Just got back from a short break in North Devon. Went to see my friend Mr Douglas E Powell.
Drunk some funny old beers and had a very nice time with the Powells. Myself Mrs Seatman and small wee Seatman went to Saunton Sands. Lots of exploring and Kite flying. Some lovely old Beach Huts there. On the way back to East Fuddlewitch we stopped of at Glastonbury Tor and did the long old walk to the top. For more Beach Huts go to my Flickr Page.
I was very excited to find out about this event on the Isle of Wight. But alas I can not go. So I thought best give it a mention. Quay Arts 2010 Open Winner; Katayoun Dowlatshahi investigates the hidden story of the rocket testing site in West High Down, Isle of Wight. 'Orbit' is a site specific response to the artist’s exploration of the Island and this work will be on show in the West Gallery at Quay Arts from the 22nd October - 3rd December 2011. The West Gallery, Quay Arts, Sea Street, Newport Harbour, Isle of Wight PO30 5BD For the first time since the closure of the site in 1971, the event will see the return of working pulse jet rockets to the site by 11 apprentices from Astrium* in Portsmouth and Stevenage. The launch of a scale model of Black Arrow; three eminent speakers covering topics ranging from a historical, scientific and business perspective; a memory wall for those associated with the British Space Programme to contribute to either in the form of memories or artifacts; interactive activities for all ages, finally leading to a lantern launch at dusk. THE EVENT IS FREE!
Have just uploaded a new tune to Myspace. The tracks called Its Now Time To Let Go. Have been working on a number of tunes for the next album. Three of the new tunes were played on Phantom Circuit 78 back in July. If all goes to plan the album should be finished by Spring/Summer 2012 (I Hope) Anyway have a bimble over to Myspace and have a listen.
I finally have some vids for three tracks of my album Consistently Mediocre and Daydreams.Dazzling Display and Shipping Forecast was produced by my friend Mr S Heartfield. using clips from The Haunting The Innocents Light Houses and Stormy Seas. We Always Lose was put together by me. And was originally shown at Shndg 6.
I quite like the Musical Oddness. And here are some fine examples of musical oddness that I like at the moment. I am not a huge fan of Alex Harvey but The Sensational Alex Harvey Band performing Jacques Brel's Next on the Old Grey Whistle Test works very well for me. Next up Mr Ivor Cutler playing his little ditty I'm Happy, and you just can't not feel happy watching it. This is followed by the wonderful Cardiacs with their promo vid for the song Tarred and Feathered. Sadly Alex Harvey passed away in 1982, Ivor Cutler passed away in 2006. Poor old Tim Smith of the Cardiacs suffered a stroke and heart attack in 2008, and it is unlikely that we will hear from the Cardiacs in the forseeable future. Which is a bloody shame.
Picked this up quite cheap a while ago. There are four of Looking and Seeing book, Pattern and Shape, The Development of Shape, The Shapes we Need and The Shape of Towns.
For more images from Pattern and Shape go here. Lots of pics of Harlow in this one.
Went to Brighton on Saturday with my friend Mr Stevens, who was playing at Splitting The Atom IV which was at The Green Door Store (just round the corner from the station. Very handy) We arrived a tad early so headed of down to the North Lanes to visit my favourite eating place in Brighton Kensingtons. Mr Stevens had one of the big Kensington Veggie breakfasts, and was more than satisfied with it. I had a rather wonderful Bacon and Avocado sandwich. After eating this we decided we should head back to the Green Door. The Green Door Store is under Brighton Station (sort of) and is all stone cobbled floors and bear brick walls. We hung around for a bit and had a beer, dropped our bags and cases of and headed back into Brighton. This time we popped into Snoopers Paradise where I spent all of £2 on a couple of old Cine magazines from 1961. Mr Stevens picked up a couple of photos and a book. A swift pint in another pub and it was back to The Green Door Store to watch the excellent Noteherder and McCloud. Lots of throb and drone from an SH101 accompanied by a beautiful echo drenched Saxophone, what more could you want. Another fav of mine on the day was the wonderful Aqua Dentata who for the duration of his set sat on a chair crossed legged and played a very haunting sweepy drone for about 20 mins. Nothing more nothing less, and it worked for me. He also wore a very fetching jumper. Mr Stevens played a blinding and blistering noise set using an SH101 and a childrens flashy toy thing which was all going through his home made contraptions. Mr Stevens was not to happy with his set, but I can assure you it was very good. After a few more swift beers it was of to the station for us to get the 9.33 home. I must briefly mention the annoying woman on the 9.33 who decided to talk to someone on her phone very very loudly about her holiday in Spain. Her top comment was "wel yer see there was only bout 7500 peeple killed in the Spanish inquisition over 300 years, so it won't that bad really, was it? know wot I mean"Rumour has it that there will be another Splitting the Atom in March. I def hope to go. So should you.
