The sole object of a ghost story, wrote M. R. James, is to inspire “a pleasing terror in the reader”. James was an academic and writer who reinvented the ghost story for a new era. He believed ghosts should be “malevolent or odious” rather than those “amiable and helpful apparitions” that appeared in stories by authors like Charles Dickens in say A Christmas Carol. In an essay on ghost stories, he claimed the most successful tales “make us envisage a definite time and place, and give us plenty of clear-cut and matter-of-fact detail” but:

...when the climax is reached, allow us to be just a little in the dark as to the working of their machinery. We do not want to see the bones of their theory about the supernatural.

Montague Rhodes James was a scholar of medieval history, who served as Provost of King’s College, Cambridge University. Each Christmas Eve, he would invite a small group of friends and colleagues and students to share some sherry around a fire while he read his latest ghost story. He wrote one story a year and most of his tales of the eerie and the supernatural were set in the world of antiquities and academia, where an individual might accidentally stumble across some ancient secret or forgotten artefact that unleashes unnameable horror. 
 

 
Among the best known of James’ short stories is “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” (1904) in which a rational, you might say somewhat skeptical, and bookish academic called Parkins discovers an ancient whistle among the dunes of a deserted beach while on holiday. The whistle has strange occult markings on one side and an inscription on the other that reads “Quis est iste, qui venit?” which Parkins translates as “Who is this, who is coming?” By removing the whistle from its burial place, Parkins soon finds out what rather than who it is that comes after him.
 

 
In 1968, the multi-talented Jonathan Miller brought the tale to television. Miller edged more towards a psychological (if not quite Freudian) drama in his adaptation of James’ tale which made the film’s supernatural elements all the more disturbing. Parkins or rather Parkin as he is called in Miller’s film, was played by Michael Hordern as a slightly stuffy, retiring man, who mutters and mumbles his way through the story—much of his performance was improvised—as if he is subconsciously aware his actions in finding the whistle symbolizes his own repressed desires and fears. Or as horror writer Kim Newman put it:

...a case of severe sexual frustration leading to absolute dementia

It’s a classic tale beautifully told and one of television’s most chilling and effective ghost stories.
 

 
In Eric Stanton & the History of the Bizarre Underground the sordid tale of the fetish world, this so-called “bizarre underground,” is revealed to be less steeped in the creepy/sleazy milieu it is normally portrayed as coming from. Author Richard Perez Seves details how the fetish subculture had many allies and partners in the supposedly more innocent OVERground world of the happy Fifties and Sixties. This long awaited book tells this story as it should be told, with LOADS of black and white and color art reproductions, histories, collectors’ checklists with detailed descriptions and more. It’s a very “modern” book in the sense that it’s perfect for the short attention span world and can be read in, or out, of order as info is needed.

But I’m not saying there’s not much to read, because there is! And it’s written in an appropriate timeline, with copious notes and a great index. It doesn’t come off like an encyclopedia, nor does it speak down to its audience, and best of all it’s a big hardcover book that is really affordable. It’s actually way cheaper than it should be! Eric Stanton & the History of the Bizarre Underground can be found on sale as you read this for around twenty dollars on Amazon! Which is insane! Even the queen of burlesque Dita Von Teese has put her stamp of approval on the book.
 

 
Everything I love and collect culturally seems to lead to the same time period, that fuzzy period around 1954 when things started bubbling into what we now know as rock n’ roll, teenage and monster cinema, the Beats, MAD Magazine, and the “bizarre fetish underground.” All of these things were initially seen as a threat to society the minute they became a “thing” that had an identity. This identity represented rebellion and freedom. All of these things had been brewing for varying periods of time, some for very long periods of time, by single-minded freethinkers experimenting with obsession, be it art, literature, music, or sex. But there’s a moment when a rebellious idea becomes a thing, meaning something that other people realize is happening and so they join in and start doing it as well. Then it becomes… a threat! And when kids get involved it makes it easier for the “critics” and politicians with agendas to start the finger pointing, blaming, set-ups and knock downs, political committees and so on.

