Carnival of Souls (1962) is one of my favourite films, so I've seen it lots of times. Up until yesterday, however, I hadn't seen the colorized version, from which this screenshot is taken. The finished product reminds me of the makeup morticians apply to corpses.
As with all the best experimental films, it takes a while to twig what's going on with Pat O'Neil's 1967 short film 7362. As the images drift, subdivide and transform like the hot wax blobs in a lava lamp, however, you'll find that it doesn't really matter what you 'get', only what you see and feel.
I'm all for forging ahead with things, but even I have to admit that something has been lost in the press button digital age in terms of experimentation. Analogue was tricky, cumbersome and time-consuming - but it was certainly fun, and it could make even a bunch of old shapes and colours feel new.
A menhir (if you've never read Asterix) is a tall stone placed in an upright position. This one is from neolithic France, and features a schematic female figure in relief.
In June 1965, Andy Warhol went to the 41st floor of the Time Life Building in New York, set up an Auricon camera and, over two consecutive nights, filmed the Empire State Building from the window. When projected in slow motion (16 frames per second, as specified by Warhol) the six and a half hours of footage runs for eight hours and five minutes.
An exercise in watching (and feeling) the passage of time, the film is, of course, pretty boring, despite the fact that there is, actually, quite a lot going on. Lights blink, the window mists, the picture blurs, the frame wobbles, stuff like that.
The whole project embodies one of Warhol's key principles: 'when nothing happens, you have the chance to think about everything' (see my previous post for another embodiment of the maxim). It's a quote that has genuinely been one of my biggest influences in terms of both art and life, so if you ever find me staring blankly into space, I'm not inactive, I'm just thinking about everything.
In recent years, I've found myself becoming more interested in experimental, abstract music - I've even made some of it myself. I'm particularly interested in the 'barely there' - sound recordings that could be ambient, minimal or field recordings, and unfold in their own time and space, sometimes their own universe.
There's lots of this music about, and I've decided to make a regular (or thereabouts) mix tape of things that particularly appeal to me. No overarching themes or gimmicks, just an hour of sound for listening, sleeping, knitting, looking mindlessly out of the window, whatever works.
Not always quiet, not particularly relaxing, but immersive and potentially transportative. Headphones or equivalent recommended, but do what you like, they're your ears.
All tracks are relatively recent and are available to buy on Bandcamp.
Track Listing: John Macedo: Short Year / Sun Picture: Various Computer Music Spaces (Excerpt) / Cosmic Drag: Heavy Rain / Anne F Jacques: Collisions / Carnivorous Plants: Duet For Piano & Open Window / Li Song: Two Mobile Phones & A Snare Drum / Primitive Structures: Admiration Course 1 / E. Jason Gibbs: Three Steel Plates With Chimes & Flagpoles / P. Wits: No End & No Beginning / Kumao: Guitar Solo 3
1970 flyer for what turned out to be a very Ballard-ian exercise in the breakdown of societal behaviour. Drunkenness, licentiousness and public urination all featured.
A selection of German covers for Dracula related records. Happy Halloween / All Hallows / All Saints Eve / Samhain, everybody!
Weird scenes in the Bio-Feedback Chamber. From John Boorman's disastrous, stupendous Exorcist II: The Heretic.
Poland, 1970. In the District Cultural Centre in Pulawy, a troupe of state sponsored pantomine artists improvise a ballet while someone goes mad on a drum kit. Luckily, a film camera is there to record it.
This stuff is like catnip to me. And there are two more parts to the film!
Yard Sale For World Peace is one of my go to contemporary music labels. Operating out of Olympia, Washington, they specialise in spontaneous music, mostly recorded live or at home on a range of inexpensive equipment. DIY is the guiding principle, and this extends to their design aesthetic, which is basic but always invigorating and attractive.
One of my favourite releases on the label is by Connective Tissue. It has one track, repeated both sides: a 21 minute synth and drums jam that stretches and grows and soars before ending in what might be a shower of cosmic sparks. Like most YSFWP releases, it is organic and real: the track breathes, and you can feel the space it was recorded in. It's unadorned and imperfect, which makes it brilliant.
The prodigious Jeff Keen cuts, rips, scratches, scribbles, burns, melts, mutilates and defaces his way to fervid, febrile creation - snapshots taken from his 1967 film Cineblatz.
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