Recently-Acquired Vinyl...

A necessary re-booting of the blog today, in slight abeyance following the conclusion of the World Cup ’74 portraits project (& the temporal demands of a work-based study programme followed by domestic decorating commitments: our new ‘creative’ room is looking fabulous, at least), with evidence of the recently-invested-in Dome box set - a quite magnificent, lavishly-presented artefact comprising 5 vinyl LPs, including the original 4 recordings re-pressed & housed within sleeves that incorporate reproductions of the originals within their design and ‘antiquated’ finish, other associated artwork & fascinatingly illustrated sleevenotes, & even an inexplicable matchbox of plastic fragments - an essential addition to and component of the truly discerning record collection, here presented in photographic form for your visual delight, although of course the ultimate point is the sonic contents of the compendium, into which we have been immersing ourselves for edification & inspiration.

The year so far seems to have been spent listening to the collected Dome (obviously), most of Wire (of whom Dome were two, of course), & the complete Felt, which begs an intriguing question: might it be possible to continue in this vein, consuming only, or primarily, the music of bands with four-letter names, throughout its course? Another ‘project’, perhaps…

Just Milling Around...

After the yellow submarine tea infuser drawn & blogged immediately previously comes another example of a watercolour drawing of Beatles-related subject/object matter in the form of the rather fetching ‘Sergeant’ peppermill, another recently invested-in must-have addition to the kitchen & home for the retromaniacally-inclined…


graphite & putty eraser, with watercolour/20x30cm

Such a study might find contextual company in the form of Euan Uglow’s painting of a Homepride ‘Flour Man’ figure, itself another retro icon to those of us able to recall such a marketing device, what might appear a humorous aside but still subject, as is obvious, to the same measured rigour of scrutiny & representation as any of the artist’s other source matter, as might be expected, & also claimed of & for the peppermill too.



Soundtrack:


Dome '1 & 2' & '3 & 4'
Wire ‘The A List’
Hanne Hukkelberg ‘Rykestrasse 68’

Not necessarily the expected soundtrack (although there’s a hopefully-still-playable cassette tape of a wonderful ’20 Years Ago’ anniversary of the Sgt Pepper album’s release Radio One documentary broadcast I’d love to listen to again, considering) but, rather, another blast of retromania, & an altogether more obscure corner of, with the delights of the collected works of Gilbert & Lewis’s Wire-offshoot Dome, none of which was ever previously owned but the memory of one track – ‘Ritual View’ from volume 2, with its snuffily-nasal ‘chorus’ – had endured from a hearing on a dim-&-distant John Peel show: a treat it is to be reunited with, at last, & now in tangible form, along with some other rather good stuff contained within the layers & labyrinths of sonic textures & explorations. By one of those quirks of memory, & the unreliability of, I had somehow conflated the recollection of ‘Ritual View’ with that of Dome-collaborator AC Marias’ ‘Drop’, reacquainted with & mentioned in these parts recently, where its separateness became apparent, so it’s been an especial mission to locate & establish the certainty of the facts of ‘Ritual View’, which have, it transpires, not disappointed: not least, the lyrics at one point make reference to "graphite marks", which is rather appropriate under the circumstances.
In the interests of verity, it should be stated that Dome were listened to earlier in the week, whilst completing a couple of job application forms: the Wire compilation & the enchanting world of Hanne H’s ‘Rykestrasse 68', too-long unvisited, actually accompanied the two sessions of the drawing process.