Just a couple of fine tunes by Douglas E Powell and Simon Heartfield. Both totally different musical styles and totally different vids, and both hit the spot with me. Well done Gents.
If like me you love old obscure record cover Artwork, then you can not go wrong by having a look at Space Age Pop a Go - GO. Above is just a selection of some of the wonderful covers collected by Christopher Evens on this site. If Albums with titles like Hi Fi Fo Fum, Astro Sounds from Beyond the Year 2000, Bachelors Guide to the Galaxy, Hawaii goes a go - go, Mmm Nice! and Mallet Mischief are your thing, then you can't go wrong with this site. There does seem to be a lot of Pop - up - windows on this site, so make sure you have them pop ups blocked.
Test Transmission Archive Reel 5 now on Mixcloud. This time round we have Sisters Of Transistors, Current 93, Carya Amara, The Seekers, Belbury Poly , Klaus Sultze and much much more.
A quick documentary on Peter Zinovieff founder of EMS Studios and inventor of the VCS3 Synth, Synthi 100 and Synthi A. I do not have one of these Synths, but I know a man who did.
In 1996 my friend Jack Packer and I were asked to produce an 18 minute piece of music to accompany a film produced by students at Plymouth University. The film was called Hydropera. Film Students from Plymouth University had recently been to the Red sea to do some underwater filming. They decided that the film needed some weird old sounds so approached myself and Mr Packer to supply this sound/music. At the time Mr Packer and I were working together as Blister Sound Workshop. Which was us basically making lots of weird and odd sounds in our studio for other people.
We recorded Hydropera in one take on our trusted old Fostex Reel to Reel. We were sent the finished film spent a week or so getting the sounds that we wanted and then one Saturday afternoon we started recording. Just over 18 mins later we had finished. There was no over dubs everything was recorded live onto tape and then mixed. The cranky old equipment used was Yamaha CS-60, Sy-1 Synths. One set of Ring Spanners all hanging from a boom mike stand going through a Melos DE-1 echo unit. Roland R-5 Drum Machine, Roland S-10 Sampler, Yamaha SG 1000 and a couple of Yamaha SPX-90s.
So after rediscovering this piece of work, we have decided to make it available for all you out there. Please feel free to click on the Soundcloud link and download a copy of Hydropera for yourself. Thank you. Its FREE.
Popping into Brighton on September 24th for Splitting the Atom IV at the Green Door Store. My good Friend Mr Jez (Shndg) Stevens is playing that day and invited me along to help out carrying some of his strange old equipment. So a day out at the seaside for me.
I recently found a few photos of myself in an old photo album at my Sister's house. I noticed that in a lot of these photo's I looked fed up, grumpy or bored
All these photos as far as I can make out were dated between 1970 and 1975.
Later on in the same week Between the Channels put up a new post. The post was a lovely book called Let's Make Puppets. One of the comments on this post was by Bollops who asked
"Was there a rule back then that said kids must look bored and miserable in photos?" I've noticed it in so many other "How To..." books of the period.
This struck a chord with me. realising that I looked bored and miserable in quite a few of the old family photos. So with that I have decided to bow to pressure and put a few on my blog. The rest you can find at flckr. As Fearlono said "I've shown you mine, now you show me yours"
After the climbing frame from Hell I now wanted to go home. I did not want to be photographed.
As you can see having spent months building this 30in Frigate. I was over the moon now it was finished.
The Ruins of Detroit. Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies
and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension. The state of ruin is essentially a temporary situation that happens at some point, the volatile result of change of era and the fall of empires. This fragility, the time elapsed but even so running fast, lead us to watch them one very
last time : being dismayed, or admire, making us wondering about the permanence of things. Photography appeared to us as a modest way to keep a little bit of this ephemeral state.
A friend of mine recently got a copy of The Ruins of Detroit. Derelict Theatres, Police Stations, Houses, Offices. They are all here. In fact the quality and style of the images is quite staggering. This book is amazing.
SED Published by Taschen 1990 by Georg C. Bertsch & Ernst Hedler. If you can get hold of a copy definitely worth it. Full of wonderful East German Design.
"Our workers are just rushing out to buy the tasteful, and yet favourably priced goods, which our industry has long since been producing"
Up to last week I had never heard of Origamibiro, then Adam Daly sent me a YouTube link to this wonderful track called Quad Time. Love the use of the old Imperial Typewriter. The text here is from their YouTube post.
Imagine music and video playing a game together. And telling stories at the same time. That's what it's like to experience a performance by audio-visual collective Origamibiro.
