Cover by Gordon Ertz for The Inland Printer, June 1916.
• “I worry that enthusiasm is being mistaken for a moral virtue, and negative criticism for a character flaw.” Dorian Lynskey on the dying art of the hatchet job. Also a reminder (not that we require it) that the word “fan” in this context has always been an abbreviation of “fanatic”.
• Culture.pl explores the work of Stanislaw Lem, the science-fiction writer “whose works, abilities and quirky sense of humor convinced Philip K. Dick that he was too brilliant to exist and must have actually been a committee of people”.
• The electronic music of Paul Schütze receives a reappraisal on Phantom Limb in November with a compilation album, The Second Law.
• Aliya Whiteley on Amanita Muscaria, the hallucinogenic mushroom seen in hundreds of fairy-tale illustrations.
• Stuart Firestein talks to Roger Payne about changing the world’s attitude to whales by recording their songs.
• Jennifer Lucy Allan talks to Sam Underwood about his unique Acoustic Modular Synth.
• Jóna G. Kolbrúnardóttir sings Odi Et Amo from Englabörn by Jóhann Jóhannsson.
• A forthcoming release on Dark Entries: Back Up: Mexican Tecno Pop 1980–1989.
• Luc Sante looks at Jim Jarmusch’s collages.
• John Grant‘s favourite albums.
• RIP Michael Chapman.
• The Divination Of The Bowhead Whale (1978) by David Toop & Max Eastley | Keflavik: The Whale Dance (1980) by Richard Pinhas | Ballet For A Blue Whale (1983) by Adrian Belew
Heh, the Gordon Ertz illustration could very easily have adorned a hypothetical Gong-adjacent band’s album sixty years later.
On the subject of fungus, there’s a good documentary on Netflix at the moment called ‘Fantastic Fungi’ which aside from a voice-over that occasionally sounds like someone with a degree in Applied Narcotics from the University Of Please Yourself, California is most absorbing and has some great time-lapse camerawork. I once passed a highly amusing evening in the company of Amanita Muscaria and spent a lot of time closely observing three-dimensional plastic time sculptures whilst repeatedly listening to ‘25 O’Clock’ by The Dukes Of Stratosphear on some headphones, if I remember rightly…
The magazine cover and mushroom article turned up by coincidence in the same week. Always good when that happens. I don’t know who the fairy king is but the look on his face is, er…suggestive.
I’ve done a fair amount of psylocibin mushrooms in the past but always avoided agarics because of their poisonous reputation. The others were also easier to find.
Hah, Sam Underwood is an old friend of mine – that’s my photo of him in the article. What a surprise to see him mentioned here! Always nice when worlds collide like this.
Any Terence McKenna fanatics out there – he is a recent discovery for me, having been straight as a stick all my life – love mushrooms, it just never occurred to me to smoke them, or whatever you do with them other than look at or draw them …
I’ve read a few interviews with McKenna but have yet to read any of his books. The Archaic Revival includes reprints of pictures by cult collage artist Wilfried Sätty.
I don’t know if you can smoke mushrooms without effecting their potency. The trouble with psylocibin mushrooms is they taste horrible whatever you do to them: chewing them is bad, making a brew of the things is worse. My solution after much trial and error was to dry them out on a sheet of paper (this also makes the tiny grubs that live in them flee) then crush them to powder and make them into pellets which can be swallowed. No bad taste, and you can manage the dose much more easily than with a cup of vile liquid.
I tried smoking them once out of curiosity. It tasted rank and didn’t have any effect; it seemed a waste of good foraging time. I found them to be best chomped down whilst still fresh, within a couple of days of having been picked.
Thanks for the Lem link, a fund of information there. Have just finished the Cyberiad and now know how the Steelypips dealt with their unwanted visitors, amongst many other subjects.