This one had me reaching straight for the credit card – for the next week, all online orders of the Stepkids‘ debut LP come with a postcard 45 of an exclusive single. Get in quick, the album is amazing, possibly my favourite so far this year.
A couple of projects JG has been involved with recently have really caught my eye on the artwork front, both have a medical angle and lean on the black, white and red colour palette.
The first is Manorexia – ‘Dinoflagellate Blooms’, a double disc pack with X-rays and syringes. Click for larger versions. Buy it from JGT’s site here. It’s a double CD with regular and 5.1 surround sound version.
The second is a lovely 4 track 10″ under the name Hydrose Plus, a collaboration with Fred Bigot. The cover shows a face from a medical encyclopedia in profile but when you take the clear vinyl 10″ out of the sleeve you realise that the eyeball is printed on the label and fits perfectly into the eye socket on the front. Not only that but you also get an insert with the inside of the face cut away.
Buy it directly from the label here.
Stones Throw have started a new series of direct to disc live albums – the band or artist performs live in the studio and the record is mixed and cut as they play. White label copies are pressed up and sleeved in hand stamped covers in a limited run, unavailable digitally. So far Rick, Gary Wilson, The Stepkids and Major Hawthorne have contributed.
Having a hard drive clear out / clean up, things might get a little random this week…
Loved Skylab‘s output, some truly wonderful records made by Mat Ducasse with some help from Major Force West and Howie B along the way.
These were in a box with a totally destroyed front cover, I like the way they look, kind if Warhol-like, next to each other.
Art by Henry Flint, colours by Strictly Kev, coming this Autumn…
I’m currently enjoying People Like Us’ (aka Vicki Bennett) new album ‘Welcome Abroad’, it’s a frequently hilarious mixture of cut and pastry based around her time stuck abroad due to the recent volcanic eruptions in Iceland. You can listen to the whole album on her Soundcloud page or buy it here. She also has her first solo exhibition, ‘The Doors of Perspection’, opening at the end of July in London at the Vitrine Gallery, previewing new films she has made by extending panning shots from existing films into widescreen format (if i’ve understood the press release correctly).
Also a few months back I received a lovely box set from the Edinburgh Printmakers‘ ‘Prints of Darkness’ exhibition, which includes a gatefold sleeve housing a poster and 12″ picture disc by Vicki entitled ‘This Is Light Music’. This 10 track mini album heavily cross references some of the music on ‘Welcome Abroad’ too and can still be bought here although it is limited to 250 copies.
PS: I actually think this is even more wonderful than ‘Welcome Abroad’, I’ll never be able to hear certain well known classics the same way again.
12″ test pressing on Ntone – ‘Fink Funk EP’ by Fink, with hand drawn ‘annotations’ by She 1, 1997.
My good friend David Vallade did this for our very own local record store – Rat Records in Camberwell. Even though they are a used store they’re celebrating too and I’ll be playing up at the Lock Lounge in Camden Saturday night too.
With added Trunk power! You know the drill by now… Ghost Box shop
A couple of weeks ago Ollie Teeba (one half of the mighty Herbaliser) followed myself, DJ Format, Andy Smith and Mr Thing at the Classic Material night in Old St. The year he was helping celebrate was 1991 and, whilst researching records to play for the night, he found he had 17 hours of material!
He ended up playing a 3 hour set and kindly put down over 4 hours for us to enjoy via his new mixcloud page. The next night is on April 16th with Big Ted and the year will be, you’ve guessed it, 1992.
Two upcoming events for your diary, both on the same weekend, featuring two friends of mine in similar settings. First up on, Friday March 18th, is The Vinyl Veterans at the Black Dove in Brighton with Jonny Cuba (ex-Dynamic Syncopation / Soundsci).
The day after it’s the turn of Classic Material at C.A.M.P. in Hoxton, London with Ollie Teeba (The Herbaliser / Soundsci).
Both events share a similar theme: a love of Old School Hip Hop, funk and breakbeats and a fondness for vinyl as the preferred medium to DJ with (Vinyl Veterans is Vinyl ONLY!). Readers of this blog with be familiar with Classic Material’s monthly theme of a different year as the basis for each session and this month it’s the turn of 1991.
