Going away at the end of the month, these are:

"Two women have been arrested after a British motor racing boss was found dead in a shower at a sadomasochistic sex club in Belgium."

And also:

A judge must now decide whether there is sufficient evidence to bring the women – who call themselves Mistress Lucrezia and Mistress Juno – to court.

“…BP drill site is directly over a massive underground reservoir of methane that could result in a huge explosion that would create “a supersonic tsunami” that “would literally sweep away everything from Miami to the panhandle in a matter of minutes. Loss of human life would be virtually instantaneous and measured in the millions.”".

No, these people are serious:

If the huge methane bubble breaches the seabed, it will erupt with an explosive fury similar to that experienced during the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in the Pacific Northwest. A gas gusher will surge upwards through miles of ancient sedimentary rock—layer after layer—past the oil reservoir. It will explode upwards propelled by 50 tons psi, burst through the cracks and fissures of the compromised sea floor, and rupture miles of ocean bottom with one titanic explosion.

The burgeoning methane gas cloud will surface, killing everything it touches, and set off a supersonic tsunami with the wave traveling somewhere between 400 to 600 miles per hour.

(EDIT: always remember, this is posted under “research material,” not “independently fact-checked news.” I write fiction, after all.)

My brain’s been deep in Other Things for the last week or two, and I have a shitload of stuff to catch up on.

Belated happy birthday to the superb artist Marian Churchland, for one.

I can’t find the link right now, but I’m pretty sure William Gibson said his new novel ZERO HISTORY will be released on digital same day as the print version goes out.

Of course, one of Fraction’s IRON MAN comics went out day-and-date digital the other week, and DC are doing some JUSTICE LEAGUE thing much the same way, so the waters are now being tested in something approaching a significant way.

Talking of novels, congrats to Charlie Stross on finishing RULE 34, which I’m very much looking forward to reading. Mr Stross has the most recent in his series of "Lovecraftian spy thrillers," THE FULLER MEMORANDUM, released next week, I believe.

kek-w ruminates/hallucinates on the subject of Design Fiction:

Design as -what?- a new open-source metaphor for imagining, one that can be incorporated -mashed-up- w/ literature – a new form of conceptualising that propels us past physical media and all known platforms? (Design is Imagining Incarnate. It’s all about…wondering, but also factoring in the physical practicalities, the possibility of building something new – a product – that might actually come-into-being; how would it interact with us, how would itlook?) It’s heady stuff, indeed. But is this all really genuinely new n Post-Physical – the next new wave – or is it just Cyberpunk 3.0? Golden Age 6.5? Or all of the above?

(Alex Berg)

Would you like to listen to a 31-minute mixtape that includes LFO, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Coil , Sisters of Mercy, Washed Out, Clannad and Basil Rathbone? Course you bloody would. Luckily, Moon Wiring Club have anticipated this deep-seated need of yours, and have created one.

Stream the new album by the amazing Zoe Keating right here, or click through to pay her a riduculously small sum to download the whole thing. Simples.

Morning.

If the embed doesn’t work, try this link.

EDITED TO ADD: my thoughts, earlier in the year, on the changes being made to the book for the film.

Just heard that the trailer for RED was screened on America’s ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT tv show a few moments ago. Anyone see it? I haven’t seen the trailer yet.

The Thinkpad Fan Buzz Of Death is getting louder and louder. Going to have to get another laptop very soon. Am looking at another Thinkpad, at Cory’s suggestion, one with a bit more oomph under the bonnet… but, ooh, pricey.

‘Course, the thing about a laptop is that, after two years, you’ve often just about got it how you like it.

What I dread is having to get my net connection going. I use AOL UK as my internet provider, because they provide me very fast internet very cheaply and a phone service that’s close to free. Their customer service has actually been terrific. But their system for setting up the router they supply is… arcane. And I always have to get on the phone with them to set it up anew, and they always have to walk me through it, and it always doesn’t work until suddenly it does, apparently through no process I or the tech support person initiated.

I want to keep this laptop just so I don’t have to go through that again.

CAPTAIN SWING #2 and SUPERGOD #4 should be along imminently, by the way.

• The TAKE-BACK Manifesto – “Boredom at Its Boredest” by Michael Tully
  "From this point forth, we are only interested in the film itself. By marketing your marketing, you are only alienating us. If you are doing anything, you are making us not want to watch your film."
  (tags:movies theory manifesto )
• Serotonin Sounds: [interview] ???
  delicious-to-blog hates symbols like ???
  (tags:music )

Announced at DC’s blog:

DC Comics… is partnering with comiXology and PlayStation®Network for two separate digital comics distribution deals launching today, Wednesday, June 23. In addition, a DC Comics App for the iPhone®, iPad® and iPod® Touch is available allowing consumers an easy way to access DC Comics’ content.

Both the comiXology and the PlayStation Network Digital Comics launch offerings will include classic titles from DC Comics, Vertigo and WildStorm, such as… Planetary: All Over the World and Other Stories. Both programs will share a tiered pricing format, with digital comics priced from $.99 to $2.99 per issue.

Several comics will be available for free at launch, including the first installment of the ZUDA series Bayou and select stories from Batman: Black & White.

