DEF

Second part of an A-Z of great artists and bands you may not have heard of;

Dakota Oak Trio :: Derbyshire Krautrock and Folk
[see Badly Drawn Boy and Neu]

ESG :: real raw club music, by real raw women
[see A Certain Ratio and 400 Blows UK]

Fridge :: Drifting but not easy listening
[see Adem and Fourtet]

check out ABC

It's just noise

Very late last night, or it might have been very early this morning, I was listening to a big chunk of ambient music as I nodded off. Surprisingly something of my own came up; Looper. I think I wrote it back in 2003, when I wanted something I could listen to while getting my daughter to go to sleep. It was a one of a number of pieces of 'music' I wrote that were trying to create something akin to listening to a loud old fridge while under the influence of Opiates. Don't try playing it a party, but you might find that it's something nice to drift off to at night.

Hipgnosis eat your hearts out!

View from the Paiju washbasins
Photo by Oliver Townsend.

original modern

Peter Saville's influence on Manchester's civil image has started popping up all around the city, ready for the Labour Party conference. I haven't got any photos I'm afraid, but the look is also starting to be integrated into the web presence of some public bodies and a quick search should find you examples of it in use. Interestingly the treatment is being used in a very non prescriptive way, with all the disparate arms of public provision in Manchester allowed, or even encouraged, to use the elements provided in different ways. So the stripes motif, reminiscent of the work of Paul Rand and more latterly Paul Smith, appears in combination with many different logos and typefaces. Whether this free and easy approach was taken for practical, political or design reasons would be interesting to know.

Steven Appleby

See more thanks to the Guardian