“Music for Two Monochords” generates bracing dissonances by using sets of numbers divorced from the harmonic series. Here’s the first page and the first piece. I have no intention of recording them (although I do own two monochords); they might be better imagined than heard.

The podcast “Weird Studies” taped its latest episode at Shannon Taggart‘s annual symposium at Lily Dale, the Spiritualist village in upstate New York. Hosts Phil Ford and Erik Davis discussed that curious character John Keel; I joined them in the second half to offer some personal anecdotes, since we were friends for many years. You can listen to it here.

Artpix, in collaboration with Moikai/Drag City, has released Mike’s Box, a boxed set of eight DVDs of the performance and video work of Michael Smith. The eighth disc is devoted to the puppet shows we did together in the 90s. It includes a full show from Dixon Place, excerpts from other shows, and all the videos we did. Laffs galore!

I’m pleased to report that my book Music From Elsewhere is now available at Watkins Books, London’s oldest esoteric bookstore. You can see it here.

You can also pick up a copy at San Francisco’s fabled bookstore City Lights. And you can see it here.

TYPO 11 is now available from Black Scat Books!

For this issue, I contributed a short story, “Papa Bach” (about Johann Sebastian Bach and his many children), short articles on the NY street artist Pantuso and on the Elizabethan polymath John Dee’s “Groundplat of Mathematics,” and a translation of Alphonse Allais’s short story “A Sensitive Boy” (accompanied by a deft sketch by Corinne Taunay).

My fellow contributors include: Terry Bradford, Norman Conquest, Lynn Crawford, S. C. Delaney, Luc Fierens, Shawn Garrett, Edward Gauvin, Paulette Hampton, Isidore Isou, Ben D. Jaeger, Paul Kavanagh, Amy Kurman, Joel Lipman, George MacLennan, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, Marcel Mariën, Sean G. Meggeson, Thomas Owen, Angelo Pastormerlo, Agnès Potier, Bernard Quiriny, Paul Rosheim, Alberto Savinio, Michel Vachey, and D. Harlan Wilson. And, as usual, the whole thing is edited by the tireless Norman Conquest.

Considerations on the Death and Burial of Tristan Tzara is now available from Black Scat Books!

Isidore Isou, the founder of the artistic movement Letterism, was a great admirer of the Dadaist Tristan Tzara. So, when Tzara died in 1963, Isou disrupted the funeral to give the great provocateur a properly raucous sendoff. Isou’s lively account of the proceedings is both a polemic against traditional funerals and a warm declaration of his affection and admiration for Tzara.

Isou’s text was originally published in 1964. My translation was first published in a limited edition by Black Scat Books in 2012; this revised edition is much improved.

A grim little poem by that master of pessimism, Thomas Hardy, set here for three voices and bass instrument.

I appeared on Dean Bertram’s podcast Talking Weird to discuss my book Music From Elsewhere. You can see and/or hear it here.

TYPO 10 is now available from Black Scat Books! I contributed a translation of an “illustrated sonnet” by Giambattista Palatino from 1540: one of the first published rebuses and a true treat for the eyes.

I’m joined by a bewildering and international array of writers and graphic artists: Chiara Ambrosio, Tim Newton Anderson, Terry Bradford, Shawn Garrett, Edward Gauvin, Fritz von Herzmanovsky-Orlando, Thibault Jacquot-Paratte, Mark Kanak, Amy Kurman, André Pieyre de Mandiargues, George MacLennan, Frank Nims, Angelo Pastormerlo, Maurice Pons, Mirtha Pozzi, Bernard Quiriny, Jason E. Rolfe, Marcel Schneider, Walter Serner, Phil Demise Smith, Lono Taggers, Corinne Taunay, and Gregory Wallace. As usual, the whole thing is edited and designed by Norman Conquest.

Thomas Wilfred: Clavilux and Lumia Home Models is now available from Christine Burgin Books, as part of the Further Reading Library. Christine Burgin and Andrew Lampert edited it, and I wrote the introduction. Here’s the publisher’s description:

Thomas Wilfred (1889–1968) devoted his life to the creation of a new art form, the art of light, which he termed “Lumia.” In the 1920s, Wilfred toured the US and Europe to great acclaim staging colored-light recitals with his Clavilux organ. By the late ’20s he had reinvented these large scale performances as self-enclosed light shows for living room entertainment. Wilfred’s aesthetically elegant and interactive Clavilux and Lumia home models were soon found in the collections of important art world figures and in major museums. His work was on view into the ’80s at MoMA, where it was seen by many of the artists who came to work with light as their medium in the ’60s and ’70s. Thomas Wilfred: Clavilux and Lumia Home Models presents a fascinating collection of archival material culled from the Wilfred archive at Yale University and other sources, including never before published sketches by Wilfred and documentation of these strange glowing screens that predated television, video art, and psychedelia.