Booked it, packed it...

Fucked off.

Hunterian Museum

I went to the Hunterian museum this Saturday gone, which is situated a (sling-shot) stone's throw away from the John Soames house, on the Southern Side of a garden square in Holborn. It was as part of an illustration short course I've been doing, and the purpose of the trip was visual research, sketching and drawing.

It's actually within The Royal College of surgeons, and, in a nutshell, is a collection of surgical artifacts, including paintings, antique instruments from the operating theatre (which looked like they could have doubled as tickle-sticks for the Spanish Inquisition) to the core of the collection – banks of display cases containing a variety of organic specimens, from skeletons to dissected fauna to human anatomy.

No photography was allowed (due to the sanctity of human remains, y'dig?), so unfortunately you'll have to make do with my drawing of a crumbling syphilitic skull. But take my word for it – this is a pretty amazing little museum.

It's centred around the collection of the distinguised surgeon and anatomist John Hunter, which the government purchased in 1799 and presented to the college. Hunter was (to quote Wikipedia) 'an early advocate of careful observation', which is borne out by the miscellany presented here, assembled for reference, which orginally constituted the contents of a museum in Leicester Square. To be blunt though, and scientific merits aside, much of its allure for me did lie in the 'grue' factor inherent in wandering through chambers populated by centuries old limbs and biological oddities suspended in fomaldehyde. In fact, it wouldn't be too hyperbolic to call some of it a bit 'freakshow', if one is assuming the word freak to denote anomalous, as some of the exhibits are indeed mutations – such as the two-tailed lizard and the four-legged chick – only these are very much real, rather than some sideshow bit of fakery (though the skeleton of 'The Irish Giant' Charles Byrne suggests its previous owner wouldn't have looked out of place in Todd Browning's carnie classic, Freaks).

Highlights for me included (in no particular order):

Watching a video where a team or brain surgeons excised a tumour made me all the more admiring of their consummate skill, as well as glad I didn't have the Pret Meatball Ragu sandwich for lunch.

The club owned by one on the 'Beadles' responsible for transporting the remains of executed felons to the college for dissection (perceived as a horrible fate by the underclasses). It's a kind of wooden belaying pin with iron flanges, presumably used to repel irate rellies of the deceased.

Some stereoscopes attached to a wall displaying before and after cases of early 'plastic' surgery to first world war casualties, a reminder if ever one was needed that trench warfare 'ain't great' especially on the frontline, with assorted bits of metal hurtling about at high velocity.

An early device for removal of gall stones. Most of the surgical instruments look like more tarnished versions of things I'd glimpsed in David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers, but this little bit of steel joy is something else. Supposedly an early example of 'non invasive' surgery, it probably helped gave rise to the surgeon's phrase of the day 'Lord if thou take me, do it not through the bladder". I'm not going to even try and explain it here – pets might be reading.

Charles Babbage's brain. Yep, that's right, a section of brain previously belonging to the man often referred to as a 'father of the computer' can be found bobbing round in an unassuming fashion in a jar in Holborn. Apparently they've got two other bits out back, and his family were quite 'up for it'.

That should hopefully have piqued your 'appetite anyway'. I think there's some other bits in the college to check out, but this section is, in itself, is a fascinating window onto a historical period in medicene, and nascent surgical techniques (as well as lots of things that look like they're out of that film Aliens). It's free, as well, so even if you're feeling 'the pinch of the crunch' you can justify mooching on over for an afternoon. Plus kids will probably love it if it doesn't scare them witless.

Gordon Brown

I got this David Shrigley postcard with a print I bought from POW recently, and it's kept me chuckling ever since. I can't quite put my finger on what it is about David Shrigley I like. I feel I should find his stuff naff – wonky doesn't usually do it for me – but I instead find it intriguing. And hilarious. And sinister.

And G-Unit? I sorta feel sorry for the guy, really. He's in an unenviable position and it looks lonely at the top. He seems tired and out of his depth, which even by the standards of someone whose spent most of their premiership very much on the back foot is saying something. Presumably the only reason his 'Heathcliff-like' presence is still lashed to the wheel of the ship he failed to navigate past so many icebergs is the albatross around his neck, which might yet draw some of the public's venom away from Labour's cankerous body politic. Poor lad. He only wanted his turn.

