Dana Mattocks – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 515

A pair of Huysmans covers from 1978 designed by Gérard Deshayes.

• Friends of the great composer/musician Jon Hassell set up a GoFundMe account a few days ago to help raise money for Jon’s medical costs. It’s always dispiriting having to link to these fund-generators when they shouldn’t be required at all but until America sorts out its health situation this is how things are. For those who’d prefer to help Jon by buying his music, there’s a Bandcamp page with a handful of releases, and more available at Bleep, the online distributor of Warp Records who helped produce his last release, Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One). Related: Words With The Shaman: Jon Hassell interviewed by Chris May.

• Every time I think I must have heard all the best of the early Kraftwerk concerts another one turns up. This new posting at YouTube is taken from a recent file upload at the concert-swapping site Dimedozen, and is believed to be a radio recording of the group playing in Vancouver, Canada, in 1975. It’s very good quality (some slight bleed from other stations) and features excellent versions of their concert repertoire at that time. The version of Autobahn is especially good.

• in 2009 Dana Mattocks built a machine he called Steampunk Frankenstein, a construction which was attended by a frame containing my first piece of steampunk art. Dana’s latest creation is TILT, the Robot with Rocket Jet-Pack.

• RIP Tony Allen, the drummer about whom Fela Kuti said “without Tony Allen, there would be no Afrobeat”. Allen was interviewed by John Doran in 2012. Related: Tony Allen: the Afrobeat pioneer’s 10 finest recordings.

• “Robert Fripp’s ‘Music for Quiet Moments’ series. We will be releasing an ambient instrumental soundscape online every week for 50 weeks. Something to nourish us, and help us through these Uncertain Times.”

• How to avoid Amazon: the definitive guide to online shopping – without the retail titan; Hilary Osborne & Poppy Noor have some suggestions. I favour eBay for many of my purchases, large or small.

• Adam Scovell on A Cinematic Lockdown: Confinement in the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

• Liberty Realm, a book of art by Cathy Ward, is coming soon from Strange Attractor.

• One Great Reader: Luc Sante talks to Wes del Val about his favourite books.

• Oscar Wilde and the mystery of the scarab ring by Eleanor Fitzsimons.

• Unica Zürn at Musée D’art Et D’histoire De L’hôpital Sainte-Anne.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 302 by Avizohar.

• Another concert: Tuxedomoon live in Rome in 1988.

• Rarefilmm | The Cave of Forgotten Films.

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Ghosts.

• Ghost Song (1978) by Jim Morrison & The Doors | Ghost Song (2000) by Air | Ghost Song (2005) by Patrick Wolf

Weekend links 124

Couple with Clock Tower (2011) by Louise Despont.

Assuming such a thing doesn’t already exist, there’s a micro-thesis to be written about the associations between the musicians of Germany’s Krautrock/Kosmische music scene in the early 1970s and the directors of the New German Cinema. I’d not seen this clip before which shows the mighty Amon Düül II jamming briefly in Fassbinder’s The Niklashausen Journey, a bizarre agitprop TV movie made in 1970. More familiar is the low-budget short that Wim Wenders helped photograph a year earlier showing the Düül performing Phallus Dei. Wenders later commissioned Can to provide music for the final scene of Alice in the Cities. And this is before you get to Werner Herzog’s lengthy relationship with Popol Vuh which includes this memorable moment. Any others out there that I’ve missed?

• Album sleeves in their original locations. And speaking of album sleeves, photo prints of some very famous cover designs by Storm Thorgerson will be on display at the Public Works Gallery, Chicago, throughout September and October.

• Crazy for kittehs: the quest to find the purring heart of cat videos: Gideon Lewis-Kraus goes where few journalists dare to tread. Also at Wired, the same writer explores the Cat Cafés of Tokyo.

• The City of Rotted Names, a “shamelessly Joycian cubist fantasy” by Hal Duncan, available to read in a variety of formats on a pay-as-thou-wilt basis until Monday only.

• Jailhouse rockers: How The Prisoner inspired artists from The Beatles to Richard Hawley.

• How To Survive A Plague, a documentary about HIV/AIDS activism in the US.

• Deborah Harry: hippy girl in 1968, punk in 1976, and Giger-woman in 1981.

• Alan Garner answers readers’ questions about his new novel, Boneland.

• For steampunk aficionados: ‘COG’nitive Dreams by Dana Mattocks.

• David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Madonna & Asparagus: Kraftwerk in 1976.

• New music videos: Goddess Eyes I by Julia Holter | Sulphurdew by Ufomammut | Warm Leatherette by Laibach.

Steampunk redux

The Steampunk design I created last year for Modofly (based on a formula by writer Jeff VanderMeer) is given a new lease of life with this colour version. Modofly produce decorated Moleskin books with a range of designs from some very talented artists. Previous graphics were laser-etched onto the boards but they’re now able to print in full colour which is obviously to everyone’s advantage. This is available now in two different book formats. And while we’re on the subject, a reminder of Dana Mattock’s incredible Steampunk Frankenstein casemod at Flickr. His photos of my Steampunk print are now posted.

I’m planning more designs for Modofly and would have had some ready now had the past few months not been so hectic. In a similar mode (as it were), I’m also planning some T-shirt designs for Kingstrike. More about these later.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Steampunk framed
• Steampunk Horror Shortcuts

Steampunk framed

Dana Mattocks wrote to me a month or so ago asking if he could have a print of my Steampunk picture to go in a frame on the wall beside his jaw-dropping Steampunk Frankenstein case-mod. I immediately agreed after seeing his photos. A single picture doesn’t do justice to the amount of work and detailing that’s gone into this project which makes most other steampunk craftings look distinctly lacklustre. See his Flickr pictures for a better look at its wood-and-brass lusciousness. What I didn’t expect was that the frame would be an equally impressive heavy-duty item. And I’m especially pleased to see the picture in there along with Colin Clive and Boris Karloff from the first Universal Frankenstein films. Thanks Dana!

I’ve been working on an updated version of the Steampunk pic for something special which I’ll announce here shortly. Meanwhile, if anyone else has one of my pictures in an impressive frame, send me a photo and I’ll feature it here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Steampunk Horror Shortcuts
• Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls