Month: April 2009

The art of Philip Shadbolt

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Lila.

I’d intended to feature Philip Shadbolt’s paintings earlier but his site was offline last time I looked. The hiatus was a temporary one which means that the beautiful men, beatific gods and kaleidoscopic mandalas of his Earth and Spirit galleries are available for viewing again. One of these paintings is very aptly used as the cover art of Thom Ayres’ Arcanta CD, Book of Mirrors, Thom being better known to some of us as our witty and incorrigible host at Planet Fabulon. For more Shadboltiana, see the interior design at myhotel, Brighton.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Sadao Hasegawa, 1945–1999
• The art of Matthew Stradling

New things for April III

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The results of the Figment album art competition have now been posted and you can see my choice of the winner on the left here. You can see the rest of the winners and read my comments on the Figment site. The winning design reminded me of the famous cover for the first King Crimson album, In the Court of the Crimson King (1969), a painting by Barry Godber. Both have an arresting quality which make you wonder what it is that’s being witnessed beyond the picture frame.

King Crimson’s debut is one of the key moments when British music abandoned the silliness of psychedelia and got down to the serious business of becoming progressive rock. For some people this means it’s also the moment when rock music Went Wrong but I’ve no time for such Spartan sophistries; Robert Fripp rules. Digressions aside, I’ve not finished with the present psychedelic obsession (no, you don’t escape that easily), and the other piece of news today comes with an alert from Valis whose radio show of psychedelic music, Trip Inside This House, runs for two hours every Tuesday morning on KBHX, St Louis, from 5am to 7am. There’s archived shows on a blog of the same name and that site currently features an interview with Matt Piucci, ex of the fantastic Rain Parade, for my money the best of the Paisley Underground bands of the 1980s. If you haven’t yet heard their finest moment, No Easy Way Down, then your life is quite simply a hollow sham.