But I can't take Labour seriously anymore. The government that marched us off to war, wants to retain our DNA on a database, give us all ID cards, and make it illegal to photograph Police (so they can whack us over the head with impunity when we try and protest), yet tries to block details of their expenses coming out in case we find out they've been claiming for their Muller Corners on us? Puh-lease!

Indeed, Labour are so far beyond the point of people being able to take them seriously, that the light from 'people being able to take them seriously' will probably reach them just before the universe ends, or whenever they get back in power – whichever comes first.

In the meanwhile, and in the words of 80s coin-op 'Operation Wolf':

"Sorry, but you are finished here".

Radio Advertising

Radio Advertising. Annoying: probably pretty effective.

I'm working at the minute, with all that entails, including listening to an office radio. And this week, the slightly tepid pop selection comes courtesy of Absolute FM who, in their favour, have a policy of not playing the same tune twice in a day*.

The same can't be said of advertising unfortunately, and on commercial radio my experience seems to suggest far fewer subscribers buying slots – compared to the pluralistic frenzy of the internet or TV – with the result that the same five or so radio ads get some seriously heavy caning throughout any random eight-hour sample.

Radio advertising feels odd to me. My initial thoughts upon getting reacquainted were that it represented some kind of extant bunker of purely jingle-led promotion, sticking to its guns on the airwaves like packets of Japanese soldiers hiding out on Pacific islands long after World War 2 ended. But no, generally all the ads are re-purposed versions of TV campaigns – just lacking any visual context (one, a Subway ad, features a Peter Kayesque 'talking pocket' which I'd never have garnered from the radio) Even so, the focus of radio ads does seem to be the twee, catchy little tunes.

On the plus side, this relative lack of sophistication seems quite endearing, hearkening back to days when the marketing mensch weren't preoccupied with trying to enslave the latest bit of social networking apparatus to their own dark ends. But on the downside it does mean you're probably going to be subjected to some of the most insanely irritating tuneage since the last Christina Aguilera single. Irritating, but it must be said, catchy, for these sung refrains are insidiously compelling – like a kind of mnemonic mind-worm that burrows into your brain (think the slug things in the Star Trek film 'Wrath of Khan') – and they stay there!

I can still remember jingles from my childhood, in fact. Who could forget classics such the Kellogs Bran flakes ad, for instance?

"Theeeey're tasty tasty very very tasty." (etc)

Though when my brother bumped it to the forefront of my mental playlist whilst on holiday the other year, we were all at something of a loss to recall the product it originally centred around. Bacon? err, chips? dunno. And even though the accompanying images of the piece in question have largely faded from my memory, I can still vividly recall the song from a Mobil ad of my youth, that set the following lyrics to Gene Pitney's 24 Hours From Tulsa:

"Only 24 toasters from Scunthorpe,
Only 6 double beds from Torquay,
And I can’t decide if I will
Buy a diamond ring or a drill,
And if I want to
I can add to
My Premier Points with cash
If I haven’t driven enough!"

I think the line where the singer sums up the (exciting) quandary that the choice between a tool and a piece of jewellery elicits is pretty much automatic D&AD award-winning genius (well, maybe not). But still somehow captivating in its silliness, hey?. Old advertising is a heady garden of nostalgia though anyway – I recall with affection the ads that punctuated a crackly recording of Star Wars on VHS we watched to abstraction as kids, such as the Heineken one with the road-mender's sign in the rain, where the icon of the man slurps on a crisp lager, then with a flourish, transforms his spade into an umbrella (that was when Heineken was 3%, mind. God knows what he'd do now – probably fall asleep.)

But I digress. The main reason I'm writing all this is that the last few days I've been subjected to a Muller corner ad that uses the tune from Nina Simone's 'I Got Life', only behind some most unfeasibly inane wordplay I've ever heard. It's basically a choir of people, young and old, taking turns to insert their favourite Muller flavour into the "I've got my" format, and the net result is truly distracting in its stupefying idiocy. It starts something like this:

"I got got my cherry, got my berry! got my biscuit, got my crunch!"

then meanders off through some other flavours, (a child cheeps "I got my blueberries!", discordantly) before the cherry girl triumphantly reiterates that she's 'got her cherry', and the whole thing ends.

I've been hearing this about five times a day (at least) the last fortnight, and it has the kind of nauseating, delirium inducing effect otherwise only legally obtainable off herbal-high counters in Camden. Annoyingly, it's habit forming though, constituting an itch my brain seeks to scratch through involuntary repetition: I'll be pootling round my kitchen, say, and suddenly catch myself starting to hum "got my cherr" before I come to with a start and give myself a mental 'dry slap'.

