Mark Hollis’s only solo album after Talk Talk is a minimalist masterpiece. I would love to eventually find this amount of space and control in the music I make. I could’ve picked any song from this album as evidence, but I’d forgotten how good this one is, probably because it’s so understated, even on a record of numerous slow wonders. Just before the two-minute mark, Hollis’s voice does something unexpected and the song begins to shift subtly before returning to its sparse, pastoral groove. Restraint enables release and it is such a powerful device.

Paul Buchanan’s voice and music is unfeasibly melancholy and beautiful as you can hear in this complementary video. In a recent Guardian article he said, “You work and work and work and have the life that you have, and once in a while, sometimes once in a decade, you see a few things you’ve got and think, yes, that’s authentic.” I think that’s an admirable attitude in a world where popular song is often churned out, devoid of any specific emotion or ‘soul’.

Lauren Marsolier, Transition -part 3, 2009 – 2012

Lauren Marsolier, Transition -part 3, 2009 -2012

Lauren Marsolier, Transition -part 2, 2007 – 2009

These images and others like them feel like a series of absences and withheld information, but also in the subtle collage of seemingly seamless elements, they are also about adding something and reinvention: haunting and smooth – a new reality.

via It’s Nice That

Hey! What if the Byrds had made lo-fi, ’80s indie-pop produced by Ariel Pink in his bedroom? I’d like to think it’d sound similar to Catwalk.

I saw this film in a somnolent state on a small hotel TV screen recently, late at night. It seemed emblematic of a certain strand of mid-1970s cinema subsequently dubbed ‘New Hollywood’. Not much happened in the film but it’s circuitous nature allowed me to reflect on the characters’ motives and the context of an era where the American Dream had begun to unravel in the eyes of many counter-cultural figures, including, presumably, the director Bob Rafelson. You can see it in the run-down hotels and the bleak vaudeville settings for this intriguing non-drama about suspicion and mental deterioration.

John Griffiths book cover for Fred Hoyle’s The Black Cloud, 1962.

I saw in The Guardian that Penguin book illustrator John Griffiths had died and it seemed appropriate to share one of his striking covers. There’s a bit of debate going on currently about the differing merits of e-books versus physical books but, whatever your opinion, I think that there’s something magical about the physical properties of individual books especially when encased in wonderful jackets such as this one. Print, tactility and the need for illustration are factors that should not be underestimated because they help to emphasise that individuality.

This sequence is taken from the film La cicatrice intérieure (The Inner Scar) made by Phillipe Garrel and starring Nico. This song is from the stark and brilliant album ‘Desertshore’. It was screened as part of the AV festival in Newcastle and I missed it so I thought I’d post this up to vaguely console myself.

This cassette sleeve is the most fantastic thing I’ve seen today and there’s a whole bunch of great artwork and warped African pop on a blog called, appropriately enough, Awesome Tapes from Africa. You can listen to Woubeshet Feseha here.

Eugene Richards, Corinth, North Dakota, January 2006

Richards’s photographs of this period are like American Gothic short stories, with their town names suggesting an unseen narrative.

This cosmic disco makes me unfeasibly happy!

Käthe Kollwitz, Self-portrait, circa 1904

A good portrait or self-portrait says a lot about a person, even if it’s just the viewer projecting their opinions on the image. I saw this lithograph in Köln the other day and was very moved.

I love this record and I love Robert Wyatt. When I first heard him, as a teenager, I didn’t know what to make of him, but his music is genuine and humane; I persevered and soon became enraptured. Rock Bottom is like the sea that it speaks of, deep and seemingly unfathomable, but ever-changing and capable of rare and pure beauty. Today I read this amazing Pitchfork interview and listened to samples of Wyatt’s favourite music and I felt I had to share it with someone/everyone!

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!