REVIEWS 4
05 JAN 2017
ART-PUNK PINNACLE PROVIDERS
Pink Section (1978-1980) were an obscure San Francisco band, too weird for the 'weirdoes' in the local alternative music scene but certainly vanguard, deserving praise from connoisseurs. Formed at the San Francisco Art Institute and named after the pink-coloured arts and entertainment guide of the San Francisco Chronicle, they were under the Dadaist influence that caressed many field creatives at the time but represent genuine suburban threat. Pink Section's 'Jane Blank' could be the perfect art-punk, new/no wave song. It is the first half of this brimming video, filmed at the College of Marin in 1979:
This cracker inside the Jack-in-the-Box is clean and immediate pugilist fab delivered with phet aesthetic by hot provocateurs ready for further action. The singer has an arcane hair-crimp halo and innovative lyric structure that intercuts sung verses with read news broadcasts about archetypal bored housewife Jane Blank's existential flip into armed insurrection against the State. A resident of Austin, Texas, USA and linked to the Red Brigade and other 'commie' (GLADIO?) paramilitary subversos, her "bloody gun battle" at Richmond Mall was not with sex pistols. They were looking for clues that weren't there because mystery, and this mother of three who shot three police officers (King-Kill 33°) is now in custody. Asked why she did it, Jane replied: "I have my mind!"
Thrill to the unusual two-male/two-female balanced personnel at the best ages forms the Cross of Doors; all being self-taught provides the Key. Guitarist Matt Heckert and bassist Stephen Wymore's angular string slices to singer Judy Gittelsohn's forcefully-biased don't-give-a-fuck shouty screech vocals and tight petite powerhouse drummer Carol Detweiler leading the throng or riding a horse forge a dynamic creato-sexual tension, belting out hallucinations that - assisted by the fecund synths - may turn real in style (= anti-style). Power lines lead to abandoned places; the unexpected revolt transmissions amplified into people's ideas... My cat sees portals.
'Jane Blank' is magic pen mighty sword riding a triffic motor, bold in the cook potential: Black Friday please. The deaf: abolition by no means; sometimes the slab of pink you think is candy is meat. It's sad and perplexing that there doesn't seem to be a studio-recorded version, but another, rawer, 1979 live rendition exists on the v/a compilation LP Can You Hear Me? Music From The Deaf Club (PVC Records, 1981), that is also included on the self-titled Pink Section retrospective LP (Superior Viaduct, 2015), and there's another live video version from SF's Mabuhay Gardens Club, dated 26 May 1979, here.
I'm not sure what Wymore has done since, but Heckert later joined the hardcore sound-art ensemble, Survival Research Laboratories, and Gittelsohn and Detweiler went on to form Inflatable Boy Clams - who don't appear to be of that contrived zany-crazy gimmick attempted by the Stray Cats, Stump, Residents, etc., but genuinely odd outsider that will resonate with flesh counterparts - and then (with David Swan) The Longshoremen, who rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way. The show must go on, in a messed up world where souls are no more, waiting for the bomb. Hat off. Honk! Honk!
26 FEB 2016
THE BACK SIDE OF SATAN
The lightning strikes suggested a more Gnostic
approach to Christianity. Jesus rejected the law of the Old
Testament and didn't mention Jehovah once in the New Testament
(neither did anyone else). Jesus didn't come from Jehovah, but from
the Most High God (Father). Jesus told us to eat his body and blood
in John 6:54 and witches are inside the Church. Parallel
Earths. Maybe demons wrote the Bible to keep people in constant
fear, that is demon food. To fear is to allow yourself to be
de-manned, then you are a demon.
Morris Cerullo - American power evangelist and President of the Morris Cerullo World Evangelism Ministry in San Diego, California - is said to be worth around £30million, and according to a lawsuit he lived in a 1000sq ft mansion in the exclusive Rancho Santa Fe community and owned a jet with a gold-plated interior. Aside from this dreary materialism, he has contributed some wacky art manifestations such as the "Witchmobile". Photographs of the inside and outside of this groovy righteous vehicle concept are reproduced below:
The Witchmobile features in Cerullo's curiously-named book, The Back Side of Satan, that first appeared in 1973, in which he helpfully informs us that:
In January of 1972, I unveiled the world's first anti-occult mobile unit . . . The Witchmobile is colorfully painted to show the 'pretty' mask being stripped off Satan to reveal the true ugliness underneath. That is what we have done, presented the ugliness underneath the bait that traps the unwary. Inside the unit are hundreds of occult items, including a real human skull and a robed satanic priest. The seemingly 'pretty' side is depicted by meditation lamps, beads, etc., as well as the more horrible appearing details.
