{music} – Page 62 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 638

• After writing about Hungarian animator Marcell Jankovics back in January, I left a comment expressing the hope that Arrow or Eureka might give us a Region B blu-ray of Son of the White Mare (aka Fehérlófia), Jankovics’s “psychedelic” animated feature from 1982. Fast-forward nine months to Eureka’s announcement that they’ll be doing exactly this in November. Watch the trailer. The release will include some of the director’s short films plus his first feature, Johnny Corncob (1973), a historical tale presented in the “groovy” style (previously) popularised by Yellow Submarine. If idle wishes can be granted so easily then I’ll hope again that Eureka might do the same for René Laloux’s second and third animated features, the Moebius-designed Time Masters (1982) (made in the same studio as Son of the White Mare) and the Caza-designed Gandahar (1987). Fingers crossed.

• “I don’t think anybody copies me, but Harmony Korine, Todd Solondz, Bruno Dumont, Gaspar Noé, I like those kinds of directors. They’re sometimes not funny at all. They’re very serious and eerily melodramatic. I just like movies that surprise me.” John Waters (yet again) talking to Conor Williams about films, writing and a prayer for Pasolini.

• “There is something profoundly haunting about a master artist’s last painting left unfinished upon its easel…” Kevin Dann on The Mermaid (1910) by Howard Pyle.

• At Bandcamp: Navigating the Nurse With Wound List: A Gateway to Far-Flung Sounds.

• “Juicy With Meaning”: Alex Denney chooses five essential films by David Cronenberg.

• Mix of the week: Discovering 1970s jazz fusion with Kerri Chandler.

• Coming soon from Strange Attractor: Purgatory by Ken Hollings.

• Steven Heller’s font(s) of the month: Farandole & Lustik.

• Dennis Cooper’s favourite albums.

• RIP Peter Straub.

• White Horses (1968) by Jacky | Five White Horses (1968) by Sun Dragon | Ride A White Horse (2006) by Goldfrapp

Switched On again (again)

The soundtrack for this weekend is the fifth volume in Stereolab’s Switched On series of compilation albums; the subtitle this time, Pulse Of The Early Brain, is another of those titles I won’t be surprised to encounter in an unlikely place at some point in the future. These albums are always very welcome for those of us who don’t bother collecting limited single releases. The main highlight of the new set is the Nurse With Wound collaboration from 1997, Simple Headphone Mind, a 12-inch which contained over 30-minutes of music. Heard in retrospect, these recordings push the group into territory that Tim Gane would explore in Cavern Of Anti-Matter, especially on the title track, a 10-minute groove that wouldn’t be out of place on a Brain release from 1972. (Maybe this is the Brain being alluded to in that subtitle?) Elsewhere on the compilation there’s the whole of the Lo Fi EP from 1993, an odd omission from previous collections (and which I already had but thanks anyway…), plus a number of previously unreleased recordings. The hard-to-photograph mirror packaging is designed by Vanina Schmitt.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Switched On again

Weekend links 637

A Risograph print by Raimund Wong for a forthcoming London concert by Suzanne Ciani. Via.

• “What makes him such an exemplary film composer is the adroitness with which he used style as a catalyst, conspiring with directors to illuminate crucial elements of character, tone, and plot through the expressive resources at his disposal.” Nate Chinen on Henry Mancini, a timely piece since I’ve been watching a lot of film noir recently, including two of the features mentioned there, Touch of Evil and Experiment in Terror. The latter is an uncharacteristic thriller from Blake Edwards with a marvellous, brooding score by Mancini. Here’s the main theme.

• “Infinitesimal as they are, phytoplankton produce more oxygen than all the world’s rainforests combined and roughly half of the oxygen on the planet—in other words, roughly half of the air we humans breathe.” David Greer on the importance of plankton.

• “Someday I’ll come into a place and someone’s playing my music and I’ll leave immediately because I don’t want to go through the editorial process again!” Diamanda Galás talking to Kevin Mccaighy about her new album, Broken Gargoyles.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: 25 experimental horror films. Not sure I’d class Night of the Lepus as “experimental”—”rubbish” would be more accurate—but you may disagree.

