Weekend links 334

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Pixel Forest (2016) by Pipilotti Rist.

• “Think about it: gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people were almost completely invisible in the movies or on television, or even in newspapers and magazines. It wasn’t until LGBT people started producing their own media that we started to see consistent, positive images. But it would take until very recently for TV and cinema to catch up with what happened in books and magazines decades ago. In other words, nearly all LGBT culture only existed in print or at the bar. So when the queer bookstore disappears, where else can you find 40+ years of LGBT culture? (Hint: it’s not on Netflix.)” Ken White on starting Query Books and republishing classic LGBT literature.

• Related to the above: David Shariatmadari reviews a new edition of Coming Out, Jeffrey Weeks’ history of gay emancipation in the UK; Modern Harmonic is reissuing Love Is A Drag, a collection of “love songs by men, for men”, first released in 1962; Your Daily Male 2017: 52 international artists, 365 pages of full-colour male art; erotic portraits of Yukio Mishima by Eikoh Hosoe.

A Year In The Country revisits The Touchables (1968), a film about four Swinging Sixties girls who live in a huge plastic bubble in the countryside (must be a nightmare in winter); the quartet kidnap a rock star as “a temporary solution to the leisure problem”. Script by Ian La Frenais from a story by David & Donald Cammell. No DVD but it’s on YouTube.

• Mixes of the week are still in the Halloween zone: FACT mix 575 by Fenriz, and Resting Lich Face by SeraphicManta.

• War, love and weirdness: Brian Dillon on Powell & Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death, 70 years on.

• Bringing back the magic: a conversation with Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions.

David Toop listens, finally, to the legendary John Latham recordings of Pink Floyd.

The Synth Sounds of John Carpenter: Halloween, The Fog, Assault on Precinct 13.

• “Creep or craftsman? Hitchcock was both,” says Tom Shone.

The Dazzling Designs for a New York That Never Existed

Photography by Harry Gruyaert

The Untouchables (1959) by Nelson Riddle | The Touchables (All Of Us) (1968) by Nirvana (UK) | The Touchables (1980) by The Human League

Weekend links 332

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Suspiria (2012) by Jessica Seamans.

Matthew Sperling on Tom Phillips’ “treated Victorian novel” A Humument, which he calls “a multimedia masterpiece”. Phillips’ sixth and final edition of the book is published by Thames & Hudson next month.

Strange Flowers on Monsieur de Bougrelon (1897), a short novel by Jean Lorrain which will be published next month by Spurl Editions. The book is currently on my to-be-read-next pile.

Theodore Carter finds images of skulls by artists through the ages. I’d have included Giacometti’s almost abstract Head-Skull (1934) or his sketch of 1923.

• The horror stories of EF Benson contain “enough nastiness to give you just the right kind of frisson for the time of year,” says Nicholas Lezard.

• Covers for One, an American magazine of the 50s and 60s dedicated to “the homosexual viewpoint”.

Kelly Sullivan takes a close look at the illustrations and stained-glass work of the great Harry Clarke.

• Lost Moomins cartoon strips will be shown in the first UK Tove Jansson exhibition.

• The extravagant homes of Ludwig II of Bavaria are in urgent need of restoration.

• Mix of the week: The Nine Ten Never Sleep Again Mix by The Curiosity Pipe.

Ténéré Tàqqàl (what has become of the Ténéré), a new song by Tinariwen.

• The King of Weird: Joyce Carol Oates on HP Lovecraft.

• Charting the legacy of cult 1970s band, Big Star.

Falling (1992) by Miranda Sex Garden | Inferno (Version II) (1993) by Miranda Sex Garden | Peep Show (1994) by Miranda Sex Garden

Weekend links 331

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Ekeko (2016) by Jon Jacobsen.

Outer Space (1999), a short film by Peter Tscherkassky using reprocessed footage taken from The Entity (1982).

Pye Corner Audio playing live for 77 minutes at New Forms Festival, Vancouver 2016.

Salvador Dalí‘s rare Surrealist cookbook republished for the first time in over 40 years.

Keeping On Keeping On by Alan Bennett; extracts from the writer’s most recent diaries.

The Hagströmer Medico-Historical Library is a new source for free antique images.

• The shopfronts of independent Paris photographed by Sebastian Erras.

The Edge of the Ceiling (1980) is a short film about writer Alan Garner.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 198 by Bestial Mouths.

Brenda S G Walter on eviscerating the body of Black Metal.

