Being on a bit of a Vangelis trip recently I decided to check out his back catalogue on Discogs and see what I was missing. One of his first outings was this soundtrack to the French film ‘Sex Power’, starring Jane Birkin amongst others (makes mental note to track that one down).
More reasons why a resource like Discogs is so essential these days (something I touched on a few weeks back) – it may not be complete but it’s as indespensible to me as Wikipedia.
On a recent trip to Tel Aviv I was given a huge amount of music, both new and old, from Israel and was knocked out by the quality of it. These form the bulk of a new mix for Solid Steel and you can see a heavy bias towards the Mordy Laye and the Group Modular record I posted about the other week which is now out on vinyl and download.
Hear and buy the album in full here or hop over to group member Markey Funk’s Mixcloud page to digest one of his great Modular mixes. He, along with group partner Mule Driver, will be putting together a special Solid Steel guest mix soon…
[vimeo width=”640″ height=”350″]http://vimeo.com/50267638#[/vimeo]
Created by Mark Taylor and Thad Povey. Love the painted records creating sounds when the needle hits, what fun you could have with this although it’s not immediately obvious how you could change each record.
This looks promising, we’ve had vampires vs werewolves, vampires vs zombies, vampires vs vampires, now… vampires versus robots.
Actually it seems that the tagline here is a bit misleading and the robots are actually vampires (not sure how that works).
Nevertheless, the art – by Menton3 – is gorgeous, reminding me of Ashley Wood‘s work back when he was in his comic prime or the old Kent Williams/Jon J Muth Wolverine book.
Forget Transformers, this is Transfusion – a 3 issue series, written by Steve Niles. that just debuted from IDW, I’ve not read it yet but it looks pretty bleak as it’s set in the future where the remnants of the human race are hunted by robots who need blood to survive.
There’s a short preview from issue 1 over on CBR.
I can’t begin to pretend I’ve heard even a couple of dozen releases on Pete Namlook‘s Fax +49-69/450464 label (to give it its full title). But those that I did hear, and own, have stuck with me. Releases like Air (not the french duo who came later), Alien Community, Silence, Dark Side of the Moog, Sequential, Sea Biscuit and Dreamfish are all part of the ambient resurgence of the early to mid 90’s. Dreamfish was the moniker of Pete Namlook’s collaboration with Mixmaster Morris, who was a huge champion of the label and got some of it licensed to the Rising High label in the UK.
Namlook (Kuhlmann backwards, see what he did there?) was releasing an album a week at one point, starting off at around 500 copies on CD and progressing to 1-2000 at one point. He had a bewildering array of colour coded releases on various sub-labels, at least half of which he either recorded solo or collaborated on. The poster above is only a select number of titles, probably ranging somewhere from the early to late 90’s and doesn’t include any vinyl from the same time. Constant collaborators like Bill Laswell, Klaus Schulze, Ritchie Hawtin, Dr Atmo, Atom Heart, David Moufang and Charles Uzzel-Edwards (aka Pure Evil) are just some of the names you can find in the credits on the many releases from Fax.
I’d been thinking of doing a poster like this for some time, just to see what it would look like to put a ton of the earlier Fax releases together. Unfortunately it took the early demise of the label’s founder and driving force to make it happen. At one time you could spot a Fax record a mile off by the circular design, the Bauhaus font and an image that usually had early Photoshop filter experiments 
When out-sourcing design work to other people (in the case of Daniel Pemberton‘s ‘Bedroom’ album that I laid out) there were strict instructions and templates that had to be adhered to, everything had to fit into the label look. These instructions arrived by fax of course…
R.I.P. Peter Kuhlmann / Pete Namlook.
Download a high-res version of the poster HERE
In time for the release of Led Zeppelin‘s ‘Celebration Day’ live reunion DVD DJ Cheeba drops his ode to the rock gods with all manner of interference both old and new.
Top marks for including Double Dee & Steinski and United States of Audio‘s remix of Coldcut‘s ‘Beat & Pieces’. Well worth 30 minutes of your time this morning.
Very sad to hear the news of Pete Namlook‘s passing (aka Peter Kuhlmann) artist and founder of the Fax +49-69/450464 label from Germany. Back in the early 90’s a lot of his releases were very big in both Telepathic Fish and my early Solid Steel sets through his hook up with Rising High in the UK.
