{music} – Page 2 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 782

Ushiwakamaru and Benkei (2015) by Paul Binnie.

• “Gohatto depicts homosexuality within a very specific subset of society. Kubi explores further than that, depicting homosexuality between equals, and between bosses and subordinates. It tries to depict the relationship between power and authority, and how sexuality is used to maintain that authority.” Takeshi Kitano talking about Kubi, his film about sex among the samurai, which is receiving a belated release in the UK.

• “De Rome later said he’d never felt persecuted for his sexuality, and it’s this sense of the carefree that’s reflected in the lightness of his filmmaking.” Luke Turner on Peter De Rome’s homoerotic films which are currently being screened at the Barbican, London.

• At Public Domain Review: Helen Haiman Joseph’s A Book of Marionettes (1920), “The first comprehensive history of marionette artistry in the English language.”

• Mixes of the week: Isolatedmix 132: Psilocybin Therapy Protocol v1.22a by Matt Xavier, and DreamScenes – June 2025 at Ambientblog.

• At Sight and Sound: Backwards through the backwoods: music editors Dean Hurley and Lori Eschler on David Lynch and Twin Peaks.

• Dennis Cooper’s favourite fiction, poetry, non-fiction, film, art, and internet of 2025 so far. Thanks again for the link here!

• New music: Interior of an Edifice Under the Sea by Pan American & Kramer, and Modulations IV by Ian Boddy.

• At The Quietus: Peer Review: Peter Strickland interviews Cosey Fanni Tutti…and vice versa.

• Cosmic Dawn: A feature-length NASA documentary about the James Webb Space Telescope.

• RIP Sly Stone and Brian Wilson.

• Les Marionnettes (1991) by Zbigniew Preisner | Sword Of The Samurai (2006) by Lisa Gerrard | Seven Samurai (Ending Theme) (2012) by Ryuichi Sakamoto

Weekend links 781

Orphée aux Enfers (1896) by Jean Delville

• “Yes, there was a riot, but it was great”: Cabaret Voltaire on violent gigs, nuclear noise – and returning to mark 50 years.

• At Public Domain Review: Matthew Mullane on George Wightwick’s The Palace of Architecture (1840).

• New music: Dissever by Emptyset; Quiet Pieces by Abul Mogard; Analogues by Lawson & Merrill.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Artist Yukiko Suto finds beauty in Japanese residential neighbourhoods.

• At The Quietus: A Condition of the Space: Mary Anne Hobbs interviewed.

• At Baja el Signo de Libra: The homoerotic photography of Yves Paradis.

• Mix of the week: Bleep Mix #303 by Abul Mogard.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Stan Brakhage Day.

• RIP Edmund White.

• Brakhage (1997) by Stereolab | Brakhage (2002) by Robert Poss | Barbican Brakhage (2009) by John Foxx

Weekend links 780

An early illustration by Burne Hogarth from Federal Illustrator, Winter 1931–1932, credited to the artist’s original name, Bernard Spinoza Ginsburg. (Via)

• RIP Simon House, a musician whose death was announced in the same week as news of a remixed edition of Hall Of The Mountain Grill by Hawkwind, the first of the group’s albums to feature House on violin and keyboards. House’s keyboards made a considerable difference to Hawkwind’s sound, expanding the range of their songwriting; the melodramatic scale of Assault And Battery/The Golden Void wouldn’t have been possible without those massed Mellotrons. Post-Hawkwind it was House’s violin that was sought after during his time as a session musician, on songs like Yassassin by David Bowie, and Talking Drum by Japan. He’s also one of the musicians credited on Thomas Dolby’s biggest hit, She Blinded Me With Science (violin again), although his contribution there is easy to mistake for a synthesizer.

• “We did want the name to be weighty and metal-related because it is a kind of a metal band. So what is heavy and what is metal: that was the answer.” Hildur Gudnadóttir talking about Osmium, an experimental quartet comprising Gudnadóttir with James Ginzburg, Rully Shabara and Sam Slater.