It's brutally effective stuff. And I could envision myself happily pounding my own head to mush in order to escape extended repetition of this particular ditty, but my last word word almost certainly be "M U L L E R", spelled out in morse code and clumps of brain as my head beat a wet, red tattoo against the wall, probably leaving something much like a Muller yoghurt and topping smeared there, more's the irony.

But seriously, who writes these things? I'm trying to imagine, and the only mental picture popping in there is of a cross between Andy Warhol and Nosferatu hunched behind a mixing desk in a post-production house in Soho, giggling maniacally between bites of a Pret butty. I'm evoking an evil genius here, but it actually does sound like quite a laugh (unless you have to take it seriously).

Anyway. That's that off my chest. Any jingles that got you reaching for a rusty nail to scratch out the bit of your brain containing it? c'mon friends, share my pain...



*apart from some competition they're running at the minute

Birkies

Uniqlock RULES!

I stumbled on this the other day.

I spend far two much of my time thumbing through the racks of 'the Japanese Gap' in the quest for fresh new t-shirts, or investigating their much touted 'Designer's Invitation' projects (the Guilded Age one, is pretty good, as it happens).

So imaging my joy when I stumbled upon a web-based timekeeping application, soundtracked by mid-90s Nintajune style jazz beats, with a quartet of Japanese girlies in pastel hoodies and jeans cavorting round a corporate looking glass and steel structure. I mean, what's not to like, huh?

Anyway. Uniqlock is pretty mesmeric, and it's busily chattering away in the background as I write this. Basically, Japan, Uniqlo and half-decent sample based music usually cheer me up somewhat, so for these reasons, I'm going to temporarily at least whore my increasingly dormant blog out to a corporation by installing the Uniqlock in the upper right corner, especially as I'm somewhat obsessed by the passage of time these days, weeks months and years.

That's all.

Tuesday

So, a wet grey Tuesday morning here and I'm sat in a Cafe Nero in
central London, with a load of estate agents. Following a gas leak.
Not only that, I'm drinking Starbuck's coffee. Sounds like a dream
huh? *Arnie voice* "IT ISN'T"

Daily Mail

Adoption Nazis? There's a sitcom in there somewhere... I'm thinking something like that late 80s wonder 'My Two Dads' (starring Greg Evigan and the guy who played slimy corporate retainer Burke in Aliens) except in this the two adoptive parents are nazis living with their charge in an ex-local authority maisonette in Dalston. Not only that but they're gay. Comic hi-jinks ensue, etc etc.

A la Manc

Pegasus

I'm having a flutter on the gee gees today, on the Grand National. First time I've I'm ever placed a bet, though I'm not much of a gambler generally, apart from those little insta-rubbish lottery scratchies ("Oh, I've won a quid, I'll buy another one, oh, I've lost")...

Flash forward ten years. Me, in a betting shop in Hull. I've put on some weight – a roll of fat wobbling over my waistband like a sea-lion lurching from a bath. My jeans are shiny. My face graven with worry and excess. If Sherlock Holmes were here now he could point to any one of a dozen things about my demeanour, carriage, attire, that speak of a life on the brink, unpaid bills, bailiffs hammering on the door, kids crying, wife screaming...

As my horse 'Time and Relative Dimensions in Space' rolls in last with all the urgency of the Camberwell Tube extension, I tear asunder the betting slip, I destroy it, this creaky bridge to far off dreams, as I have burnt so many bridges, as the destitute farmer in Colorado sets ablaze his failing ranch.

Simultaneously, I wheel about, head for the door, already parlaying this minor footnote of failure into a grander scheme of entropy, as I head for my local boozer 'The Likely Lad', there to prop up the bar until closing time or forcible ejection (whichever comes first) and dream of the days you could smoke indoors...

Ahem. Hope that doesn't happen.

MyRail

I just regretfully deleted a nice, free little application from my phone called Myrail Lite. It was really handy. It would locate stations closest to you, and filter the timetable to give you a handy list of destinations, and arrival and departure times. It was very useful, especially when you out and about or on the go. And indeed, even if you did have access to the internet, as I've never found the National Rail Enquiries website that much of a joy to use, much like the trains themselves, to be honest.

Well, when trying use it last night, I discovered that it, like many people these days, had been forced to stop working, when National Rail didn't renew their license to publish a live feed of train times.

