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Le Vampire (c. 1903) by Agathon Léonard. Via Beautiful Century. • Two masters of rumbling atmospherics interviewed at The Quietus: Bobby Krlic aka The Haxan Cloak talks to Maya Kalev while Thomas Köner talks to Joseph Burnett. Discussions about the arts now have an awkward, paralyzed quality: few judgments about the independent excellences of works [...]

The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). This weekend’s viewing was The Man Who Fell to Earth on Blu-ray, highly recommended for anyone who likes the film, Anthony Richmond’s photography looks better than ever. I’ve had this for a while on DVD and what’s notable about the old and new formats is that both UK [...]

Typographic Composition (1924) by Teresa Zarnowerówna from a post about Polish graphic design at 50 Watts. • “Direct action is a matter of acting as if you were already free… [...] …the link between military and money systems remains the dirty secret of capitalism.” A lengthy and essential interview with “anarchist anthropologist” David Graeber, author [...]

Music For Space Squirrels (1958) by Al Caiola’s Magic Guitars. Having sought out Saul Bass’s album cover designs recently, curiosity impelled me to see what fellow New York designer Milton Glaser had been doing during the same period. I already knew some of Glaser’s covers for the Tomato label in the 1970s but Discogs has [...]

Marbles and Butterflies (2011) by Jennifer Knaus. • “Cutter’s Way is a cinematic masterpiece” says John Patterson. Yes, it is, and it’s often been difficult to see (although it’s now on DVD) being one of those cult films that rarely surfaced on TV or video. Another cult film surfacing at last is Jerzy Skolimowski’s Deep [...]

Ira Cohen (1979) by Gerard Malanga. Another of the psychedelic magi departed our mundane sphere this week, and for the moment his passing seems to have been unacknowledged by those cultural wardens who you’d think would know better. Ira Cohen was a poet with a gift for phrases which demand to be appended to Mati [...]

One of the drawbacks with recommending Paul Schütze‘s music lately has been a lack of availability, with most of his CDs being out of print. That changes this month with his back catalogue returning via iTunes sporting a range of impressive new artwork (above) created by Mr Schütze himself. Schütze’s electronic music stood out for [...]

More sex please, you’re artists | Or less North, more South as Jon Hassell would say.

Better late than never mentioning this exhibition which has been running at Riflemaker, 79 Beak Street, London, since mid-January. The exhibition features those artists, writers and musicians who acknowledge the need to reach a heightened or ‘altered state’ in order to create their work. We look at the mystery of the creative act; not the [...]

If book collecting is frequently a waiting game, some waiting periods can be longer than others. In the case of Mati Klarwein’s God Jokes, my patience and hope have sustained themselves for 28 years until I finally acquired a copy this Thursday afternoon. God Jokes was the second book of Mati Klarwein’s work, published by [...]

Miles Davis & Teo Macero, 1969. Teo Macero, composer and visionary producer of one of the greatest albums ever recorded, Bitches Brew by Miles Davis, died last week. • NYT obituary • Teo talks about working with Miles Davis • Jon Hassell explains why Bitches Brew is the best

top: Jon Hassell: Solid State. Richard Maxfield: Memorial Concerts. bottom: The Theatre of Eternal Music Big Band. Pandit Pran Nath: Evening Ragas. Artist Marian Zazeela’s beautiful hand-drawn posters can be seen (and bought) at the MELA Foundation website. Most of these were created for the Dream House productions hosted by Zazeela and partner La Monte [...]

Vernal Equinox by Jon Hassell; the perfect listening for the “momentous poem among moments”.

Ry Cooder rules. New album out today sees Ry accompanied by Mike & Pete Seeger, Roland White, Van Dyke Parks, Paddy Moloney, Flaco Jiménez, Stefon Harris, Joachim Cooder and Jon Hassell. Cover drawing and interior illustrations by Vincent Valdez. On My Name Is Buddy, Ry Cooder revisits, in a new set of original material, the [...]

Brian Eno and David Byrne’s 1981 album gets a remastered reissue this month, something I’m looking forward to hearing as all the early Eno albums sounded pretty crappy on their initial CD release. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts is being given an added publicity push this time round with much being made of [...]

A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart, cataloguing interests, obsessions and passing enthusiasms. • Archives: easy access to some recurrent { feuilleton } themes. • Recent work: a continually updated list of what John’s been working on. • Writings: a selection of John’s published writings here and elsewhere. JOHN COULTHART’s first public illustration work [...]