Bush Tetras – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 569

City with Eyes in Blue (1989) by Paul Lehr.

• “Lehr chose science fiction illustration because he saw it as a path to making a living and an opportunity to ‘depict the epic’. ‘War, destruction, celebration, congestion, marching armies, waving flags and banners—the strange and mysterious atmosphere of it all, rather than the literal illustration.'” Jane Frank on the art of Paul Lehr (1930–1998).

• “Time isn’t the only thing Harrison treats as firmly malleable. The same is true of his willingness to play with genre conventions…” Tobias Carroll on M. John Harrison, and an article where you have to ignore the clickbait clichés in the headline.

• The narrators for the forthcoming audiobook of Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore have been revealed.

• At Public Domain Review: A remembrance of aerial forms: Odilon Redon’s À Edgar Poe.

• The weight of the ritual: Frank Rynne on The Master Musicians of Joujouka.

• “Cerne Giant in Dorset dates from Anglo-Saxon times, analysis suggests.”

• Aaron Moth, the artist creating exquisite collages from vintage [gay] porn.

• Clive Hicks-Jenkins on revision in illustration.

• At Wikimedia Commons: Lesbian pulp fiction.

• Mix of the week: A Wire mix by BLK JKS.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Psychedelics.

• Colleen‘s favourite albums.

• Ritual Fire Dance (1969) by Tuesday’s Children | Ritual (1973) by Vangelis | Rituals (1981) by Bush Tetras

Weekend links 287

Cover by Valentine Hugo for Contes Bizarres (1933) by Achim d’Arnim. See Hugo’s interior illustrations here.

• “In spite of the blood-drinking pursuits of Rollin’s protagonists, there’s very little in the way of body horror to be found. His undead are sensual, romantic creatures that are frequently delicate of mind and body. These movies attempt to evoke nuanced emotional responses with their mixture of romance, loss, eroticism, and tragedy.” Tenebrous Kate on Sex, Death, and the Psychedelic Madness of Jean Rollin.

• “Late at night, [Melville] ‘turned flukes’ down Oxford Street as if he were being followed by a great whale, and thought he saw ‘blubber rooms’ in the butcheries of the Fleet Market.” Philip Hoare on Herman Melville’s time in London.

• Haunted by Books, a new collection of writings by Mark Valentine, “explores the more curious byways of literature.” Full details at the home of the esoteric, Tartarus Press.

I am completely an elitist, in the cultural but emphatically not the social sense. I prefer the good to the bad, the articulate to the mumbling, the aesthetically developed to the merely primitive, and full to partial consciousness. I love the spectacle of skill, whether it’s an expert gardener at work, or a good carpenter chopping dovetails, or someone tying a Bimini hitch that won’t slip.

Art critic Robert Hughes quoted in a review by Siri Hustvedt of The Spectacle of Skill: Selected Writings of Robert Hughes

• “Art, art – I couldn’t give a crap about art.” Oscar Wilde’s nephew, Arthur Cravan, puts in another appearance at Strange Flowers.

• “The Tarot is utterly fascinating,” says Evan J. Peterson discussing his Tarot-inspired writing with Tarot Poetry.

• Manuel Göttsching: “A lot of crazy music happened at the end of the ’60s, very strange, and very curious…”

• Mixes of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 169 by Chra, and 28th November 2015 by The Séance.

• Czech Artists’ Radical Book Designs of the Early 20th Century

• Ten things you might not know about Yayoi Kusama.

• More megaliths: Francis Pryor on ritual landscapes.

• Peaches gets wild in the desert: Rub (uncensored).

• Irmin Schmidt‘s favourite records (this week)

• Mount Etna erupts

• Rituals (1981) by Bush Tetras | Ballet For A Blue Whale (1983) by Adrian Belew | Etna (2006) by Boris & Sunn O)))

Weekend links 277

Sunday by Amanda Elledge.

• Coming from Strange Attractor this November: The Moons at Your Door, an anthology of strange tales selected by David Tibet. “The Moons At Your Door collects over 30 tales, both familiar and unknown from: Robert Aickman, Algernon Blackwood, DK Broster, AM Burrage, RW Chambers, Aleister Crowley, Sheridan Le Fanu, Elizabeth Gaskell, WW Jacobs, MR James, Vernon Lee, LA Lewis, Thomas Ligotti, Arthur Machen, Guy de Maupassant, Perrault, Thomas De Quincey, Saki, Count Stenbock, Montague Summers, HR Wakefield and Edith Wharton. The volume also includes extracts and translations by the author from Babylonian, Coptic and Biblical texts alongside poems and fairy tales.”

• Gay-rights activists give their verdict on Stonewall: “This film is no credit to the history it purports to portray”. The only surprise about this episode is that anyone expected Roland Emmerich to make a historically accurate film in the first place. Related: Edmund White’s first-hand report written a few days after the riots.

• “If you hate [Boom!], I hate you, and I could never be your friend or your boyfriend. Divine and I had seen Boom! right before we made Pink Flamingos, and it’s about Elizabeth Taylor, retired, writing her memoirs, which is what Pink Flamingos was too, in a way.” John Waters (again) gives Hayley Campbell some dating tips.

