This week’s Station Idents are provided by artist EG Gauger.

This piece of art, executed in Walnut inkwash on a piece of marble slab lifted from bulldozed junk piles in Berlin’s St. Marien cemetery, is for sale. Find out more at this link.

Jack Crowder — which may be a pseudonym for a seasonal worker of note — appears pleased with his new shirt from IEU:

• German physicists create a ‘super-photon’
  "Physicists from the University of Bonn have developed a completely new source of light, a so-called Bose-Einstein condensate consisting of photons. Until recently, expert had thought this impossible. This method may potentially be suitable for designing novel light sources resembling lasers that work in the X-ray range."
  (tags:sci )
• ORC STAIN – Viva La Gronch!
  finally, James Stokoe gets a blog up
  (tags:comics )
• Brandon Graham – Where Im at
  the weekly glory of Brandon Graham
  (tags:comics )
• Exclusive Rotary Signal Emitter videos
  "Watch exclusive videos of Sculpture's animated LP…"
  (tags:music video )

I sent a telegram to Moon Wiring Club, fine purveyors of (and coiners of the term) Confusing English Electronic Music, asking that they provide me a list of their six favourite new pieces of said music from the year. The following appeared on my laptop screen this afternoon in a puff of radiophonic phlogiston:

1. VHS HEAD ~ Trademark Ribbons of Gold

SKAM return from nothingness and release a spliced master-class in FUN electonica, fusing murky (yes) 80s VHS voiceovers/synth-action with a right weird ear, this must be light-years ahead of everyone else recycling Tangerine Dream. 2009′s ‘Video Club’ EP was fine, but this is something else entirely, and the reason I’ve been saying ‘Academy Award Winner ~ Academy Award Winner’ everyday for the past 2 months. Perhaps not everyone’s cuppa if you don’t have an taste for the partly party frenetic, but this is deeply wonderful stuff. And from Blackpool.

2. D D Denham ~ Electronic Music in the Classroom

DDD his risen from the grave to throw us this archived artefact. Using period instruments, techniques and glue, the fictional entity know as ‘Jon Brooks’ flexes his audio-chops and shows us all how he gained ‘Irrational Treasure’ status.   No one else ‘alive’ has the skills to create this download-only nicely sliced delight. You can tell it isn’t real because it’s just too good.   So good, the British Museum want it for their fancy cabinet of 21st century curiosities.

3. Broadcast and the Focus Group ~ Familiar Shapes and Noises

The bestest so far in the charming Ghost Box Study Series Sevens sees ‘Inside Out’ sprawling breakbeats and synth across wonky bells, spooky clavichord and an owd Joanna. Trish seems to be singing whilst wandering around a different record alogether, and an unknown voice keeps saying ‘Falling’ (or summat) in your right ear. Oh! What ever-more do you want? It’s Bob’s full house.

4. The Bug ~ Skeng (Autechre Dub)

Given away FREE via FACT this grotty nugget bewitched me for several weeks of non-stop festering rotation. Sounding like something left out by the bins and growing like a Krynoid of FUNK, it fused two sound-worlds into a tip-top vortex of grot.

5. Pye Corner Audio Transcription Services ~ Black Mill Tapes Vol.1

PCATS confused everyone with a stunning fizzy fuzzbag of authentic tape-mangling and top-notch gloomy atmospherics. The catchely titled ‘Electronic Rhythm Number Three’ and ‘Electronic Rhythm Number Eight’ gave us some marvellously mildewed but propelling, euphoric moments, whilst the assortment of murky-tape drones on offer were clearly dredged from local canal using ‘special techniques’.

6. The Hardy Tree ~ The Fields Lie Sleeping Underneath.

Oh! This charmingly picturesque puzzle-box is a lovely hand-crafted jewel of a thing. Very wistful and calming, this was this my soundtrack to stuffing large cardboard envelopes with more cardboard and I enjoyed every bloomin’ moment. The cd itself really is the most beautiful thing I’ve bought all year. An exceedingly complete delight!

On a non-CEEM TIP (?), I would be reet wrong to not mention AMAZING music from oOoOO, LA Vampires, Umberto, Washed Out, Madlib and Zola Jesus & totally tons of others. And from last year Fever Ray cast a rather large shadow. AND finally, for next year can we have some proper UK electro-murky-female-goth-hop-weird music PLEASE.

