dead clothes sing

Dior Couture Spring 11

2011-01-27T18:42:00.000-08:00

Based on the fashion illustration of Rene Gruau.

daughters of darkness

2010-08-17T18:20:00.000-07:00

A gorgeous, louche, sexy vampire film from 1971...a gloriously empty hotel on the Belgian sea resort town of Ostend is an unfortunate stop for an innocent couple. The Countess oversees their education in indulgence. Beautiful to watch as the days start shortening, night falls sooner and windows must finally be closed.

brighton shock

2010-02-24T18:21:00.001-08:00

Counting the days down to World Horror Convention 2010, which is being held outside the US for the first time, and its 20th anniversary!

redemption, with rita

2010-01-20T17:09:00.001-08:00

There is nothing quite so comforting as rereading old, old favourites when everything is on the verge of spinning out of control around you. Currently I'm snatching warmth whenever I can on the subway and before lights-out with Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, from Stephen King's 'Different Seasons' collection. The movie was wonderful, but the story goes deeper and a bit harder, and all the better for it. It also makes you rather thankful for your little lot.

I'm alone with you tonight

2009-12-27T16:29:00.000-08:00

The Sunnyboys were teenagers from north of Sydney, Australia who formed a band in '79 and in a flash were touring, famous and releasing their first record. They were incredibly talented and one of those cases of the exact right sound, crystallising the time & place. Very tight, melodic pop songs with beautiful Rickenbacker riffs and Hammond organ that still sounds new...their arc was short but so bright. I was madly in love with Jeremy Oxley, like every other Sydney schoolgirl.

midnight is a place

2009-12-10T19:25:00.000-08:00

Joan Aiken was a British author who was known primarily for her children's books - The Wolves of Willoughby Chase series was very popular for years, first published in 1962 with a gorgeous cover by Edward Gorey:

She wrote many adult novels as well, in many genres from gothic thriller to mystery to supernatural. Her writing is a marvel of clarity and sly, sharp intelligence, as well as a wicked and playful sense of humour. She could combine elegance and tremendous human warmth with a shade of the sinister that stayed with you for days. Her titles are equally evocative: Black Hearts in Battersea, Voices in an Empty House, Midnight is a Place. But it's her short stories that show the sharpest edge, the highest polish.

Her short story collections are hard to find (I dug mine up on eBay) but well worth the search. Don't let the Puffin editions fool you. A Whisper in the Night and A Bundle of Nerves are full of nasty, beautiful wonders that will democratically haunt adult and child alike.

I'm in your blood

2009-11-22T09:48:00.001-08:00

Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a quiet, creeping film from 1971 that makes a lot of people's most-underrated list. We went to a 16mm screening with the director, John Hancock, in attendance last week. Thought the print was a little too dark, it was great to watch in the theatre and get some backstory and commentary from him. Someone asked what he thought upon viewing it again after 38 years and he said "It's much better than I thought at the time!". The stark, relentless soundtrack by Orville Stoeber makes the tension that much stronger.

strangers

2009-11-11T11:39:00.001-08:00

The Strangers came out last year, and I've just caught up to it. It's remarkably stripped-down, almost flat: couple terrorized in an isolated house by nameless, silent people. Very rarely do I get genuinely nervous watching a film.
While it wobbles a little bit - the last quarter meandering into commoner tropes - the first three acts unspool beautifully while slowly, and expertly, building dread - the soul of true horror.

the house of the devil

2009-10-31T06:59:00.000-07:00

This looks fantastic...set in, and filmed as if it were still - 1980. Out now theatrically in the US, hopefully soon elsewhere...HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

dirty gems

2009-10-18T15:33:00.001-07:00

All my old obsessions returning to me of a sudden. Wedged into a pile of true-crime books at a thrift store, I finally found Christiane F., the original book (later filmed) about her junkie-baby-prostitute life in late-70s West Berlin.

As hard as the movie can be to watch, the book is even more dense, immediate, and rough. I read it when I was 13 and it strongly affected me...it's virtually impossible to find now, long out of print, and battered copies go for $60+ on ebay. Not this one!

N.B.: If you're up for it, the entire movie has been posted to Youtube, starting here. So far, it's unavailable in North American NTSC format.

