Phil Legard – Page 2 – { feuilleton }

Wyrd Daze 1

Wyrd Daze is a new digital zine edited by Leigh Wright, the first issue of which is now available via a subscription of $5 (Canadian) or about £3. For that you receive a 66-page pdf plus access to music mixes and podcast files. The contents are the kind of thing which finds particular favour here: the weird, the marginal, the spectral, the esoteric, and so on. In issue 1 there’s fiction from Gareth E. Rees and Phil Legard (aka Xenis Emputae Travelling Band), interviews with writers Berit Ellingsen and David Southwell (the latter talking about psychogeography and “strange England”), a piece about Laurel Halo and Demdike Stare, many curious photos and graphics, and a lot more. I may be contributing to a future issue so watch this space.

Artwork from issue 1 by Emma-Jane Rosenberg.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Weird

Weekend links 168

Window to the Universe (1967) by Roberta Bell. From Summer of Love: Psychedelic Posters from SCMA currently showing at the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA.

• Sympathy for the Shoggoth: China Miéville’s Revolution of the Weird Tale, an essay by Christina Scholz which features one of my Cthulhu pictures among its embellishments. Related: “‘New Strange’ stories hold a chilling mirror to life” says Rick Kleffel discussing Robert Aickman and others. And speaking of Aickman (so to speak), Reese Shearsmith has recently recorded Aickman’s Cold Hand in Mine for Audible.

• An erotic alphabet book from the Soviet Union circa 1931, created to promote adult literacy. Who says porn can’t be educational?

• Angelystor is a new 39-minute composition by Phil Legard which he describes as “often heavy, Saturnine and melancholic”.

• James Ward’s postcards of the Post Office Tower. Related: film of the revolving restaurant at the top of the Tower in 1967.

•You Might Never Find Your Way Back: Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman by Nicholas Rombes.

Stone Garden (1967) by Wilfried Sätty.

• High Over Blue is “a mind-warping 20-minute freakout” by Moon Duo.

• Queer Visual Splendour: Jon Macy discusses his erotic comics.

• The Origin of the Pilcrow, aka the Strange Paragraph Symbol.

• Mix of the week: the Kranky 20th Anniversary Mixtape.

• Ten Amazing Cheeses and their Literary Counterparts.

• PingMag looks at the past and present of Ginza.

• Mind Gardens (1967) by The Byrds | The Garden (1981) by John Foxx | The Toy Garden (2006) by Helios

Cassette culture

Three Spirits by Xenis Emputae Travelling Band.

Looks like I was premature in 2008 when I was eagerly contemplating the demise of the cassette tape as a music format. Earlier this year I bought a music cassette for the first time since the early 1980s, albeit inadvertently since this was the compilation that came with The Twilight Language of Nigel Kneale (more about that at a later date). This week Phil Legard of Xenis Emputae Travelling Band very generously sent a copy of his latest release, Three Spirits, which is another cassette edition. And to top things off, FACT magazine this week launched a review section for new cassette releases. So much for the format being moribund.

I have to admit my anti-cassette animus has largely dissipated now there’s no reason to rely on them for anything. And I did hang on to my cassette deck… Switching that on for the first time in years and pressing “play” was a considerable novelty, as was the inevitable tape hiss that’s absent from most contemporary releases unless your name is Pye Corner Audio. The resurgence of the format is both interesting and understandable: interesting for its being another example of the way the future never unfolds in a predictable manner; understandable because cassettes are relatively cheap to produce, and there’s still a very evident market for material, analogue artefacts. And the novelty is present, of course, for people young enough to miss out on the delight of friends’ cheap tape machines chewing their lovingly-crafted compilations.

As to Three Spirits, it’s an excellent release, two sides of sublime atmospheres which at times sound like a local equivalent of Popol Vuh. I’ll be playing this one a lot. Phil writes about the music here, and there’s also a video for one of the tracks.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Xenis Emputae Travelling Band
• Old music and old technology

Xenis Emputae Travelling Band

The Old Weird Britain of folk tales, folk songs and pagan ritual has been a recurrent theme for the past couple of months so here’s another post on the subject. The music of Phil Legard’s Xenis Emputae Travelling Band is steeped in British folklore but mostly sidesteps songs in favour of drones and improvised soundscapes. Early pieces feature electronic sounds which are substituted in the later works by bells and accordion tones. A number of Legard’s recordings are made in response to locations with a weight of history and ritual association, a process elaborated in a chapbook entitled Psychogeographia Ruralis.

The past decade has seen the emergence of a cottage industry of micro-label music production, mostly people offering limited run CD-Rs via mail order. Many of Legard’s recordings were released in this fashion on his own Larkfall label but you can now explore them as free downloads at the Internet Archive. (Thanks to Warren Ellis for pointing this out). Among the few songs there’s a setting of Moly, a poem by Clark Ashton Smith. If you need a respite from unavoidable seasonal torment then this is a good place to start.

As usual I’ll be away for a few days so the { feuilleton } archive feature will be activated to summon posts from the past below this one. Enjoy your wassail.