Some people earn the tag of legend - and for five decades Derek Ridgers, the London-based photographer has captured the Dark Carnival of the British underworld in our most radical club nights, from Blitz and Skin Two through to today’s Wraith Club.  Growing up in the 60s, and making his name photographing punk clubs, and taking rock shots of the world’s greatests, he is a hero to many working photographers and fans of subculture, alike.   Humble, brilliant, and with a rock n roll gallows humour to match his dark lens, now 70, in this Goth Shop X Cold Lips podcast, it’s a pleasure to have a conversation attempting to span his archive, and talk about voyeurism and documenting the cultural politics of the underground. Derek Ridgers stands alone in his preservation of the fleeting expressions of the night.   His limited silver bromide and C-type signed and numbered Derek Ridgers Editions are available via the wonderfully curated Goth Shop:  gothshop.co

COLD LIPS

GOTH SHOP X COLD LIPS with Derek Ridgers

Recorded September 2020, on a balcony in the east, looking down towards the spree river with Berghain between.  I’m sitting with Rob Doyle, the author of my favourite book so far this year, Threshold.  It's published in the UK and the US by Bloomsbury, so he takes throne as a leader in a new school of digital existentialist modernists, who take a post-millenial ego, and ask questions about the Author’s physical space on the page. Rob Doyle is very tall, he appears at the door wearing a black polo neck and black pegs, looking total jazznik, because later tonight he’ll be on stage with a strain of the Fat White Family in Neukolln, playing percussion at a reassuringly fun evening, where the super-spreading qualities of the flute can be ignored, as we travel in an alt reality, away from the claws that birthed us all. Ex pat life, where universal globalisms of Me Too, BLM, Terf-wars, squish in the Q-Anon malestrom of denial and manipulations of the maleducated grip for sense and logic mean the novel has not felt as relevant and required in counterculture in my lifetime. Threshold sits as a hologram, in an era where the individual is manipulated into the spectrum of hashtag identity politics, and good/bad - like/dislike polarisations mean we are the product, smashed beneath a data-driven duvet in a privatised society. 80% predictable, asking if that too is corrupted as any other statistic,the novel remains relatively data-proof, its nuance its strength, the unsearchable, between the lines facts being far truer than any single sentence or status update. Thanks for listening. I’m making this on Sunday 27 September in Berlin. The music is by Gil De Ray. We’re on a residency in Mitte at the Neurotitan Gallery as guests of the wonderful artist Danielle De Picciotto - whom you can hear a past conversation with in the trenches of all your favourite podcast outlets, via Anchor, Spotify, iTunes, many more, and our own coldlips.co.uk. I also share these on kirstyallison.substack.com, where I gratefully send out thank yous of my new poetry book, Now Is Now, a collection since 007, to paying subscribers. Rob Doyle's Threshold is out now, and the film This Is Ritual is coming soon. Follow him on https://www.instagram.com/skullhotel/ https://coldlips.co.uk/2020/09/12/modern-poetry-live-in-berlin/ 

Rob Doyle x Kirsty Allison, Berlin

Recorded February 2020, at Studio 65 in Wedding, Berlin, when Cold Lips released Martyn Goodacre's Whos Fuckin Planet book to accompany his exhibition as Das Gift Released in anticipation of Danielle De Picciotto's GESAMTKUNSTWERK show at Neurotitan Gallery, Berlin.  12 September > 03 October where Kirsty Allison will be artist/writer in residence with Gil De Ray Please do support these efforts by subscribing to kirstyallison.substack.com

Danielle De Picciotto x Kirsty Allison

Kirsty Allison took part in Mehmet Sander's life changing workshop at the Chisenhale Dance Space.  His world-class 'action architecture' defies EVERYTHING in contemporary dance.  Punk, hardcore, radical, revolutionary. https://coldlips.co.uk/2018/07/05/mehmet-sander-dance-company/ https://youtu.be/K3RIteQb5p4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR50gEdpKwc

