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

Weekend links 324

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Untitled painting by Aleksandra Waliszewska. The artist is profiled by S. Elizabeth at Dirge Magazine.

• “…from my point of view, the only thing to do with any genre, any medium, is pretty much to break it, to transcend it, to find out what its limits are, and then go beyond them, and see what happens.” Alan Moore (again) talking to Heidi MacDonald about his novel, Jerusalem, which is out next month.

• A Monument to Outlast Humanity: Dana Goodyear gets the reclusive Michael Heizer to talk about his decade-spanning sculptural project, City, work on which is almost finished.

William Burroughs’ appearances in adult men’s magazines: a catalogue which includes some downloads of uncollected Burroughs essays and other writings.

• Mixes of the week: Homegirls & Handgrenades Mix by Moor Mother, Secret Thirteen Mix 194 by Kareem, and hieroglyphics #014 by Temples.

Remoteness of Light is a new album by The Stargazer’s Assistant inspired by the depths of the oceans and the vastness of space.

• RIP Gilli Smyth. “The silliness ran deep in Gong, but they could groove like mothers, too,” says Joe Muggs.

Guide to Computing: historic computers presented by James Ball as though they were new machines.

• “Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis is one of the greatest love letters ever written,” says Colm Tóibín.

• “Will You Dance With Me?” Derek Jarman films dancers in a gay club in 1984.

• Snapshots from an editor: Donald Weise on working with Edmund White.

Stupid by Wrangler (Stephen Mallinder, Phil Winter and Benge).

The Rutt-Etra-Izer

Dynamite/I Am Your Animal (1971) by Gong | Witch’s Song/I Am Your Pussy (1973) by Gong | Prostitute Poem (1973) by Gong

Weekend links 321

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The Addams Family In Kimonos by Matsuyama Miyabi. Via S. Elizabeth.

• “They’re not the men you’ll walk down the street and lock eyes with, or that you’ll spot at a bar casually. They’re a fantasy.” Michael Valinsky reviewing Tom House: Tom Of Finland In Los Angeles edited by Michael Reynolds. Related (and almost a polar opposite): Nick Campbell on The Life to Come and Other Stories by EM Forster.

Randall Dunn, musician (Master Musicians of Bukkake), producer (Sunn O))), Earth, etc), engineer, discusses making and recording music.

John Waters brings back Multiple Maniacs: “Of course I went a little too far.” he says. Waters also talked about the film at Gawker.

Q: Most cherished book on your shelves? Why?

A: Depends on the day. Today it’s Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Blood Meridian is an indictment of Manifest Destiny, the Westward Expansion, of Hollywood and its portrayal of the west; it’s confrontational and bellicose. The sheer brutality of it affected me like I’d swallowed poison or taken a shot to the liver that I didn’t remember. Blood Meridian is a reminder that literature isn’t always tame. It can bite you.

Laird Barron talking to Smash Dragons about favourite writers and his own fiction

• In East Tower Dreaming Howlround, aka Robin the Fog, processes the sounds of a former BBC office building.

• At The Headless Hashasheen: Magic Mirrors and Specters: Paschal Beverly Randolph, Hashish, & Scrying.

• At Dangerous Minds: The astonishingly beautiful three-colour photography of Bernard Eilers.

Samm Deighan on Gothic Film in the ’40s: Doomed Romance and Murderous Melodrama.

• On a scale from 1–100, Milton Glaser rates every single Olympic logo design in history.

• The overwhelming A/V experience of Paul Jebanasam and Tarik Barri.

Patrick Feaster describes how to “play back” a picture of a sound wave.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 192 by Shadows.

COLLAGE—The London Picture Archive

Madrigal Meridian (1978) by Tangerine Dream | Meridian Moorland (1979) by Peter Baumann | Meridian (2009) by Espers

Weekend links 320

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Palm Night (2016) by Nick Liefhebber.