These “things” were such a threat to the powers that be that they were portrayed as causing Communism, crime, drugs, pregnancies and worse. The premiere form of presentation in print of the fetish underground was, in fact, comics. Of course there were “dirty” photos as well—notably the classic Bettie Page shoots that informed male libidos of several generations—but it’s worth noting that—at the very least—50% of all published fetish materials were comics, which is quite odd and interesting. These were comics that were not read by children. It doesn’t seem like many women read them either, of course.
 

 

The price is from 1958, which is pretty remarkable!
 
Unlike most artists, who simply drew what guys like Irving Klaw paid them (very little) to draw, Eric Stanton was very interested in the sexy subject matter he was working with, which is what injected his art with that extra shiny, whip-cracking “something.” He was also instrumental in bringing Gene Bilbrew (aka “Eneg” and other pseudonyms) into that world. Bilbrew was the yang to Stanton’s ying in a sense in that Stanton was a healthy, very fit, white suburban (at that time) family man, and Bilbrew was, as they say, living the life. Gene was an African-American heroin-addicted jazz musician living in, and at the end, dying in (of an overdose) in a porno bookshop on “The Deuce” (42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenue). Their styles were very similar at first (Bilbrew worked for Will Eisner and Jules Feiffer early on and he and Stanton met at the Cartoonists and Illustrators School, where they also met Steve Ditko and struck up a fast friendship). Bilbrew’s art got consistently weirder and weirder as time and his drug addiction went on, becoming so weird that it seemed to be intentional. And maybe it was, but I’m talking weird on two levels, one in subject matter with everyone, including the “pretty girls” used to sell the books he was illustrating becoming monstrous and bizarre (in the traditional sense) and downright ugly! On the other hand he seemed to lose his sense of perspective with arms and legs getting rendered too short, people looking like midgets, really big, almost square, wall-eyed heads, etc. (If all this was , er… on purpose, then Bilbrew has become my all-time favorite artist! Taking a concept as simple as using sexy women to sell hard up guys horny reading material and taking this idea and turning it on its head into a truly bizarre version of itself.)
 

 

 

Three paperback covers, all with Gene Bilbrew art.
 
The big revelation in Eric Stanton & the History of the Bizarre Underground is the direct connection between the world of the adults-only sex underground publications and the burgeoning creation of Marvel Comics. In this book all the guessing, rumors and wondering that has been whispered about for decades is spelled out in words and in pictures!

Eric Stanton was married to a religious extremist who was massively opposed to what he started to do for a living. Stanton realized more and more how much he was turned on by this world he happened to step into and things went very wrong at home. In classic style Odd Couple-style, Stanton moved his studio into his art school buddy’s space. This friend happened to be one Steve Ditko, who would later go on to co-create Spider-Man with Stan Lee.

Keep reading after the jump…

A candid shot of Raquel Welch (as Captain Nirvana) and Robin Williams as the lovable alien Mork on the set of ‘Mork & Mindy’ in 1979.
 
I was still of a tender age when one of the most gorgeous women to ever woman, Raquel Welch showed up looking a bit like a busty, tanned David Bowie in thigh-high silver boots on Mork & Mindy. Are you with me? Good. Because in addition to Raquel’s role as Captain Nirvana—the leader of the very sexy-sounding fictional alien race, the Necrotons, we also get to see Playboy’s Playmate of the Year (1978), Debra Jo Fondren in a bikini in a golden cage. If any of this sounds like a blatant ratings grab, you’d be right. Originally, the episode “Mork vs. the Necrotons,” was going to be presented as a one-hour special but ended up airing as a two-part cliffhanger. If you remember anything about this show, it is likely this very episode or the perplexing thirteenth episode of the season when Mork became the first male Denver Broncos cheerleader. It’s hard to say. I came across a quote from Williams when he was asked about his feelings on the show, a contentious one for the cast:

“There were a lot of little kids who went through puberty watching that episode, and I think we lost a lot of the audience.”

