Don Buchla – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 329

Josef Vyletal borrows figures from Aubrey Beardsley’s Salomé for a Czech poster promoting The Immortal Story (1969) by Orson Welles. Vyletal’s own paintings were often strange and surreal.

• Pale Fire is Nabokov’s “great gay comic novel,” says Edmund White. A surprising but not inappropriate reappraisal. White has noted in the past that Nabokov “hated homosexuality” despite having a gay brother and uncle. The portrayal of Charles Kinbote in Pale Fire isn’t unsympathetic if you overlook his being delusional, and possibly insane…

• At Folk Horror Revival: details of the charity donations raised by sales of the Folk Horror Revival books, the first of which featured my David Rudkin essay. A one-day Folk Horror Revival event takes place later this month at the British Museum, London.

• Mixes of the week: The Bug presents Killing Sound Chapter 2: Inner Space, a 2-hour blend of “sci-fi scores, expansive atmospheres and synthesized psychedelia”; Decoded Sundays presents Scanner; Secret Thirteen Mix 197 is by LXV.

• Stars Of The Lid unveil a James Plotkin remix of their Music For Twin Peaks Episode #30 Pt. 1. Related: the hype for the new Twin Peaks series gets into gear with a teaser.

• Robert Aickman’s only novel, The Late Breakfasters (1964), is being given its first US publication by Valancourt Books.

• “Don’t dream it, bet it.” Evan J. Peterson on 40 years of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

• Anna von Hausswolff’s sister, Maria, directs a video for Come Wander With Me / Deliverance.

• RIP Michael O’Pray, film writer and curator of many festivals of experimental cinema.

• Oli Warwick talks to electronic musicians about the influence of the late Don Buchla.

• Breakfast In Bed (1969) by Dusty Springfield | Alan’s Psychedelic Breakfast (1970) by Pink Floyd | Another Breakfast With You (2001) by Ladytron

Weekend links 327

The Green Knight Arrives by Clive Hicks-Jenkins. Part of a series based on the theme of Gawain and the Green Knight.

• RIP Don Buchla, inventor of the Buchla Electronic Musical Instrument (or simply Buchla to aficionados). The early Buchlas were produced contemporaneously with the Moogs but never achieved an equivalent popularity. Morton Subotnick was an early serious player, using one of the first Buchlas to record Silver Apples Of The Moon in 1967. By coincidence, this month has seen the release of Sunergy, an album created by two Buchla enthusiasts, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith & Suzanne Ciani, the latter having been a Buchla player for many years. Sean Hellfritsch made a 25-minute film of the pair playing their machines, while they talked about their collaboration to Danny Riley.

• Erik Davis talks to occult book-dealer Todd Pratum about rejected knowledge, growing up Californian, book synchronicities, and the loss of knowledge in the age of the Internet.

• Mix of the week (month, year, etc) is undoubtedly this 12-hour history of Spiritual Jazz. Less intimidating (and more eclectic) is an exclusive mix by Fenriz for The Wire.

• More electronica: (The Microcosm): Visionary Music of Continental Europe, 1970–1986, another quality music collection from Light In The Attic.

• Flying Saucers Are Real! is a history of 20th-century UFOdom by Jack Womack. Related: A map of the last remaining Flying Saucer Homes.

• Coming soon from the Ghost Box label, Peel Away The Ivy by The Pattern Forms. Jon Brooks gives an account of the album’s creation.

• Uri Bram meets computer scientist David Chapman to discuss the limits of formal learning, or why robots can’t dance.

• Andrew Male on Julius Eastman: the groundbreaking composer America almost forgot.

• Ship found in Arctic 168 years after doomed Northwest Passage attempt.

• Anna Cafolia on the resurgence of witchcraft in 1970s Britain.

• Welcome to the Austronesian Embassy of Anaphoria Island.

• Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top chooses some favourite records.

• A profusion of Marty Feldman links.

• The Flying Saucer Pts 1 & 2 (1956) by Buchanan And Goodman | Flyin’ Saucers Rock’nRoll (1957) by Billy Lee Riley and The Little Green Men | Flying Saucers Have Landed (1972) by Paul St. John

Weekend links 103

Robert Fripp photographed by Chris Stein. Video posterization by Michael Schiess.

Scans of Synapse, “The electronic music magazine”, are posted here. Issues range from 1976 to 1979, and include interviews with the more notable synthesists of the period, Kraftwerk included. Brian Eno was regularly interviewed by synth mags despite always being reluctant to talk about what equipment he might be using; sure enough he’s featured here. Far more interesting is a longer interview with Robert Fripp that catches the guitarist as he emerged from his self-imposed retirement in the mid-70s with the extraordinary Exposure album. (See a 1979 promo video for that here.) Related: TR-808 drum sequences in poster form by Rob Ricketts.

• More electronic music from the 1970s: “[Don Buchla] showed me that the idea of playing a black-and-white keyboard with one of these instruments was completely ridiculous. It was inappropriate and had nothing to do with the way you would use an electronic instrument.” Suzanne Ciani talks to John Doran about electronic music composition. A collection of her early recordings, Lixiviation, is released by Finders Keepers. Related: The Attack of the Radiophonic Women: How synthesizers cracked music’s glass ceiling.

• “Her writing—full of immigrants, circus animals, freaks, socialists, hipsters, servants, and suffragettes—revels in the atmosphere of the ‘Yellow Nineties,’ a period characterized by Wildean decadence and art for art’s sake.” Jenny Hendrix on Djuna Barnes.

More etchings by Albin Brunovsky at But Does It Float.

• More scanned magazines: the Fuck You Press archive at Reality Studio. A trove of rare publications produced by Ed Sanders in the 1960s with contributions from world-class writers, William Burroughs included.

• “[My parents] were horrified by what I did, but they encouraged me to keep doing it because I was obsessed, and what else could I do?” John Waters writing in (of all places) the Wall Street Journal.

• A time-lapse assembly of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) by Jeff Desom who explains how he did it here.

• The Occult Experience: a 95-minute documentary on the international occult scene, filmed in 1984–85.

• Compost and Height re-post A Gold Thunder, a song by Julia Holter first sent to them in 2010.

• Drawings by Bette Burgoyne.

• Schroeter’s Salomés

• Cats are liquids

• Fade Away And Radiate (1978) by Blondie (featuring Robert Fripp) | Exposure (1978) by Peter Gabriel (produced by and featuring Robert Fripp) | Exposure (1979) by Robert Fripp | Babs And Babs (1980) by Daryl Hall (produced by and featuring Robert Fripp) | Losing True (1982) by The Roches (produced by and featuring Robert Fripp).