Plaything posters: Black Mirror goes full Designers Republic

The Plaything episode of Black Mirror is a love/hate letter to video games and artificial intelligence. It is also a tribute to the graphic genius of The Designers Republic.

In the episode, future national treasure Will Poulter plays visionary game designer Colin Ritman. At one point in the episode, we visit Ritman's office. His shelves are cluttered with framed posters featuring the work of the TDR graphic design studio, which is beloved of techno heads and console gamers.

While he talks to Lewis Gribben's games journalist character Cameron Walker, you can spot the following works:

○ An Aphex Twin poster
○ the cover of Polygon Window's Quoth
○ a rare poster for The Orb's Blue Room
○ the cover of Autechre's debut album Incunabula
○ a circle thing which I haven't identified yet
○ a "laugh vote die" poster referencing a previous Black Mirror episode
○ and, hidden behind Cameron, the cover of Warp's first volume of Artificial Intelligence.

In another shot, you can spot Autechre's album Amber.

There are The Designers Republic works elsewhere in this office. Notice the one with the pigtails? That's from a TDR takeover of Emigre magazine – issue 29, to be exact. The pigtailed mascot featured here is called Sissy. The poster further left with a similar colour scheme is a collage for the same publication and contains stream-of-consciousness gibberish such as "design or die!", "g7oba7 7anguag3 for th3 mazz3z" and a Sheffield '94 football ident.

On the same shelf, there's an impenetrable sheet of black and white logo designs. This is their Visual Symbolism Vol. 94 (1990-1994) collection of "new and used" logos which contains Pop Will Eat Itself icons, Sun Electric's typeface, and a tonne of visual blaps saying things like "have a nice day" and "e by gum" and "I love my DR".

There is more, of course, but if I delve further into this, I'll fall into some kind of Black Mirror plot matrix and I'll grown USB sticks for fingers or something. Anyway, it's smashing to see such an iconic design outfit represented on the telly.

Further Fats: The Designers Republic vs B12 Records – are the 1990s dead? (2009)

Further Fats: Chosen Words – D is for Design (2010)

A message for all Nazis and generally bad people

Seriously now. Come on, world.

Ticket giveaway for Sonar 2009

I wonder if any fellow Mancunians fancy a trip to Barcelona right now? No?

The Sonar Festival is giving away a brace of tickets to their celebration of future music and art on June 8th to 10th this year. That's in about two weeks time.

To win the tickets, all you need to do is pick your top five Warp Records releases and email the list to info at bleep dot com.

Or you can pop your faves on the wall of Bleep's Facebook group. I've just joined that group, so I may see you there.

Someone had to tell me about Manchester United versus Barcelona. As a Mancunian, that's pretty shameful, but football's so off my radar, it's ridiculous. The only footie thing I like is Pop Will Eat Itself's Touched By The Hand Of Cicciolina.

A History Of The Prodigy For People That Can't Be Bothered Reading The Wikipedia Article

Maimed

In the 1970s, thousands of children were killed or maimed on Britain's roads. A cutesy animated kid and his cat warned us to take more care. The Prodigy turned this innocent bairn into a drug-hoovering club gibbon with debut hit Charly. Rave was born, and Kenny Everett, who voiced the cat, died of shock.

Trumped

While Sesame Street and Trumpton birthed kids 'n' drugs anthems photocopied from the Charly original, the Prodigy retreated into the studio to record an album. Experience was a crap name, and the music, although iconic, became a joke in grunge-obsessed Britain. Still, they proved techno bands could turn out a decent album.

Burnt

Experience was beaten to the Mercury Music Prize by Manchester band M People: the repercussions of this were felt 15 years later when the B Of The Bang sculpture fell apart. Alex Garland, who designed the Experience's cover, went on to write the screenplay for 28 Days Later in which Manchester was burnt to the ground. M People have won nothing since.

Goaded

On mid-90s follow-up Music for the Jilted Generation, the Prodge sidled up to sweaty crusties Pop Will Eat Itself to stamp their feet against the Criminal Justice Bill. So many voodoo people bought this album, they became the same establishment they so hated. They goaded people with "the poison" and "the remedy" simultaneously, which seems like a pretty toothless threat to me.

Sandwiched

After D:Ream won the election for "New" Labour, the Prodigy did wonders for the sale of Stella with abuse anthem Smack My Bitch Up. The video for this single used lesbianism in a way that only Katy Perry could wish for.  Parent album The Fat Of The Land turned band member Keith into a spiky-haired firestarting freak. It was quite the in-thing to be "psychosomatic addict insane". Fat Of The Land was the sixth most successful LP of 1997 in the UK, sandwiched between Celine Dion and the Spice Girls. There are so many potential jokes here, but I'm ignoring every one of 'em.

