Mark Pilkington – Page 3

Weekend links 250

Untitled artwork by Melinda Gebbie.

• “Johnny Rocket is like a Chaucerian epic retold by David Peace with music by Bruce Haack and The Focus Group for a music hall located in Hell.” John Doran talks to Maxine Peake and the Eccentronic Research Council about their “psychedelic ouija pop”.

• Allison Meier looks at a new exhibition of Victor Moscoso’s psychedelic drawings. Related: Julia Bigham writing in Eye magazine in 2001 about London’s psychedelic poster scene.

• “Oh to eye the very enfilade through which that orchidaceous entity would make his stately progress…” Strange Flowers on the eccentric Count Stenbock.

• Melinda Gebbie: What Is The Female Gaze? The artist is in conversation next month with Mark Pilkington and Tai Shani at the Horse Hospital, London.

• Pamela Colman Smith: She Believes in Fairies. The Tarot artist and illustrator in a rare interview from 1912.

• Minimalist posters: “a lack of nuance disguised as insight,” says John Brownlee.

• Saturday night in the City of the Dead: Richard Metzger on the John Foxx-era Ultravox.

• The Will Gregory Moog Ensemble plays the Brandenberg Concerto No. 3.

• “In a weird way”: a brief history of a phrase by Ivan Kreilkamp.

• Die Hexe: An installation by Alex Da Corte.

• RIP Daevid Allen

• Istaqsinaayok

• You Can’t Kill Me (1971) by Gong | Master Builder (1974) by Gong | When (1982) by Daevid Allen

Weekend links 241

A drawing by Lucille Clerc.

• The usual imbalance of heat versus light this week but Kenan Malik and Teju Cole had some worthwhile things to say. Related: Atlantic illustrators respond to the events of Wednesday. And some history: covers of Charlie Hebdo‘s parent magazine, Hara-Kiri, whose legacy of bad taste and confrontation was overlooked in the rush to express disapproval.

• At The Quietus: Virginie Sélavy, Mark Pilkington and Stephen Thrower of the Miskatonic Institute talk to Mat Colegate about horror old and new. There’s more horror cinema in Mat Colegate’s interview with animator Carla MacKinnon.

• Mixes of the week: Sleepwalkers of the Montgomery Canal by The Geography Trip, and Secret Thirteen Mix 142 by Helena Hauff.

• Jazz legend Julian Priester reflects on his fusion classic Love, Love, Sun Ra, Herbie Hancock, and a lot more.

• “No gays, no blacks, no fat people”: Ryan Gilbey on how film advertising continues to betray filmmakers.

• Paul Gorman on the drumheads that Barney Bubbles painted for Hawkwind’s Simon King in 1972.

• Massive: Gay Erotic Manga and the Men Who Make It, edited by Anne Ishii & Graham Kolbeins.

• NASA’s exoplanet travel bureau wants you to pack your bags.

• The New Humanist on imagining a world without work.

• At Strange Flowers: 15 books for 2015.

• Ghosts in the TV

• Prologue/Love, Love (1974) by Julian Priester | The Jewel in the Lotus (1974) by Bennie Maupin | Rima (1975) by The Headhunters

The Art of Gothic by Natasha Scharf

This weekend I was at the Louder Than Words music conference in Manchester to meet Peter Bebergal, author of Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll, and Mark Pilkington of Strange Attractor. By coincidence the event was hosting a discussion about goth music and culture based around The Art of Gothic, a new art book by Natasha Scharf. As mentioned last month, this book features some of my work but I hadn’t seen a copy until now.

I’ve been fortunate recently to have my work appear in some impressive volumes but this outsize hardback takes some beating. It’s a very lavish production, 224 colour pages on heavy paper with gorgeous design by Paul Palmer-Edwards. Goth has been subject from the outset to mocking stereotypes, to a degree that many people would imagine they know exactly what a study such as this would contain. A recurrent theme of the Louder Than Words discussion was the growth of the goth subculture beyond its clichéd boundaries which is one reason my work is featured in the book. When Natasha was first in touch I thought it might be for the Cradle of Filth album covers but I’m in the chapter that examines the increasingly tangled goth/steampunk crossover. This is one development that’s come to seem almost inevitable given the roots of so much of the goth aesthetic in Victorian nightmares. Many steampunk novels tend towards the dark in their blend of science fiction and horror so the traffic goes in both directions.

