SPINNING COIN * KEEL HER * ROCKY LORELEI

Quick poster for a gig I'm hosting next month. Amazing line-up!

Glasgow's league-topping indie five-asiders, Spinning Coin (Geographic), bring us Permo! Support comes in the form of an ultra-rare appearance from London-based lo-fi legend Keel Her (Critical Heights, O Genesis) and her band, plus a full-band set from Glasgow's best-kept secret Rocky Lorelei.

Henry's Cellar Bar, Edinburgh
Saturday 18th November
7pm-10pm-ish
£7/£5

https://www.facebook.com/events/717597228430134/

These Winds Are In My Heart

Things have been a bit quiet at Peanut Snake this year, but don't worry, I've just been working and reading a lot of books. And last week I drew this poster (plus upsy-downsy variant) for the Lau Nau gig at Summerhall in Edinburgh next month, a joint promotion between Braw Gigs and the Nothing Ever Happens Here series.

I haven't seen Lau Nau play live since the Homefires festival ten years ago (!), but that was a wonderful set, so I'm really looking forward to the gig. She seems to have moved towards the audio-visual in the intervening years, with her new album for Fonal an instrumental soundtrack, so not really sure what to expect, which is fine by me!

About the same time as I finished this poster, I started reading The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany, which I'm really enjoying, and includes a couple of scenes, with a tumbling troll, and a drifting princess, which were weirdly synchronous with my poster image.

"And at that moment a wind came out of the northwest, and entered the woods and bared the golden branches, and danced on over the downs, and led a company of scarlet and golden leaves, that had dreaded this day but danced now it had come; and away with a riot of dancing and glory of colour, high in the light of the sun that had set from the sight of the fields, went wind and leaves together. With them went Lirazel."




https://www.facebook.com/events/569326229884005/

Braw As A(n octopus's) Craw

So, it seems that Record Store Day is once more just around the corner. And I'd just like to suggest that you might wish to add James Yorkston's "The Demonstrations of the Craws" to your panic-list.
I know exactly what you're thinking: "But Pual, you know I can't even begin to think about buying that, or anything else, not even the "Shirley Inspired" Shirley Collins tribute album, not when all of my mental energy for this next month will be expended purely on worry over how I will get my hands on a copy of the original Graeme Miller & Steve Shill "Moomins" theme music on 7" from Finders Keepers with fuzzy felt cover."

And I understand, completely. But this JY 12" contains demo versions of songs from one of last year's best albums, and I did the artwork, and it has a sort-of Shaking Stevens octopus on it, and there are only 500 copies being pressed, so just take a deep breath and scratch it onto your list, as I'm sure it will only bring you relief once you've done so.

And if you find you're still hyperventilating, perhaps trying watching a few episodes of the original Moomins animation on this wonderful archival site; should calm you down in no time.

Grey Waves ~ Faith/Void

I contributed some one-off hand-drawn sleeves for the limited artist version of a really nice 7" put out by People In A Position To Know. Two killer tunes from Grey Waves (Jesse Hughey and Eric Judy of Modest Mouse)! You can see the mixed results of my doodlings below. All ink on pastel. Do not rub on your face (only joking, I fixed them with some ancient, foul-smelling spray I found in a chest in the attic*).

One or two of these will have gone to other contributing artists, but PIAPTK have three of them for sale here, and the band are also selling through their bandcamp - perhaps they got one too? I dunno, but you could ask them...

Big thanks to Mike at PIAPTK for organising such a great project! I think there was an exhibition of the sleeves in Seattle too - top stuff.





* But perhaps don't rub them on your face anyway, just to be on the safe side.

Indie-Pup Invaders

Ride with us on the bone-UFO to the Cocktail Planet, where an out-of-this-world line-up of indie-pop songmanauts (?) awaits, care of restless intersonic promoter/explorers The Gentle Invasion!

Face Books event: https://www.facebook.com/events/273928772810916/

(No spirits allowed on premises, right of admittance for dogs reserved.)

Tilbage Til Havet

I designed a sleeve for a new Goodiepal cassette for Reckno, called Tilbage Til Havet. It's number 36 in his Audio Svar series, and is really quite amazing. The sleeve is a three-panel fold-out, you can see some pictures of it here, and check out the other new releases by AyGeeTee and Biographs too.

I had a lot of fun with this, what with the plasma ferns, and the crystallised pineapple drive, and the flaming teapot etc. I did a quick little Reckno/Havet logo for it too, which you can see bigger below.

= = = = = = = = = U P D A T E = = = = = = = = =This has now sold out from Reckno, but you might still find a copy over at Boomkat.

