FON tickets on sale at Jumbo, Leeds

Jumbo Records, Leeds' finest independant record shop, has FON tickets for sale from this weekend. You can call in at the shop in the St Johns centre ( quite near Leeds Met and opposite the Merrion Centre) or book online at Tickets - Jumbo Records. Buy some records while you're at it.

Leeds has been good to us over the last couple of days. FON apparatchiks John and Glenn have been active in the EXPO festival, appearing at Late Expo and working with Young Expo at Leeds City Museum. EXPO was good as ever. As well as seeing two fine nights at Left Bank (particularly enjoyed Family Underground) I went to see Paul Rooney's piece "Thin Air" concerning the various histories conained within Leeds Poly Art departments H Block, and met a lot of nice people, forcing FON print on most of them.

FON launched in Lancaster, courtesy 44, Fuck Buttons and Zun Zun Egui

This amateurish blur is my sole record of the FON launch night at Lancaster's Story Institute on friday. It was a great night, with a big turn out for excellent sets from Fuck Buttons and Zun Zun Egui . Congratulations to FON partners 44 Promotions and to the venue management. Cracking place, good sound , a communal washing area and its five mins from the station

Owl Project to play Barrow Sixth Form College for FON

If youve been reading Wire lately, (and if youre reading this then you probably have) youll know of Owl Project and thier work..if not, have a look at Owl Project, iLog, Sound Lathe, Log1k..

Owl Project is a collaborative group of Manchester based artists who share interests in human interaction with technology and process led art.

The group currently consists of Simon Blackmore, Antony Hall and Steve Symons. Over the last few years (they )have become known for a distinctive range of wooden musical and sculptural instruments that critique human interaction with computer interfaces.

Owl Project will present thier work to students at Barrow Sixth Form College on Oct 21 of FONweek as part of our education programme. Thanks to Colin Aldred at B6FC for setting this one up. Tony Hall met the FON team recently while working at Ormsgill school in Barrow lately, wowing the kids with home made space rockets and his portable slime-lab. There were nowt like that at Tupton Juniors. Here's Tony launching one of the kid's rockets . Try it at home kids, go on, try it.

Susan Matthews meets FON

Susan Matthews is one of FONs Resident artists during the week of the festival. She was up here with her family on a recce the other week, and is seen here re-creating the Smiths Salford Lads Club photo, possibly, outside our front door.

Susan is based in Kidwelly, Wales. She's an experimental composer, known for her intense, ambitious, hypnotic harmonies and industrial noise creations. our very own
In 2005 she founded the independent record label Siren Wire Recordings through which she has released nine commercial albums and seven eps. She has also recorded music for highly regarded local net label Earth Monkey Productions. last time we saw Susan she was thinking of involving south lakeland tunes , local musicians and the Canteen's battered piano in her FON piece.

You can hear Susan's work on www. myspace.com/susanmatthews

Her son Fenn has a myspace page too with some great stuff on it, well worth a listen.

A BED FOR ZAPPI

Outstanding among the list of requirements from Faust at FON is "A large Couch for Drummer." "Big Man" they add. If you've seen Faust you'll appreciate the understatement. Zappi Diermaier is the equivalent of several Big Men. After combing the furniture shops of Barrow I found nothing . Everything looked like Dolls House Furniture. How about a big bed we thought? OK, but have you seen the cost of a decent King Sized bed lately? It'd mean cutting back on the tech budget...so I got up today with half a plan about scrounging something from a local shop in a hastily cobbled sponsorship deal... I left my flat to find my yard and most of the street awash with mattresses, bedboxes, bedframes... dozens of them... seems my landlords are using the spaces benaeth my place as a storeroom. When I bought the Faust Tapes 30 summat years ago I never thought I'd be lugging the drummers bed around the cellars under Barrow Shipyard. Zappi will rest easy, thaks to Jimmy and his gang.