Poster by Chris Ware for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010).
• “He is a proponent of “slow cinema,” which is to say, movies that inspire reflection because they are unhurried but fluid, clear but framed by mystery.” Hilton Als on the metaphysical world of Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
• “You could take off your clothes and lay in the sun, nude, with other guys looking for sex, right in Manhattan. And the police didn’t care. It was safe…” Stanley Stellar on his photographs of New York’s “Gay Piers”.
• At Wormwoodiana: An interview with RB Russell who talks about his new book, Robert Aickman: An Attempted Biography.
• New music: Mysterium by Held By Trees; A Journey by Hinako Omori; Waves by The Soundcarriers.
• Get some cosmic perspective with an updated version of Charles & Ray Eames’ Powers of Ten.
• You Cut Your Hair and Made a Friend: Richard Conway on Ladytron’s 604 and Light & Magic.
• At Unquiet Things: The Tawdry Technicolor Horrors of Vicente B. Ballestar.
• Alexis Petridis compiles a list of the late James Mtume’s greatest recordings.
• Steven Heller’s Font of the Month is Valvolina.
• Slow Motion (1978) by Ultravox | Slow And Low (1995) by Tetsu Inoue | Slow Burning Ghosts (1996) by Paul Schütze
Lovely to see Ultravox’s Slow Motion linked. Systems of Romance an all time favourite album of mine (driving guitar + synths + passionate vocals singing existential dream lyrics). When I got into them at about 15 I discovered they’d just broken up, was so disappointed by Vienna. Loved Uncle Boonmee and RIP Mtume, great to be hearing him afresh through theheatwarps.com.
PS not sure whether this is of interest, but think it might be and I found it rather moving: https://cdm.link/2022/01/get-lost-in-magical-1983-footage-of-brilliant-trees-delicate-ibm-dictaphone-looping/
Wow, that Sylvian film is a real surprise. Thanks! Good to see him saying something about JH, I used to wonder if Sylvian had cold-shouldered Jon after some of his remarks in The Wire interview from 1991.
Re: Ultravox, I also like Ha! Ha! Ha! despite the usual overbearing Steve Lillywhite production. And I do like Vienna (Midge Ure’s lyrics aside) in part because of Conny Plank’s production. I’ve surprised a few people with Astradyne, asking them to guess the group.
Yes, JH wasn’t exactly generous about Mr Sylvian. Glad it was of interest. I love(d) all of Ultrafoxx. Went halves on each album with my friend Trevor and we’d take it in fortnightly turns to have and play the records, somehow I ended up with them. The thing I most like about Ha! Ha! Ha! is Hiroshima Mon Amour for the doomed romance of the lyrics/music and because the other studio version is so amazingly and wonderfully different. I think I just couldn’t get over Foxx’s departure, Vienna isn’t a bad album, just very different I guess. Foxx was occasionally brilliant thereafter (e.g. Metamatic, Tiny Colour Movies), but Ultravox less so, imho.