I'm not sure if this real-life Scooby Doo Mystery Machine-style caravan is still burning around the States, pulled by Cerullo and his good guys gang as they battle the praeternatural hordes terrorising the local populace, but I do suspect that back in the day this funky fairgroundlike trip probably turned more people on to the occult rather than repel them from it as intended?
Overall, this book is a reasonably accurate and zany example of the Sensational Christian Satanic Expose genre. It concentrates on USA activity with chapters on the usual suspects Manson, Church of Satan, Isaac Bonewits, Mike Warnke, demons, ritual sex and murder, black mass on campus, etc. Enjoyable and titillating enough, like one of those porn films masquerading as an educational aid, but still a too typical Bible-believer-biased recruitment drive surface skim through the darker realms. It regards ancient folklore as contemporary fact and attempts to foment a moral panic witch-craze/hunt spiritual war, which books such as these did indeed achieve as the progenitors of the 1980s-1990s Satanic Panic.
A 1999 advert for a Cerullo rally broadcast on the Christian Channel stated that "Satanic hordes" had "occupied the principal palaces of power in Europe", so Cerullo's lucrative SRA angle continued long after Back Side, and disturbingly, he has also been active in London, England in 1992 and 2014 with his controversial Miracle Crusades.
I'm told there was no appearance of the Witchmobile, although plans do exist for an alternative nocturnal British milk-float version with hypno-stroboscopic headlights and an altogether different game...
Morris Cerullo, The Back Side of Satan. Creation House, 1973. Hardback. Illustrated. 224pp. Library of Congress Catalog No.: 72-94922. RRP $4.95.
24 FEB 2016
THE FREE DESIGN
Hey, put aside The Monkees, Bubblegum and other joker-band gimmicks, there was a serious tradition of mellow West Coast sunshine pop, easy listening with an intelligent edge. Sure, you gots the upbeat contrived sound of The Mamas and the Papas, The Carpenters and all that lot, but they are all weighed down and bondaged by cursed moneybags, trapped in some horned-acid otherdimensional obscurity over the hill behind Satan's Sunset Stripe, where a black mirror awaits through the bloodstained looking-glass and Scary Mary gave birth to a monster magnet. Where it's at is THE FREE DESIGN, the crème de la crème of fantastickness.
Birthed at the end of 1966 in New York City, The Free Design soon became in definite vogue amongst the Greenwich Village coffeehouse folk circuit, signed to Enoch Light's celebrated Project 3 Records, then put out an album a year between 1967-1972 (and also another one in 1970, Songs For Very Important People, that compiles their previously-released child-friendly songs with new ones on this theme).
Not one track of their entire output is duff or filler (well, the later stuff could be a bit frumpy-dunk: jury's out), and it's a baffling mystery why they never hit it big. Elegant is the word, and "the kindly ones": beautiful male-female voices of celestial harmony, very fine production and irresistibly catchy arrangements brew a sure cure for depression; taste the warm golden syrup of their own material and flipping killer cover versions of The Doors' 'Light My Fire', etc.
Love is the drug here, a cuddly sherbet high, the bubbles in your nose are strange balloons of fun and everything's groovy-cool and zonky, where the fresh smell of summer washing caresses the green shoots of recovery, Robin Hood lives happily ever after with Florence Nightingale, and the Smarties tube never runs out. A joy-bell Utopia, like, with no dust or insects, and all wankers automatically lose the right to gravity so are pulled off into space, or are fused together and thrown down a bottomless well by purple ravens, never to return. Too right.
The Free Design Vinyl LP Discography is: Kites Are Fun (1967); You Could Be Born Again (1968); Heaven/Earth (1969); Stars/Time/Bubbles/Love (1970); Sing For Very Important People (1970); One By One (1971); There Is A Song (1972). They split in 1975, alas, but we danced like Mad March Hares when, happily, this glorious band made a spiffing 2001 reunion comeback with their Cosmic Peekaboo CD.