It’s been well documented that Williams, Pam Dawber and the entire crew were challenged by Welch’s diva demands and behavior during filming. At one point the episode’s director, Howard Storm says Raquel suggested her younger, female hench-chicks should wear “dog masks” and she should lead them on to the set “on leashes.” Usually, this would sound like a pretty terrific idea given the fact that A) it came from Raquel Welch, and B) I rest my case. However, Storm mentioned to Welch she didn’t need to do anything but “snap her fingers,” and the girls would “drop to their knees.” Raquel liked this idea very much, and interestingly, the leash idea made its way on to the show anyway, and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.

I rewatched clips from both episodes while putting this post together, because of course, I did, and I laughed nearly to the point of exhaustion at times thanks to the gift which never stops giving—the comedy genius of Robin Williams. Much of Williams’ comedic outbursts on the show were improvised and timing to accommodate the actor to do so was written into scripts early during the show’s first season. After being so pleasantly reminded how great and profoundly weird the show was, I picked up season one and two on DVD for less than twenty bucks and will be binging on the show as soon as they show up. In anticipation of this blessed event, I’ve posted some great photos including some sweet, candid shots of Williams and Welch on the set, and footage of Williams and Welch from the show. Nanu Nanu!
 

Another candid shot of Williams and Welch.
 

 

Playmate of the Year 1978, Debra Jo Fondren (Kama), Raquel Welch, and Vicki Frederick (Sutra).
 
More Mork after the jump…

 
When one thinks about Creedence Clearwater Revival the terms “psychedelic” or “avant-garde” usually don’t come to mind. The Bay Area unit was first and foremost a rock-n-roll group, their unpretentious, southern-flavored style standing in contrast to psychedelic rock, and San Francisco jam bands like Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead. So, it might come as a surprise—as it’s rarely talked about—but CCR did actually dabble in psych and the avant-garde.

While Creedence’s self-titled debut album, released in the summer of 1968, did include a handful of songs with psychedelic elements, and the group would stretch out on some of their subsequent album tracks, few would categorize any of it as experimental. One notable exception is the final number on their sixth LP.

Released in December 1970, Pendulum did expand on the CCR formula, bringing horns and keyboards into the mix, but even still, this wouldn’t have prepared Creedence fans for the album’s closing number, “Rude Awakening #2.” This instrumental starts off sounding very much like a standard CCR tune, before morphing into something else altogether. It’s definitely psychedelic, but also has dramatic qualities. To my ears, it sounds inspired by the Sgt. Pepper’s track, “A Day in the Life.” It’s definitely weird, but, ultimately, the song doesn’t really go anywhere, and after six-plus minutes, “Rude Awakening #2” simply fades out.
 

 
In his autobiography, Fortunate Son, band leader John Fogerty wrote about the track.

The only thing we ever really collaborated on as a band was the six-minute-plus instrumental with sound effects called “Rude Awakening #2.” (Which begs the question, what was “Rude Awakening #1”?). The Beatles had done this “sound collage” called “Revolution 9”; that type of thing was in the air. I’d recorded a beautiful fingerpicking song that I did with a split pickup guitar. I liked the song, but the stuff added on after it is just free-form nonsense. Doug [Clifford, drummer] farts on the track—that was his contribution. So that’s the one and only Creedence collaboration. A masterpiece? No.

 
I would definitely agree that “Rude Awakening #2” isn’t CCR’s pièce de résistance, but I think the comparison to “Revolution 9” is more apt in regard to an even more bizarre Creedence work.
 

 
A couple of months prior to the release of Pendulum, a promotional-only CCR 45 was sent to radio stations. The two-part “45 Revolutions Per Minute” was described by Fogerty in Fortunate Son as a “little two-sided narrative for the fans.”
 

 
While the text on the cover of indicates the 7-inch is “meant to thank radio disc jockeys,” the record is, in part, a parody of the sort of interviews in which band members are asked the usual, banal questions by dopey DJ’s. It’s also the strangest thing Creedence ever issued, an avant-garde exercise with lots of tape manipulations and sound effects. Think “Revolution 9” and the Beatles’s wild comedy number, “You Know My Name (Look up the Number).”
 
