A Year in the Country – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 681

All Cats are Grey At Night (2009) by Kenny Hunter.

• “They found ways to do the impossible”: Hipgnosis, the designers who changed the record sleeve for ever. Lee Campbell talks to Anton Corbijn about Squaring the Circle, Corbijn’s documentary about the Hipgnosis design team. Peter Christopherson is shown in the accompanying photo but Campbell doesn’t mention him at all, despite his having been an equal partner with Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell from the mid-70s on. Many of those famous covers were photographed by Christopherson’s camera.

• A new book by Stephen Prince at A Year In The Country: “Lost Transmissions weaves amongst brambled pathways to take in the haunted soundscapes of electronica, the rise of the occult in the 1970s, cinema and television’s dystopian dreamscapes and hauntological work which creates and gives a glimpse into parallel worlds…”

• New music: Ambient Bass Guitar by John von Seggern, and Sturgeon Moon/Beaver Moon by Missing Scenes.

• How Samuel R. Delany Reimagined Sci-Fi, Sex, and the City.

• Mix of the week: Tranquility by A Strangely Isolated Place.

• Galerie Dennis Cooper presents…Snow Globalists.

• The Strange World of…African Head Charge.

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

• Nights on Earth.

• Transmission (1979) by Joy Division | Clandestine Transmission (1994) by Richard H. Kirk | Transmission (1996) by Low

Weekend links 651

The Horror of Living (1907) by Tyra Kleen. Via

• “Voss suggests Af Klint was a pioneer of abstract painting, a label that fits in some ways – her work certainly isn’t representational in the normal sense – but jars in others. She saw her work as a spiritual calling, supercharged with meaning in ways most of her contemporaries struggled to grasp. Most, but not all. Af Klint socialised and collaborated with other visionary women. Some were artists, others were writers, but all were adherents of the new philosophies sweeping Europe in the late 19th century: spiritualism, Rosicrucianism, theosophy.” Madoc Cairns reviewing Hilma af Klint: A Biography by Julia Voss.

• “I want to insist on an amateur internet; a garage internet; a public library internet; a kitchen table internet. At last, in 2023, I want to tell the tech CEOs and venture capitalists: pipe down. Buzz off. Go fave each other’s tweets.” Robin Sloan looking for new avenues away from the corporate cul-de-sacs of social media.

• “Even when subjects take psychedelics in clinical environments devoid of nature…many of them still emerge with stronger relationships to the natural world.” Simran Sethi on the connections between psychedelic use and eco-activism.

• At A Year In The Country: A Shindig! Selection: From Celluloid Hinterlands to Children of the Stones via The Delaware Road and a Sidestep to the Parallel World of él Records.

• At Public Domain Review: Mighty Mikko: A Book of Finnish Fairy Tales and Folk Tales (1922) by Parker Hoysted Fillmore.

• “When coffee is all gone. It’s over.” Spoon & Tamago gets existential at Tokyo’s Museum of Wonky English.

• The “S” Word: Spirtuality in Alternative Music is a book-length study by Matthew Ingram (aka Woebot).

• New music: Does Spring Hide Its Joy by Kali Malone (featuring Stephen O’Malley & Lucy Railton).

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

• Spiritual Awakening (1973) by Eddie Henderson | Spiritual Blessing (1974) by Pharoah Sanders | Spiritual Eternal (1976) by Alice Coltrane

Weekend links 633

A blueprint by Buckminster Fuller for the first geodesic dome.

• “That opening sequence on the train, it’s got the dynamic of a wonderful pop video. It’s one of the world’s greatest actors who understood the power of small gestures.” Jah Wobble enthusing about Roy Budd, Michael Caine, and Mike Hodges’ baleful revenge drama, Get Carter.

• One of the BFI’s Halloween releases this year will be The Ballad of Tam Lin (1971), the blu-ray debut of a cult film that blends folk horror with modish melodrama. Direction by Roddy McDowall, music by Pentangle, and a cast that includes Ava Gardner and Ian McShane.

• New from A Year In The Country: Cathode Ray And Celluloid Hinterlands, a book exploring weird film and TV, not all of which is from the over-ploughed folk-horror furrows.

The whole notion of the Diggers kind of evolved out of the anarchism thing. And also there was more than a little social conscience. Because, by now, in ‘66, people started to come to the Haight Ashbury from all over. And that was when, in ‘66, it was still, really… Before the “Summer of Love,” it really was the Summer of Love. The “Summer of Love” [in 1967] was Life Magazine’s version. That’s what created the homeless on the streets and all that shit, because so many people came with absolutely no understanding of what they were about.

