Many older people in Russia remember seeing and hearing mysterious vinyl flexi-discs when they were young. They had partial images of skeletons on them, could be played like gramophone records and wer
A vibrant, wry, and engaging account of life as an adventurous, queer young person in late 1970s London discovering themselves as an artist, and an individual.While working as a photographer’s model, gallery usher, and exotic dancer, Dorothy “Max” Prior witnessed the births of Adam and the Ants, The Monochrome Set, The Sex Pistols, and Throbbing Gristle, as well as drumming in her own cult band Rema Rema and recording with Industrial Records. Her exuberant commentaries, each presented as a stand-alone episode, illustrate the multilayered nature of the London music, art and fashion worlds of the late 1970s, and the overlap between the early punk scene with the city’s rapidly evolving club and queer cultures.
A revised edition of Phil Baker’s critically lauded biography of artist and occultist, Austin Osman Spare.London has harbored many curious characters, but few more curious than the artist and visionary Austin Osman Spare (1886–1956). A controversial enfant terrible of the Edwardian art world, the young Spare was hailed as a genius and a new Aubrey Beardsley, while George Bernard Shaw reportedly said “Spare’s medicine is too strong for the average man.” But Spare was never made for worldly success and he went underground, falling out of the gallery system to live in poverty and obscurity south of the river. Absorbed in occultism and sorcery, voyaging into inner dimensions and surrounding himself with cats and familiar spirits, he continued to produce extraordinary art while developing a magical philosophy of pleasure, obsession, and the subjective nature of reality. Today Spare is both forgotten and famous, a cult figure whose modest life has been much mythologized since his death. This
A wide-ranging collection of interviews, anecdotes, essays, and ephemera concerning one of the most enigmatic bands to emerge from the 1960s hippy scene."Encyclopaedic in scope, passionate in tone, this book is a minotaur's labyrinth of information about one of the most remarkable groups in 20th century music. Be glad, for everything you need to know is here." (Rob Young, The Wire)First published in 2003 and long out of print, Be Glad For The Song Has No Ending: an Incredible String Band Compendium is the definitive book about the ISB. Containing a wealth of interviews, essays, and ephemera from the band's brief but tangled history, this new revised and expanded edition includes two new pieces by ISB member Rose Simpson on Witchseason Productions’ idiosyncratic offices and on recording with the ISB in the Sound Techniques studio, as well as interviews with Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys, folk musician Alasdair Roberts, and Ossian Brown of Coil and Cyclobe.Contributors include Rowan Will
A comprehensive historical survey of the work of undertakers in the first half of the twentieth century, essential reading for anyone interested in understanding an often hidden but certainly most fas
A memoir about the recovery from alcoholism, habitual drug use and mental illness, from broadcaster, and co-founder and editor of The Quietus website, John Doran.Jolly Lad is a memoir about the recove
In 1543, the ancient world began to unravel. The Polish astronomer Copernicus wrecked the old sense that the cosmos revolved around a stationary Earth, opening up the dizzying freedoms and dangers of
A lively and personal account of the strange, centuries long entanglement between humans and spiders.What happens when one making animal meets another? Gossamer Days explores the strange web of spide
A journey deep into the heart of the trash experience: tales from the underground and exploitation movie scene in America during the 1960s.Trash has always served me well—over the years it has become
A biography of a key figure in psychedelic history: the man who turned Timothy Leary on to LSD.Of all the figures associated with the history of LSD there is none more enigmatic than Michael Hollingsh
The first substantial scholarly volume devoted to artist Tessa Farmer's work.For almost two decades now, Tessa Farmer has been evolving a new species of fairy. They represent the point at which scienc
Scholarship, debate, archival material, and esoterica relating to Arthur Machen, a “modern master of the weird tale.”For twenty years, Faunus, the biannual journal of the Friends of Arthur Machen, has
A legendary singer, folklorist, and music historian, Shirley Collins has been an integral part of the folk-music revival for more than sixty years. In her new memoir, All in the Downs, Collins tells
One hundred objects, exuding magic and mystery, emerge from the darkness of Cornwall's much-loved Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in this book of haunting photographs.Artist and photographer Sara Hanna
Jesús "Jess" Franco is an iconic figure in world cinema. His sexually charged, fearlessly personal style of filmmaking has never been in vogue with mainstream critics, but for lovers of the strange an
The fascinating phantasmal worlds in the work of the artist Cathy Ward.Pulsing and surging with dark energies, Cathy Ward's mesmerising drawings capture a restlessly inquiring spirit through the metic
From occult rites in soft porn discos to Sooty the TV puppet's amphetamine problem, a feast of curiosities from British film and TV.The past, they say, is another country, but as seen through the lens
A crime and a six-decade cover-up: the death of a fashion designer in the cesspit of vice and violence that was 1950s London.In 1954, Jean Mary Townsend was strangled with her own scarf and stripped o
Drawings, personal photographs, documents, and ephemera by underground cartoonist, artist, writer, musician, and amateur magician Savage Pencil.Pulled together from his massive archive of drawings, pe
One night in 1976, a group of squatters entered the Cambodian Embassy in London, an opulent building that had remained empty for two years following the bloody revolution of the Khmer Rouge. For the n