And hey, w-what's this, National Rail have just created an application of their own, reportedly inferior, for £4.99. That's £4.99, for information on a public service, who already charge some of the most expensive fares in Europe, for conveyance in their grotty overcrowded carriages. Greedy. Why not make it free, National Rail? or charge 50p, but £5? For shame.

Still, why am I surprised that the rail infrastructure in this country is continuing to pursue their tried and tested policy of making things less efficient and more expensive, even in this minor aspect.

*adjusts monocle, lights pipe, harumphs etc.*

I'm getting bored of this poster now.

Thanks to Sigh 9 for kindly pointing me in the direction of this Flickr pool which contains numerous examples of that poster I was whingeing about. I can probably put this sucker to bed now.

This is my favourite, I think.

Grizzly Man

This evening I watched the Werner Herzog documentary 'Grizzly Man' about the reclusive guy who fed himself and his girlfriend to bears in 2003, Timothy Treadwell.

There's something incredibly eerie about it, as it largely mostly consists of footage self-filmed by Treadwell whilst out in the Alaskan wilderness, consisting of him delivering enthusiastic bulletins about his ursine friends, when you in fact know what the grisly outcome of this obsession was

And he was definitely an 'unusual' guy, with something of a chequered past, who discovered bears like other people discover Jesus. In fact, there is an messianic zeal about some of his straight-to-camera monologues, which veer from sweet (if somewhat naive) hymns to the giant beasts he loves so much, to expletive strewn rants against human society, against the bleakly beautiful backdrop of some mountain vista – usually with a skip-sized brown bear swaying in the middle distance.

In contrast to which, Herzog's measured, considered voiceover seems incredibly compelling. He is clearly fascinated by this man and the legacy of his extant footage, though while the I got the impression he views him kindly (and some people interviewed for the programme clearly saw him as a crank who got his comeuppance) he is as at odds with the spiritual significance that Treadwell projected on to the lumbering beasts who were his companions as anyone. One quote which we actually had to rewind and re-listen to it was so solemn and aphoristic was (and I paraphrase) "The common denominator in the universe is chaos, hostility and murder".

Ultimately, this is quite a sad, affecting portrayal of a man who paid the ultimate price for his love of bears (great tagline, huh?). What stays with me as much as anything however is the incredible gravitas that the archived documents that survive Treadwell possess, the breathtakingly stark beauty of an Alaskan wilderness, mostly indifferent to human motives, set against the emotional crusade of a single man, and as well as being a documentary it's a tragedy, if not also a strange sort of love story.

I also enjoyed Little Dieter Wants to fly by Herzog, too. Next time, I think I'll try and catch one of his actual 'movies'.

Keep Calm

There's that phonemenon, largely subjective I suspect, but often ascribed to synchronicity, where something you were previously unaware of – such as a word, or phrase – suddenly becomes apparently ubiquitous, and you start hearing it on a near daily basis. (Such a thing happened last year, when everyone started saying "über" rather too much).

It is possible that this is largely due to the brain's subconscious yearning to identify patterns, but also, on occasion can arise simply from a popular trend, or something that cleaves to the public imagination, at any given moment (Myleene Klasse, for instance).

Into the latter category would I place that poster, the wartime public broadcast "Keep Calm and Carry on" (you must, by now, know the one).

Now, I realise that this is an artifact of some antiquity, dating from the Second World War, but prior to the end of last year, I was cheerfully unaware of its existence. Then, one day I saw it, and suddenly it seemed to be EVERYWHERE. I see it on a near weekly basis now, peering at me from the corner of an interiors photoshoot in the the pages of a broadsheet weekend magazine; gurning at me from a web browser, or acting as a kind of serving suggestion in the window of a local framers.

More disconcerting still is the wacky meme of appropriating said, rather staid wartime propaganda, and 'subverting' its message. In fact, I think I might start a niche museum dedicated to archiving permutations of this specific visual macro-trend.

The theatre of Advertising relies on cliches, which act as a kind of shorthand – effectively conveying a set of associations with relative economy, by setting the context. You want to imply that your brand is 'for the people?' (ie: cheap) simply effect a poster campaign aping those Soviet-era propaganda posters you went and saw at the Tate the other year. Y'know, flip the 'R's around, lots of red, raised fists, that sort of thing. Simple.

