Rebels in control

Salvo/ZTT "Element Series" Reissues

Rebels in Control are working with Union Square Music's Salvo imprint and ZTT Records' in-house archivist Ian Peel on a series of repackaged deluxe reissues. The “Element Series” redesigns take their cues from the releases original artworks, expanding them greatly to incorporate previously unseen images, photos and new liner notes from the pen of Peel.

First up: releases by 808 State, Buggles and a deluxe reworking of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's “Welcome to the Pleasuredome”. Many more to follow…

(FGTH illustration © Lo Cole)

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www.unionsquaremusic.co.uk

Ostgut Ton

Steffi is a DJ, label owner and party promoter in one. On first sight, this is nothing out of the ordinary these days, but when all of this is done as passionately and with high quality standards as in Steffi’s case, you better have a closer look. Until she moved to Berlin in autumn 2007, Steffi has been a motor of an Amsterdam scene defining itself in opposition to the commercial dance business in the Netherlands. She is currently a resident at Berlin's infamous Panorama Bar.

Rebels in Control were in disco heaven when Steffi commissioned them to illustrate the cover for Steffi's debut 12”, “Kill Me”, released by Ostgut Ton, the label run by Berghain / Panorama Bar. The imagery used for the artwork was born from collaboration – photos of butterflies supplied by Steffi's mother were collaged by us; typography is by Ostgut Ton's in-house designer, Yusuf Etiman.

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www.myspace.com/steffiklakson

Trevor Horn

If the success of a record producer can be judged by the weight of awards on their shelves then Trevor Horn ranks as the world’s number one. He has a hat trick of Brit Awards for Best British Producer from 1983, 1985 and 1992. In the 80s he was Rolling Stone’s Producer of the Year 1983. In the 90s, Best Producer at the 1991 Q Awards. And in the 00s, Music Week’s 2004 Producer of the Year. He produced legendary singles like Band Aid’s ‘Do The Know It’s Christmas?’ and Godley & Creme’s ‘Cry’; the mainstream pop of Frankie Goes To Hollywood, Pet Shop Boys, Rod Stewart, Simple Minds and Tina Turner; cult classics like Malcolm McLaren and the World's Famous Supreme Team, Act and Anne Pigalle; and the whole spectrum of groups, with Genesis on one side and Boyzone on the other.

Paul Morley, Horn’s co-founder on projects such as Art of Noise and ZTT Records explains it best. “If in the 60s, Phil Spector created a ‘wall of sound’,” he says, “by the middle of the 80s Horn had already established his sound, a whole room of sound, the walls, floors, ceilings, doors, windows, decorated with absolute flourish. As an architect of sound, Horn is unashamedly an exhibitionist, an utter show off... He has proved time and time again that pop is an art form, and that he is the supreme pop artist.”

Rebels in Control have built Trevor Horn's new official site, part of our on-going work for his SPZ Group. Welcome to the pleasuresite…!

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Faster Than Sound

Joining the dots between musical genres and digital art forms, Aldeburgh Music’s Faster Than Sound is delighted to announce three year funding for a pioneering new programme which builds on the previous success of its one-off events at Bentwaters Airbase. Presenting a new year round programme of events, Faster Than Sound will take place in its new home, the Hoffmann Building - recently converted industrial spaces at Snape in Suffolk, England. Developing a fresh approach which focuses on commissions, residencies and collaboration, Faster Than Sound will present the first of its new events, featuring the world premiere of two commissions for a robotic musical quartet, as part of the Hoffmann Building's opening weekend celebrations.

Rebels in Control have built a CMS-based site for Faster Than Sound, incorporating Quayola's fantastic “Natures” imagery.

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Short n Curlies

Short n Curlies is an international creative / production agency specialising in short form filmed projects. Commercials, TV promos, art projects or music videos. If it's short (or maybe even long), its up their street. Based in Berlin and with a second production base in the UK, Short n Curlies has a truly international focus. Rebels in Control have built a clean, simple, bilingual CMS site showcasing their work.