More after the jump…

 
Released in December 1967, Their Satanic Majesties Request had the working title of Cosmic Christmas, and the Stones imagined it on display in the shops at Christmastime with a 12” x 12” photo of Mick Jagger’s crucified, nude body on the cover. Or so I read in Billboard:

… the Stones originally wanted to call the LP Cosmic Christmas and have its cover featuring Jagger naked and nailed to a cross, Jesus-style. The band’s label, aka the only parent left in the room at this point, nixed it.

A vestige of the concept survives on the finished album in the form of “Cosmic Christmas,” aka “We Wish You a Cosmic Joke,” several seconds of music tacked on to the end of side one after “Sing This All Together (See What Happens).” The unlisted track, an electronic rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” with psychedelic percussion, is often credited as a Mellotron performance by Bill Wyman, but I believe the few sources that identify the instrument as an oscillator. According to fan lore, you’re supposed to change the speed from 33 to 45 when “Cosmic Christmas” comes on; I’ve embedded a YouTuber’s approximation of the sped-up version below.
 

 
A clever bootlegger pressed “Cosmic Christmas” onto a green vinyl single, mono on one side, stereo on the other, and slipped it into a seven-inch replica of Satanic Majesties’ inner sleeve. A comment on Discogs say this legit-looking “promotional” release came out in ‘78 or ‘79. Could the bootlegger have been trying to steal some Xmas cheer from Keith’s “Run Rudolph Run”? What kind of monster would do that?
 
An amateur comparison of ‘Cosmic Christmas’ at regular and fast speeds:
 

 
More after the jump…

 
According to his parents David Bowie was a smart kid. He was rolling paper into a typewriter and tapping keys writing gobble-de-gook lines and even using a phone—the old-fashioned rotary kind—by the time he was three. His parents thought he was special, just like every parent does, but they were right. They never talked to him as child, no baby talk, no goo-goo, ga-ga, they treated him as a mini-adult because they thought him smart, intelligent, someone who had chutzpah, someone who just might do something. Not that his teachers thought the same. He was an average student who could always do better. One former school friend (Trevor Blythe) said of him:

‘He was a very bright guy, but he never applied himself. He was fairly good at art, but overall he tended to wander through. He was a butterfly. I was old-fashioned and could knuckle down and do the job. He was the opposite to that. There was a creative spirit, but no-one could’ve guessed where it was headed.’

Bowie was born David Robert Jones on a cold foggy Wednesday morning, January 8th, 1947. His old man, “John” Hayward Stenton Jones (b. 1912) was a fairly well-to-do Yorkshire man, who had inherited £4,000 (mega bucks in those days) from his parents which he quickly invested in setting-up and managing a London nightclub near King’s Cross in 1933. It seemed a fairly good investment. Jones met his first wife, a singer called Hilda Sullivan, at the club. They got married. When the club inevitably ran into financial difficulty due to a lack of experience, Jones bailed and spent the last of his inherited wealth on a joint-partnership running a seedy bar in London’s notorious Soho district. He was conned by his business partner who split with most of the cash and left Jones “holding the can.” His fall was buffered by the start of the Second World War. Jones signed-up with the Eighth Army and served the duration of the war. By 1945, his marriage to Hilda was over, but the pair didn’t divorce.

Bowie’s mother, Margaret Mary Burns (b. 1913) came from a working-class family of six ruled by a violent and brutal ex-soldier of a father. Burns was rebellious and left home at the age of fourteen. She became a nanny and had a brief relationship with a wealthy businessman. She became pregnant to this man, who quickly abandoned her, and had a son named Terrance (b. 1937). The child was given to her parents to raise. Burns took up work in a factory where she met another man and fell pregnant once more. This time she had a daughter Myra Ann (b. 1943), who was given up for adoption. Burns never saw her daughter again. After the war, Burns met Jones while she was working as a waitress/usherette. The pair lived together, as Jones was still technically married to his first wife Sullivan. In 1947, the couple’s son David was born, and the family lived in a terraced home at 40 Stansfield Road, Brixton. Eight months later, Jones was divorced and he married Burns.

Bowie was the focus of his parents’ love. His older half-brother Terry was never quite considered part of the family. However, it was Terry who first guided Bowie towards jazz, rock ‘n’ roll and the literature of the Beats.

