John Coulthart

@johncoulthart.com

1754 Followers 74 Following

Artist, designer, occasional writer. • Words: https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/ • Pictures: https://www.johncoulthart.com/ • Linktree: https://linktr.ee/johncoulthart No DMs. Contact me here: https://www.johncoulthart.com/contact.html

An album release on compact disc: Jóhann Jóhannsson: Drone Mass (2022) by Theatre of Voices; American Contemporary Music Ensemble; Paul Hillier, conductor.
A spread from View magazine showing the title page of Cornell's The Crystal Cage juxtaposed with a silhouette of the Chanteloupe Pagoda made from random typesetting. A small picture of a girl is set amid the words.
A pair of Alice Coltrane compacts discs: Huntington Ashram Monastery / World Galaxy (2011) and Universal Consciousness / Lord Of Lords (2011).
A compilation album on compact disc: Huntington Ashram Monastery / World Galaxy (2011) by Alice Coltrane.
A printed passage: "...take off those clothes, because if he did you'd see that underneath he's not human. He's a character from an H.P. Lovecraft story." H.R. Giger, in fact, cites Lovecraft as an inspirational force. Also Edgar Allan Poe,Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Frank Zappa, and Elvis Presley. But his true inspiration comes from deep inside himself...very deep. "About fifteen years ago," he says, "I had a diary—a dream book. I had been having the same dreams again and again, and they were nightmares. They were horrifying. But I found that when I made drawings about them, the dreams went away. I felt much better. It was sort of self- psychiatry." Not that the nightmares went away. He once wrote in his notebook of a dream in 1970 where he found himself trapped in the confines of a narrow..."
An album release on compact disc: Universal Consciousness (1971) by Alice Coltrane.
A screen shot from PASSAGEN showing a cluttered work area which includes an album cover from which a record has just been removed.
A screen shot from PASSAGEN showing an untuned television with the film's title superimposed over the top in red translucent type.
A black-and-white illustration by John Coulthart which shows a kitten playing with a ball of wool. The thread unwinds over the kitten to inscribe a line of esoteric figures which then lead to a spiralling interdimensional vortex out of which eldritch tentacles and less identifiable things are emerging.
An album release on compact disc: Muscle Up (2015) by Patrick Cowley.
An album release on compact disc: Folds And Rhizomes For Gilles Deleuze (1996) by Various Artists.
A monochrome photo of an elaborate decorative frieze for the Sullivan Centre (formerly known as the Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building), Chicago.
A compilation album on compact disc: Hydra-Calm (1992) by Main.
A compact disc EP: Firmament II (1994) by Main.
An album release on compact idsc: La Varieté (1982) by Weekend.
Cover of The New Yorker for Jan 9, 1937. A cartoon of an art gallery which pokes fun at the weirdness of Dalí-style Surrealist art.
An album release on compact disc: Hard Edge (1999) by Rhys Chatham.
A paperback from 2014: Cover art is grey, red and black graphics. A silhouette of a small train is climbing a hill which is also the shoulders of a bearded man whose stylised head wears a crown of chimneys billowing smoke.
Roy Kuhlman's semi-abstract cover design for the playscript of The Screens (1961) by Jean Genet.
An album release on compact disc: Screen Ceremonies (1995) by David Toop.
A detail of a larger drawing showing a white dog suspiciously examining something on the ground.
A black-and-white illustration by John Coulthart which shows a kitten playing with a ball of wool. The thread unwinds over the kitten to inscribe a line of esoteric figures which then lead to a spiralling interdimensional vortex out of which eldritch tentacles and less identifiable things are emerging.
An album release on compact disc: Porgy And Bess (1958) by Miles Davis.
A poster for Les Sevices de Dracula (1971). Blue/purple/black, vaguely Art Nouveau in design, with the twin girls posed Janus-like, the evil one with a snake wrapped around her head to form her eye, the good one with a dove over her eye. A bald male vampire head is drooling blood in the tangles of their hair.
An album release on compact disc: Live At The Aquarium (London Zoo 21 May 1992) (1992) by Michael Brook.
