Moondog – { feuilleton }

Weekend links 339

Untitled (2011) by Roger Hiorns. Photograph by Kate Green.

• “Most surprising and troubling of all is the status of a series of new paintings, also depicting naked male bodies. The figures look archaic, painted using latex and molten and folded plastic. They have sex with each other and with themselves. Extra penises float about, and fill any otherwise unoccupied orifice. There’s a lot of rogering going on, anal and oral, the figures consumed entirely by the act.” Adrian Searle reviews Roger Hiorns’ latest show at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham.

• “At the heart of magical belief is the belief in your own free will, in your ability to make changes and influence the world. It wasn’t accepting your circumstances, it was working to understand and directly change them.” Jessa Crispin on the women of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

• Addison Nugent on William Hope Hodgson: “The Forgotten Bodybuilding, Shark-Fighting Sailor who Invented Cosmic Horror (and annoyed Houdini)”. I’d quibble with the “forgotten”—Hodgson is sometimes overlooked but not exactly unknown—but the appraisal is welcome.

• More end-of-year lists: The Quietus posts its Albums of the Year, Bandcamp does the same, while Adrian Curry at MUBI announces his favourite film posters of the year.

• Callum James has devised The Quite Difficult Book Quiz for those who’d like a challenge (and a donation to charity) over Christmas.

• “A profoundly poetic anomaly”: Kenan Malik on the Tantric paintings that pre-empt Modernist abstraction.

• Patricia M’s Flickr albums contain a wealth of antique graphic design, advertising art and undigitised letterforms.

• “Cronky, shonky, soggy, knackered”: Simon Reynolds on ten years of Moon Wiring Club.

• Michael LePointe on the delightful mysteries of The Voynich Manuscript.

• Veloelectroindustrial: Wandering the wastelands of former industry.

• Mix of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 202 by JG Biberkopf.

• “Was Edmund Wilson jealous of Lolita?” asks Alex Beam.

• “Research finds MP3s drain your music of emotion.”

• Richard H. Kirk‘s favourite albums.

• Pavel Banka‘s surreal abstractions.

• Dennis Cooper‘s Alan Clarke Day.

• Cosmic Surfin’ (1978) by Yellow Magic Orchestra | Cosmic Meditation (1991) by Moondog | Cosmic Call (2006) by The Evpatoria Report

Weekend links 210

Crashing Diseases And Incurable Airplanes (2014) by USA Out Of Vietnam. Artwork by Amy Torok.

Amy Torok’s cover art for the debut album by Canadian band USA Out Of Vietnam is pleasingly reminiscent of the surreal and psychedelic collages of Wilfried Sätty. The music within has been described as “a cross between ELO and Sunn O)))” which it is up to a point, although to these ears the group are more in the Sunn O))) camp than the post-Beatles pop of Jeff Lynne and co. The sound is big whatever label you apply, and promises much for the future.

• Mysterious creatures of Monterey Bay Aquarium’s ‘Tentacles’. The Aquarium bought one of my drawings last year for this exhibition which juxtaposes tentacular artwork with live creatures. The show runs until 2016.

• Jon Hassell’s 1990 album, City: Works Of Fiction, has been reissued in an expanded edition including a live concert collaboration with Brian Eno, and a collection of remixes/alternate takes.

• Photographer Jonathan Keys uses antique camera equipment to give his views of contemporary Britain a patina of the past.

• Roman Polanski and the man who invented masochism. Nicholas Blincoe on Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Venus in Fur (sic).

• Mixes of the week are by James Pianta, E.M.M.A. (whose Blue Gardens album I helped design), and Balduin.

• Sweet Jane unearths another great article about psychedelic London: The Fool and Apple Boutique, 1968.

• “Did Chris Marker think history to be not only an infinite book but a sacred one?” asks Barry Schwabsky.

• Front Free Endpaper on the story behind the cover photo of A Boy’s Own Story by Edmund White.

• Mapping the Viennese Alien Event Site. Christina Scholz explores another Zone.

• Moondog: The Viking of 6th Avenue. The first and only movie about Moondog.

• Rick Poynor on rediscovering the lost art of the typewriter.

• At BLDGBLOG: 100 Views of a Drowning World.

• Miguel Chevalier’s magic carpets

• Venus In Furs (1967) by The Velvet Underground | Sex Voodoo Venus (1985) by Helios Creed | Venus As A Boy (1993) by Björk

Weekend links 22

Planet of the Apes Magazine #15 (1975), art by Bob Larkin.

I never read any of Marvel Comics’ Planet of the Apes titles but the painted covers of the American editions are evidence of a distinctly lurid imagination. An excess of drugs—this was the Seventies, after all—or mere enthusiasm? You decide. Related: “The Soft Intelligence”: 5 Underrated Literary Cephalopods by China Miéville. Kudos to him for mentioning The Sea Raiders (1896) by HG Wells, a favourite story of mine when I was 12.

My ever-lovin’ octopussy (1970) by Jackie Black.

• A Journey Round My Skull chooses selections from Ang Wyman’s flickr group Eye Candy (above), psychedelic illustration for children’s books by Nicole Claveloux, Peter Max, Heinz Edelmann and others.

• Watch out, there are “fancy gentlemen” about. It’s The Homosexual Menace!

• Design in opposition: Neville Brody announces the Anti-Design Festival.

• The Almias Rural Psychogeography Walk takes place on July 25th.

• Steven Heller on The Incredible Posters of Tadanori Yokoo.

• Hipster Priest: Alan Moore interviewed at The Stool Pigeon.

• FACT mix 167, a great selection by These New Puritans.

• The Orion Galaxy is a beautiful bespoke synthesizer.

• A radio portrait of Moondog at Speechification.

• RIP: Sugar Minott. RIP Tuli Kupferberg.

• Introducing Wizard’s Tower Press.

• Octopus (1970) by Syd Barrett.

Strange Things Are Happening, 1988–1990

A NOTICE TO OUR PUBLIC…………
It’s now a shade over twenty years since Rolling Stone was launched, complete with a brave new broadside on its interests and purposes.

So we too now announce our aims and prejudices and strive to clear a path laying bare our hopes and inspirations. Strange Things will deal from the heart and feature items that we would wish to find on offer. Music, from whatever era, will always be the core, with in-depth studies of a sound or an individual, or a laugh and a picture whenever the situation arises. There will be discographies, reviews, rare photographs; there will be threads or themes across several issues or even, instead, a one off appreciation.

That aside, there will be literature, film and television; cult curiosities or mainstream geniuses. In short, the boundaries are limitless. Over the next few issues the tale of Greenwich Village will unfold; so too the life and work of Richard Brautigan. Frantic new pop will sit beside English folk-rock, the Silver Surfer will meet the San Franciscan scene and white Chicago Blues will rock with Thunderbirds. “Whatever Fits” is our new motto – we’re there wherever strange things are happening.

Continue reading “Strange Things Are Happening, 1988–1990”