Bowie was precocious as a child. At junior school he was known as a bit of schoolyard scrapper, but he was always considered bright, smart, and someone to watch, if only he would work just that little bit harder. But Bowie’s mind was elsewhere. He was looking for something else. This came the day he saw one of his cousins dance to Elvis Presley’s record “Hound Dog.” As he later said:

‘I had never seen [my cousin] get up and be moved so much by anything. It really impressed me, the power of the music. I started getting records immediately after that. My mother bought me Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill” the next day. And then I fell in love with the Little Richard band. I never heard anything that lived in such bright colours in the air. It really just painted the whole room for me.’

Bowie was nine years old when that occurred. He formed his first band the Konrads when he was fifteen. He was twenty-two when he hit the charts with “Space Oddity.”
 

 

 
More young Bowie, after the jump…

 
I normally don’t post about a film I haven’t yet seen but I’m saving Possum until the holidays are here—I gotta have something fun to watch—so allow me to concentrate on the film’s remarkable soundtrack. That I have heard, and if the film it accompanies is half as good (or even a quarter as creepy) it’s gonna make for the perfect Christmas day horror movie.

Possum, by the way, tells “the story of a disgraced children’s puppeteer who returns to his childhood home and is forced to confront his wicked stepfather and the secrets that have tortured him his entire life.” The film is the directorial debut of Matthew Holness, who American audiences will know as the star and co-creator/writer of the classic British TV cult comedy Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. (Along with Holness’ hilarious portrayal of self-absorbed/delusional sci-fi and horror writer Marenghi—“author, dream weaver, visionary, plus actor”—this show also marked the breakout roles for Richard Ayoade, Matt Berry and Alice Lowe.) The film is an adaption of Holness’ short story of the same title.

The original score for Possum was created by the recently revived Radiophonic Workshop, the pioneering BBC electronic sound laboratory responsible for the Doctor Who theme and the sound effects for a host of radio and television programs over the past sixty years. You would think that at least once during their long association that the Radiophonic Workshop would have scored at least one feature film for theatrical release, or collaborated on a major score for something together, but this has not been the case. Until now. And what a fascinating and major piece it is, reminding the listener of Ennio Morricone’s anxiety-ridden giallo scores and the darkest soundscapes of Coil.

Holness and the film’s editor Tommy Boulding had used sound cues from the Radiophonic Workshop in their rough cut and approached the newly reformed group about using their archival work in the film. To their delight the Radiophonic Workshop offered to do an original score.

And if all that wasn’t enough to pique your interest—and it should have been—the Possum soundtrack features sound elements and drones taken from the archives of Delia Derbyshire who famously created the original Doctor Who theme. These elements were discovered in boxes of tapes stored in the late composer’s attic, have been restored and were used in the foundations of the film’s scary/tense soundtrack and sound design.
 
Continues after the jump…

 
Matt Groening made his comedic name in the 1980s with the brutally nihilistic alternative comic Life In Hell (a favorite of mine in high school) and went on to far greater fame as the creator of the animated Simpson family as well as the TV series Futurama and Disenchanted.

One of Groening’s early forays into comedy occurred in 1972 when, as a student at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, he co-directed, co-wrote, and appeared in “Drugs: Killers or Dillers?,” a parody of the many inauthentically “authoritative” anti-drug propaganda film strips of that era. National Lampoon and the Firesign Theatre were a very big deal when Groening, Tim Smith, and Jim Angell teamed up to create the nine-and-a-half-minute movie—and you can see that influence pretty strongly here. The movie is amateurish but pretty good, considering.
 

 
Groening appears in the opening bit as a hippie degenerate who drinks way too much LSD. My favorite gag involves the eventual demise of a pair of cavemen who pop up to illustrate the origins of drug consumption. The montage of the various types of drugs is quite amusing as well.

The first title card of the movie reads “A TEENS FOR DECENCY PRESENTATION.” When Groening appeared on Late Night with David Letterman in 1989—there’s no way I didn’t watch this episode when it first aired—he mentioned that when he was in high school, he started a group by that name because a teacher had referred to Groening and his friends as “teens for filth.” The group’s motto was “If you’re against decency, what are you for?” and all the members secured election to the student body offices, yay.

