3-Way Mix in Canada this weekend

Off to Canada this weekend to play two 3-Way Mix shows with Cheeba and Moneyshot in Montreal and Ottawa. Friday will see a return to the SAT in Montreal where I did my dome shows in 2012 and on Saturday we’re at Ritual in Ottawa with promoter Shawn Scallen who was the first person to put Ninja Tune on in that city back in 1996!.

Here’s a photo he took of PC and I from that night and also a short interview I did last week for Apt 613. We’re beginning to upgrade the video side of the mix now and I’ve been editing suitable footage all week for my section which should debut this weekend if I can get it all to synch properly.

*UPDATE* – here’s a 3-Way interview with Darcy MacDonald that went live whilst I was away about the mix

Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD Teaser


Weirdly another thing with ‘Future Shock’ as a title, must be something in the air – although my mix title takes from both 2000ad and an early 70’s documentary. But anyway, I’ve been meaning to post this for ages but got sidetracked. Someone is finally attempting to tell the story of 2000ad in proper documentary form and they’re really going all out to do it.
So far I think they’ve spoken to anyone and everyone who’s ever been within walking distance of the comic in the last 37 years. Check the trailer above, read the production blog, it will be screening at Beyond Fest and Fantastic Fest in the US in the coming months but there’s no news of a UK premiere yet.

Posted in 2000ad, Film. | No Comments |

Full Bleed demo by Bundy K Brown

Sorry for the lack of recent updates, really juggling a lot of different plates at the moment with gigs, video edits and artwork. Trying to fit music and life into the mix is proving difficult and all my web-time at the moment is being swallowed in a gargantuan update of this site which is over 5 years old now and is showing it’s age.

Until then here’s a treat uploaded by Bundy K Brown, it’s his first pass demo of the track we collaborated on that opened ‘Kaleidoscope’ back in 2000. We took the stems of this version and broke it all up and added to my version to make the one you hear on the LP today. There’s some interesting stuff going on in there as he varies the tempo here and there by a couple of bpm to get a live feel for it (it’s all samples). Check out his Soundcloud as he’s uploading lots of archive stuff at the moment.

Anyway, enjoy – that’s also any early idea for the LP cover in the upload. There’s lots of stuff in the works at the moment that I can share soon with several things coming to a head hopefully and then the blog can become a bit more regular again.

Posted in DJ Food, Music. | 1 Comment |

Bernard Szajner’s ‘Visions of Dune’ reissue

Received a vinyl copy of this wonderful album over the weekend from InFiné Records (thanks!) Beautiful packaging with debossing on silver card + insert and inner sleeve, rounding off an excellent record perfectly. Pretty sure this will be in the end of year top 10 album chart for 2014 for me, not a duff track on it. Get it here.
UPDATE: Finders Keepers have just put an exclusive cassette version on sale referencing the original artwork.

Future Sound of London ‘Environment 5’ album + free EP

Following on from the themes of the first four ‘Environments’ albums, Five explores the space / time / dimension that exists when we die. The moment of departure. It includes appearances from Daniel Pemberton (BAFTA nominated / Ivor Novello winning composer), Raven Bush (Syd Arthur) and Riz Maslen (Neotropic). The Environment series originally began as an archive of previously unreleased recordings but Environment Five features thirteen all new songs recorded in the first half of 2014.

All pre-orders of the new album made through FSOLDigital will receive a bonus free 3-track EP on release! Here’s a new teaser video and album cover too – more info on fsolnews.blogspot.

My very good friend Roy ‘DJ Moneyshot’ Spencer recently interviewed Garry Cobain for the classic album series in this month’s Future Music, focusing on their ‘Lifeforms’ album.

Posted in Film, Music. | No Comments |

Kid Koala ‘Nufonia Must Fall’ live show

Kid Koala‘s latest show is so multifaceted that it almost defies description, it certainly isn’t easy to sum up in one sentence anyway. In 2003 he released a 300 page silent graphic novel called ‘Nufonia Must Fall’ about a robot who falls in love with a girl (no spoilers there). He’s now translated it into a hour long stage performance that sees the story performed with puppets whilst being filmed live as Kid plays the soundtrack alongside The Afiara Quartet.

