Secret Lexicon

XIBALBA AKAB

2012-02-16T03:15:00.001-08:00

Rodolphe Bresdin - Flight into Egypt

The two above by Ioana Serban

Jean-Luc Moerman

Eric Lacombe

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

I found all of these beauties at a new favorite HAUNT

Lately Musick

2012-02-16T01:32:00.000-08:00

Some recent inspiration:

LUSTMORD - [BEYOND]

KRENG - GRIMOIRE

BELL WITCH

THE VANISHING - IN THE BAT HAUS

HADES - ALONE WALKYNG

MARCIA BASSETT & HELENA ESPVALL - LAPIDARY

NAERVAER

SUIS GENERIS UMBRA - ATER

BURIAL HEX - ANGELIC GEMATRIA

Randoms

2012-02-09T17:10:00.001-08:00

And I think to myself: What a Wonderful World.

Mother of God

2012-02-07T13:49:00.000-08:00

Claire Dannenbaum - Halo

Jasibe Cure-Twede - Three Mary's

I found myself at the Gigantic gallery where my talented roommate had some work up at the Mother of God show. While there I beheld these two gems. Excuse the poor photos, go HERE to find out more and see a better photo of Halo.

ANCIENT EVENINGS by Norman Mailer

2012-02-06T09:45:00.000-08:00

I recently finished reading Norman Mailer's criminally under appreciated epic Ancient Evenings. I can't tell you how much this book floored me, melted me. It's overwhelming and it took him 10 years to write, spanning hundreds of years and many lifetimes. It is like a colossal poem of Egypt, Eroticism, Reincarnation, War, Power, Failure, Gods, Mysteries & MAGIC.

Look at this guy:

LED Cathedral

2012-02-05T17:30:00.000-08:00

55,000 LED lights illuminate The Luminarie De Cagna, which was a part of Ghent, Belgium's 2012 Light Festival.
Ecstasy is good. Cathedrals are cool. Illumination is important.
Previously/Similarly.

Edward Steichen

2012-02-05T17:17:00.000-08:00

Photography's early Master Edward Steichen.
Via Mr. Door Tree
High Definition is overrated.

TERRIBLE SPIDER COCOON TREES

2012-01-29T02:15:00.000-08:00

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As if being devastated by monsoon floods weren't bad enough, it seems the people of disaster-laden Sindh, Pakistan (circa 2010) were also the recipients of a more surreal holocaust: SPIDER TREES.
This has made the rounds on the mainstream interWEB I'm sure but it was too terrifying for me to resist.
The general consensus seems to be that the flood waters drove billions of spiders and other insects up into the trees where they then sealed them in ghostly cocoons. The people of Sindh said they have seen nothing like it before yet apparently no formal scientific analysis was made. National Geo sent photographers who insist that when you stood under these things lots of tiny, tiny spiders would fall on your head. This has been heavily contested, many say that certain moth larvae or other silk spinning worm types are more likely to be blamed. But in the end does that really make this any less of a nightmare made flesh? Yet another relentless, overwhelming example of the wonder/terror that is the natural world.

Meyoko Skulls

2012-01-25T12:41:00.000-08:00

by MEYOKO AKA Melissa Murillo

Emma Bennett

2012-01-25T12:16:00.001-08:00

Oh gosh I love these. Absolutely marvelous work by Emma Bennett.
I wish I could just sit quietly for a long time and watch a person paint something like these.

NIGHT HEIR portraiture

2012-01-24T01:42:00.000-08:00

Sean Barry Sam Rosenberg
These are some images I did for my band NIGHT HEIR.
We are writing a new album, which is very exciting but it's also putting some brakes on Lexicon productivity so my apologies...

Guy Laramee's Carved Bookscapes

2012-01-15T14:43:00.000-08:00

So I carve landscapes out of books and I paint Romantic landscapes. Mountains of disused knowledge return to what they really are: mountains. They erode a bit more and they become hills. Then they flatten and become fields where apparently nothing is happening. Piles of obsolete encyclopedias return to that which does not need to say anything, that which simply IS. Fogs and clouds erase everything we know, everything we think we are.

Evan T. Wellington

2012-01-11T13:05:00.000-08:00

I met Evan briefly at a somewhat experimental creative community in Portland known as Milepost 5. A good friend of mine curated a nautically themed opening there entitled The Devil And The Deep, which is currently up through the 31st of January. For the show Evan assembled a ghostly black ship pieced together from all kinds of old wood and metal. Later, while wandering the halls I discovered more work by Mr. Wellington, including in particular this hooded gem. It may have a title which I do not know but I was rather taken with it.

BOB WIRTZ !i!i!i!i!i!i!I INVERTUM

2012-01-03T01:51:00.000-08:00

BOB WIRTZ is a very strange and very lovely fellow whom I remember fondly from Boston.
I love to look at really great still work by this guy. I was lucky enough to see a lot of Bob's early video work in person...and to see Bob's work in person generally meant that it was LARGE, LOUD and UNCOMPROMISING.
Please DO visit INVERTUM
and the TUMBLR

GAPING MAWS

2011-12-22T15:21:00.000-08:00

Holy shit do I have a treat for you guys today...

