CIRCLE OF DUST, RECOMMISSIONED

Hugely prolific Detroit-based electronic musician Klayton ( also known as Celldweller ) has released a new video for his resurrected 90s industrial project CIRCLE OF DUST.

CoD was originally put on ice due to complicated legal disputes with a former label, in response to which, Klayton went on to form CELLDWELLER and grow his thriving label FIXTMUSIC to produce and market his own music ( as well as that of other acts such as Blue Stahli, The Qemists and The Algorithm ).

Recalling surrealist pioneer Louis Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou, and Shinya Tsukamoto's horrifying 90s cyberpunk body-horror movie TETSUO, the video perfectly captures the aesthetics of 90s industrial music, as performed by bands like Die Krupps, KMFDM, and Schnitt Acht.

Circle of Dust has remastered and re-released it's entire back catalogue, culminating in a brand-new 2016 album, Machines of Our Disgrace. This track is taken from that album.* 

*There will be a comprehensive overview of FIXT's recent output on this blog soon.

OLIVIA PEAKE: FUTURGARDE

Olivia is a UK artist, and here she talks to FUTURE-ROCKER about her unique brand of Neo-Futurism.

I first started to get back into painting, having investigated different mediums in drawing, photo-editing, collage and textiles. I had gained a great interest in technology, having worked my ideas through photoshop and had a love for high intensive colours, manipulating hues, saturations and contrasts. 

I wanted to investigate how I could make my paintings interact with the ideas of new technology, and the modern lifestyle we see today. This is where the urban architectural structures and utopian virtual spaces began, and I started to produce my large-scale abstract paintings with fluorescent vibrant paint.

Olivia Peake: Futurgarde ( Painting One ), 2013

I am influenced by Greenberg, Fried and Douglas Fogle’s The Trouble with Painting, and the manipulation of painting to reform the canvas into a new hybrid form. Melting the edges of the restrictive canvas into three-dimensional form, light and installation and intervening within the architecture of the gallery space, to depict a metaphor for the collapse and re-development of painting itself.

Olivia Peake: Futurgarde ( Painting Two ), 2013

Further influences of mine were from movements within futurism and modernist abstraction: Utopian spaces that present a state of re-development and movement, reminiscent of the work of Julie Mehretu, Ian Monroe and Constant Nieuwenhuis' New Babylon. As intricate and complex as my paintings are, my work also follows minimalistic structures, taking inspiration for the work of Mondrian in the use of geometric forms and technological pixilation, and creating stark building structures with contrasting subtle reflections.

Olivia Peake: Futurgarde Installation, 2013

I develop my paintings by constantly editing, erasing, re-doing, and working through levels of improvisation and intuitive responses, combined with precision and decisiveness of perspective and forms. In a way my work is in a constant battle with itself, being manipulated from a wall based canvas to a sculpture, then to an installation. Conflicting responses between the virtual vs. actual, abstract vs. representational, from the plastic aesthetics of Perspex to the glossy reflective surfaces of paint.

Olivia Peake: Urban Dynamics, 2012

My work is always shifting and developing and has began to take influences in ideas of alter-modernism and the interventionist work of Katharina Grosse, and I am excited to know where it will lead next.

Olivia is currently living and working in Derby, UK, and further developing her paintings at a smaller scale and continuing to involve the use of installation and sculpture.

To purchase Olivia's work, click here

With thanks to Charlie Levine and Artfetch

ALEXI K: KONSTRUCTIVISM - A NEW LEVEL

I am an artist based in Birmingham UK, inspired by Futurism, Cubism and Constructivism, as well as Bauhaus, and the Dutch Avant-Garde. I'm a founding member of The Cobalt Blue art collective, where we make a point of seeking out great artists to join us on projects. We are not dictated to in any way, either by institutions, or the strictures of funding programs.

About the current series of paintings: I've been working on some canvases recently, that ideally need to be 'read' in sharp lighting, because of the level of accumulated detail ( in the relief patterns on the surface ). These allow you to see the 'history' of the piece - a bit like viewing a tract of land from an aeroplane.

Ultimately, you're seeing structures within structures, paintings inside paintings.

These close-ups work as finished pieces in themselves, and have inspired the next phase of my art.

Alexi K: HYPERION - Acrylic on canvas, 2012

Alexi K: QUARTERLY PROJECTION - Acrylic on canvas, 2014

Alexi K: SUPERHIGHWAY - Acrylic on canvas, 2014

Below: The finished version? Maybe.

All artwork, copyright Alexi K, 2012 & 2014

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THE RING CYCLE: THE SOUND OF A TREE ( with axe accompaniment )

Bartholomäus Traubeck is a sound artist who specialises in creating music from unexpected sources. 

In 'Years' ( 2011 ) he has used the eye camera from a Playstation to read the data from the rings of an Ash tree. This data is then translated into a musical score by a program called Ableton Live. To us humans, music is an important form of mass communication. Do trees have the equivalent? Our anthropomorphic minds want there to be. The result is eerie and beautiful.

Below: Modified record player, wood, sleeves, 2011

In the punningly-titled 'Two Axes in a Forest' ( 2014 ), the artist loops the sound of guitars humming through one another. Where the imperfections in the manufacturing process prevent it being a perfectly resonant drone, a musical 'tune' is spontaneously created by the objects.

Below: Installation, Guitars, Amplifier, Transducers, 2014