The puppets, or more accurately models / macquettes, came in different sizes and there must have been at least 10 different stage sets on pedestals which would be filmed before the camera moved on to the next on a tracking dolly. The puppeteers all wore black so as to be more inconspicuous and would change stage sets between filming as each scene was projected and edited live above the stage on a huge screen. All the while Kid Koala was soundtracking the performance alongside a string quartet, one minute playing keyboards then scratching, playing mandolin or affecting voices into a vocoder. At one point he was playing a keyboard figure with one hand and then needle dropping tones from the Spiritualized drone record ‘Pure Phase’ to form melodies.

The whole piece was incredible, funny and moving and the sit down setting of the Roundhouse on a rainy Monday night made it even more fantastic. It was also the antithesis of his previous ‘Short Attention Span Theatre’ shows of a few years ago, often moving as a glacial pace because of the limitations placed on the crew moving between scenes which took time to set up and assemble. Prerecorded inserts of the robot’s chest-mounted tape recorder or cut-away scenes involving hands performing acts that the models couldn’t were included where needed and bought time for the puppeteers and variety to the camera angles.

The music was an integral part of the piece and bought scenes to life, the themes repeating to form a fully realised score that built on the original soundtrack included with the book. I was close to tears at one point and realised that it was the music that had bought me there but it was also used as a sound effect with a particularly effective cello bow sound used to make the sound of the robot’s head turning in an elevator scene.

If you get the chance to see this then take it as it won’t be getting too many outings due to the size of the production. Sadly it was only on once in London before moving to a four night residency in Hamburg and then more in the Netherlands. Watching it on the web would only give you a portion of the experience, you really have to see it in all its multi-layered glory. We joked afterwards that a DVD of the performance would have more behind the scenes features than the actual main feature.

Another unexpected aspect of the show was that there was a near stage invasion as the end as people wanted to inspect the props, sets and characters that had been used, take photos and try to deduce how what they’d just seen had been done. It’s a rare show that can achieve such an effect on a crowd in this day and age, also, I forgot to mention – the whole night started out with a gain on bingo on specially drawn Kid Koala cards.

Posted in Event, Film, Music, Robots. | No Comments |

Zonatape box

I found this lovely little Zonatape box at Spitalfields market last Thursday, great colours and design. It housed, not a reel of tape but some home made date calculators with odd painted patterns on the back. Later the same day I found this op-art plate in a charity shop, I like the way the turntable poster from the Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal magazine looks like it’s exploding out from it.

Posted in Oddities, Packaging. | 1 Comment |

The Heliocentrics w. Melvin Van Peebles

It’s been a long time coming and it’s finally almost here – the long trailed album by The Heliocentrics featuring Melvin Van Peebles drops on Now Again on Oct 7th on double CD and deluxe vinyl with bonus instrumentals disc. It comes on like Cannonball Adderly‘s David Axelord-produced ‘Soul Zodiac’ and from the 4 tracks I’ve heard, doesn’t disappoint. More info here and an exclusive instrumental to check out.

Posted in Music. | 1 Comment |

New Aphex and FSOL albums


photo by Edwin Wong
Not one but two electronica bombshells were dropped this week – first the Aphex Twin blimp and stencils then the announcement yesterday of a new album. You can pre-order the album here including being entered into a raffle to purchase a £250 (!) limited edition vinyl version and read the press release which looks like it’s been google-translated from Japanese.
AFX gear list

Over on Facebook, Gaz from Future Sound Of London has finally been giving some previews of Environment 5 – the long-awaited next installment of their Environments series, the low-key soundscape set that they’ve been releasing for the past few years. This time though it seems as if this is THE new Future Sound of London album as the tracks are all said to have been written this year instead of from their archive. This will also be available on vinyl as well as CD and Download and note that it’s ‘Environment’ instead of the plural. Now all we need is a new Kraftwerk album…


Posted in Music. | 2 Comments |

Future Shock on Solid Steel


Future Shock was a 2hr mix that I cooked up for an online ‘pirate’ radio station a couple of friends set up earlier this year called Altar Ego Radio. Billed as ‘Music from the Future you remember from your Past’, I mixed sci-fi electronica with a retro feel from Jokers of the Scene, Falty DL. The Books, Sculpture, Nico Motte and Jeremy Schmidt. Here’s the first hour, exclusively sans the chat of the original broadcast which was hosted like a regular radio show. Much like the recent Magpie Music mix of a few weeks ago I intend to expand on these themes in forthcoming Future Shock mixes focusing on the more electronic side of my current tastes. Altar Ego Radio will also be back on the air over the August Bank holiday weekend, more info here

Ryoji Ikeda’s ‘Spectra’ in London

I finally saw Ryoji Ikeda‘s ‘Spectra’ yesterday in the Queen Victoria Park in London and it is stunning. These photos don’t do it justice but try to see it today before it disappears. Installed in secret to mark the centenary of the beginning of WW1 last week, it is part of the Lights Out commemoration for all those who fought and died in the First World War.

