One more month and then we’re done for the year and it’ll be time for best of’s and round ups. But what’s been tickling my fancy this month? Space Drum Meditation have a new 4 track single up for pre-order with a release at the end of Jan. Cate Francesca Brooks releases more gorgeous ambience under the banner of ‘The Blanket Tapes’ and Jem Stone is back with a remix of ‘Neon Tuxedo Hotel’ from his ‘The Legend of Kaptain Carnival’ album. ‘Depoimentos Do Futuro’ (Testimonials From the Future) us a new compilation of Portugese Hauntology from the Russian Library label and finally Janine A’Bear‘s album is out on Castles In Space, I think I did the cover art well over a year ago. Paranoid London have a new 2-tracker out and Jimi Cauty under his TowerBlock 1 alias mines the KLF‘s sonic legacy for elements of ‘Music For Funerals and Bricklaying Ceremonies’, the soundtrack to the recent Birkenhead People’s Pyramid festivities in Liverpool. Move 78 release the second album of 2025 and it’s another contender for album of the year, they really can do no wrong at the moment, with this and the ‘Game Four’ long player I think they’ve found their voice as a group. Field Lines Cartographer found his a long time ago and here’s another slice of quality in the shape of ‘Aperion Anxiety’. Honorable mention for Hieroglyphic Being who’s released five EPs of varying quality this month alone.
Larry Wooden
Various covers from the end run of promotional RCA (Radio Corporation of America) magazine that existed from 1941 to 1971. You can view a selection of them here.
Hawkfrendz covers from the Hawkwind fanzine plus one for the Crazy World of Arthur Brown by Trevor Hughes.
To round out the post here’s some Op-Art that’s been collecting in a folder – first up, an Olivetti ad by Juan Carlos Distéfano, Ruben Fontana and Juan Andralis for Insituto di Tella.
Next, the front and back cover of a French library music remix compilation, ‘Tele Music Reinterpretations’ from 2017.
Lastly, a page from a fashion book that highlights the resurgence of sixties fashions in London in 1979.
Various bits of comic-related ephemera kicking around the desktop: above, the original art to the Fantastic Four cover below, classic Jack Kirby but they just don’t seem to be able to translate this property into a decent film do they?
Above, an early Brian Bolland ad for the shop, Dark They Were And Golden Eyed, sent to me by the writer David Hine from a magazine in his collection, possibly posted before but not in this quality. Below, a couple of super rare badges for the same shop that came up for auction. By Bryan Talbot maybe? Would love to have won these.
Above, another rare piece; this time by Hunt Emerson, a poster for a Right To Read Benefit in 1988. Below, original art by Dan Clowes for a 1986 comic front and back cover that I spotted on Heritage Auctions.
It’s not all vintage on here, James Harren‘s Ultra Mega comic was one of my favourites of 2025 and here he does a Transformers variant cover in the same style. Below are two variant covers for different comics relating to Ian Bertram. Top is Bertram’s cover for Spectregraph #4 and below that is Tradd Moore‘s variant for Ian’s Precious Materials, one of this year’s best books. Both artists vie for the title of ‘best psychedelic visualisations in comics’ in this house.
Lastly, this image really confounds in this day and age, the first appearance of Catwoman in a Batman comic back in 1940. In the strip she poses as an old lady in makeup to draw attention away from the fact she’s a jewel thief but Batman sees through it and delivers this line as he wipes away her disguise. Back to the present day, who else is reading Absolute Batman and loving this fresh take on the Dark Knight’s world?
Posted earlier this year on his Instagram which, I believe, is maintained by his daughter, Stella Keen, you can see the full magnificence of Keen’s collage work for his Amazing Rayday Secret Comics. These date from between 1962-1967, measure 42 x 32 cm and were a definite influence on my own recent collage comic.
Also seen here are two precursors to the above, ‘Atomic Rayday’ and ‘Amazing Rayday’ that date from 1962.