They are gateways. Entrances to a realm as mysterious and fascinating as it is frightening. Countless tales have been told of the hosts of these passageways; countless more of those who have passed beyond. But little attention has been paid to the gateways themselves; the openings through which all become equal.

The time has come for that to change. For the gateways to be recognized; their beauty and their terror to be captured. Frozen in that moment of glory beyond which there is no return.

Welcome now to the realm of...

The Gaping Maws

The creator of WWW.GAPINGMAWS.COM insists:

"It is my goal to have the most complete collection of gaping animal maws that anyone can have"

Now, That is an attitude that fills me with merriment!
Yes, there are tons more like this.

INTO THE ABYSS

Hashima - Battleship Island

2011-12-22T13:29:00.001-08:00

Hashima, Gunkanshima, Battleship island. Only 1 of 505 uninhabited islands off the coast of Nagasaki. The ancient Mitsubishi corporation bought this place during the industrialization of Japan back around the turn of the previous century. It became a coal mining facility, complete with typhoon proof sea walls. Tons of forcibly recruited workers from all over Asia were brought here and stuffed in huge concrete apartment blocks, especially during WWII. In the 60's, after the discovery of the wonder-element Petroleum, places like this were abandoned en mass. The bottom most photo depicts the infamous "Stairway to Hell."

Celine Clanet and Máze

2011-12-21T22:33:00.000-08:00

In observance of SUFFERING VS. CONCESSION , which is one of the central themes of the holidays: this is just a tiny reindeer-specific selection from Celine Clanet's beautiful photographic portraits of Máze.

Celine Clanet on Máze:

Since 2005, I have been traveling regularly to Máze, a small Sámi village located at the highest point of the European map, far above the Arctic Circle, in Norwegian Lapland. There, I met quiet people, sometimes melancholic, captivating, who are very proud of their village and territory. They often have binoculars at hand, even in their homes, to gaze at these beautiful landscapes.

I have photographed Sámi people, houses, land and reindeer that were almost not here today. They barely escaped being flooded by the waters of a hydroelectric dam project that the Norwegian government planned in the early 1970’s and thanks to Sámi people’s protests and resistance was fortunately aborted.
But I have also photographed a reality that will undoubtedly transform in the coming century, due to global warming and cultural integration.

To me, Máze is an ambivalent symbol of resistance and helplessness.

Pride as well as suspicion, solitude and great beauty prevail there. In the most beautiful tundra of the Arctic region, I tasted Ante’s and Ole Ailo’s favorite season, when days get longer and temperatures become milder. The perfect moment, when time doesn’t exist anymore and night is gone, when they immerse themselves in their favorite activities: fishing through ice holes in Lake Suolojávri and riding the snøskuter in the tundra. And all these hours spent with friends, family, outside on a reindeer skin, in a hytte or under a lávvu, talking, joiking, or lying down doing nothing, saying nothing. Just being.

Luciana Rondolini

2011-12-21T22:16:00.000-08:00

Old fruit and plastic diamonds all over each other in the same place? How unexpectedly delightful!
Wonderful work by Luciana Rondolini, who has a wonderful name and, by double inference, must be wonderful.

Bowerbirder

2011-12-17T09:58:00.001-08:00

All this, much more & original sources to be found in my friend's extensive collection.

Hang Sơn Đoòng - The Infinite Cave

2011-11-26T01:24:00.000-08:00

This is a place in Vietnam, which is right next door to LAOS. It is largely unknown still but apparently there is an exceptionally large cave beneath Vietnam. It is the Hang Sơn Đoòng. Unbelievably, this place has come onto the civilization radar only recently- the first extensive scientific survey having been done a couple years ago. Beyond that it had even been virtually unknown even to the locals until 1991. National Geographic sent super-human photographer Carsten Peter with the second team who succeeded in climbing a massive wall which had halted the first crew. Together, the photographer and the scientists found these things out:

1. It is absolutely colossal
2. It is a part of a complex cave system that is easily the biggest we've seen.
3. It doesn't seem to quit and we have no idea how big it is.

In other words, it's a big cave. And I think that's a big deal.
To enter this unthinkable wonder realm that actually exists one needs only venture to faraway Vietnam, land of mist-heavens Behold:

Xieng Khuan Sculpture Park, LAOS

2011-11-26T01:20:00.000-08:00

This is a place that is in LAOS
Thanks, source.