Moon Wiring Club’s new long player is the gloriously mental “A Spare Tabby At The Cat’s Wedding,” and you can learn more about that at this link here.

Related articles

• Moon Wiring Club: music for children, by children (guardian.co.uk)

This week’s Station Idents are provided by artist EG Gauger.

This piece of art, executed in Walnut inkwash on a piece of marble slab lifted from bulldozed junk piles in Berlin’s St. Marien cemetery, is for sale. Find out more at this link.

Early Universe was a liquid

• Not by the Direct Method., A female hoplite?
  “Think not the less of me if this is the first time I?ve run across something in a history book which admits the possibility of Greek female warriors.”
  (tags:history )
• DAMIR DOMA SINGLE – WILD EYES
  another Former Ghosts collab
  (tags:music )
• Found Objects: Robinson’s Return
  “Patrick Keiller has a new film on release, ‘Robinson in Ruins’, and this is a cause for some celebration. Those already familiar with his earlier works ‘London’ (1994) and ‘Robinson in Space’ (1997) will appreciate another adventure for his itinerant alter ego Robinson as he dispenses wisdom and wishful thinking on a diverse range of topics including psychogeography, occult references, English revolutionaries, politics, the environment and social commentary in the manner of Ian Sinclair, Ian Nairn and George Orwell, Baudelair’s flâneur and Situationist dérives. There is perhaps a further dose of hauntology thrown into the mix, as the promotional material suggests Robinson now attempts to communicate with ‘non-human intelligences’, returning from time in prison like a ghost in search of somewhere to haunt…”
  (tags:film )
• Research carries cautionary warning for future stem cell applications
  “The research indicates a possible danger of cancerous tissue development in the use of such cells.”
  (tags:med )
• Breakthrough could lead to disposable e-readers
  “A breakthrough in a University of Cincinnati engineering lab that could clear the way for a low-cost, even disposable, e-reader is gaining considerable attention.”
  (tags:tech )
• Researchers kick-start ancient DNA
  “Binghamton University researchers recently revived ancient bacteria trapped for thousands of years in water droplets embedded in salt crystals.”
  (tags:sci )
• Learning Without Frontiers – Immersive Theatre
  “we are developing a show entitled Professor Scopps’ Travelling Library, where the children are asked to help the Professor and his assistants to fill the library with facts, thoughts, feelings and ideas. The live show is supported by an interactive website, where the children’s contributions to the library, in whatever media they choose to create them, are stored and can be shared with other schools participating in the project.”
  (tags:performance comms net )

"Cutting off your own thumbs. Because, you know, fuck evolution."

In which I grab mostly visual posts and pieces off Tumblr and other places and stuff them in my online notebook. All text below is by the linked authors.

* paperbits:

Z Axis Extender Kit for Makerbot Cupcake by Zydac – Thingiverse

Here we have a hardware upgrade that significantly modifies the capabilities of an open-source robotic 3D printer. Which is designed to be printed on that printer. And is uploaded to a social-software site for sharing fabricatable designs, forking them, and resubmitting improvements.

Let’s say that again: this is a downloadable hardware upgrade for an affordable robot that can fabricate its own components.Which I am linking to, because it’s been shared on a kind of Flickr for fabricatable objects.

* kateoplis:

The Hindenburg flying over Manhattan in 1936 or 1937. It burned and crashed in May 1937 at Lakehurst, NJ.

NYT: Streetscapes: The Empire State Building=

New comics are released into comics stores on Wednesdays in North America and Thursdays in the UK.

After we finished TRANSMETROPOLITAN, two major sf series followed it at DC Vertigo. Brian Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Y THE LAST MAN and, still being serialised today, Brian Wood and Riccardo Burchielli’s DMZ. I love this series. Brian’s done some simply amazing things with it, and in places has broken ground that much of the rest of the medium hasn’t even noticed yet. DMZ #59 is the pause before what looks like the final year of the book — or, at least, the final year of the war in and around Manhattan that DMZ has depicted. For most of the series, Manhattan has been the DMZ of the title, a buffer between opposing fronts in a new American civil war. Things have not gone well. This issue, guest illustrated by the remarkable writer/artist David Lapham, sets the stage for what comes next.