19 FEB 2016
FRITS JONKER'S ORANGE RAY
The OKOK Alphabet: No.101 in a series of hand-drawn alphabet fonts by the talented and indefatigable Dutch artist and philosopher, Frits Jonker. I highly recommend his work, and he is also open to commissions. His labyrinthine personal Showcase website is here. His Facebook is here and his Twitter is here. You can e-mail him here. A couple of Daily Webhead videos featuring him are here and here.
17 FEB 2016
HAYDEN THROUGH THE AGES
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The four faces of
Linda Hayden in Baby Love (1968).
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The blonde haired, blue-eyed, public school-educated English actress, Linda Hayden, is known to certain of her fans as "Lindangel", after her stunning performance as Angel Blake in Blood On Satan's Claw (1971). She made her feature film début aged 15 (Tarot Trump 15 is The Devil), as the lead actress in the controversial 1968 British sexploitation flick Baby Love, in which she plays the loose schoolgirl, Luci, a disturbed proto-hellcat of the working class, whose entry via her mother's death into a posh surrogate family precipitates inter-dynamic sexual tension troubles for the new mother, father and brother, resulting from the adult lesbianism and hetro-lust the naked and clothed Luci provokes-and-scorns like a teasing, vindictive dynamo, seducing the mother, violently attacking the father, and knocking out the brother in a weird tryst of warped libidos, addressing taboo.
Note that, in the Satanic Panic world, Luci means "the fallen half of Lucifer", and was the four-lettered coven name given to Audrey Harper at her 1961 Halloween night initiation into a hardcore paedophilic, drug-pushing, blood-sacrificial Satanic coven based in Virginia Water, Surrey, England.[1] Harper claims to have been recruited inside a pub just off London's Curzon Street (where MI5 had its HQ at Leconfield House from 1945-1976 and other departments at Curzon Street House from 1976-1995),[2] and that this highly sinister coven controlled her via "Satan's telephone",[3] a kind of remote-influencing-cum-telepathic-communication device - unless, more prosaically, she was implanted with a microchip as part of a MK-ULTRA-like mind-control operation. This "inner compulsion" told her
when, and where, to go.
It was a sort of mounting pressure in my head. I put it down to the strange power of Satan. He wanted me at his meetings - and if you believe in the dark forces, it's not difficult to accept that Satan could direct me to the coven by remote control.
Even after I broke away from the witches, I could still feel this strange pulling in my mind, sometimes so powerful it brought on a raging headache.[4]
This moving picture Baby Love was based on the novel Baby Love by Tina Chad Christian (Sphere, 1969) (a curious surname given the subject matter...); also stars that other mysterious, podgy, blonde-haired, blue-eyed femme fatale, Diana Dors ("Goddess Diana Doorway"); and 'ends' with an open ending...
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Linda Hayden as
Angel Blake in Blood On Satan's Claw (1971).
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I relate the above as Hayden's next major role was as the Devil-worshipping witch-queen, Angel Blake, in the renowned 1971 British horror film, Blood On Satan's Claw (aka: Satan's Skin). Both actress and character merge to produce a seductive emanatory fecund power that is the Key to Claw, as she directs her coven and the unfolding events under the Devil's Command. In this context, note that Hayden later starred in the British crime thriller, Something To Hide (1972), as Lorelei (in mythology a femme fatale water spirit who lures sailor-men to their death), a pregnant teenage hitchhiker who drives a man to madness, murder and suicide; and in the 1976 British erotic horror-thriller, Exposé (aka: The House On Straw Hill, aka: Trauma), as simply Linda (playing with herself), that has a fascinatingly sinister rural hauntological atmosphere. In both films she acts as a sex-death catalyst who attracts/produces a heavy disruption of the right (or 'divine') order in her immediate environment, tantalizing those she comes into contact with.
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Linda Hayden
(Angel Blake reborn) transmitting occultic sex-death
symbolism in a Norfolk field in Exposé (1976).
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The only British film to make it onto the official 1984 DPP "Video Nasties" banned list, Exposé is much more than a mere Straw Dogs cash-in, and certainly deserves the "cult classic" label. It also features 1970s Soho sex superstar, Fiona Richmond; the "King of Porn" legend, Paul Raymond, was one of its executive producers; and it was shot in Norfolk: the most haunted county in England. Exposé was written and directed by library music master James Kenelm Clarke, and it has come out of the shadows to program the next generation, for it was remade as Stalker (2010). Hayden actually makes a cameo appearance in this as Mrs Brown and one of its executive producers was the aforementioned JK Clarke. Thence the magical link.