Show Me Your Dream

2011-11-23T23:30:00.000-08:00

Caspar David Friedrich

Ul de Rico

Sybille Rupert

Virgil Finlay

Damien Hirst

John Everett Millais

Jean-Marie Poumeyrol

Wladd Muta

Dolorosa

Unica Zürn
(Author of The House of Illnesses)

Gerard Gachet

William Holman Hunt

TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES ...PLEASE STAND BY

2011-11-23T23:15:00.000-08:00

AGAIN my computer took a big shit on me and AGAIN it has risen from it's own ashes! This is an unpleasant pattern and I'm a tad bitter that I missed a chance to do a Halloween post.
Alas.
Apologies to the readers. However, I'm back in the driver's seat for the time being.
High weirdness resuming...

NIGHT HEIR cassette tape

2011-09-07T19:16:00.001-07:00

I'm excited to announce that I've independently released an Audio Cassette Tape edition of the NIGHT HEIR album Wind In My Dream Mist In My House.
This release is limited to 100 copies.
It can easily be ordered for 3$ (plus S&H) online through the Bandcamp site OR you can even email me directly at Chambermusick@Gmail.com to request a copy or offer comments & concerns.
Enjoy.

Lately Musick

2011-08-19T14:21:00.000-07:00

The usual mix of slow bliss/beauty and noisy, anguished bullshit. At least this time I put them in two categories.

SLOTHS - Transit
(Local boys! Might be one of the best bands we got in Portland right now. I hear they are great live too, you and I should confirm that.)

Aluk Todolo - Descension

Black Majesty - Seventh Kingdom of Edom

Catherine Christer Hennix - The Electric Harpsichord

Deux Filles- Silence & Wisdom
(This one I highly recommend looking into. Highly.)

Toshio Hosokawa - Deep Silence

X-RAY pin up calender

2011-08-19T13:52:00.000-07:00

Yeah, this is real.

Julie Evans

2011-08-19T13:19:00.000-07:00

The dreamy work of one Julie Evans. I particularly love the four top-most works, which are from a collaborative series known as Cowdust--- The interwoven miniaturist work was done by Evan's friend Ajay Sharma. You should really go to her blog if you are interested in seeing some step by step transition captures of how the joint pieces were made.

Magical Calender

2011-08-18T14:54:00.000-07:00

Via the wondrous BibliOdyssey

Kerry Howley's Hair Jewelry

2011-08-07T14:07:00.000-07:00

Aversion and repulsion are apparently common reactions to these pieces of jewelry made from human hair. The artist, an English girl named Kerry Howley, had this potential response in her head from the beginning- recognizing the phenomenon that hair, though often thought to be gorgeous upon the head, becomes strangely alien whence removed. It was her hope that perhaps she could make "dead" hair attractive once more by weaving it into ornate, aesthetically pleasing necklaces. Personally, I don't see an aversion/attraction conflict at all. It's just so beautiful. But think what ye will, populace.

Landscape: Robin Friend

2011-08-03T14:48:00.001-07:00

More please.

Landscape: Ori Gersht

2011-08-03T14:31:00.000-07:00

The following are from the series Falling Bird:

Phenomenal, versatile.

Landscape: Tzu-chi Yeh

2011-08-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

These are paintings!
Wonderful Taiwanese realist.

Landscape: Darren Almond

2011-08-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

Darren Almond, photographer of melancholic land. The lonely earth.

Galerie Max hetzler

FANTASTIC ART by David Larkin

2011-07-07T15:26:00.001-07:00

David Larkin is kind of a hero of mine. He is an editor! Much like what I do here, he seeks out beautiful things and puts them all together in one place. Specifically, Larkin is perhaps best known for compiling what you might call Fantasy Art. Through Peacock and Ballantine Books publishers he released a number of excellent little collections in the seventies. Dulac, Rackham, Kay Nielsen and the like have all been handled lovingly by him as well as the Pre-Raphaelites and many others. These books are all still found fairly easily (and cheaply!) in used book stores. I had a few of these books early, when I was still very young and soaking up all the pictorial books on Dad's shelves like a sponge. One of the best was the concisely titled Fantastic Art. The cover art is by Acrimboldo. I have failed to find a respectful documentation of this collection on the net so far so I decided I'd step up to the plate. The book features selections from all the well known greats (Bosch, Goya, Dali, Ernst, Rousseau, Redon, etc.) as well as the legendary Fairy Feller's Master Stroke. But it's the lesser known works that really stand out! Some of these strange, gorgeous, intense images are criminally ignored but not for lack of effort on Larkin's part. Here is his introduction to the book:

"What is fantasy? You might as well try to define truth, or, failing that, have a go at reality. Fantasy is the beautiful, the sublime, the fragile; it is the grotesque and the horrible, it is that which encompasses the real and overtakes it, it is supra-real. It is some strange formulation of an equally bizarre inner statement, which when externalized, comes to mean something quite uniquely important to all men. Fantasy is, well, art.
Throughout the shadowy eons of man's existence there have been some men more committed to the communication of the inexplicable. They have been the philosophers, the scientists and, always, the artists. Some opted for words, some chose music, and happily for the rest of us, a battery of geniuses attempted to convey just what it is they felt-visually. And so we have not merely art, but fantasy in art, mirrors upon mirrors.
This book is not meant to be any sort of definitive, absolute statement on fantasy-that is impossible anyway. Rather, it is intended as a delicious sampling of these 'visionary mavericks', from the wretched little demons of Bosch through the erotically cynical works of a contemporary graphic artist. The similarities, the absurdities, the wonder-that is all the be seen by the individual."

