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An engraving from The Geometric Landscapes of Lorenz Stoer (1567). • Curtis Harrington’s cult horror film, Night Tide (1961), receives a lavish blu-ray reissue from Powerhouse in January. The limited edition will include an extra disc of Harrington’s early short films which encompass Poe adaptations and also Wormwood Star, his portrait of occult artist (and […]

Typhonic Neural Tantra by The Wyrding Module. • November 2019, as many people have been noting, is the month in which Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner takes place. At Dangerous Minds Paul Gallagher writes about the unrelated William Burroughs script whose title was borrowed for Scott’s film. • More Ridley Scott (sort of): disco was still […]

Art by Joe Mugnaini (1955). • Mixes of the week: The Ivy-Strangled Path Vol. XIX by David Colohan, and The Ephemeral Man’s Teapot 2—Atmosphere insomniac by The Ephemeral Man. • Patrick Clarke talks to Morton Subotnick and Lillevan about Subotnick’s pioneering synthesizer composition, Silver Apples Of The Moon (1967). • A second volume of London’s […]

Magma concert poster, 2017. Art by Jofre Conjota. • The Dream Foundry is a new venture with a mission “to bolster and sustain the nascent careers of professionals working in the field of speculative literature.” This includes artists as well as writers, and to this end I was asked to answer a few questions about […]

Alien Technology (2014) by Monira Al Qadiri. • “William S. Burroughs wrote, in a long, zigzag ode: ‘You can hear metal think in the electromagnetic fields of Takis sculpture.’” Geeta Dayal on the sound sculptures of the late Panayiotis Vassilakis (1925–2019), better known as Takis. • “Everything about this song is mysterious, from the creation […]

Fantastic Sea Carriage (1556) by Johannes van Doetecum the Elder. • I’ve grown increasingly tired of Kubrick-related micro-fetishism (despite contributing to it myself with previous posts) but this piece at Film and Furniture about the history of David Hicks’ Hexagon carpet design is a good one. • “In hindsight, we can see how rarely one […]

Hades II (2004) by Ana Maria Pacheco. • I’ve been reading a lot of Angela Carter over the past few weeks so the news of her house in Clapham being awarded a blue plaque was coincidental but also timely. Related: Angela Carter Online, and The Holy Family Album (1991), “a sacrilegious take on the history […]

Cover art by Mike Hinge. • “[The Family] is an unforgettable fusion of journalism and poetic prose that still holds up precisely because it has no use for category, for genre, or for being anything other than its own unique, obsessive self.” Sarah Weinman on how Ed Sanders wrote the definitive account of the Manson […]

Man’s body dish for Sashimi under the cherry blossom (2005) by Ryoko Kimura. • Godley & Creme’s Consequences (1977) is reissued this month on CD and vinyl. Originally a three-disc concept album with a theme of climate disaster and the natural world’s revenge on humanity, Consequences was released at a time when punk and prog […]

AS11-40-5877 (1969). • A minimum of Moon-related links this week because this is a subject I always return to. Previous links to NASA’s photo archives are now redundant after they changed their website but the archive of photos from the Apollo missions are currently hosted on Flickr…while Flickr lasts, anyway. The Albums section features whole […]

“Spectra of various light sources, solar, stellar, metallic, gaseous, electric”, print by René Henri Digeon; plate IV in Les phénomènes de la physique (1868). • More polari: Thom Cuell this time with another review of Fabulosa!: The Story of Polari by Paul Baker. Good as it is to see these articles, one thing they all share […]

Poster art by Hiroo Isono. • “[Divine] didn’t want to pass as a woman; he wanted to pass as a monster. He was thought up to scare hippies. And that’s what he wanted to do. He wanted to be Godzilla. Well, he wanted to be Elizabeth Taylor and Godzilla put together.” I can’t help linking […]

Pink Floyd, Lee Michaels, Clear Light (1967) by Bonnie MacLean. • Electronic musician Mort Garson has been subject to a revival of interest recently, with reissues of his works as Ataraxia (The Unexplained), and Lucifer (Black Mass). The latest reissue is Mother Earth’s Plantasia (1976), an album released under Garson’s own name, and one of […]

A rail station in ruins by Tokyo Genso. From a series of views of Tokyo showing a ruined and abandoned city. • Old music technology of the week: The EKO ComputeRhythm, a programmable drum machine from 1972 used by Chris Franke (who didn’t like the sounds so he used it to trigger other instruments), Manuel […]

“The atom shall work for peace…” Soviet poster promoting the benefits of nuclear power. • RIP Mac Rebennack aka Dr. John Creaux, The Night Tripper. Dan Auerbach remembers the man whose return to funky form, Locked Down, he produced in 2012. Elsewhere, Michael Hurtt details Mac Rebennack’s pre-Dr. John exploits; some of his music from […]

The Simulator (1936) by Dora Maar. • Surprise of the week for me was the discovery of a new album, Kshatrya – The Eye Of The Bird, by cult French composer Igor Wakhévitch. This had been out for a while but I’d managed to miss the announcements. The music was recorded in 1999 so isn’t exactly […]

Eye 98: Beatrice Display Black, Sharp Type, 2018, and a detail from an original drawing for Lexicon by Bram de Does, 1989. • Issue 98 of Eye, the international design journal, is out this month. The new issue is a typography special but also features my review of Mark Dery’s Born to be Posthumous: The […]

A Mrs Radcliffe Called Today (1944) by Dorothea Tanning. • Darran Anderson on how the Bauhaus kept things weird. “Many imitators of the famous art school’s output have missed the surreal, sensual, irrational, and instinctual spirit that drove its creativity.” • Notes on the Fourth Dimension: Hyperspace, ghosts, and colourful cubes—Jon Crabb on the work […]

• At Expanding Mind: Tarot expert Mary Greer talks with Erik Davis about Tarot artist Pamela Colman Smith, the Golden Dawn, the art of illustration, Jung’s active imagination, Smith’s musical visions, and the recent study of Smith’s life and work, Pamela Colman Smith: the Untold Story. • Almost five years have passed since the last […]

The Moon photographed by Andrew McCarthy. • Top twenties of the week: Anne Billson on 20 of the best (recent) Japanese horror films, and Britt Brown‘s suggestions for 20 of the best New Age albums. (I’d recommend Journey To The Edge Of The Universe as the best from Upper Astral.) Related to the latter: Jack […]