Introducing Esotika Erotica Psychotica

andreyiskanov.jpg

Visions of Suffering (2006) – Andrey Iskanov

ESOTIKA EROTICA PSYCHOTICA is a blog by Mike who decribes it in his own words as a blog about “Sex, art, horror and experimentation in world film.”

Every film includes a review and a generous amount of photos.

The title is inspired by the Italian title of Radley Metzger’s The Lickerish Quartet: Esotika Erotika Psicotika.

Previous entries include:

And his blogroll features:

I’m looking forward to reading more, not in the least because I’ve never heard of the films he mentions. It looks like Mike is discovering the cult hits and sleepers of the coming decades.

Contemplative Cinema Blog-a-Thon

Today marks the beginning of the Contemplative Cinema Blog-a-Thon, hosted by Harry Tuttle at Unspoken Cinema.

“Contemplative Cinema” is defined as “the kind that rejects conventional narration to develop almost essentially through minimalistic visual language and atmosphere, without the help of music, dialogue, melodrama, action-montage, and star system.” Though the Blog-a-Thon runs throughout January, the entries are already gathering nicely, and even better, IMHO, many of the voices are entirely new to me.

Bonus for French speakers: A concurrent discussion, “Cinéma Contemplatif?,” is rolling along in Le Forum des Cahiers du Cinéma. –via Greencine

Imaginary gardens with real toads in them

Grotto in the Bomarzo gardens, Italy

At this moment someone in Uzbekistan or in Zimbabwe is writing a book which reveals more about life on earth than one year of television or a ton of newspapers …The Scream by Munch or a story by Kafka predict more than a thousand futurologists, a chapter by Proust reveals more than a hundred analytical sessions, a page of Kawabata tells more about eroticism than 10 Kinsey reports. Poetry, fiction, imagination, it’s always about – as Marianne Moore has stated inimitably – imaginary gardens with real toads in them, and try catching those. — The Abduction of Europe (1993) – Cees Nooteboom

Russ Meyer documentary

Supervixens (1975)

The British Channel Five produced documentary about legendary Sexploitation master and lover of unfeasibly large breasts, Russ Meyer, is now available in six parts on YouTube. Enjoy… part 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6
via Retrofap via PCL.

In his early career, Russ Meyer was a director of nudie films. His films were always more more ribaldry than pornography, and seem unusually focused on women with large breasts. His later films are almost entirely devoted to this vision; his discoveries include Kitten Natividad and Uschi Digard. He co-wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls with film critic Roger Ebert. Faster, Pussycat. . . Kill! Kill! is usually considered to be his greatest, or at least his most idiosyncratic, picture.

Interesting about the documentary are the people interviewed: John Landis, Dita Von Teese, the founder of Troma Films, Richard Kern, film critic and cultural historian Jack Sargeant, Kim Newman, Jim Morton (who contributed to Incredibly Strange Films (1986)) etc …

Update: I just watched the six part documentary and it was fun but well travelled territory. And everyone is going on how erotic his films are, and fun at the same time. I’ve found them strange … and decidedly unerotic.

No, what I am waiting for is a documentary based on Pete Tombs’s 1994 book Immoral Tales: Sex And Horror Cinema In Europe 1956-1984 which covers European exploitation cinema of the this era with profiles of Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, José Larraz, José Bénazéraf, Walerian Borowczyk and Alain Robbe-Grillet.

Soft knocks at the door

The Tenant (1964) – Roland Topor
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

The Tenant chronicles a harrowing, fascinating descent into madness as the pathologically alienated Trelkovsky is subsumed into Simone Choule, an enigmatic suicide whose presence saturates his new apartment. More than a tale of possession, the novel probes disturbing depths of guilt, paranoia, and sexual obsession with an unsparing detachment. With an introduction by Thomas Ligotti. The novel was adapted to film by Roman Polanski in 1976.

The above is a new edition of the 1964 The Tenant, a novel by Roland Topor which is better known in the film adaptation by Polanski.

Topor is one of my canonical artists for his satirical wit and his unique crosshatched drawing style which is somewhat reminiscent of that of Alfred Kubin. His ‘nodes’ are just as interesting as his work, he is connected to Fernando Arrabal, Alexandro Jodorowsky, Roman Polanski, Daniel Spoerri and René Laloux.

Amazon’s similar items connects him to Thomas Ligotti, Theodore Sturgeon, William Hjortsberg, Clark Ashton Smith, Ramsey Campbell, Alfred Kubin and William Browning Spencer, none of whom are familiar to me.