= = = = = = = = = H U O M ! ! ! = = = = = = = = = On the tape, the Goodiepal mentions Snappidagg GaruNDz 2953... which it seems does not yet exist. However, he did send through some materials to Reckno, for possible use with this release. I included some of this on the sleeve - the text inside the spaceship, a photo of him appearing on DR2. For the spine, I used part of a score where he mentions Tilbage Til Havet, although I think only to point out that this score is not part of Audio Svar 36. However, this does actually seem like it might be the score which he is referring to when discussing the Snappidagg, and I think he does also refer to something in another of the scores which he sent, earlier in the tape, so I'm going to upload them here, and hope I don't get in trouble. I edited these together from six separate images (and also "EQed" them a bit), so there is some fuzziness around the joins.

Flower-Corsano Duo

Here's a poster I gone and done for Braw Gigs' upcoming show with Flower-Corsano Duo, Ashley Paul, and Acrid Lactations in Edinburgh - really looking forward to this one!

Some of the colours seem to be a bit too hot for the internet to handle, despite some tweaking in that respect. Maybe I need to recalibrate my monitor, or my eyes; probably both.

Here are all the event details on Facebook... http://www.facebook.com/events/1454452968105844/

Braw Pigs

Here's a quick poster I did for a recent Braw Gigs show. Pigs.

Havet \ Prunes Home Movie

Here's a little home movie commercial for the Goodiepal/Flower Farmer split tape on Reckno, made on a hot, foggy day last week. The audio is a small excerpt of a Flower Farmer tune made with random samples of Goodiepal's Havet. Which is not on the tape. But you can still buy that anyway, either direct from Reckno, or from Boomkat (who also have the download of the FF side), or Norman.





You can hear a track from the FF side in the post below, and here's a video of the whole of Goodiepal's 1990 ambient opus Havet (which sounds super lush on cassette)!

The Flower Farmer Prunes...

This week finally sees the release of Flower Farmer's "Prunes". The good folk at Reckno have waited almost three years whilst Florian tried to carefully prune the original improvisations down to a listenable length, without damaging the essential character of the original floral arrangements, or the essential character of his brain.

The result is over 40 minutes of relentless electronic foam, suitable for late night f-zero drives and midday sun-touched ferry rides.

By magical serendipity, the album is presented as a split cassette release, with the other side taken up by Goodiepal's early '90s ambient opus "Havet". Incroyable! I handled the artwork for both sides (reversible sleeve!), and had a lot of fun with it.

You can hear the whole thing and order the cassette over at the Reckno bandcamp page. They've also released a new tape by Campbell Kneale's Our Love Will Destroy The World this week, just in time for the summer. It makes me want to go to the beach - highly recommended.

Here's the final track from Prunes...



Florian is occasionally sending in tunes from his current Miniatures project, so fans can expect to hear that completed c. 2016.

Trekstock Spanish Ants Tee

Youth cancer charity Trekstock have made a lush t-shirt of my logo design for James Yorkston's Spanish Ants single. I think they made them to sell at the Field Day festival, alongside designs by the likes of Django Django, Animal Collective and Purity Ring, but you can buy one NOW from their site!!!

It was the Scottish Fisheries Museum's annual open day last weekend, so I paged my official photographer, Vicky Brown, and headed over for an impromptu photoshoot. (The amazing life-sized inflatable sea beasties were made by a chap called Andy Peters, you can have a look at his website here.)

The t-shirts come up quite big, size-wise - US sizes, perhaps? I'm wearing the large, which is nicely billowy and voluminous. The colours have come up really great (although I suspect a few new mines may have needed to be sunk to source the rare minerals required to render the lurid colour scheme).

Buy a JY Trekstock t-shirt here, and help young people with cancer whilst looking really really fashionable looking at the same time!!

Spanish Ants in your Dancing Pants

Here's some artwork I did for the digital release of James Yorkston's Spanish Ants EP on Domino. It's an earlier version of what eventually became the t-shirt logo a few posts below. Check out the EP here! As well as the excellent title tune, it includes remixes by The Pictish Trail, OnTheFly and James himself - it's killer material; all bangers, no mash. Disco sausage.

Record Store Day 2013

So, it was once again Record Shop Day and, although I was unable to get to any participating shops to snag that MGMT cassingle, or the Roky Erickson 7", I did manage to grab the above haul from my local vinyl purveyor, The Community Kist. I got a Rhythm & Sound comp, Night Eyes by Eyes (!), and Malcolm McLaren's Madame Butterfly on 7" - nice! 

Every day is Record Store Day at the Kist.

The Kist is a newly opened charity shop in Anstruther, Fife, run by Elizabeth Gordon, with assistance from various other volunteers, raising money for a variety of local causes. I recently designed a logo for them, and would heartily recommend you come and have a look at the shop if you're in the area.

