Monthly Link Dump: March 2025

This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird.

From Nikolas Vitus Lagartija at I Was A Teenage Sisters of Mercy Fan - Forty Years Ago today: First and Last and Always was released:

Forty years ago today (11^th March 1985) on the third day of their ‘Armageddon’ tour across the UK (which was revisiting University of Sheffield that evening after the traditional tour openers in Glasgow and Edinburgh), The Sisters of Mercy finally released their debut LP, First And Last And Always, on the WEA label. FALAA, to give it its usual acronym, went on to become one of the true monoliths of gothic rock, recently ranking as high as second in the Uncut magazine special, The 200 Greatest Goth Albums. But as we shall discover, intriguingly the album might have enjoyed similar success in the main UK album charts, which would clearly have helped to reduce some of the pressure on the band for commercial success, with their three WEA singles all having failed to dent the official UK Top 40 singles chart.

From Stephen Prince at A Year in the Country - Benjamin Stone, Homer Sykes, Sarah Hannant, Merry Brownfield, Henry Bourne, Charles Fréger and Axel Hoedt – Folkloric Photography and a Lineage of Documentings and Imaginings: Wyrd Explorations 10:

There is an area of photography which concerns itself with documents of British folkloric rituals and costumes. A starting point for such things is Sir Benjamin Stone’s work in the late 19^th and early 20^th century, when he photographed British traditional customs, collected in book form in A Record of England: Sir Benjamin Stone and the National Photographic Record Association 1897-1910, which was published in 2007.

From Matt Mattock at Caught by the River - Peckerwood: Field notes from a feral’d garden:

I know exactly where he is. Not on the twiggy TV aerial gripped to the brick chimney directly opposite, below which a few scattered rectangles of amber glow dimly like open windows on an advent calendar — his usual spot; no, he’s nearer, in the ash trees.

From Tim F at Cultural Snow - About old films:

As he points out, any number of budding cinéastes and auteurs honed their own aesthetics via the serendipity of late-night TV, a set of happy accidents that may be unavailable to the next generation. I had similar experiences, discovering Wilder, Hitchcock, Buñuel, Astaire/Rogers and 1930s Universal horror thanks to the eccentric generosity of BBC2 (and the absence of much useful competition).

From Simon Reynolds at BlissBlog - Hauntology Parish Newsletter - Lent edition:

I saw that American family sitting glumly in the tea room of the farm shop the other day. Although the dad may actually be a Brit - he’s got one of those grating in-between accents. Passing their table on the way to my favorite nook, I heard him muttering disagreeably about the deficiencies of the bagel that lay forlornly half eaten on his plate. Honestly, anyone with a pinch of sense wouldn’t order a bagel in that kind of place. A scone, a granary bap, a nice white roll, a flapjack…

From Stephen Prince at A Year in the Country - Grey Malkin’s Explorations of the Spectral Fields of A Year In The Country and Other Wyrd Landscapes:

The A Year In The Country imprint continues its literary exploration into the more hidden and arcane aspects of both hauntological and folkloric culture with its new publication ‘Threshold Tales’. This new text follows fast on the heels of its previous collection, ‘Lost Transmissions’, which focused on such celluloid ghosts as the obscure supernatural TV compendium ‘Leap In The Dark’, and on investigations into the cinema of ‘Rollerball’ and ‘Gattaca’, as well as a deep dive into the uncanny aspects of the music of Delia Derbyshire, Sharron Kraus and Burial.

From Marika Rose at An und für sich - Stabat Alma Mater:

For several years now I’ve been haunted by a piece by Étienne Balibar about the relationship between politics and knowledge in the university. Balibar wrote that, We realise now that our ruling class is no longer a bourgeoisie in the historical sense of the world. It does not have a project of intellectual hegemony, nor an artistic point of honour. It needs (or so it thinks) only cost-benefit analyses, ‘cognitive’ educational programs, and committees of experts.

From Evans at Evans is a place on Earth - Bohemian Like Her:

The bohemian London scene of the 1920s through to the 1960s was a long time ago now. Things were different then. It was an age, as some like to say, of dinosaurs and by that they don't mean the diplodocus or the triceratops. They mean the men of the age, the chauvinists. You may think that in the countercultural milieu of the time, attitudes to gender equality may have been more enlightened.

