Emptyset – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 781

Orphée aux Enfers (1896) by Jean Delville

• “Yes, there was a riot, but it was great”: Cabaret Voltaire on violent gigs, nuclear noise – and returning to mark 50 years.

• At Public Domain Review: Matthew Mullane on George Wightwick’s The Palace of Architecture (1840).

• New music: Dissever by Emptyset; Quiet Pieces by Abul Mogard; Analogues by Lawson & Merrill.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Artist Yukiko Suto finds beauty in Japanese residential neighbourhoods.

• At The Quietus: A Condition of the Space: Mary Anne Hobbs interviewed.

• At Baja el Signo de Libra: The homoerotic photography of Yves Paradis.

• Mix of the week: Bleep Mix #303 by Abul Mogard.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Stan Brakhage Day.

• RIP Edmund White.

• Brakhage (1997) by Stereolab | Brakhage (2002) by Robert Poss | Barbican Brakhage (2009) by John Foxx

Weekend links 766

The Fantod Pack (1995): a Gorey take on the Tarot deck.

• A happy 100th birthday to Edward Gorey. I was hoping to link once again to Gorey’s appearance on the Dick Cavett Show from 1977 (a rare TV interview) but it’s one of those things that’s no longer available at YouTube. You can always browse Goreyana instead. Meanwhile, there’s this in Scotland: In Gorey Detail: Celebrating An American Friend At Custom House, Leith. A tribute exhibition which is running in Edinburgh for this week only.

• “A blisteringly frank and triple X-rated chat with Peter Berlin”. A blisteringly hyperbolic headline for a discussion between Ted Stansfield and Peter Berlin, the self-invented sex object of the 1970s.

• This week in the Bumper Book of Magic: Smoky Man posts my replies to his questions about the creation of the book’s Rainy Day and Kabbalah sections.

• Tricky’s Maxinquaye was released 30 years ago this month. David Bennun revisited the album five years ago.

• At Colossal: Felines evoke ‘A Floating World’ in Tùng Nâm’s whimsical illustrations.

• New music: Gloam by Emptyset, and The Mount Hibiki Tapes by Mount Shrine.

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

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

• Last Of The Steam Powered Trains (1968) by The Kinks | Steam Megawatt (1979) by Tod Dockstader | Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt (1996) by DJ Shadow

Ash

Cover art by Clayton Welham.

I’ve been doing the design duties on albums and singles by Emptyset since their first self-titled release in 2009. The latest album from the electronic duo, Ash, is also the 50th release on the Subtext label for which I’ve once again provided a minimal layout. I’ve no idea how the images by Clayton Welham were created, and I’m quite happy not knowing. Ash is available for pre-order ahead of its release next month.

Work announcements here have been rather scarce of late, in part because I’ve been working on a major project which is nearing completion and will no doubt be announced soon. Watch this space.

Weekend links 474

AS11-40-5877 (1969).

• A minimum of Moon-related links this week because this is a subject I always return to. Previous links to NASA’s photo archives are now redundant after they changed their website but the archive of photos from the Apollo missions are currently hosted on Flickr…while Flickr lasts, anyway. The Albums section features whole film rolls from each of the missions.

• Mixes of the week: Stephen O’Malley presents In Session: Richard Pinhas (a re-posting of a mix from last year), and The Ivy-Strangled Path Vol. XVII by David Colohan.

• Living With The Human Machines: experimental artist Sarah Angliss speaks to Matthew Neale about the cyborgs, dummies and ghosts that populate her work.

• On And On And On: A Guide to Generative Electronic Music. Related: Deconstructing Brian Eno’s Music for Airports.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Jesse Bransford presents…A List of Grimoires for the Twilight of the Age of the Book.

• A Dandy in Aspic exclusive: Paul Gallagher interviewed cult author Derek Marlowe in 1984.

• From Ted Hughes to HG Wells: Jeanette Winterson picks the best books about the Moon.

• Tate acquires vast archive of British surrealist Ithell Colquhoun.

• At Greydogtales: Ten supernatural stories which stay with you.

• Emptyset turn to machine learning on new album Blossoms.

• Paul Grimstad on the absolute originality of Georges Perec.

• Valerie Stivers on cooking with Bruno Schulz.

• Blown out ’77: in the studio with Suicide.

• Astronauts on record covers.

• Back Side Of The Moon (1991) by The Orb | Moonshot (1999) by Hallucinator | Under The Moon (2019) by Brian Eno with Daniel Lanois & Roger Eno

Weekend links 451

Manifold (2015), a painting by Samantha Keely Smith which will appear in April on the cover of Life Metal, a new album by Sunn O))).

• At Expanding Mind: Professor and queer historian Heather Lukes talks with Erik Davis about Silver Lake riots, gay bikers, house ball scenes, the nostalgia for repression, and the joys and challenges of working on the online archive The Grit and Glamour of Queer LA Subculture.

• A Stroke of Ingenious: Chatting Fear and Fantasy with Darius Hinks. Also this week, Darius Hinks’ The Ingenious (for which I created the cover art) was featured in a Barnes & Noble list of seven attractive (if hazardous) fantastic cities.

• “From the late ’60s and through the ’70s broadcasters invested in home-grown kids’ television, and much of it was decidedly weird.” Paul Walsh on the vanished, thought-provoking strangeness of British TV.

That late surrealism still needs rescuing by curators and critics is perhaps not a sign of its defeat but of the breadth and pervasiveness of its triumph. Could we have Pablo Picasso or Jackson Pollock without surrealism? What about David Lynch, JG Ballard or Angela Carter? As an influence, it’s easy to give [Dorothy Tanning] a crucial place in the canon of feminist art. Louise Bourgeois was born just a year later than Tanning but only started to sew after Tanning had exhibited her first sculptures.

Lara Fiegel on the weird, wild world of Dorothea Tanning

• After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house by Nivhek, a new album from Liz Harris (Grouper) “recorded using Mellotron, guitar, field recordings, tapes, and broken FX pedals”.

• At Dangerous Minds: Michael Rother (Neu!/Harmonia) on the forthcoming reissue of his solo albums from the 1970s.

• Clesse by Clesse, another pseudonymous musical project by Jon Brooks (The Advisory Council et al).

• After Dark: The art of life at night—and in new lights by Francine Prose.

• Elena Lazic on where to begin with Gaspar Noé.

• Mix of the week: Headlands by David Colohan.

• Steven Heller‘s confessions of a letterhead.

• RIP Albert Finney.

• Void (2009) by Monolake | Void (2013) by Emptyset | Void (2014) by The Bug feat. Liz Harris