Despite Exposé, and probably other of the abovementioned Hayden films suffering cruel cuts by the twisted British censor, what remains is certainly there, and makes me suspect that there is something arcane occult behind them, attempting to influence real-life changes in the audience's lives. Perhaps a genuine 'Satanic' cult was behind a lot of such horror/exploitation flims (especially those of the Hammer stable), who produced them as subversive propagandic lures towards the dark side, that would make them loads of money in the process and get people to actually pay for their own defilement programming - the Devil would find this very amusing. These films have affected so many impressionable minds, drawing them into the the forbidden mysteries.
Hayden's other film roles include Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), as the Prince of Darkness' victim-slave; Night Watch (1973); Vampira (1974); Madhouse (1974); Queen Kong (1976); and a brief cameo role in the Nazi-genetic bloodline thriller The Boys from Brazil (1978). The titles shew the lineage shew the secret script?
NOTES
[1] Audrey Harper &
Harry Pugh, Dance With The Devil. Kingsway Publications
Ltd., 1990, p.53.
[2] Ibid., p.44.
[3] Ibid., p.95.
[4] Ibid., p.77.
16 FEB 2016
A NEOIST RESEARCH PROJECT
I've always liked the punchy provocateurial
pranksterism of the Global Neoist Network, especially the
neo-Neoist overkill groove of its Stewart Home tranche, that blurred the divides
between art practice, occultism and political action. (Home has the
most intense stare, and that's what's important. Many creatives
won't do one because they're afraid it's not appropriate, or that
they'll be rejected as the odd wo/man out.) Heck, if I'm drunk or
angry enough I can even dig the relentless pontifications of
Neoism's metal-teethed, blood-spraying, supposed founder, Istvan Kantor, who seems to be suffering a
constant cosmological crucifixion. But I draw the line at Monty
Cantsin and Karen Eliot; as for Luther Blissett... (Spartacus was cool though). Born out of
violent boredom and alienation, Neoism was the final cry in the
wilderness against shitness. Some dare call it irreverent or silly,
but Neoism's depth is in its shallowness. Dunno about their general
uncertainty principle and pro-plagiarism, anti-authenticity stances
(lifted from the Situationists), for the exact sun, the absolut-unique
obviously exists? In it something is. Written in cement. Anyhow, the
artist's studio is the place of fascination; the work is secondary
to the portal.
Try and find primary source Neoist works however and you'll be aghast at their scarcity thus prices, so it's pretty fantastic that the (probably pseudonymous) N.O. Cantsin has assembled such a hot smorgasbord of obscure Neoist activity here in one affordable anthology. A Neoist Research Project a real treat for the thinking cultural worker or any of the pervertebrates, with tons of texts and a load of monochrome images - some drawn from supernatural media sources - that comprehensively document international Neoism (plus its "affiliated currents"), before (maybe as) - like most illusory 'movements' - it degenerated into a ghastly caricature of itself. Presented in that direct, old school, all-uppercase-word-processor-ranting/nth-generation-photocopy look, the un-paginated, undated, un-copyrighted leaves of this book are a fleet of magic carpets; an open road to the ecstasy of instant antidotal revolution; a good goading laugh; 'something' as useless and essential as cocktail umbrellas. This is the end of art. And not before time. REFUSE. DENY. NEGATE. SMILE!
N.O. Cantsin, A Neoist Research Project. OpenMute, 2010. Paperback. Profusely illustrated. 266pp. ISBN: 978-1906496463. RRP £? Seemingly out of print, but currently obtainable on Amazon, etc.
10 FEB 2016
BRICKS FROM THE KILN #1
A new periodical reader from London. Its title is
derived from Ret Marut's (later B. Traven) early-20th Century
anarcho-satirical magazine, Der Ziegelbrenner (The
Brick-Burner or The Brick-Maker). I sensed a great
buzz as it was on its way; this was confirmed on arrival, for when I
opened the rectangle card carrier inspiring oomph flowed out. Bricks
From The Kiln has good dimensions, not too big not too small,
with the look and feel of a progressive early-1970s school art
textbook gone out of time, but up to date. Thus it's fine so far,
and obviously determined to go farther; maybe that's why it smells
like a tank. The pages document people's image and literature
examinations, and the very mediums: typography and graphic design,
etc., what's behind the mask. It kicks off with the Situationist
Adventure re: Ron Hunt and Ralph Rumney, that looms and merges with
the allied and more liminal elements from other articles to 'form'
some weird, undefined aesthetic more of us should veer towards.