From Stephanie Gaunt at Hastings Battleaxe - Hastings Battleaxe wakes up to uncomfortable local political realities…:

Battleaxe is on the political warpath again. Recently, I have tried not to get hung up on international or national politics. Bad for the mental health. I do try to keep myself up-to-date with Trump, Gaza, Ukraine etc., as well as the efforts of our Labour Government, which feels quite enough. So, Battleaxe had taken her eye off the ball about what is happening locally. Devolution for Sussex… Abolition of our current local authorities … An elected Mayor? What’s all this? I’ve now done my homework, and it looks grim. Anyone in East or West Sussex who is Labour, Lib Dem, or Green, prepare yourselves…

From John Coulthart at { feuilleton } - Dormitorium: The Film Décors of the Quay Brothers:

One of the curious things about looking at art in our mediated age is that you can become very familiar with certain paintings or drawings yet only have a vague idea as to the actual size of the originals, even when dimensions are printed along with reproductions in books. So too with the Quays’ puppets and décors.

From Kris De Decker at LOW←TECH MAGAZINE - The Compressed Book Edition:

While a book looks and feels more low-tech than a website, it has an environmental footprint as well. Industrial book publishing and distribution involves wood harvesting, pulp and paper production, printing, ink-making, and lots of shipping throughout the supply chain. Even if the wood for paper production is harvested sustainably, which is rarely the case, all these processes require energy and produce carbon emissions.

From Terrence Eden at Terrence Eden’s Blog - What does a "Personal Net Zero" look like?:

Five years ago today, we installed solar panels on our house in London. Solar panels are the ultimate in "boring technology". They sit on the roof and generate electricity whenever the sun shines. That's it.

This morning, I took a reading from our generation meter:

19MWH of electricity stolen from the sun and pumped into our home.

From Mia Ridge at Open Objects - Cultures of collective work and crowdsourcing?:

Nearly ten years ago I was in Estonia for the 'Community Involvement in Theme Museums' conference where I had the chance to meet and hear from people working in Estonian, Finnish and Lithuanian memory institutions. I was there to talk about 'niche' projects in crowdsourcing, so I had a few conversations about crowdsourcing in the Baltic region.

From Tracy Durnell at Tracy Durnell's Mind Garden - Slow craft: writing with a noncapitalist mentality (Part 6):

The capitalist growth mindset is deeply embedded in the American psyche, and has shaped the way we spend our free time and treat our own — and others’ — creative labor. I’ve been working to reshape my attitudes towards my own creative production, excising capitalist expectations, releasing self-judgment, and rebuilding a healthier, more sustainable practice.

From John Coulthart at { feuilleton } - The Population of an Old Pear-Tree; or, Stories of Insect Life:

Bruyssel’s book is an account of insect life intended to stimulate an interest in tiny creatures for a youthful readership. The narrator describes himself in the opening chapter undergoing a metamorphosis (it later becomes apparent that he’s fallen asleep in his favourite meadow) which gives him a new appreciation of the insect world. The chapters that follow explore a wide variety of insect life, accompanied by Becker’s engraved illustrations. The book isn’t a scientific study—the insects are anthropomorphised into various “tribes”—but Bruyssel avoids the cuteness that often bedevils writing about animals; the destructive habits of locusts are noted in one of the chapters.

From Richard Smith at Richard Smith's non-medical blogs - Was Edvard Munch one of the great portrait painters of the 20th century? Three paintings to the case that he was:

Edvard Munch is judged by critics to be one of the great portrait painters of the 20^th century, and I certainly think him impressive. We went recently to see an exhibition of his portraits at the National Portrait Gallery. My wife, a painter, is much less impressed: she thinks his compositions odd, his colours sickly, and his painting clumsy. She prefers his drawings. I agree that some of his paintings seem sloppy, but some of them I much admire. I tried to convince her of the worth of Munch’s portraits by telling her of three pictures.

From Phil Hine at enfolding.org - Out now: Delinquent Elementals:

If there’s one thing I’d like to be remembered for, it is Pagan News, the zine that occupied a central place in my life between 1988-92. Delinquent Elementals, edited by myself and Rodney Orpheus (my co-creator and co-editor), brings together a selection of the best content from Pagan News over the 36 or so issues. Six years in production, Delinquent Elementals features a selection of news stories, essays, interviews, tips on practical magic, and more. It is a fascinating window into the UK’s blossoming occult scene at a time of rapid social and political change.