• “When did new age music become cool?” asks Geeta Dayal.

Barok Main, a new piece from Mica Levi & Oliver Coates.

• American gay magazine XY has been relaunched.

• Confessions of a vinyl junkie by David Bowie.

Touch Radio archive at the British Library.

Harvard’s collection of glass flowers.

Michelle Stuart‘s Magical Land Art.

Dali’s Car (1969) by Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band | Save Me From Dali (1980) by Snakefinger | Salvador Dali’s Garden Party (1989) by Television Personalities

Weekend links 330

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Summer Passing (2013) by Laura Battle.

• The Marquis de Sade’s enduringly contentious The 120 Days of Sodom has been republished by Penguin Books in a new translation by Will McMorran and Thomas Wynn. “[De Sade] described his novel as ‘the most impure tale ever written since the world began’ and, for all the hyperbole, his description still holds true even now,” says Will McMorran, exploring the history and reputation of the book.

• From the Cutting Room Floor: Rick Klaw talks to Bruce Sterling about the current state of US (and world) politics. Sterling’s Futurist novel Pirate Utopia (which I’ve designed and illustrated) will be published by Tachyon next month.

• New from Strange Attractor: In Fairyland: The World of Tessa Farmer, edited by Catriona McAra, and Of Shadows: One Hundred Objects from The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic by Sarah Hannant and Simon Costin.

• Mix of the week: Programme No. 16 in the long-running Radio Belbury series is a guest presentation by The Pattern Forms (Jon Brooks, Edward Macfarlane and Edward Gibson).

The Book of Three Gates by Simon Berman, “An Esoterica of HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos”, is seeking funding.

• Occultist Phil Hine discusses Richard Payne Knight and phalluses at the Conway Hall, London, later this month.

• “My goal is to make music that is transcendent and isn’t specific of a certain time,” says Earth’s Dylan Carlson.

• Kiss the sky: psychedelic posters of the 60s and 70s from the collection of the late Felix Dennis.

Radionics Radio: An Album Of Musical Radionic Thought-Frequencies.

Madeleine LeDespencer on the occult bookshops of London.

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Sade Masoch (1968) by Bobby Callender | Confessional (Give Me Sodomy Or Give Me Death) (1991) by Diamanda Galás | The Sodom And Gomorrah Show (2006) by Pet Shop Boys

Weekend links 328

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Feathers and Weights (2016) by Susan Jamison.

• The latest release from A Year In The Country is No More Unto The Dance, “a reflection of nightlife memories and the search for the perfect transportative electronic beat”.

Depero Futurista (1927), the bolted book showcasing the artistic work of Fortunato Depero, returns in a facsimile edition.

• This week in the occult: Sam Kean on 21st-century alchemists, and a second volume of The Occult Activity Book.

How could so many jazz critics have overlooked Davis’s powerful trumpet playing on Bitches Brew, and its continuities with his previous work? The reason for their bewilderment was, in large part, the brew, the music’s muddy electric bottom, which bore no resemblance to the jazz they knew. Davis had never been a pure bopper, but his music had always made allusion, however oblique, to the grammar of Parker and Gillespie. On Bitches Brew, Davis decisively broke with his roots in bop. As [George] Grella argues, building on the pivotal work of Greg Tate and Paul Tingen, the more revealing points of comparison were no longer to be found in jazz but in the psychedelic guitar of Jimi Hendrix, the warbled vocals of Sly Stone, and the bass lines of James Brown.

Adam Shatz on Miles Davis

Daniel Wenger on Bob Mizer, “the obsessive photographer behind America’s first gay magazine”.

The Hauntings at Tankerton Park, a book of words and very detailed drawings by Reggie Oliver.

• A 40-minute performance by Pentangle for Norwegian television in 1968.

Maisie Skidmore on ten things you may not know about René Magritte.

• Shirley Collins is the secret queen of England, says Nick Abrahams.

Eighth Climate: ethnographic recordings from the imaginal world.

Pasquale Iannone on five ways to recognise a Pasolini film.

The greatest record sleeves, as chosen by the designers.

Cosmic Horror, new comics work by Ibrahim R. Ineke.

• Mix of the week: FACT mix 569 by S U R V I V E.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: 47 unmade films.

Cosmic Dancer (1971) by T. Rex | Cosmic Slop (1973) by Funkadelic | Cosmic Tango (1973) by Ash Ra Tempel