...always coming back to you

2009-10-09T15:13:00.000-07:00

Sighing over Scott Walker once again, after watching the documentary 30 Century Man (2006). Cameras are let into his studio for the first time (recording his '06 album The Drift). David Bowie, Johnny Marr, Brian Eno all confessing their love and his influence. It's the first time Scott has been interviewed so intimately. You get a sense of the depth of his marriage to his music, that he can be and do nothing else but create this extraordinary stuff. Although his style has drastically evolved - become more itself, one could say - I will always get chills listening to his solo work from the 60s/70s. It stops you up short. He really is one of the life-changers.

the plight house

2009-10-07T15:43:00.000-07:00

Heartbreak, horror, and impossibly brutal choices may all be yours in The Plight House. This first novel by Jason Hrivnak is like nothing I've ever read, and still troubles me.

down the junction

2009-10-01T20:06:00.001-07:00

I spent my pre-teen years in Toronto's Junction neighbourhood in the early 80s, and the surroundings of the spartan Crossways Mall (beneath the dual tower blocks pictured), derelict warehouses and railway lines - accompanied by a soundtrack of Soft Cell, Joan Jett and Human League - were heavily formative.

perverted by language

2009-09-22T17:04:00.000-07:00

What an excellent, stripped down film, with an amazing performance by Stephen McHattie. Three people in a smalltown Ontario radio station, on air during the development of a ferocious virus transmitted through...words

spring 2010

2009-09-20T13:15:00.000-07:00

courtesy of ohne titel; how I love me grey:

and mary karantzou with the mad, beautiful prints: it looks like something grows from it, at the neckline...

liquid metal, or a petrol-puddle:

brevity is the soul of story: Hint Fiction

2009-08-04T19:07:00.001-07:00

Robert Swartwood is a Pennsylvania writer editing an anthology of stories, open to all for submissions from August 1 - 31, 2009.

Each of these stories must be 25 words or less. It's called Hint Fiction.

See how close to the bone you can cut it.

the bitch is back

2009-07-08T17:25:00.000-07:00

The stunning, striking Kristen McMenamy is back from huge 90s fame followed by obscurity, in a 30-page feature in July's Vogue Italia. Bravo.

the shuttered room

2009-06-15T08:12:00.001-07:00

1967 - apart from being set in New England with some mysteriously deformed villagers, it's a great 60s British horror that has little to do with the Lovecraft story. Oliver Reed is a twisted joy to watch as he terrorises a young couple claiming their ancestral inheritance: a dilapidated millhouse which has secrets to tell. Particularly that upper room.

Carol Lynley is the perfect, kittenish ingenue returning to her childhood home. The girl can leave the village, but the village will reclaim the girl...

a new toy

2009-05-18T17:45:00.000-07:00

ay-yay-yay...I wondered why the kids made fun when I dressed like her at Beckford Primary...

killing the primary colours

2009-05-14T19:43:00.000-07:00

A great gig (if usual terrible sound at the Phoenix theatre).

An amazing new album - turns preconceptions about them on their heads. Every song turns out just the way you want it to. Sounds so new and throwback at the same time.

r.i.p.j.g.b

2009-04-19T16:54:00.000-07:00

Died today at aged 78 in London. No more from this incredible mind is a sad thing...

Black Hearted Love

2009-03-29T17:39:00.000-07:00

PJ Harvey and John Parish have made a new album together: A Woman A Man Walked By. The Chapman Brothers made the video for the first single, Black Hearted Love.
They have a palpable chemistry together - you can feel it in their work. He's produced her for years, and they made Dance Hall at Louse Point in 1996. I love their elegant, enigmatic album titles.
This song really struck something with me: the minor key of the recurring riff, its slight messiness, but Polly's voice so crystalline and clear.