Below are about a third of the images in the book that I have, in my own fashion, selected to display here. As always, click the images to enlarge.

Carved Wood Cupboard - After Lorenz Stoer
(unfortunately this one has a little rip in it in my copy, but damn, thats all wood!)

Mon Tombeau - Clovis Trouille

Le Cheval de Troie - Gerard Vuilliamy

Poor Room - Ivan Albright

Les Tresors de Satan - Jean Delville

Death on a Pale Horse - J M W Turner

The Female Eunuch - John Holmes

Marionette - Karl Korab

Nave of the Fools - Oskar Laske

Mit der Zufalligen Familie - Richard Oelze

The Labyrinth - Robert Vickrey

Tentazioni di San Antonio - Salvatore Rosa

Lucifer - Thomas Häfner

The back of the book features this quote from the above artist, Thomas Häfner:

"...I find nothing fantastic in so-called fantastic art, it is an aspect of reality in search of sanity beyond normal bounds. I believe that fantastic art is related to the protective dream, that it prolongs the healing dream and finds symbols that change dread into wonder, strangeness and beauty.

As in all figurative art, fantastic art must of course be judged not only by its intentions but by the quality of the execution, and by standards that have been almost totally lost in the turbulence of changing fashions, movements and politics of the art market. This has led to a noticeable helplessness among the critics, who seem to ignore a growing tendency toward the fantastic in the hope that it will fade away and die. I do not believe it will."

Garlands of Shame / ASP

2011-07-07T14:53:00.000-07:00

These are scans from issue number one of GARLANDS OF SHAME, a sort of apocalyptically buddhist zine by Allison Shea Phillips (ASP) She constructs lots of wonderful black and white collages, among other things. She doesn't use computers or the internet to do this, just lots of wine and damiana. The top most image is the cover and I think it's especially elegant. The scary woman below is a another work of hers, made directly onto wood.

Big Pentagram

2011-07-07T14:49:00.001-07:00

Sick and tired of not being able to find a fairly large, hi-res pentagram on the interplace? Well fear no more, evil-doers! Lovingly scanned from the cover of A Pictorial History of Magic and the Supernatural by Maurice Bessy. That's the front fucking cover!

Hilarity

2011-06-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

Even the mysterious bullshit of the Lexicon is no match for a good chuckle.

Randoms

2011-06-23T16:07:00.001-07:00

Ryan McGinley

2011-06-08T20:59:00.000-07:00

The work of photographer Ryan McGinley. Much of his stuff is more minimal portraiture, and it's really good. But the above is really good. And yes, he is the guy who made that wonderful feel good Sigur Ros video with all the good looking naked kids having fun in the woods.

Leonora Carrington

2011-06-08T20:58:00.001-07:00

1917-2011

Black Dreams

2011-06-08T20:20:00.000-07:00

Felicien Rops - Satan Sowing Seeds

Salvator Rosa - Scene of Witches

Agostino Veneziano - The Carcass
- The Skeletons

Francisco de Goya - Disorderly Folly

Lately Musick

2011-05-23T14:49:00.001-07:00

The Slaves - Ocean On Ocean
Harvey Milk - Special Wishes
Mutilation Rites - (self-titled ep)
Enslaved - Vikingligr Veldi
Daniel Higgs - Ancestral Songs
Emuul - Crawling Across the Rafters
David Lynch - The Ghost of Love (single w/ Imaginary Girl)

Kimiko Yoshida

2011-05-10T12:37:00.001-07:00

These are all self-portraits.

Uncle Boonmee who can recall his past lives

2011-05-02T23:55:00.001-07:00

I Just saw this, Uncle Boonmee, who can recall his past lives. It is a dream-like Thai film directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. It is very slow and very, very strange and a lot of it takes place at night. It's mystical but it's also scary, irreverent and silly. AND the exceptionally gifted Chris Ware did the poster.

The Eagle The Dream and The Heir

2011-04-14T17:34:00.001-07:00

This post is both a shout out and a shameless self-promotion. Firstly, epic props to my gal-pals Purple Rhinestone Eagle, a heavy psychedelic rock outfit with whom I have been lucky enough to tour throughout most of the country. Incidentally I also designed the sleeve inserts for their full-length and EP. If you read this blog and you know of design work needing to be done for albums, etc. then email me- this is something I am trying to do a lot of! Anyways, the Eagle and I, along with the three beautiful brooklynites known as Bad Dream, will be escaping the gloom and reality of Portland for a brief jaunt down to sunny California. We begin this very evening and schedules are posted on the girl's website. Along the way I will be bringing some preliminary tape cassette versions of the NIGHT HEIR album I made recentlyish. I will be pedaling and/or tossing them about like seeds. This is a small "experimental" run. If all goes well I intend to make a larger, better made amount and somehow make them more widely available. If anyone out there even knows what the hell I'm talking about them come out to see P.R.E. and get one of my tapes as well. If you don't know what the hell I'm talking about then please do visit me
HERE
and
HERE.

