A quick selection of images sent to me my buyers over the Record Store Day weekend. Thanks to Cheeta Breaks, Ian Wilson, Mr Mumbles, RJ Sandford, SV Child, Tom Hamid and Trist Stephens.
This week on Solid Steel I put together the best of a set I made for the De:Tuned party in Antwerp the weekend before last with the I Love Acid crew. They asked for an old school Hip Hop and Hip House set (I think I probably own about one Hip House record so it’s more heavy on the electro to be honest). Anyway, it’s a trip back to the 80’s but with an added bonus for Solid Steel that the Antwerp crowd didn’t get. The first seven and a half minutes consists of selections from the first mixtape I ever made in 1987, extracted from an old TDK AD90 cassette and unheard by virtually anyone for 25 years.
Let me explain a little about the mix, it was made over many months in various sections once I traded in my first mixer (a Tandy model with no crossfader) and bought a Soundlab model – hence the name, ‘The Soundlab Mix’. At the time I had very few records, maybe less than 100, I had no parental collection to raid as they never had a record player and my younger brother had none either. So, I was forced to use what I could find alongside the few import 12″s I could afford and the limited UK releases of US Hip Hop that were available. People forget that a lot of early rap never got released in the UK in the first half of the 80’s, we were mostly forced to survive on Streetsounds Electro compilations and the few ‘hits’ that the Sugarhill, Tommy Boy and Def Jam labels produced until the rest of the industry caught up.
This meant that my early mixes have tracks from 7″ singles given away free with music papers, carboot soul and funk compilations and even a flexi disc I had found attached to a magazine in a paper recycling shed at school. As you will hear, the mix is massively influenced by Double Dee & Steinski‘s ‘Lessons’ series and Grandmaster Flash‘s ‘Adventures On The Wheels of Steel’. Kicking off with the Thunderbirds theme, the idea to mix well known soundtracks over beats seemed like a no-brainer but I’ve spared you the 007 and 2001 themes elsewhere on the tape. In the spirit of the aforementioned ‘Lessons’ I decided I needed an ‘old’ song to mix over some beats, similar to the ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’ section in Double Dee & Steinski’s masterpiece. For this, I used the flexi disc which happened to contain, ‘The Inquisition’ from Mel Brooks‘ ‘History of the World Part 1’ film, not very politically correct by any means, sorry, I had to use what I get my hands on.
Anyway, I wanted lots happening rather than having to mix live and change records so I would record a short section of two records, wait until one had finished and pause the tape on the beat. Rewinding to the best point, I’d cue up another record and jump back in at the appropriate point, sometimes for as little one line of dialogue. Neither of the decks were Technics 1200‘s and only one had a pitch control so each record had to be pitched to beat mix before the next section. Actually the ‘pitch’ control wasn’t anything of the sort, it was a tiny screw next to the tone arm that I found, if you inserted a small screw driver into it, you could fine tune the deck speed faster or slower. At times I would have to release the pause button and start scratching immediately so a lot of it is a little shoddy, also, occasionally the initial edit was sloppy so I had to rewind and do it all again until I got a clean join between the two separate recordings. It was a learning experience and I would record small sections with what I had and slowly build on it as and when I got new records so that the side filled up over the course of about a year, eventually ending with some chart acid and dance music in amongst the beats, rhymes and film snippets.
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.
You have to hand it to Jack White, this is the coolest thing to bring back into the world.
Tomorrow sees a double whammy in Madrid where I’ve been invited to talk about my design work in general for a meeting at Café Molar. It starts around 7.30pm and should last for an hour with a Q&A session.
Later that night I’ll be playing a 2 hour AV DJ set at the Skills Club before heading back to the UK on Saturday for Record Store Day.
I absolutely love these ads from 1981, they’ve been doing the rounds on the web for some time now, I think they originate from a Lego Flickr group but I can’t find the source. Anyway, before Lego Friends designated a pink and purple world for girls only, it was resolutely unisex, and hang the cheap brown background, it was all about the bricks.
It’s that time of year again, Record Store Day looms this Saturday and the Secret 7″ project is back for another year. Initiated by Universal Records, it presents artists and designers with the chance to create a one-off cover for one of seven different releases, both old and new.
This year’s artists are Public Enemy, Elton John, Laura Marling, Nas, Haim, Jessie Ware and Nick Drake. Over 700 sleeves have been created and each will be available on April 20th at Mother, 10 Redchurch St, London, E2 7DD at the price of £40 each with the money raised going to the charity Art Against Knives.
You won’t know who has designed which sleeve or what song you’re buying (although you can take an educated guess) until you buy it, when all will be revealed. I bought three last year and it was one of the most exciting purchases I made in recent memory.
The sleeves were on view to the public last weekend and I managed to catch the last few minutes and snap some favourites before they closed the doors, which reopen at 10am on Saturday. I spotted work by Pete Fowler, Jonathan Edwards and Felt Mistress among them but Gilbert & George have contributed this year somewhere too.
I’ll be in Madrid on Friday, playing at the Skillz Club and also giving a talk on graphic design an as yet unspecified place.
This is great, three in a row now from Melt Yourself Down on Leaf.
This really made me laugh (slightly NSFW)
After the post last week I’ve dug up a few more of these odd rock posters with a better look at Hunt Emerson‘s Ramones one and a very weird Stranglers image by Stuart Briers.
*update – two late additions found elsewhere: The Clash by Mark Manning (the same one?) and Siouxsie by Borin Van Loon (pseudonym?)
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).
