Records

45/7 Vinyl Club mix #20: DJ Food

A new all-45s mix I did for the 45/7 Vinyl Club (not to be confused with the 45Live crew but the aims are similar). Each guest is asked to provide a mix made from vinyl 45s only, answer 5 questions and choose a unique hand-painted cover which they are then sent with a special 45/7 Vinyl Club 7″.

Click into the mix link for the interview and, as there’s no track list provided, here it is below

Dr. Donald B. Louria – Is Marijuana really dangerous? (Teach Records)
DJ Shadow – This Time (I’m Gonna Dub It My Way) (Universal / Island)
Sixtoo – Incedental 1 (Bully)
Dr. Donald B. Louria – Does LSD increase creativity? (Teach Records)
Controller 7 – Wandering Song (Bully)
Primal Scream – Kill All Hippies (Creation)
The Giallos Flame – Vultures feat. Wolf People (Analog Screams)
Cavern Of Anti-Matter – Total Availability and the Private Future (Peripheral Conserve)
Blues Explosion feat. DJ Shadow – Fed Up & Low Down (Edit) (Mute)
The Go! Team – Grip Like A Vice (Memphis Industries)
Paul Weller – Rip Up The Pages (Lynchmob mix) (Island)
The Protein Bros – Drainpipe (Rural)
The Edgar Winter Band – Frankenstein (Epic)
John Rydgren – The Noise (Teach Records)
Beck – Mixed Business (Geffen)
Chaps – Ascension To Virginity (Decca)
The Zutons – Why Won’t You Give Me Your Love? (Deltasonic)
Ocean Colour Scene – Hundred Mile High City (MCA)
The Soundcarriers – Boiling Point (The Great Pop Supplement)
D.O.T. – Say Your Prayers (Twisted Nerve)
The Dirty Feel – Get Down (No Label)
Toolshed – Pazuzu (Theme From Exorcist II) (Black Deck)
The Giallos Flame – Italia Violenta (Analog Screams)
Alan Copeland – Mission Impossible/Norwegian Wood (ABC Records)

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Sisters of Transistors

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This Sisters of Transistors LP had passed me by when it was released in 2009 although I remember hearing a remix of one of the tracks by Hot Chip that really floated my boat. It was a project featuring Graham Massey and four female organists if the sleeve notes be believed and there a fair few of them, weaving a tale of lost music and organ quartets that goes back to the second world war. It comes encased in a white plastic sleeve with sealing sticker and silver logo screened on the front. The design is by ehquestionmark who you might know from all the amazing work he’s done for the Skam and Lex labels and the attention to detail, as with all his work, is second to none.

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Inside we have a sleeve with a front cover like some vintage classical performance document and a back showing a the band setup with Graham at the center and the four organists circling him in a sea of swirling wires. The real treat is the large insert which comes with it though, loose leaves with punched out ring binder holes, library stamps and the cheesiest set of band photos ever. Straight out of some 70s accountancy firm or teachers end of year book, the players – all given aliases – couldn’t be more convincing with muted green/brown tones and outfits and hair to match.

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The music is a real mix, almost uncategorisable, of course organs feature heavily but it’s more complicated than that. There’s distorted grooves, fuzz, female chants and harmonies, lots of live drums and the whole thing has the air of a mass or seance about it. The pieces are all reputedly from different eras of the 20th century so styles flip constantly. All in all I think this will become one of those overlooked curios, collected and coveted by those in the know in the future. You can buy it digitally from iTunes as the label seems to have no obvious shop, or Discogs is a good bet for physical copies. See the covers being assembled in the video below, including the special undies randomly inserted into some copies

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X-Ray Audio book and new film

X-Ray AudioBookcoverI know I’ve written about this before but I’ve finally finished reading Stephen Coates‘ ‘X-Ray Audio’ book, about how underground bootleggers from the Soviet Union used to cut forbidden music onto old X-Rays. It’s a fascinating read in a time when we have pretty much any media we desire at our fingertips. It tells of a time where just possessing certain records could get you in serious trouble or even thrown in prison. Having to buy forbidden songs for huge amounts of money that were sometimes not even on the disc or of a fidelity so bad that they were virtually unlistenable.