Elizabeth, forced to pose with random objects.

It's genuinely an Aladdin's Cave of wonders, with you as likely to find yourself lost in conversation with Elizabeth as amongst the large selection of books, CDs, clothing and much more. Magic lamps, a cyclops, they probably have those somewhere too, although I suppose that was more a Sinbad thing... answers on a postcard delivered by a miniature Dynamation horse. Or a robot owl.

A big batch of donations being processed!

Check out the Community Kist on Facebook here!

Magic Fruits

I've been eating a lot of yoghurt recently. Here's an experemedial scraggy guffed-up sketchbook drawing that could really have done with some g. fructis pixel care.. better planned expeditions into the Kingdoms of Gif to come.

Springtime Wardrobe Alert

I've designed some t-shirts for James Yorkston. They have a cat on them. James is just heading off on a mega-carpet-sale three-piece-suite tour with The Pictish Trail and Seamus Fogarty, so head along to one of these dates if you'd like to snag one (I imagine they'll also be available at Gnomegame).

Here's Seamus here modeling the navy blue version. I should say, Seamus has some new t-shirts of his own as well, which are also pretty good. They have cows on them. And Pictish has some depicting the eastern seaboard of his face (do not feed the gulls). So. There are the main facts as they currently stand. That is all. Good luck with the springtime and any fashion plans you may have for the season.

It Takes Tea

Kettle-keen Edinburgh tune-brewers Randolph's Leap have got into the mug game, and they got me to design it! So, for just £6, plus postage, you can own one of these ceramic beauties, as well as getting an immediate download of an excellent new Leap tune, "News", taken from their forthcoming album!

You can order one now from here, or why not head along to their Edinburgh Queen's Hall megagig this coming Saturday, and pick one up there? The Leap will be joined onstage by Jo Mango and Snowgoose; in such a fancy venue, it promises be a special event indeed!

Here's a close-up pic of the bad-arse rap baboon featured in the headline story (on the mug)..

Wild Things

Just did this poster for a tasty triple-decker sandwich of acts at the Queen's Hall in February. It's a sort of Hitchcock-meets-some-old-blue-and-orange-Pumas design, with inconclusive jaunty beasties. There should be copies of the poster for sale at the gig, you can find all the gig info here..

Wobbly Dog

I've just done a poster for The Pictish Trail's upcoming tour with Eagleowl. Johnny Pictish has been hugely supportive of my vague efforts to draw more pictures this year, and gave me free reign with this design, a tragic lapse in judgement which has led to this heartbreaking image of a wobbly dog, lost, with inconclusive packed lunch, in Volcano Bacon National Park. Let's hope he gets out of there okay, and that this doesn't mark the end of my association with Fence. Anyway, a pleasure to draw something totally free range, so thank you Johnny! Go and check out the tour, it is going everywhere, it's a big bus and you cannot miss it.


Michael Rocket by The Pictish Trail

Eagleowl - Eagleowl vs Woodpigeon (Live in Pittenweem) by RadioMagnetic

CHRISTMAS MEGABAUBLES

 

Well, incredibly, another year has apparently passed and it's already time for the third installment of Kid Canaveral's Christmas Baubles (narwhal-themed poster stuck together by the Peanut Snake elves above), another festive all-dayer featuring a rich, fruity musical mixture topped with comedy marzipan and DJ icing..

FRUITCAKE = Malcolm Middleton, King Creosote vs. FOUND, Meursault, Randolph's Leap, RM Hubbert, OnTheFly (rare live set!);

MARZIPAN = Josie Long, Elaine Malcolmson, Eleanor Morton;

ICING = Papi Falso family DJs, DJ The Pictish Trail.

Oh, and what's that gleaming coin-shaped chunk of metal you've just shattered a tooth on? Why, it could only be festive heroes Kid Canaveral themselves, feverishly unwrapping songs from their staggeringly good soon-to-be-released second album!  

There might still be a few tickets here if you move fast, so get along, it's sure to be a CHRISTMAS CRACKER! Of a gig.

https://www.facebook.com/events/221198618009172/?ref=ts&fref=ts

2012 Winter Collection

Now the cold winter nights are drawing in, why not "hermitically" seal yourself up with one of these fabulous Randolph's Leap t-shirts? Hand screen-printed by the good folk at Jetpace, from my design for the Hermit EP launch, this fancy garment is sure to add a blast of summer blue to your winter hibernation wardrobe.

You can also buy it as a part of a package deal, which includes the fantastic Hermit 7", as well as a pair of tickets to their Queens Hall gig in a few months. But have a look around innit. Snazzy.

http://randolphsleap.limitedrun.com/products/505787-hermit-t-shirts