WARREN ELLIS LTD
a writer's notebook

WARREN ELLIS LTD

Author: Warren Ellis

WARREN ELLIS LTD Articles.

Anthology Of Post Industrial And Experimental Music From Italy

Warren Ellislibrary

The Sound Mapping Project is one of my favourite things in the world right now.

Since the end of the 1970s, industrial music has stood out as one of the most vital and innovative forms of all the popular culture of the 1900s. In Italy, industrial and post-industrial have generated one of the most interesting and popular music scenes on the international scene. The reasons for this success are to be found in the cultural matrix and in the inspirational models that underlie this artistic phenomenon. Unlike what happened previously, the roots of industrial did not sink into US and UK rock. Influences from various artistic avant-gardes of the last century converged in the so-called grey area: futurism, Dadaism, situationism, performance, body and mail art. One of the main merits of the industrial scene was precisely that of translating the most radical aesthetics of research art into music, without leaving the context of popular music, in terms of distribution and market. This choice led, from the beginning, to the creation of a musical environment that did not derive from Anglo-Saxon cultural models.

NORTHERN EARTH 168

Warren Ellismagazines

I still subscribe to a few small magazines. Only the ones I consider essential. Like NORTHERN EARTH. It is always a good day when a new issue arrives.

Our magazine has been running since 1979, and is now the world’s oldest earth mysteries journal! We have attempted to maintain throughout a tradition of free-thinking, approaching archaeology, folklore and the many constituent strands of earth mysteries without a specific axe to grind – no ideologies or beliefs other than a general political radicalism influence our content. In these days of ‘new age’, pagan, factional and other belief-centred publications, our approach might seem unusual.

Find out more, and examine the staggeringly cheap subscription, at their website.

Cosmos

Warren Ellismorning computer

Vangelis passed yesterday.

researchers are led to an extremely interesting conclusion: that there exists a mirror universe very similar to ours but invisible to us except through gravitational impact on our world. Such “mirror world” dark sector would allow for an effective scaling of the gravitational free-fall rates while respecting the precisely measured mean photon density today.

“In practice, this scaling symmetry could only be realized by including a mirror world in the model—a parallel universe with new particles that are all copies of known particles,” said Cyr-Racine.

Stanislaw Fernandes, ‘Doorway to Reason’

New images from Solar Orbiter:

My Own Timeline In Black And White: Eddie Campbell’s THE YEARS HAVE PANTS

Warren Elliscomics

I was re-reading the big collection of Eddie Campbell’s ALEC stories yesterday – I have a story idea/approach/undefinedthing itching away at the back of my head, and a train of thought ended with the little still grace notes that Eddie achieved in those stories.  So I pulled out the book and spent a pleasant hour re-reading chunks of it.

What I always forget is how that book is a personal time machine for me.  Much of it, you see, is set in my part of the world.  Eddie lived here in the 70s and early 80s – I think he left just as I was entering my mid-teens.  So, when I open an ALEC book, I see my town as it was when I was growing up.  Which isn’t an unusual experience with art if you live in, say, New York City, or London, or some other vibrant and picturesque place where serious history happened.  You don’t get it much if you lived in a village outside a minor seaside town.

But there’s the bus stop on Chichester Road, just as it was, with the number 20 bus to Hullbridge that my friend used to take home.  There’s Crocs nightclub, which became the Pink Toothbrush, also sometimes known as the Bogbrush.

As much as I revel in the work – and Campbell was a revelation to me when I first discovered his work, back when he was still photocopying his comics! – the thing that makes me sit down and think, in the moments I get to spend with his book, is that rare experience of seeing your own history as art.

THE YEARS HAVE PANTS, Eddie Campbell 

(written July 2016)

Comms And Time Radio: A Dream Protocol

Warren Ellisjotter

A fragment written in 2016:

…I retired to bed with the new Paul Kingsnorth book, BEAST. His previous book, THE WAKE, was written in a remastered form of Old English. I’d previously finished Walter Benjamin’s diary, ONE-WAY STREET, which is shot through with Surrealist-style dream protocols.

Last night I dreamed that it was discovered that time travel was only achievable robotically – I kind of blame Nicola Barker’s THE CAULIFLOWER for this, too. And so we sent tiny fly-sized drones into the past, devices that could be biodegraded or self-incinerated to preserve the timeline. Video was difficult. But we could transmit audio back up the line. Archived sound recording has been in my head since a tour of the basement levels of the British Library a while back, in pursuit of an abortive spoken-word project about radio.

In the dream, in my head, I could hear Old English being spoken in the 10th Century, amongst the crackling of old fires and the lapping of buried rivers.

19may22

Warren Ellisstatus

Just arrived: THE YEAR UNDER THE MACHINE, Peter Danielsson.

Thunderstorms were booming over the Delta all night. No time for news today: I have emails to write and stories to fix and ideas to test. And also finish writing Sunday’s edition of the newsletter.

Listening: Fimbul Radio

Also reading: THE FOGHORN’S LAMENT, Jennifer Lucy Allan:

Who had decided that this terrible horn was a good idea? Where did such an obscene machine come from? Where could I hear it again?

Filtered For: Radio

Warren Ellislinks and bookmarks

Previous links and posts about radio:

My iPad Is A Radio – converting dying devices for extended uses

Shipwreck Radio – Nurse With Wound’s art-music broadcasts

That Was Very Fine – fun quote about German radio art

ANTIDAWN, Burial – radio is always a strong theme in his work

Ganymede Series 01 Watch Arrived – weird radio-dial watch

Beckett And The BBC Radiophonic Workshop – true story

Heart Of The Island – vaguely adjacent, my visit to the British Library sound archives

morningcomputer 18may22

Warren Ellismorning computer

Reading this Wirecutter review of “tabletop radios,” as I guess they’re called now, made me want one.

I use an old Echo Spot in the kitchen for radio, as well as for access to Amazon Music, and the sound quality doesn’t seem to me to be much different from the radio sets of my youth. When I was a kid, the radio was always on in the kitchen, and, growing up, it was my little lifeline to culture and discovery. John Peel, Annie Nightingale, Alexis Korner, Linton Kwesi Johnson. I’m sure it’s just memory and nostalgia that made me instantly think, wow, I’d love a radio on the kitchen counter with a proper dial. I don’t need one, obviously. But I’m bookmarking it anyway, against that time in the future when I don’t have access to the internet and still need that little lifeline to the world of sound.

Listening to: Radio Mothership, out of Woodbridge.

Liz Craft:

© 2024 WARREN ELLIS LTD.
Amazon Affiliates links used to defray running costs on this site

Sliding Sidebar