Fever Ray

2009-03-29T17:31:00.000-07:00

Karin Dreijer Andersson is half of The Knife, a remarkable, enigmatic brother-sister band from Sweden. She has released her first solo album as Fever Ray: a heavy, atmospheric and dense thing that I can't rip myself from...

libertango

2009-03-14T14:38:00.000-07:00

Grace and...yogurt? Last night, a new ad for H&M had a cover of Grace Jones' "Libertango" tinkling in the background, immediately followed by an ad for Liberte yogurt, featuring a healthy, yogurt-y couple dancing the...'libertango'. I suspect someone in the studio was having a little fun.

conrad williams: tight wrappers

2009-02-24T19:48:00.000-08:00

The best story in Best New Horror 19. Absolutely horrid, stuck to my thoughts for days, involves scaffolding and True First Editions. Many thanks again, CW!

kate moss by bert stern

2009-02-24T18:38:00.001-08:00

the scent of friedrichstrasse

2009-02-24T15:46:00.000-08:00

From Chandler Burr's column in the New York Times T Magazine comes word of a scent exhibit - possibly the first of its kind: ‘‘If There Ever Was: An Exhibition of Extinct and Impossible Smells,’’ at The Reg Vardy Gallery in Sunderland, England.

Among the headspinning creations:

Lethal Peruvian arsenic deposits
Hiroshima
A 16thC spell for eternal beauty (contents: murdered raven, almond oil)

and

the scent of Berlin-Friedrichstrasse train station, the only connection to West Germany in the GDR.

SPLAT

2009-02-17T18:16:00.000-08:00

Nice, slightly mental clothes from Marc Jacobs in NYC for these dour times. Looks like Stephen Sprouse...history's repeating, again and again and...

Genius for hire, apparently

2008-12-31T11:45:00.001-08:00

Heard today that The Village Voice has canned Lynn Yaeger along with other staff that have worked there for decades. A braver mag better grab her as her droll, clever and uncompromising fashion column is the rare sort of voice we need MORE, not less of in these homogenized times.

edited to add: Smart people at New York magazine snapped her up.

personas

2008-12-30T16:32:00.000-08:00

Illamasqua is a drool-y, theatrical new makeup line in the UK. Alex Box is the incredible makeup artist who is their artistic director. God knows when we'll get it in N. America, but the stuff looks sensational and the products have marvellous names like Salacious, Test, and Daemon, so ask your friend who's next going to London to get it at Selfridges!

Watch Alex Box's tutorial on the smoky eye. A northern accent makes '...Sex' even more-so.

The Site

2008-07-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

I unearthed a great ratty paperback a couple of months back. "The Site" by Melisand March had an era-appropriate (1989) metallic-embossed cover of a fanged and bloody face bursting out of a glass and steel building. I grabbed it because I do so love a modern haunting and was in the mood for some 80s horror.
It was very well-written - complex, with deep characterisation. Obviously her first book but the writing of it sprang from a series of coincidences and a natural passion for buildings which demanded the story be recorded.
She's disappeared from the world of writing (and perhaps the world in general)...but the buildings were real. Here's the site itself - where terrible things occur - 277 Park Avenue, New York City.

Too much for Italy...

2008-06-09T17:49:00.000-07:00

...which has banned the new print ad for Tom Ford eyewear. My only argument is its lack of subtlety - which may be what TF was going for...

das leben der anderen

2008-04-15T19:30:00.001-07:00

...the lives of others.
Currently reading 'Stasiland', written by an Australian journo who spoke to East German people about what the everyday was like - afterwards. No longer having an informer for every 6 people. No longer being watched. How would you get used to that?

the jefferson institute

2008-04-07T18:10:00.000-07:00

Freaked me out as a kid, and still provides a good chill. Wonderfully feline Genevieve Bujold tracks comatose patients to the concrete-stark Jefferson Institute, where they're being stored with an elegant pulley system and then harvested...

seventh tree

2008-03-06T16:16:00.000-08:00

Such a beautiful new album from Goldfrapp. Prancing clowns, a taste of The Wicker Man, softer than the last two albums yet no less sharp. Deepens and improves with each spin.

boys & girls come out to play

2008-02-24T10:51:00.000-08:00

Ruminating on some new releases by boy/girl outfits lately: The Raveonettes

and the Kills

Both are fond of a stripped-down sound with lashings of feedback.

The Kills are all over the fash mags of late - the male half Jamie Hince is dating Kate Moss. They're stylish in the classic skinny-cigarettes-dark hair & leather rock aesthetic.

The Raveonettes are a little easier to warm to.
Danes who temper the coolness with a touch of sweet & sad...

