Stereolab – Page 6 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 261

Salome (2013) by Lucie Hardie.

• Aickmanesque, “A list of films that possess the same strange ambiguities, disturbing illogicalities, grim mundanities, psychological unpleasantness, narrative open-endedness, Freudian oddness and genuine disturbing moments of horror as the short stories of Robert Aickman.” One of those films, Symptoms (1974), has been out of circulation for a long time but may be watched at YouTube.

• “If this was psychedelia, then it had more in common with the variety peddled by US bands like The Rain Parade, The Three O’Clock…and The Bangles…all of whom had been grouped into a movement known as The Paisley Underground.” Joseph Stannard looks back at Around The World In A Day by Prince And The Revolution.

• “…what I do is not magical realism. I do realistic magic.” Alejandro Jodorowsky talking to Ilan Stavans about writing and filmmaking. A substantial interview in which Jodorowsky isn’t forced to express himself solely in English.

[Angela] Carter thoroughly upset the bien pensants with her essay The Sadeian Woman (1978) where she argued that Sade “was unusual in his period for claiming rights of free sexuality for women and in installing women as beings of power in his imaginary worlds … I would like to think that he put pornography in the service of women, or, perhaps, allowed it to be invaded by an ideology not inimical to women.” She also makes the connection between Sade’s misanthropy, as she calls it, and his splitting of women’s bodies from “the mothering function”. McQueen seems to me to fascinate for similar reasons. Some of the pull he exerts on huge numbers of people arises from this side of his sensibility: there’s no hint of motherhood; he disliked the way that traditional décolletage revealed the breasts, and instead encased the whole female torso in coiled silver, mussel shells or razor clams—even glass.

Marina Warner on Alexander McQueen whose Savage Beauty exhibition is currently running at the V&A

• London’s American poster king: Graham Twemlow on E. McKnight Kauffer’s posters for the London Underground.

• At Celluloid Wicker Man: Electronic music and mental illness in cinema.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 154 by Moniek Darge.

• #1 (1994), the first album by Skylab, has been reissued.

• Vir·tu·al Ge·om·e·try

• Tamborine (1985) by Prince And The Revolution | Indigo (1994) by Skylab | Metronomic Underground (1996) by Stereolab

Weekend links 220

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 198

Bum (1966) by Pauline Boty.

• Eleanor Birne on Pauline Boty, “the only prominent female Pop artist among a generation of famous men”. Ken Russell’s Pop Art documentary, Pop Goes the Easel (1962), which features Boty, may be seen here. Two years later Boty was back with Ken Russell playing the part of the prostitute from The Miraculous Mandarin in a film about Béla Bartók. That’s something I’d love to see. There’s more about her painting, and the work of other female Pop artists, here.

• Why Are We Sleeping? Mark Pilkington on the music world’s recurrent interest in the philosophy of GI Gurdjieff. Pilkington’s most recent Raagnagrok release with Zali Krishna, Man Woman Birth Death Infinity, was reviewed by Peter Bebergal.

• Cinematic details: Frames-within-frames in The Ipcress File (1966), and the typography of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

A Jay Shaw poster for Ben Wheatley’s forthcoming film of High-Rise.

• “…a large cavity must be dug in the bird’s shoulder and filled with ball bearings.” Christine Baumgarthuber on the dubious delights of The Futurist Cookbook.

• Why Tatlin Can Never Go Home Again: Rick Poynor on the difficulties of finding a definitive representation of an artwork online.

• Jay Parini reviews Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris by Edmund White. At AnOther Donatien Grau talks to White about fashion.

• At Bajo el Signo de Libra (in Spanish): the homoerotic and occasionally Surrealist art of Pavel Tchelitchew.

• At 50 Watts: Kling Klang Gloria: Vintage Children’s Books from Austria.

• The motorbike girl gangs of Morocco photographed by Hassan Hajjaj.

• Geoff Manaugh on how LED streetlights will change cinema.

• Stylus “is an experiment in sound, music and listening”.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen mix 106 by Senking.

• At Pinterest: JG Ballard

• This Is Pop? (1978) by XTC | Pop Muzik (1979) by M | Pop Quiz (1995) by Stereolab

Les Chants de Maldoror by Shuji Terayama

27 minutes of experimental video from 1977 in which director Shuji Terayama retrieves some predictably unorthodox images from the bottomless pit of Lautréamont’s text. The preoccupations here seem to belong as much to the director’s mind as to that of Isidore Ducasse, what with the emphasis on various forms of bondage and unusual erotics. (Not that Maldoror lacks sexual material but what there is adopts a different guise.) With a score that sounds like outtakes from a Clock DVA studio session it’s very much a product of its time, but not without interest. Terayama was (among other things) the director of Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1971), a film whose title was later swiped by Stereolab. Les Chants de Maldoror may be viewed at Ubuweb.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Polypodes
• Ulysses versus Maldoror
• Maldoror
• Books of blood
• Magritte’s Maldoror
• Frans De Geetere’s illustrated Maldoror
• Maldoror illustrated

Weekend links 118

The Garden of Urban Delights (2010) by Marcin Owczarek.

His protagonists are misfits: alienated, implicitly gay, longing for love, frequently hard to be around, always fixated on small pleasures that compensate for an essential feeling of not belonging. […] His patroness Edith Sitwell termed him “that rare being, a born writer.” William Burroughs dedicated The Place of Dead Roads to him, declaring Welch “certainly the writer who most directly influenced my work.” John Waters has called In Youth is Pleasure “so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, [it] is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger.”

Sadie Stein on Denton Welch, a writer I’m embarrassed about still not having read. Edith Sitwell and William Burroughs had a famously disputatious correspondence in the pages of the TLS over The Naked Lunch. An appreciation of Welch’s work was one of the few things they had in common.

• Don’t mention guitars: Robert Hampson on acousmatic music, the curse of Loop and the rebirth of Main.

• No Straight Lines: A Collection Of Queer Comics part one, part two, part three. A history by Justin Hall.

• Pieces Of Gold by The Aikiu: shots from gay porn videos repurposed via some smart editing.

• RIP Ilhan Mimaroglu, electroacoustic composer. Ubuweb has a selection of his recordings.

“A good ground rule for writing in any genre is: start with a form, then undermine its confidence in itself,” he says. “Ask what it’s afraid of, what it’s trying to hide – then write that.” For Harrison, the most satisfying writers are “at odds with their cultural context. They’re trying to fit in and failing, or they’re trying to remove themselves and failing. The attempt to resolve the conflict is an angle – a frame or a context – in itself.”

The Guardian’s A Life in Writing profiles M. John Harrison. His new novel, Empty Space, was published on Thursday. There’s also this recent video interview with Arc magazine.

• Stephen Usery interviews editor Russ Kick about The Graphic Canon: Volume One.

• At home with Prince Zaleski, the “most decadent and imperial detective in fiction”.

• A Visit with Magritte: photographs by Duane Michals.

• Loitering airships could dispense drones on demand.

• Creating a Forever Object: Ian Schon’s Pen Project.

• A Tumblr for the late, lamented Arthur Magazine.

• “Few cities can boast a railway line for the dead.”

• The Lost Tapes by Can: An Oral History.

• Space Reflex (1963) by Dick Hyman & Mary Mayo | Space Is Deep (1972) by Hawkwind | Space Is The Place (1973) by Sun Ra | Space Moment (1995) by Stereolab | Space Pong (2006) by T++