• “Gortner includes reference to the little known Hollywood ‘sewing circles’ (code word for lesbian communities) of which Marlene became a part. This group included Ann Warner, Lili Damita, Claudette Colbert, and Dolores del Río.” Walter Holland reviewing Marlene, a “novelization” of the life of Marlene Dietrich by CW Gortner.

• “Challenges and all, Jerusalem ensures Moore’s place as one of the great masters of the English language.” Heidi MacDonald reviewing Alan Moore’s forthcoming novel. Photos of the slipcased paperback edition (a 3-volume set) appeared last week.

• “It’s unlikely that a gnawing sense of being unborn tops the neuroses of most writers these days, but I’d argue that Beckett’s Jungian insight is more commonly known today as anxiety.” Robert Fay on nihilism and the writing life.

• “So why would I be ‘great for this cover’? Good chance it’s because the book is aimed at a female audience and I am a female designer.” Jennifer Heuer on gendered book covers and being a woman designer.

• Mixes of the week: FACT mix 562 by M. Geddes Gengras, Secret Thirteen Mix 191 by Monica Hits The Ground, and a mix by Daniel Miller.

• Strange Flesh: The Use of Lovecraftian Archetypes in Queer Fiction, an ongoing series by The Punk Writer: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4.

• “For the Sake of the Prospect”: Lily Ford on the ways in which balloon flight transformed ideas about landscape in the 18th century.

• “Why did Google erase Dennis Cooper’s beloved literary blog?” asks Jennifer Krasinski.

• From Leeds to London: portraits of English cities in the 1970s by Peter Mitchell.

Phantasm is Dune

• RIP Jack Davis

Palm Grease (live, 1974) by Herbie Hancock & The Headhunters | Phantasm (1994) by Biosphere | Fizzy Flesh (1996) by Spacer

Weekend links 319

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The Sapphic Sleep Web by Oliver Hibert.

• “Google isn’t willing to say whether or not it’s censorship. That they don’t have to even address this is what’s so shocking, It seems like cowardice.” Dennis Cooper talking to Andrew Durbin at Frieze about Google’s unexplained deletion of his long-running blog. Cooper’s case has been covered by arts sites and some newspapers but I’ve yet to see any mention at all on the main US gay news sites despite Cooper being a notable gay author. I’ve cast aspersions at those sites in the past for their obsession with terrible pop acts and off-topic trivia (one site still reports every last fart of Britain’s Royal Family as “news”); this recent issue only reinforces their irrelevance.

• Creating Jerusalem: Alan Moore on the most important book he has written. Related: Alan Moore uses nine-year-old’s fan letter on new book’s cover.

• “Whatever side of the aisle you’re on, HL Mencken is as relevant as ever,” says Paula Marantz Cohen.

To say that Goodbar is an obsessive and symbolically overdetermined film would be an understatement: the film compulsively reiterates themes, visual motifs and parallel narratives, a relentless and repetitive reiteration of ideas that lends that film the aspect of a Freudian dream landscape, a baroque, Boschian sequence of fantasies, projections and illusions.

Bruce LaBruce on Richard Brooks’ film of Looking for Mr. Goodbar

Mare Teno by Michel Redolfi, performed by Thomas Bloch, Susan Belling & Michel Redolfi.

• From 2015: Suicide’s Alan Vega Talks Fiery Record With Big Star’s Alex Chilton.

• Mix of the week: The Takeover with Front & Follow & The Geography Trip.

• Psychic Spaces & Neon Nirvana: The Art of Oliver Hibert by S. Elizabeth.

• How William Burroughs‘s drug experiments helped neurology research.

Yello, absurdist Swiss pop pioneers, return with a new video, Limbo.

• Morphologies Masterclass: Ramsey Campbell on HP Lovecraft.

Cliff Martinez on horror, homage and The Neon Demon.

• A City of Dust: photos of London by Lewis Bush.

Dust To Dust (1986) by Ginger Baker | Neon Sisters (1992) by Thomas Dolby | Limbo (1992) by Sandoz