Oddly, Fox, the network that hired Groening to make The Simpsons—the same network that series would eventually save from oblivion—was run by a man named Diller.
 
Watch the movie after the jump…......
 

Portrait by Laurie Griffiths
 
Graham Duff is a music obsessive and prolific writer. His TV series include Ideal, The Nightmare Worlds of H.G. Wells, Hebburn and Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible, plus the radio shows Nebulous, Count Arthur Strong’s Radio Show, Stereonation and the forthcoming The Absence of Normal.  He has his own on line music show Graham Duff’s Mixtape and his book Foreground Music is being published in the autumn by Strange Attractor.  Here are Graham’s picks for the best albums of 2018:

20. CRAYOLA LECTERN – Happy Endings

 
Sometimes melancholic, sometimes brimming with love,, Happy Endings is a tender and ambitious collection. Opener “Rescue Mission” sets the tone with its sky bound melody underpinned by Chris Anderson’s thoughtful piano work and keening vocal. Elsewhere, “Barbara’s Persecution Complex” is like a silent film musical soundtrack in miniature, whilst the goosebump inducing “Submarine” recalls Roxy Music circa Siren. Giant Moon Up in the Sky takes things in a more folk-rock (or should that be folk horror?) direction. If you’re a fan of Matching Mole, early Eno or late Cardiacs, this is an album that could easily touch your heart.

19. VESSEL – Queen of Golden Dogs

 
The previous album from Vessel (aka Sebastian Gainsborough) was 2014’s Punish Honey, which mixed an open-ended approach to techno with the celestial strangeness of Coil. Queen of Golden Dogs is something completely different. These pieces largely jettison the beats of previous recordings, in favor of a curiously fashioned chamber music. The album still features Gainsborough’s haunted and occasionally manic electronics, but also foregrounds string arrangements and choral movements. The decorous and courtly “Arcanum For Christalla,” or the largely vocal “Torno-me eles e nau-eu For Remedios” could be the soundtrack to an off-kilter 18th century drama. A unique release.

18. CLOUD – Plays With Fire

 
Tyler Taormina’s Long Island-based ensemble has returned with a wide angled album that takes in a range of textures. The opening “Happer’s Laugh” sounds like a stripped back Spiritualized circa Laser Guided Melodies, all slow waves of distortion and bright arpeggios.  At the other end of the spectrum, “Two Hands Bound” is an upbeat pop tune about being trapped in a job you hate. There is a wonderful balance of sadness and optimism throughout the album and Taormina’s innate sense of taste means both the song’s arrangements and their sequencing combine to make up a classic collection.

17. MAP 71 – Void Axis

 
Brighton-based Map 71 is Andy Pyne on synths, programming and live drums, with spoken words from Lisa Jayne. Jayne’s unaffected delivery is never less than compelling and on pieces such as “The Prefab” she describes scenarios in a prose that is paired down yet extremely vivid. Pyne’s production has a real immediacy, and on “The Future Edge,” he seems to have constructed a compulsive rhythmic loop from a live jack plug being tapped. But the highlight is “Nuclear Landscapes” where Jayne’s calm, near whispered vocal rides over rolling, tribal floor toms, pierced with darts of splintering electricity.

16. HOLON – Disruptive Technology

 
Based in Ontario Canada, Holon has been releasing warm melodic electronica since the turn of the century, and with Disruptive Technology, he presents his best set yet. The whole album is very much of one mood, laying rich, propulsive synth lines over craftily programmed beats to create a sound that draws on electronic music’s past as much as its future. “Connection Severed” is constantly unspooling melody evinces a strong emotive tug, whilst “Whatever The Future Holds” strikes an autumnal tone, as sheets of detuned noise are studded with bright percussive beads. If you think electronic music lacks emotion, this album could persuade you otherwise.