Things
Between 1997 and 2008, the Prodge did quite a lot of things that precisely nobody cares about.

Ends.

So there it is. All you need to know about the Prodigy. They have come a long way since what is offically known as their 'Kenny Everett phase'. The dear old Prodders have returned with an album of nuanced ballads called Invaders Must Die. Like a flesh-eating disease, it has grown on me, and I fear I was a little harsh in my review last week.

If this scant biography was too long for you to read, settle for this even briefer biog posted by a friend on my Facebook page:

"Band formed, did stuff, went away, did more stuff a bit later. Shouted a lot."

The Designers Republic vs B12 Records: are the 1990s dead?

I was sad to see The Designers Republic close its doors last week.

Through work for many bands (Autechre, Aphex Twin, Pop Will Eat Itself, Pulp) and classic video games, they pretty much defined 1990s graphic design for me.

According to a piece in the Creative Review, founder Ian Anderson explained:

“We’d lost a couple of clients, didn’t win a couple of pitches, got a tax bill which should have been sorted out and wasn’t and a major client who didn’t pay the money they owed us – in themselves any of those things would have been fine but when they come all at once there’s not much you can do.”

So sad.  They made a Google image search look sexy.  Their record covers looked like the music, like a kind of creeping Talented Mr Ripley metamorphis.  Wipeout 2097 wouldn't have been the game it was without their abject coolness, and they utterly defined PopWill Eat Itself's image.

They're not wiped out for good (did you see what I did there?) as I'm sure something will rise from the paint fumes.  Speaking of paint fumes, the picture of Designers-style graffiti at the top of this post was taken by John Wardell.  No-one needs Banksy when you have this graf in the basement.

On a more positive vibe, B12 are keeping the 1990s well and truly alive by rereleasing their complete back catalogue in a seven volume Archives series.

Rewind to the early '90s for a moment.  Modern electronica came out of the dregs of rave culture, when a cluster of assorted dredded dancers and smiley pill-poppers wanted music for the head as much as for the body.

B12's Archives series tracks the invention of IDM and intelligent techno, and spans many important moments in post-rave electronica.  It includes tracks used in the Electro Soma and the Artificial Intelligence compilations, the former of which you can hear at the bottom of this post.

Absolute techno nirvana, in seven double-CD chunks.  Volume three is out this week, which largely contains tracks from '91 and '92 and contains four unreleased tracks.  The 1990s may be dead visually, but the beautiful noise lives on.

[THE EMBEDDED MEDIA THAT WAS HERE IS NO LONGER ACTIVE]

His master has spoken

When January 2007 was a mere baby, puking and pooing from either end of its scrawny little body, I pontificated on how HMV would fill their shelves now that chart rules on downloads have been relaxed.

Dearest reader, drink from the potion of guru soothsayer Fat Roland. A mere six days later, HMV announced they would dump the official top 40 from its stores. They will instead fashion their own singles chart from washing-up bottles, old newspapers and dog dirt.

Their PR dude said the decision was "a practical issue. If we used the new download-friendly chart in our stores, there'd be large gaps on our walls." Yes, I KNOW. I flipping TOLD you.

>Nose

Meanwhile, as January ages into long trousers, its hands unclean from nose-picking and football, chart history has been made thanks to the first ever unsigned band to score a top 40 hit.

Koopa are rockers from Essex - nevertheless, their download-only single Blag, Steal & Borrow was loved by fans. It hit the mid-weeks at 17 and made its chart debut at number 31 on Sunday.

>Anus

Of course, they haven't made history at all. Pop Will Eat Itself scored a top ten hit with Get The Girl Kill The Baddies after being dropped by their record label, so technically they were the first. But they were hippy tree-huggers and didn't wash much; maybe they will be forgotten in the anus of history. Yes, anus. It's funnier than 'annals'.

(Brain: "Isn't Koopa the name of Russell Brand's mobile phone?")

>Elbow

As January ages, its once virile body withering into a crinkled stoop, we should get more unknowns elbowing their way into the charts.

It isn't really that amazing, though. No-one buys anything in January ever. January is the month that brought us number one singles from Babylon Zoo, 2 Unlimited, Chaka Demus & Pliers, Clive Dunn, Whitetown and the Rednex.

That alone should tell you everything.

PS - it looks like Music Zone is in trouble [link no longer active]. Yargles!