ORBITING THE UNREAL (I)
By Tomas Lindberg
Ok, how do we do this? Long time, no writing in this form… but let’s give it a try. Well, as my dear friend, José Carlos, asked me to scribble down some recommendations/observations, I will try to do just that, as honest as possible, and in brainstorm/freestyle mode. Might not be the most organized column you ever read, but maybe you will get inspired by something, check something new out... who knows.
So, I just came back from watching a film at the international film festival of Gothenburg. A film based on, and named after, the novel ‘Sanatorium, Under the Sign of the Hourglass’ by the Polish writer Bruno Schulz. Schulz was one of the writers who I came to be inspired by as we were starting the process of writing ‘The Nightmare of Being’. If you love Franz Kafka, Elias Canetti and Boris Vian (check out ‘Froth on the daydream’ if you haven’t, it is an absurd classic!), Bruno might be something for you. His writing is a dark, absurd, and twisted world to be engulfed in. The film was an animation/mixed media piece made by the Quay brothers and depicted the same nightmarish dreamscape as the book. Highly recommended.
Another movie, recently watched, that I can recommend is the Brian Eno documentary, simply titled ‘Eno’, - the movie uses a totally new idea, a technique that makes every viewing unique. Really cool, a bit challenging, but funny as well. In preparation for that one I have been reading Eno’s diary from 1995 (‘A Year With Swollen Appendices’), and it is really inspiring. A lot of artistic, cultural and philosophical ideas are discussed, in a quite humorous, yet intellectual way. I can recommend having it on your nightstand, and read maybe ten pages every day, or so. Before you sink your teeth into a novel of your choice.
Biographies is actually something I have been into as well, a bit, lately... there are a lot of them out there, and some are wonderful, some mere sleeping pills, to be avoided. In the second category I would include stuff like the Geezer Butler one (‘Into the Void’), where the author basically is telling you "how it was" ("We took a lot of cocaine, and did a great album, then we took more cocaine and made a shit album" kind of, haha) In the first category I can recommend ‘Us and Them’, a book about the Hipgnosis team (the album design team known for, among other things, ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’, ‘Houses of the Holy’ and others). It describes the context of the times really well, and gives you an insight into the (sometimes lost) world of album cover design. I would also like to mention the maybe obvious Thurston Moore book ‘Sonic Life’, which was fun and had a lot of detail about Sonic Youth’s music, and the NY scene in general, from The Velvet Underground to the No wave scene. You can almost feel that you ARE on the streets of NY, smelling the life, eating the same food/smoking the same cigarettes, as you read it. On the side note of Sonic Youth, check out Kim Gordon’s solo album ‘The Collective’ one of my top albums of 2024! Great stuff! Heavy, distorted AND smart! I also indulged myself in the Mark Lanegan bio ‘Sing Backwards and Weep’, highly entertaining, tragic, and dark as hell. His style of writing has a lot of self-deprecating humor, and there is a lot of drugs, heroin in particular, as in A LOT, and music worship (he really, really loved The Gun Club :) )
My main reading has, otherwise, lately been focused a bit on sci fi, after the deep dive I did into pessimism for the last At The Gates album. I can't remember how I stumbled upon it, but it might have been Martin from At The Gates who recommended the English writer China Miéville to me, and that opened the floodgates. I have come to the realization that there is a "new breed" of sci fi writers with more philosophical leanings, writing novels full of existential dread, and social commentary. I have fallen in love with writers such as Peter F. Hamilton and Adrian Tchaikovsky. The only thing with sci fi is that you must make sure you read the novels in the right order, as they are usually part of a series, which you must read chronologically, so keep your eye on that. Hard for a novice like me to recommend stuff here, because there is so much. But a good starting point might be ‘The Reality Dysfunction’ by Peter F. Hamilton, a space opera with a gallery of cast as long as a Dostoyevsky novel, and spanning across millions of years (and of course, the first in a series). Multi-dimensional with almost a magic realism twist to it. Dive in, and you might never find your way out. An ”easier” starting point could be ‘Perdido Street Station’ by China Miéville, a sci-fi, or weird fiction as it has also been called, socialist statement if there ever was one! Superb. He is one of our generation’s great ones indeed! Also check out another personal favorite of mine of his ‘The City and the City’, such a brilliant idea, mind boggling to say the least, and a lot of magic realism vibes in that one!