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People Like Us

Since 1991 Vicki Bennett has been making CDs, radio, and A/V multimedia under the name People Like Us. Ever since she has been animating and recontextualising found footage collages with an equally witty and dark view of popular culture with a surrealistic edge, both pre-recorded and in a live setting. Vicki has shown work at, amongst others, Tate Modern, The National Film Theatre, Purcell Room, The ICA, Sydney Opera House, Pompidou Centre, Sonar in Barcelona and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. She has also performed radio sessions for BBC's John Peel, Mixing It, and also CBC, KPFA and does a regular radio show on WFMU which has had over 3/4 million realplayer hits.

Rebels in Control have designed PLU's new website. In the words of Vicki Bennett, “Instead of stealing the source code from our yoga teacher this time, we decided to work with Rebels in Control, who have done a fantastic job untangling everything, polishing it all up and throwing out the trash too!”

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The Suffolk Symphony

Faster Than Sound bring more imaginative experiments with sound and image to the Snape Proms with The Suffolk Symphony, a specially commissioned residency and new work by leading sonic and visual production company Touch. Inspired by the historic coastline of Aldeburgh and its surrounding area including Aldeburgh Music's Snape Proms and its history, Touch will create a new audio-visual symphony from scratch, using only locally sourced sounds and images. Beginning on 16 August, Philip Jeck, BJNilsen, Jon Wozencroft, Philip Marshall and Mike Harding will go on a week-long treasure hunt to unearth old records, field recordings, home-made sounds and images to create a new multimedia Suffolk Symphony, culminating in its first performance on the 22 August.

Directed by Mike Harding with sound by Philip Jeck and BJNilsen and images by Jon Wozencroft, the whole week will be documented for an interactive website by Rebels in Control, the basis of which is now live…

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Bare All

Rebels In Control have created a website for a new soft drinks brand launch Bare All, developed by Cott Beverages. With its 100% natural ingredients proposition and offbeat and cheeky positioning, Bare All is targeted at children and families. The website includes a ton of information about the brand and manufacturer, as well as wallpapers, animations and doodles flowing from the pack design. Bare All is now available nationally in selected Tesco stores.

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Hildur Guðnadóttir

Hildur Guðnadóttir is a cellist and composer. Best known for her collaborations with múm and guest appearances with Pan Sonic, she has a rich catalogue of collaborations and varied projects behind her.

Guðnadóttir began playing cello as a child, entered the Reykjavík Music Academy and then moved on to musical studies/composition and new media at the Iceland Academy of the Arts and Universitat der Kunste in Berlin.

As a composer she has written music for plays, dance performances and films, pieces for chamber orchestras, various instruments, voices and electronics. Guðnadóttir likes to explore the nature and movement of sound, and often turns her experiments into sound and visual installations. She recently co-composed a live soundtrack to Derek Jarman's 1980 film In The Shadow of The Sun with legends Throbbing Gristle, arranged choir for performances by them in Austria and London.

Rebels in Control have designed her new website, launched in support of her second solo album (and her first for Touch), "Without Sinking". The website runs on a CMS spine, so Hildur can update the contents herself. Its design features the beautiful landscape photography of Jon Wozencroft, used on the album's packaging.

(Photo © Jon Wozencroft/Touch)

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Ash International

Ash International was unleashed onto an unsuspecting world in early 1993 by Mike Harding who also runs the label Touch with Jon Wozencroft. He was initially aided and abetted by Robin Rimbaud (without whom...), but he departed to run his Scanner operation full time in early 1995. Electronic communications, radio emissions and other natural frequencies are an endless source of material... from the early Scanner releases to the Disinformation releases, - both eaves-dropping in their way.

