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Exploring Penda's Fen, a 1974 BBC film that achieved mythic status.In 1974, the BBC broadcast the film Penda's Fen, leaving audiences mystified and spellbound. “Make no mistake. We had a major work of

Described by W. B. Yeats as a "scholar, connoisseur, drunkard, poet, pervert, most charming of men," Count Stanislaus Eric Stenbock (1860--1895) is surely the greatest exemplar of the Decadent movemen

Written in the early years of the twenty-first century, when the author was engaged in dream-explorations and mystical practices centered on the Greek Moon goddess Selene, Somnium is an intensely per

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

The first unabridged English translation of a classic work on dreams by an author regarded as the father of lucid dreaming.First published anonymously in 1867, Dreams and How to Guide Them is the lost classic of lucid dreaming―that is, the art of becoming aware that one is dreaming and then continuing to dream, whether to fly, have erotic encounters, or just explore the dream world further. It has long been a rare and legendary work. Freud knew of it, but never managed to find a copy, and surrealist André Breton begins his own book The Communicating Vessels by discussing it This is the first complete English translation―there was a heavily abridged edition in 1982, much-loved and also rare―and it is now published to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Hervey de Saint-Denys. This new edition is edited and introduced by Phil Baker, who traces the author’s life and connects his work with Tibetan Buddhist dream practices, and surrealism, as well as to more recent research in

An expanded edition of the classic exploration of the English esoteric musical underground―with the first biography of Coil, Current 93, and Nurse With Wound.This newly expanded edition of England's Hidden Reverse, the classic exploration of the English esoteric musical underground that includes the first, and only, biographies of Coil, Current 93, and Nurse With Wound, is based on exclusive interviews and unprecedented access to all three bands’ personal archives. Together, these genre-defying bands and their circles represent the English underground in all its cultural, artistic, and sexual variety. Over four decades, the three intertwined groups have maintained a symbiotic, yet uneasy, relationship with the mainstream of popular culture, even as their music, beliefs, and practices have repelled them from it. Theirs was a clandestine scene whose work accents the many occulted peculiarities of Englishness that flow through generations of outsiders, channeling personalities as diverse

Forthcoming from the MIT Press.

The first full colour monograph on the work of acclaimed graphic artist Arik Roper.Arik Roper’s vibrant psychedelic illustration and painting springs from the depths of a fertile imagination, invoking psychedelic visions, ancient dreams, and idyllic natural environments. Since the 1990s, his creations have appeared on rock and metal album covers by bands including Black Crowes, Sleep, Earth, Sunn O))) and OM, screen-printed posters, in books and magazines, animations, game designs, and beyond. Vision of the Hawk collects an epic selection of his art for the first time in a single volume, alongside unpublished material and sketches, and texts by Roper describing his creative process, as well as by some of his many collaborators including authors Erik Davis, Peter Bebergal, and Jay Babcock, and musicians Stephen O’Malley (Sunn O)))), Al Cisneros (Sleep, Om) and Matt Pike (Sleep, High on Fire).

A forensic investigation into a single LP: Dr. John, the night tripper's Gris-gris.Two-Headed Doctor is a forensic investigation into a single LP: Dr. John, the night tripper's Gris-gris. Though released in 1968 to poor sales and a minimum of critical attention, Gris-gris has accumulated legendary status over subsequent decades for its strangeness, hybridity, and innovative production. It formed the launch pad for Dr. John's image and lengthy career and the ghostly presence of its so-called voodoo atmosphere hovers over numerous cover versions, samples, and re-invocations. Despite the respect given to the record, its making is shrouded in mystery, misunderstandings, and false conclusions. The persona of Dr. John, loosely based on dubious literary accounts of a notorious voodooist and freed slave, a nineteenth-century New Orleans resident known as Doctor John, provided Malcolm 'Mac' Rebennack with a lifelong mask through which to transform himself from session musician in order to const

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

The history of India’s first electronic music studio founded in 1969 at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad by David Tudor.Subcontinental Synthesis explores the history of India’s first electronic music studio, founded in 1969 at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad with the support of the composer David Tudor. The essays and writings unravel the narrative and context surrounding the studio as well as the work of the Indian composers who created groundbreaking recordings during its four years of activity. The texts reflect on the role of electronic music within a post-independence India, considering its interconnections with experimental design, radical pedagogies, and the international avant-garde, as well as the encircling conditions of Western ideological soft power within the global expansion of Modernism. Contributors include Frances Morgan, Matthew Williams, Geeta Dayal, Shilpa Das, Alexander Keefe, Paul Purgas.

The first unabridged English translation of a classic work on dreams by an author regarded as the father of lucid dreaming.First published anonymously in 1867, Dreams and How to Guide Them is the lost classic of lucid dreaming―that is, the art of becoming aware that one is dreaming and then continuing to dream, whether to fly, have erotic encounters, or just explore the dream world further. It has long been a rare and legendary work. Freud knew of it, but never managed to find a copy, and surrealist André Breton begins his own book The Communicating Vessels by discussing it This is the first complete English translation―there was a heavily abridged edition in 1982, much-loved and also rare―and it is now published to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Hervey de Saint-Denys. This new edition is edited and introduced by Phil Baker, who traces the author’s life and connects his work with Tibetan Buddhist dream practices, and surrealism, as well as to more recent research in