• Coming soon from Strange Attractor: 69 Exhibition Road: Twelve True-Life Tales from the Fag End of Punk, Porn & Performance by Dorothy Max Prior.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Gunkanjima (aka Battleship Island) from above: exploring what was once the world’s most-densely populated city.

• Previews of pages from A Tiger in the Land of Dreams by Tiger Tateishi, newly reprinted by 50 Watts Books.

• Mix of the week: A mix for The Wire by Ali Safi of the Marionette label.

• New music: Verde Pino by Beautify Junkyards.

• Mark Pawson & Disinfotainment

• Tiger Rag (1929) by Duke Ellington And His Orchestra | Night Of The Tiger (1959) by The Markko Polo Adventurers | Tiger (1967) by Brian Auger & The Trinity

Weekend links 636

Untitled painting by Oliver Frey based on The Wild Boys by William Burroughs.

• RIP Oliver Frey, a prolific illustrator and comic artist whose art for UK computer magazines in the 1980s made a lasting impression on a generation of games players, hence this obituary at Eurogamer. On this site, however, Frey is also remembered for his artistic alter-ego “Zack” (previously), an equally prolific creator of comic-strip erotica for Britain’s few gay-porn mags at a time when any such material being sold in the UK ran the risk of police seizure or even a court appearance. For a while, Zack’s Rogue and Tom of Finland’s Kake were rare examples of assertive, unashamedly lustful gay characters with strips of their own, which makes Oliver Frey something of a pioneer, and a daring one at that.

• “The title characters were a trio of boys named Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews, who live in the fictional California town of Rocky Beach, not far from Hollywood, on the coast…” Colin Fleming on the satisfyingly spooky adventures of Robert Arthur Jr’s Three Investigators. I was never as obsessive as Fleming was but I read all of the books about the trio that I could find in our local library.

• “Though its inimitable visual style has safeguarded it as a quintessential cult film most at home behind a shroud of pot smoke, the influence of Koyaanisqatsi has been sweeping.” Josef Steen on 40 years of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi.

• “Putting it simply, coincidences and curiosities and chance encounters happen when people go looking for zodiacs.” Mark Valentine on Britain’s terrestrial zodiacs.

• At Literary Hub: Marguerite Duras on writing the screenplay for Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour.

• New/old music: a reissue of Solar Maximum by Majeure.

• New music: Kerber Remixes by Yann Tiersen.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Ingrid Caven Day.

• Threnody To The Victims Of Hiroshima (1959-61) by Krzysztof Penderecki | Memory Of Hiroshima (1973) by Stomu Yamash’ta | Hiroshima Mon Amour (1977) by Ultravox!

Weekend links 635

“A close-up image of the surface of a soap bubble. The image reveals ‘lipid islands’ of soap floating on a very thin film of water. The film on which the soap floats is so thin that it does not interfere with the light hitting it, therefore allowing the light to pass through. This creates an appearance of a black abyss. Magnification x250.”

• Coming soon from Strange Attractor Press: Everything Keeps Dissolving, Conversations with Coil edited by Nick Soulsby. I helped out a little with this one so I’m looking forward to seeing it. And since the cult fervour around the group remains undiminished, anyone interested in buying a copy is advised to do so sooner rather than later.

• There are over 90 stories in The Complete Short Stories of JG Ballard (quantities vary according to edition) but few of them have been adapted into other media. The Drowned Giant is an exception, an animated short directed by Tim Miller.

• “You could spend your life exploring its dream logic without arriving at a definitive destination.” Anne Billson on the mysteries of Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Earwig.

• Meta-mix of the week: links to yearly mixes of favourite ambient releases by A Strangely Isolated Place.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Matchstick cookies keep the flame of tradition alive.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: George A. Romero Day.

• Felicia Atkinson’s favourite music.

• RIP Wolfgang Petersen.

• Das Boot: Titel (1981) by Klaus Doldinger | Martin (1983) by Soft Cell | Everything Keeps Dissolving (2000) by Coil