Arthurfest – { feuilleton }

Hollyhock House

The Hollyhock House in Barnsdall Art Park was the only Frank Lloyd Wright house I got to see up close when I was in Los Angeles. The park on that occasion was the venue for the Arthurfest music festival so the house was omnipresent but was closed to visitors. After renovation the building was opened to the public last year, and in November was filmed by Houzz in this short video which includes drone shots of the exterior. Rain Noe at Core77 notes that the house was one of Wright’s notoriously poor constructions but a leaking ceiling doesn’t seem so bad if your home looks as spectacular as this.

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• Remembering Arthurfest

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.

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Earth in Manchester

Earth, looking suitably infernal.

Out this evening to the Zion Centre in Hulme to see Seattle drone metal band Earth. I didn’t get to see their performance at the 2005 Arthurfest in Los Angeles but this event made up for that. Support—which we missed due to late arrival—was from Sir Richard Bishop, whose portrait I produced for the last issue of Arthur Magazine.

Earth play that kind of slowed-to-a-crawl metal which has its roots in Black Sabbath (the origin of their name) and Swans. The band have some great album and track titles, among them Thrones and Dominions, Hex (Or Printing in the Infernal Method) and Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine, the latter being borrowed by a drone doom supergroup. Unlike followers Sunn O))), who don robes and fill the stage with fog, the Earth presentation is a minimal one: no vocals, just the music, and no effects, red light only. I’d heard a couple of Earth CDs but what becomes obvious when you see them live is that this kind of music really benefits from loud volume and a good sound system. Both those elements were in place tonight which made for a thoroughly immersive experience.

Earth have a new album out at the end of this month, The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull, on the Southern Lord label.