Category Archives: news

The Complete BRUTE! hardback – now on Amazon!

After 35 years and countless attempts to get it published (OK, six), I am proud to be able to finally offer this iconic slab of pulp fiction to the public.
Originally, we hoped to publish it with Titan Books but, due to a disagreement about the content, they passed on the proposal and co-author and -creator, Malcolm Bennett, sadly died while we were still in negotiations. After another year of stalled plans, we were finally approached by Eyewear Press who promised us complete artistic control and final edit and the result is now available online.
Please, share the link to get BRUTE! recognised as the cultural landmark it is.
Buy it!

The BRUTE! classified pulp nasties collection is here!

Over the last few decades since the publication of the Sphere paperback, we have attempted to find a new publisher to reprint the stories from my BRUTE! magazine into one volume. After being turned down by several companies, we have secured the services of Eyewear Press and I’m proud to announce that the book will be on the shelves in May 2020. Featuring all the stories from the seven BRUTE! pulp magazines and the paperback plus the short stories from Blitz and BIKE magazines, this is a comprehensive collection that includes several never before published yarns and illustrations.

To pre-order your copy, please click the link HERE:

Obituary: Malcolm Bennett – A Life Out Loud

My Life with the Battle Poet.

It was the summer of 1977 that I first ran into Malcolm at a dance in our home town. I remember the place: the glorious modernist Riverside ballroom, part of the New Brighton baths complex that was later destroyed in a storm. Inside, thugs and students eyed up the local talent. I was there with my mates; a motley crew of druggies, lefties and punks. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife – that’s why everyone was armed.

Suddenly, a gasp went up, the crowd parted and a big, burly bully burst in. Six foot seven in his leper-skin levi’s, a youth stood aloft, bursting to shout.

His bold entrance sent ripples of gossip around the room.

”Who is that?”, I enquired, urgently.
”It’s Malcolm Bennett”, they went.
‘’He’s a poet!’’. ‘’He’s a Nazi!’’. ‘’He’s bent!’’.

Knives, pints and slags were fingered, nervously.

”Hmm,” I thought through gritted teeth. ”He looks interesting and yellow.” But, before we could chat, a fight broke out and sirens cleared the dance floor. Later, I discovered he lived next door but one to me in Egremont, a feral squat that lapped the shores of the Mersey. I’d see him gangling up the road to the shop, his Glen Campbell fringe and polyester cardigan flapping gloomily in the smog. He was grumpy and serious and committed to his poetry. I once painted ”Happy Birthday” on my naked girlfriend and sent her round to cheer him up. He slammed the door in her face. He thought I was a frivolous party animal with no commitment to my art. I thought he was an old fart, stuck in his gloomy books instead of girls. However – he introduced me to Camus, Celine and Jack London.

I read his poetry and was impressed. I suggested Malcolm should read it over an improvised sound-scape. We practiced, stuck up posters and played at Eric’s club. To earn money, we dressed up as terrorists and stormed local pubs, threatening the regulars with fake guns to the amusement of practically everyone. We commandeered a school bus dressed as revolutionaries. We hired burly psychiatric nurses to beat up our bass player on stage. So many stories….

While Mal was in prison for an altercation with the police, I moved to Bristol to start a new operation whilst obtaining a better standard of benefits. When he eventually emerged from Walton nick, he joined me there and we began to start performing and publishing.

I’d been in town a while and met a new circle of people but Malcolm took over as soon as he arrived in the city. He became legendary for striding into St. Paul’s notorious Black and White club to complain about the standard of their weed and getting away with it. We spent the winter months writing and freezing in The Unit and the summers performing and selling books on the street, at festivals and at protest marches in the UK and Europe. Despite the unemployment and black mood that had settled over the country, Malcolm and I were inspired: the Thatcher government, the Miner’s Strike, the Falklands War and the Anti-Nazi League protests fueled our creative fury.

Amsterdam in the early 80s offered us new opportunities and Malcolm gave his most electric performances in the city, appearing at the One World Poetry festival two years in a row.

We decided to gatecrash the event (which featured, along with William Burroughs, Russia’s greatest living poet, Yevgeny Yevteshenko and the UK’s Gregory Corso. We had a lot of support in the city so it didn’t take much blagging before we got the nod from the organiser that we could go on before one of the night’s headliners. Unpacking our Roland 606 and 808 on stage, we surveyed the room, packed to the rafters with poets, punks and fans eager to see the legendary Burroughs in action. After performances from Corso and others, we shot onstage and, for 30 minutes, regaled the audience with our brand of high-octane electro demagoguery. Filled out with our supporters, the audience went mental, clapping wildly and urging us into several encores until, spent of energy and other material, we triumphantly legged it off stage and into the VIP bar which overlooked the main hall. Meanwhile, Old Bill took to the stage and proceeded to croak his way through a medley of his ancient hits, pausing briefly to survey the hall which was half-empty after our storming finale. So, we were into our fifth pint before Bill, along with his entourage, approached us at the bar and proceeded to accuse us of stealing his notes, drugs and wallet while his bony ass was on stage. His minder, while a strapping lad himself, noted Malcolm’s 6′ 6” fighting stance and baulked at Bill’s suggestion of a quick frisk to determine our innocence. ‘You’re off your head, mate,’ I laughed, ordering another round.
Malcolm, unfazed by Bill’s temper tantrum, suggested that the old timer check his own pockets before hurling unfounded accusations. The minder whispered in the elderly poet’s ear before Bill, his eyes glazing over, began to timidly search his pockets. Meanwhile a crowd, eager for some inter-poet rivalry, surged round us as Bill emptied his coat. There, in amongst the junkie flotsam, we could see the items he’d accused us of taking so his minder wisely took the opportunity to whisk him away.
Malcolm could not resist one parting shot. ‘You know, Bill,’ he yelled over the heads of the crowd, ‘You should stick to Guinness. It’s a lot better for your memory than heroin’.

