Something to get you in the mood for the 45 Live gig this Saturday at Factory in Plymouth.
All 7″s, no track list yet, bonus point for those that get the title reference without googling it.
After a drought I’m overflowing with mixes at the moment and there’s more to come…
This week it’s a triple flexi shoot out with Coldcut‘s Jon More returning to add a gem from his collection to the selection and it’s taken a fair bit of research to piece together some of the info here. Two of the discs are adverts for party nights around the capital highlighting a particular trend for distributing information about underground or illegal dance music in the 80s and early 90s. All are unintentional comedy gold in part as well.
We’ll start in chronological order with Jon’s contribution: ‘Discoland’ by The Baby Sham $ Boys (the name says it all) for a party in Blackfriars, London from 1986 from what I can tell by tracing the date and by the clubs, DJs and artists mentioned. Jon remembers, “I may have got this when I worked at Reckless (secondhand record store in Soho) – I have a vague memory of someone dropping a pile off… I did not go – a decision that was easy to make after listening to the “advert”….”
Terribly sung and narrated over The Floaters‘ ‘Float On’ we have sex, drugs, geezers, innuendo and the worst French accent you ever heard. Narrator Robert introduces organiser Mark and DJs Chris, Little James and Simon (Pew?) in a line up that just screams 80s, mercifully there’s no B side.
A recent discovery of mine in an East London record emporium – where the (young) cashier looked at it exclaiming, “what is it?” – was this party invite on a flexi. Simply entitled ‘Party’ this 1-sided disc, complete with London Records logo, is a comparatively slick production featuring rapper E-Mix giving details for a jam on Saturday 12th Sept, 1987 over Public Enemy‘s ‘Timebomb’ instrumental.
It seems to be for an illegal party featuring DJs Jazzie B, Ratchet, Mark Moore, Ben Jones, Little John, Milton Checkley (sp?) and Roots (the same one as featured on early Ninja Tune records maybe?). There’s a CT logo above the London one, was this the party name or venue? E Mix calls out, “CT getting busy now” at the start and the venue is quoted as “next door to Bill Sticker, not the big route ‘cos it is too suspicious” and “be there dead at 11, don’t make a queue, remember, this is an illegal do”. Again tracing the date back it seems that this comes from 1987 which would make sense with the names and the Public Enemy backing track.
The final flexi has literally no info on the clear disc itself aside from ‘Orlake’ (this will be the pressing plant it was made at) and ‘Sturflexi’ (the catalogue number) scratched into the run out. I got this many years ago, thrown in as part of a trade with another collector and, through the magic of Discogs, managed to find out what this gem was. Apparently it came free with an issue of UK magazine Generator and was worth the punt as it’s certainly unique.
Two sides of adverts for compilations with side A featuring two ads for The Sonic Experience – Def Til’ Dawn (1993) on Strictly Underground Records. This contains recordings of people and police from raves in between tracks, sounds professionally made and I’m pretty sure I heard some of these on Colin Dale and Colin Favor‘s KISS FM shows in the early 90s.
The B side contains three ads for compilations on Strictly Hardcore, (a subsidiary of Strictly Underground) Illegal Rave (1992), Illegal Rave II (1993) and Illegal Pirate Radio (1993). In comparison to the flip these ads are just two geezers (presumably label owner Mark Ryder and someone called John or Kev) waxing lyrical about the records, flipping through the tracks as friends would in bedrooms around the nation. The fact that the words ‘strictly’ and ‘kev’ were included was not lost on me and I cut this up at the start of a Hardcore mix I made around 2004.
Never one to pass up an opportunity to advertise their wares, the advert for Illegal Rave was included at the end of the Illegal Rave II compilation, another was featured at the end of the later Illegal Pirate Radio II comp and The Sonic Experience featured the ad for Illegal Pirate Radio.
Apparently there was a sleeve for it which may have helped me put together some of this info a bit quicker, this post hast taken up far too much time!
Love this poster for 1972 film ZPG (Zero Population Growth), sort of a visual mix of Logan’s Run and Yellow Submarine. The film looks awful though…
A spotlight on ads designed by Barney Bubbles taken from various issues of Sounds or the NME between 1977-81. No doubt there were many more but I don’t have complete collections. I’m fairly certain that these are done by Barney’s hand as all bear his style and he designed the sleeves for these releases so you would assume he would have done the ads too. I could be wrong though and no doubt Paul Gorman who runs the excellent Reasons To Be Cheerful blog dedicated to Barney’s work could provide 100% confirmation.
What is The Dark Outside?
24 Hours of Music nobody has heard before in a place where nobody might be listening.
Who is taking part?
There are quite a lot of contributors, you’d best scroll down the list here.
I’ve contributed an unreleased remix but it’s hidden in the line up.
When?
Sept 26th-27th, 2015
Where?
Murrays Monument, Talnotry, The Galloway Forest Dark Skies Park, Scotland. More explicit directions are here
What’s the catch?
You need travel to one of the darkest places in the UK and bring a radio.
