All Big Letters But It Isn't No Acronym

DOOM!.. I bought tickets that I couldn't really afford for The Super Villain's first UK appearance as soon as they hit the virtual shop, and when no official gig poster emerged for the show I set about bothering the event organizers Sonar, and eventually DOOM's label Lex to see if I could produce something for them. The nice folk at Lex said that if I knocked something up and sent it to them, they would forward it on to DOOM's people and perhaps His people would contact my people (me) and that maybe it might end up being used in some way, but not to be offended if it didn't as there's a lot of industry red tape to snip through in matters like these.

Anyway, I haven't heard anything yet but I thought I'd post this currently un-official poster for the 'Taste of Sonar' event, where I'll be head-nodding to the sounds of Daniel Dumile's alter ego (or his stunt double!) next week.. Click it up big and see if you can pick out all the nerdy references to all His characters and projects that I snook into the patterns on the mask.

After pestering Metal-Face, I was actually invited to do this poster for the awesome home-made instrument tinkerer, Thomas Truax.. or at least a bit of it anyway. Designer Alex Warren has been producing a nice series of images for Dead Young's shows at Oporto in Leeds, with simple layouts, bold colours and one main central image. Dead Young asked me to provide the image for this one that I dropped into Alex's template and colour scheme, and I think it came out looking pretty fancy, with more than a nod to Charles Burns and a shiny-quiffed, zombified Truax shouting into his 'Hornicator' that twists round and turns out to be him.. Infinity and snakes eating their tails n' all that jazz, yeah?

Oh, and my old pals The Heebie Jeebies are on the bill too.. sweet!

'When the East is in the house'.. My mate's band The Great Eastern are gonna play a few shows at The Grapes in Sheffield, so here's the first of a series of posters that I'll be doing for them. They'll be different colours and will each feature a different animal wearing a hat in the steam cloud. I've got a few posters going on where I switch the colour schemes around at the moment, and as well as being a handy corner to cut for a time saving technique, I do generally have an urge to see the same image in a different set of colours.. I think this stems from the later releases of Street Fighter II where small sparks of joy were often attained from simply seeing a character in a different coloured set of pee-jays.

..and here's another one I did recently for Dead Young Records, who've got their Blues buddies Mojo 57 to host a monthly shindig at The Angel's Share in Chapel Allerton.

How I Roll..

Seamless linkage from the Silver & Black post below to this doped-out, silver 'n' black (MF) DOOM decal I just pimped my ride with..

Bicycles are the only way to roll down here in the nation's capital and now I'm rollin' with considerably more steez after sticking this sticker to the ol' bone-shaker. Sadly I cannot claim to have chanced upon this stickable item by accident though. It's a limited release, which originally came out with the MM..FOOD Special Edition CD, and I put in a bit of dork-time picking it up off ebay. I got it for a quid and another quid postage though, which isn't bad 'cos with that and a few squirts of WD40, the trusty steed's never been happier.

And so from one MF to another now because while I was getting a bit click happy with stickers and the like on the old eazy ebay, I finally picked up MF Grimm's autobiographical comicbook, which I've been meaning to get for yonks.

It's a good read, with Grimm's character shining through his gritty and often tragic circumstances thanks to his enduring love for the game. Being of the comic persuasion, I suppose you could say it's a good 'look' too, as the artist Ronald Wimberly does a great job of balancing quickly scrawled, fluid lines with clever composition and style.

DOOM pops up a few times in the story, and I think Grimm should be particularly commended for putting their 'beef' to one side for the sake of the book to speak of his former friend with genuine affection. I don't know what DOOM's intentions were when he referred to the Monsta Island Czars (a group that he was once a part of alongside Grimm) as 'Midgets Into Crunk' on the Dangerdoom track 'El Chupa Nibre', but Grimm really hasn't come off too well with his various, venomous diss-record responses such as 'Book of Daniel'.

Whatever the beef is, it'd be great to see an MF reunion in the not too distant future, even though DOOM recently dropped his MF prefix to perhaps distance himself further from his estranged colleague.

Anyway, this Blog's really meant to be all about me showing off all my drawings n' that, not ranting on about my obsession with one of Hip-Hop's current saviors, so I'd best shut up about the Supervillain (at least until the new Madvillain album comes out) and resume the incessant blowing of my own trumpet once more.. 'Toot-toot'