Boards of Canada – Page 2

Weekend links 166

The Julian House cover art for the forthcoming collaboration between John Foxx and Belbury Poly (here renamed) has been revealed. Single no. 9 in the Ghost Box Listening Centre Study Series is now available.

• In addition to new Ghost Box records there’s more Hauntological (for want of a better term) cinema on the way this summer with the DVD/BR release of Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England. The potted description at Movie Mail is “a monochrome psychedelic trip into magic and madness set during the English Civil War”. Julian House has made a trailer. Meanwhile at Fangoria, there’s a PIF mixtape from The Advisory Circle. This accompanies an interview with John Krish, director of the most bizarre of the UK’s many strange and alarming public information films from the 1970s.

• More mixes: The hour-long OH/EX/OH show for The Geography Trip on Chorlton FM. “Expect slumber / tension / euphoria in almost equal measures.” It’s marvellous. At Self-Titled mag there’s DJ Food with O Is For Orange: Boards of Canada, Broadcast, The Books, etc.

• Tangiers is a computer game based on the fiction of William Burroughs. Jim Rossignol talked to Alex Harvey about the development of the project.

Walpurgisnacht (1917) by Amadeus. A drawing that could easily be from the late 1960s. If anyone knows the full name of the artist, please leave a comment. Via Beautiful Century.

• Rebecca J. Rosen asks “What would the night sky look like if the other planets were as close as the moon?”

• The mystery of Charles Dellschau and the Sonora Aero Club.

• The Surreal Cave Paintings Of Stockholm’s Metro Stations.

• At 50 Watts: More strange art from Marcus Behmer.

• Ry Cooder in 1970. Directed by Van Dyke Parks!

• The Post Office Tower: now you see it…

• At Little Augury: 99 Meninas.

• Sartori In Tangier (1982) by King Crimson | City Of Mirage (2010) by John Foxx

Weekend links 163

Le Cadavre Exquis by Yukio Michishita. As featured in The Purple Book: Sensuality & Symbolism in Contemporary Art & Illustration by Angus Hyland & Angharad Lewis.

• ” Like Polo’s magic cities, which in the end all turn out to be Venice, fantasy finally refers us back to reality and the challenge of everyday social engagement.” Jonathan Galassi on The Dreams of Italo Calvino. In the same edition of the NYRB, Anna Somers Cocks on The Coming Death of Venice?

• Mix of the week: Solid Steel Radio Show 7/6/2013 Part 3 + 4: Peter “Look Around You” Serafinowicz compiles 70 minutes of Boards of Canada-inflected ambience.

• “Magic and art tend to share a lot of the same language. They both talk about evocation, invocation, and conjuring.” Alan Moore talks to Peter Bebergal.

The gay rights movement around the world has promoted a basic idea: we want to show society that we are human beings like everyone else. The problem is that the train driver at the Kashirskaya train station doesn’t necessarily think that those few dozen passengers in whose face he closes the doors are a priori inferior and deserve such treatment. He feels that he becomes superior to them by means of using his power over them. This sense of superiority can be trumped only by some higher superiority.

On the Moscow Metro and Being Gay by Dmitry Kuzmin.

• “I went from being a very promising young writer to being completely ignored in two novels.” Madeleine Monson-Rosen on Angela Carter.

• Sequence6, another excellent sampler from Future Sequence: 40 new pieces of music as a free download.

The Arrival on Mars, an illustration from The Ship That Sailed to Mars (1923) by William Timlin.

• At PingMag: An Icon for Everyone: Shoryu Hatoba, Japanese Crest Artist.

• More Japanese weirdness at Sardines Bizarres.

• Larry Nolen on Bruno Schulz.

• Magic Ritual (1976) by Black Renaissance | Magic Fly (1977) by Space | Magic Vox (1981) by Ippu-Do

Weekend links 102

Flannery O’Connor with one of her many peacocks.

When the peacock has presented his back, the spectator will usually begin to walk around him to get a front view; but the peacock will continue to turn so that no front view is possible. The thing to do then is to stand still and wait until it pleases him to turn. When it suits him, the peacock will face you. Then you will see in a green-bronze arch around him a galaxy of gazing haloed suns. This is the moment when most people are silent.

Flannery O’Connor

Essay of the week was without a doubt Living with a Peacock by the great Flannery O’Connor, originally published in Holiday magazine in September 1961. I’d heard about Flannery’s peacocks before but had no idea she was such a pavonomane. Thanks to Jay for the tip!

• “‘He’s chameleon, comedian, Corinthian and caricature.’ But he was more like the very hungry caterpillar, munching his way through every musical influence he came across…” Thomas Jones reviews two new books about David Bowie for the LRB.

• In June Mute Records release The Lost Tapes by Can, a 3-CD collection. Here’s hoping this doesn’t merely repeat the outtakes that’ve been circulating for years as the Canobits bootlegs. This extract is certainly new.

• Animator Suzan Pitt, director of the remarkable Asparagus (1979), discusses her new film, Visitation, inspired, she says, by reading HP Lovecraft in a cabin while wolves howled outside.

• Night Thoughts: The Surreal Life of the Poet David Gascoyne, a biography by Robert Fraser reviewed by Iain Sinclair.

The Dangerous Desire (1936) by Richard Oelze (1900–1980) at But Does It Float.

• Making the Mari: the stuff of nightmares brought into the world by Jefferson Brassfield.

• The Background to the Moorcock Multiverse: Karin L. Kross reviews London Peculiar.

• Orson Welles’s lost Heart of Darkness screenplay performed for the first time.

• The Erotic Films of Peter de Rome: the new BFI DVD collection reviewed.

• Page designs by Alphonse Mucha for Ilsée, Princess de Tripoli (1897).

• A Slow-Books Manifesto by Maura Kelly.

• Tim Parks asks “Do we need stories?”.

• Musical table by Kyouei Design.

• Horror Asparagus Stories (1966) by The Driving Stupid | Peacock Lady (1971) by Shelagh McDonald | Peacock Tail (2005) by Boards of Canada.

Deaf Center in Manchester

Out this evening to Trinity Church again to see Deaf Center as part of a Type Records-themed event. Greg Haines set things rolling with a mysterious e-bow/autoharp performance where he managed to coax from a stringed instrument the kind of sounds more usually associated with electronic music.

Deaf Center are Norwegians Erik Skodvin and Otto Totland who were assisted this evening by Kristin Evensen Giæver on wordless vocals. Much of their set seemed to be versions of their Pale Ravine album which sounded a lot more substantial played live. Especially good were the clouds of noise with shifting harmonic layers, the kind of thing Boards of Canada do then often spoil by introducing a plodding rhythm. Deaf Center avoid plodding rhythms and are all the better for it.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Machinefabriek in Manchester
• Trinity rendezvous
• Helios in Manchester