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
Seven Souls, Hashisheen and Laswell’s Paul Bowles collection, Baptism of Solitude are constant companions.
Bandcamp seems to have to have survived the buyout. My understanding is that most of the layoffs were from the editorial staff, so no more long genre articles I guess.
I missed that Bowles disc even though I was buying any Laswell-associated stuff in the mid-90s. I have an earlier Bowles album of unaccompanied readings which is okay but doesn’t get played very much.
And yes, Bandcamp seems to be okay with its new owners. Let’s hope they’re smart enough to avoid spoiling a good thing.
Material-wise it would be Temporary Music (only the brown cover, not any of its rejigged successors), Memory Serves and Seven Souls – I lost interest from The Third Power onwards. Also love Baselines, Last Exit, Low Life and to a lesser extent Hear No Evil plus the first two Herbie Hancock productions. Heard a lot of his other releases, but none of them sent me in the same way. So impressed was I by those releases, I called my first cat Laswell.
PS bonus points in the article for mentioning Kip Hanrahan who seems an almost forgotten figure nowadays, which is a great shame. On the other hand, I don’t understand why the author writes “the Material story really starts with this 1991 album” about Seven Souls. Hasn’t he heard Memory Serves which features an amazing roll-call of George Lewis, Olu Dara, Billy Bang, Henry Threadgill, Sonny Sharrock, Fred Frith and many others?
PPS sorry, last comment I promise. If you’re a fan of early Material, I do hear pleasurable echoes of that outer-national sound in parts of the recently released Small Medium Large album (https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/small-medium-large).
Those Bandcamp guides are always comprised by their only being able to recommend recordings posted to Bandcamp. Laswell doesn’t yet appear to have posted all the early Material recordings. I’ve got Temporary Music on Secret Life; I ought to burn a copy with the tracks in the right order. Hallucination Engine is my other big favourite, I still regard that album as the peak of the Axiom catalogue. It’s overlong but I was knocked out by The Hidden Garden, I wish he’d done more like it.