All his label sleeves had a distinctive house style for many years and were colour-coded to alert the buyer to the music contained within. I even laid out a sleeve for one of his releases once, a debut album by a young kid, just out of school called Daniel Pemberton – I wonder what happened to him?
R.I.P. Pete
.
A new remix edition of Jim Mahfood’s classic, out of print 2007 mini-comic all about the ‘Paul’s Boutique’ album has just been released (see cover of the original version, left). For serious music heads and comic book fans alike, the man who did the illustration for our ‘Caught In The Middle Of A 3 Way Mix’ has updated his ode to the Beastie’s classic LP.
Each track is dissected with lyrics, samples and making-of facts alongside illustrations referencing the subject matter. It’s a beautiful tribute to the album, which Jim has said he listens to at least once every week, and made him the first choice for an image when we were compiling our mix.
The new version features a brand new wrap-around cover, new inside front and inside back cover art, 32 pages, black ink printed on light yellow paper. Signed and numbered by Jim. Also available, the new ‘Paul’s Boutique’ Limited Edition Giclee Print and the ASK FOR JANICE Funk Pack. Dig it! Available here…
When Pepe Deluxé do anything they don’t do it by halves, in fact they go the whole nine yards and then add a load more into the mix for good measure. What emerges is music and imagery so multi-layered it requires repeat listens to pierce the surface and process the motherlode of information contained within.
One of the reasons I love Pepe is because there is genuinely no one like them, they are a one-off and a band seemingly working in and across separate time zones whose records sound so out of place you wonder if they’ll ever even find reappraisal 20 years down the line. This isn’t a criticism, it’s to be admired that a band can strike out so single-mindedly whilst ignoring any current forms of music that are deemed ‘hip’ and ‘cool’. In fact it’s testament to Pepe and Catskills for leaving off the many remixes they’ve had over the last releases as, with the exception of Husky Rescue‘s cover of ‘Supersonic’, none of them came close to Pepe’s vision and sounded like they were trying to force the band into a modern day setting (sorry guys, just my opinion).
The new Deluxe version of their ‘Queen of the Wave’ album is no different, in fact it ups the ante considerably and throws everything AND the kitchen sink at you over 2 CDs, a DVD and a 64 page booklet inside a hard backed book. The original album is present but the ‘Esoteric Pop Opera In Three Parts’ has suddenly expanded to three discs, the second with versions, new and unused tracks and an easy-listening style EP of selected songs. The DVD includes videos for singles both new and old as well as stems for budding remixers. Everything about it says EPIC, the original album is one in itself but bolstered by the 2nd disc, DVD and a book that has crammed enough material for 100 pages into 64 then the deal is sealed.
No space is left un-filled and we learn everything from recording history to how they shot the video for ‘Night & Day’ with real magic tricks and all. The book shouldn’t work, it breaks so many rules of what good design is with up to 10 different fonts competing for space on any one page and a layout that’s more scrapbook than grid. Yet it does work and adds to the music is so many ways, placing the album visually between steampunk and psychedelia with nods to Tiki and Analogue electronics from the golden age. One minute you think you’re looking at an issue of Practical Electronics then it’s a poster in the style of a traveling circus or a Richard Hamilton-esque collage.
Anyway, enough of me blathering on, check the video below as it’s another brilliant Pepe production with the classic ‘Virtual Chicken Little Funk Operator’ set to become legendary. You can BUY the deluxe package from Catskills HERE.
Jonathan Edwards has a few new books out as well as featuring in the upcoming ‘Creature Couture’ book by Felt Mistress. This one is called ‘Imagined Landscapes’ and features all sorts of weird and wonderful locations in his unique style.
If you follow his twitter you’ll have seen these popping up over the last year or so and he’s collected them together in a 32 page sketchbook. I love the colours on the cover and wished there was more colour inside but then again it is a sketchbook.
He has copies in his online shop as well as more sketchbooks, prints, original art, comics and he’ll even do a bespoke portrait of you.
That’s right, a Blade Runner Police Spinner vehicle made from Lego, custom designed and completely unauthorised. It’s not big, it’s not clever and it’s certainly not cheap when they don’t pay all the postage and you have to pick up the bill. If you fancy it for Xmas then there’s the URLs to follow in the photo and they do all sorts of other vehicles from other sci-fi franchises.
Out on Stones Throw a while back now but still in stock, ‘3 Dollars’ on 5 inches of vinyl (actual cost: $10 + postage) but still cheap compared to some of the prices I’ve been seeing lately. Great design and illustration plus the track’s a banger – “that’s right!”
