Alex Digard presents Analog Love

As seems to be the trend at the moment we’re coming in way too late on this, having only clocked on to this incredible exhibition after Ekoplekz tweeted the above picture last week. Analog Love was a photo exhibit put together by Alex Digard aka Tape-Echo, documenting the Bristol underground scene.

If you’re in the boat with us who missed out on the journey to Bristol to see it when it was running, you can still grab copies of the accompanying zine from Idle Hands, host of the exhibition and the place to have filled the need for a physical vinyl store in the creative hub following the tragic closure of Rooted. Big ups to the crew involved there.

Check the exhibition opening video below (skip to 4:15 for just a preview of the zine), underneath that full details on the night and exhibit now passed, and underneath that some photos that have been doing the rounds taken of the print copy.

via Idle Hands

‘Analog Love’ is an exhibition of photographs and artworks by Alex Digard documenting the Bristol bass music underground. From the early ‘Dubplate Monthly’ (later the infamous ‘Dubloaded’) dances at the Croft to the iconic Rooted Records in Gloucester Road, some of the city’s most vital cultural hubs have been captured by his lens.

Perhaps it was the time spent as a press photographer or the hours spent studying the photograp…hs of the Blue Note album covers that informed his aesthetic. Pure documentary, merging into the dark backgrounds and observing the events unfolding around him but never interfering with them, his pictures offer the viewer an insight into the intimate inner workings of the Bristol scene, from the disused bank vault turned studio below Stokes Croft that transmits the Panhead stream once a month to the Western Union nights in the Take5 cafe basement which serves as an incubator for the new generation of Bristol house music producers and DJs.

A selection of 16 of his photos were printed in the booklet accompanying the Punch Drunk Records compilation ‘Worth The Weight’, a double disc album that compiled some of the best dubstep records to come from the city since the genre’s humble beginnings back in 2006. More recently his pictures were selected by Resident Advisor to be used in their film ‘Real scenes : Bristol’, part of a trilogy showcasing cities with a strong electronic music community.
Aside from photographic work, Alex is also the editor of the Tape-Echo project, a publication and website focusing on Bristol’s electronic music community, with a strong leaning towards the more vinyl centric and analog ways of working. Through this he has designed and art directed projects for a number of record labels and exhibited artworks in galleries from Guernsey to Glasgow.
As well as photographic work there will be a selection of artworks utilising different media: ink stamps, film, Xerox copies, typewriters and dubplates are all different parts of his idiosyncratic visual language.

The exhibition opens on Thursday 21 July at the Idle Hands record store, Bristol’s hub for dance music vinyl. What better place for these pictures to be displayed than the very same kind of spaces that inspired the whole project in the first place?

Music on the night will be provided by the Tape-Echo DJs Neka and Transient as well as Ossia and Kowton, and the exhibition will be open from 7-10pm.

A limited run of zines containing some of the photos from the exhibition will also be available on the opening night.