Ex-Industrial… An extract from J.D. Taylor’s Island Story
This is an edited extract from JD Taylor's forthcoming book, Island Story: Journeying Through Unfamiliar Britain Morning on the Acklam Garden City Estate, Middlesbrough, surrounded by cheery red-brick terraces, patriotic flags and, a little beyond, row after row of boarded-up houses,
Time Lapses… an extract from Robert Barry’s The Music of the Future
Time Lapses “…indifferent to the future…” After consuming a Ritz cracker, two Valiums, half a can of Tab, and one weak, vodka-based cocktail, a girl named Karen slips into a coma one Friday night in 1979. Seventeen years later she wakes up and
Extract: A Gathering of Promises, a new book on Texan psych by Ben Graham
The Austin Psych Fest was last weekend, but in the UK we were fully focused on the elections and associated depression/stoicism/recriminations/reinvigoration (delete as appropriate). So in belated celebration of the festival and the 13th Floor Elevators 50th anniversary reunion show
Exclusive extract of Eugene Thacker’s forthcoming Starry Speculative Corpse
This is an extract from the introduction of Starry Speculative Corpse: Horror of Philosophy Vol 2 by Eugene Thacker. It is the second part of a 3-book series, which began with In the Dust of This Planet (Zer0, 2011) and
“Materialistic arseholes and suburban dreamers”: Bowie and the 1960s.
As a big fan of both Bowie and Chris O’Leary, it was as hard to select an extract from Rebel Rebel as it is to choose a favourite Bowie song; each song is covered in a self-contained entry, and they’re all fascinating.
In the end I chose a series of 3 posts which make chronological/conceptual sense, and shed entertaining light on Bowie’s complicated relationship with late ‘60s hippy culture. Also contains The Prettiest Star, which is far from his best track but which, for sentimental reasons, remains one of my all-time favourites.Rebel Rebel (Zer0, 2015) is out on March 27th, there’s a list of stockists here.
Cygnet Committee [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKMSgZo9c8s&w=420&h=315] Recorded: (demo, “Lover to the Dawn,” unreleased) ca. mid-April 1969, 24 Foxgrove Road. Bowie: 12-string acoustic guitar, harmony vocal; Hutchinson: lead vocal, acoustic guitar; (album) ca. late August-early September 1969, Trident. Bowie: lead vocal; Christmas: 12-string acoustic guitar; Wayne: lead guitar; Renwick: rhythm guitar; Wakeman: electric harpsichord; Lodge: bass; Cambridge: drums. Produced: Visconti; engineered: Sheffield, Scott or Toft. First release: 14 November 1969, Space Oddity. Broadcast: 5 February 1970, The Sunday Show. Live: 1969-70. “Cygnet Committee” was, consecutively, a break-up letter to a communal arts center Bowie co-founded, a scattershot attack on the counterculture and a desperate self-affirmation. Deep in this gnomic, nearly ten-minute screed was a struggle to find a workable design for the years ahead, Bowie pledging himself to a life of creative destruction while keeping clear of professional revolutionaries. It was the sound of Bowie willing himself to become a stronger artist, hollowing himself out to let a greater creative force, for good or ill, take hold in him. The possession took. In fleeting moments, you can hear the apocalyptic, utopian voice of “Five Years” and “Sweet Thing,” of “Station to Station” and “‘Heroes.’” The man who was able to write those songs had to go through the crucible of “Cygnet Committee” first.Monsters, Tricksters, Stranglers: an extract from Phil Knight’s Strangled
Extract from Phil Knight's brilliant new book, Strangled: Identity, Status, Structure and The Stranglers, out now, investigating "the greatest punk band", their overlooked mysticism, and their erasure from punk's history. *** Picture for a moment a world in which the most significant
Camden: Last Survivor of a Dead Epoch
This is an extract from Uncommon London, a new title in the excellent Uncommon Guide Books series, which will be published in June 2015. Camden: Last Survivor of a Dead Epoch — Tariq Goddard I wanted to be a writer at a
Dark, the Dim Hear – Daniela Cascella
This is an edited extract from the forthcoming F.M.R.L: Footnotes, Mirages, Refrains + Leftovers of Writing Sound, by Daniela Cascella (author of the blog/book En Abime) - "Ephemeral. F.M.R.L. (frenzy-madness-reverie-love), a fame really, ever merrily, Effie marry Lee: there are words that