Starting this week in 2000ad, the first in a new series by Brendan McCarthy and Al Ewing – The Zaucer of Zilk – the first episode is very intriguing and reads like Alice In Wonderland in rainy run down Britain. Brendan’s art is on great form too and other good news is that Henry Flint is back on the current Judge Dredd epic which is one of the best in years.
UPDATE: You can preview the first episode for free online at the CBR website now.
[youtube width=”640″ height=”280″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXLzJhZa8PY&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]
An amazing collection of original posters from a collector who passed away is here
New CD version of the Daphne Oram compilation, images stolen from the Boomkat mailout, beauitful design and packaging. If you’re interested in this sort of thing, the original Oramics machine is on display at the Science Musesum in London with an interactive touch screen version of her ‘drawing on film’ method of composition.
Time for a repost: this lovely design was made by Stefanie Posavec, showing the length of cassette tape needed to record Kraftwerk‘s ‘Computer World’. Originally made as a one off for a friend’s club night she’s finally made them for sale.
It’s available as a 915 x 700mm 2-colour litho print (the yellow is fluorescent) on 300gsm, on Challenger Offset paper in a signed edition of 200. You can get it here and 25% of the profits go to the Ganet’s Adventure fund that helps a small primary school in Milawi.
[vimeo width=”640″ height=”360″]http://vimeo.com/35720685[/vimeo]
Amazing video to advertise usegoodbooks.com. There’s a fun dig at Amazon in there too.
Kev Walker – ‘Tharg‘ – 2001
(59.4 x 420 cm, ink on paper).
I was recently lucky enough to win the original pencil sketch from a seller on eBay too…
(59.4 x 420 cm, pencil on paper – image is cropped down, the drawing is nearer A4 in size).
Original pencil and ink drawings for the cover of 2000ad Prog 1263.
Note from Kev Walker: “I blew them up on my printer, then drew the linework in ink. Then I scan the linework, and fill in the solid blacks on the computer and add any other stuff that needs adding. In Photoshop, nothing else.
They really should be classed as final pencils, because hardly anything changes from those. I draw at print size cos I find it easier to judge how much space I’m leaving for speech bubbles.”
Pretty excited about this release and it’s been a long time coming. This is the CD Promo version of the forthcoming DJ Food & The Amorphous Androgynous remix 12″ due out on Record Store Day (April 21st). The 12″ contains the 17 minute long Amorphous (hereafter referred to as AA) remix of ‘The Illectrik Hoax’ featuring Natural Self, from my album ‘The Search Engine’. This will be split over two sides of the 12″, on multi-coloured vinyl and cut at 45 rpm for extra loudness.
The CD (which isn’t available in stores I’m afraid, although a download will cover most of it) contains radio edits of one section of the remix plus a shorter version of ‘GIANT’ featuring Matt Johnson from the aforementioned album. Exclusive to the CD and download is a beautiful ambient/acoustic remix of ‘The Illectrik Hoax’ by 2econd Class Citizen which fitted perfectly into my ambient interpretation of the record at the London Planetarium launch party, he really took it to another place.
AA on the other hand do everything you expect and more, 17 minutes split into three distinct tracks: ‘The Illectrik Hoax’ (AA remix) is a madcap jam session, trampling the original track in the dust, ‘Don’t Pray, Don’t Bother (We’re Evil)’ takes the tempo to half time and grinds without mercy until ‘The Electric Images In My Mind (Never Die)’ ups the ante for full all out sonic battery. Natural Self‘s vocal is rephrased and twisted into a repeat refrain that keeps coming back for more over the last eight and a half minutes.
Taken all together they form yet another of the AA’s ‘Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble’ remixes, the likes of which have graced Oasis, Paul Weller and Pop Levi in the past. I’m very pleased to be added to that list and I’ll post pictures of the vinyl version and details of where you can order it as soon as I have them. The artwork is by yours truly with a little help from elements Henry Flint created for the album cover.
Just arrived – Electrical Banana: Masters of Psychedelic Art by Norman Hathaway and Dan Nadel – absolutely beautiful, with a forward by Paul McCartney no less, get a copy here…
After the first mix I had tons of material left over and, with some of the obvious covers out the way, it was time to up the ante. The opener of ‘Radio Activity’ played by the First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra (is there a second?) does that pretty well.
Rare live versions of ‘The Model’ by Lloyd Cole and The Balanescu Quartet featuring David Byrne crop up and we start to see the pattern of many versions of the track appearing, it’s by far their most covered song. I think this one is possibly my favourite of all of the mixes as it features some amazing versions of ‘Pocket Calculator’, silly spoken word and the abstract cover art.
By complete coincidence about a minute after I posted this I saw that VW has a competition to win tickets to the MOMA shows (so that’s where they all went) if you make a gif ! Weird synchronicity.
I have to say that Kraftwerk’s incessant tinkering and airbrushing of their past isn’t much to my taste (especially the erasing of past members’ contributions) and is one of the reasons why most of the content I’m putting up here this month doesn’t go beyond ‘Tour De France’. I’m not a fan of ‘The Mix’, as I found that they’d ironed all the soul out of their music in reconstructing it for a real computer age. The irony of the men who wanted to sound like machines finally attaining their wish as technology caught up with them is that they lost the one thing that gave their music depth – the humanity.
