The Japanese Sandman, a film by Ed Buhr

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I upgraded my DVD of David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch to blu-ray recently. The film is one of my favourites in the Cronenberg oeuvre even though its connection to the novel is minimal at best. After watching it again I was thinking (not for the first time) that one way to adapt either Naked Lunch or any of the books in the “Nova Trilogy”—The Soft Machine, The Ticket That Exploded, Nova Express—would be to commission ten or twenty very different film-makers to adapt portions of the novel in whatever manner they chose. The resulting short films could either be run in sequence or cut together to make a meta-film which, if nothing else, would be closer to the disjointed structure of William Burroughs’ early novels than the semi-biographical narrative that Cronenberg delivered .

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Which brings us to The Japanese Sandman, a 12-minute film made by Ed Buhr in 2008 which turned up recently on YouTube. Buhr’s short is a dramatisation of passages from the letters that Burroughs wrote to Allen Ginsberg in 1953, in which Burroughs recounts his experiences in Panama while searching for the yage vine, a plant which yields the hallucinogen known as ayahuasca. Narrator John Fleck is a decent Burroughs mimic (although the real Burroughs pronounced “Panama” with a distinct drawl at the end, more like “Panamawww”), and since Burroughs’ own words provide the text of the piece the film is closer to Burroughs’ books than many other short films. Black-and-white scenes in Panama rooms alternate with a colour sequence where Burroughs recalls a doomed love affair with a boy in the St Louis of the 1930s. It’s gratifying to see someone draw attention to an aspect of Burroughs’ writing that’s often ignored, the persistent thread of melancholy and regret for lost time/lost people which runs through so many of his novels. It’s a side of the fiction that would also have to be accounted for in any longer adaptation of Burroughs’ work.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The William Burroughs archive

Marian Zazeela album covers

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Drift Study 4:37:40-5:09:50 PM 5 VIII 68 NYC (1968) by La Monte Young.

One of the links at the weekend was to the late Marian Zazeela’s poster designs of the 1960s and 70s. She also designed a number of album covers around the same time, mostly for recordings by her husband, La Monte Young, and for associated groups and individuals like Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music—in which Zazeela played the tambura—and raga master Pandit Pran Nath. Some of the albums shown here haven’t always been easy to find thanks to Young’s refusal to reissue his earlier recordings (although he did relent recently and allow digital reissues), but the music has nevertheless been influential. Artists as diverse as the early Velvet Underground, many electronic musicians, and metal bands such as Earth and Sunn O))) owe debts to Young’s compositions.

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31 VII 69 10:26 – 10:49 PM / 23 VIII 64 2:50:45 – 3:11 AM The Volga Delta (1969) by La Monte Young / Marian Zazeela.

This is about Marian Zazeela’s cover designs, however, not her husband’s music, designs which are immediately recognisable for Zazeela’s calligraphy and the abstract decorative elements which resemble tiles or fabric prints. The calligraphy is the consistent element, present even when the cover is mostly photographic. This degree of consistent aesthetic attention is unusual in the world of avant-garde composition where the packaging of a composer’s recordings is often little better than the perfunctory appearance of classical albums. Without Marian Zazeela’s involvement it’s unlikely that La Monte Young’s albums would look as good as they do.

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Ragas (1971) by Pandit Pran Nath.

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Dream House 78’17” (1974) by La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, The Theatre Of Eternal Music (front cover).

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Dream House 78’17” (1974) by La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, The Theatre Of Eternal Music (back cover).

Continue reading “Marian Zazeela album covers”

Weekend links 720

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The Poet and the Siren (1893) by Gustave Moreau.

• “Some books become talismans. Because they are strange, wildly different to the common run of literature; because they are scarce, and only a few precious copies are known to exist; because, perhaps, they liberate by transgressing the moral limits of the day; because their authors are lonely, elusive visionaries; because, sometimes, there is an inexplicable glamour about the book, so that its readers seem to be lured into a preternatural reverie. This book possesses all those attributes.” Mark Valentine in an introduction he wrote for a 1997 reprint of The Book of Jade (1901) by David Park Barnitz. The book’s author was an American writer who died at the age of 23 after publishing this single volume, a collection of poetry inspired by his favourite Decadent writers. Praise from HP Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Thomas Ligotti has since helped maintain the book’s reputation. The Book of Jade turned up recently at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts. Also the home of an increasingly eclectic list of publications.

• At n+1: The Dam and the Bomb by Walker Mimms, a fascinating essay about the entangling of Cormac McCarthy’s personal history with his novels which makes a few connections I didn’t expect to see. Also a reminder that I’ve yet to read McCarthy’s last two books. Soon…

• The latest installation from teamLab is Resonating Life which Continues to Stand, an avenue of illuminated eggs on the Hong Kong waterfront.

• At The Wire: Symphony of sirens: an interview with Aura Satz, David Toop, Elaine Mitchener, Evelyn Glennie and Raven Chacon.

• At Unquiet Things: The Art of Darkness presents The Sleeper May Awaken: Stephen Mackey’s Unrestful Realms.

• RIP Marian Zazeela. There’s a page here with a selection of her beautiful calligraphic poster designs.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Tomona Matsukawa’s realistic paintings reconstruct fragments of everyday life.

• At Public Domain Review: Thom Sliwowski on The Defenestrations of Prague (1419–1997).

Trinity (2024), a short film by Thomas Blanchard. There’s a lot more at his YouTube channel.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Lotte Reiniger’s Day.

Sirens (1984) by Michael Stearns | Sirens (1988) by Daniel Lanois & Brian Eno | Siren Song (2009) by Bat For Lashes

Sibylle Ruppert: Frenzy of the Visible

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La Bible du Mal (1978).

