Weekend links 516

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Bats in space: an illustration by Henrique Alvim Corrêa from a 1906 edition of The War of the Worlds.

• Auf wiedersehen to Florian Schneider. Until he left Kraftwerk in 2009 (or 2006 or whenever it was), Schneider had been the group’s longest-serving member, keeping things running for the few months in 1971 when Ralf Hütter was absent. The brief period when Kraftwerk was Schneider plus soon-to-be-Neu! (Michael Rother, guitar, and Klaus Dinger, drums) fascinates aficionados over-familiar with the later albums. The music they produced was a wild and aggressive take on the rock idiom but Scheider maintained the link with Kraftwerk before and after, not only instrumentally but with his ubiquitous traffic cones, as noted in this post. There’s no need for me to praise Kraftwerk any more than usual, this blog has featured at least one dedicated post about them for every year of its existence, and besides which, the group itself is still active. Elsewhere: Simon Reynolds on how Florian Schneider and Kraftwerk created pop’s future; A Kraftwerk Baker’s Dozen Special; Dave Simpson attempts to rank 30 Kraftwerk songs (good luck getting anyone to agree with this); Jude Rogers with ten things you (possibly) don’t know about Kraftwerk; Dancing to Numbers by Owen Hatherley; Pocket Calculator in five languages; Florian Schneider talks about Stop Plastic Pollution.

Intermission is a new digital compilation from Ghost Box records featuring “preview tracks from forthcoming releases and material especially recorded for the compilation during the global lockdown”. In a choice of two editions, one of which helps fund Médecins Sans Frontières.

• How groundbreaking design weirdness transformed record label United Artists, against all odds. By Jeremy Allan.

Sex in an American suburb is not quite the same phenomenon as sex in, say, an eastern European apartment block, and sex scenes can do a great deal to illuminate the social and historical forces that make the difference. All of which is to say that sex is a kind of crucible of humanness, and so the question isn’t so much why one would write about sex, as why one would write about anything else.

And yet, of course, we are asked why we write about sex. The biggest surprise of publishing my first novel, What Belongs to You was how much people wanted to talk about the sex in a book that, by any reasonable standard, has very little sex in it. That two or three short scenes of sex between men was the occasion of so much comment said more about mainstream publishing in 2016, I think, than it did about my book. In fact, in terms of exploring the potential for sex in fiction, I felt that I hadn’t gone nearly far enough. I’ve tried to go much further in my second novel, Cleanness. In two of its chapters, I wanted to push explicitness as far as I could; I wanted to see if I could write something that could be 100% pornographic and 100% high art.

Garth Greenwell on sex in literature

James Balmont’s guide to Shinya Tsukamoto, “Japan’s Greatest Cult Filmmaker”.

• A Dandy’s Guide to Decadent Self-Isolation by Samuel Rutter.

Maya-Roisin Slater on where to begin with Laurie Anderson.

• The Count of 13: Ramsey Campbell’s Weird Selection.

Adam Scovell on where to begin with Nigel Kneale.

When John Waters met Little Richard (RIP).

RB Russell on collecting Robert Aickman.

Weird writers recommend weird films.

Campo Grafico 1933/1939.

Ruckzuck (1970) by Kraftwerk | V-2 Schneider (1977) by David Bowie | V-2 Schneider (1997) by Philip Glass

Leitkegel

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Gatefold interior for Doppelalbum (1974), a double-disc compilation album by Kraftwerk.

More Kraftwerkiana. “Leitkegel” is the German name for traffic cones, and it’s immediately obvious to anyone browsing Kraftwerk’s pre-Autobahn recordings that Ralf and Florian had a fixation with these objects. The closest thing I’ve found for a rationale is in Tim Barr’s history of the group, Kraftwerk: From Dusseldorf to the Future (1998), which features some musings about the influence of Joseph Beuys and the Düsseldorf arts scene of the late 60s. Prior to Kraftwerk, Florian Schneider was a member of a short-lived art collective/music outfit with the very un-Kraftwerkian name of Pissoff. Recordings exist of the group performing with Beuys. A more straightforward explanation might be to look towards Pop Art (something that Barr also suggests), with the traffic cone serving as a symbolic objet trouvé that’s also the first inkling of the future Kraftwerk obsessions with roads, trains and cycling. Whatever the impulse behind its adoption, between 1969 and 1973 the traffic cone was turning up everywhere that Ralf and Florian went.

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Cover design by “Comus” (Roger Wooton).

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The first instance is on Tone Float (1970), the pre-Kraftwerk album by Organisation, a collection of freeform improvisations that’s very much of its time. The album wasn’t very successful, and matters weren’t helped by the poor cover artwork. That multicoloured head and Ringlet typeface are also very much of their time but if you look on the back of the sleeve you find a traffic cone beside the album credits.

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Organisation live (1970).

Before the group split they were recorded by German TV, a performance that gives a good idea of the Organisation sound and of how odd they all look together. Ralf Hütter isn’t visible but you do glimpse a traffic cone for a moment when Florian is moving his microphone stand. I suspect the proliferation of cones around Florian (see below) is an indicator that their adoption was his doing.

Continue reading “Leitkegel”

Weekend links 220

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Untitled painting by Aleksandra Waliszewska.

