Robert Beatty – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 829

In the Constellation of Pisces by Adolf Hoffmeister.

• “Comb through many of the numerous ‘greatest post-punk albums of all time’ lists that you’ll find dotted around the internet and one fairly continual omission is Thirst, which is something of a travesty. It’s difficult to think of many albums that embody the more pioneering and progressive elements of the post-punk spirit than Thirst.” Daniel Dylan Wray on the early, anarchic performances of Clock DVA.

• Warner Brothers have decided at long last to allow the world to see a complete print of Ken Russell’s The Devils, a film they’ve effectively been censoring since 1971.

• A psychedelic Texas company powered hippie culture—then vanished. Gwen Howerton explores the history of the Houston Blacklight & Poster Company.

• “What is the world made of?” A long read by Felix Flicker looking at the nature of reality via the properties of fundamental and emergent entities.

• “My body ached from the volume”: Makoto Kubota remembers his time with the enigmatic and fearsome Japanese rock band Les Rallizes Dénudés.

• New music (and a psychedelic video by Robert Beatty): Introit / Prophecy At 1420 MHz by Boards Of Canada.

• Stellar Iris, a new short film by Thomas Blanchard.

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

• At Dennis Cooper’s it’s Zoetrope Day.

• This Website Cannot Save You

• Der Prophet (1982) by Rolf Trostel | Prophecy Theme (1984) by Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois & Roger Eno | Prophecy Of The White Camel / Namoutarre (2011) by Master Musicians Of Bukkake

Weekend links 772

Barbarella (1968) by Robert McGinnis. Not one of his best (see below) but the film is a cult item round here.

• At the Bureau of Lost Culture: Alan Moore on Magic, a recording of the three-way talk between Alan Moore, Gary Lachman and myself for last year’s launch of the Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic.

• At Colossal: “Daniel Martin Diaz encodes cosmic questions into geometric paintings and prints.” And is heavily influenced by Paul Laffoley by the looks of things.

• RIP Robert McGinnis, illustrator and poster artist. Related: The Artwork Of Robert McGinnis, Part 1 | The Artwork Of Robert McGinnis, Part 2.

• At Public Domain Review: “The Form of a Demon and the Heart of a Person”: Kitagawa Utamaro’s Prints of Yamauba and Kintaro (ca. 1800).

• Coming soon from Ten Acre Films: The Quatermass Experiment: The Making of TV’s First Sci-Fi Classic by Toby Hadoke.

• New music: Lost Communications by An-Ting; UPIC Diffusion Session #23 by Haswell & Hecker.

• Anti-Gravity Holiday Every Month by Robert Beatty.

• Barbarella (Extended Main Title) (1968) by Bob Crewe And The Glitterhouse | Barbarella (1991) by The 69 Eyes | My Name Is Barbarella (1992) by Barbarella

Weekend links 544

“You may if you please, call a partial View of Immensity, or without much Impropriety perhaps, a finite View of Infinity.” An illustration from Thomas Wright’s An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe (1750).

• If you read about electronic music for any length of time today you’ll eventually come across the term “pad”, referring to a feature of the music itself not the instrumentation. I’ve noticed increasing instances of this with no accompanying explanation of what the term actually refers to. Rob Wreglesworth has the answer.

• At Dangerous Minds: Richard H. Kirk talks to Oliver Hall about Cabaret Voltaire and Shadow Of Fear. No comment from Kirk as to why the new album warrants the CV name when the music is indistinguishable from his many solo works.

• Eyeball Fodder: The Art of the Occult Edition. S. Elizabeth presents artwork featured in her new book, together with links to artist interviews, including one to the interview we did for Coilhouse magazine a few years ago.

• More electronica: Music From Patch Cord Productions is a new compilation of music by Mort Garson that features some previously unreleased pieces. Great cover art by Robert Beatty as well.

• A trailer for Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds, a documentary film about meteorites by Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer.

• From 2019: John Waters and Lynn Tillman in conversation. “The pair discussed Waters’s recent exhibitions and art career.”

• Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions may finally be published, after a five-decade wait.

• Turn your feline into a god with this cardboard Shinto shrine for cats.

• Mix of the week: XLR8R Podcast 670 by Dadub.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Harry Dean Stanton Day.

• John Cooper Clarke‘s favourite songs.

• Meteor Storm (1994) by FFWD | The Third Chamber: Part 5 – 7pm Tokyo Shrine (1994) by Loop Guru | Fireball (1994) by Sun Dial

Weekend links 491

The Weirdness is Coming, an illustration by Robert Beatty for an NYMag feature about the near future.

