Newsletter 58
there were men burning holes in the earth and they woke up the god in the sediment
The Leo Nocentelli tune down at the bottom is a stunner of a folk rock song. If it had been released when it was recorded, it would be one of the immortal hits of the 1970s. College students across the decades would know the first few bars of the guitar part. It would be featured in the soundtrack of a dozen period pieces. Clapton would have done a cover in the 80s with an obnoxious and totally unnecessary guitar solo.
There’s other great stuff in this issue, too, don’t get me wrong, but that’s the best. Here, click on this link to the song, don’t even bother scrolling. Don’t miss it.
Fares Micue is a photographer from Las Palmas who shoots self-portraits. Here's her Instagram, and here’s where you can buy prints. Colossal, one of my favorite firehoses of art, has coverage from 2019, 2020, and 2021.
For a fun little glimpse into the sausage factory of the fine art world, check out this ad for an exhibition of Micue’s work that one could rent (if that’s the right word) for one’s museum or similar. The seller here is the Denver Botanic Garden; I guess they put it together initially and are trying to recoup their investment. Here's a video of the artist herself promoting the show.
Via a post on the blog Biblioklept, which is like a highbrow version of the first half of this newsletter. Korzhev was a Soviet (and, after the USSR, merely communist) painter. This piece is a departure from his typical work; note the year.
Manfred Sillner (link is in German) is an artist from Kelheim. Above is his piece Über Regensburg, completed in 1982. Below is an Albrecht Aldorfer painting from 1529 that inspired it. Zoomed-in views are available at the links. This came to me via the most excellent blog feuilleton, who has more on Sillner.
New music: The End is Now by HMLTD. (Bandcamp or Spotify or YouTube). A big theatrical rock song with electric guitar, organ, piano, and some very effective chopped up backing vocals; the lead singer starts belting at :50 or so.
This is one of two very different singles off of an upcoming concept album about parasitic worms taking over humanity. This song is the more accessible of the two, plus it explains a bit what’s going in the story of the album. I was gonna say this genre is broadly “prog rock” but Wikipedia says “art punk” and “glam rock” and “new rave.” The artists themselves leave it at “alternative.”
New music: Immature by Lisel. (Bandcamp or Spotify or YouTube). Experimental music from Durham; her Spotify bio mentions her Yale music education. The album is titled “Patterns For Auto-Tuned Voices And Delay”. Give this song a moment to settle in; there’s more to it than the apparent chaos of the beginning.
The Guardian has some nice things to say about Lisel, but that’s not where I found it: Lisel came recommended by Ted Gioia, a music writer and scholar who has an incredible newsletter. He recommends albums, he recognizes trends (note that this came out 8 days before Apple’s big announcement), and he knows more than any man alive about Robert Johnson’s deal with the devil at the crossroads. Showing perhaps more wisdom than me, he shared a song from this album that’s got lyrics.
Old music: Give Me Back My Loving (1971) by Leo Nocentelli. (Bandcamp or Spotify or YouTube). Imagine, for a moment, that it’s 1972. This might be easier for some readers than others; for me, it’s pretty difficult. But just imagine you read in the music section of your local anarchist newspaper, or heard from the oddly-mustached clerk at the record store, or however people learned about new albums back then, that the main guy from The Meters had put out a folk rock LP. You’d have found a way to listen to that, right? That woulda sold some records, right? So why the fuck didn’t this get released until 2021?
(If you’re thinking “that would be more compelling if I knew who The Meters were” then you are in for a real treat. Start with It Ain't No Use; the YouTube algorithm should take it from there. The Meters were featured previously in Newsletter 42, which also contains cool pictures of dragons and some other music I like a lot.)
Next time someone asks “where do you find all this cool stuff?” you should tap one of these buttons and have them type in their email address.
-Thomas