The continuing Muxtape trades, this month’s self-portrait thread (featuring, as ever, threemonkeys being mental), a group of mad Danes planning to "discover America" this summer, details of a new Paavoharju release, updates on the new BURST FICTION web project, and continuing ruminations on sf magazines.

And people will be talking about new comics later, I suppose.

The online bodymodification-reportage pioneer Shannon Larratt has now permanently left BME, the sprawling web presence he founded and figureheaded. This follows a protracted legal difficulty between him and ex-wife Rachel Larratt. He notes:

I will no longer be writing online about body modification

Which suggest the terms of the settlement include a non-compete clause. Rachel says

First of all, Shannon Larratt will no longer be an employee of BME, and has
willfully relinquished his interest in our site to me — we were co-owners of
BME, and I am now the sole owner. We truly believe this was in the best interest
of both parties, and this was a decision to which Shannon and I both agreed.
There was no force, no coercion — nothing of the sort.

Shannon, however, in the preceding post, said:

After a personally difficult legal dispute over BME, I’ve had to face the
potentially insurmountable reality of being massively in debt, and I have chosen
to transfer the business to Rachel (the details of this deal are sealed, so
please don’t ask).

Making it fairly clear what brought the settlement to its conclusion.

While Shannon was and is plainly crazier than a snake-fucking rabbit, it was his great skill, love and humour that glued BME together and made ModBlog such a riveting (and sometimes purely revelatory) daily read. Rachel is clearly committed to BME, but has never shown the same facility as a writer as Shannon. It’ll be interesting to see her next moves.

I’m wishing Shannon the best of luck in his next venture, of course.

CYBERDINE features the superb illustrator (and Molly Crabapple’s other half) Fred Harper. If you’re in NYC, this is a must-see show.

Cyberdine: Fred Harper & Christopher Conte

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 17th, 7:00pm-11:00pm.

Show runs May 17th thru June 29th, 2008.

511 W. 33rd St, New York City

Last Rites Gallery

(Sepia Tweakery Composite)

This is the The The song that the Spaceape slid into during last night’s gig.

This is from the album INFECTED. In fact, this video is from the “video album” for INFECTED — they shot a video for every track on the album and released it as a videotape, the first time this had been done (at least by a mainstream recording artist). I used to have it. INFECTED was an interesting album not only for its frank anti-American bent, which you didn’t see much of in the pop charts of 1986, but because it was a clear breakpoint for Matt Johnson. The troubled romantic balladeer of “Uncertain Smile” can be clearly seen to go stark raving mad on INFECTED, and he was never the same afterwards.

I’m tempted to link half the album: “Heartland” is a swaggering excoriation of British life of the period, “Angels Of Deception” has a beautiful refrain, and “Slow Train To Dawn” is a poisonous duet with Neneh Cherry.

Anyway. This was the cover. And I loved this album in 1986. It reminds me of the pure philosophical hate only a teenager can really summon, and of walking to my girlfriend’s house with a cheap Walkman-knockoff on…

Am returned, after an interesting meeting with a tv company, flashfried by the sun and crocked by three early-morning starts in a row. I’m not good at mornings.

So I’m tired, suggestible and on half power. If you’ve got anything good, are hellbent on tampering with my pliant brains, or just wish to pay homage to a dying man, drop me a note at the blogdump - degaussing at googlemail com.

In the meantime, I’m going to find some food and wait for the dark, because I have a new head full of things to think about.

Am currently at a pub on Newman Street in W1, having a very quick drink before going into a meeting.

So last night I was at the hauntology gig. Kode9 and the Spaceape were just as good as I expected them to be — their “Memories Of The Future” has been an aural touchstone for me since its release. The surprise was Philip Jeck — the recorded material I’ve heard was just interesting, but live it’s absolutely thrilling. Working with old turntables and seven-inches, he turned the venue into a truly haunted space. The ambience was utterly supernatural. Jeck is an intense figure as he works, an acoustic scientist bent to his experiments.

In contrast, Kode9 and the Spaceape actually made me laugh when they pulled a The The cover out of the electric fog. They should also be credited for not losing their stride when something set the fire alarm off, sending everyone outside for ten minutes while the fire brigade took a look around and the local bishop phoned the venue to find out if the electrical devil music really had summoned up the infernos of hell.

