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Japanese poster (1982). At The Quietus Steve Earles looks back at John Carpenter’s visceral and uncompromising The Thing which exploded messily onto cinema screens thirty years ago. It’s always worth being reminded that this film (and Blade Runner in the same year) was considered a flop at the time following bad reviews and a poor [...]

• Two covers from a new range of Penguin reprints for the AIDS awareness fund (RED), all of which are based around quotes from the books in question. Non-Format‘s stylised extract concerns the blazing red of the Count’s eyes while Coralie Bickford-Smith plays some Tom Phillips games with the text of The Secret Agent. The [...]

Kjendalskronebrae, Nordfjord, Norway (c. 1900). From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division via Wood s Lot. Are you suffering list fatigue yet? I certainly have been, especially from the apparently endless “best ___ of the decade” catalogues which would have you believe that the significant cultural products of the past ten years have [...]

CBS 73059; construction by Karenlee Grant, photo by David Vine (1972). A1 Timesteps (13:50) A2 March From A Clockwork Orange (7:00) B1 Title Music From A Clockwork Orange (2:21) B2 La Gazza Ladra (5:50) B3 Theme From A Clockwork Orange (1:44) B4 Ninth Symphony: Second Movement (4:52) B5 William Tell Overture (1:17) B6 Country Lane [...]

Impressions de la Haute Mongolie – Hommage á Raymond Roussel (1974-75). When I wrote a short reminiscence about Impressions de la Haute Mongolie last March I really didn’t expect I’d be watching it again just over a year later having waited thirty years for the opportunity. But now we can all see José Montes-Baquer’s collaboration [...]

Many sounds have never been heard—by humans: some sound waves you don’t hear—but they reach you. “Storm-stereo” techniques combine singers, instrumentalists and complex electronic sound. The emotional intensity is at a maximum. Sleeve note for An Electric Storm, Island Records, 1969. An Electric Storm by White Noise is reissued in a remastered edition this week. [...]