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The real history of the covey of attention-artists who call themselves "The Birds."A great deal of uncertainty--and even some genuine confusion--surrounds the origin, evolution, and activities of the so-called Avis Tertia or "Order of the Third Bird." Sensational accounts of this "attentional cult" emphasize histrionic rituals, tragic trance-addictions, and the covert dissemination of obscurantist ontologies of the art object. Hieratic, ecstatic, and endlessly evasive, the Order attracts sensual misfits and cabalistic aesthetes--both to its ranks, and to its scholarship.In recent years, however, the revisionist work of the research collective ESTAR(SER) has done much to clear the air, bringing archival precision to the history of this covey of attention-artists who call themselves "The Birds." Gathering the best articles of the last twenty years of The Proceedings of ESTAR(SER), this volume represents a landmark in the history of aesthetic practices, and will be a point of departure for future work wading the muddy marshes at the limits of historicism.

Texts explore the multifaceted conceptual practice of the artist Ilana Halperin.Ilana Halperin (b.1973) is an artist who shares her birthday with an Icelandic volcano. Working through the aesthetics of geology since the late 1990s, her multifaceted, conceptual practice unearths the intimate poetics of rocks, minerals, and body stones. Halperin''s fieldwork has led her from erupting volcanoes in Hawaii to petrifying caves in France and geothermal springs in Japan. Felt Events surveys the last two decades of Halperin''s output (1999-2020), representing a mid-career moment of reflection.Felt Events includes critical and experimental writing from international curators, Lisa Le Feuvre and Naoko Mabon, art historians Andrew Patrizio and Dominic Paterson, anthropologist Jerry Zee, and writer Nicola White. It also offers examples of Halperin''s performance lectures, some of which appear in print for the first time. This collection introduces Halperin''s work to new generations of artists, writers, and environmental activists--those who will shape the critical landscapes of the twenty-first century.

A work that combines biography and pyschogeography to trace Aleister Crowley''s life in London."I dreamed I was paying a visit to London," Aleister Crowley wrote in Italy, continuing, "It was a vivid, long, coherent, detailed affair of several days, with so much incident that it would make a good-sized volume." Crowley had a love-hate relationship with London, but the city was where he spent much of his adult life, and it was the capital of the culture that created him: Crowley was a post-decadent with deviant Victorian roots in the cultural ferment of the 1890s and the magical revival of the Golden Dawn. Not a walking guide, although many routes could be pieced together from its pages, this is a biography by sites. A fusion of life-writing with psychogeography, steeped in London''s social history from Victoria to the Blitz, it draws extensively on unpublished material and offers an exceptionally intimate picture of the Great Beast. We follow Crowley as he searches for prostitutes in Hyde Park and Pimlico, drinks absinthe and eats Chinese food in Soho, and find himself down on his luck in Paddington Green--and never quite losing sight of the illumination that drove him: "the abiding rapture," he wrote in his diary, "which makes a ''bus in the street sound like an angel choir!"

A lonely young woman and a mysterious man meet in a northern California landscape populated by poets, New Agers, stoners, and dropouts.Do you know the language of the birds? Summer, 1979: A lonely young woman housesitting for her aunt and uncle in an isolated bohemian enclave finds troubling reminders of a past family tragedy surfacing in odd and unsettling ways. When a mysterious man moves in next door, Dovey hopes for a romance like the ones in the novels she secretly devours. But a dark truth hidden since childhood erupts shockingly in a violent otherworldly intrusion, catapulting her into a desperate struggle for her life and sanity. Set in a haunted northern California landscape populated by poets, New Agers, stoners, and burnouts, Neighbor George is a deeply atmospheric story of psychological horror enacted in the liminal space where the natural collides with the supernatural.

The first ever publication of Mark E. Smith's supernatural film treatment, co-authored with Graham Duff.In 2015 Mark E. Smith of The Fall and screenwriter Graham Duff co-wrote the script for a horror feature film called The Otherwise. The story involved The Fall recording an EP in an isolated recording studio on Pendle Hill. The Lancashire landscape is not only at the mercy of a satanic biker gang, it's also haunted by a gaggle of soldiers who have slipped through time from the Jacobite Rebellion.However, every film production company who saw the script said it was 'too weird' to ever be made. The Otherwise is weird. Yet it's also witty, shocking and genuinely scary. Now the screenplay is published for the first time, alongside photographs, drawings and handwritten notes. The volume also contains previously unpublished transcripts of conversations between Smith and Duff, where they discuss creativity, dreams, musical loves (from Can to acid house) and favourite films (from Britannia Hospital to White Heat). Smith also talks candidly about his youth and mortality, in exchanges that are both touching and extremely funny.