Various psychedelic covers for Time magazine from the 60s. Above, The Beatles by Gerald Scarfe and below, the intro to the same issue detailing his process.
Above, the ubiquitous Peter Max tackles UK royalty and below a photo composite by Robert S. Crandall.
Milton Glaser above, Geoffrey Dickinson‘s famous Swinging London cover below.
The Flower Scene and the Love Generation Issue No. 1, October 1967. Super rare, four issues are known to exist, cashing in on the 60s pop counter culture. Printed and published by R. Milward & Sons in Nottingham and edited by Martin Graham. Here is an early ‘The Pink Floyd’ article and a very odd cover of Ringo and baby. Elsewhere in the mag; The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, The Mothers of Invention, Scott McKenzie, John Peel, Pink Floyd, Janis Ian, The Move, and Hippie Of The Month: Eric Burdon.
Seeing as this is an online scrapbook, here are some bits and pieces that have been clogging up the desktop for some time. Yardbirds poster directed to me by Neil Rice who spotted the Holy See Lights credited.
Can’t remember where I saw the above and below but I love them. Above is actually a Rolling Stones 1972, music concert programme.
A Peter Max poster from 1967 and detail, maybe for a show at The Contemporaries gallery in New York?
Membership card for the Guildford Arts Lab, date unknown and two sides of an invite to appear in the audience for Jukebox Jury at the BBC.
and finally a very groovy ad for an Irish cassette, tape and 8-track shop, Pat Egan‘s.
The regular Omega Auctions in Manchester continue to expose all manner of amazing counter cultural artefacts and the up and coming ones are no exception. Their Music Memorabilia and Vinyl Showcase on Dec 2nd contains all the lots in this post and many more. Above is a lovely Hendrix poster on silver foil I’d never seen before, circa 1968 and designed by Photosida.
This poster for issue 5.5 of I.T. (International Times) by Michael English is super rare. Entitled ‘The Invisible Generation & The Invisible Generator’ and using text by William Burroughs, it was printed in an edition of 200 in silver ink before Xmas, 1966, then in a larger run in gold sometime later after Burroughs complained that he couldn’t read the silver. Most of them went to subscribers before they went on sale to the public, hence the scarcity.
An original flyer featuring a collage by Linder Sterling for a Buzzcocks gig in 1977.
Another one I’d never seen before, a poster for Futurama, billing itself as ‘The World’s First Science-Fiction Music Festival’ in Leeds, 1979. Look at that line up! There’s also a badge to go with it.
One of the most amazing lots (actually several different lots) is the original artwork, paste ups, proofs and other materials for the infamous Tudor Lodge album cover on Vertigo. This lavish, die-cut, fold out sleeved folk rock album goes for £500 in poor condition and up over £1000 for a decent copy, I wonder what the art will go for? The lots are originally from the collection of artist and designer Philip Duffy of PD Graphics.
The Telepathic Fish compilation features in the Bleep round up of 2025 and to celebrate they’re making an exclusive glow-in-the-dark edition of the original T-shirt we made in 1994. As worn by Sean from Autechre and members of The Grid on Top of the Pops including Richard Norris back in the day. Pre-order here now.
Well, this just happened!! The Telepathic Fish album is No.1 in Rough Trade‘s compilations and reissues of the year 2025. To mark the occasion they’ve made an exclusive blue vinyl edition !! A huge thank you to everyone who helped this comp come into being, all the artists and labels who licensed their tracks, friends and collaborators who shared memories and photos. Special mentions to Mixmaster Morris and Matt Black for the inspiration and collaboration and thinking of Chantal who sadly isn’t here to be a part of this, hoping she would be proud of what we did.
Last but not least to fellow fish Mario Aguera, David Vallade and Doug Shipton @Fundamental Frequencies who put so much work in to make it happen.
