01 Tuesday Dec 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, New books, Podcasts etc.
Missed by me in the summer, “a world premiere of a song cycle All The Wild Worlds by Nicholas Ryan Kelly“. The finale featured a Lovecraft poem set to music.
A recording is on YouTube as Contralto Lynne McMurtry Recital at Vernon Proms 2020.
30 Monday Nov 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Need a suitable Yuletide spinner to enliven the hipsters at a dour Xmas party? Cadabra Records has a new vinyl LP presentation of Lovecraft’s festive “The Festival”, read By Andrew Leman to a score by Fabio Frizzi and with art by Jesse Jacobi.
Not quite on the store yet, with a page for pre-orders that’s not yet live. The record will ship 18th December 2020.
Cadabra Records on SoundCloud has a free sample.
28 Saturday Nov 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
The band Tangerine Dream are not one you associate with cosmic horror, more trippy cosmic voyaging of the “White Ship” variety, but John Coulthart finds subtle traces of influence from Lovecraft, Smith, Poe and others.
27 Friday Nov 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings
McFarland has a Black Friday sale with coupon BLACKFRIDAY30 — and their huge list has a great many to choose from. Though it’s not all great, and in there are some gems such as H. P. Lovecraft’s Dark Arcadia, but also some that are not so good such as the Dune Companion. I spotted a book there that’s new to me, Arkham House Books: A Collector’s Guide (2004). This has a pleasing Cornell-like glimpse of Lovecraft on the cover.
25 Wednesday Nov 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works
The 10th issue of Fantasy Art and Studies will be “dedicated to music” and is calling for creative work. While the journal is French, for this issue they appear to be also open to work in English. Deadline 5th January 2021.
22 Sunday Nov 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Podcasts etc.
Scottish Lovecraftian Comedy. What’s that then, and is it more fun than a hairy highland haggis on the loose? Find out by listening to a new long interview with the maker of such…
Matthew McLean is the writer, producer and one of the stars of A Scottish Podcast. While the name may not suggest it, A Scottish Podcast is steeped in Lovecraftian horror. It’s also pretty damn funny.
15 Sunday Nov 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
≈ Enter your password to view comments.
12 Thursday Nov 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Odd scratchings
I’d always been vaguely put off the Call of Cthulhu RPG’s “Dreamlands” supplement by its naff current cover. Partly because the cover recalls for me the boredom engendered in a boy by C.S. Lewis’s show-stopping The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (I think it was that one, in Narnia series), rather than the creepy wonders of encountering Lovecraft’s Dreamlands. And then there’s that awful garish typography and equally off-putting subtitle: Roleplaying Beyond the Wall of Sleep. When did “Beyond the Wall of Sleep” enter the Dreamlands canon? Nothing about the cover invites confidence in the likely contents.
But who knew there was this older cover, which makes the thing look very much more appealing and is a nice bit of Lovecraftian art in its own right…
Anyway, if you want to check out the CoC Dreamlands as it currently stands (with Gazetteer, creature guide and map, as well as RPG adventures), there’s no need to pay silly collector prices for it. The 2011 printing is currently available in print for $10 at the Chaosium site, although shipping is extra.
Here’s a peek at the contents for the two books and map found in the original box…
04 Wednesday Nov 2020
Posted in Historical context, Lovecraftian arts
“Author with Dreams”, a circa 1936-46 painting of Donald Wandrei (and his personal dream-world) by Clement B. Haupers.
31 Saturday Oct 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
For Halloween, Stanley Chaplin’s “Cornish Litany” series of monster postcards. Apparently there are 12 designs in total, in b&w and colourised variants. The Litany is said to be traceable back to the 15th century, and to be chanted by superstitious Cornishmen and women to ward off the night-spirits.
0.
1.
Missing
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9. B&W.
9. Colour
10.
Missing.
11.
12.
29 Thursday Oct 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts, Scholarly works
Providence’s Brown University has a fully-funded PhD opportunity in Music and Multimedia Composition, which may be of interest to those making Lovecraftian music or sonic environments…
Students have access to the department’s Multimedia and Electronic Music Experiments (MEME) studios, and the university’s Granoff Center for the Creative Arts. These specialized research facilities house recording studios, electronics shops, project studios, exhibition and performance spaces. … faculty specialties in technoculture, sound studies, copyright, improvisation and timbre.
22 Thursday Oct 2020
Posted in Lovecraftian arts
Newly up for sale, an original art board for Marvel’s Journey into Mystery, specifically the Gene Colan teen-friendly Lovecraft adaptation of “The Haunter of the Dark”.
Also a nice page of ‘Kirby Cosmicism’ from Thor, where in the pencilled margin notes you can see the synopsis and thus ‘the Marvel Method’ at work. For speed, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby would verbally spitball a plot outline, and Lee would jot it down into a basic synopsis. Jack would go away and pencil the pages to the synopsis, then Lee would come back in and ‘write to the art’ — often directly onto the boards.
Both boards are at nostalgicinvestments which has a website that’s just too annoying to link to, with weird rapid auto-refresh of pages that can’t be cured even by disabling Javascript and CSS.