A compendium of other musics, channelled from the spirit world, the fairy kingdom, outer space, secret societies and occult lodges.This unique collection of esoteric earworms gathers, and reproduces, music from other worlds. Here you''ll find tunes hummed, strummed, and sung by spirits, sprites, and fairies, extraterrestrial elevator music, dreamed ditties, marches for occult ceremonies, secret musical codes and languages, music made by animals, and more.Each entry contains an explanatory text on its origins and purpose, and also reproduces the musical notation, in facsimile where possible, so that you can play along at home.An in-depth introductory essay by musician, historian and collector Doug Skinner rounds out this wondrous musical cabinet of curiosities.

A fascinating glimpse into the pagan counterculture, from the “Satanic Panic” to “occulture.”Delinquent Elementals: The Very Best of Pagan News collects some of the finest articles, news reports, interviews, and humor that appeared in this singular publication, providing a fascinating glimpse into the pagan counterculture. It charts the historical timeline of the Satanic Panic scandal of the late 1980s, documents previously uncollected information, and provides a wide selection of practical knowledge and insight into occult practice. It reveals how occult practitioners interacted with the wider culture—bringing about what is now termed “occulture”: the intersection of esoteric themes with popular culture, political activism, and the struggle for LGBTQ rights and recognition.Wonderfully unpretentious and absurdly funny, this is the definitive guide to the magazine that redefined the nature of late-twentieth century occultism.

A biography of a key figure in psychedelic history: the man who turned Timothy Leary on to LSD.

A journey deep into the heart of the trash experience: tales from the underground and exploitation movie scene in America during the 1960s.

A chronicle of a lifetime's passion for gig-going, by one of British television's most respected writers.

Telling the stories of ten areas of London—some of the city's most famous, and infamous neighbourhoods—which have disappeared from the A-Z.London is in a state of constant transformation, layer upon layer built up over centuries of destruction and reconstruction. There is so much change all around us that we scarcely notice it, but among the areas now vanished and forgotten are some of the city's most famous, and infamous, neighbourhoods.Vanished City takes us to ten areas, well-known in their day, which have disappeared from the A-Z. Each chapter tells the stories of places once known to every Londoner, including the most feared neighbourhood in the Western world, London's first Olympic Park, its first port, the original Grub Street, a high society spa resort, an occult square, a landscape of ancient, mythical kings, a notorious slum, and the streets stalked by the first London serial killer.Lost London lies right under our noses, in places we think we know and places we never thought to visit. Vanished City peels back the layers to reveal London as it used to be.

The return of the Strange Attractor Journal, offering a characteristically eclectic collection of high weirdness from the margins of culture.

A memoir from one of Britain's legendary singers, folklorists, and music historians.A legendary singer, folklorist, and music historian, Shirley Collins has been an integral part of the folk-music revival for more than sixty years. In her new memoir, All in the Downs, Collins tells the story of that lifelong relationship with English folksong—a dedication to artistic integrity that has guided her through the triumphs and tragedies of her life. All in the Downs combines elements of memoir—from her working-class origins in wartime Hastings to the bright lights of the 1950s folk revival in London—alongside reflections on the role traditional music and the English landscape have played in shaping her vision. From formative field recordings made with Alan Lomax in the United States to the "crowning glories” recorded with her sister Dolly on the Sussex Downs, she writes of the obstacles that led to her withdrawal from the spotlight and the redemption of a new artistic flourishing that continues today with her unexpected return to recording in 2016. Through it all, Shirley Collins has been guided and supported by three vital and inseparable loves: traditional English song, the people and landscape of her native Sussex, and an unwavering sense of artistic integrity. All in the Downs pays tribute to these passions, and in doing so, illustrates a way of life as old as England, that has all but vanished from this land.Generously illustrated with rare archival material.

The disturbing, exciting, and defiantly avant-garde films of Jesus "Jess" Franco, director of such films as Vampyros Lesbos and Lilian the Perverted Virgin.

A memoir about the recovery from alcoholism, habitual drug use and mental illness, from broadcaster, and co-founder and editor of The Quietus website, John Doran.

A subtle and sometimes disturbing account of how technology has impacted upon human culture.