A crowd-funding goal has been announced for The Dreamlands, a feature film set in the worlds of HP Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle which, if it goes ahead, will be director Huan Vu’s second Lovecraftian feature. His first, Die Farbe (2010), is an excellent adaptation of The Colour Out of Space which impressed me with its atmosphere […]
Chthonic Cities by David Chatton Barker. One of a series of Folklore Tapes screenprints available from Bleep. • The original version of Kenneth Anger’s Lucifer Rising, the one with the Jimmy Page soundtrack that was completed in 1973, has always been described as lost/stolen/buried or otherwise gone forever. So you’d think the news that a […]
Yayoi Kusama’s art has often been classed as psychedelic—some of her mirrored rooms were featured in the travelling Summer of Love exhibition in 2005—but this is more a consequence of her activities meshing with the interests of the late 60s than anything else; her preoccupations always seem a lot more personal and obsessive. Jud Yalkut’s […]
I would have changed the subject today if it wasn’t for spotting a copy of David Solomon’s LSD: The Consciousness-Expanding Drug (1964) in Roger Corman’s notorious and rather creditable stab at psychedelia, The Trip (1967). Corman’s film is an oddity in his run of AIP exploitation films in being far less condemnatory than you’d expect […]
Nova Express (2014) by Paul Komoda. • Last week it was Kraftwerk, this week it’s Can in another astonishing 70-minute TV performance from 1970. For those who know where to look in the torrent world there are copies of these recordings circulating there. • JG Ballard: five years on. Extracts from introductions by John Gray, […]
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds from Yellow Submarine (1968). The advent of spring invariably gets me listening to favourite psychedelic songs, and this year has been no exception. Earlier this week I was idly wondering how many songs there are that follow the Beatles’ lead in telegraphing their drug metaphors by using the initials […]
King’s Cloak (2012) by Alice Lin. • The week in Finnegans Wake: illustrations by John Vernon Lord for a new Folio Society edition; The Guardian‘s review from 1939; Christina Scholz explores Joyce’s use of the Ant and the Grasshopper fable; Sheng Yun wonders when Dai Congrong will compete the first Chinese translation of the book; […]
“Fuck for Peace” declares a title card at the end of Jerry Abrams’ Eyetoon, an 8-minute slice of psychedelia from 1968 whose second half has a hippyish couple doing exactly that as they run through a few hardcore Kama Sutra moves. The rest of the film is comprised of rapid editing and some brief animated […]
RIP Steve Moore. We never met, unfortunately, but I was very pleased he asked me to create a cover for his unique occult novel, Somnium, in 2011. Prior to this we’d been connected by shared acquaintances, colleagues, and membership in the informal cabal that was (and maybe still is) The Moon & Serpent Grand Egyptian […]
A Dune-inspired piece by Joshua Budich for In Dreams: an art show tribute to David Lynch at Spoke Art. • “[Montague] Summers was a friend of Aleister Crowley and, like [Jacques d’Adelswärd] Fersen, conducted homoerotic black masses; whatever eldritch divinity received their entreaties was evidently propitiated by nude youths.” Strange Flowers goes in search of […]
Portrait (2014), a short video piece by Milkyeyes (Donato Sansone) which Francis Bacon might appreciate.
Figuras Miticas: Bailarin II (1954) by Leonora Carrington. • The 26th Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists have been announced. Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam; Gay City: Volume 5 made the LGBT Anthology list, so congratulations to editors Evan J. Peterson & Vincent Kovar, and everyone else involved. I illustrated and designed the cover of that volume […]
I was hoping this might turn up on YouTube eventually, my copy being stuck on a VHS tape. Clocks of the Midnight Hours (1986) is a 25-minute film about the music of Max Eastley directed by Simon Reynell. The title is taken from a Borges poem. What makes Eastley’s music special is that all his […]
It wasn’t so very long ago that occult artist Marjorie Cameron (1922–1995) was visible only as a silent and enigmatic presence in films by Kenneth Anger and Curtis Harrington. Previous posts here have catalogued the resurrection of interest in her life and work which now includes a book of poems by husband Jack Parsons, embellished […]
When statues die they enter into art. This is a Resnais short I hadn’t seen before, and a proper collaboration this time between Resnais and Chris Marker. Les statues meurent aussi (Statues Also Die) was commissioned in 1950 by Présence Africaine, a pan-African magazine published in Paris. The film was released in 1953. The subject […]
Before he directed his first feature, Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), Alain Resnais had distinguished himself with a succession of short documentary films. His half-hour history of the Holocaust, Nuit et brouillard (1955), has always been the most prominent of these, although as a history it’s since been superseded by Claude Lanzmann’s exhaustive Shoah (1985). Toute […]
Last Year in Marienbad (1961). Via. In our age of cultural plenitude it can be salutary to remember the time when many things were easy to discover but often impossible to experience; albums, books, and especially non-American films could all-too-frequently exist as rumours, referenced but always out of reach. Two films in particular dogged me […]
An illustration by John Kettelwell for The Story of Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (1928). • “The strain in everything I write, of not being taken with the bounteousness of humankind, was also the attitude of both my parents.” Jonathan Meades talking to James Kidd about his forthcoming memoirs. • 7 Trumps From the Tarot Cards […]
Untitled etching by Etsuko Fukaya, 2005. • “By the time Scorsese met Powell, in 1975, the British director had fallen on hard times and was largely ignored by the UK film establishment.” A London office used by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is given the Blue Plaque treatment. • Ambient reminiscences at The Quietus: Wyndham […]
Sebastiane (1983) by Sex Gang Children. A 12″ single using a still from Jarman’s film. A final post for this Jarman week. Derek Jarman sustained his film career with regular music promo commissions (see this earlier post) but he never produced any album covers as such. What you have here are music releases which happen […]
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