Core members of the legendary British experimental band Coil tell its story in the present-tense, as events unfold across their twenty-year history.Between 1983 and 2004 the legendary British experimental band Coil established themselves as shape-shifting doyens of esoteric music whose influence has grown spectacularly in the years since their untimely end. With music that could be dark, queer, and difficult, but often retained a warped pop sensibility, Coil’s albums were multi-faceted repositories of esoteric knowledge, lysergic wisdom and acerbic humor. In Everything Keeps Dissolving, core members John Balance and Peter Christopherson tell Coil’s story in the present-tense, and from their personal perspectives, as events unfold across their twenty-year history. Accompanied by their various collaborators, Coil describe the fertile eruption of ideas, inspirations, and stray tangents that informed their lyrical and musical visions―as well as those dead paths and castoff concepts that

A series of essays modeled on the Purgatory of Dante Alighieri―personal reflections, historical incidents, and unexpected mythological correspondences.“The obsession with Beauty and Virtue must inevitably bring Trash into existence. Trash offers a way of lifting their curse; it marks the end of all such fatal enchantments.” In this sequel to 2020’s Inferno, Hollings shifts his attention away from America in the Age of Pop to take a close look at European decadence and decay at the end of the nineteenth century. Purgatory follows the twin fates of Hallward and Hancock as they are drawn, like so many artists before them, towards the city of Paris. It was here that exiled Swedish playwright August Strindberg struggled to turn iron and carbon into gold, while the aesthete Sâr Péladan staged his sumptuous Salons de la Rose+Croix. Over a series of thirty-three essays directly modeled on the Purgatory of Dante Alighieri, personal reflections, historical incidents, and unexpected mythologica

The first walking guide to London’s role in the evolution of horror cinema, inspired by the city’s dark histories and labyrinthine architectures.Death Lines is the first walking guide to London’s role in the evolution of horror cinema, inspired by the city’s dark histories, labyrinthine architectures, atmospheric streetscapes, and uncanny denizens. Its eight walks lead you on a series of richly researched yet undeniably chilling tours through Chelsea, Notting Hill, Westminster, Bloomsbury, Covent Garden, and the East End, along the haunted banks of the river Thames, and down into the depths of the London Underground railway. Each tour weaves together London’s stories and takes the reader to magnificent, eerie, and sometimes disconcertingly ordinary corners of the city, unearthing the literature, legends, and history behind classics like Peeping Tom and An American Werewolf in London, and lesser-known works such as mind-control melodrama The Sorcerers; Gorgo, Britain’s answer to Godzi

A series of painterly and poetic considerations on a feminized history of the rye fungus Ergot, the chemical basis of LSD from the author of Our Fatal Magic.From the cellular to the galactic, via Paleolithic cave markings to the trace impressions left by drone photography on our mind’s eye, incorporating dancing plagues, communist psychedelic witches, hyper-sexual fungi, chthonic descents, and skyward ascents, The Neon Hieroglyph weaves together a series of painterly and poetic considerations on a feminized history of the rye fungus Ergot, the chemical basis of LSD. The Neon Hieroglyph constructs a house of lyrical reflections for our ghosts to inhabit, a place where the gothic and the hallucinatory collide, where gothic affect and fractal dread form a mausoleum for psychedelic specters. And also the Sun! The Sun is a ghost that haunts the night! Framed with new essays by artist and writer Caspar Heinemann and anthropologist Amy Hale, Tai Shani’s The Neon Hieroglyph continues a journ

Stories of the secret underground Cold War–era Soviet music subculture that distributed forbidden music on used hospital x-rays.During the Cold War era, the songs that Soviet citizens could listen to were ruthlessly controlled by the state. But a secret underground subculture of music lovers and bootleggers defied the censors, building recording machines and making their own records of forbidden jazz, rock 'n' roll, and Russian music, cut onto used hospital x-ray film. Bone Music is the follow up the acclaimed X-Ray Audio: The Strange History of Soviet Music on the Bone, delving deeper into a forgotten era when being a music fan could mean a lengthy prison sentence, or worse. Who made these records? Why did they do it and how was it even possible? Foregrounding interviews and oral testimonies gathered over five years, Bone Music presents the stories of the original bone bootleggers, their customers, musicians, record collectors, and commentators, evoking a spirited resistance to a re

A compendium of other musics, channelled from the spirit world, the fairy kingdom, outer space, secret societies and occult lodges.This unique collection of esoteric earworms gathers, and reproduces,

The first in-depth biographical study of the British surrealist and occultist Ithell Colquhoun,This book offers the first in-depth biographical study of the British surrealist and occultist Ithell Col

An account of the English rock band Hawkwind shows them to be one of the most innovative and culturally significant bands of the 1970s. Fifty years on from when it first formed, the English rock ban

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

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

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 chronicle of a lifetime's passion for gig-going, by one of British television's most respected writers. "Foreground Music is an absolute gem. Charming, very funny and often achingly melancholy, Gr

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

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

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

An anthology of conversations and essays, memories and commentary from the heyday of British pop music writing.In its heyday, from the 1960s to the 1980s, the UK music press was the forging ground for

Astronomy is another form of cinema. Time is fragmented and extended. Matter becomes light in motion. The camera remains fixed, looking outwards into the darkness, while the earth moves beneath our fe

A literary mix tape that explores the entwined boundaries between sound, material culture, landscape and esoteric belief.Trees rigged up to the wireless radio heavens. A fax machine used to decode the

The life of escape artist, fortune-teller, author and raconteur "Ironfoot Jack," aka Jack Rudolph Neave (1881--1959), the self-styled "King of the Bohemians" in London's Soho."I became acquainted with