Slow-evolving, sometimes menacing, at others soothing, Scott’s latest release is the confident output of an artist deeply connected to his work. @bandcamp https://earthmantra.bandcamp.com/album/a-sky-full-of-ghosts | Continue reading
ON DECK: I suspect today will be a day full of interruptions, but I’m aiming for 8 pages of script and some outlining. We’ll see. As things (hopefully) calm down around here, I’m hoping to get some thinking time back.INBOX: 100, but a bunch of those are delivery notifications: I … | Continue reading
DAGON ALLEY is part of what I call my LOVECRAFT’S YEOVIL cycle of work (there’s an art / photography book of the same name currently in production). It’s partially inspired by hidden parts / wrong-angle views of my home town – how it can suddenly reveal itself to me in new, unexp … | Continue reading
I love Tokarczuk’s work, but this is a doorstep of a thing – even on Kindle, I think it took out 5% of the battery life just downloading the bastard – and I’d been putting it off because this year I’ve been in the mood to read nimbly across shorter works. But autumn is approachin … | Continue reading
All of us who were in this issue — I did a gig with the brilliant Becky Cloonan therein – were sent this presentation box. Apparently Past Me took a photo, probably in full knowledge that Future Me would not remember this, nor would he remember where he put the box. Past Me was q … | Continue reading
For the next five or six days I am basically Pressing All The Buttons. I am also faintly angry about everything and wish to Scheme, but I need to clear the backlog first. ON DECK: Outline, newsletter, script, consult document, script. Also, something in this page’s theme has popp … | Continue reading
Onsturicheit is a project by modular sound wizard Peter Moorkens. The name is derived from a Dutch word from the Dark Ages that means turbulence, noise, unbridled, wildness, etc… And that perfectly describes his musical approach: Electronic, chaotic, random, noisy, improvised… an … | Continue reading
In the last of the morning light – storms incoming. I picked up an unexpected job late yesterday, so the first thing to do is knock out a quick outline of that, and then go straight into all the other things I already had to do today, so I’m descending into the mines tout suite. | Continue reading
I look at something like this and just think: Angus McKie was right. Angus McKie’s starscapes always looked like that. (Yes, I had three out of the four original Hamlyn TTA books as a kid, as well as McKie’s own COMIC TALES) | Continue reading
This entire post from the people at Optional in Iceland. Business-card sized notebooks, flipbacks, prototypes – must re-read and digest. I still have some of their excellent island-themed notebooks. | Continue reading
Not sure this will work, but let’s give it a shot: For this guest mix I present you, the listener, with an absolutely stellar outing from an ambient DJ that hails from Hungary. Not only that, but the only female ambient DJ in Hungary. How cool is that? Beyond a measurable scale o … | Continue reading
I don’t know a lot about jazz, and even less about John Coltrane — I am, however, completely devoted to the music of Alice Coltrane. But Coltrane came up in conversation with a publisher friend a year or so back, and I’ve been meaning to learn more. COLTRANE: THE STORY OF A SOUND … | Continue reading
I’ve always believed that the imagination is a spiritual quality that, like memory, can be trained and developed. MY LAST BREATH, Luis Bunuel | Continue reading
Taking a moment to look back on my mark-making here recently and pick out the pieces I thought worked better than others, mostly for my own consideration going forward. Donnée Book – which I should have just added to the “notebooking patrol“ Proust And His Fucking Biscuit (this t … | Continue reading
Vodka martinis now possible. (One part frozen vodka, scant teaspoon dry vermouth, two drops bitters if wished, stir and serve with twist of lemon or lime peel) | Continue reading
A gentle space. | Continue reading
I used to write flash fictions. Miniatures, mostly. I guess I had some kind of mental block about fiction fragments, which I kind of regret now. Probably because I have a folder in my filing system called “Loose Ideas” that is pretty much nothing but fragments and broken notions, … | Continue reading
The stages of Alban Fischer’s cover for BARILOCHE: Oliver Munday: Carlos Esparza; Latter two from Casual Optimist’s essential monthly round-up. | Continue reading
Remember when Instagram mostly existed as a repository for photos of food? Happy breakfast time Allergy season seems to have come off its peak, but it’s tooooo late for me. Lovely selection of Ian Miller illustrations over here. Ian Miller was the art editor at INTERZONE magazine … | Continue reading