This is an odd duck, made with great care and strategy content- and presentation-wise, with varying visuality throughout. These bricks are special reserve, chosen for power-uniqueness, and together build a punchy interpenetratory house of delight with organic offshoots. It's like a silk red-black polkadot tie or purple velvet smoking jacket: rarely worn but fountaining when in contact. Those interested in oblique tendencies should warm their hands with this publication. (If you need to see a preview of the thing the editors' Afterword is reproduced here.)
Andrew Lister & Matthew Stuart, eds., Bricks From The Kiln #1. TTC-090, December 2015. Paperback. Illustrated. 138pp & two inserts. Edition of 700. ISSN 2397-0227. £13 including postage in the UK. Available direct from the publisher. Ordering details and full contents list here.
08 FEB 2016
PRAETERLIMINA 1, 2 & 3
This is a newish occult hardcopy publication operating in the hauntology-psychogeography-folk horror field of the continuous magical revival. It describes itself as a "journal of Magic, Daemonology, and the Human Condition. Encompassing Science, Philosophy, and the Arts," and is made by a UK-based trio/quartet of library-diving cool cats at/from university, judging from the scholarly topics featured and the quality of the writing and illustration. It has a lively, eye-pulling layout with all kinds of falling leaves in its garden, and some from far overthere. The art side is given equal importance as the text and it looks professionally printed.
ISSUE 1 immediately gets into its stride: the cryptid; qliphothic vistas; university necromancy; Boson's urban spell placings; book discovery. A bit too slim, the A4 page-size making this more noticeable, but this avoids overload blocks in the reader and intensifies what's there, that's more than enough for any debut. ISSUE 2 ups the ante, with more pages, some in colour: Occulted Vectors; Londinium Jack; folk dance underground; Archer's transgressions; Blake's moving pictures; more outside Boson spells; tomorrow's blue seeds; a wilderness voice. ISSUE 3 is back to monochrome, continues on: the first transmission of the aftermath of magic.
The Praeterlimina People should be pleased and proud for creating this triune statement; it's a proverbial "good read" that makes any more to come very promising. The only irksomes perhaps is the centre-alignment of much text, that acts like a literary Devil's Tritone to those in the Mainstreet Cabaret, or is that the point? More importantly, a lot of it isn't...'real': fiction fleshed onto skeletons of fact. The contributors do make this clear on the first page, but I'm not sure this is the best way to go. Making stuff up can give a wider scope for content and general fun, but ultimately defeats the object? The inclusion of genuine truths to support the (however interesting/thought-provoking) lies will get people's hopes up, wasting their time chasing not-existent-enough greased pigs, and when encountered on too much coffee and insomnia, etc., it smacks more of the cynical, manipulative grey/black occult propaganda created by military intelligence agencies, or dark deceptive remote alien direction, rather than wisdom teachings from the Trickster. The producer may regret it later when the awkward e-mails arrive enquiring about things s/he 'has' to deny exist, and their more serious things done in future are dismissed as "cry wolf" inauthentic. I don't "really believe" this, but will say that the whole postmodernist "relative/subjective reality" deal pushed by the Instigators is a con-job that's led to a society built on sand and now crumbling all around us. What the UK needs is a bit more vicious chicken digest: a deep roams cult of proper hard bastards who stand by their word and take no shit off anyone.
Lucy Brady, Chris Richford, Sean Pearce & Jemma Watts, Praeterlimina. Project Praeterlimina, 2015. A4 stapled booklet. Issue 1 is £2, Issues 2 & 3 are £3 each plus postage, or all three plus the mini-zine Visiting Ghastwych Abbey (minus the four postcards) can be had for £8 plus postage. Available via mail order from the Project Praeterlimina shop.
