Strange Flowers – Page 6

Weekend links 342

La femme et le pantin (1909) by Ángel Zárraga.

• RIP John Berger. Berger’s essential TV series on art, Ways of Seeing (1972), is at YouTube and Ubuweb; “Such freedom is unthinkable today,” says series director Mike Dibb; the book of the series was designed by Berger and Richard Hollis; ways of seeing Ways of Seeing; Geoff Dyer, Olivia Laing & Ali Smith on Berger; M. John Harrison on Berger.

• The beginning of January means the LRB posting Alan Bennett‘s diary for the previous year. In related news, Network DVD will be releasing Six Plays by Alan Bennett next month, a collection that includes a favourite of mine, Me! I’m Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1978).

• At Dennis Cooper’s: Acid Westerns Day (Restated). Related: Jodorowsky’s El Topo and The Holy Mountain are being released on Blu-ray (Region B) by Gryphon Entertainment.

The acre of suburban lawn surrounding our house became like the Paramount lot for my feverish theatrics. I graduated to building “spook houses” in the family garage out back. Inspired by the ride-through Trimper’s Haunted House in Ocean City, Maryland, designed by Bill Tracy (and it’s still there in operation), I remembered excitedly wheeling through this attraction in these rickety little coffin-shaped cars and dreaming of befriending the crudely built, motorized corpses, cannibals, and skeletons who lived inside. I fantasized the cars breaking down, the panicked, chickenshit children screaming, bolting from their seats, tripping over live wires, and electrocuting themselves. I wanted to take this imagined fear, this frightened happiness, back to my own house where I knew I could preserve, protect, and stylize it on my own adolescent terms.

John Waters on his childhood home

• Strange Flowers‘ latest reading recommendations include books on lesbian decadence, occult Paris, flâneurie and the queerness of the Benson family.

• Where Evil Dwells (1985), a 28-minute preview of a longer piece of weird cinema (now destroyed) by Tommy Turner and David Wojnarowicz.

• Francis Ford Coppola and Brian De Palma having a conversation about Coppola’s The Conversation.

• The Edge Question for 2017: “What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely known?”

• Mixes of the week: Drone Theory with Roly Porter, and Secret Thirteen Mix 205 by Stavaris.

• Simran Hans suggests where to begin with the films of Todd Haynes.

• More decadence, this time among the Mexican Modernists.

• Moon Wiring Club at Bandcamp.

• No Name, No Slogan (1989) by Acid Horse | Those Tapes Are Dangerous (1997) by The Bug | Spooky Action At A Distance (2014) by Sqürl

Weekend links 332

Suspiria (2012) by Jessica Seamans.

• Matthew Sperling on Tom Phillips’ “treated Victorian novel” A Humument, which he calls “a multimedia masterpiece”. Phillips’ sixth and final edition of the book is published by Thames & Hudson next month.

• Strange Flowers on Monsieur de Bougrelon (1897), a short novel by Jean Lorrain which will be published next month by Spurl Editions. The book is currently on my to-be-read-next pile.

• Theodore Carter finds images of skulls by artists through the ages. I’d have included Giacometti’s almost abstract Head-Skull (1934) or his sketch of 1923.

• The horror stories of EF Benson contain “enough nastiness to give you just the right kind of frisson for the time of year,” says Nicholas Lezard.

• Covers for One, an American magazine of the 50s and 60s dedicated to “the homosexual viewpoint”.

• Kelly Sullivan takes a close look at the illustrations and stained-glass work of the great Harry Clarke.

• Lost Moomins cartoon strips will be shown in the first UK Tove Jansson exhibition.

• The extravagant homes of Ludwig II of Bavaria are in urgent need of restoration.

• Mix of the week: The Nine Ten Never Sleep Again Mix by The Curiosity Pipe.

• Ténéré Tàqqàl (what has become of the Ténéré), a new song by Tinariwen.

• The King of Weird: Joyce Carol Oates on HP Lovecraft.

• Charting the legacy of cult 1970s band, Big Star.

• Falling (1992) by Miranda Sex Garden | Inferno (Version II) (1993) by Miranda Sex Garden | Peep Show (1994) by Miranda Sex Garden

Weekend links 313

The Sullen Son (1921) by Rose O’Neill from her Sweet Monsters series (also here).

• 10 hours of Popcorn (1972) by Hot Butter. Related (and linked here before) 79 different versions of Gershon Kingsley’s original. If that’s not enough, there’s at least 100 more out there.

• Mixes of the week: Touristica Mystica Sigillistica by Gregg Hermetech, FACT Mix 554 by The Body, and Secret Thirteen Mix 187 by Dalhous.

• Another electronic cover version: Trans Europe Express by Cobby & Mallinder.

In the 1950s people like Pierre Schaeffer and John Cage were saying: “But there are all these sounds in the world, and if you listen to them carefully enough you will hear the music that they speak.” This immediately opened up a new world; it’s enriching once you’ve educated your ear to that, because when you’re annoyed by the sound of the street you can make music out of it. You can make music out of almost everything!

Eliane Radigue discussing her career with Paul Schütze

• Patricia Highsmith’s Snail Obsession and Two Weird Tales of Monstrous Mollusks.

• Youth and Alex Patterson remember the making of Little Fluffy Clouds by The Orb.

• Strange Flowers pursues Sheila Legge and other Phantoms of Surrealism.