Ran across these yesterday in Instagram, hip hop artists rendered in comic cover form by Torre Pentel aka Alejandro Torrecilla. Although his work mostly covers the current generation of MCs, stretching back over the last couple of decades (names I know more from my kids’ liking them than their music) he does also dip back pre-2000 and occasionally outside the rap genre for artists like Herbie Hancock and Sun Ra. Comics aficionados will spot take offs of certain comic covers or logos of yesteryear, he’s pulling not just from the superhero genre but from the undergrounds too. See his work here and buy prints here.
The Audiovisual Assembly is coming to Hackney Bath House on 21st November – The Light Surgeons are performing ‘The Consensual Hallucination’ which is one of the most incredible things I’ve seen them do in the 30 years I’ve known them. Bitvert is also performing with liquid visuals from Pat Grimm and I’ll be doing my Boards of Canada-centric ‘O Is For Orange’ audio visual set. Tickets: https://ra.co/events/2276158
Each year, Olympia plays host to the PLASA (Professional Lighting & Sound Association) event to showcase the latest innovations in the entertainment industry with brands exhibiting their wares across the great hall for three days. For the last few years Rob Halliday has organised a Classic Gear section, showcasing historic sound and light equipment from yesteryear to great effect, rapidly becoming a big draw for the old heads to gather and reminisce about how things used to be done.
This year was the first time a darkened area had been set up to demonstrate projection, hosting Optikinetics co-founder Neil Rice and friends Nigel Bailey, Gareth Dean and Jennie Caldwell to recreate analogue light show practices. Neil showed off his 4x Tutor II x Opti Solar System and colour wheel set up, complete with a mini liquid squash plate he’d devised. Shown above, in this Jon Primrose-edited short, is a similar version to the set up we had a preview of in his home earlier this year.
You can now listen back to the 2hr Telepathic Fish ‘Float IV’ guest mix from last week on dublab with Doug Shipton and I. My set is largely new tracks with a couple of classics and Doug dives back to the 90s and beyond for his hour.
Tracklist:
STRICTLY KEV MIX
Patrick Carpenter – Santosha (Bandcamp) Space Drum Meditation – Yarra (Space Drum Meditation)
Lo Five – Unbecoming You (Castles In Space)
Paul Cousins – Blueprint (Castles In Space)
Advisory Circle – Gog (Cafe Kaput)
Listening Centre – The Death of Group D Meter (Castles In Space)
Loula Yorke – I Felt A Melting In Me (Castles In Space Subscription Library)
Dub Squad – Blown Fruit (Music From Memory)
Multicast Dynamics & Sid Hille – Metamorphosis – Part 1.1 (Astral Engineering)
Eurythmics – This City Never Sleeps (acappella) (RCA)
John Lennon – Space (Mind Games Meditation Mix Binaural ∿Theta Waves∿ 8Hz) (Universal)
Klaus Back & Tini Beier – Interferences (Buried Treasure)
Kosmologic Research Society – Rift (Confused Machines) Multicast Dynamics & Sid Hille – Metamorphosis – Part 1.2 (Astral Engineering) Spooky – Orange Coloured Liquid (Test Pressing)
Dream 2 Science – My Love Turns 2 Liquid (acappella) (Confusion Records) Multicast Dynamics & Sid Hille – Metamorphosis – Part 1.3 (Astral Engineering)
LF58 – Radials Part 1 (Astral Engineering)
DOUG SHIPTON MIX
Reload – The Enlightenment (Infonet) Christ. – Arctica (Benbecula) Biosphere – Decryption (Apollo) William Orbit – Silent Signals (I.R.S.) Kat Epple & Bob Stohl – Spiritus Sanctus (Dead Cert) Global Communication – 14.31 (Dedicated) Some Other People – Relativity (Infinite Mass) Black Dog – Raxmus (Warp) Ami Shavit – Alpha 3 (Amis) Gescom – Cicaca (Skam) Emerald Web – Ice Caves (Stargate) Bola – Aguilla (Skam) Godspeed You! Black Emperor – Providence (Constellation) Essential Chrome – Mika (Wide Area Network) Deuter – Ecstasy (Kuckuck)
Another month of great music greets us as we power into Autumn – Jo Johnson‘s ‘Alterations Vol.1’ is another contender for the album of the year list, made up of tracks and remanants that she released as they were finished over the course of the year, collected now into an album with the follow up already begun – check her Bandcamp page for more. I recently discovered the band SML on International Anthem which is why this list includes two of their releases and the ever-prolific Future Sound of London also feature twice with an expanded version of ‘A Controlled Vista’ and a new release, ‘Unrealities’ which sees the release of longform pieces made for the Touched Music online listening parties.
