Don’t Forget To Pop Your Tabs

I’ve been on a cassette digitization spree lately. Got to reminiscing with DJ friends about mixtapes and cassettes in general. It seems all of us were fans of Maxell tapes, and the ones we used most to make mixtapes to give out were XL-II’s. (The even better XL-IIS’s I usually reserved for my own mixtapes.) Looking around on the magical interwebs, where almost any subject is discussed, no matter how arcane, it seems others shared our favourable opinion of them.

I did a much rougher version of this idea years ago, but I revisited it by doing a much better illustration of this particular cassette. With some artistic liberties taken.

I don’t know that PostContemporary is even an ongoing concern any more, so maybe the only stickers of this to be produced will be the dozen or so I printed to give out to friends.

S.o.t.D. - Twist Another – Alkahest

Twist Another – Alkahest

A tight little groover from Burlington Ontario’s finest, Legion of Green Men, in their techno guise.

S.o.t.D. - The Borderless Beyond – Legion of Green Men

The Borderless Beyond – Legion of Green Men

I still laugh about how they describe their music - Acid Jazz without the Jazz/Trip Hop without the Hop.

My pal Scott Duncan on vocals. A man of many talents.

Typeface Design – Siegfried

Mmmhh, design may be a bit of a misnomer – production may be more appropriate.

Along with Freddy, this was commisioned by PostContemporary Records for use on one of their Zeuxis and the Painted Grapes releases.

The example they had was from a Morgan Press Type Collection Catalog. In the sixties there was a big revival of turn of the century, art deco faces, and that is indeed the era this is from. Released in 1900 by the Wilhelm Woellmer Schriftgießerei in Berlin.

If you totally love this typeface, you can get it free from here and here. Don’t know if they’re the same, and I seriously doubt that it’s the one I did. But if you want it, go there. (Maybe my version is better, but I don’t even know where I have an actual typeface copy of it (never thought enough of it to actually use it myself). I know I have a .fog file somewhere, but without Fontographer, there’s not much I can do with it at the moment.)

Post Contemporary Sticker

Sticker design I re-discovered while going through some old discs.

Little double entendre.

S.ot.D. - Synaptic Response – Legion of Green Men

Synaptic Response – Legion of Green Men

I saw this video being made. Well, I saw a few seconds of it being made....

I was walking along Queen St. E. in Toronto out in Parkdale about 15 or so years ago. (sheesh, that long ago already? sigh...). Looked up a side street and there was Rew’s girlfriend.

“Hey!”

“Hey!”

He came out at the same time.

“Hey! They’re making the video in there for Synaptic Response. It’s stop motion live action ballerina animation. And they’re doing the camera animation right now. Come in and have a look.”
So we hung out for a an hour or so and saw the incredibly exciting world of moving an old camera a smidgeon at a time and photograph it hundreds of times. Hours of work for a few seconds of video.

It went on to win them a best video award at the MuchMusic Video awards in what, 95, 96...

S.o.t.D. – Blowbaq – Legion of Green Men

Blowbaq – Legion of Green Men

I can’t believe that I haven’t had a tune by these fellas up yet. I’ve talked about them in other ways, but figured it was high time I put up a track. And I think it’s high time those frakkers put out a new album.

PostContemporary Sticker

Sticker for the PostContemporary label.

Typeface Design – Freddy

Well, maybe this isn’t so much “design” as it is straight production work. Post Contemporary Records had come to me asking me to create a digital version of a typeface called Freddy, a 1960’s era Morgan Press face, which I suspect is itself a version of an art deco era face.

I decided to try Adobe’s Streamline, their auto-trace program. I hadn’t been very impressed with the auto-trace features on FreeHand, but thought I’d give Streamline a shot. 

And it stunk too. The problem with letting a computer algorithm do it is that it places points in really wonky places, and leaves a wobbly, ugly line. I spent so much time cleaning up the lines that I realized I may as well have just traced it myself with the pen tool, getting it perfect the first time. Lesson learned. And auto-trace features still suck all these years later. I can always tell immediately when someone has auto-traced something as the lines are so sloppy. Which can definitely look good in certain instances. But for the stuff that I’ve done and continue to do, I need the lines to be much tighter and precise.

Logo – Caution Point

Perhaps not so much a logo as a design for a T-shirt.

Caution Point is the recording studio of the PostContemporary label. One of the things they specialize in is locked grooves, or Eternal Opuscules as they call them. They’ve done over a hundred up till this point. Primarily a DJ tool, the repeating loop allows the user to concentrate on adding other elements over top.

The design is meant to symbolize a stylus in a record groove.