Very sad to hear the news that Carmine Infantino passed away the other day. I remember him from the time he used to draw Star Wars Weekly in the late 70’s as his distinct style stood out despite who was inking his work that week. As a result, he’s probably one of the first American comic book artists I noticed along with Micheal Golden‘s work on Micronauts. I didn’t have access to US comics at that time aside from the random samplings you could find in the spinner racks of some newsagents.
From an issue of i-D magazine dated Aug ’86, this recently turned up in an expedition in the Secret Oranges archive (incidentally it’s Steve Cook‘s birthday today). A rather risqué ad for Sigue Sigue Sputnik‘s debut album, ‘Flaunt It’, which I seem to remember got banned from most publications at the time. I’m a big fan of Sputnik, especially this Giorgio Moroder-produced album and its surrounding singles, so you’ll occasionally see posts about them featured here.
Tony James, band leader and general mastermind behind them recently wrote up their history at length on their newly-launched website and it’s a candid, no-holds-barred read. As with any history, it’s his version of events and I’m sure there’s another side to it but he’s very forthcoming about the failings of the second album and the record industry crap that went with it. There are also all sorts of outtakes and demos up online under the heading ‘Demobomb’ which are pretty illuminating in terms of how they got their sound.
Also below is the news piece from Sounds the week the band signed their ‘million pound’ deal. This was quite something at the time as the band had a lot of hype surrounding them without a recording to their name but had managed to get the sort of double page features in the music press usually reserved for established artists. Also if anyone has a sealed copy of the cassette on card version of this album, (see above) packaged to look like a toy, then I’m still looking for a copy.
First rule of Dome Club? Everybody talks about Dome Club – go and check it out, an online video just doesn’t do this justice. I won’t be at the April shows but I might be at the May one (just eating popcorn probably).
These vintage posters from the late 70’s, and many more of their kind, went up on eBay today from the seller v6kentman.They’re something you rarely see these days in a world where image and copyright is controlled meticulously; illustrated versions of current music idols, originally printed by Communication Vectors of London in 1979 and sold as posters.
What makes some of these especially interesting to me is that they are illustrated by some of the best of the UK’s underground comic artists at the time: Hunt Emerson, Kevin O’Neill, Bryan Talbot, Brett Ewins, John Higgins and David Hine. I’ve seen the O’Neill ones before but the rest are new to me and there were a lot of them it seems with 2 series’, A & B.
I can find virtually nothing about these on the web aside from a few more examples like Sid Vicious by Ewins and The Sex Pistols by Emerson. If anyone knows more about them then please get in touch. V6kentman has many more for sale though, all starting at £9.99 and featuring loads of other artists such as The Stones, Bowie, Ian Dury, The Runaways, Dylan, Zappa… some great, some not so successful. All fascinating to see though and linked in to a project I’m researching on music illustration in UK magazines from the 70’s onwards.
PS. David Hine writes:
“I hate that illustration! I think that was done 1979 or 1980. There were dozens of posters produced by Communication Vectors. This company, run by a guy called Mal Burns, also produced the comic Pssst! It was a weird setup, I think the money came from a mysterious French millionaire.
I do remember that all the submitted artwork was exhibited in a room and artists were invited to a meeting to vote on which should go to print. It was a ridiculous system. Only a small proportion of the artists were able to get there and I confess we fiddled the vote along the lines of “I’ll vote for yours if you vote for mine.” There were posters by Hunt Emerson, Bryan Talbot, Brett Ewins and Brendan McCarthy among others. Here’s a link to Brendan’s excellent take on The Specials and Johnny Rotten: I think I also did a Buzzcocks print. We were well paid for the time – £200 per artwork if memory serves.”
The new Demdike Stare 12″ has a nice twist to the packaging and design. It comes in a paper sleeve, housed in a second thin PVC protective cover with an A4 insert and labels that are either black or white for sides A and B. On the front are instructions that customers would see if they had ordered their own set of test pressings to approve before a release.
For those that don’t know, once a record is finished it goes to a cutting house where they make a master ‘lacquer’ of the disc on a large lathe in real time. That lacquer is then sent off to the pressing plant and a small number of ‘test’ pressings are made, usually called ‘white labels’ due to the fact that a white label is pressed onto the centre where the regular label would go. These are then sent to the artist or record label to check that ‘the cut’ was OK and that everything sounds fine before proceeding with the full run of the pressing. It would be foolish to go through such a delicate and variable process without checking a sample copy before pressing hundreds or thousands of discs only for them to all be defective.
The new release is the first in a series of ‘Test Pressings’ by the duo and the cover sets out the various steps you should take when getting such a pressing yourself. Only the catalogue number appears on the front, no titles or even the group’s name (that’s on the insert) and the same thing is repeated in German on the reverse of the sleeve. I think this is their best release in a while, dark and sinister as usual but more beat-orientated this time around, in an industrial meets jungle kind of way.
Record Store Day is only 3 weeks away and, as usual, my local used record store, Rat Records in Camberwell, will be celebrating. I had great fun playing there last year and, as is traditional, my good friend David Vallade has out done himself this year with his poster for the event. They have six separate in stores this year, lord knows where they will fit everyone!
Rat doesn’t have any of the usual RSD releases as they are a used store but they have new stock every Saturday and will be stockpiling specials for April 20th I’m sure. If you’re South of the river and don’t fancy joining the scrum uptown but want to just rummage in the unknown and support a local business in the celebration of vinyl then this is a good place to start.
They are just off Camberwell Green, nearest tube is Oval, nearest overground is Denmark Hill and there are plenty of buses from Oval or Elephant that go straight there.
That makes 5 now, so looking forward to this…
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.
