Roses in the closet

Liverpool 1971

artmalikwolf — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:53:51 +0000

incredibly moving film about my city in the early 1970s

My prints for sale on line ;-)

artmalikwolf — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:43:21 +0000

http://liverpoolgallery.com/Photography.asp

amy scott-samuel

art hag

artmalikwolf — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:06:09 +0000

Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while
I walk on the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village,
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I’ve been up
all night, talking, talking, reading the Kaddish aloud,
listening to Ray Charles blues shout blind on the
phonograph
the rhythm the
rhythm – and your memory in my head three
years after – And read Adonais’ last triumphant stanzas
aloud – wept, realizing how we suffer -
And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing,
remember, prophesy as in the Hebrew Andthem, or the
Buddhist Book of Answers – and in my own imagination of
a withered leaf – at dawn -
Dreaming back thru life, Your Time – and mine accelerating
toward Apocalypse,
the final moment – the flower burning in the Day – and what
comes after..

C’est moi

artmalikwolf — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:58:34 +0000

www.myspace.com/rudyfoolish

Jon-Rae Fletcher, Oh Maria!

artmalikwolf — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:51:46 +0000

The music of Jon Rae Fletcher harks back to another era and a simpler time, when your love for your sweetheart, your horse and your hipflask of whiskey was all that mattered. A time of horse drawn wagons, and endless dirt roads, when lonesome men sang songs of loss and heartbreak beside a crackling fire, with only the moon and stars as their company.

When listening to ‘O Maria’, one might envisage our narrator as an ageing and weathered old man, pondering onerously on the life that has gone before him, for each song functions as a whimsical tale or ballad, and brims with a heavy, burdened heart; a regretful sentimentality and a brooding sense of melancholy.

Jon Rae’s music is evocative of a lifetime filled with sorrow. Ay, it could be claimed that this man is bursting at the sides with the blues. For even the geetars, piano and trombone that accompany his sweet whiskey voice can be heard to moan and ache with the sadness of a million broken hearts.

But be warned, dear reader, because before you know it - the album’s ultimate and perhaps, most treasured track will be plucking, ever so gently, at your own tarnished and blackened heart strings, and will leave you weeping, ever so softly, into your tea cup. For having given his love, his soul, and his everything to Maria, all that our singer has left in him is the futile and hopeless cry, ‘Oh! Ooh! Maria!’

Hanne Hukkelberg: Blood From a Stone

artmalikwolf — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:37:00 +0000

Originating from Kongsberg, Norway, Hanne Hukkelberg has been making music and testing out her vocal capabilities from the ripe age of 3. Performing with an ever-expanding cast of friends and accomplished musicians, Blood From a Stone is Hanne’s third release under her guise as solo artist and composer. When listening to Blood From a Stone, one can certainly detect Hanne’s early punk / noise roots and her assimilation into a scene that championed DIY noise and experimentation over musical pomp and uniformity. Like the songs of the Cocteau Twins, Joanna Newsom or Coco Rosie, Hanne’s music has a distinctly ethereal quality, which both captivates and entices; transporting the listener through a series of dark, foreboding and enchanted spaces. Unlike the onerous drone of Funeral, the Doom Metal band with which Hukkelberg once performed, the singer’s third album, Blood From a Stone, positively lends itself to the majesty and grace of Hanne’s voice. If the world is a stone, Hanne is the crimson blood that spills forth from it, unapologetic, whimsical; brimming with emotion and depth. Hanne’s music creates a cathartic diversion from the hum drum of the everyday; it allows a space to engage in fantasy, and a medium for ecstatic, unadulterated feeling. Drawing inspiration from bands like Einstürzende Neubauten and Sonic Youth – Hanne utilizes all manner of found objects, from kitchen utensils, to clacking type writers, flag poles, sea gull cries and cat purrs, in turn weaving a unique and poignant miasma of textured, layered and ambient sounds.

Propeller Recordings (Norway)

(Memories) Lost and Found

artmalikwolf — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:19:23 +0000

Looking back and reflecting on the past has long been a strange and disorienting experience. I feel so detached and so far removed, that all those endless nights, bizarre happenings and hazy, dreamy days feel like they belong to another part of me; an old, lost me. Perhaps she lies festering in the cob-webbed recesses of my teenage mind, or else is broken and weathered, rusting and decomposing in a junkyard scrapheap somewhere in Speke. She might be a mass of seaweed hair and bloated blue, washed up along the shores of the River Mersey. Or maybe I left her sleeping soundly in a corn field in Sussex? Or sat at the top of the old tripping tree, where she is eternally stuck, never to come back down.

Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon

artmalikwolf — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:55:52 +0000

Three Studies for a Crucifixion – 2

Tonight I watched Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon. Directed by John Maybury, Love is the Devil is a stark, disturbing and emotive depiction of Bacon’s working life. The film centres on the artist’s tempestuous and tragic relationship with lover and muse George Dyer, while providing an insight into his private world and tortured, complex psyche. As a child, I was introduced to Bacon’s paintings, having found a postcard of Triptych in an old cupboard in our dining room. To this day, I still find it extremely distressing to view Bacon’s work. His studies of human figures are a terrifying portrayal of life – at once raw, passionate, violent, and filled with macabre illusions. They are hell incarnate in the human form. And perhaps it is this - their overt truth – and Bacon’s ability to capture the futility of existence - that makes them both fascinating and utterly repelling.

Here is a memorable interview with the artist, produced for the Southbank Show in 1985

http://www.ubu.com/film/bacon.html

Flying contraption

artmalikwolf — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:15:49 +0000

Last night I dreamt that I was given a magical flying device. This consisted of a hat, much like an old RAF cap from the 1940′s, a bulbous, and fully inflated red balloon, and a huge set of wings. I was offered my wings by an old time flyer – an ancient looking guy with a face covered in patches of grey whiskers and a strange, ancient smell about him, that seemed to hint at his magic and wisdom.

I soon found myself walking by a freeway, carrying this huge set of wings, made of wood and material, with pieces of loose silk thread, feathers and dark worn leather trailing from them. I approached a woman who was sat on a wall with her young children. I asked if she may help me put on my wings as they were heavy and not easy to haul onto my back. The children wore animal masks, a tiger, an elephant, a monkey. They marvelled at my magnificent wings and stroked and tugged on them, as I hauled on the last arm. And then, with a hop skip and a stumble, I was off..swooping low over a lake and skimming my feet above a mass of leafy tree branches..

I was dancin in the lesbian bar a-woo

artmalikwolf — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:41:40 +0000

Me and Andy went to see Jonathan Richman play a show in The Deaf Institute, Manchester, this past Sunday. It was just him and his geetar, with Tommy Larkin playing on drums. Jonathan stood there in the spotlight with his uniform striped T and those familiar, black cotton Chinese shoes that he always seems to be wearing, and that you can buy from the Chinese market for a few dollars. (I have a pair, and they’re very comfortable.) Jonathan was incredible – still kooky as hell. A little awkward, very childlike and full of smiles for the audience. At one point, I looked around the crowd, and we were all smirking; giggling with delight. Jonathan hadn’t said anything, he was just eyeing up the stragglers, with his wide eyed and goofy, slack jawed grin. There was a spattering of funny, self reflexive interjections from Jonathan, and of course, he whipped out those unforgettable, Latino / dad-at-disco moves.

This song has gotta be one of my all-time favourite Richman songs. Im just gutted he didn’t play Kookanagan