Analog Mutants‘ brilliantly-named ‘Brothers of Invention’ is some contemporary hip hop that throws back to the 00’s in style and Ac1D Vicious is manic drum ‘n’ bass on the Beat Machine label’s Swinging Flavors series of dance 45s. Although we have to wait until January for the album, Barry Adamson graces us with one track from his ‘Scala!!!’ film soundtrack and, because it’s Halloween, it’s time for the latest Delights release, this time from Voxatone, returning for a second outing with some fuzz drums that compliment Adamson’s spy jazz perfectly. Last but not least, James Adrian Brown releases the first single from his forthcoming debut album proper – ‘Generator’ – with a host of remixes from the likes of Warrington Runcorn and Field Lines Cartographer.
This weekend (25/26th Oct) I’ll be at the Bound Art Book Fair at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester with a table selling my latest collage comic, the All Colour High Fidelity Radio Cartoon. This was started in lockdown in 2020 and worked on intermittently for five years until recently when I exhibited some pieces in Folkestone and decided I had enough to assemble a comic/zine/whatever at last.
That had always been the goal but there was no deadline so I just continued to work on pieces for years, slowly building each page to a point where they were ‘finished’. With the Bound Art Book Fair invitation for Saturday, I decided that would make a suitable deadline to compile a first version of these works.
Unless I’ve got a deadline I can tinker with things forever (hence no new DJ Food music in years) and this has been on the Infinite Illecktrik release list since 2020 (ii03 – to be accompanied by an album of the same name but that will come later now). Talking of which, I am also readying some new releases for the label which will take physical form soon…
But I digress, the comic – I’m calling it a comic because a large proportion of it is taken from comics and you can ‘read’ some pages, but really I have no idea what it is – is 32 pages, full colour and includes a free pair of 3D specs to view the centre spread. The first 50 come with a random sticker applied inside and I will have a random selection of badges free for buyers at the fair this weekend.
I’ll also have the new Mindfood zine (issue 5) and very limited original copies of #1,3 & 4 for sale as well as copies of the Float III mixtape and a handful of the Telepathic Fish LPs. Also there will be copies of my Wheels of Light book, the comic book version of my Search Engine album and whatever else I can find.
In addition to that I’ll be giving a talk at 1pm on the Mezzanine about the Telepathic Fish parties and the zines we made at some point on Saturday and in the evening I’ll be playing at YES alongside my good friend Moz. That’s quite an itinerary for Saturday. The comic will go on sale online next week via Bandcamp for those who can’t make the fair.
There’s a new interview and exclusive Openmind ‘Seeds’ ambient mix (based around my set at the recent Telepathic Fish launch party) over on The Ransom Note website. The fifth in their mixtape series, this actually started out as a ‘Float’ mix but was reconfigured and retitled as, ‘Openmind’s leave your phone at home & discover Paradise after a forage in the forest’ for this piece. Doesn’t quite trip off the tongue I know but you’ll see why when you listen, I’m very pleased with this set indeed. Buyers of the deluxe album set will have the ‘Float III’ mixtape and a two hour special ‘Float IV’ mix arrives next week on Dublab via Doug Shipton and I, more details soon…
I was interviewed by Lloyd Briggs for his Deeep Space show on PBS 106.7FM in Australia recently, here’s a link to the show.