Rebels in Control designed the third revision of the Ash International website, catalogue number Ash 8.2. Ash International say they are “a haberdASHery audio project. R&D not A&R.” – so now you know…

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Three Questions and an Answer

"Three Questions and an Answer" is an immersive elegy to the noises that you never notice. The ghosts of our time found, easily and not-so-easily, in the everyday.

Released on cassette only, in a limited edition of 104 copies, it is a response to D-L Alvarez's fascination with a low-budget film made of a real-life plane crash in the Florida Everglades in 1972. "The Ghost of Flight 401" features the ghost of the dead pilot who reappears on planes which have in them some of the salvaged parts of his aircraft.

Commissioned as part of “Psychometry” an exhibition curated by D–L Alvarez at Exile and Arratia, Beer, Berlin [07.02.2009 – 04.04.2009], where it is to be played off a tape deck…

The cassette was produced and designed by Philip Marshall, features sublime lomography by Eddie Nuttall, is released via our friends at Ash International and available in the TouchShop.

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www.touchshop.org
everything.philipmarshall.com

Sweet Billy Pilgrim

Rebels in Control's relationship with designer Chris Bigg and David Sylvian's Samadhisound label continues to prosper with a website for Sweet Billy Pilgrim, promoting their second album, "Twice Born Men". Tinkering about somewhere between the earthy and the ethereal, Sweet Billy Pilgrim scrape strings and tap away at laptops trying to make beautiful things with steady hands and empty pockets.

Our design adapts the albums' beautiful digipak, which features exquisite artwork from the wonderful Tacita Dean and runs off a CMS that can be controlled by the band and their management. The site has also been partially translated into Japanese by Samadhisound's Yuka Fujii.

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The SPZ Group

The SPZ Group is a UK-based entertainment business with interests across all aspects of performance, publishing and recording. Active for more than 25 years and headquartered at the world-famous Sarm West recording studios in London, it's headed up by legendary producer Trevor Horn.

Following our work for ZTT Records, SPZ hired us to work on sites for two of their other businesses: Music Bank - Europe's leading backline hire and rehearsal studio facilities, and Perfect Songs - one of the UK's longest-running independent music publishers.

Our designs for these two sites share cues with ztt.com, building a family feel for the Group. Both sites run off a CMS spine, allowing SPZ to control their own content. In addition we have rebuilt spz.com, which now automatically collates newsfeeds from the other three sites.

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www.perfectsongs.com
www.musicbank.org

The Rights Workshop

The Rights Workshop is a preeminent music supervision, licensing and clearance company specializing in rights negotiation, digital marketing and publishing administration. Based in San Francisco and helmed by Billboard-Award winning producer and music supervisor Brooke Wentz, The Rights Workshop has provided music supervision, licensing, rights clearance and digital marketing services to the film, television, advertising and marketing community since 2002.

Rebels in Control have built their new CMS-powered corporate site, putting The Rights Workshop in control of their own online content.

(Background still image grabbed from Steve Blush's American Hardcore documentary film.)

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Jóhann Jóhannsson

Jóhann Jóhannsson has released five solo albums, two on Touch, 2002's Englabörn and 2004's Virðulegu Forsetar, Dís on Worker's Institute (2005) and two on 4AD: 2006's IBM 1401, a User's Manual and his latest work – Fordlândia.

After IBM 1401, A User's Manual, Fordlândia is the second instalment in a proposed trilogy based on technology and iconic American brand names. Whereas IBM 1401, A User's Manual was a personal response to technology and its inevitable obsolescence (inspired by his father's work with mainframe computers in 1960s Iceland), Fordlândia springs out of a far more diffuse set of influences. It brings together the soaring grandeur of its predecessor – some sections were recorded with the same orchestra in Prague – and the intimacy of Englabörn, moving between heady, melting cadences and crystalline motifs with gorgeous, dreamlike logic.

Jóhann commissioned Rebels In Control to redesign his site, working from artwork based around engine blueprints, old Ford motors and rockets, supplied by legendary 4AD art directors v23.

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