Dwellers of the Sea (1962) by Eugene Von Bruenchenhein.
• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: Conan Stories by Robert E. Howard.
• At Colossal: “Uncanny personalities appear from nature in Malene Hartmann Rasmussen’s ceramics.”
• New music: Glory Black by Sunn O))); Through Lands Of Ghosts by Foster Neville; Sirenoscape by NIMF.
If we insist that art functions as a tool for promoting a limited set of political principles, what happens when an ideology that doesn’t share our values sweeps into power? Learning to engage with complexity is a necessary skill if we are ever to drag ourselves out of the puerile swamp of the culture wars. But if we continue to reduce art to moralistic soundbites, we will only succeed in stripping it of its capacity to transform us, which would be a huge loss. Art can help us to better understand ourselves, and the world we live in, by expressing those things that words cannot. It exposes us to a vast range of experiences, and asks us to sit with the fundamental ambivalences, moral complexities and conflicting emotions that are a part and parcel of being human.
Rosanna McLaughlin on attempts to make art of the past reflect the moral platitudes of the present
• Strange Attractor is having a winter sale with 30% off all its available titles.
• At the BFI: Miriam Balanescu selects 10 great filmmaker biopics.
• Mix of the week: DreamScenes – January 2026 at Ambientblog.
• The Strange World of…Free Jazz & Improvised Music.
• Free (1991) by Mazzy Star | The Free Design (1999) by Stereolab | Everything Is Free (2001) by Gillian Welch