The role of the Diggers in this period was an outlaw, romantic, feed-the-people, anarchist, ‘Who’s in charge?—YOU ARE’, that kind of thing. That line in Apocalypse Now when he gets to the bridge and the little string of Christmas lights are hanging and he gets to one guy who’s guarding one end of the bridge and he says, Who’s in charge here? He says, I thought you were. And that’s so true. That is so true. Then Grogan, whenever anyone would ask, where’s Emmett Grogan… anyone could say “I’m Emmett Grogan.” So you could deflect a lot of shit.

Harvey Korspan of the San Francisco Diggers talking to Jay Babcock in another installment of Jay’s verbal history of the hippie anarchists

• “Buckminster Fuller patented the geodesic dome on June 29, 1954. Two decades later, it was everywhere in science fiction.”

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Spotlight on…Harry Mathews Tlooth (1966).

• Mix of the week: A mix for The Wire by Cheri Knight.

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

• Tam Lin (1969) by Fairport Convention | Young Tambling (1971) by Anne Briggs | Tamlane (2016) by Dylan Carlson & Coleman Grey

Weekend links 620

varo

Premonition (1953) by Remedios Varo.

• “Classical mythology, Arcadian idylls, occult speculation, and an interest in cultural curiosities coexisted in the grotto, allowing for the playful exploration of a new tension emerging between Nature and Artifice.” Laura Tradii explores the artificial grottoes of the Renaissance and beyond.

• “Some of the symbols and signs seem like bridges to nowhere, and perhaps Nabokov was lovingly teasing our endless quest to find patterns and generate meaning.” David M. Rubin on writing a response to a Nabokov short story.

• New music: “KMRU & Aho Ssan erupt in post-apocalyptic extremity with Resurgence“. I did the layout for this latest release on the Subtext label but I still haven’t got round to updating my web pages so you’ll have to take my word for it.

• Powell & Pressburger’s Black Narcissus “unleashes a level of eroticism that’s surprising for 1940s British cinema,” says Adam Scovell.

• “Premonitions are impossible, and they come true all the time.” Fiona Sturges reviews The Premonitions Bureau by Sam Knight.

• Between Hell and Paradise: paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and his followers at the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

• At The Collector: Olivia Barrett on the Voodoo Queens of New Orleans.

• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Astronef Super.

• Mix of the week: Isolatedmix 118 by Pan American.

• TMP-01 Vintage Synth TV Series from Benge.

• Vale, A Year In The Country.

• Premonition (1979) by Simple Minds | Premonition (1980) by Cabaret Voltaire | Premonition (Giant Empty Iron Vessel) (1987) by David Sylvian & Holger Czukay

Weekend links 582

Illustration by Gustave Doré from L’Espagne (1874) by Jean Charles Davillier.

• Warp Records has announced the forthcoming publication of Atmospherics by Jon Hassell, a short book collecting the diary extracts, composition notes and other ephemera that Jon compiled as an evolving appendix for his website. I was involved with the first iteration of the Atmospherics when we were working on his site in 2004, and for me this section was always the most interesting part of the project, comprising unique, personal material. The book will be published in October.

• “Almost everything in his book would be dismissed by today’s streaming behemoths as ‘too quirky, too local, too slow, too dry, too difficult, too weird’.” Sukhdev Sandhu reviewing The Magic Box, a history of British TV from the 1950s to the 1980s by Rob Young.

• New music: Cobalt Desert Oasis by Marco Shuttle, Angel’s Flight (AD 93) by Biosphere, and The Shildam Hall Tapes: The Falling Reverse by Stephen Prince, a sequel to an earlier release by A Year In The Country which includes an accompanying novella.

• Mix of the week, month and year: Sentimental Ornament: A Broadcast Rarities Mix by Aquarium Drunkard. First posted almost a year ago, I only discovered it last week; Aquarium Drunkard is now added to my RSS feed to avoid further neglect.

• I didn’t post anything for Bloomsday this year but if I’d seen these caricatures by Craig Morriss back in June I would have linked to them at the time.

• At Unquiet Things: The Eerie Moods and Pulpy Frights of Henri Lievens.

• Whole lotta rarities: the strangest Led Zeppelin artwork.

• Old music: A Willow Swept By Train by Janet Beat.

• Instant Lettering Database

• Atmospheres (1967) by Wimple Winch | Atmospheric Lightness (2018) by Brian Eno | Ligeti: Atmosphères (2019) by Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France; Alan Gilbert