Cavern of Anti-Matter – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 804

Poster for The Phantom of the Opera, 1925. The first Universal horror film, and the best screen adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s novel, was released 100 years ago this month.

• “Evolution seems to have a thing for mind-bending molecules here on planet Earth. Psychedelics are more widespread in nature than you might think. These remarkable compounds, which can profoundly alter consciousness, arose repeatedly across evolutionary time, stretching back at least 65 million years. To date, some 80 species of fungi, at least 20 plants, and a species of toad have been documented to produce psychoactive molecules. And scientists continue to identify new ones.” Kristin French presents a trip around our surprisingly psychedelic planet.

• “There was no condescending sense with Potter —all too present today as then—that the public were idiots who needed to be intellectually housetrained, by their enlightened ‘betters’. […] Television was not treated as a particularly serious medium, something Potter upended not by performing ‘seriousness’ but by bringing out the possibilities few had believed it contained.” Darran Anderson on the television plays of Dennis Potter.

• At Public Domain Review: AD Manns on a possible origin for the occult lore presented in Charles Godfrey Leland’s Aradia, Or the Gospel of the Witches, a founding text for the witchcraft revival of the 20th century.

• New music: Implosion by The Bug vs Ghost Dubs; Herzog Sessions by Mouse On Mars; VHS Days Vol. 1 by Russian Corvette.

• At Wyrd Britain: A link to a video interview in which the great Ian Miller about his long illustration career.

• At the BFI: David West selects 10 great Hong Kong action films of the 1980s.

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

• At The Wire: Stream the new album by Ann Kroeber & Alan Splet.

• Seb Rochford’s favourite records.

• RIP Tatsuya Nakadai, actor.

• Phantom Lover (2010) by John Foxx | Phantom Cities (2020) by The Sodality Of Shadows | Phantom Melodies (2018) by Cavern Of Anti-Matter

Weekend links 795

Heksenkeuken I: The Witches’ Sabbath (1916) by Lizzy Ansingh.

• A trailer for The Ice Tower, a new feature film by Lucile Hadžihalilović. Good to see the Hadžihalilović brand of weirdness being supported once again, but then they do things differently in France. Charlie Kaufman was complaining this week that nobody in Hollywood will fund his films. Maybe he should look elsewhere?

• Dreaming of Shadow and Smoke: Jim Rockhill talks to John Kenny about the enduring influence of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s stories of the supernatural. Rockhill’s latest book is A Mind Turned in Upon Itself, a collection of writings about Le Fanu published by Swan River Press. I designed the exterior of this volume which I’ll be discussing at a later date.

• “Eerie strangeness is abroad, sometimes beautiful, much more often menacing.” Derek Turner reviews Figures Crossing the Field Towards the Group, a novella by Rebecca Gransden. The book is published by Tangerine Press. I recommend it most highly.

• At Public Domain Review: Ivan Aivazovsky’s miniature seascapes (c.1887), which the artist painted into small photographs of himself at work.

• At The Wire: Against The Grain: Mattie Colquhoun on Mark Fisher’s cultural pessimism.

• At the BFI: Miriam Balanescu chooses 10 great mockumentary films.

• Winners and finalists of Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2025.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Galerie Dennis Cooper presents…Emma Kunz.

• New music: Magnetism by Kali Malone and Drew McDowall.

• Mix of the week: Bleep Mix 308 by DJ Food.

• Daveed Diggs’ favourite albums.

• Magnetic Dwarf Reptile (1977) by Chrome | Magnetic North (1998) by Skyray | Feed Me Magnetic Rain (2018) by Cavern Of Anti-Matter

Weekend links 732

Chasing Fireflies, A Lady of the Tenmei Era, from the series Thirty-six Elegant Selections (1894) by Mizuno Toshikata.

• While working on the Herald of Ruin cover late last year I was wondering when we might get to see the BFI or Eureka releasing Louis Feuillade’s silent serials on Region B blu-ray discs. Six months later, Eureka have announced this very thing: Louis Feuillade: The Complete Crime Serials (1913–1918), a box comprising the Gaumont restorations of Fantômas, Les Vampires, Judex and Tih Minh. I’ll probably have more to say about this in September.

• At A Year In The Country: Wyrd Explorations: A Decade Of Wandering Through Spectral Fields, a book which collects revised and extended pieces from the first ten years of A Year In The Country posts.

• At The Paris Review: Eliza Barry Callahan visits and revisits Joseph Cornell’s house at 37-08 Utopia Parkway, NYC.

• New music: Jinxed By Being by Shackleton & Six Organs of Admittance.

• Browse artworks by Pablo Picasso at the Picasso Museum, Paris.

• At Unquiet Things: Victor Kalin’s Paradoxical Paperback Art.

• Strange Transmissions: The World Of Experimental Radio.

• At Dennis Cooper’s it’s Satoshi Kon‘s Day.

• Aaron Turner’s favourite music.

• DJ Food’s haul of Acid Badges.

• Acid Head (1966) by The Velvet Illusions | Acid Heart Mother (2000) by Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. | Acid Death Picnic (2013) by Cavern Of Anti-Matter

Switched On again (again)

The soundtrack for this weekend is the fifth volume in Stereolab’s Switched On series of compilation albums; the subtitle this time, Pulse Of The Early Brain, is another of those titles I won’t be surprised to encounter in an unlikely place at some point in the future. These albums are always very welcome for those of us who don’t bother collecting limited single releases. The main highlight of the new set is the Nurse With Wound collaboration from 1997, Simple Headphone Mind, a 12-inch which contained over 30-minutes of music. Heard in retrospect, these recordings push the group into territory that Tim Gane would explore in Cavern Of Anti-Matter, especially on the title track, a 10-minute groove that wouldn’t be out of place on a Brain release from 1972. (Maybe this is the Brain being alluded to in that subtitle?) Elsewhere on the compilation there’s the whole of the Lo Fi EP from 1993, an odd omission from previous collections (and which I already had but thanks anyway…), plus a number of previously unreleased recordings. The hard-to-photograph mirror packaging is designed by Vanina Schmitt.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Switched On again

Ghost Power

This week I’ve been enjoying the Ghost Power album, a collection of groovy instrumentals from Tim Gane and Jeremy Novak. A heavier use of synthesizers and samples than you usually hear from Gane, together with trace elements of his previous project, Cavern Of Anti-Matter. The highlight is the final track, Astral Melancholy Suite, a 15-minute synth odyssey that includes an extended sequencer run of a kind usually associated with the Berlin School.

The comic-book details that decorate the packaging are credited to Samplerman, whoever they are. There’s further continuity here with Stereolab who borrowed graphics from French comics for the artwork on some of their singles and EPs. I’ve never been a fervent collector of Duophonic releases so it was years before I realised that the graphic on this cover for Instant 0 In The Universe…

…was swiped from this page in the fabulously rare Saga de Xam.

Update: Samplerman is here. Thanks, Dave C!