I’m late to this but it’s worth passing on the news about an exhibition of paintings, drawings and collages by Sibylle Ruppert (1942–2011) which is currently running at Project Native Informant in London. Ruppert’s art has been mentioned here many times, she’s one of my favourite artists, so it’s great to see her receiving more recognition, and in London as well, not Paris as I would have expected. I ought to go and see this but finishing the Bumper Book of Magic book took longer than I expected so I’ve had scheduled work backed up which I’m dealing with at the moment. I also don’t fancy taking another chance with Britain’s failing rail network, not when the last experience a few weeks ago was a bad one. But if you’re closer to London I’d recommend this exhibition which Artforum says is Ruppert’s first solo show in the UK.

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Ma Soeur Mon Epouse (1975).

It’s tempting to connect the exhibition to this year’s 100th anniversary of Surrealism but I’ve never seen Ruppert’s name mentioned in Surrealist circles. She isn’t referred to in Penelope Rosemont’s wide-ranging Surrealist Women, for example, but then neither is Leonor Fini, possibly because Fini tried to maintain some distance from groups and movements. Was Ruppert the same? Without further information it’s hard to say. She was friends with HR Giger, however, and pictures by both artists may be seen in Providence (1977), the Alain Resnais film, as I noted a couple of years ago.

Frenzy of the Visible will be running until 20th April.

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Le Sacrifice (1980).

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The fantastic art archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
Art on film: Providence
Hans by Sibylle
Sibylle Ruppert revisited
Sibylle Ruppert, 1942–2011

Rare Opals

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In the mail at the weekend, a pair of reissued Opal CDs that I didn’t expect to see any time soon, Happy Nightmare Baby (1987) and Early Recordings (1989). Opal were an American group who were active throughout the 1980s but they didn’t record very much, only releasing these two discs towards the end of their career. Both albums sank from sight in the early 1990s, and had been unavailable in any form when CD reissues were announced in late 2019 on guitarist David Roback’s own label, Salley Gardens. The reissues were withdrawn shortly before the release date, possibly as a result of Roback’s illness and subsequent death in February 2020. All of this is niche stuff but aficionados of the niche in question may like to know that I bought these new from an eBay (UK) seller for a fraction of the price you’ll pay at Discogs or elsewhere. (Here and here.) I’d seen reports that copies had been shipped before the cancellation was announced but hadn’t seen any on sale outside Discogs until last week. I’ve also seen suggestions that there might be bootlegs circulating but if these are boots then someone has managed to imitate the matrix numbers on the discs which I don’t think is an easy thing to do.

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Opal is a group you seldom see mentioned today but plenty of people know the name of Mazzy Star, the group that Opal became after the departure of singer Kendra Smith in the late 1980s. David Roback was the key member, the link between Mazzy Star and the neo-psychedelia of the Los Angeles Paisley Underground which gave rise to both Opal and Roback’s other outlet, the Rain Parade. The Paisley Underground was never as psychedelic as I hoped it might be, only the Rain Parade could be classed as a bona fide psych band, but the groups associated with this loose scene—The Bangles, The Dream Syndicate, The Three O’Clock, et al—were all preoccupied with the music of the late 1960s, and of the early 70s via Neil Young and Alex Chilton. Opal followed the trend, being less oneiric than Mazzy Star would be, more concerned with reviving older musical styles than creating something new. Early Recordings, a collection of singles, EPs and other songs, owes less to psychedelia than it does to late-60s balladeering: guitar and vocals, lots of reverb and minimal percussion and keyboards. Kendra Smith, formerly of The Dream Syndicate, sings almost all the songs on both albums. The origin of the Opal sound may be found in the cover versions on Rainy Day (1984), a one-off album that David Roback recorded with Kendra Smith plus members of The Bangles, Rain Parade and The Three O’Clock. Lou Reed’s I’ll Be Your Mirror is the early Opal sound in miniature, especially in the version by Nico and The Velvet Underground which Roback emulates with Susanna Hoffs.

Happy Nightmare Baby has a rather prosaic monochrome cover but this is where the psychedelic rock comes to the fore, with Roback breaking out the fuzz box and wah-wah pedal to fashion a heavier sound that would later be heard on Mazzy Star songs like Ghost Highway. I said that only the Rain Parade warranted the psych label but Happy Nightmare Baby certainly gets there on songs like Magick Power and the slow explosion of Soul Giver, the latter being the closest that Opal get to the Rain Parade’s finest moment, No Easy Way Down. There’s also a touch of glam in the opening number, Rocket Machine, which harks back to the T. Rex of Electric Warrior. Happy Nightmare Baby is a fiery debut—and Opal could be even heavier live—but it’s one of those albums that you’d expect would be surpassed by later releases, instead of which all we have is Early Recordings*. The two albums are dissimilar enough to almost be the work of different groups; together they suggest that David Roback spent most of the 1980s trying to orient his music in a way that honoured his influences while also accommodating all his favoured modes of expression, from fuzz squall to languid blues to nocturnal drift. The first Mazzy Star album, She Hangs Brightly, is the place where the influences and intentions fused to create something new. And Roback found his ideal singer in Hope Sandoval, of course. Kendra Smith is okay but her voice can get monotonous over a whole album, she lacks Hope Sandoval’s mystique and emotional range. Opal were good but you can’t imagine many people wanting to cover their songs the way people have done with Mazzy Star. But then without Opal there might never have been a Mazzy Star. Niche stuff this may be but it doesn’t deserve to be buried for another thirty years.


* Or almost all. There is another album, Early Recordings Volume 2, a collection of unreleased songs and covers. But this has never been given an official release.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Balloon parade
The Dukes declare it’s 25 O’Clock!
Strange Things Are Happening, 1988–1990