Almost too simple. Simple to the point of being hackneyed, in fact. But I suppose it takes time for what are by now slightly weary tropes to worm their way into the visual vernacular. What I do find a fascinating enigma, is the notional tipping point at which something like this attains critical mass, and becomes recognisably iconic – to the extent that it's no longer simply a rather simple bit of typography, than a meme, or trope. What precipitated this little bit of design's inauguration into the national Consciousness's golden hall of design fame, alongside The Routemaster?

God knows. But what I suspect from experience is we're probably going to see a lot more of this rather unassuming poster in the future in some form, be it parody or pastiche. The latest example I've secured for my rogues gallery of such examples I spotted on the Peckham Road the other night, which I present for your appraisal here.



I can't help but think that the designer here has aped the typographical layout of the original to the detriment of the poster's actual message... quite aside from the phrasal emphasis feeling slightly wonky – "ANYTHING YOU SAY MAY (be taken down) AND USED AS EVIDENCE" – the poster felt to me like some kind of wagging finger aimed at prospective criminals, when actually the two little lines of copy at the bottom reveal that the poster's purported message is about a police pledge to use confidential informant's testimony as evidence in court.

Still, I suppose it does at least stylistically fitting in the context of a message originating from the state, even if it does look a bit 'V for Vendetta'. We live in an incredibly pluralistic, visual culture (someone quoted "alter modern" at me the other day) where entire historical visual languages are there to be cherry-picked, just a Google search away. In such an age 'appropriateness' is perhaps the best a designer can aspire to, when there is no single master 'design narrative'.

PS: has anyone else spotted any other hacks of this bit of iconic design? I'd be interested in seeing them.

Closer @ Hidden

On Friday night I went to a night called Closer, at a club called Hidden in Vauxhall which was, appropriately, tucked away on a little side street just next to the South Bank.

It's a pretty compact venue, with two shoebox-like dancefloors, one with a kind of mezzanine bar above it. There's also an astro-turfed smokers bit outside. Pretty unpreposessing really, but the music itself – some of the banging-est techno I've heard in a while – was a refreshingly cathartic opportunity to dance like a thing possessed, for most of the wee hours.

In spite of the yellow and black industrial stylings of the flyer, (which owe a rather obvious debt to The Hacienda and Peter Saville) and the fact that legendarily tough-as-titanium-nails producer The Surgeon was headlining, the music was on a surprisingly groovy Detroit flex (still well hard though).

Highlights for me included someone playing Game One by Infiniti (a Juan Atkins pseudonym) and 'The Surge' dropping Didgeridoo by the Aphex Twin at about five in the morning, though by that time I was somewhat weary, and in fact popped out about halfway through the tune to down a shot of vodka and ice at the bar.

Following this, Saturday was almost entirely couch based. I stayed in, ate Chinese and watched Gosford Park. Today I went for a mooch round Hampstead Heath with Will, Sam, their bairn Zac and Helen and Renee. On our way back home we passed George Orwell's old gaff on Parliament Road. Most relaxing.

Here's that Infiniti track. Enjoy. Or don't, if you hate Techno.

That Watchmen review

Who Watches the Watchmen? well me, last Friday at the iMax, and I actually sat down and penned quite a long review about it too, before thinking, hmm, about eight squillion people have already chucked their two penneth in the jar, so you can probably google "Watchmen review" and get an idea whether you think it's going to suck or not without recourse to my ramblings. Here's an extract from my epic:

"It's been said quite often that a serialised TV show would be a far better format for translation of this project, and I have to agree. Watchmen was, as a comic and latterly a graphic novel, intrinsically episodic, and its frequent forays into the medium of other media (e.g. Newspaper clippings and magazine articles) from the alternate late 20th century Moore dreams up for us, are intrinsically problematic to channel onto a cinema screen."

Eh, I do get carried away sometimes (I start going on about Marshall Mcluhan, too). I think that's enough for now. To paraphrase my weighty, considered review:

"Watchmen: It's not as bad as it could have been"

In fact, it's not bad at all. No, it's not the novel, never could be, never was going to be, so get over it. It's pretty (if that's the word) and if you liked Dave Gibbons' artwork, you'll probably just be mesmerised by seeing that translated into moving images for two-and-a-half hours. That's me as a fan speaking though. Lord alone knows what people who hadn't read the comic thought – they were probably utterly bemused by it all.

What I would say is, if you haven't already (and can be bothered) read the book first. It's very good, and doesn't even really bear comparison to the film in terms of its breadth.

