Fenriz – { feuilleton }

Pixel Forest (2016) by Pipilotti Rist.

• “Think about it: gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people were almost completely invisible in the movies or on television, or even in newspapers and magazines. It wasn’t until LGBT people started producing their own media that we started to see consistent, positive images. But it would take until very recently for TV and cinema to catch up with what happened in books and magazines decades ago. In other words, nearly all LGBT culture only existed in print or at the bar. So when the queer bookstore disappears, where else can you find 40+ years of LGBT culture? (Hint: it’s not on Netflix.)” Ken White on starting Query Books and republishing classic LGBT literature.

• Related to the above: David Shariatmadari reviews a new edition of Coming Out, Jeffrey Weeks’ history of gay emancipation in the UK; Modern Harmonic is reissuing Love Is A Drag, a collection of “love songs by men, for men”, first released in 1962; Your Daily Male 2017: 52 international artists, 365 pages of full-colour male art; erotic portraits of Yukio Mishima by Eikoh Hosoe.

• A Year In The Country revisits The Touchables (1968), a film about four Swinging Sixties girls who live in a huge plastic bubble in the countryside (must be a nightmare in winter); the quartet kidnap a rock star as “a temporary solution to the leisure problem”. Script by Ian La Frenais from a story by David & Donald Cammell. No DVD but it’s on YouTube.

• Mixes of the week are still in the Halloween zone: FACT mix 575 by Fenriz, and Resting Lich Face by SeraphicManta.

• War, love and weirdness: Brian Dillon on Powell & Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death, 70 years on.

• Bringing back the magic: a conversation with Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions.

• David Toop listens, finally, to the legendary John Latham recordings of Pink Floyd.

• The Synth Sounds of John Carpenter: Halloween, The Fog, Assault on Precinct 13.

• “Creep or craftsman? Hitchcock was both,” says Tom Shone.

• The Dazzling Designs for a New York That Never Existed

• Photography by Harry Gruyaert

• The Untouchables (1959) by Nelson Riddle | The Touchables (All Of Us) (1968) by Nirvana (UK) | The Touchables (1980) by The Human League

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

Tag: Fenriz

Weekend links 334

Weekend links 327