Weekend links 786

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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 782

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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 780

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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

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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

Weekend links 778

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Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons (c. 1470–75) by Martin Schongauer.

• “Physique was a response to restrictions and laws that kept photographers on a short leash, and what made it lively was they were constantly pulling at that leash.” Vince Aletti discussing Physique, his new book about the history of homoerotic photography. There’s more homoerotica at the latest Vallots After Dark art auction.

• Mentioned here before, but I was reminded of the place last week: 366 Weird Movies, “Celebrating the cinematically surreal, bizarre, cult, oddball, fantastique, strange, psychedelic, and the just plain WEIRD!”

• “When the gods and goddesses of the great religions first emerged, they came into a world already populated with daimons.” David Gordon White on the many lives of Eurasian daimonology.

• At The Wire: Read an extract from Studio Electrophonique: The Sheffield Space Age From The Human League To Pulp.

• At Public Domain Review: Gilded Fish—Illustrations from Histoire naturelle des dorades de la Chine (1780).

SFJAZZ Digital Media Archive: “…over 2,000 recordings of jazz, world, folk, and roots artists”.

• Mix of the week: DreamScenes – May 2025 at Ambientblog.

• New music: Lake Deep Memory by Pye Corner Audio.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Ella.

Ella Guru (1970) by Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band | Ella Megalast Burls Forever (1988) by Cocteau Twins | Ella (1996) by Faust