I got into a conversation recently about comic book opening pages where type and title became part of the landscape which reminded me of the king of this; Will Eisner. I can’t claim to be an expert but I always found The Spirit opening pages that I saw to be endlessly inventive with the idea being ripped off numerous times over the decades.
There’s a great article about the public cataloging of Afrika Bambaataa‘s record collection over on Wax Poetics’ site.
Going to this next Sunday, The Simonsound playing all night in one dome, psychedelic visuals, telescopes to watch the meteor shower (maybe), Ashley Beedle DJing and more, should be fun. There will be limited free Simonsound mix CDs available and he should have copies of the new 10″ single if they arrive in time. Get more info and tickets here.
This promises to be a pretty unique event, you’re not going to get a line up like this every day. Even more so once the Very Special Guests (3 in total) are announced. The end of the 25th year will be seen out in style and Cheeba, Moneyshot and I will attempt to recreate the Paul’s Boutique mix we put together last year.
Tickets can be bought here and we should be announcing similar events in Bristol and Paris very soon.
Speaks for itself really, Shaky Kane redesigns the Orbital Comics bag.
The bag is in black & white but, if you pick up the latest issue of the free paper Your Days Are Numbered (cover, left), you get a colour version in the back (above). This is a decent quarterly freebie, printed A3 size and available in various places by the counter or where they put flyers.
Featuring original comics, interviews with creators and reviews, it’s one of the good ones to look for. The latest issue has interviews with David Hine & Shaky Kane, Gustavo Duarte (who also does the cover) and Fabio Moon & Gabriel Ba.
Also inside is this great ad for Gosh! Comics by Ben Newman (below) which, along with the new Orbital bag by Shaky, means that Forbidden Planet really need to step up with their promo artwork.
This week we return to the Solid Steel birthday celebrations and share the cake with something else that turns 25 this year – Public Enemy‘s ‘It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back’ album.
To honour both occasions our very own DJ Moneyshot shows us once again why he’s the mixtape king with the career-best offering, ‘Solid Steel and the Hour of Chaos’.
Over 60 blistering minutes he takes in all the beats, breaks, samples and spoken word nuggets that made this seminal Bomb Squad production such an explosive release.
Amongst the vast stack of tracks in the mix, expect words of wisdom from Louis Farrakhan, exclusive interviews with Hank Shocklee, and all the soul, rock ‘n’ roll and early rap tracks that went into making up P.E’s (if not hip-hop’s) finest album.
After taking part in last year’s dissection of ‘Paul’s Boutique’ and US of Audio‘s trbute to ‘3 Feet High & Rising’ – can Moneyshot raise the bar? Of course he can. If you enjoy the mix, why not read his exhaustive feature on the album in the pages of this month’s Future Music magazine?
Power to the people and the broadest beats.
Nice lot of work gone into this jazz LP-parodying flyer for a series of DJ jams in Crotona Park this summer. The last one is actually today and features Lord Finesse, DJ Cheese and Johnny Juice.
I love these guys. Taste-wise I may as well be listening to one of my own mixes here, so many tracks that I know and love. And the ones that I don’t know, I want to know.
With a graphic like that I can’t resist either – go take a listen and then – if you like what you hear – check the Group Modular album that Markey Funk made with Mule Driver.
Terrible film but great poster and animated film intro. Theme tune sung by Julie Driscoll.
How cool is this? An animated version of the Micronauts toy and comic franchise that looks pitched somewhere between Transformers Animated and Tron: Uprising.
These are concept drawings, posted by Dave Johnson aka @Devilpig666 via his Twitter account after reaching 10k followers.
The pitch ultimately failed and it looks like it won’t be made because Hasbro bought the rights but he revealed that they would have got original Micronauts comic artist Michael Golden in to do some designs too.
Regardless, it’s just nice to see this modern day re-imagining of an old classic although this does look like it would be a bit less brutal than the old comics.
From the Heritage Auctions sale site where these two original Jack Kirby pieces are due to be auctioned this weekend:
“Jack Kirby Lord of Light/Argo “Pavilions of Joy” Illustration Original Art (1978). This incredible Jack Kirby illustration, loaded with the kind of style only “King” Kirby could provide, has a very interesting story connected with it. Originally conceived as production pieces for a proposed film, based on a Roger Zelazny Science Fiction novel, the commissioned art was stored away when producer Barry Geller lost his funding. It was later picked up by the CIA for use in a daring covert rescue mission of six Americans held in Iran. A fake film production company was created, with offices set up in Hollywood, and permission to film scenes in Iran was obtained, all as a ruse to spirit the Americans out. The Ben Affleck film, Argo, is based on these true events, and this piece of art played a pivotal role in that astounding and successful mission.
