A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Not the first time Walter Crane has been featured here but this slim volume (62 pages) is a useful overview of the artist’s work which covers all aspects of his career: fine art, book illustration, political design (Crane was a lifelong Socialist), textiles for William Morris, and interior design. There’s more Walter Crane at Wikimedia Commons.
The Constant Drumbeat of Terrible News (no date) by Allison Sommers.
• Nadia Khomami on Gay UK: Love, Law and Liberty, an exhibition at the British Library. Related: Simon McCallum‘s potted history of LGB characters on British screens. Elsewhere: writer and philanthropist Chuck Forester on gay sex in the 1970s.
• The Panic Fables: Mystic Teachings and Initiatory Tales by Alejandro Jodorowsky. Finally available in English, a collection of all the comic strips written and illustrated by Jodorowsky when he was living in Mexico in the 1960s.
• A trailer for the restored print of The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (1961) by Karel Zeman. Related: collage designs by Graphic Manipulator for a Japanese collection of Zeman’s films.
• “Whether divining ancient wisdoms or elevating the art of cold reading, Tarot is a form of therapy, much like psychoanalysis,” says James McConnachie.
• James Reith on “the Icelandic publisher that only prints books during a full moon – then burns them”.
• Mixes of the week: Wire 400 Mix #6 by Emptyset, and Secret Thirteen Mix 223 by Constantine.
• Mud And Flame: Penda’s Fen re-examined by Matthew Harle and James Machin.
• Tilda Swinton in a Leonora Carrington-inspired fashion shoot for i-D magazine.
• At Dennis Cooper’s: Spotlight on William Burroughs’ The Wild Boys.
• Applied Ballardianism: A Theory of Nothing by Simon Sellars.
• At Dangerous Minds: The Dark Rift by Jim Jarmusch’s Sqürl.
• French Underground Rock: 1967–1980; a Discogs list.
• Suzanne Ciani‘s favourite albums.
• Infinite artwork: Untitled, 2017
• Rip, Rig And Panic (1965) by The Roland Kirk Quartet | Panic (1984) by Coil | Flash Of Panic (1994) by Axiom Ambient
Here come the anniversaries again, driven by nostalgia and the imperatives of corporations to flog you another version of that thing you already own. Anniversaryism grew out of the CD reissue boom, with one of the first significant incidents being the debut release on CD of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album in 1987. This week you can walk into a shop and buy the album yet again in a variety of formats, the 50th anniversary now coinciding happily for legions of accountants with the current boom in overpriced vinyl.
This post is complicit, of course, just as Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention were complicit in reinforcing Sgt Pepper‘s status as a cultural monument even while carping at it; satirists always end up attached to what they attack. The latest round of retrospective attention had me wondering whether Alan Benson’s excellent South Bank Show documentary about the making of the album was on YouTube. It isn’t (but it is available elsewhere), probably because there’s a documentary in the new Sgt Pepper box set that seems to be the same film. The South Bank Show documentary was broadcast in the UK in 1992 for another anniversary, the year being the 25th since the album’s release. This is one of those television productions crafted to deliver maximum content with a minimum of fuss, so there’s no hyperactive editing, and no pointless Reactions To The Great Work from minor pop celebrities. Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr are all present to discuss the creation of the music, from the first song of the sessions, Strawberry Fields Forever, through to A Day In The Life. In the film’s real coup, George Martin sits at a mixing desk in the Abbey Road studio pulling faders up and down to show how the songs were pieced together; he also explains how some of the album’s more unusual effects were produced. The film runs just under 50 minutes, and it’s notable that nearly all the songs being discussed are by John Lennon even though this is an album dominated by Paul McCartney’s voice, and the initial concept was McCartney’s. Watch it here.
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Lyrical Substance Deliberated
• The Fool album covers
• The Sea of Monsters
• Tomorrow Never Knows
• Yellow Submarine comic books
• A splendid time is guaranteed for all
• Heinz Edelmann
• Please Mr. Postman
• All you need is…
A mural for Forest For The Trees, 2016, by Yoshi47.
• “Who’s the real cunt?” Andrew O’Hagan on the Daily Mail‘s hypocrisies, Little England bigotries and omni-outrage in a review of Mail Men: The Unauthorised Story of the ‘Daily Mail’, the Paper that Divided and Conquered Britain by Adrian Addison.
• Deutschlandspiegel 198/1971: a short film at the German Federal Archive which includes footage of Popol Vuh (still in their electronic phase) six minutes in.
• A meeting of remarkable minds: a live radio discussion between Annea Lockwood and Pauline Oliveros from December 1972.
• The House In The Woods (aka Martin Jenkins of Pye Corner Audio) at Rare Air, Seattle, 14th May 2017.
• “Peaceful but not to be messed with.” Tony Naylor on how the bee came to symbolise Manchester.
• Mixes of the week: FACT Mix 602 by Deathprod, and Secret Thirteen Mix 222 by Yuji Kondo.
• Emptyset and Mouse On Mars’s Jan St Werner on space, time and the evolution of sound.
• At Indiegogo, a funding call for Subotnick: Portrait of an Electronic Music Pioneer.
• Shannon Taggart’s Camera Fantastica: an interview by Peter Bebergal.
• Study finds mushrooms are the safest recreational drug.
• Mary Anne Hobbs‘ favourite albums.
• Bumble Bee Bolero (1957) by Harry Breuer | Bee Stings (1998) by Coil | The Bees Made Honey In The Lion’s Skull (2008) by Earth
Continuing an occasional series in which illustrators of Lautréamont’s baleful masterwork are noted. Santiago Caruso’s paintings provide suitably grotesque embellishments to a Spanish edition of Maldoror which was published in 2016 by Valdemar. The book is part of their Gótica collection which includes many fine works of weird fiction including titles by contemporary writers such as Clive Barker and Thomas Ligotti. Caruso’s illustrations are among the best I’ve seen for Lautréamont’s novel, and make the book worthy of purchase even for those who can’t read Spanish. See the full set here.
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The illustrators archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• Jacques Houplain’s Maldoror
• Hans Bellmer’s Maldoror
• Les Chants de Maldoror by Shuji Terayama
• Polypodes
• Ulysses versus Maldoror
• Maldoror
• Books of blood
• Magritte’s Maldoror
• Frans De Geetere’s illustrated Maldoror
• Maldoror illustrated