Now, for a bit of fun, here's Watchmen author and all-round arch beard Alan Moore commenting on and reading from the book (if you stick around to the end). He fucking hated the film on principle. Fair enough. I like his assertion that Batman, as a archetype is essentially a vigilante psychopath.



What tickled me more was the similarity between Moore (no pun) and Garth Marenghi in Channel Four's wonderful Horror spoof Darkplayce. It made me chuckle, anyway.

Just William

So, this afternoon Prince William popped into The St Giles' Trust on Camberwell Church Street. Immediately prior, I was scarfing down a bowl of noodles from my flat over the road, gazing absently out of the window and wondering what all the police and – even more rare for Camberwell – photographers were doing there.

Me and my housemate, whom I alerted to all this, assumed it was probably some MP or something, and it was only when the tall grinning one emerged from a silver people carrier with his entourage, that we realised what all the fuss was about.

After that, we pulled up seats, waiting for him to emerge again. It felt a bit like being on a police stakeout (though quite entertaining) as we watched a rogues' gallery of Camberwell's eccentrics tramp past, up and down the street, looking bemused at the gaggle of reporters camped outside of the Castle pub downstairs. I managed to get a cactus needle stuck in my thumb, from the withered specimen on the windowsill, which I spent most of the time trying to tease forth with a fair of tweasers. One of the guys from the trust popped out for a ciggy three times, which suggests he either really likes the coffin nails, or was just quite nervous (or both).

Eventually, a blunt looking 4x4 (containing two slightly twitchy looking bodyguards) and the silver people-carrier reappeared, signaling his reemergence, though it was another twenty minutes or so before he stepped out the door. In the meanwhile, one of the waiters from House gallery next door emptied a bucket of suds into the drain under the SUV of the two secret service types, nearly causing a security incident in the process. Word had got around by now, and the African guys from Merrygold's Barbers were were out on the pavement gawking (along with the girls from Hairshack afro-hair salon next door).

Eventually, Wills stepped smiling out front, to be greeted by flash bulbs and cheers, before stepping into his carriage and being spirited away 'up West'. The Castle Pub was looking especially busy when I walked past just now, presumably full of St Giles' employees, talking excitedly about their day.

Annoyingly, my photos are 'crazy shit'. But there you go.

Moodymann at Need to Soul

So last night I trooped up to Cargo for Need2Soul with Al, where the enigmatic Moodymann was headlining alongside Benji B, who recently interviewed that other Detroit legend Juan Atkins for his BB6 Deviation radio show.

It's hard to know what to expect from such a individual, who is, as a personality, almost as cryptic as his mystically obtuse deep house jams. In an era of vapid celebrity, there does seem something almost heroic about Moodymann's celebrated reclusiveness (he's like an Alan Moore who writes house rather than comics) which falls into the same 'faceless' vein of fellow camera-shy Detroit reclusives Underground Resistance, and whom like the latter is often outspoken in a scene perhaps perceived as apolitical in the supposed inclusiveness of the dancefloor. This is perhaps epitomised best by his infamous 'whiteboy-baiting' liner notes on a Silent Introduction which could perhaps be interpreted as a topical sideswipe at producer Moby's liberal ransacking of the Lomax brother's field recordings of deep south blues singers on the album Play, (tracks from which later on ended up gracing a host of commercials, somewhat tarring the Go producing vegan's credentials in the process).

And Moodyman – or Kenny Dixon Junior's – rants on the proprietary nature of all things black seem to extend to recorded media itself, for he is a champion of the vinyl, as the 2000 release, Forevernevermore testifies - the rambling passages of mumbling, ambient clattering and near silence that interrupt tracks otherwise pristine on the LP release seeming less his evocation of musique concrete than a sly dig at those who chose to fork out for the shiny little coasters (that was my take, anyway).

Which was ultimately borne out last night, when he played a vinyl-only set from the DJ booth at the side of the room. We got in just in time to witness the beginning of his set, and hear him doing his laconic paper-comb-voice-mumble bit, waving a 12 inch aloft and affectionately referring to the crowd as "all y'all motherfuckers out there" (for which they seemed exceptionally delighted). In spite of his unshowiness, the man is clearly a showman of sorts.

