England`s Hidden Reverse – A Secret History of The Esoteric Underground 2e

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This new volume contains almost 100 pages of extra material culled from Furfur, a collection of interviews with musicians and artists whose careers intersected with the bands,' initially published alongside Strange Attractor's first limited edition of the book.

Other familiar names pop up as well: Death In June, Sol Invictus, Fire and Ice, Nature and Organisation, Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV … The book was quite a trip down memory lane for me, and I expect I’ll be re-listening to a number of CDs in the near future. Sei's nun sexuelle Identifikation, postpolitische Agitation, schlichte Provokation, Drogenexzesse, usw. this new edition has a new foreward and afterward, the former seeming a bit bitter (though i did laugh when he took godspeed down a few pegs, and rightfully so). Christopherson was part of the Hipgnosis art collective, but after meeting Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge - formed proto-Industrial group Throbbing Gristle. Inspired by the further reaches of krautrock, electronic music and the worst nightmares of the Velvet Underground, and just as equally all the transgressive shock tactics they’d learned as COUM, TG created a new form of music to reflect the horrors of austerity Britain, a semi-improvised machine drone that revelled in its noisiness and messiness, capped off with P-Orridge wailing lyrics inspired by Burroughs and Ballard to soundtrack a nighttime alternate world of serial killers and sexual deviancy.It's a tragedy reading it in hindsight of John Balance's death, since we can see the chaotic impulses and self-destructiveness in some of his behaviour and music, and we know how it all ends. I think the sections with David Tibet are the most exciting, but I'm a bit biased because I connect with his music the most on a personal level and he's a friend of mine. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of books about the music and musicians toiling in virtual, cultural obscurity, but this is one of them, and this one is not to be missed. The book was the definitive biography of UK experimental music groups Coil, Current 93 and Nurse With Wound, and chronicled these artists’ development and growth alongside the post-punk post-industrial underground music scene that birthed them, from the late 70s through to the present.

despite not being as familiar with current 93 and not really familiar with nurse with wound at all, i really enjoyed learning about the histories of all these artists ! It is true that many subsequently repudiated these dalliances, but there is no doubt that it was an element of the scene for a while and a full discussion of this would have added to the overall picture. This expanded edition comes completely redesigned, with many new and previously unseen photographs and ephemera. I read the original 2003 print, published by SAF, but I understand there is an updated and revised edition available.So we are talking post-PTV offshoots - Christopherson and Balance’s justly celebrated Coil, myriad of David Tibet’s projects - as well as Stapleton and his nebulous Nurse With Wound orbit. And Nurse With Wound’s Steven Stapleton had moved to Cooloorta in Ireland and set up his house, which became a focal point and haven for avant-garde musicians and outsider artists. A clear labour of love, the book was sold as a limited edition with a free CD, and quickly became the key text on these musicians and the post-industrial underground.

Noddy had appeared in the sky crucified, and since Christ was God, therefore Noddy was also God, so he was Goddy. There's one hilarious top review on here bemoaning the fact that "hipster" David Keenan didn't get into the weeds of the various overtly nazi groups in the World Serpent orbit, which shows the sort of edgy posturing associated with some of this music.To enter into the work of any of these groups is to enter a world dense with intertextual references and allusions, to undergo a mind-expanding induction into a wider world full of strangeness and wonder, a recurring motif in Keenan’s own fictional work. But for anyone interested in a vibrant alternative to the overwhelmingly over-produced, glossy blandness of the era (and one that is, mystifyingly, being 'rebooted' at the moment), this is an essential read. Alongside these names, it also folds Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, Shirley Collins, Charles Sims and AE Housman into the esoteric narrative, making for a book that has become highly influential and increasingly pertinent to a lot of music and literature produced in recent years, such as that by Grumbling Fur, English Heretic and Kemper Norton. He also kept some dubious company*, like Tony Wakeford (of neo-folk band Sol Invictus), Douglas Pearce (of Death In June), William Bennett (of 'power-electronic' noise merchants Whitehouse) and Boyd Rice. Strange Attractor Press are proud to announce the release of a new revised and expanded edition of David Keenan’s seminal secret history of the UK’s esoteric underground, England’s Hidden Reverse.