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Weekend links 744

Postage stamp design by Dario Canovas celebrating Argentina as guest of honour at the 2010 Frankfurt Book Fair.

• Sideways Through Time, Joe Banks’ book of Hawkwind interviews, was initially available as an exclusive supplement with the special edition of Days of the Underground, Joe’s essential history of Hawkwind’s first decade. From the end of October both books will be available as separate editions from Strange Attractor, with the interview collection being republished in a revised and expanded edition.

• “Two heads are better than one”: Another extract from Two-Headed Doctor: Listening For Ghosts In Dr John’s Gris-Gris by David Toop.

• “Rammellzee was an electric presence”: Thurston Moore on NYC’s graffiti-writing hip-hop pioneer.

• New music: Long Tail Of The Quiet Gong by Robert Rich, and Neostalgia by Heiko Maile, Julian Demarre.

• At Colossal: Postage stamp designs by Tùng Nâm showing portraits of endangered animals.

• At Public Domain Review: Edwin D. Babbitt’s Principles of Light and Color (1878).

• At Print magazine: An interview with design anthropologist Keith Murphy.

• At Unquiet Things: Tristan Elwell’s visual spellcraft.

• Mix of the week: Bleep mix 287 by Sarah Davachi.

• Mariam Rezaei’s favourite music.

• Over Under Sideways Down (1966) by The Yardbirds | Stepping Sideways (2003) by John Foxx & Harold Budd | Trip Sideways (2010) by The Time And Space Machine

Weekend links 742

Thunderstorm (1959) by Blair Rowlands Hughes-Stanton.

• “To create a novel or a painting, an artist makes choices that are fundamentally alien to artificial intelligence,” says SF writer Ted Chiang. A New Yorker essay which has received a fair amount of attention over the past week, with good reason. As someone who found his name on the list of artists whose work was allegedly being fed into Midjourney, I suppose I have a vested interest in the arguments. (Good luck to any machine trying to imitate my “style”. I don’t have one.) Too much of the discussion, however, has been very poor which is why this is the first time I’ve linked to such a piece here.

• “After going their own way for much of the 20th century, mathematicians are increasingly turning to the laws and patterns of the natural world for inspiration. Fields stuck for decades are being unstuck. And even philosophers have started to delve into the mystery of why physics is proving ‘unreasonably effective’ in mathematics, as one has boldly declared.” Ananyo Bhattacharya on why physics is good at creating new mathematics. Having recently finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s final novel, Stella Maris, this was all very timely.

• “…our films obey musical laws. Of course, you can never tell people how they should watch a film. But the musical element provides a narrative of its own.” Thus the Quay Brothers, in the news again with their forthcoming feature film, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. The quote is from a recent interview with Xan Brooks. Meanwhile, Alex Dudok de Wit posted another interview from 2019, originally published in French, now made available in English for the first time.

• At Wormwoodiana: Mark Valentine announces a new book of his essays, The Thunderstorm Collectors.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: 28 books that either faked ingesting LSD or did.

• At Public Domain Review: Antiquities of Mexico (1831–48).

• At Print mag: Kelly Thorn’s Tarot of Oxalia.

• USC Optical Sound Effects Library

• Strange Thunder (1987) by Harold Budd | Sweet Thunder (1991) by Yello | Studies For Thunder (2004) by Robert Henke

Weekend links 741

The Empty Mask (1928) by René Magritte.

• A Walk Across Northampton: Iain Sinclair and John Rogers wander the streets in search of significant historical locations before ending up at the home of the local magus, Alan Moore. I recently illustrated a new piece of writing by Iain Sinclair but can’t talk about that just now. Later.

• New music: The Invisible Road: Original Recordings, 1985–1990 by Sussan Deyhim & Richard Horowitz, and Through Other Reflections by The Soundcarriers.

• At Wormwoodiana: Mark Valentine reviews Joseph Hone’s The Book Forger: the true story of a literary crime that fooled the world.

• At Colossal: Across rural Europe, Ashley Suszczynski photographs remarkable and ancient masked traditions.

• Among the new titles at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts: Poetry by WB Yeats.

• At Unquiet Things: Maggie Vandewalle’s enchanted autumns.

• Richard Norris’s favourite albums.

• Tapedeck.org

• Preludes For Magnetic Tape (1966–76) by Ihlan Mimaroglu | Tape Hiss Makes Me Happy (1995) by Stars Of The Lid | Those Tapes Are Dangerous (1997) by The Bug

Weekend links 739

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