But what it highlights most of all is the power of music, what lengths people will go to to hear it and when they do, the effect it can have. This quote from an interview with Kolya Vasin really stood out, he became known as ‘The Beatles Guy’ and he recounts first hearing ‘All My Loving’.
“When I heard them I felt something so phenomenal, even the great Little Richard whom I had adored faded for me. They enlightened me, it was insane. Little Richard was atomic happiness but The Beatles were insanity, something else, the limit, something unexplainable. And I understood everything… I felt in them a holiness. It was freedom.”

The Vinyl Factory also recently premiered a new short film about the phenomenon that they’d made with Stephen

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Coming soon… I Love Acid 45s mix

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I put this pile of 45s down in a mix last week, possibly the world’s first all 7″, all-Acid mix? I’ve been collecting acid tracks on 7″ for a while now and, when Josh from I Love Acid asked me to do a mix for his I Love Acid Radio slot, I thought this would be the perfect slot to showcase them. The mix is due to debut on March 10th, I’ll post a link here when it does. Pete Isaac from 45 Live is also a big acid 45 collector and we’ll be doing something in that vein later this year…

Acid on 45 is a pretty niche area, a lot of the releases are UK pressings as several tracks made the charts at the end of the 80s and record labels were still pressing 7″s alongside the 12s to get radio play. There are also a lot of european singles from around that time too, tracks that were big in countries like Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain but won’t maybe be known elsewhere. In the 90s a lot of acid on 45 is confined to the more uptempo almost gabba-techno kind and there are slim pickings to be had until the 00s when the sound made a resurgence back into techno.

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Freaky Formats #2: Op Art sleeves

Jaga Jazzist 'Oban' frontweb

The second of my ‘Freaky Formats’ features just went up on The Vinyl Factory site. This second installment focuses on Op Art sleeves which speak for themselves really. Check it out and there’s a link to the first one about 3D covers too, there are more in the pipeline so look for them roughly monthly…

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RIP Clarence Reid aka Blow Fly

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I found the record above at a carboot sale around 1987 in a muddy sports ground in South Park, Reigate. It was shortly after I had started to ‘dig for breaks’, inspired by hip hop and sampling, in as much as a skint 17 year old could ‘dig’ in a small town 30 miles south of London with only an Our Price, a Woolworths and one other indie record shop to excavate. I had no idea what this was but, with a cover like that and on a label called Weird World, I wasn’t about to leave it in the box.

There were no track titles and for good reason; ‘Shake Your Ass’, ‘Bad Fuck’, ‘Suck It’ and ‘Spread Your Cheeks’ were some of the delights contained within. But I knew the signs were good: black artist, 70s release, the word ‘Disco’ put me off a bit but there were all those other LPs on the back too. Who was Blow Fly? The dude in the mask and home made super hero (villain?) suit presumably, and why were all these women naked around him? The ‘For Mature Adults Only’ sticker needn’t have been on there, it was pretty obvious that this wasn’t for kids.

I got it, probably cost 50p, and never showed my parents that particular cover. It contained enough profanity to sink a ship as Blow Fly took established songs and changed the lyrics to suit his dirty mind. The classic ‘What A Difference’ took ‘What A Difference A Day Makes’ and turned it into ‘… A Lay Makes’ while ‘Suck it’ paraphrased ‘Do It ‘Til You’re Satisfied’. Purile stuff for sure and the blueprint for every Blow Fly album I’ve ever heard since but hilarious stuff to a teenage boy. With no internet it was impossible to find out more about the masked man and it wasn’t until I started touring the States in the late 90s, buying from a wider range of records, that I found out who he was and picked up the other albums on the back cover.

The Fly was the alter-ego of Clarence Reid, record producer and songwriter since the 60s, who had started changing the lyrics to hit records for a laugh at parties. Recording an album of them, he created the Blow Fly persona to protect his respectable career name and the rest is history. ‘Disco’ isn’t his best album (and he got sued good and proper for that ‘What A Difference…’ cover) but I’ll remember it with the most affection as it was the first one I found and for introducing me to his weird world. RIP Clarence Reid aka Blow Fly.

Blowfly Disco backweb

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Sculpture 8″ Lathe cut picture postcard record

486dc05e-d312-4fab-9f79-66cf3c14d3c1Sculpture have made a Christmas record, just released last week in a limited edition of 160 (each record individually cut) by Hasenbart Records… (the people who did the great People Like Us Xmas record this time last year)
It’s called ‘Self Checkout Ego Death Westfield Stratford City’ and is a 1-sided lathe cut 8” zoetropic picture disc, square cardboard with full colour printing on both sides, stamped on the back, audio on front side.

