{music} – Page 99 – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 525

Polish poster by Franciszek Starowieyski, 1970.

• Tony Richardson’s Mademoiselle (1966) is one of those cult films that’s more written about than seen, despite having Jeanne Moreau in the lead role as a sociopathic schoolteacher, together with a screenplay by Marguerite Duras and Jean Genet, plus uncredited script-doctoring by David Rudkin. John Waters listed the film as a “guilty pleasure” in Crackpot but it’s been unavailable on disc for over a decade. The BFI will be releasing a restored print on blu-ray in September.

“While the hurdy-gurdy’s capacity to fill space with its unrelenting multi-tonal dirge is for some the absolute sonic dream, for others it is the stuff of nightmares.” Jennifer Lucy Allan on the pleasures and pains of a medieval musical instrument.

• “I truly believed”: Vicki Pollack of the San Francisco Diggers talking to Jay Babcock for the fifth installment of Jay’s verbal history of the hippie anarchists.

• “If you want to call yourself a composer, you follow every step of the instrumentation.” Ennio Morricone talking to Guido Bonsaver in 2006.

• Dutchsteammachine converts jerky 12fps film from the NASA archive to 24fps. Here’s the Apollo 14 lunar mission: landing, EVA and liftoff.

• New music: Suddenly the World Had Dropped Away by David Toop; Skeleton and Unclean Spirit by John Carpenter; An Ascent by Scanner.

• Peter Hujar’s illicit photographs of New York’s cruising utopia. Not to be confused with Alvin Batrop‘s photos of gay New York.

• Mixes of the week: XLR8R Podcast 651 by Dave Harrington, and Mr.K’s Side 1, Track 1’s #1 by radioShirley & Mr.K.

• Simon Reynolds on the many electronic surprises to be found in the Smithsonian Folkways music archive.

• The Gone Away by Belbury Poly will be the next release on the Ghost Box label.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Ed Emshwiller Day.

• Shirley Collins’ favourite music.

• Mademoiselle Mabry (1969) by Miles Davis | Hurdy Gurdy Man (1970) by Eartha Kitt | Danger Cruising (1979) by Pyrolator

Ennio Morricone, 1995

David Thompson made this 40-minute Ennio Morricone documentary for the BBC in 1995. I taped it at the time but haven’t watched it since so it was good to find again. The highlight is the lengthy interview with the man himself but there are also contributions from Christopher Frayling, Brian de Palma, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gillo Pontecorvo and others.

Maestro

RIP. There’s no such thing as too many Morricone discs. These are what I’d call a good start.

• Someone had to do it: Alexis Petridis dares to compile a list of 10 great Ennio Morricone compositions.
• At The Quietus: 13 artists and writers on their favourite Morricone compositions.

Weekend links 524

Letter M from Abeceda (1942) by Jindrich Heisler.

• At the BFI: Matthew Thrift chooses 10 essential Ray Harryhausen films. “This is, I can assure the reader, the one and only time that I have eaten the actors. Hitchcock would have approved,” says Harryhausen about eating the crabs whose shells were used for Mysterious Island. Meanwhile, Alfred Hitchcock himself explains the attraction and challenges of directing thrillers.

“Although largely confined to the page, Haeusser’s violent fantasies were even less restrained, his writings littered with deranged, bloodthirsty, scatological scenarios.” Strange Flowers on Ludwig Christian Haeusser and the “Inflation Saints” of Weimar Germany.

• Death, Pestilence, Emptiness: Putting covers on Albert Camus’s The Plague; Dylan Mulvaney on the different design approaches to a classic novel.

• A trailer (more of a teaser) for Last and First Men, a film adaptation of Olaf Stapledon’s novel by the late Jóhann Jóhannsson.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Spotlight on…James Purdy: The Complete Short Stories of James Purdy.

• Al Jaffee at 99: Gary Groth and Jaffee talk comics and humour.

• Steven Heller on Command Records’ design distinction.

• Czech Surrealism at Flickr.

• Sisters with Transistors.

• Solitude by Hakobune.

• Mysterious Semblance At The Strand Of Nightmares (1974) by Tangerine Dream | Mysterious Traveller (Dust Devils Mix) (1994) by System 7 | The Mysterious Vanishing of Electra (2018) by Anna von Hausswolff

4 Hours by Clock DVA

Sleeve by Neville Brody.

After mentioning Clock DVA’s Thirst (1981) a couple of days ago I’ve been playing the album together with Pow-Wow ever since. 4 Hours was Thirst‘s accompanying 7-inch single, a marvellous slice of rumbling post-punk angst. The B-side, Sensorium, includes the words “Uptown apocalypse” among its lyrics, a phrase that’s also the title of the second track on the equally marvellous Music For Stowaways (1981), an instrumental album by the post-Human League, pre-Heaven 17 offshoot British Electric Foundation. This isn’t a coincidence; the latter number was co-written by Clock DVA’s Adi Newton, and features him playing guitar and synth, Newton having been in The Future with BEF’s Marsh & Ware prior to the formation of Clock DVA and The Human League. And to further complicate this tangle of Sheffield connections, 4 Hours was reissued in 1985 in 12-inch format on Cabaret Voltaire’s Doublevision label. I bought almost all the Doublevision releases but this was one I missed. (Was the title of Cabaret Voltaire’s Sensoria derived from Sensorium? Maybe…)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Pow-Wow by Stephen Mallinder
• Old music and old technology
• Neville Brody and Fetish Records