New blog post: Kay Nielsen's Arabian Nights

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Dominique Sanda, bathed in blue light, in a scene from The Conformist.

Enzo Tarascio in Plato's Allegory of the Cave scene from The Conformist.

Dominique Sanda looking modern and liberated (cigarette, trousers, louche stance etc) in The Conformist.

Jean-Louis Trintignant against wallpaper made stripey by light coming through blinds.

THE CONFORMIST: one of the most exquisitely photographed films ever. (Not going to say "Each frame looks like a painting" b/c it implies Painting is the Superior Art Form; no, it looks like a FILM.) See it on a big screen if you get the chance; there's a recently restored version doing the rounds.

I love it. Never seen it on a big screen but I've got the blu-ray. This makes me want to watch it again.

Joe Meek BBC 'Arena' documentary 'The Strange Story of Joe Meek', 5th September, 2007 YouTube video by John Moss

Readers of Alan's next novel may acquaint themselves with Joe Meek's history via the BBC documentary The Strange Story of Joe Meek. From the comments: "This documentary has everything! A dude getting his nose bit off and a talking graveyard cat!" It does.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=-r2h...

The Long London Uncovered | Alan Moore and Iain Sinclair in conversation (4K) YouTube video by John Rogers

youtu.be/Ccyy42oR4mk?...

typodermicfonts.com/downloads/

Ray Larabie describes his Strasua font design: "I released Strasua on January 10, 1999. It was an industrial-influenced display typeface with minimalist forms that produced a distorted appearance. Strasua was closely related to my earlier design Plain Cred, and the two typefaces were nearly identical in construction. The name did not have a specific connection to the design and was one of my less considered choices. Strasua was initially distributed with a free commercial desktop license. In April 2024, I placed it into the public domain."

The cover of The Campfire Headphase (2005) by Boards Of Canada. The group name is set in Strasua.

Strasua, a font design by Ray Larabie.

It's true, and rather fitting that the mention was prompted by Boards Of Canada when childhood memories have been a feature of their music.

I always remembered the series but couldn't have told anyone the name of the strip or the comic it was in until I went searching for it some years ago.

Seven vector hexagons, grey with black outlines on a grid-enabled background.

Hmm, yeah... I do have a serious reason to be drawing vector hexagons today. Just thought I'd start like this...

A compilation album on compact disc: Warp20 (Unheard) by Various Artists.

#nowplaying

A portrait painter and specialist in scenes lit by candlelight, Schalcken lived mainly in Dordrecht, though he spent 1692–1697 in England. Dramatically illuminated by a guttering candle, the girl opens the shutter, perhaps to welcome her lover.

Gottfried Schalcken klaxon at National Museum Cardiff 👌🚨...

A panel from Watch Out for the White-Eyes (1972): Man in a hat petting a black cat; both have white eyes. "So your are one of us, eh, puss? Well, don't waste your strength frightening young lads! Our time will come--and when it does, we shall destroy all the weaklings!" The cat: "Na-aaaagh!"

I've just watched the McCartney bass documentary that features Hawkwind and I feel genuinely outraged. It makes a completely unfounded, verging on libellous, claim that "it felt like Hawkwind had a motive [to steal the bass] and it also felt like they also had the personality to go and do it." 1/2

A comic-strip headline: "A thrilling new series starts here"... "Watch Out for the White-Eyes".

Two black-and-white panels from the same strip: a man in a suit is surrounded by a cloud of gas; the same man's head, now with pupil-free eyes.

White-eyed kids remind me of one of my favourite comic strips when I was 10 years old: Watch Out for the White-Eyes in Lion & Thunder. Small globes of experimental gas turn the human and animal inhabitants of an English town into dangerous white-eyed maniacs.

Just remember (per JL Borges) that the solution to the mystery is always inferior to the mystery itself. Or, in this case, the product release can never live up to the unbounded promise of the marketing campaign.

Four cryptic Boards Of Canada posters on a wall somewhere in Los Angeles. A small motorcycle is parked in front of them.

Meanwhile in Los Angeles...

Via www.reddit.com/r/boardsofca...

New blog post: Weekend links 825

Magma Pantin 1977 HD YouTube video by Angel Garcia

It's fäb.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=--iF...

wow

Yes!

The Compact Books edition of The Deep Fix (1966) by Michael Moorcock, credited to James Colvin. "Drugs took him into a nightmare world where logic ceased to exist". Cover art shows a Patrick McGoohan lookalike fixed bu crosshairs at the centre of a stylised eyeball.

An obituary notice for James Colvin, New Worlds magazine, 1970. Obituary: The Man who Nobody Knew Many readers will be saddened to hear of the death of James Colvin, the science fiction writer who contributed actively to New Worlds while it was Colvin at a science fiction convention: one of the few pictures ever taken of this little-known writer under the editorship of John Carnell, and who went on to write progressive fiction and regular book reviews, after Michael Moorcock took over as editor in April 1964. Two of Colvin's best stories were The Mountain (NW 147) and The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius (NW 154). His novel, The Wrecks of Time, was serialised in NW 156 to 158, and a collection of his short stories, The Deep Fix, was published by Compact Books. Colvin was born in 1941 in Surrey, came to London and lived on his own in a Kensington bed-sitter. He avoided personal encounters, and was seldom seen by his colleagues. Tragically, a heavy filing cabinet full of manuscripts fell over, crushing his chest, early in November 1969. After two weeks in hospital he died from pneumonia and other complications associated with a punctured lung. As one of the few people who knew Colvin personally, I feel the science fiction field has lost a talent which never quite came to fruition. To the end, Colvin was a man who nobody really knew. —William Barclay.

"Colvin" also wrote the original draft of The Deep Fix. His untimely death was reported in New Worlds 197.

You’ve seen the cover for The Art of the Unknown: A Visual Treasury of the Esoteric, Uncanny, and Unexplained. Now here’s a peek inside! (Including the first page!)

This is my fourth book in the Art in the Margins series and it is, I think, the strangest and most sprawling of the lot!

From the boardsofcanada community on Reddit: Poster High Res Explore this post and more from the boardsofcanada community

If you're in Soho tomorrow (or even tonight) you can go and look for these.

www.reddit.com/r/boardsofca...

Easily done!

An album release on compact disc: Music Has The Right To Children (1998) by Boards Of Canada.

#nowplaying

Ned Dameron. From Robert E. Howard, Kull, Donald M. Grant, 1985. #NedDameron

Very much, especially with that engraved sun!

That book cover is pure Ghost Box.

I think that one might still be on YT. I spotted it last time I was searching around.