Also check out their excellent themed mix, shirt and stickers sets in their store, there’s a new one each month featuring a re-rendering of a classic Hip Hop label logo – Classic Material store.
Also, both events are FREE so there’s no excuse about door prices, if you love what Rap used to be about and not what its sadly become, then these nights are for you. There seem to be more and more cropping up too, Rap History in Berlin and the Boom Bap in London, which I played at last night and is a weekly concern!
Amon Tobin‘s 2005 Splinter Cell game soundtrack has been remixed to coincide with the release of a new 3D version of the game. Various Ninja Tune artists such as Daedelus, Kid Koala, King Cannibal, The Qemists, Eskmo and Lorn have worked their magic on the tracks alongside a couple of new pieces by Amon himself.
For the artwork I was required to update the original and decided to experiment a little with the 3D analyph technique you can achieve in print. If you have a pair of red and blue 3D glasses to hand, have a look at this from the inner sleeve of the vinyl. The physical LP and CD versions are released in April but you can buy the download version right now from the Ninjashop.
This little piece of history has been going viral over the last few weeks after being put up on Soundcloud by a user called mjs538.
*UPDATE: Another user: DJMOOG1 has put up a better quality version which I’ve embedded above.
Although not actually by mjs538, the pieces have a strange and convoluted history in themselves as well as portraying the history of pop music based on all the #1 hits in the US charts since 1958. Both mixes use up to 5 seconds of each and every #1 since the mid fifties, in order, up until 1981 in Part 1 and into the early nineties in Part 2. Whilst a herculean effort, even in this day and age of digital editing and online stores to source the material, it’s all the more impressive that the bulk of Part 1 was made in the late seventies using reel to reel tape and a razor blade.
The piece – known as ‘Time Sweep’ – was part of an extensive radio show called ‘The History of Rock n Roll’, made by Drake – Chenault Enterprises for radio in the US which utilized 52 hours to bring the first comprehensive history of rock music to the airwaves. Each year was prefaced with a medley of that year’s #1 hit singles (a ‘Chart Sweep’) and the whole was compiled into a ‘Time Sweep’ to end the mammoth series. The engineer responsible was Mark Ford (above), a veteran of radio jingles and production. He compiled and edited all the selections up until 1977, not only cutting and splicing but also EQing and time stretching sections to make them fit together sonically and selecting and pairing little couplets of lyrics at certain points – Roy Orbison‘s “Pretty woman, walking down the street”, segues into “there she was, just a walking down the street”.
For a little ‘behind the scenes’ info, check out this link on the making of the special
But the story doesn’t end there. For those paying attention, just after the Meco version of ‘Star Wars’ in Part 1, the sound quality noticeably changes in both the stereo field, quality and editing. The reason for this is that a teacher from Maryland University called Hugo Keesing extended and updated the concept of the Chart / Time Sweep for his classes as each year finished up until 1991. With all due respect to Keesing, he isn’t a sound engineer and it shows in the application of edits and production. This is where the piece stops being art and turns to documentation and, as such, loses the essence of its greatness. Keesing was using a Wollensack tape recorder to edit with and had no way to clean up or EQ the tracks. So, the majority of Part 1 is Mark Ford’s original (up until 1977) and then Keesing’s extension, which runs the entirety of Part 2.
Five Seconds Of Every #1 Pop Single Part 2 by mjs538
How this piece came into circulation on the web was via a tape with Keesing’s name on it that was passed to the Evolution Control Committee‘s Mark Gunderson in the 90’s and the piece was widely believed to have been by him in it’s entirety by the cut and paste fraternity unfamiliar with the History of Rock n Roll programme. Eventually Keesing was tracked down and you can read an interview with him over at Jon Nelson‘s ‘Some Assembly Required’ blog.
For a comprehensive overview of the whole story check here, there is also an update of the whole concept from 1993 to 2010 if you can’t get enough of this kind of thing.
10″ vinyl record, charity shop find, London
