The Shadow by Kenton Nelson.
• The week in Coil: An interview by Derek de Koff, plus an extract from the new edition of England’s Hidden Reverse by David Keenan. Opening later this month at Ludwig, Berlin, is Chaostrophy, a Coil-related exhibition/celebration.
• Strange Flowers remembers the incomparable Marchesa Casati, a woman who happens to feature in the book I’ve been designing and illustrating for the past few weeks. (More about that later.)
• “It wasn’t about how we could meet the demands of the book, but rather how the book meets us.” Ben Wheatley (again) talking to Jamie Sherry about bringing High-Rise to the screen.
• The latest release from Hawthonn is Sea-Spiral Spirit. The album has two accompanying videos: Pan Laws and Last Chimes From A Dormant Moon.
• Alan Moore celebrates Chris Petit’s The Psalm Killer—a nerve-shredding Irish noir.
• Not a mix but a reading guide: The Brit Horror Mixtape collated by Mark West.
• More Penda’s Fen: Graham Fuller on the Romantic tradition in British film.
• Previews of Tooth by Raime, “a steadfast concoction of brooding dystopia”.
• “How big an issue is the nausea problem for Virtual Reality products?”
• FACT chooses 16 of the best songs powered by Sly and Robbie.
• Geeta Dayal on the pioneering computer music of Bell Labs.
• Mix of the week: Finders Keepers’ Space Rock Special.
• Paul Schütze: The True Art of Fine Fragrance
• The Surrealist Legacy of Claude Lalanne
• Les illustrateurs de Baudelaire
• RIP publisher Peter Owen
• Perfumed Garden Of Gulliver Smith (1967) by John’s Children | Perfumed Metal (1981) by Chrome | Fragrance (Ode To Perfume) (1981) by Holger Czukay
John do you know what the current legal state of the COIL catalog is? As an american who largely missed it all first time round and who likes what he has heard and wants to investigate further, I find work either not available or if available priced outrageously. Since the principals are now deceased is the catalog caught in some estate litigation lower rung of hell?
That seems like it might be the case at the moment, I’ve noticed some accusations on Discogs about who has the rights (or doesn’t). JB & PC’s family may not be interested while others who were close to the group may have no legal claim so they’d have to cajole the families into signing contracts and the like. I’m sure there’s a record company out there who’d want to reissue the major works but it may take some time.
In the meantime, nearly the entire discography is available at the Internet Archive so you can sample some of the works there if you choose:
https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Coil%22&page=2
Since there’s a wealth of material I’d recommend starting with Musick To Play In The Dark vols. 1 & 2. I also like Love’s Secret Domain a great deal, and its companion album, Stolen And Contaminated Songs.
Thanks!
Am I wrong in thinking Arthur Machen’s star is on the rise? I keep seeing his name being referenced more and more in various contexts. Maybe it’s just over here in the states but I think with Joshi’s Penguin edition of a few years ago his work has finally come out of Lovecraft’s shadow at at last. I probably shouldn’t say as this as an american but even with all the affection I feel for HPL I think Machen was his superior in every way.
Yes, he’s had a resurgence of interest in recent years although it remains to be seen how that sustains itself. It helps with Machen that he had Lovecraft as his champion since many people gravitate to writers like Machen and Hodgson after reading Lovecraft. It’s also the case now that Lovecraft is so well established that even people who haven’t read him have heard of him (or of Cthulhu). This makes room for other writers to be championed as being worthy of attention.
Machen was certainly a better writer in a literary sense although I think it’s unfair to compare them too closely since they were both aiming for different things: Machen for a sense of visionary wonder, Lovecraft for a sense of paralysing horror. They intersect in place, of course, and I regard The Dunwich Horror as very much in debt to Machen’s The White People.