Loving everything Sculpture, flexi disc and zoetropic, I had to have one, you can too, order here

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Researching the Ramm.Ell.Zee

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Last week I played at the opening of the ‘Cosmic Flush’ exhibition in London at the Magda Danysz Gallery. The contents of which celebrated the work and life of Rammellzee, the MC and artist who passed away in 2010. Instigated by the Gamma Proforma label, it was full of art from the new album and attended by a who’s who of the leftfield art scene. Pieces by Futura 2000, Kofie 1, She One, Will Barras, Dan Lish and Poesia sat with art from three of Ramm’s crew: Doze Green, Ian Kuali’i and one of Dr Zulu‘s Lego letter racers. There were also life-size cut-outs of Rammellzee in full battle gear by Will Barras with backgrounds by O.Two.

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The exhibition will run until 22nd December. The gallery is open daily from 11am-7pm, closed Mondays.
You can buy the seven releases that make up the ‘Cosmic Flush’ album from Gamma’s online store.

During the run up to the exhibition opening The Quietus website premiered a piece I’d written about Ramm which you can read in full here. It featured a previously unseen image by Timothy Saccenti, made in collaboration with Rammellzee, for a photo session they did in 2005. Here’s another unpublished image from the same time and I’m incredibly grateful to Timothy for letting me use these great images for the piece.

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At the opening I played an all-Rammellzee set including a new mix I made for Solid Steel celebrating his musical career. The object was to map an aural history of Rammellzee‘s recorded output, in roughly chronological order, to showcase his music, theories and wordplay for those who wondered what all the adulation and legendary status was about. Take a trip from the early 80s up to the present day, through Ramm’s intricate, confusing, yet always unique recording career from his old school origins through to his final masterpiece.

As an addition to The Quietus piece, for which I had way too many images, here’s an extended look at some of his releases over the years. Going back to the beginning, want to see Profile Records‘ original master tape of the ‘Beat Bop’ single? It was recently unearthed by Noah Uman and given a proper reissue after countless bootlegs over the years. Originals now go for triple figures, but here’s the no frills master tape box that was taken from Jean-Michel Basquiat‘s original reel.
Beat Bop Master tape frontBeat Bop Master tape back

Here’s the Slinky Gym School single he featured on in 1983

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The 1985 Death Comet Crew 12″ on Beggars Banquet 

Ramm DCCfrontRamm DCCbackThe Gettovets album with Shock Dell and Delta II, produced by Material on 4th & Broadway in the late 80s
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Whilst researching the mix I came across some beautiful sleeve artwork from the various Japanese-only albums and DVD releases in the 00s. Some of these were news to me but well worth tracking down.
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Final reveals for the Rammellzee ‘Cosmic Flush’ album & show

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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.

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New Ghost Box ‘Other Voices’ pre-order

GBX716 cover 800
Just in time for Xmas here’s two new 45s from Ghost Box‘s ‘Other Voices’ series – one-offs from friends and like-minded souls of the label. Being a huge fan of Tim Gane‘s Cavern of Anti-Matter I was excited to see their name appear months ago as next up on the agenda. Their excellent debut album ‘Blood Drums’ is long gone (still looking for a copy if anyone is selling) but you can hear it via the Staalplaat bancamp page and they have a website at last with a new album on the way early next year.

The single doesn’t disappoint either with the A side unfolding into a near 6 minute sprawling electro-country-fied epic that, at one point, almost threatens to break into ‘Witchita Lineman’ (the second of the Other Voices series to do so). The B-side is even better and mines a sound familiar to many Stereolab fans, all motorik Krautrock groove with guitar and organ accompaniment. But what’s the point of trying to describe them (‘dancng about architecture’ etc…) when you can listen to clips below and make your own mind up?

ToiToiToi are completely new to me and a google search reveals that it’s the project of Sebastian Counts from Berlin. His 7″ is a mixture of lo-fi childlike tunes that sound like Brian Wilson having fun in his sandbox mixed with early Kraftwerk Autobahn-era overtones. ‘Odin’s Jungle’ on the single comes from a 2011 album that you can hear on his Bandcamp page. Order both singles HERE.

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Flexi discs everywhere including the Quietus

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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’.

X-Ray AudioBookcover

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.

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