I always wondered what the name meant. At the top of the stairs leading to the studio is a sign stating “Caution: Hearing protection must be worn beyond this point.” The first word and the last word. Hence the hearing protection symbol as the stylus.

6° of PostContemporarity

I went to a Clan of Xymox concert in Toronto in 1989.

After the show, my friend Len introduces me to two guys that he went to college with.

Obviously twins, but trying hard not to look like twins.

We start to talk and it turns out that they were the people behind a record that I had bought recently, Empirical Sleeping Consort.

One of them mentions that he would like to go back stage and say hi to the band.

“Yeah me too. They’re from Holland and so am I and I think it would be neat to say hello.”

“Hey my brother’s girlfriend is from Holland too.”

We start to chat, in Dutch and she asks me where in Holland I’m from.

“Amsterdam.”

“Yes me too. Where abouts in Amsterdam?”

“In the new south district, the river borough (all the streets were named after rivers in Holland)”

“I don’t know the neighbourhood I’m from, but I was born in and lived in the KrommeMijdrecht Straat.”

Music was playing in the club, so I wasn’t certain I had heard her right. But I got a funny tingle down my spine. “What did you say?” I asked incredulously.

“The KrommeMijdrecht Straat.”

I must have had the most stunned look on my face.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“This is really going to freak you out, but I was born in the KrommeMijdrecht Straat!”

“Whaaat!”

(Now this is not a street that ran the length and breadth of the city, but a one block street!)

When we explained to the English speakers around us what had just transpired, they were equally amazed.

“Do you remember the number you lived at? What year were you born in?” I asked.

“I can’t remember the street number, and I was born in 1967.”

Same year I was born in.

“What school did you go to?”

“We moved to a different city when I was three.”

We continued to talk for a while longer and exchanged addresses (which much to my chagrin, I lost shortly there after.)

About five years later I walked into my friend Jarkko’s house, and there are two twins trying hard not to look like twins sitting on his couch.

“I know you two.”

They were looking at me with one of those I remember you, but why looks. “You do?”

“Yeah. Your girlfriend was born on the same street as me!”

“I remember you!!” They both shouted in unison.

And we’ve remained friends ever since.

PCON Poem

A little something I wrote about those Incarnate / PostContemporary / Caution Point boys.

There in that magic hollow
Laboured an act tough to follow
Baking treats easy to swallow
Scientific verbosity
Cellular curiosity
Musical virtuosity
Under the hideout lived a skunk
First drawn there cause it stunk
Ended up staying for the funk
Stylishly appointed
Timberframe jointed
Druid anointed
In the hideout lived the wizards
Weaving tunes as deftly as a lizard
From bits of tape they scissored
Records methodical
Results melodical
Releases periodical
Above the hideout lived the owl
All night long hoot and howl
On it’s eerie nocturnal prowl
Acrobatic rat
Electrostatic cat
Hydro attic bat
Electronica flowing from the heart
Created with tools state of the art
Packaged in mind bending op-art
Futuristic beebop
Funky techno-pop
Acid jazzy trip hop
Using gear that’s analogue
Not found in any catalogue
Sculpting alien travelogue
Records revolving
Minds evolving
Egos dissolving
A pound of salt in the tub
Pounding Guinness in the pub
Cranking out pounding dub
Sounds subsonic
Songs harmonic
Breathing chronic
Mad science nerds
Inspired by the absurd
Whispering code word
The law may not approve
But a keyed in locked groove
Makes a whole room move
Eternal Opuscule
DJs find useful
A limitless tool
Leading through example
Sound sources ample
Using innovative sample
Those lads McCrimmon
A hit with the women
Colin invited them Swimmin’
Quirky transparent bass
Quickly transports the place
Quietly transforms the space
Six degrees of separation
Lex agrees to celebration
Sex leads to impregnation
Inspirations eclectic
Schedules hectic
Concepts dialectic
Bubbling water filter
Beats off kilter
Sound tapestry quilter
Kaleidoscopic
See microscopic
Third eye cyclopic
The otters tell
Of Watershell
Odder ’n hell
In the bush they’re hackin’ and coughin’
In the lab they’re topnotch boffins
In the home they’ve feasts of fancy often
Created from analogue sound
Twisted mind travelogue bound
Conscientious dialogue expound
Get in the studio & do some
A mismatched twosome
Squabbles often gruesome
Lex has hexes
To the lunar nexus
On his solar plexus
Caution Point is carefree
Burning herb sets you free
Owls in the Apple Tree
How do you do, guru Rew
22 skidoo canoe crew
Stirring the witches brew
The buzzword turned inward
Stirred by the puffbirds third word
The herd overheard afterward