Robert Ridley-Shackleton


What Keeps My Card Hard Top Ten

Hello everybody RRS here, I love and hate a lot in life, just depends on the day, but there are some things in life that I love ssooooo much that it makes my heart pound and my mind gooey like uhhh like bovril I think , kinda,
so anyway here is my top 10 best things I enjoy, I have discounted any person or animal in this list as it wouldn't be fair and would get me in trouble with the nice police.

1. Performing on stage doing a full set
yes its what I work my life around , its the final assault on any feelings, pain, fear, happiness, love, loss, everything I put it into one and release it when Im on stage , its the ultimate therapy having a sing song and a dance, I cant do it all the time as that would cripple me as its exhausting physically and mentally ,but, well, card is life.

2. Alan Vega
yes I wasn't sure out of my two heros to put higher in the list but this guy taught me everything about performing and making music hes not only one of the biggest geniuses of all time hes the biggest punk there has pretty much ever been, in terms of punk the closest to him is maybe andy kaufman , but kaufman was a bit easier to work out, Vega is something I havnt even got to the bottom of and ive been intensly listening to suicide for ten years. At the age of 18 I was planning to be a visual artist and I wanted to do narly performances, I had all these ideas of work I wanted to do but then I heard suicides first rehearsal tapes and the second album and then I knew its time to get to work, first few years I basicly sounded like an alan vega clone lukily I grew out of that but I was absolutely obsessed with suicide for a few years, I was lucky enough to see his last show in uk at the barbican (wonderfully supported by dylan and crew) and it was an ecstatic experience they were still as messy, punky as fuck as the early videos I had seen on youtube , but in a fresher way. Vega love u so much, hope your giving them hell up in heaven xx

3. Prince
of course u knew this was coming, secondary school was torture, all the kids listened to nu metal which I enjoyed for about a few months and got bored, my mum had always been a fan of synth pop and she got a classic 80s comp that I listened to a lot, the electronic grooves of the 80s sounded much more life affirming and minimal and just snack a delic than any papa roach or that shit. It was obviously a secret from my high school chums for fear of being picked on, But one xmas there was a best of prince cd coming out and the advert got me tingling from head to toe, wow, what the fuck was that, so that was a christmas present from santa claus and it made life so much better I was obsessed with him until I was 18 and discovered alan of course. but tthat prince knew how to be a man, he was a role model in the same way vega was but for different reasons. Prince knew how to dress, His lyrics the fucking badass funk, and one thing, as I have aged since then is that nothing compares to princes funk, hes still the funkiest of all time nothing can touch him. Funk is great and all and then theres prince. Miss my two heroes they died in months of each other. But I never stop the obsession.

4. 2D fighting games such as the Street Fighter series
what does a prince do when hes not in “music art spray card” mode? Thats right I play fighting games. I love video games but realy its just and exclusively fighting games that I play and worship, before there was prince and suicide as a little kid my obsession from probs at the age of 7 was fighting games , it started with the best there ever could be, street fighter 2 , so happy I was a 90s child. We had a version of street fighter 2 on a buggy old and generally fucked windows 95 computer that my dad got off a work mate, little did we realise until now he must of sold dad a dud computer . However despite doing weird things such as putting an image of a green horizon in the middle of the screen when ever you wanted to do a word document it had a copy of super street fighter 2, although the game played super slow to the point the fighters crept across the screen and there was no sound effects it set a spark in my head that hasnt gone out, so thank u dad for making the gamble on that weird computer, ive owned and still own shit loads of games consoles over the years avidly collecting fighting games mostly 2d japanese old school fighting games. I own a neo geo and games for that, the neo geo was a realy expensive console from the nintees that had arcade perfect fighting games some of the best in the scene bar street fighter, some of the games in my collection are now nearly worth a thousand pounds cuz apparently its cool to collect retro games now. I love them dearly thank u street fighter 2. oh and yes I am pretty good at them, but im not tournament good, which I found out one grey sunday evening.

5. Photocopy Art
why bother doing an etching ? Cuz your an artist of grandeur and your work is better than anybody else no wait mines better than yours, no wait. And so on and so on. U fools for about 10p down the local library I can make a photocopy of just about anything and it looks a lot like an etching for only 10p ? but its worthless aint it unlike your etching, and thats the beauty, the art world makes me cry, I love, realy love great paintings abstract art and collages and the like, but dont u hate when you go into a gallery and its all people with posh middle class accents and realy impecible but boring clothes on? The pristine white walls everything hung at perfect right angles, tubes of paint that cost 100 pounds and canvases so big , my canvas is bigger than your canvas but my painting has more expensive paint. Well if your just perfect dont worry you get your beautiful massive painting bought for loads of wonga and will be kept for its forseeable future in a bankers vault wraped up with no one to look at it thats when u no u made it. I just hate it , in the funky underground music scene u can make money from gigs if u were to not drink any booze from the bar u could have profit your actualy patted on the back, with art u have to pay shit loads to be part of an exhitbiton and u wont see that note again. what I love about photocopy art is its worthless as a finished product but with certain toners and machines u can get incredible etheral spirtual effects that are trash its just a photocopy, but thats so great, artists can trade them, make zines. Wow a zine its like an exhibition of my photocopy art but u can send your exhibiton to someone. Im not saying artists shouldnt get paid no no they should, artists love art from artists and I love how the diy scene im part of is a commuity of people who do more radical art that couldnt fit in the tate modern, I love getting a few fivers here and there in my paypal and I love its the community that are buying my stuff and then I can buy some more tapes with that money or use it to invest in my equipment . Obviously there is the problem of how some of us would love to actualy live comfortably on our great work but I dont have the answer to that, all I will say is if you can ever afford to live on your artwork thats ace, well done ,just make sure u keep it card. My fave photocopy artists are bob cobbing the amazing poet and his incredible tones and textures, any release by the skaters has incredible beautiful artwork made so dream like etheral from the copier. Wow love to all the photocopiers out there mwah.