• “We moderns may too-often suffer from a mixing up of historical sequences, but better that, surely, than risk raising a population that is entirely not-arsed about its past.” Julian Cope explores the Celts: Art and Identity exhibition at the British Museum, London.

• “But I am talking about psychedelic music, and obviously some of that comes from early psychedelic rituals, which are all about losing yourself…and I did come back into the world in a different way.” Natasha Khan on her new musical project, SEXWITCH.

• At Dangerous Minds: Vincent Price teaches the dark arts on his 1969 album An Adventure in Demonology.

• A trailer for Salthouse Marshes, “a short, landscape obsessed ghost story” by Adam Scovell.

• Rare video of Young Marble Giants playing for 45 minutes in Vancouver, 1980.

• A collection of Ghost Box posters and flyers designed by Julian House.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 163 by Ssleeping desiresS.

• Ministry, a new photo series by Ellen Rogers.

• Julia Holter‘s favourite albums.

• Boom Stix (1962) by Curley & the Jades | Things That Go Boom In The Night (1981) by Bush Tetras | Boom! (1991) by The Grid

Weekend links 274

Lilith Births the Djinn (2015) by Rithika Merchant. Via Phantasmaphile.

• Lord of Strange Deaths: The Fiendish World of Sax Rohmer, edited by Phil Baker & Antony Clayton, is a new publication from Strange Attractor. “This is the first extended attempt to do justice to Rohmer, and it ranges across the spectrum of his output from music-hall writing to Theosophy. Contributors focus on subjects including Egyptology, 1890s decadence, Edwardian super-villains, graphic novels, cinema, the French Situationists, Chinese dragon ladies, and the Arabian Nights. The result is a testimony to the enduring fascination and relevance of Rohmer’s absurd, sinister and immensely atmospheric world.”

• More weird fiction: Twisted Tales of the Weird promises “an evening of readings by some of the finest writers in the contemporary scene, a panel discussion about the mode, and a Q&A with the audience” at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, on 23rd October. Writers M. John Harrison, Helen Marshall and Timothy J. Jarvis will be reading from their works. The event is free but space is limited so tickets are required.

• More Lovecraft: “Lovecraft never said his entities were evil,” says Alan Moore discussing his new Lovecraftian comic series, Providence, with Hannah Means Shannon. At the University of Sterling, Chloe Buckley reviews the Ellen Datlow-edited anthology Lovecraft’s Monsters for The Gothic Imagination (with passing reference to my illustrations but no credit for the artist).

• One for completists or those who were there on the night: Earth playing There Is A Serpent Coming at the Columbus Theatre, Providence on 22nd August. I’d almost given up hope that someone might have recorded anything from this event so thanks to Mr Beast Rebel of the Hellscape for the upload. There’s also a song by Elder from earlier in the evening.

• A Rose Veiled in Black: Art and Arcana of Our Lady Babalon edited by Robert Fitzgerald and Daniel A. Schulke.

• Robin the Fog on Spectral Spools, Amplified Olympia and XPylons.

• Mix of the week: BerlinSchool Mix-A [Beginnings] by Headnoaks.

• At AnOther: Leonor Fini: Female Libertine

• The lost tunnels of Liverpool

• The Zymoglyphic Museum

• Folk Horror Revival

• Some Weird Sin (1977) by Iggy Pop | It’s So Weird (1983) by Bush Tetras | The Smallest Weird Number (2002) by Boards of Canada

Weekend links 146

A Chinese postage stamp celebrating the Year of the Snake.

• Cyclopean is a collaboration from Burnt Friedman, Jono Podmore and Can founding members Jaki Liebezeit, and Irmin Schmidt. The Quietus has a preview of all the tracks from their forthcoming EP. Great stuff.

• Ten Things You (Possibly) Don’t Know About Kraftwerk. Related: a Speak & Spell emulator, and Atomium, a new single by Karl Bartos.

• In 1975 Barney Bubbles designed an inner sleeve for Hawkwind’s Warrior on the Edge of Time album, and this scarce recipe booklet.

• “We should all use language carefully. That is an obligation on the literate. But carefully doesn’t mean fearfully,” says Jenny Diski.

• Faber’s car-crash of a cover design for the 50th anniversary edition of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath caused an outbreak of parodies.

• At Strange Flowers: Ancient dreams and antique corruptions, Salomé via Gustave Moreau and Huysmans.

• FACT Mix 368 is a very varied collection of recent music and older pieces curated by Holly Herndon.

• At Ubuweb: eleven out-of-print recordings of Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures.

• Laurie Anderson and Brian Eno in conversation at Interview magazine.

• Michael Chabon on Wes Anderson’s Worlds.

• Snake Rag (1923) by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band | Rattlesnake Shake (1969) by Fleetwood Mac | Snakes Crawl (1980) by Bush Tetras | Ananta Snake Dance (1980) by Suns of Arqa | Snakeblood (2000) by Leftfield