Gregg Hermetech – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 391

Mass by Ron Mueck at the National Gallery of Victoria Triennial. Photo by Tom Ross.

• Thanks of the week: to In Wild Air for asking me to fill their list of six favourite things; to Hodderscape for including my cover for Jeannette Ng’s Under the Pendulum Sun among their choice of best book covers of the year; and to Dennis Cooper for listing this blog among his own end-of-year favourites. Ta, all!

• New/old music: The Quietus reissues, etc, of the year, new Pye Corner Audio, Soul Jazz presents Deutsche Elektronische Musik 3, and The Cleansing is a new album by Annabel (lee).

• Mixes of the week: Seeing The Forest For The Trees by Gregg Hermetech, FACT mix 631 by Zola Jesus, and Secret Thirteen Mix 240 by Restive Plaggona.

Were a normally sexed person to enter such an establishment, he might be puzzled to see so many finely dressed men sitting there with soldiers, though he would find nothing particularly offensive. The friendships between homosexuals and soldiers forged here over sausage, salad and beer frequently endure for the full term of service, and often longer. The soldier returns home, living as a married farmer far from his beloved Berlin garrison, but many a uranian still receives freshly killed quarry as a token of friendship. Sometimes these relationships are even passed on to younger brothers; I know one case where a homosexual had relations with three brothers one after the other, all of whom were with the Cuirassiers.

An extract from Berlin’s Third Sex by Magnus Hirschfeld, one of the new titles from Rixdorf Editions. Ostensibly straight soldiers supplementing their income by having sex with “uranians” was still a common thing decades later, as detailed in John Lehmann’s In The Purely Pagan Sense.

• The Cremator (1968) a film by Juraz Herz, was reviewed on these pages a while ago. It’s now out on region-free blu-ray. Highly recommended.

• At Wormwoodiana: Mark Valentine on a map of old Dunwich, and Egypt in England.

• Clive Hicks Jenkins on Mapping the Tale: image making and the narrative tradition.

• Wyrd Daze returns with a free pdf, and a mix by The Ephemeral Man to download.

• At the BFI: Chris Gallant on where to begin with giallo cinema.

• The Parisian Cabinet of Curiosities Loved by Wes Anderson.

• Mass Production (1977) by Iggy Pop | Mass (1981) by Yellow Magic Orchestra | Mass Transit Railway (1997) by Monolake

Weekend links 352

Table-Tipping Workshop at Rev. Jane’s House, Erie, Pennsylvania, 2014 by Shannon Taggart.

• Canadian electronic musician Sarah Davachi talks to Erik Davis about analogue synthesizers, reverberating cathedrals, attention spans, and her ambient drone album All My Circles Run.

• Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind may now be released by Netflix. (I’m restraining my excitement for the moment since this one has been a long time arriving.)

• Mixes of the week: VF Mix 86: Jah Shaka by Roly Porter, Secret Thirteen Mix 215 by Twins, and What Good Is God? (1:11:11.111 Melon Collie Mix) by Gregg Hermetech.

• Making sense of The Weird and the Eerie: Roger Luckhurst reviews the final book from the late Mark Fisher.

• Pye Corner Audio has been very productive this year (I’m not complaining); the latest release is The Spiral.

• “I don’t like acceptance,” says Cosi Fanni Tutti, “it makes me think I’ve done something wrong.”

• Jon Brooks on the Continental inspiration for his next album, Autres Directions.

• Séance: Spiritualist Ritual and the Search for Ectoplasm by Shannon Taggart.

• Corny and clichéd: Matthew Bown on bad painting in the twentieth century.

• At Wormwoodiana: Douglas A. Anderson on Borges and a forgotten book.

• At the BFI: Samuel Wigley chooses 10 great films set in the jungle.

