Warped Reality Magazine – HI-FI, LO-FI, NO-FI and everything in between

Communing with Derek Jarman & Other UK Highlights

On October 17, 2024

View of the stunning Dungeness shingle facing the white cliffs of Dover. — Dungeness facing the white cliffs of Dover.

My recent trip to the United Kingdom was so incredible that hearing Viv Albertine speak wasn’t even the greatest moment of my trip. Viv Albertine! Of the Slits!

I am going to jump around a bit in the timeline of the trip to highlight my favorite moments. I was in the UK from Sunday to Sunday, September 22 to September 29. On my first day, I saw Steve Wynn at the Walthamstow Rock n’ Roll Book Festival and Viv Albertine at the George Tavern in Shadwell. From Monday to Wednesday, I visited my friends Mick and Anne in Edinburgh ( my first ever visit to the city). On Thursday, I visited my dear friend Sarra in lovely Muswell Hill, then headed to Finsbury Park to see the first of two Prolapse shows. Friday, I headed to Brighton to see Prolapse again, and Saturday our group road-tripped to Dungeness to visit Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage. Sunday I was back in London for a last day of good food and an extensive Tate Modern visit. Oh, and I witnessed the debut of Widget, a band featuring members of Big Joanie and All Cats Are Beautiful.

A Day in Dungeness

I think of Derek Jarman as a worldbuilder extraordinaire. Before his life was cut tragically and horrifically short by AIDS in 1994, he never stopped creating films, books, poems, and paintings— his last film, Blue, came out the year before he died — and he was equally adept at transforming raw spaces.

From 1969 until 1979, he lived in a succession of rudimentary studio spaces, all of which were situated on the Thames riverside. (Now fully gentrified, the neighborhood was then a warren of crumbling warehouses and disused wharfs, with less than 5,000 residents.)

Steve Albini, 1962-2024

By andrea

On May 15, 2024

In In Memoriam

There have been numerous tributes in the wake of legendary producer and engineer Steve Albini’s death last week, at the age of 61. Some exhaustively trace his history in iconic Chicago bands like Big Black and Shellac — or his unique production work for bands like Nirvana (“In Utero”), the Breeders, PJ Harvey, Bush, and scores of others. Most detail his notoriously acerbic candor, often about bands he’d recorded. (Steve on the Pixies: “Never have I seen four cows more anxious to be led around by their nose rings.”) And most mention “The Problem with Music,” his oft-quoted 1993 Baffler screed — still spot-on roughly 30 years later — that likens signing with a major record label to swimming backwards through a trench filled with runny shit. (It gets less complimentary from there.)

Steve Albini with Lil Bub, a small saucer-eyed cat, on his shoulder. — Steve Albini with Lil Bub, the magical space cat, at Electrical Audio.

The Vaughan Oliver Memorial Lecture at Newcastle

By andrea

On October 24, 2023

In 4AD, In Memoriam

The phrase “fucked-up and photocopied” is often used to describe the aesthetic of punk graphics. Imagine visuals that have been chopped, warped, repeated, inverted, and so on, until the meaning becomes distorted and new. While the work of the late designer Vaughan Oliver grew in increasing complexity over the course of his long career, it always retained a certain roughness and the spark, the grit of the imperfect. That fucked-up-ness, if you will. As he himself said of his work with the Pixies (perhaps the band that he will be most associated with, despite working with a broad spectrum of musicians, artists and clients): “You imagine designing sleeves for your own record collection. The David Lynchian moods in there, the black humor, the surrealism — there’s such natural inspiration for me.”

1) Vaughan Oliver as a young man. 2) 4AD PMT experiment 3) Vaughan and Bruce Gilbert (Wire) at the ICA, 1993. 4) Vaughan and a skirt of eels for Pod. — 1) Vaughan Oliver as a young man. 2) 4AD PMT experiment
3) Vaughan + Bruce Gilbert (Wire) at the ICA, 1993. (Photo by me)
4) Vaughan and a skirt of eels.

Natural? Or unnatural? Either way, Vaughan never looked to the usual sources to draw inspiration. (And his weapon was often the now-obsolete PMT camera, a crucial ally in making beautiful accidents with type and texture.) “I would take something from Vaughan’s experience and his body of work and think about what happens when you step away from the computer and when you use your hands,” Vaughan’s peer, Adrian Shaughnessy, has noted. “Vaughan certainly advocated the use of hands in his teaching. And I suspect, deep down, he actually regretted the computerization of graphic design. Keep in mind that a lot of the best work was done manually.”

Shaughnessy was just one of the speakers reflecting on the work and legacy of Vaughan Oliver at the Glasshouse (formerly the Sage Gateshead) in Newcastle, UK, on September 14. Vaughan’s v23 colleagues, Chris Bigg and Timothy O’Donnell, also delved deep into their memories of their close-knit, challenging and fruitful collaboration at 4AD, where Vaughan served as the in-house designer for 20 years. The audience represented a wide swath of musicians, designers and photographers whose careers and working methods were forever warped, thanks to their work with the formidable V.O. Attendees included Miki Berenyi from Lush, Anja Huwe and Manuela Zwingman from Xmal Deutschland, artist Russell Mills, photographers Dominic Davies and Kevin Westenberg, Glen Johnson from Piano Magic, and Vaughan’s family, to name but a few. (The lecture also marked the inauguration of the Vaughan Oliver Graphic Design Scholarships, a 10-year initiative supported by 4AD to provide opportunities for talented students to study design at Vaughan’s alma mater, Northumbria University.)