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Totally studly and macho flyer for the first Tooting Bizarre gig in Croydon, at the Scream Lounge. Vanessa’s excellent Euro-Prog band The K!Nights Of Rad (website/myspace to follow) support.

Weirdly continuing the nautical theme from last year’s flyers, Tooting Bizarre is now in it’s third year (I think) at the The Miller.

So the new Thumpermonkey record finally got finished. It is entitled “We Bake Her Bread Beneath Her Holy Fire“. Here is the artwork that I prepared for it. The look I was aiming for is bold and striking – an attempt at a classy and “iconic” feel (whatever that means!). The bird-headed woman speaks to the Aztec imagery that Mike Woodman enjoys so much, the birds are a nod to HP Lovecraft’s soul-snatching whippoorwills (as mentioned in Whateley, track 2), and the toaster is, well, an incredible looking toaster (and matched to the imagery in Proktor Cylex, track 4).

Yes. It is here. Four tracks of molten gloom recording at Keynote Studios in Reading. Half the recording was paid for by Nightshift Magazine, Oxford, after they awarded 50ft Panda with Demo of the Month, and the engineer, Umair Chaundry, got an absolutely blinding sound for the record. I truly free the bar has been lifted again – this is definitely the best sounding record I’ve ever been part of.

Please download Olid, by Olid for almost nothing (at 320kbps MP3) from our Bandcamp page.

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Update: my good friend Mike Woodman has just completed a rad music video for us:

Olid – ‘Lights on the Lake’ from Michael Woodman on Vimeo.

Todger launch their new record (see my album artwork below) at the Monto Water Rats on March 3rd. They are giving away a free A3 poster with each ticket, and I made a little web ad for it too:

Tooting Bizarre continues its regular take-over at The Miller. I am playing the first two nights in 2009, and also made the flyers. Ici!

Todger’s third album, and their first full-length album with the full-fat electric line-up is now available. Recorded by our good friend Anthony Chapman, I was struggling to come up with the right cover for this. Something humorous but rocking, evil looking but with a wink. After a number of false starts, I woke up one morning with a vision of this. Luckily I have some instantly game friends, and I thank Mr.W and Miss.P for their assistance.

Inspired in no small way by the recent Francis Bacon exhibit, I was excited to try a tryptic of my own and bring some narrative into the design in a way that I’ve not achieved before. Here is the front cover in context:

The back cover is particularly silly and makes a satisfying job of undermining any initial perceived seriousness in the front cover. The satanic halo I’m particularly pleased with…

Completed the album artwork for the new 50ft Panda EP – The Tribunal of Mr Shout. This is their second recording, and we went for a more esoteric, pseudo-mathematical, Illuminati symbolism, mystic conspiracy kinda feeling. I’m very pleased with it, and I’m sure Robert Anton Wilson would like it too…

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I have also updated the 50ft Panda site to match the new artwork. Huh!

Foolishness of foolishnesses; Stonasaurus recently re-united for the first gig since the Norwich Arts Centre gig (supporting Goldie Lookin’ Chain) way back in… er… 2005… maybe?

Mike Woodman (in his confused ignorance) insisted that we grab the mics for old times’ sake and open a Tooting Bizarre night. It was actually damn fun, and great to have so many friendly faces in the crowd (without which it might have fallen somewhat flatter!). I thank all those who came out to see it muchly – and advise anyone who missed it to download The “Best” Of Stonasaurus (for free, of course, I wouldn’t expect anyone to part with a penny for this nonsense!).