A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
The big book arrived, with one bumper corner bumped by the clumsy post office. It’s big and shiny. Eager neophytes will have to wait six more weeks before delving inside those covers. Patience.
Pre-order from Knockabout Comics | Top Shelf | the usual outlets.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Moon and Serpent Rising
New Moon and Evening Star (c.1932) by George Elbert Burr.
• If you’re eager to see a physical copy of the forthcoming Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic then Alan Moore World has screengrabs from a teaser video posted by US distributors Penguin/Random House to the social-media pit formerly known as Twitter. I’ve yet to receive a copy myself so I’m pleased to see the foil overlay on the cover looking as eye-catching as I’d hoped. Library Journal gave the book a starred review earlier this month.
• At Bandcamp: George Grella profiles Material, Bill Laswell’s long-running polycultural ensemble. Two of the albums on this list are all-time favourites of mine.
• Mix of the week: DreamScenes – August 2024 at AmbientBlog.
• The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges: A Hypertext.
• At Unquiet Things: Owls, Bats, and Moths in Art.
• At Dennis Cooper’s: Varvara Stepanova Day.
• Jon Hopkins’ favourite music.
• RIP Gena Rowlands.
• Desert Sands (1958) by Eugene LaMarr and His Magic Accordion | Grains Of Sand (1989) by Opal | Infinite Sands (1997) by Robert Henke
Top Shelf announced this one on Friday so I can break my silence about the book I’ve been working on since May 2021. The Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic by Alan Moore and Steve Moore was first announced in February 2007. I’d created the cover design which was used for promotional purposes after which the project went into hibernation for several years. In 2014 Alan and Steve were back at work again, and were co-writing the final essay when Steve died suddenly in March of that year, whereupon the book retreated to limbo once more. Since 2007 my cover has been floating around the internet like the lid for an empty toybox, but the book really is finished at last, and will be published by Knockabout (UK) and Top Shelf (US) in October.
In addition to the cover design I was also slated to be working on two of the book’s internal features: The Soul, a six-part illustrated serial set in the 1920s which evolved out of the occult-detective strip that Alan and I were planning circa 1999; also a series of twenty full-page illustrations for a feature titled Magical Landscapes. When Tony at Knockabout informed me at the beginning of 2021 that the book was being revived I made the audacious suggestion to him and to Alan that I could, if need be, design the whole thing as well as illustrate my own sections. Alan readily agreed, saying he trusted me implicitly, which was good to hear; his sole brief was that the book should be “beautiful and psychedelic”. One reason for his trust is that we’d already made excursions into the Moon & Serpent zone together. I designed three of the Moon & Serpent CDs in the 2000s, and made the video that accompanied the William Blake-themed reading/performance by Alan and co. at the Purcell Room, London, in 2001. Consequently, I’ve often felt like a floating member of the Moon & Serpent cabal.
A couple of things are worth noting now that the book is about to enter the world. The first is that the contents are a little different to the press release from 2007 which announced a book of 320 pages, with 78 of those pages being brand new Tarot card designs. The authors subsequently realised that creating an entirely new Tarot deck is a huge task in itself, especially if, as was the intention, you wanted it to be as wide-ranging and authoritative as the Crowley/Harris Thoth deck. There is a chapter about the Tarot in the finished book but readers will now have to choose decks of their own. I can imagine disappointment being expressed about this, and about some of the other changes but the book as it now stands is actually bigger than the original proposal, with an additional 32 extra pages. The expansion is partly a result of my page design which put fancy borders on all of the text pages. I ended up doing a lot more work for the book than I expected, adding new pages here and there, creating a lot of extra graphics and illustrations, and breaking up the long final essay into sections which are illustrated throughout with small pictures.
13 Circles by Julien Picaud.
• The 50th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing is only two months away so it’s no surprise that Brian Eno’s Apollo: Atmospheres And Soundtracks is being reissued. The latest release will include an additional disc of new music by Eno with his collaborators from the original sessions, Daniel Lanois and Roger Eno. Related: the Apollo 11 Command Module as an explorable (and printable) 3D model.
• From the real Moon to the presence of the satellite in myth and history, the next book from Strange Attractor will be Selene: The Moon Goddess & The Cave Oracle, a volume which is also the final work by the late Steve Moore. With a foreword by Bob Rickard, and an afterword by Alan Moore.
• Guitar-noise maestro Caspar Brötzmann released a handful of thrilling albums in the 1990s then disappeared from view. Spyros Stasis talked to Brötzmann about his hiatus and his recent resurfacing on the Southern Lord label.
• A year late, but I didn’t know Paul Schrader had written an updated introduction to his 1972 study of Ozu, Bresson and Dreyer, Transcendental Style in Film. I love the idea of “The Tarkovsky Ring” as a directorial event horizon.
• “Nothing written is utterly without value, as I proved to myself by reading two random works.” Theodore Dalrymple on the lasting worth of “worthless” books.
• Cinemagician: Conversations with Kenneth Anger, a documentary by Carl Abrahamsson about the director/writer/magus.
• Mirror, Mirror: When Movie Characters Look Back at Themselves by Sheila O’Malley.
• From Susan Sontag to the Met Gala: Jon Savage on the evolution of camp.
• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 289 by Mondkopf.
• Portrait of the Artist as a Consumer: Anne Billson.
• A video by IMPATV for Religion by Teleplasmiste.
• Obscure Sound ~ Cosmic: a list.
• Mira Calix‘s favourite records.
• Transcendental Overdrive (1980) by Harald Grosskopf | Transcendental Moonshine (1991) by Steroid Maximus | The Transcendent (1999) by Jah Wobble
Kujaku (2018) by Yasuto Sasada.
• “The Ernst picture [Of This Men Shall Know Nothing] has also been interpreted as depicting sexual alchemy, which also ties in with much of Peter Grey’s writing on Babalon and the goddess’ connection to sexual magic and the three ‘Fs’: f(e)asting, flagellation and fucking!” Hawthonn’s Phil & Layla Legard talk to Folk Horror Revival about their superb new album, Red Goddess (of this men shall know nothing).
• South London “Psychic Circuit”: A walk with London writer Iain Sinclair inspired by cult writer Steve Moore—from Shooter’s Hill and the Shrewsbury burial mound to Charlton House then Maryon Park and the locations used in Antonioni’s Blow Up.
• Czech filmmaker Juraj Herz, director of The Cremator (1969) and Morgiana (1972), died last week. One of his later films, The Ninth Heart (1978), featured an animated title sequence by Jan Svankmajer and Eva Svankmajerova.
• The week in psychedelic visuals: Ben Marks on Bill Ham’s San Francisco light shows (a piece from 2016), and Dangerous Minds on Astralvision’s Electric Light Voyage (1979), a light show on Betamax tape.
• “From glaciers to nuclear bunkers, photographer Chloe Dewe Mathews descends into the dark heart of the Swiss mountains that inspired Mary Shelley.”
• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 250 by Sote, and XLR8R Podcast 537 by SNTS.
• When The Horses Were Shorn Of Their Hooves, new music by Dylan Carlson.
• Emily Temple on Edward Gorey’s illustrated covers for literary classics.
• Hidden Hydrology: Coil’s Lost Rivers studio sessions.
• Tube: Minimalist YouTube search
• Sukhdev Sandhu is In Wild Air
• Lost Roads (1988) by Bill Laswell | Lost Sanctum (1994) by Lull | Lost Ways (2016) by Pye Corner Audio