Also at this time, we began to write the initial stories that would become the first issue of BRUTE!

In the mid-80s, Malcolm moved to London and, after a period living in poverty, managed to get himself an internship at Blink Studios in Soho while touting BRUTE! around various ad agencies and TV production companies. It paid off. He gave me the call and I moved to London, immediately. We both lived on the notorious Rockingham estate in Elephant and Castle with dozens of other scousers fleeing the bleak unemployment of the north. They even called the estate, ”Little Wallasey” due to the amount of squatters who’d moved down south from the Wirral. Before long, we entered into a period of sustained creative work producing short films, pop videos and ad campaigns all based on the BRUTE! concept. Malcolm’s unbridled enthusiasm, wit and bravado secured us jobs and press coverage until his rising star was recognised by channel chiefs eager to unleash unconventional presenters onto the world via the new medium of youth TV. By the time we parted company in 1989, Malcolm was appearing on TV twice a week.

Except for an fruitless reunion in Bristol in the mid-90s, I wasn’t to see him again for 25 years. I moved with my family to the States and put the work I’d done with Malcolm behind me. It wasn’t until his son,Tom, urged us to start talking again a few years back that we began to heal the old wounds and started talking about working together again. When he visited me in Prague last year, he seemed his old vivacious self, brimming with ideas for the future and looking forward to seeing BRUTE! on the book stands once more.

 

Sadly, he never lived to see his final book published.

 

Guardian obituary

 

Claim

Malcolm Bennett performing extracts from his anti-Thatcher polemic, The Claim.

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Malcolm Bennett and myself on the housing estate we lived on in 1986. From here, we masterminded our attack on TV, literature and advertising.
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The success of our collaboration on BRUTE! magazine garnered praise as well as sales of the paperback and subsequent merchandising.

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Live Art Event in Prague

KPMG

Last month, I was invited to provide live art for KPMG’s annual executive breakfast, here in the Czech Republic.
Over the weekend prior to the event, I sketched out a number of concepts based around the managing partner’s speech which were to be hand-inked during his presentation on the day.1962697_10153197446237977_7130754928872410739_n

Using wide-nib calligraphy markers and Sharpie paint pens, I had two hours to complete four posters mounted on A1 boards placed strategically around the conference room.

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Working as a freelance artist can get real lonely at times so it’s nice to un-cap the old nib in public every once in a while.

Thanks to everyone at KPMG Prague for their support and encouraging commentary during the show.

 

News of the Hughes.

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Welcome to the BRUTE! Propaganda page.

Over the next months, I’ll be up-dating the shop with new merchandise while adding to the gallery some of the more interesting commissions I’ve completed recently.

Check out the brutal animation for KMFDM’s , Hell Yeah album here.

I  have also recently completed the artwork for Omicron, a forthcoming  album-book by Nowhere Nation which was a real style departure for me. Keep checking back here for updates or join my Fan Page on Facebook for upcoming samples.

Please subscribe to the blog for the latest updates and merchandise and feel free to contact me with your commission requests.

bruteprop@gmail.com

 

Regards,

Aidan Hughes

Traxbox CD boxed set artwork.

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I was asked by old friend and rare dance music enthusiast, Ian Dewhirst, to create the cover artwork for their CD collection of dance classics from Chicago’s legendary Trax Records back catalogue.   I agreed and spent the next week roughing out several concepts before settling on the one above.

 

When plotting out a character’s lines, I want to make as much impact from the lighting as possible and so, to ensure maximum flexibility, I built the DJ first in 3D so I could experiment with multiple set-ups.

 

On finding the right angle, I printed out the 3D face and then inked it in by hand before scanning it back into Illustrator for the final vector re-drawing.

Logos and lettering also by yours truly.

 

To order a box, go here

‘Kunst’,

In support of the Femen/Pussy Riot protestors, I created a suitably forceful chainsaw-wielding amazon for the front cover of the new KMFDM album, ‘Kunst’.

Since their incarceration for various anti-Putin stunts and protests, international support for the women of the movement has grown exponentially, mostly due to their bare-chested style of defiance.

(see Femen cross-felling video here: femen-cross-pussy-riot-930

Facebook have removed the image the band’s page.