned Record Store Day release might be vastly oversubscribed this year.

Posted in Art, DJ Food, Openmind designs, Poster / flyer. | No Comments |

Unused ‘negative’ designs for the Search Engine


When I do a design project there’s usually a fair few versions of things that don’t make the cut, variations on ideas to see if something will work etc. For ‘The Search Engine’ I made a series of ‘film poster’ designs, some of which cropped up in other things like a short reel telling people the timetable at the Planetarium gig or animations for a video that didn’t happen. These are ‘negative’ versions of some of those designs where I particularly like the colours.

Posted in DJ Food, Openmind designs. | 1 Comment |

Limited edition Herbaliser LPs stencilled by Snub23

Incredible stencil work done by Snub23 for the ultra limited edition (and sadly sold out) deluxe LP bundle for The Herbaliser‘s new album, ‘There Were Seven’. You can however buy the regular vinyl (but not for long as that’s a limited run too), designed by yours truly, from the Herb’s online shop, (click the red ‘store’ button top right for a pop up). Each one comes with two printed heavy card inners inside a screen printed PVC sleeve with a downlode code too.

 

Posted in Art, Design, Openmind designs, Records. | 14 Comments |

The Herbaliser ‘There Were Seven’ vinyl


Shots of the forthcoming album by The Herbaliser, ‘There Were Seven’, which I designed. This is the regular vinyl version which comes in a screen printed PVC sleeve and has a download code for the whole album too. You can pre-order if here (Click the red ‘shop’ tab for options).

The launch party in London is at the HMV Forum on October 27th where I’ll also be supporting along with Belleruche and DJ Cam. Tickets with a special ‘Friends of Food’ discount can be found here. Or, if they’re all gone – here.

Posted in Openmind designs, Records. | 1 Comment |

The Herbaliser ‘There Were Seven’ LP pre-order

Be very quick if you want one of these, The Herbaliser have their new LP (designed by yours truly) up for pre-order. If you want CD or download, you’ll be fine, but…

If you want vinyl you have two options: regular double LP with full printed inner sleeves in a screen printed sleeve – only 450 copies though.

Or there’s the super limited (50 copies) deluxe version which comes with hand stenciled covers by Snub23, a signed A2 poster, a T-shirt and a download card. More photos when I actually have a physical copy! Order here (red ‘shop’ tab on the top right) – actually I think you can only order the regular vinyl right now…

Posted in Music, Openmind designs, Packaging, Records. | No Comments |