{ feuilleton }

A couple of recommendations (thanks again to Gav and Jay):
Magic of Juju. More vinyl rips, music from around the world this time.
Insect & Individual. “an assortment of kraut, prog, free jazz, avant, diy punk, and uncategorizable recordings highlighted by nurse with wound on the legendary/infamous nww list.” Includes the impossible-to-find The Way Out by L […]

Photography by Christopher Makos.

If Main (subject of this earlier post) provide the ideal ambience for hot weather, then winter demands the chill breath of Thomas Köner. Once again, lack of decent interviews means resorting to Wire back issues which is a sign of laziness on my part and an indication of that magazine’s continued importance. For those who […]

The Beatles get the Royal Mail treatment in a new series of UK stamps next month.

Yes, it’s that magazine again, the perfect thing to feed your head for the new year.
Mark P and SAJ are profiled in the latest Wire.
Ken Hollings rides the world’s subcultural currents mapped by London’s Strange Attractor.
The Wire #275, January 2007
Strange Attractor is well named. There’s really no escaping it. Starting out as a series of […]

“A trap for dere Santa”. From How to be Topp by
Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle (1954).
That time of year again. Here at { feuilleton } we prefer to acknowledge the solstice-based traditions that pre-date the usurping rituals of Middle Eastern sky gods. The old pagan business of lighting fires and creating artificial light and warmth […]

The Guardian of Paradise by Franz Stuck (1889).
We’ll let Coil have the final word on the angel theme, the post title being taken from their Cathedral In Flames. Those words recognise—as does the painting above—that the Christian concept of Heaven is of a gated community guarded by warriors to keep the undesirable at bay.
Symbolist […]

{ feuilleton } brings you good cheer! Little explanation required this time. Vedder’s painting is an illustration of lines from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

The Cup of Death by Elihu Vedder (1885).

The Plague of Rome by Jules-Elie Delauney (1869).

The Angel of Death by Evelyn De Morgan.

The Treasures of Satan by Jean Delville (1894).
Some more favourite paintings today. Jean Delville produced a splendidly strange portrayal of Satan as an undersea monarch lording it over a sprawl of intoxicated, naked figures. When Savoy Books decided to put together the definitive version of David Lindsay’s equally strange fantasy novel, A Voyage to Arcturus, […]

On Monday Eroom Nala mentioned my Fallen Angel picture in one of the comments for the first angel posting. Here’s the picture in question (from 2004).

As I mentioned earlier, this was based on Jeune homme assis au bord de la mer (Young Man Sitting by the Seashore, 1836), the most well-known painting by Jean Hippolyte […]