15. JUST MUSTARD – Wednesday

 
Hailing from Dundalk in Ireland, the oddly named Just Mustard have a sound that is big, bold and dramatic. There’s more than a hint of shoegaze about their music, with guitars used as much to create atmospheric textures as they are to carve out riffs. But there are other influences at play here. Album opener “Boo” sounds like Killing Joke reimagined by Massive Attack. “Tennis” is a creaking narcotic haze, with airy female vocals floating above the spacious soundscape, whilst the highlight may well be “Pigs” which suggests the grandeur of early Seefeel with its uneasy tones and throbbing bass line.

14. CHEF – AC1D

 
AC1D is an album of two distinct halves. The first six tracks show a firm grasp of the power of electronic minimalism. Here Chef unboxes a strain of sleek, insistent beats that recall the pure drive of early Underground Resistance. These are adorned with the kind of bubbling 303 acid lines that can only lead to the dance floor. On the title track, or the unstoppable “L1F3 15 0N1Y @ DR34M” Chef creates a sensual but hard-edged vision of contemporary acid house. The closing four tracks have a gentler, breezier tone, as if to soundtrack a chill out session following the excesses of the acid drenched first half. But by then Chef has earned the right to change the recipe as he sees fit.

13. IMMERSION – Sleepless

 
Whilst warmly percolating analogue synths are still at the heart of Immersion’s sound, Sleepless sees the duo broadening their sonic pallet to encompass, guitars, drums and bass as well as a guest appearance from Matt Schultz of Holy Fuck. “Off Grid” kicks off with the infectious sound of a four-string tenor guitar, but it’s soon joined by flickering synths and one of Malka Spigel’s characteristically spacious bass lines. “Manic Toys” is a distinctly up-tempo track that comes across as some kind of weird deep space hoe-down. For a duo who once titled an album Low Impact, this is most definitely Immersion in high impact mode.

12. LINGUA NADA – Snuff

 
Here’s a band that appears to triangulate their sound using post-hardcore, experimental rock and some kind of fragmented bubblegum pop. There’s a Beefheartian glee to some of the sudden and unexpected changes in time signature in this Leipzig band’s music, and it has to be said, their arrangements are pin sharp. There’s also an eagerness to frequently change texture and tone. By the end of opening track “Svrf Party,” the band have already gone through enough ideas for a whole album. On “Cyanide Soda,” they take their guitar heavy sound through a series of evolutions that most bands couldn’t begin to navigate, ending unexpectedly with a mid 80’s synth disco groove.

11. WE ARE THE CITY – At Night

 
This is an album that gilds its hooks with ragged edges of dissonance. “When I Dream, I Dream of You” is a gorgeous construction, wherein an aching vocal melody balances atop a heavily phasing and flanging drum loop. At the other end of the scale, “Peachland At Midnight” is a gauzy instrumental with a skeletal piano line walking through a landscape of faint and fluttering synth noises. Meanwhile, the closing “To Get It Right You Have To Get It Wrong Sometimes” sees We the City marrying both approaches.  At Night isn’t an easily pigeon-holed suite of songs, and its greatest strength may well lie in the band’s willingness to embrace imperfections.

10. KING OF THE RING 1998 – Beardless Youth

 
These recordings could easily be labeled as experiments in tape and sound manipulation, thus relegating them to being of only minority interest. Yet KOTR1998 has created an album rich in soul and warmth. “Fear Itself” is an emotional joy ride featuring a sweetly shuddering tape melody, “Neon Narcissist” is a constantly tumbling cluster of lo-fi sound fragments, whilst “Drowning” sounds like a half-speed lounge singer being slowly submerged in a strange sonic swamp—but the end result is oddly moving. This will not please everybody, but for those willing to surrender themselves to KOTR1998’s unusual soundworld, the rewards are substantial.

9. SOPHIE STRAUSS – Hard Study

 
A follow up to Strauss’ luscious 2015 debut Yeah No Fine, this short, sweet album shows distinct advances not only in her songwriting but also in her arrangements. As ever, Strauss’ lyrics largely focus on communication, or the lack of it within romantic relationships. “Joan of Arc” is a sparkling shiver of a song, whereas “Text” is languid and listless, shimmering with unresolved sexual tension. But the album’s centerpiece is “Aphids.” With its gently nagging melody and its chorus of “He hit me, and it felt like shit,” it’s one of the year’s best songs. Strauss’ work is subtle and intimate and demands repeated listening.