• Jungle Flower (1951) by Les Baxter | Jungle Fever (1973) by The Upsetters | The Jungle Dream (1973–1980) by Patrick Cowley

Weekend links 317

Alphonse Mucha’s Le Pater, a book of mystical Symbolism written, designed and illustrated by the artist, was published in a limited edition in 1899. The book has been out of print ever since but Thomas Negovan at Century Guild will be reprinting it later this year.

• “Five axioms to define Europe: the coffee house; the landscape on a traversable and human scale; these streets and squares named after the statesmen, scientists, artists, writers of the past; our twofold descent from Athens and Jerusalem; and, lastly, that apprehension of a closing chapter, of that famous Hegelian sunset, which shadowed the idea and substance of Europe even in their noon hours.” George Steiner explores his idea of Europe.

• Journey To The Edge Of The Universe by Upper Astral, 43 minutes of cosmic ambience, is a cassette-only release from 1983. The album has never been reissued so secondhand copies command excessive prices but it may be downloaded here.

• Mixes of the week: Three hours of ambience by Gregg Hermetech, XLR8R Podcast 446 by [Adrian] Sherwood x Nisennenmondai, and Secret Thirteen Mix 190 by Shxcxchcxsh.

Today [Angela] Carter is well known, widely taught in schools and universities, and much of what she presaged—in terms of recycling and updating (“old wine in new bottles”, she called it), or gender role play and reversal—has become commonplace in the culture. Despite this, many critics find it difficult to situate her work properly. This is partly because Carter is so sui generis (she has literary offspring but few antecedents), and partly because many struggle with the relationship of politics and aesthetics in her writing.

Kate Webb reviews two new books about Angela Carter

• Words that will forever pursue us: Tim Page on the late Michael Herr, “rock’n’roll voice of the Vietnam War”.

• From 2015: Luigi Serafini on how and why he created an encyclopedia of an imaginary world.

• James Campbell on Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs: celebrating the Beats in Paris.

• Fragile Beasts, an exhibition of grotesque print ornaments at Cooper Hewitt, NYC.

• Not before time, Guy Gavriel Kay wants to see an end to the plague of writing tips.

• David Bowie and Buster Keaton by Steve Schapiro.

• Tom Charity on the films of Michael Cimino.

• Alison Goldfrapp: photographer.

• Golem Mecanique

• European Man (1981) by Landscape | Europe After The Rain (1981) by John Foxx | Trans Europe Express (1994) by The One You Love

Weekend links 313

The Sullen Son (1921) by Rose O’Neill from her Sweet Monsters series (also here).

• 10 hours of Popcorn (1972) by Hot Butter. Related (and linked here before) 79 different versions of Gershon Kingsley’s original. If that’s not enough, there’s at least 100 more out there.

• Mixes of the week: Touristica Mystica Sigillistica by Gregg Hermetech, FACT Mix 554 by The Body, and Secret Thirteen Mix 187 by Dalhous.

• Another electronic cover version: Trans Europe Express by Cobby & Mallinder.

In the 1950s people like Pierre Schaeffer and John Cage were saying: “But there are all these sounds in the world, and if you listen to them carefully enough you will hear the music that they speak.” This immediately opened up a new world; it’s enriching once you’ve educated your ear to that, because when you’re annoyed by the sound of the street you can make music out of it. You can make music out of almost everything!

Eliane Radigue discussing her career with Paul Schütze

• Patricia Highsmith’s Snail Obsession and Two Weird Tales of Monstrous Mollusks.

• Youth and Alex Patterson remember the making of Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb.

• Strange Flowers pursues Sheila Legge and other Phantoms of Surrealism.

• Revealed: Cambodia’s vast medieval cities hidden beneath the jungle.

• Alan Moore describes the cover of epic novel Jerusalem.

• Ashgabat: the city of the living and the city of the dead.

• In praise of the tram by Christian Wolmar.

• Taxidermists at DC’s

• Brian The Snail (1982) by Pigbag | Slow Loris Versus Poison Snail (1996) by David Toop & Jon Hassell | Popcorn (2000) by Gershon Kingsley