As for the music. Well, anyone expecting anything too beardy was probably in for a letdown, as he played a surprisingly accessible two hours. The set opener was The Door's Riders on the Storm, segueing into The Family Stand's Ghetto Heaven, which acted as a bridge to mostly well-loved soul and disco numbers, such as Skyy's First Time Around and the Light of the World's funk-ta-fied cover of I Shot the Sheriff*.

Later on, having popped out for a drink and a roll-up, we retuned to find he'd upped the tempo somewhat, and was playing such proto-house electro-disco numbers as Telex's chugging Moskow Diskow and the prowling electronic whine of the sinister Sharivari by early Eighties Detroit act A Number of Names, followed some more straight-up house numbers.

After that it was up to Benji B to take the reigns, which he did with a Latin-inflected set, detouring into house later on, which I thought was good, if not exceptional. By this stage I was up on the stage for the second time, having been moved off once with everyone else by one of the bouncers.

After that I departed South to Camberwell, though ultimately ended up walking to Elephant and Castle, as all the buses were so stuffed to the gills with merrymakers. Even this though, failed to detract from what was an extremely enjoyable night out, if not quite the array of obscure delights I anticipated.

Based on my two excursions there so far, this is a really good night. Soulful, danceable music over a range of styles, without being particularly faddish. The venue's not bad either – I like the outside smoker's oasis, and the soundsystem bumps. I'll be back, soon enough.

*This track, incidentally, I identified with the Shazam application on my phone, which appears to 'know its shit'. I had rather assumed it would only be able make identifications of the order of whether something was Lily Allen or not, but the music database seems to be surprisingly good.

TDR RIP

I read today, via a link from the man like Ade,(and as reported by Creative Review) that Sheffield based exponents of all things vector The Designer's Republic offically went bump, sometime in mid-January of this year (shows how up-to-date I am).

It sounds like they encountered a 'perfect storm' of mishaps, such as the loss of a couple of accounts and non-payment by another large, as-yet-unnamed company, which combined to render the good ship DR financially non-viable as an ongoing concern.

The web is already seeing an outpouring of dismay from assorted designers across the board, tinted largely with a flush of roseate nostalgia for TDR's heyday of the 90s, which is, I suspect, part of the problem. Sad as it is, I can't say I'm incredibly surprised TDR went under, as though it's maybe heretical to say it, every dog has its day, and theirs was around 10 years ago.

The Designer's republic, to me, always had a fairly strong 'house style'. They were your go-to designers for a certain icon-rich, vector-y cool, that was, to be sure, oft imitated – the most obvious exponents of this type of design that come to mind now, being Japan's Power Graphixx (which is sort of an irony in itself, given how much TDR 'borrowed' Japanese pop iconography, at least in their early days).

It was undeniably, pretty dammned cool. The kind of stuff that launched a thousand design consultancies, and inspired tens of thousands of students to pick up pen and mouse.

Unfortunately, that which is radical today is often the cliche of tomorrow. The last couple of visits I paid to their erstwhile website (admittedly years ago) it was starting to look a little tired and perhaps even slightly irritating in its ADHD flickery-ness. Harsh? I hope not. TDR were the dogs bollocks, for long enough, but their aforementioned trademark style did leave them open to the vagaries of changing trends and fashion. They were very good at what they did, but the world moved on – and for me, The Designer's Republic connoted the 90s stylistic zeitgeist as much as Mo Wax records and combat pants.

For the problem with cool, is that all too often it gets co-opted by large quote-unquote EVIL corporations (eg: the makers of a certain ubiquitous brown, fizzy drink) and broadcasted back to fast moving consumer groups (FMCGs). The problem here being that these people are so fast-moving, that the product (or rather the wrapper itself, in this case) has a shortened shelf life.

Nowadays of course, it's all about artsy Non Format style art direction, all neo-modernist/brutalist typefaces with the kind of florid augmentation last seen on Herb Lubalin's blotter pad in the 70s, in New York, and to be honest, even this is starting to look a little faded. (If I seen another fancy-nancy type treatment with swirly stuff wibbling out of gothic typefaces with all the holes filled in and a ten point stroke on them, so help me god, my brain will probably shut down to save my sanity.) I wonder what's next?

But as Creative review reports, founder Ian Anderson intends to reboot his baby, and take it back-to-basics with the original ethos he set out with in the mid-eighties, as opposed to the more identifiably 'formal' agency it reportedly became. Let's hope that if TDR does return, it'll be with a spirit of reinvention.

For now though, my personal footnote?

TDR: It was fun while it lasted.