My namesake, Jonnie Lewis at Puppy Fat Films has put in some long hours to make this happen.
Jonnie approached me a while back and, based solely on the fact that he’s the only other person I’ve met who spells his name as I do, I commissioned a video for ‘Figurehead’.
A special thanks goes to would-be fisherwoman Sharon Kirby for donating the speaker-come-ocean.
Figurehead is out now in download form, available from iTunes, Boomkat, etc
And there might just be a couple of the very limited cassettes left…
Last weekend there was a special one-off* show at The Glad Cafe in Glasgow.
If you’ve not heard me raving about him before, grnr is the sonic pseudonym of electronic musician Gav Thomson. He’s done two remixes for me now and they are both absolute belters.
The Glad Cafe asked if we’d like to share a bill and, as Gav had recently supported me at my single launch, we decided to put in some extra effort and make it more than just a gig where we both happened to be playing.
I learned some of Gav’s parts. He learned some of mine. I made some visuals and he designed an amazing light show for the whole set.
We performed his two JC remixes and, as we’ve both contributed tracks to the forthcoming mixtape from Ar Droops, we played those too, with Droops joining us on stage to spit his bits.
It was a lot of fun, despite being slightly under-cooked in places.
Chris Adams from ScotVis put together this video of us playing ‘Hand-Hand / Summer Is For Going Places’ which has turned out very nicely.
*I say one-off, but we put in a fair bit of work and it was so much fun that it definitely wouldn’t take much to talk us into doing it again sometime.
Miaoux Miaoux and grnr both featured on Hair Of The Dog and are no strangers to my gushing praise.
And to kick off the night with a mini-set of maxi-wordplay, we have new kid on the block, the rapping reincarnation of The Japanese War Effort, my wee bro Ar Droops.
Its Wednesday. We’ve just tipped over into the ‘less than a fortnight til Christmas’ dangerzone.
If, like me, you are wracking your brain for little gifts that people might actually enjoy rather than merely tick the box of ‘gesture completed’, one of these could be just the ticket.
It’s a badge. Of a tape. Which comes with a download for an EP I made using tape. Yes, that’s right. This item is even more conceptually pure than if it were actually a tape.
Everybody loves tapes. We grew up with them. Even stupid kids who only listen to music off their phones up the backs of buses think tapes are cool. Not actual tapes, mind. Just on t-shirts and that.
So this is enough of a tape for a tape-lover to love but also not-a-tape enough to satisfy someone who doesn’t own a tape player.
EVERYBODY WINS. Except the English language.
ANY CHARACTER HERE
ANY CHARACTER HERE
The lovely badges were made by lovely people Keny Drew & Showpony. I’ve known Keny for a wee bit now, bumping into him at various gigs. When he asked if I’d be interested in having my name on one of his boutique glass tape badges, I thought “Yes, I bloody would.” but I also thought there wasn’t much point unless there was some musical element involved.
So I set about recording songs to tape, mixing songs to tape and making songs from bits of old tape I recently found in my mum’s attic. The result is JWC008. A 19 minute position chrome odyssey.
And that’s what you get when you buy a badge. Something to put on your jacket and something to put in your ears. (Do not, I repeat, do not put the badge in your ear.)
“Hair Of The Dog, the remix album of Jonnie Common’s debut ‘Master Of None’ was released by Red Deer Club as a limited run of screenprints by artist David Galletly in November 2011. These are all long gone, so it’s time to let the dog off the lead.”
The album features remixes from Geese, Dems, FOUND, Ben Butler & Mousepad, OnTheFly, River Of Slime, grnr, A La Fu + Loomid, Miaoux Miaoux and The Japanese War Effort.
Thanks to all who contributed to Hair Of The Dog. I am still as insanely chuffed with it as I was the day it was released.
FOOTFALL is one of the tracks I created and performed at this year’s Culture Hack Scotland.
“Culture Hack Scotland is a 24 hr event where digital and design talent work together with cultural organisations to make new and exciting innovation prototypes.”Sync
This year’s theme was Data, Sound + Vision and the results were fantastic.
I was there as I’d been approached by the organisers to perform on the Saturday afternoon before the final presentations. The idea was that I’d compose my set over the 24 hours, somehow utilising the data pool they provide and/or feeding from what people were creating on the night.
At around 4am, I received a tweet from digital design student, Kyle MacQuarrie, asking if I’d like some footfall data from an exhibition at Glasgow’s Tramway converted into a midi file.
I am clueless as to how he did it, but I took this midi file and spread it across 5 VST synthesisers and a drum machine.
I didn’t alter the notes in any way. This is genuinely how it came out.
All I did was delete the notes below C0 and wedged the drum breaks in where it felt natural. I took my cues from what the numbers were throwing up.
Many thanks to the wonderful Sync team for running such a great event and getting me involved.
And to Kyle, without whom, this wee slice of crazy would not have come into existence.
Here he is presenting his pleasing visual interpretation of said footfall data.
…but John Rattray does it well enough for the both of us.
Plus a few more folk.
A Scottish pro-skater residing in the States, John has just made my day/week/month with this wee vid / beard blog featuring an old track of mine.
His blog The Predatory Bird is always worth a visit. The playful writing puts me in mind of A La Fu’s own but they’re both fae the ‘deen so maybe that’s something to do with it…