• At Criterion: Stephanie Zacharek on Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, films from a time “when delighting audiences meant more than catering to the predetermined whims of a dogged fandom”.

• The week in maps: At Public Domain Review, Bernard Sleigh’s Anciente Mappe of Fairyland (ca. 1920 edition); at Nautilus, the first maps of the Earth’s magnetic field.

• The eleventh 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.

• Not on any map: Mark Valentine describes the time he tried to buy a phantom island from the Hudson’s Bay Company.

• At Colossal: “In surreal portraits, Rafael Silveira tends to the garden of consciousness“.

• New music: Osmium by Osmium, and Along The Wind Spear by Survey Channel.

• Anne Billson chooses Anjelica Huston’s ten best roles.

• Owls in Towels

• Five Owls (1970) by Canned Heat | Night Owl (1996) by System 7 | Owls And Flowers (2006) by Belbury Poly

Weekend links 779

The Crystal World by JG Ballard. An illustration by Virgil Finlay for the Summer–August 1966 issue of Things To Come, the Science Fiction Book Club mailer.

• At Blissblog, Simon Reynolds looks back on 20 years of limited-edition electronic music reissues by the Creel Pone label. (Previously.) A bootleg enterprise but a very worthwhile one since most of the reissues would otherwise remain deleted and largely forgotten. I thought the releases had finished years ago but it seems not, Discogs now lists over 300 of them.

• “Everyone recognized the brilliance of Robinson’s eventual script: they just didn’t want to make it.” David Cairns on the miserable magnificence of Bruce Robinson’s Withnail and I.

• Coming soon from Top Shelf: More Weight: A Salem Story, Ben Wickey’s illustrated account of the Salem Witch Trials.

• The tenth installment of Smoky Man’s exploration of The Bumper Book of Magic has been posted (in Italian) at (quasi).

• At Colossal: “A unique portfolio of Hilma af Klint’s botanical drawings communes with nature’s spiritual side”.

• At Nautilus: The Visual Language of Crystals—Chemistry becomes art in Thomas Blanchard’s timelapse video.

• At Unquiet Things: Supernatural field notes and incomprehensible eldritch frequencies: The art of Ed Binkley.

• See some of the entries from the 2025 Milky Way Photographer of the Year.

• New music: Instruments by Water Damage, and Reverie by Deaf Center.

• The Strange World of…Editions Mego.

• Strobe Crystal Green (1971) by Gil Mellé | Crystal Leaves (1983) by Ippu-Do | Crystalline Green (2002) by Goldfrapp

Ulrich Eichberger album covers

El Condor Pasa (Paul Nero In South-America) (1970) by Paul Nero Sounds.

It’s the groovy look again. Since compiling a list of artists and designers working in this post-psychedelic style I keep finding practictioners I hadn’t noticed before. German designer and art director Ulrich Eichberger is someone I might have spotted earlier if I’d examined his discography, especially when several of the albums he worked on are ones I’ve owned for many years. The covers of those albums aren’t very psychedelic, however, and don’t even look like the work of the same designer until you scrutinise the credits. The examples here are those where he was working as a cover artist as well as designer, favouring the ones where the pop-psych hallmarks are in evidence: vivid colours, bold outlines, and faces or figures treated to various degrees of stylisation. Elsewhere, the influence of Heinz “Yellow Submarine” Edelmann may be seen in the watercolour blooms that fill the backgrounds. Most of these designs are for the German wing of United Artists Records (or its Liberty affiliate) which means that Eichberger got to work for two of the major German groups of the early 70s, Can and Amon Düül II.

Partyrausch – Das Ideale Tanzalbum 70/71 (1970) by Various Artists.

Tago-Mago (1971) by Can.

I’ve never thought this was a very good cover but it’s the most popular album of those listed here.

Partyrausch 71/72 (Das Ideale Tanzalbum) (1971) by Various Artists.

In The Groove (1972) by Charly Antolini.

Included mainly because of the title.

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