Please and thank you!

Also, seriously, BAD DREAM are fucking stellar. Good musicians with good hearts. Check them out and if you can you should get their 7 inch. It slays big time.

Marina Richterová

2011-04-06T20:33:00.001-07:00

Marina Richterová is a Czech artist who grew up in communist Russia, isolated from western artistic trends and influence. This has certainly gone some ways toward atmospherically informing her dark, folklorist visions. To me it looks somewhere between Egon Schiele and Stephen Gammell (the illustrator who everyone knows was the reason why the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books were scary.) And that's a hell of a good combo. Fortunately there is a really wonderful site where you can see all of these works plus kind of a LOT more. Thank god for artists who aren't entitled and actually allow large reproductions of their work to exist on the web. Anyway, as is obvious, Marina rules big time. Plus she probably doesn't even know how metal she is.

Ernie Cabat's Monsters

2011-04-04T13:36:00.001-07:00

From his book Ernie Cabat's Magical World of Monsters.

More.

BOUGH

2011-04-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

My good friend Andrew Diluvian has recently finished recording a new album under his moniker BOUGH. The album, Night's Electric Dog, is an awesome, meandering assemblage of strange voices, thick sine walls, stirrings and driftings. Andrew describes it in his own words:

Night’s Electric Dog began as a concept based on a perversion of the “Zoological Fantasy” theme, originally coined by Camille Saint-Saëns for the “Le carnaval des animaux” suite. The concept of the zoological fantasy has been isolated from that particular framework for its usefulness as a point of departure, a vehicle to meditate on the unique forms that make up my own fantasy life, and a way to dissolve as many boundaries between there and here as possible. The resulting album is a 78 moment program glissing the conflux of dream, animal essence, and magickal enterprise.

The album is being released in it's first limited edition, a gorgeous, painstakingly handmade set that includes a unique PHOTOPLASMAGRAM with each copy. To those of you with an ear and a heart for experimental musick I highly recommend you listen/buy/download or at least learn more about this project by visiting Andy at
BOUGH-HOUSE
or
at Bandcamp.

Chapel of St. Kinga

2011-03-24T18:05:00.000-07:00

This is the 10,400 square foot Chapel of St. Kinga, carved out of rock salt in the Wieliczka salt mine in Poland. I like the idea of passing through a prayer place before the real drop off into the deep dark of the mine. Apparently, so did a lot of the miners.

Wolfgang Hutter

2011-03-24T17:58:00.000-07:00

Some of the work from Wolfgang's book Zauberflote. Go here for the source, which is 50 Watts, the new site from that guy who ran the deservedly famous A Journey Round My Skull blog.

Susan Derges

2011-03-24T17:19:00.001-07:00

Susan Derges is something of an alchemist. A photographer exploring the camera's ability to allude to the invisible rather then merely record the visible. In fact, she often doesn't use a camera at all! Much of her work is the result of a loosely controlled physical interaction with the natural world, laying photo paper in and amongst the elements and using ambient, evening light to expose them. She has also revealed the latent physicality of sound waves as they leave impressions of themselves through other mediums. I first heard of her through a large, beautiful collection of her work, simply and approriately entitled Elemental.

Aokigahara Forest, The Sea of Trees

2011-03-16T20:36:00.000-07:00

AOKIGAHARA forest is assuredly one of the scariest places on the Earth. It sprawls vastly from the northwest base of Mount Fiji in the magical but troubled land of Japan. I haven't been able to nail down exactly why but, curiously indeed, the forest in known for having a very minimal wildlife population. Apparently one almost never hears birdsong even. That fact, coupled with the wind-blocking density of the trees, makes this place quiet, quiet, quiet all of the time. Growing from a magma base, spewed from Fiji herself God knows how long ago, the woods have had a difficult time with the hard and rocky ground. This has led them to sprawl their roots out everywhere, making foot traffic nearly impossible in some areas. Underneath this thick, choking growth above, the ground is home also to many caves below, some of them with ice year round. Tourists visit a few of these caves but most of them are unexplored and surely there are many that are undiscovered all together.
The history of Aokigahara Jukai is grim enough. The place has historically been associated with demons or Yurei (Japanese ghosts) for hundreds of years now. In times past it was a regularly used locale for the notorious act of Ubasute which means to leave a dependent to die. Apparently, among the impoverished, those that could not feed or help themselves were often brought to the forest and left there, presumably starving to death and if so, undoubtedly filling some of the silence of the forest. Legends and myths about this place abound, including one that says there are huge iron deposits in the ground which will make your compass go haywire and facilitate losing one's way. One thing we do know for a fact though is that many, many people have died in this place. Aokigahara forest is an inexplicable suicide vortex. That's right. It's one of the world's most popular suicide destinations, second only to the Golden Gate bridge in San Francisco (a decidedly less terrifying place) Approximately thirty bodies were found in the forest annually for some time, spiking then to seventy three in 1998, then to seventy eight in 2002 and a little over a hundred the year after that. Since then the Japanese government has been withholding the statistics from the public in a desperate avoidance of fueling the forest's reputation. Like on the Golden Gate, there are many signs posted here and there urging people to reconsider their actions, written both in Japanese and English. There are forestry divisions at work here but even they tend to avoid lengthy travel. When they do find bodies they are often well into the state of decay. Because of this light travel, even by caretakers, there is said to be a peculiarly disquieting variety of litter in these woods. If you were to visit Aokigahara you would likely find skulls, some long lines of colored tape, used to find one's way back from a trek and then discarded, many many bouquets of flowers left by the bereaved, various left behind suicide tools both recent and ancient. And yes, if you take a long enough, deep enough, brave enough walk you will probably encounter a hanging body. Or two.