I only caught half of the preceding presentations. Paul Devereux’s piece was fascinating, introducing me to the concept of “archaeoacoustics.” He’ll flood an area of archaeological significance with pink noise, identifying the resonances to determine, for instance, how ritualistic sites were used. There’s a site in India whose seven stone columns ring with the seven basic tones of Indian classical music — a cave that might hold the birthstones of the raga. This presentation was interrupted by some idiot who appeared to be complaining that the presentation was in English.

I spoke to Kode9 for a little while after his gig — we have a mutual friend in Steven Shaviro, and it turned out he checked this blog yesterday because he couldn’t remember where he was supposed to be playing. Afternoon, squire.

And now I go to this meeting.

Just a test of the post-by-mail system, post-Wordpress upgrade. I’m off to London tomorrow, to take in a seminar on hauntology and see Kode9 and the Spaceape in the evening. And on Tuesday I have a meeting with a TV company. So there may be the occasional post from the road, issuing either from the old Treo or from the laptop via what will doubtless be exquisitely expensive hotel wifi…

Copy and circulate:

A report on the NEW NARRATIVE seminar in one paragraph:

As a presenter at this conference, and viewing Steven (Shaviro)’s presentation (on DOKTOR SLEEPLESS), I can firmly say that Warren Ellis’s blog post attracted asian goth ladies from the surrounding area. Well, at least one.

Taken on the grounds of Sutton Manor in Essex (with a Nokia N95 8GB) earlier today.

• Charles Pellegrino Web Site
  valkyrie rockets
  (tags: frankenstein)

Anyone remember this?

• MySpace.com - Lexxe Machina - CA - Experimental - www.myspace.com/lexxemachina
  (tags: music ambient)

At CBR. With extra YOUNG JUDGE BAO action.

Solo Tales of Professor Swift

Originally uploaded by The Searcher.

We’ve reached the halfway point of the first volume, so we’re taking a week to catch our breath. But there’s still something new to read there.

At Comics Bulletin.

Teaser for the IRON SKY project that I mentioned here last year:

(thanks, Bill)

Issue 20, featuring the excellent "A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica" by Catherynne M. Valente and an interview with my old friend John Picacio:

This is just the presage to a frankly brain-burning day on ModBlog. Can you identify the mystery meat?

It’s worse than you think. Don’t look.

You should look at this one, because it’s kind of romantic, really. In an indescribable WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO THAT kind of way.

This has been doing the rounds, so I apologise if you’ve seen it. But you need to see it. Credits at the end of the video.

kyoteizinc (video mix) / omodaka (far east recording)
dir.: hiroshi kizu (P.I.C.S.)
dancer: masako yasumoto

OMODAKA is the name of the project developed through a trial and error process of mutational fusion of music and motion graphics. It will knock over your existing image toward a music video by a beautiful trajectory.

(via Mez, thanks)

The New Narrative? Comics in Literature, Film and Art — a conference over May 10 and 11 at the University of Toronto.

Features Steven Shaviro’s presentation “’You Will Never Own a Jetpack’: Warren Ellis’ Science Fiction Comics” (on the Saturday, 3A, 1:30pm):

This paper looks at the science fiction comics of Warren Ellis: Transmetropolitan, Global Frequency, and the currently ongoing series Doktor Sleepless. These comics are about the social effects of new technologies. They bring us a wavering and uncertain vision of a highly technologized future, and ponder the possibilities of change in a world pervaded by a sense that the future itself has largely been played out.

Steven Shaviro is the DeRoy Professor of English at Wayne State University. He is the author of Doom Patrols: A Theoretical Fiction About Postmodernism (1997), and Connected, Or, What It Means To Live in the Network Society (2003).

• Man pushes creation of panel to prepare city for space aliens : Elections : The Rocky Mountain News
  “It is important because if you’re driving down the highway and you saw a crash of a small spaceship and a car or a bus full of kids, you really wouldn’t know what to do,”
  (tags: mad)
• English Russia » A Visit to Baikonur
  (tags: space)

I would buy records from a notional record label that released no records at all but produced beautiful sleeves, posters and stickers from bands and performers who didn’t actually exist. I would, as people once said, buy the shit out of that.

I would have bought an awful lot more from ZTT Records in the 80s if there’d been no records in the sleeves.