[youtube width=”640″ height=”380″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6lYFO_tKlE&feature=relmfu[/youtube]
I’m not going to comment on the recent Disney buys Lucasfilm story or the current media scramble to find out who will be starring and directing because… honestly, I don’t give a shit. As I posted the other day, the other SW franchise hook up is with Angry Birds and I have to say, this is very well done. My kids play the game and if the new films failed to sell it to a new generation then this is a good start on the next one.
Only 3 more weeks until Hellboy In Hell arrives in stores, written AND drawn by the great Mike Mignola for the first time in years. If you’re new to this and fancy jumping on then now’s the time to do it and this handy resumé of Hellboy’s history popped up on the web a few weeks back.
Not that it’s any substitute for reading the actual stories (about 11 collected graphic novels now I think plus a handful of spin offs and B.P.R.D. which is a whole other story). Also this board had been created on Pinterest: The Gothic Genius of Mike Mignola if you need a fix of his artwork anytime. 
It’s been a bit quiet on the blog these last two weeks because I’ve been busy finishing the fulldome show for this weekend’s FulldomeUK2012 (tickets still available) and gigging in Tel Aviv, Berlin and Bucharest. There’s loads of stuff to come when I can find time to photograph and upload it all though. The studio is a mess, I can’t find anything without moving piles of crap, I need a day to sort stuff out but today won’t be it unfortunately.
Also this Sunday sees an appearance at The Regeneration Festival at the Tabernacle in London that runs for Saturday and Sunday and features Time & Space Machine, Wolf People, Bardo Light Show, talks and films on the psychedelic experience.
Besides that there’s all sorts of things going on behind the scenes as we prepare for 2013 and Solid Steel being 25 years old, starting with a new residency in Brighton at the Blind Tiger, starting this Friday with DK with support from 2econd Class Citizen and Banks.
Coming up: The 4xLP repress of ‘The Search Engine’ – yep, still not done, we went back and changed the cover from a heavy card gatefold to a quad foldout gatefold (remember the limited edition Paul’s Boutique LP? yes, like that), so I have to reconfigure the artwork this week.
Currently finishing a mix for Solid Steel that has a high proportion of music I was given in Israel, both old and new that is up there with the best of anything currently released on labels like Finders Keepers or Now Again (see the post of Markey Funk‘s ‘The Mystery of Mordy Laye & The Group Modular‘).
On Saturday I was lucky enough to get a ticket to the ‘Man Machine’ performance by Kraftwerk in Dusseldorf next January (thanks Tony Morley!) so I will be doing Kraftwerk Kover Kollection vol.8 to coincide with that early next year (the group are doing their 8 albums over 8 nights thing in their home town in case you didn’t hear, tickets sold out in less than 2 hours).
“just a sketch” says Henry Flint, better than some people’s finished pieces. From his twitter feed.
Wow, this is right up my street. A video collage for The Simonsound remix of Beta Hector‘s ‘Trust Me‘, featuring clips from Psychomania, Mala Morska Vila mixed with oil projections performed on overhead projector. The original song, featuring Rosi Lalor on vocals, is re-imagined by The Simonsound as mythical adventure story, told using analogue synthesisers, Optigan orchestra, home made percussion, pre recorded flute replayed and performed on reel to reel tape machine, and a scattering of voices plucked from the ether.
Available as a free download from Tru Thoughts Records
With the US election upon us I thought I’d share these photos which were taken during the run up to the 2004 Presidential election. The display was in the window of Record Palace in Amsterdam (a shop I’d recommend to anyone visiting the city).
Also Steinski knocked up a little topical skit about Mitt Romney over here.
I’ve just come back from Tel Aviv and while I was there I met Markey Funk, whose ‘Go Ask Alice’ image and mix I posted by complete coincidence earlier this week. He gave me a load of records including his latest album ‘The Mystery of Mordy Laye’ as well as a DVD with 3D glasses.
If you love radiophonic / moog / library / space beats then this is the album for you. The nearest I can pitch it is The Simonsound LP by DJ Format & Simon James on First Word last year. I definitely recommend this record, check out the album and the intriguing back story on their bandcamp page. On the same label, Audio Montage – also the home to The Apples – are a number of 45’s of old and new psyche, funk, surf, sitar material and the same goes for the Fortuna label which is only 2 releases old.