And here are clicky pictures for two more pages:

INVINCIBLE IRON MAN #32 and SECRET AVENGERS #7 are probably the two most entertaining straight superhero books Marvel are producing right now, and they’re both out this week.

The new ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY is out, #20, presented, as has become customary, in an expensive hardcover edition. At this point, I imagine you already know if you want it or not. As a continuation of a serial, it’s your choice whether you want a USD $24 book that’s the middle of a story as your first experience of Chris Ware. That said, if you haven’t yet read Chris Ware, you should see to that soon. I was going to refer you to his publisher’s catalogue, but most of his books seem to be out of stock.

EDIT: Ed Brubaker tells me “the new Acme is actually a self-contained GN this time.” And yet the publisher’s text I found includes “The ACME Novelty Library Number 20 comprises a contributing chapter to cartoonist Chris Ware’s gradual accretion of the ongoing graphic novel experiment ‘Rusty Brown.’” A chapter that works as a self-contained piece? Is Peggy still at D&Q? Peggy, I can still find out where you live.

THE WALKING DEAD continues to impress: Robert Kirkman’s best work, writing with an admirable ruthlessness, and Charlie Adlard becoming ever more magnificent. The thirteenth collection, TOO FAR GONE, is out this week, as is #79 of the serial. This is first and last time I’ll mention THE WALKING DEAD in these notes, because it’s about to become as ubiquitous as LOST and hardly hurting for an audience. And you’ll be able to find all the collections easily in bookstores, and wonder to yourself why this wasn’t selling sixty thousand copies per serial issue in comics stores.

This week’s Station Idents are provided by artist EG Gauger.

This piece of art, executed in Walnut inkwash on a piece of marble slab lifted from bulldozed junk piles in Berlin’s St. Marien cemetery, is for sale. Find out more at this link.

Mondays are always work days that don’t involve much actual writing. Mondays are for email, setting up conferences, touching base on things, general admin, catching up with news… Mark Romanek is negotiating to direct the pilot of LOCKE AND KEY based on Joe Hill & Gabriel Rodriguez’ comics series, which is lovely news (I once wrote a foreword to a LOCKE AND KEY collection)… I’m trying to clear the time to attend THRILLING WONDER STORIES 2 in London on Friday, but it’s not looking good… RED’s still in the US movie top ten this week, even after the crushing of what I may have called on Twitter HARRY POTTER AND THE UNSETTLING HANDJOB IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT… six weeks in the top ten, even, which is very pleasant… having to reconfigure the next month’s work, not so much. Just a few too many things have gone Horribly Wrong in the last six months. Still, things should get quiet at the end of the week, when America goes into a meat coma…

Also Molly Crabapple is threatening my internal organs again, which I think means she’s back in London to paint more filthy murals next week. And Templesmith is talking about some all-inclusive Templesmith App for iOS. He didn’t seem thrilled when I suggested it was going to be called iSquid, but then I don’t think he’s really parsed the whole "stroke or swipe the Templesmith for information" of it all.

Also, this:

More stuff tomorrow.

It’s that time of year. And we live to meet your needs, here at the International Electrophonic Union. Behold:

Indeed. You may view your purchase options here at the IEU Store.

Steven Shaviro is the DeRoy Professor of English at Wayne State University in the US and the author of many wonderful books like DOOM PATROLS and CONNECTED. His new book POST CINEMATIC AFFECT, is about the intersection of supermodern life and the new cinema. I asked him to write to you about his strangest and/or most interesting film experiences of the last year.

This is not a definitive top ten list; there are too many recent films that I still haven’t seen (including Red, based on Warren’s graphic novel). But the films that especially impressed me over the past year include the following:

* Splice (Vincenzo Natali). A box office flop, but to my mind the best SF/biohorror film since early Cronenberg. Sarah Polley and Adrian Brody are genius bioengineers who create an intelligent transhuman entity as their “child,” and then don’t know how to treat her. Disturbing less for the body special effects than for the emotional claustrophobia. What’s the use of creating something new, if we still act in all the old, stupid ways?