Lately I have also gotten deeper in my vinyl collecting, like REAL deep, haha... How are all those hardcore seven-inches so expensive? Haha! I love to sit down with a good novel, with the headphones on and a great record in my head, hard to beat! Have lately been re-discovering a lot of gems that has always been close to my heart. The Dutch band GORE, if anyone remembers them, amazing stuff if you are into early Swans, Celtic Frost and The Melvins. Oh, and speaking about Swans, the ‘Holy Money’/’Greed’ era, I had a revisit to that the other day, might be my favorite Swans era, at least at the moment! Also, some stuff like Deathrow Watchtower, Obliveon, Nasty Savage, (second album especially!) and Revenant have been spinning quite a lot lately (partly inspired by the lack of a new album from Virus (Norway), another personal favorite). And guys and girls, that first Christian Death album (with Adolescents guitar player Rick Agnew): if you wondered where Celtic Frost found the inspiration for the "tortured moans" kind of vocals for the (underrated!) ‘Into The Pandemonium’ LP, look no further, 100% goosebumps material!
And there is of course the whole thing with end of the year lists at the moment. As we are already in 2025, I won't bore you with a whole list, but the latest Oranssi Pazuzu album is of course a MUST, though on that one I am probably preaching to the already converted here. Other incredible release last year was, to me, the Alan Sparhawk album. Alan is the guy from the band Low, who lost his wife and bandmate to sickness and then wrote this album. So emotional, it makes the hair of my arms stand up! Also worthy of a mention is the latest album by Julia Holter, of course. If you haven't heard her already, give it a go, but keep an open mind, there are a lot of dimensions to her music, you need to go deep. Suggestive, improvisational, minimalistic are my personal key words for her music. Did everyone get the new album by Swedish group Samling? It is called ‘Autisten’ and it is purely amazing, neo psychedelica with BIG hooks, so smart and beautiful, released on the Robotor label, run by the Berlin band Kadavar.
Ok, what else has been going on in my head lately (eyes and ears)? I love collecting "geographic area specific" compilations, haha... it was the fantastic Punk 45 compilations from the majestic Soul Jazz records who set me on this path (check out all these comps, but the Cleveland one is a current favorite here). One favorite I stumbled upon was the ‘We Were Living in Cincinnati’ LP, out on Hozac records, cool underground punk gems, and also ‘The Akron Compilation’, a classic punk/new wave LP on Stiff records.
One question I really want answered is, what happened after that one album by Sweven (the band of ex Morbus Chron mastermind Robert Andersson)? The world needs more of this, the song writing is absolute brilliance. I love bands who can be unique, but still have hooks (that's why At The Gates brought out Morbus Chron on tour in 2014, I didn’t miss ONE of their sets!)
Ok, enough of this music talk; two last recommendations, reading wise. First: if you want to dive into ONE classic this year (if you haven’t had the pleasure already), I recommend ‘The Man Without Qualities’ by Robert Musil, a definitive MUST read, absolutely, and one of the few books that are worth returning to for a re-read. A modernist, existential story of ideas, deeply philosophical, but enthralling, and weirdly enough a paradoxical, 1700 pages long page turner. Second: another author who was crucial to the inspiration for the last At The Gates album (‘The Nightmare of Being’) is Jon Padgett, and I would recommend you to start with his book ‘The Secret of Ventriloquism’, a piece of superb pessimistic, cosmic horror. Read only if you are in good spirits, as it is a bit of a mind-fuck, haha…
Thank you all for letting me rant about some of the culture that have been passing through my mind lately, I notice that I have what you might call an eclectic taste, but if this is appreciated, I might return again with more stuff, there is ALWAYS more!
Among many other things, Tomas is the vocalist of the legendary Swedish band At The Gates.
Listen to them on Spotify.
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