• Revealed: Cambodia’s vast medieval cities hidden beneath the jungle.

• Alan Moore describes the cover of epic novel Jerusalem.

• Ashgabat: the city of the living and the city of the dead.

• In praise of the tram by Christian Wolmar.

• Taxidermists at DC’s

• Brian The Snail (1982) by Pigbag | Slow Loris Versus Poison Snail (1996) by David Toop & Jon Hassell | Popcorn (2000) by Gershon Kingsley

Weekend links 312

The Shadow by Kenton Nelson.

• The week in Coil: An interview by Derek de Koff, plus an extract from the new edition of England’s Hidden Reverse by David Keenan. Opening later this month at Ludwig, Berlin, is Chaostrophy, a Coil-related exhibition/celebration.

• Strange Flowers remembers the incomparable Marchesa Casati, a woman who happens to feature in the book I’ve been designing and illustrating for the past few weeks. (More about that later.)

• “It wasn’t about how we could meet the demands of the book, but rather how the book meets us.” Ben Wheatley (again) talking to Jamie Sherry about bringing High-Rise to the screen.

• The latest release from Hawthonn is Sea-Spiral Spirit. The album has two accompanying videos: Pan Laws and Last Chimes From A Dormant Moon.

• Alan Moore celebrates Chris Petit’s The Psalm Killer—a nerve-shredding Irish noir.

• Not a mix but a reading guide: The Brit Horror Mixtape collated by Mark West.

• More Penda’s Fen: Graham Fuller on the Romantic tradition in British film.

• Previews of Tooth by Raime, “a steadfast concoction of brooding dystopia”.

• “How big an issue is the nausea problem for Virtual Reality products?”

• FACT chooses 16 of the best songs powered by Sly and Robbie.

• Geeta Dayal on the pioneering computer music of Bell Labs.

• Mix of the week: Finders Keepers’ Space Rock Special.

• Paul Schütze: The True Art of Fine Fragrance

• The Surrealist Legacy of Claude Lalanne

• Les illustrateurs de Baudelaire

• RIP publisher Peter Owen

• Perfumed Garden Of Gulliver Smith (1967) by John’s Children | Perfumed Metal (1981) by Chrome | Fragrance (Ode To Perfume) (1981) by Holger Czukay

Weekend links 303

Design by Julian House.

• The last major release by Ghost Box recording artists Belbury Poly was The Belbury Tales in 2012, so news of a new album is most welcome. New Ways Out by The Belbury Poly (that definite article is a fresh addition) will be released next month. The Belbury Parish Magazine has links to larger copies of Julian House’s artwork for this and the recent release from Hintermass, The Apple Tree.

But before New Ways Out appears there’s a compilation album from A Year In The Country released at the end of April. The Quietened Village is “a study of and reflection on the lost, disappeared and once were homes and hamlets that have wandered off the maps or that have become shells of their former lives and times. Audiological contents created by Howlround, Time Attendant, The Straw Bear Band, Polypores, The Soulless Party, The Rowan Amber Mill, Cosmic Neighbourhood, A Year In The Country, Sproatly Smith, David Colohan and Richard Moult.” I’ve been fortunate to hear an advance copy, and it’s an excellent collection.

• “London’s architecture has become laughably boorish, confidently uncouth and flashily arid,” says Jonathan Meades in a review of Slow Burn City: London in the Twenty-First Century by Rowan Moore.

I feel very ill, physically and mentally ill when I hear Christmas carols. I feel so angry, so much like getting out a sniper’s rifle when I hear that kind of music. And Broadway shows with their sentimental songs, those kinds of things are terrifying for me because they call up memories from far back and I don’t necessarily know what they are but they just break me, they break my heart, they break my soul. Iannis Xenakis, the great Greek composer, he said the same thing. He couldn’t listen to the music his mother had played to him when he was young, because it was akin to thinking of someone who was disemboweled. And so for me, if I do a song that’s what you’d say is pretty, my interpretation takes it to another place because it shows the death of the virgin, the animal that goes out in the spring and then gets shot by a hunter. It is prettiness that is very alarming to me, so I tend to do a juxtaposition of something that might be pretty with something that is harsh, just because I feel that they occur in life together.

Diamanda Galás talking to Louise Brown about her work

• The Fantastical Otherworlds of Adam Burke: S. Elizabeth talks to the artist behind Nightjar Illustration.

• “I try to frighten myself”: Master musician and curator David Toop on his extraordinary cassette tape archives.

• Silver Machine: Hawkwind’s Space Rock Journey throughout Science Fiction and Fantasy by Jason Heller.

• Mixes of the week: Secret Thirteen Mix 179 by Mesmeon, and a new Italian Occult Psychedelia Festival Mix.

• Offset Identities: Kenneth FitzGerald on graphic designer Barney Bubbles.

• The Cine-Tourist lists some of the many cats in the films of Chris Marker.

• John Patterson on Ran (1985), Akira Kurosawa’s last great masterpiece.

• Britain’s scarecrows photographed by Colin Garratt.

• Strange Flowers explores the city of Turin.

• The Museum of Talking Boards

• Giallo-themed playing cards

• Origami bookmarks

• Silver Machine (1972) by Hawkwind | Silver Machine (1973) by James Last | Silver Machine (1988) by Alien Sex Fiend