Elsewhere in the book there are chapters on Futuristic Goth, Japanese Goth, and Cybergoth, all of which maintain the requisite darkness while evolving away from the top hats, lace and veils (the latter are all present and correct elsewhere, of course). It’s a beautiful book, out now in the UK from Omnibus Press, and in the US from Backbeat Books. A few more page samples follow. There’s more at Amazon UK.

left: The Amazing Screw-On Head by Mike Mignola (2002); centre: the full-colour version of the ever-popular Steampunk Equation (2009), words by Jeff VanderMeer, graphics by John Coulthart; right: Dr Geof’s Medicine Lady, aka Steampunk Pinup #2.

The mighty Giger again. I’ve got a framed print of that picture on the wall, a fact that will surprise nobody.

Continue reading “The Art of Gothic by Natasha Scharf”

Weekend links 198

Bum (1966) by Pauline Boty.

• Eleanor Birne on Pauline Boty, “the only prominent female Pop artist among a generation of famous men”. Ken Russell’s Pop Art documentary, Pop Goes the Easel (1962), which features Boty, may be seen here. Two years later Boty was back with Ken Russell playing the part of the prostitute from The Miraculous Mandarin in a film about Béla Bartók. That’s something I’d love to see. There’s more about her painting, and the work of other female Pop artists, here.

• Why Are We Sleeping? Mark Pilkington on the music world’s recurrent interest in the philosophy of GI Gurdjieff. Pilkington’s most recent Raagnagrok release with Zali Krishna, Man Woman Birth Death Infinity, was reviewed by Peter Bebergal.

• Cinematic details: Frames-within-frames in The Ipcress File (1966), and the typography of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

A Jay Shaw poster for Ben Wheatley’s forthcoming film of High-Rise.

• “…a large cavity must be dug in the bird’s shoulder and filled with ball bearings.” Christine Baumgarthuber on the dubious delights of The Futurist Cookbook.

• Why Tatlin Can Never Go Home Again: Rick Poynor on the difficulties of finding a definitive representation of an artwork online.

• Jay Parini reviews Inside a Pearl: My Years in Paris by Edmund White. At AnOther Donatien Grau talks to White about fashion.

• At Bajo el Signo de Libra (in Spanish): the homoerotic and occasionally Surrealist art of Pavel Tchelitchew.

• At 50 Watts: Kling Klang Gloria: Vintage Children’s Books from Austria.

• The motorbike girl gangs of Morocco photographed by Hassan Hajjaj.

• Geoff Manaugh on how LED streetlights will change cinema.

• Stylus “is an experiment in sound, music and listening”.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen mix 106 by Senking.

• At Pinterest: JG Ballard

• This Is Pop? (1978) by XTC | Pop Muzik (1979) by M | Pop Quiz (1995) by Stereolab

A playlist for Halloween: Hauntology

Flyers by Julian House for tonight’s Ghost Box event at Mono Cafe Bar, Glasgow.

It’s a tradition here to post some recommended listening each Halloween. This year there’s an embarrassment of riches with five listings chosen from the multitudes at Mixcloud. Hauntology is the theme, not Jacques Derrida’s spectral musings but Simon Reynolds‘ deployment of the term to define the music produced by artists on the UK’s Ghost Box label—Belbury Poly, The Focus Group, The Advisory Circle, Pye Corner Audio et al—and their allies delving into similar areas: “folklore, vintage electronics, library music and haunted television soundtracks”. I’ve been plugging the Ghost Box people for years but going by Mark Pilkington’s recent introduction to the sub-genre some still find this information to be news.

All the following mixes feature Ghost Box tracks, with the Ghost Radio mix being almost solely derived from the label’s releases. All the mixes are a year or so old apart from the Samhain Seance which was posted at the weekend. I’ve been playing these round the clock for the past couple of days, enjoying the way one playlist bleeds into another. Given the choice of only one I’d pick Samhain Seance, a great selection and very adeptly sequenced. Among the highlights there’s a lengthy extract from the occult-themed TV serial I mentioned yesterday, Children of the Stones, which had a superb vocal score by contemporary classical composer Sidney Sager. The Aethereus Mix also features Sager’s score, and opens with a warning from The Stone Tape which has even greater resonance today: “It’s in the computer!”

(Note: I corrected some of the track credits.)

