A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
The big book arrived, with one bumper corner bumped by the clumsy post office. It’s big and shiny. Eager neophytes will have to wait six more weeks before delving inside those covers. Patience.
Pre-order from Knockabout Comics | Top Shelf | the usual outlets.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Moon and Serpent Rising
The Empty Mask (1928) by René Magritte.
• A Walk Across Northampton: Iain Sinclair and John Rogers wander the streets in search of significant historical locations before ending up at the home of the local magus, Alan Moore. I recently illustrated a new piece of writing by Iain Sinclair but can’t talk about that just now. Later.
• New music: The Invisible Road: Original Recordings, 1985–1990 by Sussan Deyhim & Richard Horowitz, and Through Other Reflections by The Soundcarriers.
• At Wormwoodiana: Mark Valentine reviews Joseph Hone’s The Book Forger: the true story of a literary crime that fooled the world.
• At Colossal: Across rural Europe, Ashley Suszczynski photographs remarkable and ancient masked traditions.
• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: Poetry by WB Yeats.
• At Unquiet Things: Maggie Vandewalle’s enchanted autumns.
• Richard Norris’s favourite albums.
• Preludes For Magnetic Tape (1966–76) by Ihlan Mimaroglu | Tape Hiss Makes Me Happy (1995) by Stars Of The Lid | Those Tapes Are Dangerous (1997) by The Bug
New Moon and Evening Star (c.1932) by George Elbert Burr.
• If you’re eager to see a physical copy of the forthcoming Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic then Alan Moore World has screengrabs from a teaser video posted by US distributors Penguin/Random House to the social-media pit formerly known as Twitter. I’ve yet to receive a copy myself so I’m pleased to see the foil overlay on the cover looking as eye-catching as I’d hoped. Library Journal gave the book a starred review earlier this month.
• At Bandcamp: George Grella profiles Material, Bill Laswell’s long-running polycultural ensemble. Two of the albums on this list are all-time favourites of mine.
• Mix of the week: DreamScenes – August 2024 at AmbientBlog.
• The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges: A Hypertext.
• At Unquiet Things: Owls, Bats, and Moths in Art.
• At Dennis Cooper’s: Varvara Stepanova Day.
• Jon Hopkins’ favourite music.
• RIP Gena Rowlands.
• Desert Sands (1958) by Eugene LaMarr and His Magic Accordion | Grains Of Sand (1989) by Opal | Infinite Sands (1997) by Robert Henke
Springtime in Paris (1923) by Georg Kretzschmar.
• I’ve been asked to mention that the tribute book put together for Alan Moore’s 70th birthday, Alan Moore: Portraits of an Extraordinary Gentleman, is still available. As before, the book features contributions from many well-known comic artists, a foreword by Iain Sinclair, and this piece of my own.
• “I never posted any lecture of mine on Tumblr, even though Tumblr would seem to have plenty of elbow-room for hour-long, learned, European public lectures (with many lecture slides).” Utopian Realism, a speech by Bruce Sterling.
• Reading the Signs: John Kenny in conversation with Mark Valentine about Mark’s new collection Lost Estates.
There remains something suspect about blotter, a stain that is both a blessing and a curse. As the blotter producer Matthew Rick, who started selling sheets as non-dipped ‘art’ collectables at festivals in 1998, puts it: ‘[B]lotter is the last underground art form that’s going to stay underground, simply because you’re creating something that looks like and functions like a felony.’ In other words, blotter is ontologically illicit; it is, as Rick says, ‘drug paraphernalia by its very existence’.
Erik Davis (again) on LSD and the cultural history of the printed blotter
• At Colossal: Uncanny phenomena derail domestic bliss in Marisa Adesman’s luminous paintings.
• Standing stones, urban hellscapes and male nudes: Andrew Pulver on Derek Jarman’s Super-8 films.
• “ [breaking news] An anomaly on earth has brought the cats to over 150 meters. Please be patient.”
• At We Are The Mutants: Alien Renaissance: An interview with illustrator Bob Fowke.
• At Dennis Cooper’s: Spotlight on…René Crevel My Body and I (1926).
• At Public Domain Review: The Little Journal of Rejects (1896).
• Steven Heller’s font of the month is Sandhouse.
• RIP Steve Albini.
• Sandoz In The Rain (1970) by Amon Düül II | Bon Voyage Au LSD (2001) by Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. | Careful With That Sheet Of Acid, Eugene (2019) by Jenzeits
Dr Faustus Conjuring Mephistopheles (1928) by Eric Ravilious.
• Materialising in July from a cloud of sulphurous smoke: The Devil Rides In – Spellbinding Satanic Magick & The Rockult 1967–1974. Cherry Red Records, home of the well-sourced, well-researched multi-disc compilation, might have been channelling my inner desires with this one, a Sabbath-esque soundtrack to the Occult Revival. I ordered it faster than you can say “Hail Satan!”
• A Series of Headaches: Shakespeare’s First Folio meets the London Review of Books. “In this film, letterpress printer Nick Hand pulls apart the whole process, from making ink from crushed oak galls to heaving the levers of a replica Jacobean press, and shows how we produced our own (almost) authentic version of the LRB circa 1623.”
• Alan Moore will be subject to greater attention than usual in October. In addition to the forthcoming Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic, the month will also see the publication of The Great When, the first novel in his Long London series. Bloomsbury now has cover art to go with their description of the novel.
• Mad Dogs & Englishmen: Faust On Virgin Records: An extract from Neu Klang: The Definitive Story of Krautrock by Cristoph Dallach, “the first comprehensive oral history of the diverse and radical movement in German music during the late 60s and 1970s.”
• Alien life is no joke: Adam Frank on combating “the giggle factor” in the search for extraterrestrial life.
• At Colossal: Lauren Fensterstock’s Cosmic Mosaics Map Out the Unknown in Crystal and Gems.
• New music: Ritual (evocation) by Jon Hopkins; Time Is Glass by Six Organs Of Admittance.
• At Unquiet Things: The Gentle, Jubilant Visual Poetry of Tino Rodriguez.
• At Retro-Forteana: Colin Wilson, Philosopher of the Paranormal.
• DJ Food on Jeff Keen’s Amazing Rayday Comic collages.
At Dennis Cooper’s: Alan Clarke Day.
• Krautrock (1973) by Faust | Krautrock (1973) by Conrad Schnitzler | The Kraut (2007) by Stars Of The Lid