Can anyone contribute?
Yes! Send material to [email protected]
Where can I find more info?
http://www.darkoutside.co.uk/
What’s this?
The location that The Dark Outside will be broadcasting from (in the day of course)
PS. What is the Stolen Library?
Ah, that is something possibly even more wonderful
I saw this recently and, although dated technically, it has some fantastic sets, shots and soundtrack moments. A tale of the world’s first AI supercomputer who decides man is a danger to himself and holds the world to ransom. The film was based on a novel by D.F. Jones from two years previous and there were two sequels although none apparently live up to the original. Highly recommended and sporting some great poster and book cover design from the late 60s.
I can’t say enough good things about the new anthology comic Island. Put together by Brandon Graham and Emma Rios it’s a collection of stories by all manner of artists working in the field from the well known, the lesser known to first timers. There’s no over-arching themes although visions of future societies do feature largely but these aren’t super hero, big brawl shoot ’em up comics, they’re about ideas, relationships and a bigger picture. Some strips are self-contained and some continue in the next issue, some even continue several issues later and the hit rate per issue is high.
Issue 3 just came out – worth it for the Faryl Dalrymple cover alone (above) – you can see previews over on the comic’s tumblr and order digital versions from Image if print copies are hard to find. What’s also refreshing is that it contains no ads whatsoever and all the usual publisher guff is kept to the smallest possible point size in the most inconspicuous place so you get the maximum amount of comics and the minimum amount of distraction. There’s no standard Island logo either so each issue looks different but you can tell it from other standard comics as it’s larger and has a perfect bound spine rather than staples.
Great post over on Scarfolk this week…
Last Saturday (Sept 12th) I played an hour long set after a showing of ‘Jodorowsky’s Dune’ documentary at one of the FEAST film nights in West Norwood’s Portico Gallery. During the mix the audience were greeted with a film of the slowly evolving, geometric designs of Ambigraph aka Ameet Hindocha.
Night co-ordinator Pete Williams recorded the mix and Ameet has reworked his visuals to accompany it in an hour long, meditative soundscape where all tracks are sourced from releases connected with Frank Herbert‘s most famous novel. *I recommend viewing in HD, probably late at night with the lights off.
Over the decades many artists have been inspired by this work and there are many concept albums built around themes from his books. As well as Toto‘s score for David Lynch‘s big screen adaptation there’s also music from the forthcoming soundtrack to the documentary I mentioned and tunes from Bernard Szajner‘s ‘Visions of Dune’ release among others.
I was very pleased when one of these popped through the letterbox the other day – a present from one of my consistently favourite labels. Ghost Box records are 10 and what does any self-respecting label do when they reach that anniversary? They compile some of the best bits and that’s exactly what ‘In A Moment’ showcases.
Nestling in the credits as well… that’s very serious company to be keeping. The comp is out on 9th October on double vinyl, CD and DL with sleeve notes by Simon ‘Hauntology’ Reynolds.
My last flexi disc from Japan this week and one that looks back to the west, London and Simon Harris’ Music of Life record label. Yasuharu Konishi – a founding member of Pizzacato 5 – creates ‘A Tribute To Simon Harris’, a multi-tempo break beat cut & paste tune on bright yellow plastic. It was available in issue 53 (July 2001) of Relax magazine, this time in a printed sleeve, and the 524 on the disc is the name of his record label.
Back in the UK, in the late 80s, Simon Harris was issuing flexi discs of his own, the one below being an overview of his Music of Life label thus far. It dates from 1987, only about a year since the label’s inception, a time when it was transitioning from reissues of US material to original content, focusing on the UK Hip Hop scene. He mentions “here at the 1987 International DJ convention“ so I’d guess it was only available at the event as the tone is very industry-based with talk of distributors, import-style pressings and loud vinyl cuts. There’s no trace of it on either Discogs or YouTube so I think this is a fairly safe one to put up and I’ve added it to my Soundcloud.
I’ve always known Music of Life as a Hip Hop or Breakbeat label but during the history of the label, Simon mentions their first release – a remix of Cerrone‘s ‘Supernature’ on a one-side 12″. I dug out my copy and sure enough, check the catalogue number: MOLIF 1 from 1986 no less. (This isn’t a flexi but I thought it was interesting).
Another flexi that MOL issued was a preview promo for their Hard As Hell 3 compilation which dates from 1988. I don’t actually have a copy of this myself but someone has put it up on YouTube in all its Harris-narrated glory, nice Music of Life slipmat too. No idea where this was available from, maybe a magazine like Hip Hop Connection?
Jamie Hewlett’s first ever exhibition will actually be three: “the fine art exhibition comprises three bodies of work: “Tarot” (“Hewlett’s idiosyncratic, breathtaking interpretation of the world of tarotica”), “Honey” (a “frisky homage to the exploitation movies of the 60s and 70s”), and “Pines”, featuring “extraordinarily detailed illustrations of trees Hewlett observed while in the south of France.”