Yesterday was very weird. Morning.

(MontiLee Stormer)

The 4am is a selection composed entirely of music sent to me by artists. If you want your music (I’ll also take field recordings, noise and spoken-word) to be played on The 4am, email your 128kbps-plus mp3 files directly to warrenellis@gmail.com. Include your website address, please. The 4am is of no set length and is released on no set schedule. The 4am doesn’t survive without new music. If you like the 4am, please tell people.

The podcast feed for The 4am is: http://warrenellis.com/?feed=podcast

(web archive) (iTunes)

22: Crawling Inside Your Body

It’s another quiet, darkened, meditative one.

 

 The 4am: 22 - Crawling Inside Your Body [24:56m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (8928)

(Mysterious technical problems continue to plague the 4am. Have tried a few tweaks. Any problems, please use the comments thread. Ta.)

Jimmy and the Binliners – Walk It Out (0:31)

Scratch River Telegraph Company – “The Crawling House” (3:49)

Robboland – “threefiveoh” (3:24)

clearsignals – “vv cephei a” (6:12)

I†† – “?¬¬†” (5:03)

Sugar Sphinx – “Someone Has Done This” (5:55)

Hello. Brief liner notes follow.

Hey, if you want a different piece of intro music, you’re going to have to make it and send it to me. I like this one.

(Also, I seriously would make an entire 4am out of pieces that were 31 seconds or less in length. Seriously.)

Scratch River Telegraph Company are very new, I’m told, and can be found at this link here. Very lovely low-key strange blues.

Robboland says: “I’m sending you a tune which seems strangely relevant, being that it’s called three five oh, due to it being recorded at 3:50am one dark and twisty night, somewhere near the edge of the UK. It’s all done on a couple of classical guitars and a bass, with my own fair hands, and probably a bottle of red wine somewhere along the way for that extra ‘I don’t know what’ (sorry, don’t speak French).” Please help him to either drink more or learn French.

Clearsignals describes his work as “Electronic soundtracks for stars comprised of skittish beats, nonlinear melodic patterns, and bass duets between the synthetic and actual.” His piece comes from the album “stars lost your name.”

I†† bear one of those witch house style names that make them impossible to search. Thankfully, SoundCloud doesn’t truck with such youthful shenanigans, and so you can find them there as http://soundcloud.com/itt.

Sugar Sphinx doesn’t have a website, but its alter ego Paul Kopal has a site for his art.

"BrokenZero is a series of precursors to Broken20 – releases prior to the present that still fit into the internal timeline of the label. They form a part of the narrative thread of the label, and their specific chronology is incidental. Where possible we will be giving these releases away for free."

Cryptic Flickr message from Jones The Steam reads "Matt Jones wants you to watch a video – incredible piece. ghost engine in a big brick box."

And bugger me if he isn’t right as usual.

It’s a piece by UVA and the sublime Mira Calix:

The sculptural work consists of a group of massive pendulums suspended from the roof. A light and a speaker are mounted on each of the motor assisted pendulums, together forming a single instrument. Each light pendulum emits its own unique musical score, an individual voice in the darkness that together forms a perfect ensemble of light and sound.

While the work explores the relationship between performance, sculpture and installation, musical composition sits at its heart. Composed by Mira Calix, the composition is structured in three distinct phases which will resonate through the dark space, punctuated only by the choreographed pendulums of light.

My name’s Warren Ellis. I write comics, graphic novels, journalism and anything else that people pay money for. I live in Britain.

I’m the writer of the graphic novel RED, the film version of which (starring Bruce Willis, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman & Helen Mirren) is out in October. I’m the writer of the GRAVEL graphic novels, under development for film by Legendary Pictures. I also wrote the novel CROOKED LITTLE VEIN. I extrude a monthly column for WIRED UK magazine.

I write here almost every day. A collection of the writing I’ve done here and elsewhere on the internet, SHIVERING SANDS, was published last year.

Quick links: Whitechapel (message board) – Twitter – MySpace account – Soundcloud – an Official Warren Ellis Compound on that Facebook thing – a store of Things at CafePress.

For people wanting to send me to their sites, wanting to email stuff or tell me about new music or send me tips or whatever, I’ve set up a Gmail account that I check once every day or so: warrenellis@gmail.com. This isn’t, I stress, my main email account, and it’s not for asking me when some comic’s coming out (there’s a FAQ for that). Always interested in new music, new art, new connections, dirty pictures, madness etc.

If you need to contact me about writing for print or web, please contact my agent Lydia Wills using the link in the righthand menu bar.

If you need to contact me about anything involving film, tv, games or other things that move, please contact my agent Angela Cheng Caplan using the link in the righthand menu bar.

If you (for god knows what reason) wanted to send me something physical… um, well, you can’t, right now. My book agent has gotten flooded with stuff of late, and I feel terrible about drowning them in things like that. So I’m going to sort myself out a PO Box here in the UK next week. Details will go in the July update of this message.

Your retropunk technoporn for the day, in three different posts from English Russia:

Moscow Aviation Institute – Aerospace Department

Kachinsky Air Garrison

Puschino Radioastronomical Observatory

Former Ghosts – “New Love” – on Upset The Rhythm – out autumn 2010