SERPENS

2011-03-08T14:14:00.000-08:00

I like snakes! Apparently, so does the phenomenal, classical photographer Guido Mocafico , who captures textures within textures with his gorgeous portraiture of all kinds of good stuff: Snakes, Clocks, Guns, Jellyfish, Snakes...need I go on? Please check out his site where there is much to find beautiful. These selections are all from a giant coffee table book entitled Serpens. What really, really makes these snakes is the squared off compositions...brilliant!

Show Me Your Dream

2011-03-05T09:49:00.000-08:00

Ilya Repin

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Hans Bellmer

Shigeru Mizuki

Alastair

Ljuba

Toshio Saeki

Thanks.

SWANS

2011-03-02T02:37:00.000-08:00

I recently had the thrill of seeing the legendary band SWANS perform here in Portland last Sunday, the 27th. Jesus come down! As you might expect it was relentless, pulverizing, beautiful, ugly. I was confident I wouldn't be disappointed and yet it's always good to have those feelings extensively validated. For those of you who aren't familiar I would recommend you proceed with caution. This group is not for everyone. In fact, taken as a whole, they are for very few of us. I typically stray from making grand pronouncements like this, but Swans are basically the heaviest band I've ever heard. Now there's an interesting thing: This word heavy, that we so often only associate with the various metal genres. Swans are decidedly not a heavy metal band. At every step of their long, zig-zagging career they have defied description anyway. The kinds of tonalities they produce are unorthodox for any group working within the "loud" music field and yet in terms of sheer overall intensity you would be hard pressed to find an equally disturbing peer. The band is the fickle plaything of notorious front man Michael Gira (pronounced jeer-AH, despite the fact that I and everyone else I know who gives a shit continues to regularly and carelessly mispronounce GEAR-ah. Get it right or don't, just fall in line.) After some time of listening to this intensely haunted voice I always wondered what my physical impressions of the man would be when i finally saw him. (I have unfortunately never seen his alternate antithesis project The Angels of Light) To say the least, he is a bit scary. I enjoyed watching him aggressively direct the excellent band he has assembled for this tour. (The drums and bass in particular sounded fucking awesome) That is, he occasionally threw his commanding fingers at all of them except the only original member, guitarist Norman Westberg, who must know the drill pretty fucking well by now, I'm sure. Or maybe he has just known Gira long enough to be spared some of his mania. In any event, they shook my bowels and stirred my soul and I was pleasantly surprised at the patience of the audience, especially during Gira's occasional creepy, solo voicings.

Incidentally, here is a freaky image of the great Hank Williams, which hangs somewhere in my room. I put it together the night after the show. Do you see it too?

This Island Earth

2011-02-16T14:58:00.001-08:00

Colonel Douglas H. Wheelock, a NASA astronaut with a sense of poetry, took these gorgeous, velvety images while orbiting our planet. In the top one you can see some of the Aurora Borealis. He has a feed where he posts regularly.

Emil Alzamora

2011-02-16T14:40:00.001-08:00

The work of Emil Alzamora, whose platform is always the distorted human figure, reminds me of Antony Gormley - One of the all time greats.

Xela Trilogy

2011-02-11T13:46:00.000-08:00

J. Twells (aka XELA) , a brit by way of Malden, Mass as I understand, has been putting out some pretty stellar ambient/drone/noise/metal material for a while now. He has conjured up cultish, esoteric musings before but this very ecclesiastical religious cassette trilogy is really formidable! In order from top to bottom we have The Illuminated, The Divine, The Sublime. In turn, these installments evoke death, transition & rebirth. Drone addicts like me will get a thorough fix but don't dismiss this if you are afraid of noise. It's quite varied and much of this material is really gorgeous, moody atmosphere laden with field recordings of church bells, chants & prayers. While it's also true that the second side of The Illuminated (the fittingly death-related volume) is really some of the scariest music I've ever heard.
The tapes were super limited as always and sold out right away, I believe. At any rate, Dekorder is re-issuing all of it in vinyl format with alternate artwork. Also, you can visit S4D for a digital download. Included there also is Heirs Of The Fire, very excellent as well. Either way, if, after evaluating it, you decide you love it then support this man! This stuff is highly recommended!