Similarly the hand drawn, painted and coloured graphics and photography have been replaced by cold, dull cgi versions of their classic sleeves. The reduction of the ‘Radio-Activity’, ‘Trans Europe Express’ and ‘Man Machine’ sleeves to basic typography and logos may bring them into a neat line with the rest of the Catalogue but it does little for me aesthetically. The one example I will concede to however, (and this happened fairly quickly back in the 70’s), is the re-draughting of the ‘Autobahn’ sleeve. Above you can see the original with its dashboard and rear view mirror most definitely placing the sleeve in the early 70’s. The removal of the dashboard on later sleeves definitely makes for a better composition but the adoption of the UK sleeve, that centered on the white on blue motorway logo, gives it the jump from literal illustration to iconic status.
Above are different front and back sleeves for various 7″ singles utilising parts of the ‘Autobahn’ artwork and below are two CD booklet illustrations from the Catalogue remasters. I assume these are newly commissioned pieces in the style of the original cover but the hyperreal colour does nothing for me.
…and a couple of late entries: Not official in any way but linked visually to the above designs, flyers for a club my friend Graeme Ross was involved in.
Yet another batch of posters arrived from Scraffer (via Henry Flint) to be signed and then sent out to buyers. Above is a small selection of doodles by Henry for the ‘Madman’ print, of which every one has its own bespoke illustration by Henry inside the thought bubble. I think these are close to selling out now whilst the ‘Life Cycle of a Machine’ print is definitely sold out – don’t worry if you ordered and didn’t receive one yet, I just signed the last batch. The ‘Cosmonaut’ print below is also still available as we made that in a higher run.
This week has been fruitful in terms of new vinyl finding its way into my hands. A package from a friend, several online purchases, a spot of digging and a random find of a comic with a free record in the Nobrow shop in Shoreditch. Here’s a small selection including private press releases, airline records, postcard records, a Russian pressing of two Led Zeppelin albums and a hand painted cover.
Girls On Top ‘I Wanna Dance With Numbers’ 7″, Frenchbloke & Son ‘Sexy Model’ 7″, Late Night Radio 12″, ‘Dark Side Of The Autobahn‘ Mordant Music 7″ picture disc.
These are among the best reworkings I own on vinyl because the artwork perfectly mirrors the contents. I can credit the Girls On Top record for igniting my love of mash ups, I picked it up because of the cover and took a listen in Rough Trade over in Ladbroke Grove the week it came out. It was so insane I had to have it and I remember being slightly worried it would clear the floor the first time I played it out. The crowd went mad for it. ‘Sexy Model’ is a genius pairing of Right Said Fred‘s ‘I’m Too Sexy’ with Kraftwerk’s most known hit; “I’m a model, you know what I mean”. It’s also backed by a latin take on ‘Neon Lights’ and comes on transparent vinyl with a free badge. Graeme Ross, aka ‘Son’ in the duo, helped me greatly when I was first compiling the Kover Kollections too.
Late Night Radio is a mind boggling medley in the same vein as the Stars on 45 records but pitting Kraftwerk with Vangelis, has to be heard to be believed. ‘Dark Side of the Autobahn’ is an excellent coupling of ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ with ‘Autobahn’ (as you can probably guess from the title), as well as snatches of Joy Division, Throbbing Gristle, Simon & Garfunkel and Peter Cook. The B side plays the same track backwards and all of these can be heard scattered around the various Kraftwerk Kover Kollection mix series. Below is a strange artifact from Russian that I picked up, a 5″ red flexi disc of ‘Boing Boom Tschak’, these things pop up all the time for bigger name groups but this is the first Kraftwerk one I’ve seen.
I received this beautiful item the other day after seeing it on both the RokRiot and Hardformat sites. Upon watching the short film of the record being opened (see below) I knew I had to have a copy. The group is Machine, Dear and the album is called ‘Killing Something That’s Already Dead’. Designed by Klaus Matthiesen of OddFischlein, there are only 150 copies and you can grab one here.
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I highlighted this before when it first appeared but I only had two of the four discs then and the photos didn’t really do it justice. I now have the complete set so I thought I’d revisit the package and try to get some better images of all the parts (very difficult). For those who missed these there is now a 2 CD version with all this and more out on Modern Love.
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Jean Giraud aka Moebius has died, he was a massive inspiration, especially on the recent artwork for my album with Henry Flint.
Moebius contributed to the European anthology ‘Métal Hurlant’ in the 70’s, a lot of which was reprinted in the American version, ‘Heavy Metal’, which helped to bring him to worldwide attention. He also drew the cowboy books ‘Blueberry’, collaborated on comics with Alejandro Jodorowsky and contributed designs to many classic films such as Alien, Tron and The 5th Element.
What with Ralph McQuarrie dying last week, it’s the end of an era for some of the most original designers of the sci-fi I grew up with.