Eye of the Devil/13

2008-02-17T11:36:00.000-08:00

Wonderfully stylish and evocative film from 1966.
David Niven, Deborah Kerr and an impossibly gorgeous Sharon Tate & David Hemmings.
Niven is the eldest son returning to his ancestral chateau to complete a ritual which will ensure the town's survival.
A familiar trope but sharply shot in B&W with some genuinely sinister moments.

Buffalo Gals

2008-02-06T17:55:00.001-08:00

From a spread in American Vogue, July 1983.

Malcolm MacLaren's "Buffalo Gals" was the craziest thing I ever heard that year.
Skipping, skratching, all messed up like 8 songs in 1 - and after seeing the video, it made you want to change everything you listened to, everything you wore, ditch your friends and fly to New York...even if you were only 12.

"Jason wanted me to help pick out a pair of slacks."

2008-02-04T17:03:00.000-08:00

"I'm sorry, Mr. Stanton can't come to the phone right now..."

2008-02-04T16:56:00.000-08:00

Roxy Music: For Your Pleasure

2008-02-02T15:36:00.000-08:00

1973--a dark, slick cover with S/M overtones---'In Every Dream Home A Heartache'---need any more?

Ashes to Ashes

2008-01-28T18:13:00.000-08:00

So excited about this show! It's the sequel to the wonderful Life On Mars - this time set in 1981 London with a similar time-travel bent. The hard man gets skirt for new partner. Killer OTT clothes:

God knows when we'll get it on these shores. Check BBC Canada/America.

the parking garage II

2008-01-23T18:40:00.003-08:00

OK, so when you're walking through this:
you ought to be listening to this:
Or, more recently, this:

Bright & Jaunty

2008-01-21T19:59:00.000-08:00

Alma Cogan was big in postwar Britain and eventually all over the world - she had a girlish, sparkly voice with a husk & a little squeak...known as 'The Girl with the Giggle in her Voice', and a dizzying range of glamourous outfit changes. Part of the red-velvet-curtain touring revue so popular at the time, when she was home she held court with her mam & sis in their flat in Kensington High Street to people like Tommy Steele, the Beatles, and many actors and musicians of the period. She died terribly young at 34 in 1966 - just before everything in popular culture changed.

Jeff Wayne's 'War of the Worlds'

2008-01-15T16:55:00.001-08:00

Whose?, you may ask:

In 1978, Jeff Wayne (an unknown American record producer) put together a roster of musicians like Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues, David Essex, and Phil Lynott to record a musical version of the H. G. Wells story, with Richard Burton narrating.

A bit difficult to get your head round - until you listen to it. One of the finest examples of progressive rock & a concept album, done right.

Muir Blue

2008-01-09T18:19:00.000-08:00

Jean Muir was a British designer of stunningly simple, clever, incredibly constructed clothes.
Her signature colour was navy, her fabric jersey.
Look at the lovely Joanna Lumley showing us this one:

Golden Worlds

2008-01-06T13:43:00.000-08:00

Joanna Newsom

and Bat for Lashes

can't extricate themselves from my player right now. In common they share an extraordinary talent for making music that's unlike anyone else. Comparisons to 'new folk' or Kate Bush are cheap and lazy. Both are classically trained and apply their rich imaginations to the musical world, creating a wonderful and sometimes uncomfortable place to visit.

Joanna Newsom, 'Sprout and the Bean'
Bat for Lashes, 'What's A Girl To Do'

girls in suits

2008-01-05T08:56:00.000-08:00

I was feeling YSL-ish for New Year's Eve (having just read the engrossing book 'The Beautiful Fall' by Alicia Drake) and wore my own version of Le Smoking cobbled together from satin trousers, a skinny blazer and black sequins.

Nowadays girls are doing it again, prompted by Hedi Slimane's designs for Dior Homme.

Inspector Calhoun

2008-01-02T18:18:00.000-08:00

Donald Pleasance from the cult film 'Death Line' aka 'Raw Meat'. Just read a story in Best New Horror 18 - 'Sentinels' by Mark Samuels, which drew its influence from this film, reminding me of its humour and horror. Cannibals in the London Underground, 1972. Mind the doors!

andy & edie are nyc

2007-05-24T19:44:00.000-07:00

In honour of holding on to that new york feeling as long as I can after just getting back from a week of that blasting rushing fun fun city---the original superstars.

