{ feuilleton }

Weekend links 157

Elektrik Karousel, a new release on the Ghost Box label by The Focus Group. “For a clue to its moods, think Czech animation, Italian Giallo, early Radiophonics, HP Lovecraft stories, 1960s underground cinema, Lewis Carroll and baroque psych.” Julian House’s package design is “heavily inspired by 1960s underground press and conceived as a kind of mind altering DIY board game”.

• Joseph Stannard of The Outer Church compiles a mix for Kit Records, and talks about rural psychedelia and malevolent lighthouses, among other things.

• At Sci-Fi-O-Rama: a sampling of Dan Nadel & Norman Hathaway’s Electrical Banana – Masters of Psychedelic Art (2012).

• Stranger than Paradise: Tilda Swinton photographed by Tim Walker in the Surrealist Wonderland of Las Pozas, Mexico.

• Whistler in Limehouse & Wapping: stunning etchings by the 25-year-old artist when he was newly arrived in London.

• The complete catalogue of Sunn O))) recordings is now on Bandcamp for preview and purchase.

• La Danza de la Realidad: Alejandro Jodorowsky returns to his childhood in Tocopilla, Chile.

• Enjoy The Silence: Jude Rogers talks to Michael Rother about joy of quiet.

• Dressing the Air, “the Bureau of Sensory Intelligence”, had a relaunch.

• Fast forward – and press play again: Cassettes are back

• The Lovecraft Expert: An Interview with S.T. Joshi

• Book Graphics: an illustration blog.

• Paint Box (1967) by Pink Floyd | Beat Box (1984) by Art of Noise | Glory Box (1994) by Portishead

Wear Your Love Like Heaven

It’s unlikely that many people have been crying out for yet another Donovan compilation but that’s what EMI released earlier this month. Breezes of Patchouli (His Studio Recordings 1966–1969) is the prime psychedelic material, and for me looks tempting since I only have one of those albums. The latest Shindig! magazine gives the collection a favourable review (unsurprisingly), and has a related article about Donovan’s elaborate double album, A Gift From a Flower to a Garden (1968), which in its original form was two vinyl albums in a box with coloured lyric-sheet inserts. The article mentions a short promo film, Wear Your Love Like Heaven, directed by photographer Karl Ferris who shot the infra-red photos used for the album covers. A quick dash to YouTube turned up Ferris’s film in which the singer rides a white horse through some woods then enters a cave whereupon the film bursts Wizard-of-Oz-like into colour. It looks to have been filmed in either Cornwall or Ireland, and features the inevitable crew of kaftaned flower children playing with musical instruments, kites and peacock feathers. Very much of the period, but worth a look if you like this sort of thing.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Tomorrow Never Knows

Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam

Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam is a forthcoming anthology in the Gay City Anthology series from Seattle’s Gay City Health Project and Minor Arcana Press. The publishers describe it as “a multidisciplinary anthology of amazing queer monster and ghost fiction, poetry and art.” I’ve created a cover design for the book, and also have a work-in-progress extract from the never-ending novel I’ve been immersed in since August 2006, a self-contained piece which I call Study in Blue, Green, and Gold. As the anthology title implies, the general (although not exclusive) tenor is spooky steampunk business with a queer inclination; my piece features copious quantities of sex, hallucinogenic drugs, steam locomotives and a fractal cat. Anyone wishing to know more is encouraged to give a push to the Kickstarter donation fund which has been launched to help with promotional costs. I’m very pleased to be involved with this, not least because some of the fiction I’ve been working on for over a decade will receive an airing. I’ve resolved recently to start pushing the writing side of things a bit more so this is a start. When the final anthology contents are announced next month I’ll post an update here.

Behold the spam

Via Vintage Ad Browser.

Thanks to the very efficient WordPress spam filter readers here seldom see any spam comments but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any hitting the site. This blog receives an average of around 1,200 a day, sometimes more on those occasions when some algorithm out in the Deep Web turns its Sauron-gaze this way. The programs that post these things occasionally misfire (or are simply badly written) so you find things in the spam list that weren’t meant to be seen in the wild. Dangerous Minds spotted an example earlier this week, and I found another today, mine being a list of garbled “inspirational” quotes that must have been translated to a foreign language then translated back to English. Spam comments are a pain but since they’re auto-generated they’re often funny or simply strange for the ways they mangle the language. A few choice examples follow. There was a lot more of this!

This stupid guy imagine using thin thoughts and consult with wide mouth.
—Charlie Face

Commonsense isn’t really all of that popular.
—Voltaire

Resist much. Follow tiny.
—Walt Whitman

Should you communicate comprehend, get just one feet inside stirrup.
—Turkish proverb

When great modifications take place ever, as soon as good guidelines are involved, usually the majority is inappropriate.
—Eugene Sixth v. Debs

That which can be wrecked from the real truth ought to be.
—P. Chemical. Hodgell

When Christ ended up the following, there is something however definitely not always be: any Roscoe.
—Mark Twain

In no way characteristic for you to malice that which can be properly discussed by simply silliness.
—Hanlon’s electric shaver

Wizard might have it is restrictions, although stupidity isn’t therefore equipment.
—Elbert Hubbard

I just wanted to offer an instant brain upwards!
Various other subsequently that will, great blog!
Great get in line. We will be backlinks to
the wonderful content about your website. Continue
the great composing.
Method great, some good things! My partner and i value an individual thus, making this write-up accessible, all of those other website is additionally excellent. Have a very exciting.
This website is definitely alternatively useful since I’m presently producing the internet flowery web site –
Thethoughts a person exhibit are actually great. Expect you will suitable more threads.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Word games

Le Tarot de Philippe Lemaire

Philippe Lemaire is French, and another engraving collage artist who I’d have to include in the list of post-Ernst practitioners if I ever get round to updating my Strange Attractor essay about Wilfried Sätty. Like Ernst and Sätty, Lemaire seems to use paper-and-scissors techniques, although Sätty also made use of print processes in order to duplicate the images he cut from old books, and also resize, flip or invert them. In this he’s the bridge between the original method of engraving collage and digital techniques.

The examples here are from a small series of Tarot images on the artist’s website, none of which are labelled so we’re left to guess the identity of what I presume are figures from the Major Arcana. The one above may be The Empress but the other two resist easy interpretation. Judge the others for yourself here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Tarotism and Fergus Hall
• Giger’s Tarot
• The Occult Explosion
• Wilfried Sätty album covers
• Nature Boy: Jesper Ryom and Wilfried Sätty
• Wilfried Sätty: Artist of the occult
• Illustrating Poe #4: Wilfried Sätty
• The Major Arcana by Jak Flash
• The art of Pamela Colman Smith, 1878–1951
• The Major Arcana