Pre-exhibition prints (that are very expensive and possibly spoil part of the surprise) here
Out today, Christian Ward and Matt Fraction‘s continuing space saga, ODY-C from Image Comics– it’s all about the logo placement.
Beautiful artwork by Nick Stewart Hoyle aka Signalstarr for the soundtrack release of ‘Jodorowsky’s Dune’. Pre-order is up now via One Way Static for European customers, who have an exclusive variant. For US customers, order via Light In The Attic. It comes as a double LP with coloured swirl vinyl, silver foil embossing, gatefold sleeve and a poster version of this cover.
“Building upon director Frank Pavich’s idea for a score with a “Tangerine Dream-type feel,” Stenzel lays out a cosmic arsenal of analog synthesizers that would make any collector green at the gills: among other gems are a rare Moog Source, CZ-101s, and a Roland Juno 6, as well as unorthodox instruments like a toy Concertmate organ and a Nintendo DS. “I also played guitar and did vocals,” says Stenzel, “some chanting… and some screaming, which comes naturally to me.” The score also features narration by Jodorowsky himself. As Stenzel notes, “Jodo’s voice is actually the soundtrack’s main musical instrument–listening to him was almost like hypnosis, like going to the guru every night.”
My DJ set from Saturday, performed after the showing of the doc. at the FEAST night in West Norwood, is almost ready to post and contains several cuts from this album alongside all manner of other Dune-centric material.
So much to love about this, from the 70s-esque illustration by Terry Pastor to the typography. It’s another winning compilation from Finders Keepers, on sale here and now.
This is slowly creeping up on us, a new release and launch party from Buried Treasure whose recent compilation of John Baker cuts, The Vendetta Tapes, I loved.
“London. 1968. Two pioneering musicians compose electronic themes for television & radio. They discover a recording that leads to a startling revelation about their employer. Fascinated by the occult nature of the tape they conduct a studio ritual that will alter their lives forever.”
The Delaware Road is a psychological thriller & an audio-visual treat for fans of archived electronica, far out jazz & haunted folk grooves. Conceived & written by Alan Gubby. Additional material by David Yates. Compere: Dolly Dolly
Debut performance on Sat 14th Nov 2015 @ South Street Arts Centre, Reading, Berks.
Tickets here:
Live performances by: Howlround, The Dandelion Set, Ian Helliwell, The Rowan Amber Mill, Robin Lee, Loose Capacitor, Tim Hill, The Twelve Hour Foundation & Revbjelde.
DJs: Jonny Trunk & The Séance (feat. Pete Wiggs from Saint Etienne)
Tickets: £15 advance, £13 concession; £16 on the door.
Price includes free poster & advance download code for ‘The Delaware Road’ compilation album on Buried Treasure Records. All tickets are inclusive of booking fee
Star Wars video mash ups are all very well and good but now for the serious stuff that matters. I’ll be playing some tunes at this on Saturday, please visit this link for more details about how you can help, what is needed and what isn’t. You can drop donations at Glasshouse and they will be distributed to those who need them, have a clear out and help make a difference.
Obsolete formats: I have no way to play these first few items and already own them in several other forms but I couldn’t resist picking these up today.
The ‘…Pelham 123’ release is a Video disc in a huge plastic ‘cartridge’, bigger than an LP, I originally thought this was the same as the Laser disc system but it seems it’s an earlier, failed format that was read with a physical needle rather than a laser! – more info here.
I was amazed that the Derek & Clive release was even on 8-Track – this one almost as dirty as the audio it contains. The Curtis Mayfield cart is just a beautiful object.
This is Toolshed‘s first ever release from 15 years ago, a 2 track 7″ in a ziplock bag with screen-printed, folded card cover. Toolshed is Graham Massey‘s occasional all-star experimental supergroup featuring the likes of Paddy Steer, Seaming To and many more.
‘Punk Funk’ was my favourite track from The Brotherhood‘s Elementalz album back in the mid 90s and I never even knew this existed on 7″. With a great heavy remix by 12 Rounds (who included Atticus Ross among their members) exclusive to this format it’s probably my favourite find of the day. This particular version is not on YouTube so you’ll have to take my word for it.
Finally found this Psychedelic Furs 7″ with a flexi stuck to the cover, play the sleeve as well as the 45 inside!
This Jona Lewie single is actually only 6″s in size and includes a funny little disclaimer about the realities of automatic turntables trying to play it. Stiff Records up to their old tricks again, strange that they should do a 6″ and a 7″? This one was bought purely for its odd format and joins the tiny ranks of my irregular-sized vinyl collection.
From the seemingly bottomless archives of the Future Sound of London‘s tape cupboard comes vol. 8 in their From The Archives series, 12 tracks from unspecified times that never made the cut. As well as this new release there are now vinyl versions of earlier volumes of their more ambient Environments series, complete with Buggy G. Riphead sleeves. You can preview one track from Archived 8 below and get CDs, downloads and vinyl from their FSOLdigital online store where they also have posters and T-shirts. Also you get an extra exclusive 3-track digital EP if you order from there too.