We Love You Isabella B

2007-05-08T13:13:00.000-07:00

Very sad to have just learned that Isabella Blow, fashion raconteur and great discover/supporter of among others Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan and milliner Philip Treacy, has died at an unseasonably young 48. In these times it seems like an impossibility to see her revolutionary like again. We should all celebrate her by wearing something we normally wouldn't...be brave!

Tralala

2007-05-07T18:40:00.000-07:00

In honour of my impending trip to NYC, and in appreciation of this remarkable book that certainly has horrific elements...and to one of the most memorable film performances ever, by Jennifer Jason Leigh.

The Nightmare Factory

2007-04-15T12:40:00.000-07:00

Thomas Ligotti is a modern horror short-story writer whose first publications came out in the late 80s, and were a profound influence on the genre and I think on anyone who reads him. If you are familair with the field you will always remember the first Ligotti story you read (mine was "Alice's Last Adventure' from Prime Evil) . His style can be arch, dry, really disturbing and very funny. He is one of the really important ones. A film adaptation of his story 'The Frolic' is forthcoming, as is a graphic novel of his highly recommended collection 'The Nightmare Factory'. Lovely, dark and deep.

The Spunky Androgyne

2007-04-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

Isn't Agyness Deyn adorable?...she reminds me a little of Sara Stockbridge, one of the stars of i-D magazine in the 80s and a favourite of Vivienne Westwood's. They're both got a sweet, individualistic attitude.

Agyness above, Sara below.

The Queen of England

2007-03-03T09:19:00.000-08:00

Boudicca is a British fashion label: a cool, sexy couple that make sharp, graphic clothes.

A New Wall of Sound

2007-03-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

This is Amy Winehouse, a tattooed, not-so-nice little Jewish girl from the east end of London, whose voice is a gravelly and very knowing anomaly. The production on her second album 'Back to Black' is a spit-perfect rendition of 60s Spector-sound - the slightly hollow, raucous boom, with lots of brass, and claps, and rhythm. She looks, and seems to live, the part.

The Dread Hallway

2007-02-20T15:53:00.000-08:00

I think most of us are familiar with what 'corporate horror' might mean, but in terms of it as a horror sub-genre, Craig Kilpakjian is its illustrator. The picture above was also used as the cover for J. G. Ballard's 2000 novel Super-Cannes, which explores the violent occurrences in a French business park complex.

Oh, Horrors!

2007-02-06T11:00:00.000-08:00

A gang of teenage English dandy-goths with Mary Chain hair, and a nice way with the Hammond organ and a spot of feedback. Video director Chris Cunningham (Aphex Twin, Bjork) made his first clip in years for their song "Sheena Is A Parasite". Drawn from many genre threads, with a directly traceable lineage to Screaming Lord Sutch .

Arguable talent but undoubted charisma and a chaotic live show ensure fans and detractors of equal vehemence.

May I suggest for accompaniment Gregory Nicoll's short story, "Dead Air"?

The Elegant Poster Art of Poland

2007-02-04T09:20:00.000-08:00

Poland produces the most fantastic film poster art - and particularly for films of the fantastic.
(from top: Bermuda Triangle, Blade Runner, I Married A Witch, The Birds, Don't Look Now)

No More of This, Then

2007-02-01T11:35:00.000-08:00

From the BBC: "The first part of a ban on public smoking came into effect in France on 1 February – a change that may alter the image of a country partly defined by a love affair with tobacco."

Aickman's Strange Stories

2007-01-31T15:19:00.000-08:00

Robert Fordyce Aickman was an English writer of what he called 'strange stories'.

Writing from the 1950s up until his death in 1981, his short stories are elegant, modern, and packed full of disturbing imagery. Dreamlike, yet pronouncing sharp insights into human nature and relationships. Reading his tales can feel as if they are veiled by a scrim. Not through lack of clarity in language, as his prose is some of the clearest you'll read - but there is an itching to see through the words, behind the story - and it is this discomfort that Aickman was an expert at producing, leaving you with a real sense of unease. And you're never entirely sure why.