07 FEB 2016
BEYOND THE MARSHES 1 & 2
What lies beyond the marshes? Dare you go there and find out? I did, twice, not physically as far as I remember, but via the first two Beyond the Marshes booklets evoked by Phil Beeken, both of which come with a relating DVD-r to engender a text, graphic and moving-picture experience.
ISSUE 1 is the abovementioned artist-magian going to and in East Sussex early-2015 and finding what there is to there, in a fuller sense than bricks and mortar, ice cream vans and duck calls. His findings are recorded in an auroral text: 'Visions Dates & Numbers'. The author says it "contains many clues," and I do not doubt it. The accompanying DVD-r is an image stream from the marsh trip that connects itself and should be played with in a dark corner to show you more. The whole work flows smoothly like water on the gradient, or red plastic stilettos over just-mowed lawns; perhaps cricket cream cakes sun on the back, and after absorbing it I had a curious dream that involved distant drums; cats-eye stretch roads; midnight mirror transmogrifications and the Green Mass. The signpost with an Ox's Eye sparks in red winds as black skeletons dance in the shadows again and the magic mushroom queen raises her skirt. I glide past burning bongos; spy Bruce Lee evasions camping in the bullrushes. Back at the gatehouse the "jolly orange" lady presses her nipple against the light switch turn on as the manual typewriter is keyed in flickering candleight; each floorboard you can read about sixteen times. Perhaps this was a glimpse into the sub-vault of the text?
ISSUE 2 is a number of shorter writings by Phil Beeken plus a guest piece, that covers a widening sweep from the Uffington Horse to automatic writing to suburb reports and the Shard. Colour illustrations have manifested also. The DVD-r is a rough-cut study, travelogging town and subconscious country in the overt-covert. The whole thing interpenetrates, and reminded me of a kind of cryptopic stumbling into a violet trip, or rather, its abandoned sets (because of the three swords that burst?), wherein lurk transparent aerials, city hobgoblins and monochrome gods; BBC News tangled in the buzzing barbed wire as something nectarish spins and swirls, being immense.
The real outsider art stays underground, offline, undiluted by gawps: a magnetic-poles-clash thing. Only rarely, when the stars are right, does its maker lob a nugget or two over the parapet to do what it's designed to do. Phil Beeken is such an esoteric athlete (talent does what it can - genius does what it wants). He knows his onions, and has cooked up this under-radar word-image salad. It gets weird, abstract, disquieting (the wallpaper moved...), but this isn't tedious stream of consciousness reams or disjointed bedlam babble: he holds it all together to carry the audience along the adventurous journey, and at times seems as if he is a literal ghostwriter/director navigating an unexplored autoscopic frontier. The films continue the scribings, and I am not the first to suggest that Phil Beeken is the natural successor to Kenneth Anger. You already know if you resonate with this.
Phil Beeken, Beyond the Marshes. Published by CROS/Doomtube. Issue 1, March 2015. A5 stapled booklet with DVD-r. 38pp. Edition of 249. Issue 2, November 2015. A5 stapled booklet with DVD-r. 40pp. Edition of 249. Sold at the ICA, Atlantis and Otter Trading, or direct from the publisher via PayPal here. Both issues £6.50 each including UK postage. Contributions to, and swaps for, Beyond the Marshes are said to be possible.
26 JAN 2016
DREAMACHINE RESURGENCE
Having now seen Nik Sheehan's neat documentary, FLicKeR (2008), I was inspired to give the Dreamachine another go after many years of not, and so dug out my collection. I'd forgotten that my 78rpm record deck had been junked in a tricky house move, so I cut and tried the 45rpm template for the first time instead. Despite it being under half the size of the 78rpm model, I can report that it's very effective, and seems to give a tighter and more sharply defined flicker-field. (The Dreamachine's holes are a specially designed pattern to create a flicker-field that mimicks and thus induces Alpha Waves, the neural oscillations in the 8-13Hz frequency range. Alpha Waves are believed to represent visual cortex activity in an idle state; to inhibit areas of the cortex not in use; to play an active role in network coordination/communication, and to indicate a wakeful period during sleep.)