The collaborative trio merge found objects, unorthodox contraptions, multi instrumentalism and persistence of vision to create an atmosphere both nostalgic and otherworldly.Together, musicians and producers Tom Hill and Andy Tytherleigh and video artist The Joy of Box make connections between seemingly unrelated elements and create a world that plays the scale of human emotions.With atmosphere oozing from their fingertips, it's no wonder the Dublin Fringe Festival described Origamibiro as "undoubtedly the most original offering of the fringe calendar"This promo marks the first of a new series of av works to come out of the new Origamibiro stable- The BiroBox Workshops. Originally a Nottingham based audio-visual night run by Origamibiro, the Workshops has expanded to become a working space where biro can develop new ideas, experiments and working methods to play live.New album also coming soon...
Well yet again I have been asked to play some cranky old records at The King Street Tavern in Southsea Portsmouth. You can expect hear some Funk some Dub a few old Soundtracks some interesting Library Music some Radiophonics and Electronics and some Krautrock. Also expect all other sorts of audio oddities. It all starts at 7.30pm so best I make an effort.
I would just like to say that I have a session on Phantom Circuit 78. The session tracks are Not Just a Holiday, The Adventures of Mr Charles Fathom and Cold War Claims. All three tunes are new and not on my album Consistently Mediocre and Daydreams.
Due out on August 8th and available to download from iTunes and Amazon is this fine album by my good friend Mr Heartfield. The inspiration for this album is the Len Deighton novel Bomber I recently played the track Schrage Musik from the album on my last cloudcast, and I must say that all the rest of the tracks are of the same high standard. I should also point out that the fine artwork for the album was done by me. We both liked it.
Next up is the new album by Carya Amara.
Now this is all a bit of a mystery. The Phantom Circuit sent me a link to The new album by Carya Amara, I did not know what to expect.....but I was not disappointed. This album is full of lovely synths electronics pulses and drones and is FREE to download. Or £6.00 for the CD. For more info on Carya Amara go hereWhat are you all waiting for.
From 1929 to 1932, Man Ray and Lee Miller -- two giants of the European Surrealism movement -- lived together in Paris, first as teacher and student, and later as lovers. Their mercurial relationship resulted in some of the most powerful work of each artist's career, and helped shape the course of modern art and photography. Combining rare vintage photographs, paintings, sculpture and drawings, this exhibition tells the story of the artists' brief but intense association and reveals the nature of their creative partnership.
Got these wonderful 1970s Dynatron Headphones for my birthday from my friend Mr Foot. These were found in a Charity shop. They not only look good, but they sound good as well.
What can I say about The Ipcress File that probably has not been said already?? I first saw this film when I was 12 years old. I have to admit, I was never a great fan of James Bond (apart from Live and Let Die, which I love, its the Voodoo) but I loved Author Len Deighton's Harry Palmer character, played by Michael Caine. Of course in Deighton's books Harry Palmer was not his name, in fact we are never told his name, he just has a string of aliases which he adopts depending on his assignment. In the book, when the main character is approached by someone who says "Hello Harry" he later says "Now my name isn't Harry, but in this business it's hard to remember whether it ever had been."My affinity with Palmer was just that he was a sad loner, plodding about in the often very dull world of espionage and deceit. This is also the reason why in the 70s I liked the series Callan, who definitely had much more in common with Palmer than with the super spy Mr Bond. The book does differ quite a bit from the film, but all the main elements are there.
John Barry's haunting and very sombre soundtrack blends so well with the pace of the film, perhaps best shown and heard in the telphone box fight scene.
Sidney J. Furie's direction is superb. He shot scenes through pains of glass in phone boxes, over the shoulder, Point of View in fact he shot scenes at any odd angle he could (he did say later in life that he did that to liven the film up as the screenplay was just to slow and dull) But whatever the reason it worked for me. Unlike the follow up Funeral in Berlin. The 3rd film in this series The Billion Dollar Brain, which was Directed by Ken Russell is in my opinion a much underrated classic. With an amazing 60s intro. Have a quick look.
Well here I am very excited today, because I have just found the fickr Photostreams of Brighton based Design Studio Delicious Industries. One of the Photostreams is solely devoted to old copies of The Consumers' Association magazine - Which?
The covers were all contributed by Delicious Industries and Sell! Sell! The covers were all designed by Banks & Miles (Colin Banks and John Miles) and really are amazing. So do not waste time pop over to Delicious Industries flickr photostream for a look.
Here for your enjoyment is the intro and BBC promo to the 1969 series Take Three Girls. The series ran until 1971 and 11 years later a 4 part follow up called Take Three Women was produced for BBC2. The intro music is Light Flight by Pentangle.