• I’m slightly late to this news, but better late than never: The Doll’s Breath is a 22-minute animated film by the Brothers Quay, shot on 35mm film and with a soundtrack by Michèle Bokanowski. It may take a while before it’s available to view outside the festival circuit but it’s good to know it’s in the world. Related: Filip Lech on the Polish inspirations of the Brothers Quay.

• More from Swan River Press: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s disturbing horror tale, Green Tea, is published in a 150th anniversary edition, with an introduction by Matthew Holness, two essays and a CD containing a theatrical adaptation of the story by the Wireless Mystery Theatre.

• Luca Guadagnino, Olivia Laing and Sandy Powell, Tilda Swinton and John Waters choose favourite pieces of writing by Derek Jarman. Related: Protest!, a Jarman exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Fairport [Convention]’s revolutionary impact came in doing precisely the opposite of what the folklorists had intended when they began collecting the songs. By taking the old songs and setting them down on paper, they had largely believed they were preserving them in the form in which they must remain, ignoring the fact that songs passed through generations orally will always evolve. Fairport, though, played extremely fast and loose with the source material, matching tunes from one source with lyrics from another. As Rob Young put it in his book Electric Eden: “It threw into question the spurious ‘authenticity’ of the folk versions studiously set in stone by the Victorian and Edwardian collectors. Fairport’s electrifying act preserved and restored the guts and spontaneous vigour to the folk continuum.”

Michael Hann on the 50th anniversary of Fairport Convention’s Liege & Leaf

• More Patrick Cowley: PC’s megamix of Hills Of Kat Mandu by Tantra. And the mix of the week: a Patrick Cowley tribute from 1981 by DJ Jim Hopkins.

• The seventh edition of Wyrd Daze—”The multimedia zine of speculative fiction + extra-ordinary music, art & writing”—is out now.

• 5 Mishaps: A 32-page hardbound handmade book of short stories by Tamas Dobozy, with collage illustrations by Allan Kausch.

• At Dangerous Minds: Lovely Bones: The transfixing skeletons and dreamlike nudes of Belgian painter Paul Delvaux.

• From 1979: a very early TV appearance by Virgin Prunes (their first?) on Ireland’s The Late Late Show.

• Fists of fear: Anne Billson on 10 films featuring severed (and frequently vengeful) hands.

• Adrian Curry at MUBI selects his favourite film posters of the 2010s.

• Tea For Two (1956) by Duke Ellington | Tea For One (1976) by Led Zeppelin | Tea In The Sahara (2001) by Simon Shaheen & Qantara

Weekend links 333

Time Out (London), no. 2403. No illustrator or designer credited.

• October isn’t all about the dark, there’s also psychedelia: Ned Raggett reviews a new collection of British psych, Let’s Go Down And Blow Our Minds: The British Psychedelic Sounds of 1967, while Floodgate Companion, a forthcoming collection of art by Robert Beatty, is previewed here.

• Mixes of the week (aside from my own, of course): Samhain Seance 5: Invasion of the Robot Witch by The Ephemeral Man, Thee Finders Kreepers Halloween Spezial, and Secret Thirteen Mix 199 by Blue Hour.

• “No diggin’ ‘ere!” Adam Scovell revisits the ghostly locations of the BBC’s A Warning to the Curious, and presents a short film based on the same.

• Stanley Kubrick’s film of The Shining has lost its shine through endless quotation and over-familiarity, says Anne Billson. Hard to disagree.

• Between Ballard’s Ears: in which two short stories by JG Ballard—Track 12 and Venus Smiles—are dramatised in binaural sound.

• John Carpenter talks to Adam Woodward about remakes, his love of early synthesisers and why nostalgia works in mysterious ways.

• Next month at the British Library: Brion Gysin: A Centennial Invocation with Alan Moore, Iain Sinclair, Barry Miles and others.

• Peter Bebergal on the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross, “a shadowy medieval brotherhood that probably didn’t exist”.

• Until The Hunter, a new album by Hope Sandoval and The Warm Inventions, is streaming here.

• San Fran-disco: Geeta Dayal on how Patrick Cowley and Sylvester changed dance music forever.

• A small portion of Bill Laswell‘s vast back catalogue is now on Bandcamp.

• At MetaFilter: The strange history of books bound in human skin.

• Italian composer Fabio Frizzi remembers 50 years of cult horror.

• Matthew Cheney on the strange horrors of Robert Aickman.

• Jóhann Jóhannsson’s favourite records

• Dark Start (1995) by ELpH vs Coil | Darkstalker (2000) by Bohren & Der Club Of Gore | Dark (2012) by Moritz Von Oswald Trio