Lawrence English – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 841

Drawing Hands (1948) by MC Escher.

• New music: The World In Layers by mōshonsensu; The Rest Is My Ghost by Lawrence English; Rotostyles by Julien Ash & M.Nomized.

• At Public Domain Review: “The Persian Mâr-Nâmeh or, The Book for Taking Omens from Snakes” (1892).

• At Little White Lies: Sam Moore writes in praise of Hiroshi Teshigahara, “surveyor of the abyss”.

Paradoxically, art is useful only if it is allowed to remain entirely useless—that is, entirely free to go where it will. Wilde finds an ally here in Baudelaire, who followed his observation of the strangeness of the beautiful with a sharp rebuke to those who would subordinate artistic beauty to a utilitarian logic. Baudelaire asks:

“How could this necessary, irreducible, and infinitely varied strangeness…ever be controlled, amended, and corrected by Utopian rules conceived in some little scientific temple or other on this planet, without mortal danger to art itself?”

The privileging of utility over uselessness, of work over play, is the death of art—and the death of the given world in which our utilitarian spirit must be grounded if it is to have purpose and meaning.

JF Martel explores the ways in which art invented humanity

• Old music: Visions Of Sodal Ye by Mar-Vista.

• RIP Bill Oddie and Raoul Vaneigem.

• Martyn Ware’s favourite albums.

• The Last Museum

• Snake Rag (1923) by King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band | Ananta Snake Dance (1980) by Suns Of Arqa | Snakes Crawl (1980) by Bush Tetras

Weekend links 832

Dark Corridor (1990s) by Unknown Artist.

• “I greatly enjoyed this rich, allusive and strange text, which has affinities to the literary form and style of TS Eliot, David Jones and Iain Sinclair, uniting high modernism with demotic and pulp elements, as well as to the occult thrillers of Charles Williams, Mary Butts and others.” Mark Valentine reviews B-Movie: Serial of Seven Stars by Andrew Duncan.

• New music: Electronic Meditation For Inner Space Travel by Studio Kosmische; Fathom Tides by Werner Dafeldecker & Lawrence English; rust/wave by Tewksbury.

• At Public Domain Review: Animal, Vegetable, Lamb: Thom Sliwowski on the history of the mysterious Vegetable Lamb of Tartary.

• At Door of Perception: Wistman’s Wood, Dartmoor, as photographed by Neil Burnell.

• Anne Billson selects 20 of the best corridors in film.

• More corridors: Scificorridorarchive.

• Ukrainian animation.

• RIP Sonny Rollins.

• Current Rothko

• The Black Corridor (1973) by Hawkwind | Corridor (2018) by Steve Jansen | Spectral Corridor Part 4 (2021) by The House In The Woods

Weekend links 805

A poster by Peter Strausfeld for a 1966 screening of Alphaville and La Jetée.

• At Bandcamp Daily: “Caroline True obsesses over compilations so you don’t have to,” says Erick Bradshaw. I recommend CTR’s compilations.

• At The Wire: Read an extract from Music Stones: The Rediscovery Of Ringing Rock by Mike Adcock.

• At Colossal: Pastoral landscapes brim with patterns in luminous paintings by David Brian Smith.

One of the markers that sets Mamoru Oshii apart from his peers is his willingness to allow place to speak for itself. From the seasonality captured in his works, like the first two Patlabor films, to the otherworldly environments of Ghost In The Shell 2: Innocence (all projects in which Ogura was also involved heavily) and even the fantasy scapes of his Angel’s Egg, Oshii’s attention to place, and allowing it to be a player in the story, gives as much voice to world building, as he does to characterisation. This attentiveness and patience for place, allows us to settle deeply inside a worldview that is often simultaneously familiar but unerringly alien.

Lawrence English talks to art director Hiromasa Ogura and composer Kenji Kawai about their work on Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell

• At the BFI: Leigh Singer suggests where to begin with the films of Lucile Hadžihalilović.

• Necromodernist Architectures in Contemporary Writing: an essay by David Vichnar.

• New music: Hydrology by Loula York; Love Letters Via Echelon by Nerthus.

• There’s more Intermittent Eyeball Fodder at Unquiet Things.

• The Strange World of…Early Cabaret Voltaire.

• Winners of the Drone Photo Awards 2025.

• Lautréamont’s Apocrypha

• Drone Um Futurisma (1992) by Cusp | ABoneCroneDrone 1 (1996) by Sheila Chandra | Suspicious Drone (2009) by Demdike Stare

Weekend links 796

Academy by Lamplight (1770) by Joseph Wright of Derby.

• “He recounts, for example, the death of the custom of ‘Stephening’ in Drayton Beauchamp, Buckinghamshire, where ‘all the inhabitants used to go on St. Stephen’s Day to the Rectory, and eat as much bread and cheese, and drink as much ale as they chose, at the expense of the Rector’. Stephening was discontinued by the Rector, as the event ‘gave rise to so much rioting’.” Ross MacFarlane on A Collection of Old English Customs, and Curious Bequests and Charities (1842).

• “He should be known as a film music revolutionary”: Milos Hroch on revitalising the legacy of Czech composer Zdeněk Liška.

• At The Wire: Read an extract from Ian Thompson’s Synths, Sax And Situationists: The French Musical Underground 1968-1978.

Wright’s choice of subject matter was not only contemporary, but bordered on the heretical. In his candlelight paintings of the orrery, the air pump and the alchemist at work, he not only employed dramatic lighting and plunging shadows to heighten the drama, but the scenes themselves dealt in mortality and the insignificance of man in relation to the natural world, as well as suggesting that the scientist was now usurping the divine creator.

Charlotte Mullins on the chiaroscuro paintings of Joseph Wright of Derby

• New music: Daylight Daylight by Steve Gunn; Hard Ware by Patrick Cowley; WhiteOut by Lawrence English.

• At Spoon & Tamago: GAKUponi: A self-sustaining loop of fish and plants that hangs on the wall.

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

• At the BFI: Anton Bitel chooses 10 great German horror films.

• At Unquiet Things: A conversation with Benz and Chang.

• RIP Robert Redford.

• The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus) (1972) by Yes | Fish Culture (1980) by Marc Barreca | Filter Fish (1995) by Leftfield

Weekend links 776

Illustration by Adolf Hoffmeister for a Czech edition of The First Men in the Moon by HG Wells.

• It’s good to hear that Czech animator Jiří Barta is back at work on his long-gestating feature film based on the Golem legend. The new iteration looks like a reimagining of the entire project.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: The First Men in the Moon by HG Wells.

• This week in the Bumper Book of Magic: Ben Wickey breaks down more of his Great Enchanters pages.

• At Colossal: Charles Brooks photographs the interiors of musical and scientific instruments.

• At Igloomag: Philippe Blache on neo-noir, doom jazz and related atmospheric music.

• At The Daily Heller: The book-brick that is the 1,264-page Emigre Specimen Encyclopedia.

• New music: Changing States by Matmos, and Of Shadow Landscapes by Skotógen.

• At the BFI: Josh Slater-Williams selects 10 great Japanese time-travel films.

• Lawrence English remembers the sound-art pioneer Alan Lamb.

• Tunde Adebimpe’s favourite albums.

• Time Machine (1967) by Satori | Time Machine (1968) by Lemon Tree | Turn Back Time (1971) by Time Machine