8. JOBS – Log on For The Free Chance To Log on For Free

 
Boasting the year’s best album title, this is a debut set that cares little for categorization or trends. Their sound changes throughout the album and sometimes throughout individual tracks.The song “Lover,” with its brooding atmosphere and dark chords, could have been plucked from Scott Walker’s Tilt or Drift, whilst “Come to Take” has something of the busy, criss-crossing guitar lines of Dutch Uncles. Meanwhile, “Hardwood” sounds like a band sliding back and forth across the deck of a listing ship. Yet in spite of these various flavors, what emerges is an album with its own strong and confident identity.

7. CHRIS CARTER – Chemistry Lessons Vol.1

 
Carter has always been a genuinely industrious artist. In recent years, aside from tending to Throbbing Gristle’s back catalog, he’s co-created albums and performances with CarterTuttiVoid and provided classy remixes for numerous other artists. Now, nineteen long years since his last solo album, Carter serves up no less than 23 tracks, that prove when it comes to electronic music, few come close to his mastery. “Gradients” is a foggy miasma of slowly snaking tones, whilst “Xmer48” combines depth charge bass notes with heavily treated voices. Fragments of voice appear throughout, yet there are several points when it feels like we might be listening to a long lost recording by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Much more after the jump…

A stunning image of David Bowie as Pierrot with makeup by Australian artist Richard Sharah.
 
There are few images in rock and roll as recognizable as David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane look. With his hair quaffed in a red mullet and a lightning bolt slashed across his face, it is hard to conceive how anyone would not be at least somewhat aware of Bowie in this context. Bowie’s constantly changing personae are, of course, some of his crowning achievements but as we all know, even the greatest artists didn’t become great without a little help from their friends. David Bowie had many incredible collaborators. Here are two which had the great honor of using his face as a canvas.

Bowie’s secret weapons in the makeup department during the 70s were Algerian-born Pierre La Roche, and legendary Australian makeup artist Richard Sharah. La Roche is the man responsible for creating Bowie’s iconic lightning bolt, and the far-out gold sphere Bowie sported on his forehead as Ziggy. Sharah gets the credit for bringing the Pierrot look used for the cover of Scary Monsters and the “Ashes to Ashes” video to life. However, both men have made other impactful contributions to the world of makeup. Let’s start with the late Richard Sharah.

Richard Sharah’s unique makeup style helped inspire the looks of the New Romantic movement. Sharah’s working relationship with designer Zandra Rhodes (who dressed Freddie Mercury and Queen during the 1970s) lasted for decades. Sharah was slightly color blind—something his fans and students believed only enhanced his artistic ability. Taking things a step further, Sharah also made his own products, therefore, creating truly singular work for his clients which in addition to Bowie included Visage’s Steve Strange and a makeup icon in his own right, Divine (pictured below).
 

Divine (Harris Glenn Milstead) in makeup done by Richard Sharah.
 
Pierre La Roche left his native Algiers and made his way to France while still in his teens, though he wouldn’t stay long. His next move was to England, where he worked for cosmetics giant Elizabeth Arden. While with EA, David Bowie would hire La Roche to do his makeup for his 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, keeping him around to take care of business for the 1973 live concert film where Bowie retired Ziggy. Here’s more from LaRoche on Bowie’s “perfect” face:

He had the perfect face for makeup, even features, high cheekbones, and a very good mouth.

And boy, the man should know, as he spent the better part of the 1970s working on Bowie’s beloved mug. In 1971, he painted Bowie’s eyelids blue to compliment the famous turquoise suit worn in the “Life on Mars” video. In 1973 for the album Pin Ups, La Roche made both Bowie and supermodel Twiggy look gorgeously futuristic. In 1975 La Roche would work on the influential cult film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where he was given the opportunity to create Dr. Frank N. Furter’s diabolical, sweet transvestite face, famous tattoos, as well as other characters for the film. As history has proven, this and the other images he concocted for RHPS are indelible, as are his other contributions, which strongly influenced the look of glam rock.
 
Much more make-up, after the jump…