The art is in ink on paper, with an approximate image area of 22.25″ x 17″, matted to an overall size of 26″ x 20″. The art is in Excellent condition, and even without the fascinating story behind it, this is Classic Kirby as you love him.
Incidentally, this piece and the other “Lord of Light” piece we’re offering have spent the last 20 years in the collection of star artist and DC Comics co-publisher Jim Lee.”
* post script: in the end these two pieces sold for $16, 730 and $23,900!
Steve Cook put these photos up last week on his Secret Oranges blog. Above is Jim Murray and below, Jason Brashill, taken at Tribal Gathering in ’97. Both were then working for 2000ad on various projects, with Jim eventually finishing off vol.2 of the Batman/Judge Dredd team-up ‘Die Laughing’ after Glenn Fabry couldn’t commit to it. He then went off to work in the computer games industry but has just put out a gorgeous book with Robbie Morrison called ‘Drowntown’ which is the first of several apparently. Jason followed a similar path but not before he’d painted one of my favourite sleeves for The Herbaliser in the shape of ‘Wall Crawling Giant Insect Breaks’, which I commissioned from him after seeing his work with graffiti artists She One and Req 1 as part of their Brighton crew, The Dusty Knights.
Two gigs back to back next weekend, Friday sees a FREE gig with DK, Jon More and Ross Allen just down the road from me in Herne Hill – should be fun. Saturday sees a return to Seignosse in France for another gig with ex-Ninja DJ Vadim, possibly the third time we’ve been billed together in the last year.
Looking better and better…
shinjuku from robert valley on Vimeo.
More beautiful animation and design from Robert Valley, not sure what this is for exactly.
Friends on my Facebook page recently will have seen a new photo album called ‘The Devil’s In The Details’ where I’ve been posting design finds that I’ve photographed whilst going through a load of records recently. All these details are hidden on the backs of sleeves or on the actual labels, another example of something that’s disappearing with the digital age.
I’ve been having a clear out recently, I’ve not properly weeded out my record collection for years apart from going through the Hip Hop last year and it’s always fascinating to realise what you have and what’s contained within the artwork as well as the grooves. Speaking of Facebook, I now have a dedicated DJ Food Official page for gig news and official releases.
I found this old print here yesterday, by Bill Scienkiewicz in ’88 but new to me.
I should have written about Pacific Rim over last weekend but didn’t find time, but I’m happy to report that it was excellent for a big summer sci-fi blockbuster. Whilst not perfect, it certainly lived up to the promise all those posters I’ve been putting up. As far as giant robots fighting giant monsters goes, it will take some beating (no pun intended). The Jaegers (the bots) looked incredible, with each one having its own distinct visual personality to tell them apart and they had weight when they moved even if the science behind them was shot through with holes. In fact, don’t even try to start picking apart that side of things as the film would just fall down immediately. The Kaiju (the monsters) are also not your run of the mill brainless city-destroying cannon fodder, they have a few tricks up their sleeves that you don’t see coming along with a reason why they’re there in the first place.
Character-wise it was full of stereotypes with some seriously clunky dialogue at times, my main gripe being that we didn’t need two kooky scientists, one straight man to play against the oddball would have been more effective. Sometimes I wanted it played a little more seriously than it was, Ron Perlman hammed it up for all he’s worth which, along with the aforementioned scientists, made it seem a lot less terrifying in light of what was happening. Idris Elba was very good though as the first in command with a couple of great lines.
The 3D was decent 99% of the time, not forced like the Star Trek: Into Darkness trailer I saw some months back where it was so unnatural as to be virtually unwatchable. Compared to it’s nearest rival – Michael Bay’s Transformers trilogy – it beats all three with a rocket-powered punch, and that’s just in the first 20 minutes. This is how to do big budget mech movies, less of a hasty, blurry washing machine battle, Del Toro brings something more visually coherent. It’s been said that this could start a new franchise as there’s enough scope before and after the storyline here, let’s hope he’s on board if they do continue (and that he somehow slips in Hellboy 3 along the way).
Not much of a deconstructive critique I know, but I got exactly what I was expecting and loved it although I did feel a little shell shocked as the credits rolled in the IMAX, watching it at that size is really the way to do it. Next films I’m looking forward to are the sci-fi epic Elysium, then Gravity which I’m told has some of the most ground-breaking sequences and cgi ever seen (and this comes from someone who worked on it at the Framestore).
The ever-brilliant Cyriak takes his Photoshop scalpel to Bloc Party for his latest piece, combining footage from two existing videos apparently. As with all his work, he just keeps going, long after most people would have stopped and repeated an earlier clip again, he takes it another step further. Incredible.