Mehmet Sander with Kirsty Allison

This interview was recorded in St Giles churchyard in Camberwell, London, 3 July 2020. Dave Randall is the author of Sound System – The Political Power of Music  (Pluto Press 2017) and guitarist, producer and composer.  His own critically acclaimed albums released under the name Slovo feature international collaborations with artists including Iceland's Emiliana Torrini, West Africa's Maezah and US jazz legend Max Roach.  He has contributed to Grammy Award winning albums by Dido and has toured the world performing with UK dance act Faithless, for more click here. Notably, as part of the 1 Giant Leap project, Dave appeared alongside Baaba Maal, Michael Stipe, the Mahotella Queens, Neneh Cherry and others. Recently he has toured with Sinead O'Connor, and teamed up with Big Dada artist Mike Ladd, clarinet player Carol Robinson and drummer Dirk Rothbrust to create the Paris based improvising quartet 'Sleeping In Vilna'.  He's currently performing live with Roland Gift (Fine Young Cannibals). He has also produced music for the feature length documentaries 'Rebuilding Hope' (set in the US and Sudan), 'Witness Bahrain' and 'There Is A Field' (set in the USA and Palestine). He has also composed music for the contemporary dance/juggling company 'Feeding The Fish', the acclaimed Palestinian dance company Al Zaytouna and the Robert Swinston dance company.  ​ He lives in Brixton, South London. https://twitter.com/davidrrandall Dave is in conversation with Cold Lips' editor, Kirsty Allison.   https://twitter.com/kirstyallison https://www.instagram.com/kirstyallison_/ https://kirstyallison.substack.com The podcast is edited by Sebastian Bowden.

Dave Randall with Kirsty Allison

Photographer, Martyn Goodacre is perhaps best known for his iconic shots of Kurt Cobain.  But in his first book publication,  WHOS FUCKIN PLANET, limited to 100 editions, with a belly band lino cut by Kirsty Allison (available on www.coldlips.co.uk), he tells the story of free land before the Criminal Justice Act (1994), and how music led to him squatting the Fire Station on the Old Kent Road, which hosted early gigs for Psychic TV, Jesus & Mary Chain and many more.   In this meeting in Berlin's Neukölln, following the opening of his exhibition curated by Stephanie Hamer, he and Cold Lips' editor, the writer and performer, Kirsty Allison, catch up on a few more LIFE details.

Martyn Goodacre with Kirsty Allison, Cold Lips

Berlin legend, Mark Reeder - moved from working class Manchester in the late 70s, to rep Factory Records, and put on illegal punk gigs in East Berlin, which led to him being recruited as a GDR producer, after being grassed by Stasi friends.   In the seminal film, B-Movie - he explores the 80s in Berlin, but here he speaks candidly to Kirsty Allison about  his McLaren-type Svengali effect on subculture, shaping the sound of New Order, trance in the 90s, and how he's currently impacting China with his new act, Stolen. https://mfsberlin.com https://kirstyallison.substack.com https://coldlips.co.uk Edited by Sebastian Bowden

Mark Reeder with Kirsty Allison

Recorded on the rooftop of The Union Club in London's Soho,  accompanied by martinis, before a Polaroid session, which adorned the second edition of Cold Lips,  prior to headlining the legendary launch party at Hoxton's Courtyard Theatre in 2016, the mighty Dr John Cooper Clarke raps with Cold Lips' founder and editor, Kirsty Allison https://kirstyallison.substack.com https://coldlips.co.uk Artwork by Luke McLean https://www.iamlukemclean.com Edited by Sebastian Bowden

Dr John Cooper Clarke with Kirsty Allison

TRICKY IS THE OLD SCHOOL OVERLORD OF BRITISH HIP-HOP - his new book Hell Is Around The Corner is out now - and it is splendid. It's rare to meet iconoclasts on the level of Tricky - born Adrian Thaws - mother dying of suicide/epilepsy at 4 - and it’s an honour to learn and be infected by people like this. I’m a huge fan, and I remember first meeting him for DJMag in a flat, opposite Sketch, he answered the door in a white dressing gown, and I was in a bluesman palace - with as much dope as a Howard Marks'  green room.  The other time I interviewed him was for the BBC, he took me on a golf buggy all around the back of a festival before flaming up a dressing room, and doing a hypnotising performance on the level of Iggy Pop.  You can read the feature I wrote on kirstyallison.com. BUT GET ON THE BOOK. HERE IS HIS COMMS CENTRE: http://www.trickysite.com/ 

TRICKY with Cold Lips' editor Kirsty Allison

Cold Lips is the print-first magazine, with events internationally, founded by writer Kirsty Allison (she performs as Vagrant Lovers), and edits the arts on DJMag. "I've got drawers full of archive - and wanted to share them," she says about this series of conversations with all manner of iconoclasts. www.coldlips.co.uk www.kirstyallison.com TIME OUT: "Proving bookish folk are the coolest folk…the literary fashion zine" Dr John Cooper Clarke: "artistic & fabulous" Le Cool: "the scruffy literary mag"

hubhopper

COLD LIPS

hubhopper