His other life's work was as the co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association, formed to preserve the canal system that runs through the UK, and still active today. The plaque pictured is a memorial that was laid at one of the locks, also named for him.

Till There Was You

2007-01-28T14:46:00.000-08:00

Really, who doesn't like an occasional dash of attractive, Teutonic industrial bandmembers? It can brighten one's entire day.

Kristen McMenamy

2007-01-23T16:03:00.000-08:00

A bit messy, wouldn't stay inside the lines, she came through the page at you. Always smoking, always taking her top off! The particular editorial from Details '94 (once a great magazine!) I remember vividly...

High-Rise

2007-01-23T15:32:00.000-08:00

J. G. Ballard is the prime chronicler of the city dweller who, slowly and very sensibly, goes insane. High-Rise was written in 1975 and concerns the escalating occurrences in a group of ultramodern apartment complexes. He has revisited similar themes in subsequent books such as Cocaine Nights, Super-Cannes and Millenium People; but as someone who said in 1982 that '... the future is just going to be a vast, conforming suburb of the soul', it is a topic being explored by its pre-eminent authority and seer.

Hit the North

2007-01-20T14:51:00.000-08:00

The Fall are now approaching their 30th year. Either you've never heard of them, or you have and think they're genius, crap, or both. 40 or so lineup changes but the same singer, Mark E. Smith, pictured on the record cover, who worked as a clerk on the docks in Manchester in 1977 and thought he'd start his own band.

They say music should be fun
Like reading a story of love
But I wanna read a horror story

'Dice Man' from the album Dragnet, 1979

the parking garage

2007-01-20T14:00:00.000-08:00

Parking garages seem to be internationally interchangeable, although there are attempts to lighten the mood with neon fruit or jolly animals rather than stark numbers to distinguish floors. There is an elegance in their flat functionality which can be chilling. Harmful people and berserk vehicles can be easily imagined. Or other things, if neither cars nor people are present.

Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo

2007-01-15T17:30:00.000-08:00

A film to cover the triptych of music/fashion/horror, Christiane F. is based on a true story of unglamourous drug addiction, set in late-70s Berlin with an underage cast, supplanted with performances and soundtrack by David Bowie. Its unretouched dirtiness holds a strong sway, with scenes that nowadays would be polished and Touche Eclat'd to perfection. The city itself is a star as well as the young actors.

Dark City

2007-01-13T09:35:00.000-08:00

If at times you feel a sense of foreboding, a sinister undercurrent, in the course of day-to-day living in a large modern city, look to Fritz Leiber to have your suspicions confirmed. His 1941 short horror story 'Smoke Ghost' serves as the template for the urban horror subset, shockingly ahead of its time. Do search it out (and try Harlan Ellison's 'The Whimper of Whipped Dogs' as a 1973 companion piece). The sacrifices of city life will change its meaning, slightly.

Fritz Leiber was a fascinating writer who is probably more well-known for his sword and sorcery (his original term) books with his Fafhrd and Gray Mouser/Lankhmar series, but his horror writing was incredibly prescient, witty and surprising. His novels 'Conjure Wife' and 'Our Lady of Darkness' (1953 and 1977 respectively) manage all this, with OLOD having, for me, an added melancholy tone as it contained shades of Leiber's own life that are particularly affecting. But they will also frighten you, very much.

For more about Leiber, there is a very comprehensive website.

Bob Richardson for Vogue Italia, 1972

2007-01-13T09:33:00.000-08:00

Who know that Terry Richardson was the spawn of photography genius? Well, not me obviously...this marvelously louche shot was taken by Terry's dad Bob for Italian Vogue in 1972. He sadly died in 2005 but his work is remarkable: ahead of its time, yet in retrospective it's The Look of the period.

Dear Scott W.

2007-01-13T09:32:00.000-08:00

What a thrilling discovery you were! Your populist but eerie arrangements, the ache in your beautiful vibrato, unusual subject matter...no wonder Julian Cope was obsessed with you, compiling an album called "Fire Escape in the Sky: The Godlike Genius of Scott Walker". Listen to 'Montague Terrace (In Blue)' or 'It's Raining Today' and see if you don't agree.