Chiharu Shiota

2011-02-09T10:56:00.000-08:00

Chiharu Shiota creates installations and performance work. She is also an eerie spider woman who spins miles of black wool around things, enveloping them in a foggy labyrinth. I would love to see this stuff in person. I bet it gives you the creeps.

Jvstin Bartlett

2011-02-09T10:11:00.000-08:00

Justin Bartlett is a vile illustrator who has been busy as a bee lately doing album covers, tee shirts & web design. If you're hip or evil then you should know about him. As you can see, he's kvlt as shit. Check out his cool blog here where you can do light reading and also spend some hard earned dough on his beautiful items.

Kate MccGwire

2011-02-09T10:06:00.000-08:00

Her Site.

Night Heir

2011-02-04T12:53:00.000-08:00

This is an album I recently finished recording.

You can download it here, if ye wish it so.

And here is where I talk about it.

Enjoy.

The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein

2011-02-03T16:40:00.000-08:00

Hans Holbein the younger painted this in 1533. Among other things, it is a double portrait of two real people, one of them a wealthy landowner and the other a bishop. Putting two men from such weighty occupations into a frame together automatically begs interpretive questions. The plot is also thickened considerably when one peruses the shelves behind the gentlemen and the various objects they contain. It is a beautiful little still life all it's own, comprised mostly of instruments for astronomical calculation, and then on the lower shelf, books and a lute with a broken string. There is much debate over whether the relationship between the two men and the various objects symbolizes any kind of mutuality, or perhaps religious strife instead. At any rate, the most notable element of the painting by far is the famous anamorphic skull that sits, jarringly I might add, at the feet of the two men. Two of the many popular motifs during the Renaissance were Anamorphic perspective imagery and Vanitas. Vanitas is essentially any symbology that contemplates on the transient nature of earthly life and vanity. Skulls have always been and will always be the apex of death-contemplation imagery. So to have a skull in a painting like this isn't so startling on it's own. But this is a seriously anamorphic skull! To viewers unfamiliar with the concept, it comes across as an ugly smear only until viewed at an extreme angle from the side. Some people contend that Holbein intended for this work to be hung on the side wall in a stairwell, so that people ascending the stairs would see the skull before any of the other imagery became plain. Either way it's quite a beautiful and mysterious piece of work. But here is the really cool part: John Coulthart's blog recently informed me that this painting can now be viewed in the new Google Art Project gallery. This is quite a project, they are taking huge scans of famous paintings from everywhere so that you can check them out in a digital gallery. Why this is cool: Clearly, seeing The Ambassadors in person is a treat because you get to wait in the long line to take turns looking at the image from the side. However, with all the people and security hounding over you, you can barely spend any time at all closely scrutinizing the astonishing, hyper-real detail in the work itself. The guards won't even let you get all that close. Not all of the art in the Google project is as SUPER SUPER high res as The Ambassadors, but if you would like to look at the details of the skull and the still life close up- and I mean really, really, really close up- then CHECK IT OUT:
http://www.googleartproject.com/museums/nationalgallery/the-ambassadors

Well, it's Walt Goddamned Disney again

2011-02-03T16:29:00.000-08:00

This is so. fucking. COOL.
Yet another one of the endless treasure cave findings of the old Disney era. Yes, there was a time when Disney actually made lots of truly bizarre, experimental material. And with a budget! Though I've amassed a nerdy collection of some of this old junk, I was not familiar with the release this clip comes from: Mars & Beyond!
I discovered it thanks to the artist Jvstin Bartlett, who posted about it on his evil blog.

Alexander Ross

2011-01-31T21:09:00.000-08:00

David Nolan Gallery

Lately Musick

2011-01-19T21:43:00.000-08:00

BLACK SWAN + Black Swan (in 8 Movements)

ULAAN KOHL + III

EYVIND KANG + Virginal Co Ordinates

THE MEN + Immaculada

SIGRBLOT + Blodsband (Blood Religion Manifest)

STEVEN R. SMITH + Tableland

SILVESTER ANFANG + Kosmies Slachtafval

IMYNVOKAD + Ad Ordines Descendens

SWANS + Holy Money

GRINDERMAN + Grinderman 2

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma + Love Is A Stream

NO JOY + No Joy

POPOL VUH + Coeur de Verre

VINCENT GALLO + When

HIGUMA + Den Of The Spirits

YOGA + Megafauna

DAI + The Advent

ANAHITA + Matricaria

Laura Bell

2011-01-18T18:05:00.001-08:00

Photos by Laura Bell.
This entire post linked out of BOOOOOOOM!
Thanks BOOOOOOOM!