Space In This Place at the ArcelorMittal Orbit

On Friday I was lucky enough to be invited by Ben Eshmade of Arctic Circle to play at the ArcelorMittal Orbit in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park near Stratford. This Anish Kapoor-designed structure was erected next to the Olympic Stadium a few years back and is now hosting it’s first forays into music-themed ‘lates’ for the public, looking to expand its use beyond an over-designed viewing platform. I have to confess that I wasn’t a fan of Kapoor’s design when I first saw it but, like so many things, once you go to and experience them you gain a new appreciation for them.

The structure is much bigger than I expected, the red metal wire frame that spirals up around it is beautiful and one of Kapoor’s giant funnels nestles underneath it, largely hidden in photos I’d seen. The viewing floors are what you’d expect and the view is breathtaking although we were unlucky in that it rained during much of the gig so the balconies were less inviting than usual. Due to meshed overhead shelter which let rain in you had to wonder if the architects had truly thought through such a structure built in the UK with its less than tropical weather habits. The rain however did create a great Blade Runner-esque effect on the windows with the blue interior spot lights, the illuminated red girders of the Orbit outside and the city lights in the background and we could see the Secret Cinema set for their Back To The Future feature close by.



Ben had curated a broad selection of players for the night, Manchester’s Paddy Steer, ex-of Homelife, bought his DIY one man band set up to the outside area below the funnel and proceeded to amaze with his ability to play more sounds than he had limbs. Using foot pedals, percussion, keys, strings as well as vocal FX he played all manner of sounds from his homemade set up with shakers strapped onto wrists, percussion sticks and legs, all the while dressed like a cross between Roy Wood, Sun Ra and Moondog. He seemed beamed in from another planet, the kind of performer that the crowd didn’t want to sit too close to lest he might suddenly jump up and try to implicate them into his act like a magician. Sadly I missed most of his set due to sound checking duties upstairs but he was holding court by the time I got back down to earth before the rush for the lifts took his audience up to their destinations for the evening.

The lifts housed two players to accompany people on their short ride: a pedal steel player and a voicebox & keyboardist who had 20 seconds or so to entertain you as you rode. This was a nice touch and put you into close proximity with the artists as you can imagine, I heard one girl exclaim that one of the players must have been blind as he was wearing dark sunglasses indoors. On to the first floor, Ninja label-mates Grasscut did their quintessentially British electronic folk thing to a queue for the bar that snaked around half the room, something that evidently hadn’t been quite foreseen as staff hastily assembled another bar elsewhere. I’m not quite sure what some of the audience expected musically but it wasn’t a rave by any description and there was quite a mix of people wandering around. Upstairs on the second floor Transept and Astronauts played electronic and acoustic sets respectively before it was my turn to spin at 10pm.

I’d spent several days pulling all manner of sci-fi, space and lunar tunes from my collection for this and was almost overwhelmed for choice when coupling the vinyl with existing material I had digitized into Serato. I could have played for 3 hours rather than 90 minutes I think and wasn’t expecting such an attentive audience who sat and expected a show. I’d bought an extra portable turntable to add in textures and spoken word and used the main decks to switch between Serato and vinyl to weave a space scape together against a dark, rainy city backdrop.
Further visuals were provided by two huge highly polished stainless steel ‘mirrors’ that reflected you back on yourself, distorted like a fairground sideshow and provided all sorts of weird juxtapositions as can be seen in some of Steve Cook‘s excellent photos of the evening on his Secret Oranges blog. My set began with the intro to the Clangers TV show and ended with ‘The Music of the Spheres’ from the same before pre-recorded selections of the organ playing at the Union Chapel ushered everyone down to the ground and out into the rainy night. All in all an excellent, unique experience which I’m forever grateful to Ben for organising and which may hopefully lead to more lates of a similar nature, the next one at the Orbit being a silent disco.