Sea Urchin is happy to join forces with Ace Farren Ford from Los Angeles.
Ace Farren Ford (1957) began writing poetry at the age of 10 and started playing music around the same time. Since the early 1970s Ace has explored free improvisational music, at first with his group Ace & Duce (originally a duo, but later a quintet featuring Rick Snyder, Dennis Duck and Tom Recchion) and, in 1974, as a member of Smegma. He is considered to be a founding member of The Los Angeles Free Music Society and has appeared on numerous releases on vinyl, tape and CD. Ace played in groups as varied as the West Coast punk groups The Child Molesters and Rancid Vat, psychedelic projects as EXP and Heltir, and improvisational ensembles like Smegma, which he rejoined in 2007. Since 1978 Ace has run his own label Ace & Duce, he has shown paintings and collages since 1994, and has published four books of poetry. Ace currently works as a tattoo artist in Hollywood. We are honoured to represent Ace and to distribute a selection of his output through Sea Urchin. Take a look in our catalogue for some of his fine editions (more coming soon).

The summer of 1975 was hot. A heatwave of eighteen consecutive days singed Western Europe and turned its capitals into seething cauldrons. Ira Cohen landed on the soft tarmac of Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris, in August — his mind still filled with the opiate clouds over Kathmandu, where he had lived since 1972 — and stepped into a wildfire of events. Fellow filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky was feverishly working on his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune, a megalomaniac project involving Salvador Dali, Pink Floyd, Orson Welles, Mick Jagger, H.R. Giger and many others, which was soon to collapse under its own weight like one of Dali’s soft constructions. Ira’s friend and fellow poet Brion Gysin was undergoing Cobalt-60 radiation therapy for lung cancer and appeared to be dying from either the disease or the treatment. And former Black Panthers leader Eldridge Cleaver – whose soul may have been on ice but whose brain was thoroughly fried – was spending his last months of exile negotiating his return to the US with the FBI and launching his cock-liberating pants as ‘Eldridge de Paris’.

From Journey West (All in August) is published jointly by Cold Turkey Press and Sea Urchin Editions in a limited and numbered edition of 50 copies. “All in August” was an entry in Cohen’s ‘Journey West’ scheduled for publication by Cold Turkey Press in 1976 as part of an anthology that never appeared. This joint edition marks its first appearance in print. Cohen’s poem to Brion Gysin ‘Where the Heart Lies’ has also been included, along with a number of photographs of the period. This beautiful book is available in a limited edition of 50 copies only. Get your copy now!

7 improvisational pieces by Michael Morley (The Dead C, Gate, Wreck Small Speakers On Expensive Stereos). Intense and disruptive pieces varying from throbbing psychedelia to harsh industrial soundscapes to roughly cut field recordings, all beautifully mixed. The CD comes in a nice b/w fold-out sleeve. The Pavilion Of Fools was released by Gallery Dessford Vogel, Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1996. Limited stock available. The Pavilion Of Fools has a place just for YOU!