City of A Thousand and One Churches

2011-01-18T16:58:00.000-08:00

ANI.
Though technically located in modern day Turkey, the city of Ani has spent many centuries changing ownership hands with just about every major power in that region. It was originally inhabited by Armenians, who very bitterly came and went during an endless war-torn drama in which entire cultures, populations and cities were liquidated over and over again. Though decidedly impossible to imagine now, this place was once one of the most thriving metropolises of it's heyday. The historical specifics of this region are mercilessly bloody, greedy and convoluted. As always, the church played a constant background to the madness. In fact, as different peoples and religions took over, the region became a growing patchwork of temples. Curiously, though rulers have occasionally attempted complete genocide and architectural annihilation, there are still today a number of partial structures left standing in this uninhabited land. All of them churches. All of them abandoned.

All images from these flickr sets: Here, here, here, here & here
The much more informational Original Source Inspiration.

Agostino Arrivabene

2011-01-12T14:42:00.000-08:00

Aeron Alfrey's Photostream

Shane Wilson

2011-01-05T19:02:00.000-08:00

In this one above you can actually see a bullet lodged into the horn by the man who apparently commissioned the work, thinking it unsuitable for a more traditional wall hanging.

The work of Shane Wilson, who makes sculpture out of intricately carved bones, antlers, horns, ivory and bronze. In other words, he is a badass. Please do go to the source for more information, including videos and details of his process. I think it would be wonderful if my bones ended up beautifully carved and hanging somewhere. Don't you think so too?
...no?
Oh well.

My Dad, the secret artist

2011-01-03T22:36:00.000-08:00

These are all old photos that My Dad has taken over the years. He gathered them together, scanning groups of them at once so that he could get it all imported into the computer. The photos are already beautiful on their own, but when I noticed some of these little random collections he had inadvertently conjured, I was struck by the fact that they work wonderfully as collages. The juxtapositions of sometimes completely unrelated material from various time periods have, in my opinion, a fine sense of visual poetry. Cool!

Nazi Hardware

2011-01-03T21:36:00.001-08:00

The official pin/advertisement/endorsement of the first ever Volkswagens! The German populace were encouraged en mass to invest (in advance) huge amounts of money overall for the first line of this new automobile: "the peoples car"...and they were never delivered! The Reich simply stole all that money and threw it at the military. The people never got their cars and Volkswagens as we know them weren't actually assembled and distributed until years later, at new prices.

This one is especially curious and poetic.

Despite an almost cartoonish first impression this was easily the most dreaded of all the Nazi symbols- the official S.S. Totenkopf (Death's Head). An implication of torture and death for non-aryans generally and Jews specifically.

I'm currently reading The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich by William L. Shirer. It's depressing. I can't help but be fascinated with the thought that good and evil are essentially terms we have conjured up to describe ourselves. Unspeakable terrors have been spoken and unthinkable atrocities have been thought. It's difficult and discouraging to accept that the culture of Nazism got so far and compromised so many people based quite simply on a policy of aggressive bullying, intimidation and gangsterism. Something like this is going to happen again. Incidentally and relevantly, I have also always found myself deeply interested in costume and jewelry- to whatever end. Here we have a political and ideological group with the very clear intentions of seeming both noble and inherently blessed to it's followers and scary as all hell to it's enemies...and this is what some of their "jewelry" looked like.
This imagery comes from a very interesting site that has documented all kinds of military attire throughout the ages.

the Upside Dome

2011-01-03T21:15:00.001-08:00

Gijs Van Vaerenbergh is responsible for installing the upside dome inside the St. Michiel Church of Leuven, Belgium. Constructed out of chain, the free hanging "dome" is a sort of aesthetic reversal, informed by the fact that the church itself actually has no proper dome. I would love to see this in person, it looks gorgeous! More here please.

STEPHEN KASNER NEEDS HELP!!

2010-12-24T14:39:00.000-08:00

This is the work of painter/illustrator/designer/musician Stephen Kasner. Some of you may know him in relation to his project Blood Fountains or for the artwork he has done for bands like Khlyst, JK Broadrick, ISIS and Sunn O))). STEPHEN KASNER NEEDS HELP. He is very ill, yet lacks the funds necessary for optimal medical assistance. Many of us have been in this position before! Apparently he has already had emergency care so at this point funds are a must for this fine artist to get himself back in the saddle. If you are a fan or just simply a caring person with even five extra dollars then send him some paypal funds via kasner@stephenkasner.com OR you could just simply visit his merch site. Here is hoping that all goes well...and a Merry Christmas and a God bless us everyone and all this.

Christmas Post

2010-12-24T14:18:00.000-08:00

AAAAAAHHH!!!!

...and never forget:

Merry Crossmas

Previously and better done

and as always big thanks

Paradoxical Game of Night

2010-12-10T13:03:00.000-08:00

Gorgeous piece of work by J Karl Bogartte

Read some of the artist's equally evocative prose at The Cabinet of The Solar Plexus