* Scott Pilgrim Vs the World (Edgar Wright). Another box office flop that I thought was pure genius. A movie entirely styled in the manner of indy comics and 1980s videogames. A film so dynamic, and so attuned to our current multimediated world, that it even made Michael Cera seem empathetic. This is the future of movies; nearly everything else seems drearily 20th-century in comparison.

* Life and Death of a Porno Gang (Mladen Djordjevic). This Serbian film has not yet been released in the US or the UK, though it played at several horror festivals, and has been in circulation on the Internet. A troupe of performers goes around the countryside on a hippie bus, offering audiences “the first porno cabaret in the Balkans.” But they are drawn instead into a creepy underworld of violence and exploitation. Eros turns out to be no match for Thanatos, at least in today’s world of gangster capitalism. A film that pushes into new extremes of graphic sex and violence (although in this respect it is outmatched by its companion piece, Srdjan Spasojevic’s A Serbian Film, which goes to extremes that would make even the crassest exploitation filmmakers blush).

* Enter the Void (Gaspar Noé). An amazing psychedelic downer of a movie. The main character is killed in the first few minutes, and spends the rest of this 2 1/2-hour-long film in the afterlife, forced to relive his sordid memories and forgotten dreams, and to see what happens to his loved ones in his absence. It’s all cheap drugs, furtive sex, and failed hustles; and yet it also gives you a transcendental rush. It’s actually a remake of Kubrick’s 2001 for the twenty-first century, when we have forgotten about outer space and become fascinated instead with inner space.

* Adopted (Pauly Shore). Yes, the whiny and obnoxious MTV comedian of the early 1990s is back, having reinvented himself as an independent filmmaker. In this pseudo-documentary, Pauly (playing himself) goes to South Africa to adopt an orphan, figuring that what’s good for Madonna and for Angelina Jolie has to be good for him as well. The result is awesomely cringe-inducing; Pauly embodies everything that’s despicable about the condescending, racist, rich Westerner who goes to a poorer part of the world convinced that he is God’s gift to the “natives.” It’s hard to tell when Pauly is deliberately being satirical, and when he doesn’t quite realize what he’s doing; but this confusion is what gives the film its undeniable edge.

POST CINEMATIC AFFECT is available in good bookstores, from the publisher, and from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk.

• Smithereens: Amazon.co.uk: Steve Aylett: Books
  "SMITHEREENS collects 19 stories including 'The Man Whose Head Expanded', the prophetic 'Download Syndrome', 'The Burnished Adventures of Injury Mouse', 'Voyage of the Iguana', the last ever Beerlight story 'Specter's Way', 'Horoscope', and the closest thing Aylett has ever written to a traditional SF story, 'Bossanova' (featuring a robot and two spaceships!) There are also animal-attack-while-writing reminiscences in 'Evernemesi' and top-of-the-line declarative bitterness in 'On Reading New Books'. Aylett's last collection. "
  (tags:books )

A case of joy has arrived, courtesy of Herr Direktor Funranium: six bottles of precision-engineered caffeine delivery system the Black Blood Of The Earth, proving that he can ship a box of this wonderful supercoffee internationally.

Sleep? Sleep is for YOU OTHER PEOPLE. You UNMODIFIED people. I will swap MY ENTIRE BLOOD VOLUME with the Black Blood, and develop POWERS.

Also yes probably also death BUT STILL.

This week’s Station Idents are provided by artist EG Gauger.

This piece of art, executed in walnut inkwash on a piece of marble slab lifted from bulldozed junk piles in Berlin’s St. Marien cemetery, is for sale. Find out more at this link.

I was going to write something about books, as has been the fashion in our digital circles this year, but of course I haven’t bought a paper book in months, due to having obtained a new Kindle in late summer, out of curiosity and also because I have filled the house with books that I have only read once and now sit around collecting dust and beetle turds and generally get in the way, to the point where the child has to clamber over great accreted ramparts of them to get to my office, where she stands and mocks me for owning a Kindle, a device which is apparently “just sad” in the rarefied coolosphere of a fifteen-year-old girl, not understanding that if I continue to buy books that I only read once then sooner or later she’s going to have to start eating the bloody things, and so I bought the Kindle for sound environmental reasons, not the least of which is that I prefer not to encourage more landfill publishing in the crime genre, an area I’ve had to investigate of late and crammed with so much bad writing (particularly that one that won that big literary prize, which goes “wank wank wank (repeat for four hundred pages) wank wank ooh guns bang end”) that it’s had some kind of hideous osmotic effect on me and now I’m only using full stops once in every two hundred words.