I also spoke to Ben Cardew at Radio Primavera Sound for his Line Noise podcast
Reviews have been popping up in Record Collector, Mojo, Uncut, The Wire and more and the second pressing of the album is now in hand and pre-orders being fulfilled.
I’m part of two amazing bills coming up in November – the Audiovisual Assembly that pits The Light Surgeons with Bitvert & Pat Grimm and myself. The Surgeons will be performing their incredible ‘The Consensual Hallucination’ which was one of the most psychedelic things I’ve ever seen and I’ll be doing a rare performance of my ‘O Is For Orange’ set.
It’s on Nov 21st at The Bath House, Hackney Wick, London and tickets are on sale now with limited early birds cheaper than the full price. https://ra.co/events/2276158
Earlier, on Nov 8th, I’ll be at the Simple Things festival in Bristol with Graham Dunning engaging in modified turntable madness with Puttyrubber on live visuals on the huge IMAX screen. Sculpture are also on the bill with Stunty & jb glazer. Tickets here:
Two weeks before that I’ll be in Manchester for the Bound Art Book Fair at The Whitworth where I’ll be selling things like the Mindfood fanzines (including original copies) and my new collage comic, ‘The All Colour, High Fidelity, Radio Cartoon’ which has been five years in the making.
A bit late this month as stuff is still busy but winding down on the promo front and I’m starting new projects finally. Loads of new music again to sooth the soul; 2 Headed Deer continue their Library Music Series with the third release: The Occult – very good it is too, reminiscent of early Ghost Box in places. Tezeta were a new name to me when I bumped into Sean from Klang Tone Records in Soho the other week. He furnished me with their new album on his label and it’s a killer, the perfect midpoint between jazz and afrobeat and not a bad track on there. Project Gemini have a new album out with Wendy Martinez but this little 45 I’d missed from earlier this year arrived in the post with it and it hits the spot for me. Sherman Heath is a new name on a new label, Coarse Fish Records, whose debut TGVM EP contains a whole host of tracks and is well worth checking out.
Marshall Jefferson on Utter? Yep. If you dig 24 minute meditational house designed to do Tai Chi to then this is your release of the year, even better is the digital version with bonus 18 min Vertical and Horizontal mixes by Joakim and an acapella. Nebraska has been digging in the DATs again and come up with four unreleased gems, my favourite being the Dudley Moore-sampling ‘Cinema’. Kista‘s new album veers between old school cut and paste hip hop homages to tripped out mushroom folk with hard breakbeats and Move 78 announce their second album of 2025, which I’ve heard in full and is another contender for LP of the year – no kidding. Finally it’s a classic reissue from Polygon Window aka Richard D James, I don’t need to say much about this other than, if you don’t know it then you need it in your life.
Bleep are running a competition to win one of two deluxe Telepathic Fish sets – just order the album or sign up to their newsletter to be entered into the raffle before October 2nd. Those who already ordered from Bleep will automatically be entered.
A runner up prize of original Mindfood fanzine issues 1,3 & 4 is also on offer (these are actually rarer than the main prize). We have also just launched a dedicated Telepathic Fish Instagram account for photos, stories, info and upcoming events connected with the parties.
And the Telepathic Fish album press rolls on, apologies for the info dump but I’m trying to keep track of it all.
Here Matt Black remembers the New Years Day party we co-hosted inside the derelict Roundhouse for Juno Daily by Ben Willmott.
Next there’s a Bandcamp piece I took part in where Andy Thomas neatly encapsulates our story, expanded in the booklet that comes with the LP.
Here’s Mario’s opening set from the Telepathic Fish launch party at BoSi on 31st August.
The Bleep Album of the month campaign is in its third week and here’s an exclusive Q&A I did for them if you scroll down.
I also did an interview with Mark from Skinny E Media about my O Is For Orange video mix, the image isn’t too clear but you get some insights into the intentions behind it and my thoughts of Boards on Canada.
Still to come; a piece for Record Collector and mixes for Dublab and Ransom Note. The repressing of the album is due back at the end of the month I’m told.