Weekend links 213

munro.jpg

No Tears for the Creatures of the Night (2005) by Will Munro.

• Steve Barker’s On The Wire show on BBC Radio Lancashire is one of the longest-running music shows on British radio but it’s not broadcast in London so you seldom hear it mentioned at all. (It’s also the only radio show I’ve appeared on, oddly enough.) Some of Barker’s shows, which predominantly feature dub and reggae artists, can now be heard at Mixcloud.

• “As protagonist after protagonist is undone by temptation and lust, one can’t help but divine a sinister double entendre in the book’s title – something nocturnal and obscene.” James Lovegrove on the reissue of Robert Aickman’s 1964 collection of “strange stories”, Dark Entries.

Coil vs. Kenny Loggins sounds like no contest, and so it proved in 1988 at the Mike Tyson/Michael Spinks fight. There’s another surprising connection between Tyson and Industrial culture with the poster that Neville Brody designed for the boxer’s Tokyo bout.

Ventriloquism: Unheimlich manoeuvres: Sarah Angliss (who performs as Spacedog) on the history of ventriloquist dummies. With a bonus appearance from the great Ray Alan and Lord Charles. Related: the Vent Haven Museum.

• I’ve been wanting to read Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu for years but always hesitate over which translation to choose. As Leland de la Durantaye shows, the arguments about translating Proust into English are still unresolved.

Music For A Good Home 3: a collection of 31 rare or unique tracks by a variety of artists including Belbury Poly, Pye Corner Audio, and Grumbling Fur. All proceeds go to Shelter.

David Cronenberg – The Exhibition is running throughout the summer at the EYE Film Institute in Amsterdam showing props and other materials from the director’s films.

• “’I’m in pictures,’ John Wayne explained when Nabokov cordially inquired about his line of work.” Blake Bailey on Vladimir Nabokov’s unpublished Lolita screenplay notes.

• Original artwork for the Linweave Tarot (1967) at Sweet Jane’s Pop Boutique. As noted before, the full set of cards is probably the grooviest ever created.

• Mixes of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 118 by Ensemble Economique, and a Wyrd Daze Solstice mix from The Ephemeral Man.

• At One With Chaos & Abandonment: The Irrepressibles’ Jamie McDermott talks to Joseph Burnett about his music.

From the Zodiacal Light, a new track from Earth with vocals by Rabia Shaheen Qazi.

• The Ultimate Chinatown Filming Location Map of Los Angeles.

Tuxedomoon at Pinterest.

Dark Companion (1980) by Tuxedomoon | Dark River (1990) by Coil | Dark Turn Of Mind (2011) by Gillian Welch

The Lady Is Dead and The Irrepressibles

lady1.jpg

The lady may be dead but the art here is very much alive. The second great video of the week comes via the always essential Homotography, a short piece by director Roy Raz whose film features a pair of tattooed lesbians, a tennis match involving meat (or something), boys stripping out of their underwear to indulge in some peculiar—and for all we know, metaphysical—sexual congress, an elderly lady dancing round a piano, and a gang of luscious hunks who soap a car before sponging down their own bodies.

lady2.jpg

Do we have to worry about What It All Means? Of course we don’t, although the usual crowd of bewildered YouTube commenters struggle with comprehension like medieval rustics attempting to decipher so many signs and wonders. Think of it as the kind of thing Wes Anderson might create if someone dosed him with psychotropic chemicals that also turned him gay.

lady3.jpg

More important for me is the utterly fantastic song which Roy Raz uses, a number entitled In This Shirt by a ten-piece British group, The Irrepressibles, whose name I recognised but whose music I hadn’t heard until this. Lead singer Jamie McDermott’s voice is very reminiscent of Antony Hegarty which is no bad thing, although McDermott is probably weary of the comparison. Our musical culture would be greatly improved by more people taking their lead from Antony. The Irrepressibles’ site has a Soundcloud page where you can hear other songs from their recent Mirror, Mirror album, the CD of which is now on my shopping list. They also have a couple of videos showing their live performances which look rather spectacular. 2010 is turning out to be a good year for British music; when that music comes with cute guys attached it’s an added bonus.

lady4.jpg

Update: Roy Raz’s film is now also on Vimeo with other of his works.