• Ben Wheatley’s forthcoming film of High-Rise by JG Ballard now has its own Tumblr. This will no doubt be spoilerific so I won’t keep on visiting but it’s there if you require it. More Ballardianism: “Worshipping the Crash” at BLDGBLOG.

• “Aickman wandered through the sixties fantasy landscape like some curmudgeonly fetch, returning from the fin de siècle heyday of the ghost story.” Boyd Tonkin profiles Robert Aickman, writer of peerless “strange stories”.

• At Dangerous Minds: “Raise a glass to Cthulhu at the Lovecraft Bar”. Looks more like a Captain Nemo bar to me (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but I appreciate the gesture.

But to demand that a work be “relatable” expresses a different expectation: that the work itself be somehow accommodating to, or reflective of, the experience of the reader or viewer. The reader or viewer remains passive in the face of the book or movie or play: she expects the work to be done for her.

Rebecca Mead on The Scourge of Relatability

• “Space as a paranoid, static rumble featuring: 20jfg, Ben Frost & Daníel Bjarnason, Coil & Eduard Artemiev”. 20 Jazz Funk Greats on the pleasures of the Solaris soundtrack.

• What do Hawkwind, Harry Nilsson, Stereolab and The Supremes have in common? David Stubbs examines the legacy of Neu! and Klaus Dinger’s “Dingerbeat”.

• A reminder that A Year in the Country features a host of worthwhile links and associations for the Hauntologically persuaded.

Rouge Louboutin, an ad by David Lynch. Related: An improptu biscuit ad by the Eccentronic Research Council.

• Mix of the week (a year old but no matter): JG Ballard Zoom Lens Mix by Bernholz.

• At 50 Watts: More illustrated sheet music covers by Einar Nerman.

Five book cover designers and the books that inspire them.

Tove Jansson would have been 100 this week.

Pangaea with modern borders

Solaris: Dream (1990) by Edward Artemyev [sic] | Solaris (2000) by Photek | Simulacra I (2011) by Ben Frost & Daníel Bjarnason

Weekend links 23

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“The Go-Go wonder of Paris — That’s space girl. Transistors never wear down, they just go on and on — Even her heart is made of vinyl — It’s a marvy life — With nothing else to do but dance — Why not? – Love? — Forget it, baby — Not for her —” From Mod Love (1967) by Michael Lutin and Michel Quarez.

• “Gay people are not advancing themselves in the (publishing) industry, they’re just regurgitating familiar territory. Of course, artists are always ahead of gatekeepers. That’s the way it works—artists innovate. But in order to fulfill your promise as an editor, agent, publisher or reviewer, you have to be a person who’s embracing the new and looking to elevate what is not yet known. And unfortunately, there’s not a discussion among publishing professionals about enhancing this aspect of people’s responsibilities. In fact, it goes the other way. So there needs to be a psychological revolution on behalf of the people who are controlling what information is allowed to be seen.” From an interview with Sarah Schulman at Lambda Literary.

Jonathan Ross meets Jim Steranko. Also at the Guardian: Unearthing the truth about Alan Moore.

• Photographing an abandoned Art Deco skyscraper. From the people who photographed Neverland at night.

Powers: “aural sculptures” by Andy Partridge inspired by the strange science fiction art of Richard M Powers.

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La Paresse (Laziness) (1924) by George Barbier.

Lautréamont’s poison-drenched pages. Roger Cardinal reviews a new edition of Les Chants de Maldoror and Poésies.

The Wire‘s Top 50 Rhythms of All Time, a list from 1992. Some great recommendations but it’s impossible to imagine that being written now without a mention of Klaus Dinger. And where’s Fela Kuti?

• The Wire Salon at Cafe Oto, London, on August 5th presents Rob Young discussing his forthcoming book, Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music.

American Pictorial Photography, 1912–1955. Another astonishing picture set at Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

The Beats: Pictures of a Legend. Edmund White on a new exhibition of Allen Ginsberg’s photographs. Related: the trailer for Howl.

The Dream Machine is a point-and-click adventure game made using hand-crafted animation.

Fuck yeah Francisco Lachowski: Brazilian model cutie has many Tumblr fans.

Polly Morgan’s wings of desire. The taxidermy artist interviewed.

Thomas Dolby’s solar-powered boat studio.

Rückstoss Gondoliere (1971) by Kraftwerk: pt. 1 | pt. 2

Klaus Dinger, 1946–2008

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Klaus Dinger (right) with brother Thomas, circa 1978. From the sleeve of Viva by La Düsseldorf.

“There were three great beats in the ’70s: Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat, James Brown’s funk and Klaus Dinger’s Neu! beat.” Brian Eno

Klaus Dinger, the great drummer for Neu! and La Düsseldorf (and briefly Kraftwerk in 1971) died back in March but news of this has taken a while to emerge. Everything he did in the Seventies is essential, the Neu! albums especially. YouTube has a few choice examples such as this clip of someone playing Neu!’s finest (and oft-imitated) moment, Hallogallo, slightly too fast. Then there’s Isi from Neu! 75 and the crazy glam-punk of Hero (a tremendous period performance) shortly before guitarist Michael Rother left and the band transmuted into La Düsseldorf. For a blast of the latter, there’s the majestic Rheinita from Viva. Happily, Michael Rother is still with us and was interviewed in the most recent issue of The Wire.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Aerodynamik by Kraftwerk
Metabolist: Goatmanauts, Drömm-heads and the Zuehl Axis
The genius of Kraftwerk