I must say I do prefer the 78er though, as it was the original version developed by Ian Sommerville and Brion Gysin in the 1960s and generates a larger, faster moving and more potent flicker-field that produces effects in the viewer much sooner than the 45er. It also enables more room to manoeuvre one's vision up and down the cylinder to hit the exact brainwave cycle that makes the magic work, which is slightly different for each individual (this is why Gysin eventually varied the individual elements of the template's pattern). And anyhow, the 78er is far more impressive as an atmosphere-enhancing art object spinning in the room for mysterious effect. (You can still buy 78rpm turntables for under £40, such as the Steepletone ST918, that hasn't got the best sound but will spin correct.)
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The 78rpm Dreamachine template created and
sold by Dream State.
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Although the templates I've made from picture framers mounting board or just plain cardboard box always work well, I've long sought one of greater precision and quality to work with, to enable study of the effects more scientifically. Happily, this is now possible, for the London-based company, Dream State, produce both 45rpm and 78rpm templates that are available via mail-order at a reasonable price (you can see some in action here). The templates are professionally constructed from thick and sturdy black acetate, are neatly cut by a CNC machine, and utilise the classic (and best) hole-pattern design created by Brion Gysin. For those without a record deck or who desire something more, Dream State also both manufacture and sell custom-made, complete Dreamachines, with an in-built motor, that combines both attractiveness with functionality.
The Dreamachine - described as the first work of art designed to be viewed with the eyes closed - is pure and simple genius; it widens the mind and opens occult doors in all intrepid psychonauts. Since the first Dreamachine, other devices that provoke light-gnosis have been developed, notably Lucia, a stroboscopic array that efficiently imparts a "Hypnagogic Light Experience", according to its two inventors, the Swiss mind-doctors Dr Dirk Proeckl and Dr Engelbert J. Winkler. It's now up to version No.03, and Lucia's users are reportedly very enthusiastic. One wonders what will flash in future.
Two books on the Dreamachine are Paul Cecil, ed., Flickers of the Dreamachine: The Definitive Headbook (Codex, 1996), which includes full plans for building a 45rpm model, and John Geiger, The Chapel of Extreme Experience: A Short History of Stroboscopic Light & the Dream Machine (Soft Skull Press, 2003). Complete plans for the building of both 45rpm and 78rpm Dreamachines are here. Specially-designed OKOK Research Bureau background music for Dreamachine experiments is here.
12 JAN 2016
THE SHROPSHIRE PROJECTIONS 2016
I am pleased to announce that this year's Shropshire Projections and after-rites interwined an insightfully pleasing combination of sex, the occult and mystery. "Tasteful" was the word, "Notebooks at the ready" the sentence, and black glass plinths.
We are starting to see more cute and professional operators satisfying strange longings through the darkness, such as: "I cannot speak English, only some simple words know it." Everyday win the lottery. Replicating portals anyone?
All-in-All amazing, with new sky philosophy earthed, relations sealed, and at least three watches stopping at the high point. As the bulbs cooled down we contemplated the powdered wig on a marble staircase, and it was obvious Abortion is Holocaust.
Afterwards it seems that, now the stones have befriended the snow, the usual shows sound subtly different, as if the signals were affected, or flavoured, by the hills and mountains they pass through or bounce off. Ergo the current Overton Window?
The Shropshire Projections are an invite-only event. Please do not contact me asking how to be put on the guest list because I have no influence over this. Also, do not confuse them with these.
06 JAN 2016
DR ADOLF STEG - ARTIST
In the battle for eyeballs many artists attempt to shock and awe the public, but it all-too-often reveals an obvious contrived emptiness. The British creative, Dr Adolf Steg, is well apart sideways from all this, like a purple bearded lady who stands on the ceiling above a catwalk morphing into a werewolf and emitting drops of screaming poison-nectar into the white paper cups of the trembling glitterati. Adolf is the creator and purveyor of a peculiar sardonic psychedelia that variously involves art objects from found objects, SPON magazine (a varying format/titled publication featuring much wild use of colour shining full of his weird pro-antisocial drawings), 3D sculpture and what could be described as the indescribable. It's truly far out baby. You can see further...
For more information on Dr Adolf Steg go here and/or here and/or here. Dr Adolf Steg can be e-mailed here. Images from the collection of fellow Dr Steg appreciator, Idwal Fisher.
