A journal by artist and designer John Coulthart.
Cover art for Howlin Rain by Howlin Rain (2006).
Artist Arik Roper was in touch this week with news that his website—showcasing album cover art, book illustration and graphic designs—has been relaunched. A world of psychotropic fungi and luscious ink-stained visions awaits you here.
Cover art for Magnificent Fiend by Howlin Rain (2008).
Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive
Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Arik Roper
The New York Times finally gets hip to the new folk/weird America thing.
Arthur receives a passing mention.
By WILL HERMES
Published: June 18, 2006
ASA IRONS of the Vermont musical collective Feathers is stroking his beard. It is formidable beard; a biblical beard. He and his band mates—who mainly operate out of a rural farmhouse without cellphones, Internet, manager or booking agent—are at WNYC radio to perform their enigmatic, pixie-ish folk-rock on the long-running show “Spinning on Air.” Today their instruments include a lap harp, a toy xylophone, a Middle Eastern hand drum and an acoustic guitar hand-painted with animals and rainbows.
Ruth Garbus, a dark-eyed 24-year-old whose T-shirt depicts tractors flying through space, is talking about conjuring mystery with music, “that whole psychedelic thing of letting your mind go where it will.” Mr. Irons, 24, his long hair tied up in a bun, chimes in with a story about working as a carpenter and about growing up with parents who were “woods hippies, not town hippies.”
“I’m all about the old world, man,” Mr. Irons says with a mischievous laugh.
Perhaps. But he and his band mates are also about a new world: one of the most creatively vigorous strains of underground music. Initially dubbed “freak folk,” it looked like a trend of the moment a couple of years ago, when two California artists, Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart, attracted attention with charmingly shaggy, deceptively whimsical, largely acoustic albums.
But the scene they spearheaded has grown steadily and expanded sonically, getting less folkie and more, well, freaky. It has also gone international. And this season—the Summer of Love 2.0—it comes into full, wild bloom with releases, tours and festival appearances that promise nothing less than a new age of Aquarius.
America’s most vital cultural bulletin. Free PDF download.
How nature droners GROWING found their flow. By Peter Relic. Photography by Eden Batki.
Swiss anthropologist-author JEREMY NARBY talks with Jay Babcock about what hallucinogens like LSD and the Amazonian drink ayahuasca have to teach us in the 21st century. Introduction by author Erik Davis, with a full-color illustration by Arik Moonhawk Roper.
How columnist DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF learned to stop worrying about current events.
Why power duo Al Cisneros and Chris Haikus reunited to make the meditation-suitable
heavy metal sound of OM.
‘Do the Math’ columnist David Reeves on the main reason why the USA should seal its border with Mexico.
The life, work and astounding impact of North Indian vocalist PANDIT PRAN NATH, guru
to Western minimalists La Monte Young and Terry Riley. By Peter Lavezzoli.
‘New Herbalist’ columnist Molly Frances on Lord Byron’s secret elixir and the Prophet Muhammed’s top condiment: VINEGAR.
How to recognize—and use—OCCULT FORCES, by the Center for Tactical Magic.
Notes from Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 2006 by the intrepid Gabe Soria.
Comics by Vanessa Davis, Chris Wright and PShaw.
Scenes from ArthurBall 2006, featuring Joanna Newsom, The 5:15ers (Joshua Homme & Chris Goss) and Moris Tepper and Polly Harvey.
Bull Tongue columnists BYRON COLEY & THURSTON MOORE review Richard Youngs, Pink Mountaintops, Parts & Labor, Oneida/Plastic Crimewave, Ex Models, Mouthus, The Bummer Road, Idea Fire Company, Taurpis Tula, Spykes, Ong Ong, Carson Cistulli, Starbird, 2673, Ladderwoe, Tovah Olson, Pan Dolphinic Dawn, Gastric Female Reflex, ANP Quarterly, Matt Chambers, The Colonial, Mineshaft, Little Claw, Black Lips, Zaat, Mystical Footprints of Asia, Whysp, The Story, Skarerkauradio, Jerusalem & the Starbaskets, Noise Nomads, The Nightjar Review, Shannon Ketch, Jeremy Rendina, Carousel, Quantum Noise, Lambsbread, Carlos Batts, Trenton Doyle Hancock, S.M.S.R., Tchernoblyad, Narrowmind, Sudanstrain, Blod, Sharon’s Last Part, Mnem, Edwidge, The Rita, Mania, Ashtray Navigations, Evenings, Septic Sores, Bottom Dweller, Paul Metzger, Tombi and Glass organ.
C & D riff into the dawn on Marvin Gaye’s The Real Thing: In Performance, 1964-1981 dvd plus new albums from Gnarls Barkley, Rufus Harley, The Black Keys, The Raconteurs, Eagles of Death Metal, The Cuts, Future Pigeon, The Aggrolites, The Fiery Furnaces, Espers, Josephine Foster, Scott Walker, Fred Neil, Belong, Boris and Howlin Rain. Plus: Peter Relic’s Book Corner spotlights new poetry collections by Alex Mitchell and John Tottenham.
And more…