Wyrd Daze – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 849

Mushroom Lady poster (1967) by East Totem West.

• “I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music.” Composer Steve Reich talks to Flora Willson about his long career. More Reich: live performances from 1976 by Steve Reich and Musicians of Six Pianos and Music For Mallet Instruments, Voices And Organ.

• At Aeon: Eric Leas on toadstools and toxins. “When I found the mushroom Amanita muscaria being sold in candy wrappers, I uncovered legal loopholes, dangerous dosages and more.”

• At Little White Lies: Nicolas Winding Refn on his return to cinema—and from the dead—with a neon-hued fable about a father-daughter relationship from hell.

• At Bandcamp Daily: Faust reunite without reuniting. The surviving members of the group return with four solo albums.

• New music: Noon by Richard Skelton and Lawrence English.

• Mix of the week: a mix for The Wire by Kaja Draksler.

• Winners of Bird Photographer of the Year 2026.

• At Dennis Cooper’s it’s Luchino Visconti‘s Day.

• Wyrd Daze relaunches with a new issue.

• Rainy Day Mushroom Pillow (1967) by The Strawberry Alarm Clock | Amanita Kingdom (2014) by Moon Coven | Amanita (2025) by Huong Federkeil

Weekend links 809

Atlantis by Sarah Hubacher.

• Regular readers will know Leigh Wright from his Wyrd Daze creations which I’ve linked here many times in the past. (The same goes for his frequent Mixcloud compilations.) Leigh’s wife died recently which means he now has to return to the UK from Canada where he doesn’t have permanent resident status. His request for help is here.

• Melinda Gebbie’s Greatest Fits: “Ranging from painting, illustration, Comix, portraiture, eroticism and so much more, this fully illustrated and beautifully presented book is a glimpse into the unique mind of a woman forged in the fire of counterculture.”

• At The Daily Heller: Adrian Wilson’s collection of elaborate vintage fabric stamps is explored in a two-part feature here and here.

• Mixes of the week: DreamScenes – December 2025 at Ambientblog, and ASIP – Reflection on 2025 at A Strangely Isolated Place.

• Dennis Cooper’s favourite fiction, poetry, non-fiction, film, art, and internet of 2025. Thanks again for the link here!

• At Colossal: “Field Kallop meditates on universal patterns through bold chromatic compositions.”

• “Scientists discover massive underwater ruins that may be a lost city of legend.”

• New music: The King In Yellow by Blarke Bayer.

• RIP Rob Reiner.

• Atlantis (1955) by Les Baxter | The Atlantis Healing Harp (1982) by Upper Astral | A Man For Atlantis (2000) by Broadcast

Weekend links 701

Frosty Morning in Nagaoka, Izu (1939) by Hasui Kawase.

• “A few years ago, retired professor of religious studies Chris Bache wrote a book called LSD and the Mind of the Universe. His book is the story of 73 high-dose LSD experiences he had over a period of 20 years, from 1979 to 1999, and how they changed his understanding of the very nature of reality. Bache believes psychedelics represent a ‘true revolution in Western thought,’ and his life has been lived around that premise. But after his long psychedelic journey, Chris ends up in a really interesting place. He wonders, ‘Can you have too much transcendence?'” Steve Paulson talks to Chris Bache about mega-dosing LSD.

• “Operating in the margins and intersections of folklore, experimental electronics, dreams and nightmares…” Or Hauntology, German-style. Louis Pattison at Bandcamp looks at some of the artists featured on Gespensterland, a compilation album released by Bureau B. The latest news reports about Bandcamp haven’t been encouraging. Download those digital purchases.

• “Cassel favored botanically inspired lines, distilled geometries, and a crepuscular-or-witching hour palette to capture the strange wind and cold light of a particular metaphysical space.” Johanna Fateman reviews Anna Cassel: The Saga of the Rose, a book about the occult artist edited by Kurt Almqvist and Daniel Birnbaum.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: 10 filmmakers, 20 short films, 2 each: Joyce Wieland, Vivienne Dick, Eileen Maxson, Sue de Beer, Amy Greenfield, Chiaki Watanabe, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Germaine Dulac, Lori Felker, Barbara Hammer.

• Rambalac took his roaming camera to the slopes of Mount Fuji. More drone shots, please.

• New music: A Field Guide To Phantasmic Birds by Kate Carr, and Inland Delta by Biosphere.

• Winners and finalists for the 2023 Ocean Photographer of the Year.

• At Wyrd Daze: the latest Disco Rd zine and related podcast.

• Transcendental Express (1975) by Can | Transcendence (1977) by Alice Coltrane | Transcendental Moonshine (1991) by Steroid Maximus

Weekend links 695

The Sleepwalker (1878) by Maximilián Pirner. Via.

• The latest non-fiction book from A Year In The Country is Threshold Tales, “an exploration of the edgelands, borderlands and liminal places in film; of the places whether literal, in the mind, cultural or amongst the paranormal realm where the boundaries between worlds, ways of life, the past and the future become thin and porous.” Featuring some useful viewing tips for the Spook Season, no doubt.

• Spoon & Tamago reports on VHS cafe opening in Tokyo’s Shimokitazawa district. I was happy to see the end of VHS format but I admire the Japanese dedication to redundant technology.

• There are more seasonal viewing (and reading) recommendations at Unquiet Things where Ms. E. has been blogging her way through the month. Begin here.

• At Public Domain Review: Edmund Fry’s Pantographia: A Specimen Book of All the Alphabets Known on Earth (1799).

• See 12 winning images from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Contest.

• Wyrd mail (and further links to other things) for autumn from Wyrd Daze.

• At The Daily Heller: The Art of Invented Scripts, Meaning Optional.

• Mix of the week is DreamScenes – October 2023 at Ambientblog.

• New music: N/Y by The Haxan Cloak.

• Sleepwalker’s Timeless Bridge (1972) by Amon Düül II | Sleepwalkers Woman (1983) by Scott Walker | Sleepwalking (1985) by Cabaret Voltaire

Weekend links 679

All this and the best tunes. Via.

• As noted last month, Space Ritual by Hawkwind turned 50 this year so here comes the inevitable reissue which in its most lavish edition will run to 11 discs. This isn’t as immediately attractive for me as the recent Calvert-era collection—I already own four different copies of Space Ritual, including the original vinyl—but I may feel differently a few months from now.

• At Wormwoodiana: Mark Valentine explores The Prophecies of N’Gai, something which sounds like a story from Weird Tales but isn’t.

• “Is function in the eye or mind of the beholder?” Steven Heller on Jacques Carelman’s Catalogue of Impossible Objects.

• At Spoon & Tamago: Yoko Tada began painting in her 80s. At 100 she’s publishing her first book.

• “The Magnificent Ambersons: rebirth for ruined Orson Welles masterpiece that rivalled Citizen Kane.”

At Wyrd Daze: Disco Rd 3: 23 pages 23 minutes. Free PDF, music mix, Discordianism, etc.

• A (brief) conversation with Milena Canonero, Wes Anderson’s costume designer.

• At Public Domain Review: Specimens of Fancy Turning (1869).

• New music: Móatún 7: Tetsu Inoue by Various Artists.

• Arik Roper’s favourite album artwork.

• RIP Peter Brötzmann.

• Table Turning (1973) by The Upsetters | Forever Turning (1995) by Scorn | Turning Towards Us (2008) by Redshift