05 JAN 2016
THE HIGHGATE VAMPIRE - THEN & NOW
My interest in the "Highgate Vampire" case comes and goes like a recurring dream or stonetape. It's confusive, like a Goth who paints himself white but dresses all in black. Beginning in 1967 (although there are possible sightings dating back to at least 1901), on one hand it's all made-up nonsense; on the other there's something very real behind the presented scenes. Maybe it was Halloween, scaremongering, but I've been having another look at the phenomenon, and shelled out for a couple of audio releases by the Vampire Research Society (aka: the International Society For The Advancement Of Irrefutable Vampirological And Lycanthropic Research), founded in 1970 by the (Old Catholic) Bishop Seán Manchester, who is one of the two main protagonists involved in the Highgate Vampire case (the other is David Farrant, a former High Priest of Witchcraft and founder of the Highgate Vampire Society).
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LEFT TO RIGHT: High Priest of Witchcraft
David Farrant and Old Catholic Bishop Seán Manchester, back
in the day when they were chasing the Highgate Vampire
around North London. (Bishop Manchester claims to have
found, staked and killed the fiend.)
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A tenner brought me The Highgate Vampire 2×CD-r set and The Devil's Fool CD-r. The presentation would have benefited from a bit more flair and professionalism, as disappointingly, the disks arrived in generic plain white paper sleeves with no case, no covers nor tracklist; indeed no info of any kind apart from the handwritten titles in blue felt-tip pen. One obtains a deep delve into the phenomenon as each disk is over 77 minutes long.
The Highgate Vampire Disk 1 has Bishop Manchester (nicknamed "Mad Manny" and "Bishop Bonkers") hamming it right up as he gives his own account of the Highgate Vampire case, assisted by clips of the other closely involved protagonists. Special effects flavour the voices, that are interspersed with Hammer-Horror-style Dracula music. The Highgate Vampire Disk 2 consists of various archive recordings of Mr Farrant re: the case, but mostly features a 1978 conversation between himself and Bishop Manchester (presumably recorded before their 'duel'-to-the-'death' by sabres in France, that resulted in the faked demise of the Bishop and the start of their pamphlet and internet wars), concerning Mr Farrant's involvement in the Highgate affair, his Order of the Black Moon and practice of Necromancy, the difference between Black and White Magic, etc. It's been edited in a biased way to paint Mr Farrant as a cad.
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John Pope (aka: "The Imperial Toad").
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The highlight is Bishop Manchester's interview with one of Mr Farrant's former cohorts in sorcery, the Satanist, John Pope (who has since renamed himself Dr John Pope-de-Locksley). In this unintentionally hilarious section, the self-proclaimed magickal son of Aleister Crowley, nicknamed the "Black Pope", talks about his rituals and plans then confesses that he wants to become King John II of England on his way to ruling the world, although these days he's been reduced to leading Jack The Ripper tours around a tiny part of the globe and casting spells for cash.
The Devil's Fool is another compilation of Mr Farrant's myriad Highgate-Vampire-related media interviews and appearances, again editorially slanted in Bishop Manchester's favour. It repeats too much material from The Highgate Vampire Disk 2 to be satisfying and some of the rest can easily be had via YouTube and Podcast devourings, so be warned.
I appreciated the three disks in the moment. They flit between tedious and riveting and cover a fascinating case, for esoteric and sociological reasons. Their antagonistic/accusing structure give them a certain tabloid thrill, but neither party is innocent. I mean, come on, it wasn't a hunt for a "vampire" or "tall dark figure" spectre, but for fame and groovy groupies; ghoulish rag-and-bone men seeking cash from graveyard trash, however much they insist their intentions were otherwise. It's sad that these two elderly men, one-time colleagues, now inimical enemies, have been locked in a decades-long vice-versa assault maze for a squalid Mistake Debate. Al Ucard spins.
Don't get me wrong though, overall I like this intrepid duo and the circus they ringlead. They've transformed their lives into something far more marvellous and interesting than most humdrummers do, and have pretty much morphed themselves into living legends. Such "Fake It Until You Make It" ploys shew the power and possibilities of Intention, that include the reawakening and sustenance of the Highgate Cemetery Entity.
The Vampire Research Society, The Highgate Vampire 2×CD-r. Total time 156 minutes approx. Undated. £4.99 inc p&p. The Vampire Research Society, The Devil's Fool CD-r. Total time 79 minutes approx. Undated. £4.99 inc p&p. Both were available from Bishop Manchester's imprint, the Gothic Press, but this website has since been deleted, and they are not listed in the revamped (forgive the pun) domain.