The cover of DRACUTWIG by Mallory T. Knight, "author of the best-selling Man From T.O.M.C.A.T." "The outrageous adventures of a luscious little sexpot who is the daughter of Dracula, has a body like Twiggy-and turns into a vampire whenever she makes love!"
A screen-shot of Joanna Lumley and David McCallum as Sapphire and Steel.
An album release on compact disc: Starship Africa (1980) by Creation Rebel.
A jug of freshly-made lemonade.
Ten lemons in string bags.
A US cinema poster for Frogs (1972). Artwork shows a close view of a frog with a human hand and part of an arm protruding from its mouth. Above the title a slogan reads: "TODAY--the Pond! TOMORROW--the World!"
A compilation album on two compact discs: Dubbing At King Tubby's (2016) by The Aggrovators.
Monochrome screen-shots from The Cube: a man inside a featureless cubic room is being assailed, harassed and generally confounded by a continual stream of dissembling visitors, none of whom will help him leave.
A Japanese poster for Matango (1963) showing mushroom people on the rampage among understandably alarmed human beings.
A weird scene from Yuggoth, or the planet you clever primates prefer to call "Pluto": alien architecture under a sky blazing with stars. Something vast and monstrous is growing on the horizon.
A collection of cards from the Penthouse And Pavement box printed with artwork from the group's single sleeves. The uppermost card is the one for [We Don't] Need This Fascist Groove Thang (1981).
A CD box set: Penthouse And Pavement (1981, 2010) by Heaven 17. Two CDs plus a DVD featuring a documentary film, The Story Of Penthouse And Pavement.
A CD box set: Penthouse And Pavement (1981, 2010) by Heaven 17. The CD of Music For Stowaways by Heaven 17-adjacent B.E.F is sitting in the box lid.
An album release on compact disc: Maurizio (1997) by Maurizio.
A still from Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (1970): Shintaro Katsu and Toshiro Mifune face off in a snowy, windswept village street littered with the aftermath of an extended battle between rival villains.
A Japanese poster for Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (1970). In the foreground: Toshiro Mifune in samurai gear drawing his sword; a bleached-out close-up of Shintaro Katsu drawing his sword-cane fills the background.
A compilation album on two compact discs: Macro Dub Infection, Volume One (1995).
An album release on compact disc: No Protection (1995) by Massive Attack v Mad Professor.
A full-page comic panel: black-and-white art showing Cthulhu as a mountain-sized cephalopod lording it over a group of tiny human figures dancing around a huge fire. Caption: "Witness the corruption of your world, Earthman.... Great Cthulhu, enthroned in slime amid the ruins of R'lyeh, sunken no longer and exuding its monstrous spawn under a blackened moon."
An album release on compact disc: Songs Of Praise (1990) by African Head Charge.
A black-and-white page from An Invitation to a Mystery Dance, a science-fiction comic strip by Graham Manley. Panels show a male and female couple in a spacecraft which lands on an alien planet. "Continued next issue" it says at the end, but there wasn't another issue after this one.
Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter III (1980), an album by Prince Far-I And The Arabs. Artwork shows a large spacecraft approach a planet which may be exploding into hurtling fragments after yielding to the stress of the dub sound system.
An album cover: Scientist And Jammy Strike Back! (1982) by Roots Radics Band, Scientist & Prince Jammy. Cover art is a film poster-style painting of spaceships and characters from popular Hollywood space operas.
The Ultimate Dub Box Set: 9 compact discs with a good selection of music but primitive packagaing.
An album release on compact disc: Deep Space (1999) by Jah Wobble.
A screen-shot from Fight, Zatoichi, Fight (1964). Zatoichi (Shintarō Katsu) is walking along a path heading into a pastoral scene with what looks like a roadside shrine off to one side. Nobody has been slaughtered.
A compilation album on compact disc: Champion In The Arena 1976–1977 (2003) by Jackie Mittoo.
A pair of CD purchases: Jackie Mittoo – The Keyboard King At Studio One (2000), and Empyrean Isles (1964) by Herbie Hancock. Both £2.99.
Cut-out characters (still fixed to their sheet of card) from Edward Gorey's Dracula toy theatre.
A compilation album on two compact discs: Axiom Dub: Mysteries of Creation (1996) by Various Artists.
A compilation album on two compact discs: The Best Of King Tubby (2016).