Henry might grow up to do something really evil like run for political office, if he were destined to grow up at all, which is something I’ll take care of later on. Steve Erickson has a weird tempo as a writer. He will slip into ponderous longeurs, and then blast you out of your … | Continue reading
I’ve got a jaw harp, but I’m always afraid it’s going to vibrate my teeth out of my head. | Continue reading
The pollen count out there is murderous, and somewhat freaky for this time of year. But the sun is out, things are growing, my body will soon adjust and clear out the last of the aches and pains, and all is well. ON DECK: Recording DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT 102 today, which takes me … | Continue reading
One of the US nuclear bombs stored at a Dutch air base may have been damaged in a recent accident, according to a report published on Monday, which comes at a time when a new generation of the weapons are due to arrive on the continent. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) … | Continue reading
Taking a moment to look back on my mark-making here recently and pick out the pieces I thought worked better than others, mostly for my own consideration going forward. Chekhov’s Water Bottle: BULLET TRAIN (2022) Paying To Be The Product METROPOLIS And The Confusion Dennis Potter … | Continue reading
The lilac tree is coming back into leaf. It only got a partial prune in winter, so we’ll see how it goes. ON DECK: I’m on schedule. The finals of DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT scripts will be locked by end of day, we start recording in around two weeks from now. I have three modules lef … | Continue reading
This is a book cover. I discovered it on a Book Cover Review post, and hunted for a better image than they had. The post by Erik Carter includes interior images and more details. While the cover is an absolute failure of marketing, it’s an absolute triumph of aesthetics and form. … | Continue reading
John Coulthart on the novel THE ZEN GUN, a book he’d previously avoided for pretty much exactly the same reasons I’ve avoided it. He notes, that, as ever, Bruce Sterling gives good quote that draws the eye: Yet Bayley’s elemental energy, his mastery of the sense of wonder, cannot … | Continue reading
Catasterization signals an end to the era of metamorphosis. When someone can no longer be transformed, but has to be saved, he is cast into a star. In the world of Zeus, these are the cases where there is no other way out. So it could be said that life on earth was constellated w … | Continue reading
I’d forgotten how incredibly good this record is. The follow-up to John Levy’s astonishing ‘Tibetan Buddhist Rites from The Monasteries of Bhutan’, this second volume again sees the London ethnomusicologist (fit that on your passport!) delving deep within a sacred culture and bri … | Continue reading
A short selection of previous notes on writing and process: status 1nov22: Zero Draft – “The zero draft is the draft you will never show anyone….” On Writing In Layers On Winging It: Work, Planning And Growing Your own Luck It Doesn’t End When You Think It Does: The Penultimate C … | Continue reading
I’d love to hunt down a copy of this one day. Check out that cast. It also included Ciaran Hinds. I remember Tim Roth’s performance being one of his most exuberantly evil. It was a tv play on BBC 1 in 1990, part of The Play On 1 strand that I think was a belated… | Continue reading
An international team of archaeologists have analyzed hundreds of ancient human remains found in Europe’s wetlands, revealing these “bog bodies” were part of a tradition that spanned millennia. People were buried in bogs from the prehistoric period until early modern times. The t … | Continue reading
We are pleased to announce the audio drama podcast serial THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT. THE DEPARTMENT OF MIDNIGHT stars James Callis (Battlestar Galactica, Castlevania, Picard), is created and written by Warren Ellis and is produced by Kevin Kolde, Fred Seibert, Brian Guicciardo a … | Continue reading
While similar art has been found at other ancient settlements in the region, the Sayburç images are unique in that they appear to be related to one another. The two panels are horizontally adjacent, creating a progressing scene. Each features similar images—someone facing off aga … | Continue reading
Gallery of Kim Simonsson’s latest sculptural work here. Atmospheric images taken outdoors capture the self-assured figures as they wander through woodland, equipped for an expedition. The most recent characters feature edible greenery and cabbage that grows from their limbs, tors … | Continue reading
This was the first line. I’d written a short document. I printed it off and pasted the pages into a large Field Notes Dime Novel Edition notebook. And I went to a hotel room in London and did… | Continue reading
People keep asking me where I find stuff, or where to start with an RSS reader. I exported my subscruptions, and damn, there are a LOT of dead blogs out there. Here is a selection of blogs from the… | Continue reading