Category: {film}

Film

The Strawberry Alarm Clock

strawberry.jpg

I’m on a total psychedelia groove at the moment—again—so expect more posts like this. The iTunes playlist is stuck in 1965–69 and doesn’t exclude moments of kitsch psych such as Incense and Peppermints by the Strawberry Alarm Clock, their debut single and a big hit from 1967. Thoroughly infectious and redolent enough of the era to feature in the first Austin Powers film, nothing else they produced came close. There were other soundtrack moments, a track called Pretty Song was featured in Psych-Out (1968) and the band themselves appear in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), one of many reasons to watch that lunatic movie. I always liked this sleeve design—printed in a number of variations—but even that pales next to their surfboard-shaped guitars, created specially for the band. Read more about them here.

strawberry2.jpg

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Exotica!
• The art of Bob Pepper
• A splendid time is guaranteed for all
• Heinz Edelmann
• The L.S. Bumble Bee

Versum – Fluor by Tarik Barri

barri.jpg

Regular readers will know I’ve enthused before over the electronica of Robert Henke, aka Monolake. The Monolake site recently resumed its monthly free downloads and the offering for this month is a 9-minute piece of abstract video by Dutch artist Tarik Barri. Fascinatingly immersive, this is like a 360º view of the Star Gate from 2001: A Space Odyssey accompanied by ambient drones and rumbles. Henke and Barri are planning on touring this audiovisual experience with a couple of dates already announced on Barri’s website.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Moonlight in Glory

The Kaleidoplex

kaleidoplex.jpg

The Kaleidoplex Light Organ, a kaleidoscope projector invented in the early Seventies by Marshall Yaeger to create a visual accompaniment for organ music performances.

The image [the Kaleidoplex] projects can be described most accurately and scientifically as an irregularly pulsating and continuously changing octagonal star or circular rosette centered on a circular field of smaller kaleidoscopic patterns arranged octagonally around — and related in colors and shapes to — the center. Sometimes the image devolves into from three to eight concentric, octagonal rings with alternating orientations to the vertical.

See it in action here. There are DVDs available.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Lapis by James Whitney