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Weekend links 790

Set design by Vladimir Pleshakov for the Ballets Russes’ The Firebird (1923).

• The latest book from Swan River Press is A Mystery of Remnant and Other Absences, a collection of fictions by the late B. Catling. Copies include postcards with accompanying texts by Alan Moore and Catling’s friend and regular collaborator, Iain Sinclair.

• New music: The Loneliness Of The Hollow Earth Explorer Vol. 1 by Arrowounds; The Eraserhead: Music Inspired By The Film Of David Lynch by Various Artists.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: The Purple Cloud by MP Shiel.

• A catalogue of lots at another After Dark: Gay Art and Culture online auction. Homoerotic art, photos, historic porn. etc.

• At Colossal: Laser-cut steel forms radiate ornate patterns in Anila Quayyum Agha’s immersive installations.

• Photographs by Man Ray and Max Dupain showing at the Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne.

• Mix of the week: Isolatedmix 134 by Artefakt.

• At Dennis Cooper’s it’s Anna Karina’s Day.

• Three Imposters

• Purple Haze (1967) by The Jimi Hendrix Experience | Pilots Of Purple Twilight (1981) by Tangerine Dream | Purple Rain (live, 1985) by Prince & The Revolution

Weekend links 789

Niemand (1990) by Micha Ullman.

• The Diary of a Nobody (1964) by Ken Russell, John McGrath, Weedon Grossmith & George Grossmith. A recent posting at Play For Forever, an archive of hard-to-find/unreissued British TV drama.

• New music: Paul St. Hilaire With The Producers by Paul St. Hilaire; Atoms In The Void by Ivan the Tolerable & Hawksmoor; The Cosmic Tones Research Trio by The Cosmic Tones Research Trio.

• At Public Domain Review: Julie Park explores the history of the camera obscura.

• At The Wire: Read an extract from Philosophy of Jazz by Daniel Martin Feige.

• At Unquiet Things: Jana Heidersdorf’s fairy tale subversions.

• At Colossal: Five decades of land art by Andy Goldsworthy.

• The Strange World of…Marissa Nadler.

• RIP Robert Wilson.

• Nobody (1968) by Larry Williams & Johnny Watson with Kaleidoscope | “There Is Nobody” (1976) by Brian Eno | Nobody (1978) by Ry Cooder

Weekend links 788

The Witches’ Flight (1798) by Francisco Goya.

• At Wormwoodiana: Mark Valentine reviews the latest book from Tartarus, a biography of T. Lobsang Rampa by R.B. Russell. You don’t hear much about Rampa today but, as Mark says, old copies of his books have for many years been common sights on the Spiritualism/Occult shelves of British bookshops. Rampa wasn’t a Tibetan monk as he claimed in his first book, The Third Eye, but a very non-Tibetan Englishman, Cyril Henry Hoskin, whose stories about his early years evolved following press investigations into a claim of being possessed by the spirit of a Tibetan doctor named Tuesday Lobsang Rampa. Hoskin maintained the Rampa persona for the rest of his life, writing many more books about the mystic East, as well as accounts of his contact with the planet Venus and his psychic connection with his Siamese cat. The Rampa books were very popular in the 1960s—my mother had three or four of them—despite continual accusations that their author was a fraud.

• New music: The Hadronic Seeress And Other Wyrd Tales by The Wyrding Module; Master Builder by Xeeland; Resurrection Of The Foghorns by Everyday Dust.

• The twelfth installment of Smoky Man’s exploration of The Bumper Book of Magic has been posted (in Italian) at (quasi), and in English at Alan Moore World.

• Rivers of galaxies: Mark Neyrinck on the cosmic web and other metaphors that describe the largest structures in the Universe.

• “Curation becomes subservient to metrics.” Derek Walmsley on how Spotify distorts genre histories.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Erica Ward presents Tokyo as a living, breathing organism.

• At the BFI: Chloe Walker chooses 10 great films by one-time directors.

• At Unquiet Things: How Yuko Shimizu rewires ancient stories.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Jana Thork.

• RIP Ozzy Osbourne.

• Web Weaver (1974) by Hawkwind | The Web (1985) by Cabaret Voltaire | Web (1992) by Brian Eno

Weekend links 786

The Skylark (1850) by Samuel Palmer.

• The latest book from A Year In The Country is Other Worlds: “Searching for far off lands via witchcraft battles, spectral streets, faded visions of the future and the secrets of the stones”.

• At Colossal: The 16th-century artist who created the first compendium of insect drawings.

• New music: Triskaidekaphobia Extd. by Pentagrams Of Discordia; Atamon by Amina Hocine.

• Old music: Cantus Orbis Collection by Cantus Orbis; Resonance by Yumiko Morioka.

• Coming soon from Top Shelf Productions: More Weight: A Salem Story by Ben Wickey.

• At the BFI: Miriam Balanescu chooses 10 great British pastoral films.

• The ZWO Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2025 Shortlist.

• Mix of the week: A mix for The Wire by Ben LaMar Gay.

• Jack Barnett’s favourite music.

• Pastoral Symphony (1960) by Richard Maxfield | Pastoral (1975) by Mahavishnu Orchestra | Pastoral Vassant (2018) by Jon Hassell

Weekend links 784

An illustration by HB Ford for The Violet Fairy Book (1906), edited by Andrew Lang.

• New music: An Aesthetic – Experiments in Tape by Hawksmoor; Leylines (2025 remaster) by Aes Dana; A Fragile Geography (10th Anniversary Reissue) by Rafael Anton Irisarri.

• “Skoda Auto designers reimagine Ferat Vampire car from cult classic 1981 Czech horror film”.

• At Colossal: Chris Ware illustrates a postwoman’s day to celebrate 250 years of USPS.

Seen today, the failure of Sorcerer looks like a grim prophecy of where the film industry would be headed in the years to come. It signaled that the creative ambitions of the New Hollywood, and its indulgence of stubborn renegade auteurs, had been cast aside for a new and dispiriting blockbuster ethos. Decades later, that ethos is still with us: a Hollywood dominated by digitally smoothed, effects-encrusted moviemaking, where every backdrop looks fake (even the real ones) and action sequences carry no physical weight. It’s a wretched landscape, and Sorcerer positively towers over it. To watch the film now, from its electric opening moments through its gaspingly bleak denouement, is to encounter something more than just a magnificent ruin or an object of cultish reclamation: a thwarted masterwork that is thwarted no longer.

Justin Chang on the bleak magic of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer.

• At the BFI: The Red Shoes wallpaper by the film’s designer Hein Heckroth.

• All This Violence by Caspar Brötzmann Massaker.

• RIP Lalo Schifrin and Rebekah del Rio.

• The Strange World of…Jon Spencer.

• In Ultra-Violet (1983) by Cinema 90 | Violet Ray Gas (2009) by Violet | Violetta (2012) by Demdike Stare