6. Cardboard
dang u knew it would be on the list. Im to predictable. Cardboard is trash we use and abbuse it so much but it looks sexy the colour and corrugated ones thrill me the best. They also sound great, use them in your noise set u will love it. As a young student I was photographing the streets of the town I was studying in. lots of derelict worn areas of the town, I saw a stray bit of cardboard, torn worn, with dirt of different shades and colour maybe a lick of white paint in an area (but not to much) it was ultimate trash / highest art you could look for days at the composition the nebula of tones of dirt its all or nothing, I discovered alan vega around the same time. Was a time of learning what I was to do with the rest of my life.

7. Drum Machines
I looove drum machines so much, Im addicted to beats mainly funky beats, Ive collected drum machines in my past I have a few beauties dating back as early as a sixties drum machine, Now when I moved to bristol I treated myself to a dream drum machine that seemed perfect for what I wanted. As I wanted to make the beats and control them rather than using presets on cheap keyboards, its got the perfect sound old industrial hissy perfect. I realy wish there was a genre that was neat drum beats from drum machines no effects no other instrumentation just raw beats. The closest is techno but its not quite there, but close. I could just listen to drum machines for eternity.

8. Funk
we want the funk , we gotta have the funk

9. Rummagy crisply crackly noise
now noise is great, sometimes I get bored of some of it, as ive heard it a million times. One sound that always gets me hooked is when its organic trashy sounds that sound like someone tidying away things in their living room that shit is my fave, I love all noise I hate all noise just depends on the day but that stuff usualy pushes thru that. Love lofi hifi recordings and sometimes mixing in a bit or warped tape sounds gets my hips shaking

10. CY Twombly
now this is my fave visual artist of the last few years his work is so primal and he throws away the rule book on composition and creates unique forms that are instant and child like. Most people cant do child like as good as this guy , he must get realy deep close to his core or some shite to get this level of perfect raw artistry, most people dont get his stuff or think its just bad art, but he hits it for me right where I like it. Also the dudes colour combos are sometimes perfect just soo card other times its drop the mic “mang u got some nerve”. But its not entirely visual art its more poetry of his innner child, I think, u can see scribbled writing that is sometimes legible often not, I could look at him for eternity but would have to take breaks to play street fighter maybe

Straight outta carderton, rrs is the cardboard prince and your not. All punctuation etc is his own.


Todd W Emmert


Top Ten Old School Death Metal Bands

1. Deicide
I feel like I know these guys. Seen them live a couple times. Total pros. They have a very familiar sound to me and for this reason one of my favorites. I even like later period albums. Florida.

2. Morbid Angel
They made one really bad album out of 11 albums, but they made up for it right after with last years "Kingdoms Disdained" Really can't go wrong with them except for "Illud Divinum Insanus". That album is dog shit. Florida

3. Suffocation
Brutal technical death metal from New York. John Olson got me hooked on them. Thanks, John.

4. Vital Remains
Line up changes like crazy over the years, but it doesn't affect the quality of the music. Very classically informed death metal, especially in the later years. Rhode Island.

5. Sinister
Tough as nails death metal from the Netherlands. All their early albums are massive.

6. Excruciate
Hardcore tinged Swedish Death. Only one full length studio album, but man are they way better than Entombed.

7. Disastrous Murmer
One album is all they needed to cement themselves as legends. Austria.

8. Death
All of their albums are great. They get more progressive the further you go in their discography. Maybe the first "Death Metal" band. Florida.

9. Cancer
UK Death Metal that sounds like it's from Florida. Excellent.

10. Gorguts
Super progressive giants of death metal. Canada.

Todd Wesley Emmert is a visual and recording artist based in North Carolina who started drawing at age one. He studied art at Cornish College Of The Arts in Seattle, WA, as well as attending UNC in Greensboro and Chapel Hill. In 1995 he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and hospitalized, at which point he lost his ability to create art. He now works from his home in Asheville where he has lived for the last 5 years and works only with acrylic paint on canvas.

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