Scott King in The Guardian

My piece on graphic design legend Scott King was in yesterday's Guardian, promoting his semi-retrospective MARXIST DISCO (cancelled) show in Munich. You can read the piece here.

Essex: Where they do things a little differently

Spent last weekend down in Mersea Island (above), a partially connected island off the Thames Estuary, about ten miles from Colchester. Beautiful, rugged coast, plus some weird geological condition where everything seems to grow to insane heights very quickly. My friend's vegetable gardening was giving up four-foot high rhubarb, more spinach than you could handle and the world's shiniest onions. Seriously, it's like Dig For Victory crossed with Day of The effin' Triffids down there. The place seems to have some kind of microclimate, and sustains a large vineyard; it also plays host to a large scooter/skinhead rally every autumn.

Here's me and Mrs EFTE enjoying the bleak English seaside with our friend's son. Knackered old boats, grey skies and some strange vegetation; does it get any more traditional?

CRACKIN' SKULLZ THIS SATURDAY NIGHT

London's finest hip-hop, 80s soul and ignorant bass night takes over The Legion on Old St tomorrow. 8pm-2am, free.

Power electronics v Psychedelic folk

Excellent new issue of Wire featuring a lengthy interview with creepy old industrialists Whitehouse (pictured above, onstage, looking really happy to be deafening a load of angry men), and a superb primer on British psychedelic folk featuring everyone from Steeleye Span to Comus. The Whitehouse piece is by David Keenan, whose book England's Hidden Reverse is considered a nigh-on indispensable guide to the whole Death In June/Current 93/magick scene. Whitehouse are definitely one of those bands who are a lot more interesting to read about than listen to: I saw them play at The Garage in 1996 at Live Action 69, and I can honestly say I've never seen such a pack of repressed homos in one room in my life.

The Folk article also includes John Martyn. Here he is tearing The Old Grey Whistle Test a new one with just his acoustic guitar and a massive Echoplex unit.

A bad end to a bad night, 1985

Interesting community seems to be building up on YouTube with people posting various recordings of the old 'closedown' segments from regional British TV (before the days of all night telly). This very subdued one is from Granada TV the night of the Heysel Stadium disaster. To his credit, the host segues pretty seamlessly from "A backstage look at the famous Moulin Rouge nightspot in Paris" to giving out the emergency numbers for people who didn't know whether their relatives were dead or alive. Wisely, they close down without the usual Granada jingle at the end.

Lost Film Classics: Radio On

Chris Petit's early Eighties road movie, Radio On is now available on DVD. There's a very good review of it here at the new Brithack film reviews site. I think the author's a little harsh on the film, but it's definitely worth checking. Superb use of Bowie and Kraftwerk throughout it.

The Russians Are Coming

Spent the weekend in Kent, which is a pretty hardcore example of EFTE: breakfast in the back-from-brink-of-bankruptcy Little Chef, huddled on a stony beach, rented a horse off some gypsies etc. But the high point came on the way back when we stopped off in Strood and had lunch in The Riverside Tavern. This is basically a gay pub, which - despite being in the middle of a very run down industrial dock - has been converted into a sort of Balearic homo paradise (tropical palms, pet dogs, great food etc). Who'd have thought Kent would have had such a banging gay scene?

However, the pub's real selling point is that it overlooks a bit of the dock where somone has parked a decommissioned Russian nuclear submarine. Apparently it was bought a few years ago with the idea of turning it into a nightclub, but the killjoys at the council didn't think a rusting Cold War relic in the middle of an estuary with one fire escape was a safe place to house 200 munted clubbers. So now, it's just there looking ominous. Unless some crazed bigot buys it up and attempts to do away with Kent's gay scene in a nuclear strike, I can't see it going anywhere soon.