Take pleasure in change and transitoriness

Le Voyageur (1972) – Schizo
cover of the 7″ vinyl

“Le Voyageur“/Torcol (1972) is a seven inch single by Heldon. It features Nietzsche lyrics recited by Deleuze on music by Richard Pinhas:

“He who has attained the freedom of reason to any extent cannot, for a long time, regard himself otherwise than as a wanderer on the face of the earth – and not even as a traveller towards a final goal, for there is no such thing. But he certainly wants to observe and keep his eyes open to whatever actually happens in the world; therefore he cannot attach his heart too firmly to anything individual; he must have in himself something wandering that takes pleasure in change and transitoriness.” –from The Wanderer, in the first volume of Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human

The track is available on:

Radio Nova presents: Underground Moderne (2001) – Various [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

More here.

Just when you think those vocals couldn’t climb any higher

Tommy delivers again with Aura – L.A. Sunshine (1978, Change/MCA)

… This single has to be one of the most intriguing, and certainly interesting disco tracks I’ve come across so far, anchored by that understated, percolating percussion and bass; those dreamy strings and of course that absolutely mad vocal. For me, the vocals are notable, not just because of their delivery, but because the way it seems to have been recorded, sounding slightly canned and processed but most likely without actually being so. It’s like one of those records that, on paper, shouldn’t work (kind of like Loose Joints’ “Is It All Over My Face”), but somehow comes together into something that, while a little off-beat, is completely and oddly captivating. Perhaps the most sublime moment comes right after that verse where she goes “I’ll be back soon.” Believe me, it’s not as plain as it sounds when you actually hear it; just when you think those vocals couldn’t climb any higher, they end up soaring right above your head.

Introducing the Opinionated Diner

Simon Grigg has The Opinionated Diner, a music blog with good taste.

Silent Introduction (1997) – Kenny Dixon Jr
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

….enigmatic, even in his most open moments, Kenny Dixon Jr remains both one of America’s great musical secrets, almost unknown outside electronic circles, and a massive influence across the pond in Europe and America (try and imagine Henrik Schwarz’s wonderful DJ Kicks mix without Kenny’s influence). And completely addictive…once you buy in you come back again and again (and indeed, find yourself paying silly money for those rare 12”s). His rhythms, grooves…call them what you will…are often ridiculously understated in their subtly but their ability of snare you…as he says: I Can’t Kick This Feeling When It Hits —The Opinionated Diner

A bit more on Henrik Schwarz:

DJ-Kicks (2006) – Henrik Schwarz
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

It features tracks by personal favourites, Moondog, James Brown, Cymande, Drexciya, Coldcut, Robert Hood, Pharoah Sanders, Arthur Russell and Rhythm & Sound.

Other releases in 2006 that seem good:

Sunday Afternoon at Dingwalls (2006) – Gilles Peterson, Patrick Forge
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

Related: Patrick Forge – Gilles Peterson – Acid Jazz – Dingwalls

And finally K Punk’s 2006 rewind:

Momus argues that ‘if music didn’t exactly die in 2006, it certainly felt sidelined, jilted, demoted, decentred, dethroned as the exemplary creative activity, the most vibrant subculture.’ That is one reason why Burial has to be the album of 2006, and hauntology the year’s dominant theme. K Punk’s 2006 rewind

Burial (2006) – Burial
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

 

Burial’s self-titled LP on Hyperdub is one of our albums of the year. It’s a remarkable debut, built from damaged beats and distant, hiss-smothered vocal samples: a haunted pirate station broadcasting forgotten rave anthems from the afterlife. —factmagazine

Listen to a track by Burial here. The genre is called dubstep, and it has been championed by Simon Reynolds and K-Punk since more than two years, I’m not sure I’m too keen on it. I have the same feeling as when the British music press was raving about The Streets.

Best of 2006 in music:

I’m afraid I’m not very good at year end lists, but everyone seemed to like Ys by Joanna Newsom. She belongs to that elusive category New Weird America, my brother bought a lot of that stuff last year, and his musical taste is impeccable.

Toilet philosophy

Human waste has been of interest to a number of philosophers and I call them — and I do not mean this in a derogatory way — toilet philosophers.

Fountain by Duchamp

Among them are Georges Bataille, who André Breton called “excremental philosopher” and Peter Sloterdijk, famous for his remarks on the role of the arse in his book Critique of Cynical Reason.

Then there was Slavoj Žižek in a review of a book of Timothy Garton Arsh who connected toilets to Buñuel to Lévi-Strauss to Hegel to Erica Jong.