I do, however, have a lovely-looking Duane Swierzcynzki novel to read next week. So there’s that.

This appears in lieu of an actual post because I’m working on four things at once, with only one available pair of hands. I trust that pluripotential cell culturing of extra limbs and smart microsurgery will cure this in the near term, because there is so much left to do, and yet only so much longer left to live.

See you in the morning.

Musician, writer and editor Meredith Yayanos, backstage at Project BORN last night.

• Unlogo
  "Unlogo is a web service that eliminates logos and other corporate signage from videos. On a practical level, it takes back your personal media from the corporations and advertisers."
  (tags:video culture pol )

At my message board tonight:

* ALTERNATE WORLD REMAKE/REMODEL: David Lynch’s SPIDER-MAN

* Karl Urban as Judge Dredd: First Picture

* Sizer’s LITTLE WHITE MOUSE needs a favor

* T-Shirt Of The Week: SATAN GIVES ME PRESENTS

* New Comics Talk (17nov10)

* The OSBORN #1 Thread

• soCinematic: TeslaTouch
  "TeslaTouch infuses finger-driven interfaces with physical feedback. The technology is based on the electrovibration principle, which can programmatically vary the electrostatic friction between fingers and a touch panel. Importantly, there are no moving parts, unlike most tactile feedback technologies, which use vibration motors. This allows for different fingers to feel different sensations. When combined with an interactive graphical display, TeslaTouch enables the design of a wide variety of interfaces that allow the user to feel virtual elements through touch. For example, when dragging a file, the level of friction could convey the file size. Objects could "snap" into place when designing a presentation. Or perhaps with a quick "rub" of your email application's icon, you could sense how many emails are unread. Finally, imagine a (flat) touch keyboard where the virtual keys can be felt. The possibilities are endless."
  (tags:tech )
• UNESCO Culture Sector – Intangible Heritage – 2003 Convention :
  The UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding.
  (tags:culture net )
• Found Objects: proto-hauntologists (an irregular series), #1
  "Still, judging by this September 1998 mini-profile of Drew Mulholland, you have to give props for his being way ahead of the game. Unless I'm grasping the wrong end of the stick, it sounds like he was on this path back in postpunk days (his 1996 release "The Sound of Pre-Punk" drew largely on material he'd done circa 1979-1980) and he actually first started messing with tape loops back in 1975. Nods to Joe Meek and "Tomorrow Never Knows"/Sgt. Pepper's era Beatles (as well as Radiophonic Workshop) confirm my sense that dub isn't really a major strand of British hauntology's DNA; the indigenous sources are more than sufficient."
  (tags:hauntology music )
• ?Wilson? Lands At Fox Searchlight With Alexander Payne ? Deadline.com
  "Fox Searchlight has made a deal for Wilson, a Dan Clowes-created graphic novel that the author will adapt as a potential directing vehicle for Alexander Payne."
  (tags:comics film )

A preview:

Released on Tundra Dubs next Tuesday, the new EP from I†† continues the course of events laid out in the full Preliminary Invocations album released last month. The tracks here increase the atmosphere to something more subtly filmic, eventful, almost score like….

I†† :: The Lesser Keys EP by Tundra Dubs

“Crime,” crooned the great detective Falconer. “Its musky discharge is the finest perfume to me. It is all I can do to stop myself from milking the juice of crime from suspects, like rare fragrance from a civet’s glands. Of course, civets carry a variant of SARS, so you can’t really chew on them the way you want to. I miss the days when you could have a good chew on a cat. Also people. Did you know that’s illegal now? There is crime everywhere. Terribly good for the prostate.”

Falconer, amazingly, has never been convicted of any crime.

SPARKLINES: ideas under 100 words. © Warren Ellis 2010