Collage by Chloé Poizat.
• Xenis Emputae Travelling Band plays the Music of John Dee, and free at Bandcamp: Victorian Machine Music by Plinth, the “creaking, winding, piping, chiming and wood-knocking of Victorian parlour music machines”.
• Jeremy Willard on Mikhail Kuzmin, “the Oscar Wilde of Russia”. Related: Conner Habib on the Disinfo podcast discussing pornography, sexuality, and whether sex be a revolutionary act.
• Ed Vulliamy paid a visit to Hawkwind’s Hawkeaster festival. The Hawks’ Warrior On The Edge Of Time album is released in a remastered edition next month.
• Blasts from the past: Mahavishnu Orchestra, live in France, August 23rd, 1972, and Ashra (Manuel Göttsching & Lutz Ulbrich) in Barcelona, 1981.
An illustration by Alberto Martini for Raw Edges (1908) by Perceval Landon.
• NASA’s cover designs for Space Program manuals, guidebooks, press kits, reports and brochures.
• PingMag—”Art, Design, Life – from Japan”—makes a welcome return as an active blog.
• Suzanne Treister‘s Hexen 2.0 Tarot designs.
• Listening to records that no longer exist
• The architectural origins of the chess set
• The Bohemian Realm of Absinthiana
• Les sources d’une île: a Tumblr
• Hammer Without A Master (1998) by Broadcast | Test Area (1999) by Broadcast | Make My Sleep His Song (2009) by Broadcast & The Focus Group
Regarding “Listening to records that no longer exist” I came across this bit in my quest to find the earliest recorded example of baroque music – I’m still not sure if I have found it yet or not, but this must be mighty close – you can barely hear the chorus through the noise of reproduction, but that is interesting and haunting in itself…
Handel Festival: “Israel In Egypt” – excerpt
On note with cylinder: “A chorus of 4000 voices recorded with phonograph over 100 yards away”
Composed by: G.F. Handel
Conducted by: August Manns
Record format: Edison yellow paraffine cylinder Recorded by: Col. George Gouraud, foreign sales agent for Thomas Edison
Location: the Crystal Palace, London, England
Recording date: June 29, 1888.
ENHS object catalog number: E-2440-20e
http://www.nps.gov/edis/photosmultimedia/very-early-recorded-sound.htm