{architecture} – Page 48

Weekend links 276

Beautiful Void: Holy Void II (2015) by Andy Diaz Hope.

• “Feeling like a woman. Looking like a man.” Rick Poynor on the cover art for Nightclubbing by Grace Jones. Related: A One Man Show, Jean-Paul Goude’s essential film of Jones’ 1982 tour where many of the songs are better than their album versions.

• Crammed Discs’ revival of the Made To Measure series continues with the release in October of Blue Velvet Revisited by Tuxedomoon & Cult With No Name, a soundtrack from the Peter Braatz documentary about David Lynch’s film.

• “We were learning from point zero; we created something that wasn’t around before…” Hans-Joachim Roedelius talking to Bruce Tantum about his work with Cluster and Harmonia.

• “In the Shangri-La pool there are no floating impurities. Apart from myself.” Iain Sinclair swims in “the highest pool in Europe” on the 52nd floor of The Shard, London.

• From 2012: “Possible Bubbles of Spacetime Curvature in the South Pacific” by Benjamin K. Tippett.

• After 23 years of delays and bootleg versions, Backwards by Coil is being given an official release.

• “Relaxed terror”, “perky dismay” and “unspecified uncertainty”: library music at Scarfolk.

• Mix of the week: a 4-hour collection of favourite music compiled by Autechre.

• Masakazu Shirane and Reuben Young make a human-size kaleidoscope.

• “I always was a weird child,” says John Waters.

• A new version of Argent by Jane Weaver.

• Chaos Magic (sic): The Fashion Trend

• Void (2009) by Monolake | Void (2011) by Emptyset | Void (2014) by The Bug feat. Liz Harris

Stone Glory, a film by Jirí Lehovec

It’s that city again. Stone Glory (1938) is a 10-minute documentary by Jirí Lehovec that’s like a cinematic equivalent of the photos of Karel Plicka. Lehovec shows many of the same streets and buildings as Plicka but has the advantage of motion, and there are several shots taken with the camera mounted on a vehicle driving through the narrow lanes. Glimpses near the end of marching soldiers are an ominous reminder that the Second World War was only a few months away.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Face of Prague
• Josef Sudek
• Karel Plicka’s views of Prague

The Face of Prague

More from the city of the alchemists. I downloaded The Face of Prague (1951 or 59) several years ago but never posted anything here since many of the photos are lacking Karel Plicka’s skill at framing an architectural view. But here’s a selection of shots anyway. The book has text in English and French by Jiri Körber, while the photographs are credited to M. Kucera. As usual with this kind of photography, I favour the moodier images and enclosed spaces.

Continue reading “The Face of Prague”

Weekend links 274

Lilith Births the Djinn (2015) by Rithika Merchant. Via Phantasmaphile.

• Lord of Strange Deaths: The Fiendish World of Sax Rohmer, edited by Phil Baker & Antony Clayton, is a new publication from Strange Attractor. “This is the first extended attempt to do justice to Rohmer, and it ranges across the spectrum of his output from music-hall writing to Theosophy. Contributors focus on subjects including Egyptology, 1890s decadence, Edwardian super-villains, graphic novels, cinema, the French Situationists, Chinese dragon ladies, and the Arabian Nights. The result is a testimony to the enduring fascination and relevance of Rohmer’s absurd, sinister and immensely atmospheric world.”

• More weird fiction: Twisted Tales of the Weird promises “an evening of readings by some of the finest writers in the contemporary scene, a panel discussion about the mode, and a Q&A with the audience” at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, on 23rd October. Writers M. John Harrison, Helen Marshall and Timothy J. Jarvis will be reading from their works. The event is free but space is limited so tickets are required.

• More Lovecraft: “Lovecraft never said his entities were evil,” says Alan Moore discussing his new Lovecraftian comic series, Providence, with Hannah Means Shannon. At the University of Sterling, Chloe Buckley reviews the Ellen Datlow-edited anthology Lovecraft’s Monsters for The Gothic Imagination (with passing reference to my illustrations but no credit for the artist).

• One for completists or those who were there on the night: Earth playing There Is A Serpent Coming at the Columbus Theatre, Providence on 22nd August. I’d almost given up hope that someone might have recorded anything from this event so thanks to Mr Beast Rebel of the Hellscape for the upload. There’s also a song by Elder from earlier in the evening.

• A Rose Veiled in Black: Art and Arcana of Our Lady Babalon edited by Robert Fitzgerald and Daniel A. Schulke.

• Robin the Fog on Spectral Spools, Amplified Olympia and XPylons.

• Mix of the week: BerlinSchool Mix-A [Beginnings] by Headnoaks.

• At AnOther: Leonor Fini: Female Libertine

• The lost tunnels of Liverpool

• The Zymoglyphic Museum

• Folk Horror Revival

• Some Weird Sin (1977) by Iggy Pop | It’s So Weird (1983) by Bush Tetras | The Smallest Weird Number (2002) by Boards of Canada

Remembering Arthurfest

The Arthur table. Free mags!

Arthurfest is an as-yet unreleased feature-length documentary by Lance Bangs which captured the two-day music festival of that name in Barnsdall Art Park, Los Angeles. The festival took place ten years ago to the day, and was the first such event organised by the sorely missed Arthur magazine. I was fortunate to witness some of the stunning performances on the park’s tree-bedecked plateau overlooking East Hollywood. Bangs’ cameras were hard to miss at the time—I even photographed one of them—but I’ve never seen any of the footage of the event until the appearance of a teaser which has been posted in advance of a tenth anniversary screening this weekend at Cinefamily, Los Angeles. This is tantalising stuff for the way the cameras bring the bands so much closer than they were when viewed at crowd level. There was also a lot happening each day on three different stages, one of which was indoors in the park’s Gallery Theatre, so it was impossible to see everything. Earth and Sunn O))) played inside the theatre but I missed both their shows as a result of a vampire-like reluctance to queue for a seat in the merciless sunlight. (I did get to drink Jack Daniel’s with the Sunn O))) guys, however…) Fingers crossed that Bangs’ film gets a proper release soon so the rest of us can see it. Meanwhile, here’s a few of my photos of the event…

Update: Arthur‘s Jay Babcock alerts me to footage of the late Jack Rose at the Arthurfest. Also at Lance Bangs’ channel there’s some of the performance by The Juan MacLean. Thanks, Jay!

The main stage.

Continue reading “Remembering Arthurfest”