The Aethereus Mix by Soulless Central Radio

The Box Of Delights by Roger Limb
Ecneuqes Rorrim by Pye Corner Audio
The Unseeing Eye by Malcolm Clarke
Cheyne Walk by Jon Brooks
Manège by Jaques Lasry
Children Of The Stones by Sidney Sager
Chocky by John Hyde
A Year And A Day by Belbury Poly
Willow’s Song by Paul Giovanni
Saturn by Neu! [What? This isn’t Neu! It’s a piece by an American artist, Neue.]
Variation 19 by Andrew Lloyd Webber
House Among The Laurels by Jon Brooks
The Ghost Of John by Kristen Lawrence
Double Trouble by John Williams
Windfall by Dead Can Dance

Fantasmagories by Timewriter

Funerailles Des Vampires by Acanthus
Hypnosis by Atrium Carceri
The Moonlawn by Belbury Poly
The Giving Of The Grape by Blood Stereo
Enferissimo by Camille Sauvage
Dream Music by Jonathan Elias
Evaparizione by Ennio Morricone
Spellbound by Creed Taylor
Sequenza Psichedelica by Piero Umiliani
Fantasm by Bernard Fevre
Funeral Organ by Fred Myrow
Uomini Al Bando by Bruno Nicolai
Lucifer Rising by Jimmy Page
Black Mass by Mort Garson
Spookies by James Calabrees
Forest Of Evil by Frank Reidy & Eric Allen
Hell House by Brian Hodgson & Delia Derbyshire
Raven’s Lament by The Haxan Cloak
Voodoo by The Natural Yoghurt Band
Lost World by Moran Russell
Falling by Delia Derbyshire
Sang Pourpre by Igor Wakhévitch
Untitled by Vladimir Ussachevsky

Ghost Radio by elevatoresque

Activate The Poacher by Moon Wiring Club
The Willows by Belbury Poly
Sundial by The Advisory Circle
The Third Eye Centre by Mount Vernon Arts Lab
Hey Let Loose Your Love by The Focus Group
Mind How You Go by The Advisory Circle
Ghost Radio by Moon Wiring Club
Owls And Flowers by Belbury Poly
Civil Defence Is Common Sense by The Advisory Circle
Inside Shoebox Garden by Moon Wiring Club
Albion Festival Report by The Focus Group
Erosion Of Time by The Advisory Circle
Opening Leaves by Moon Wiring Club
Meditation On Nothingness by Roj
Feldspar by Mount Vernon Arts Lab
Nuclear Substation by The Advisory Circle
Far Off Things by Belbury Poly
Plant Room by Mordant Music
Jam Jar Carnival by The Focus Group
Everyday Electronics by The Advisory Circle
They Are In The Room With Us Right Now by Roj
Wool Book by Moon Wiring Club
Post Apocalypse Listings by Mordant Music
From An Ancient Star by Belbury Poly
Fire, Damp And Air by The Advisory Circle

The Insomniacs Almanac by Melmoth The Wanderer

While London Sleeps by Mount Vernon Arts Lab
So Run Down by The Caretaker
Moondial (Theme) by Unknown
The Bane Tree (intro) by (Episodes From) The Field Bazaar
Sorcerer by Ataraxia
The Black Drop by Mount Vernon Arts Lab
In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country by Boards Of Canada
Of Grace And Providence (Remixed) by The Caretaker
The Voice by Brian Hodgson & Delia Derbyshire
The Wicker Man by Paul Giovanni
Children Of The Stones Theme by Sidney Sager
Legend Of Hell House by Brian Hodgson & Delia Derbyshire

Samhain Seance by The Ephemeral Man

Twins Of Evil (extract)
Forest Of Evil (Dawn) by Demdike Stare
Blackthorn Winter by Sproatly Smith
The Harmony Programme by The Focus Group
Sulphur by Cyclobe
The Power Of The Witch (extract) Rare BBC Documentary
Another Witch Is Dead by The Eccentronic Research Council
Blood On Satan’s Claw (intro)
Disorder by The Haxan Cloak
Black Blind Light by Moonstone
Denned Earth (Decay And Rebirth) by Ruhr Hunter
Children Of The Stones — Episode 3 (extract), soundtrack by Sidney Sager
Strung Like Lights At Thee Printemps by Godspeed You Black Emperor
Grim Reaper by Teen Suicide
The Globe Inn by The Future Kings Of England
Halloween 3 (ending)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• A playlist for Halloween: Orchestral and electro-acoustic
• A playlist for Halloween: Drones and atmospheres
• A playlist for Halloween: Voodoo!
• Dead on the Dancefloor
• Another playlist for Halloween
• The Séance at Hobs Lane
• A playlist for Halloween
• Ghost Box