Her voice is a force of nature. The arrangement is full-on Bond theme. That’ll do me.

Matthias Heiderich, selections from Favourite Places 2, 2011

I found this photographer via 2 or 3 Things I Know. His images are extremely crisp and pleasurable, generally, so it’s interesting to see that sharp quality dissipate into mist and mystery. See more here.

Elizabeth Price, video still from User Group Disco, 2009

The Baltic art gallery in Gateshead is currently showing three large-scale video installations by Elizabeth Price that deal with the suggestive language of advertising via beautiful imagery and intense usage of sound. I stood in the dark in front of these big screens and allowed myself to be bombarded.

Kathleen Stenning, Keep Warm Travel Underground poster, 1925

As a cold spell threatens Europe, here’s a simple message conveyed beautifully via the medium of graphic design. It also happens to be a cracking album.

A.W.N. Pugin, Wallpaper, ca. 1840-1844

The great Gothic revivalist Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin had a long, illustrious name and a short, illustrious life. I watched an engrossing BBC 4 documentary about his life last night and although his buildings (including Big Ben and much of Westminster) were mind-blowing works of art, I wanted to post a picture of his garish, complex wallpaper that dominated the hallway to his own (self-designed) house. Although he was shy of blowing his own trumpet, professionally, in his own home, he created a monument to his skills and talent – his design features a black bird from his own coat of arms and his motto, ‘en avant’ – ‘move forward’!

Gary Hume, Pink Rent, 2011

I was reading about Gary Hume, whose glossy surfaces I’ve always admired, in the Guardian newspaper. He’s a straight-down-the-line sort of chap and so are his paintings, to a certain extent, but there’s a richness and resonance that underpins them. These flowers appear to revel in their own plasticity.

Julia Holter – Marienbad from RVNG Intl. on Vimeo.

Ghostly yet perky, like a pop Meredith Monk (i.e. still not pop).

Oh Audrey!

Super-cool video for a nagging tune that builds and builds, but never breaks into a sweat.

Robyn Hitchcock is generally, and unjustly, hovering beneath the general public’s collective radar. This song has a surreal clarity, if that makes sense.

I saw The Lost Honour of Katherine Blum (1975) tonight, on the same day as our tabloid press is being called to account for its more despicable practices. It concerns the fate of a young woman being hounded by the press after being arrested for spending the night with a suspected terrorist. In the context of 70s West Germany, the film is explosive and indignant and I exited the cinema feeling similarly about the power of tabloid newspapers in our society. Aside from that, the polemical, melodramatic aspects of the film are appealingly over-the-top and it is carried by a striking performance by Angela Winkler.

I particularly like her recent splodgy paintings of Dogtooth patterned fabric:

I attended a screening of Alan Lomax films at the Star & Shadow cinema in Newcastle last week and saw these two stunning clips amongst many others. Throughout his life, Lomax collected examples of traditional American song and archived them. The first piece of footage is from a 1978 journey through the Mississippi Delta and the second clip is from a 1982 trip to North Carolina. If you want to see more incredible performances there’s a Youtube archive.

Heartfelt, simple music from Lucinda Williams’s eponymous 1989 album. When she sings “It’s okay to feel good” there’s so much implied hurt in that line, casting the whole song into a new light.

Le Corbusier, Les mains, 1951

This tapestry by the great architect and artist, Le Corbusier, leapt out from a book that I have called Cold War Modern. It reminds me of some of Picasso’s more illustrative works and I like the sparse patches of colour that make it feel like a tracing-paper collage.

Sonia Delaunay, Design for catalogue of the Stockholm exhibition, Nya Konstgalleriet, 1916

Sonia Delaunay’s work had a lovely sense of freedom around it, even though she was working with patterns and geometric shapes, which are often depicted more rigidly, necessarily so in the case of fabric patterns or other designs for mass production. Her use of watercolours and gouache, as seen above, makes her work seem playful and fluid rather than traditional and staid. It’s hard to capture how they look and feel in this reproduction, but I particularly like the haphazard looseness of the text – I find it really involving.

This unusual album sleeve came to my attention on Altered Zones. By following the link, you’ll find all the information and you can listen to a sample. I liked the bright-but-faded colours as well as the futuristic rambler look. Maybe I’ll adopt it next season…

I watched some interviews with Billy Mackenzie and the lack of respect he was afforded was disgraceful. His vocal range and the way he used it still sounds quite shocking to me today. There’s a seam of alienation that runs through the smooth funk and white soul music of The Associates. Club Country makes it all sound so fun.

Recently, I attended a lecture by the poet Paul Muldoon where he discussed the subtle subtexts and influence on their work contained within the letters of fellow poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Bishop lived part of her life in Brazil and this poem about a local festival was key to Muldoon’s analysis of her work. I, like Lowell, thought it was magnificent; a poem of fire and restraint.

The Armadillo by Elizabeth Bishop

for Robert Lowell

This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,

rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.

Once up against the sky it’s hard
to tell them from the stars –
planets, that is — the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,

or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;
but if it’s still they steer between
the kite sticks of the Southern Cross,

receding, dwindling, solemnly
and steadily forsaking us,
or, in the downdraft from a peak,
suddenly turning dangerous.

Last night another big one fell.
It splattered like an egg of fire
against the cliff behind the house.
The flame ran down. We saw the pair

of owls who nest there flying up
and up, their whirling black-and-white
stained bright pink underneath, until
they shrieked up out of sight.

The ancient owls’ nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,

and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft! — a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.

Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!

Maureen Gallace, Cape Cod October, 2002

With the October turning of the weather I thought it appropriate to post this painting, which carefully chooses what and what not to include.