FLUXEUROPA: ON MAGAZINE

FluxEuropa - dark music and more

FluxEuropa has suspended active publication and no longer requires items for review. The site is, however, being maintained as an archive and you can still post to the Gigboard and order Amazon products which helps to subsidise its continuation.

ON - THE WORLD AND EVERYTHING IN IT

Tony Wakeford's alternative cultural review/CD, On - The World And Everything In It, has now been published/released. Edited by Tony and Mark Denton, the magazine is a high quality production of almost 80 pages including articles on noir novelist James Ellroy, Japanese-girls-in-bandages fetishist Romain Slocombe, Mithraism, alternative artist Christina Berry, Nietzsche and Outsider Art. There is also an article on Purcell and artistic compositions by Andrew King, while postmodernist writer Stewart Home interviews David Tibet of Current 93. A 4-page Lawrence Burton cartoon and an incident in the life of madman Karl Blake of Shock Headed Peters completes the fare.

The design (by Archetype Graphics) is quite classical and the artwork in this thick, A4, publication is arresting, so this is definitely a talking-piece for your coffee tables! The content is interesting and entertaining, but it also has that gravitas which gives Wakeford's activities a significance that goes beyond his work as a mere 'entertainer'.

The full-length (80-minute) CD provides a feast of first-class material and it is all original to this compilation. The contributions are from Tony Wakeford (an original demo recording of 'Above Us The Sun', unavailable elsewhere), Amber Asylum (beautiful ethereal singing and music), Karl Blake (surreal talk, singing, and light, syncopated, music: the most unusual track on the CD), Pigsix 4 (Eno-esque instrumental), The Moon lay hidden beneath a Cloud (distinctive vocals over background of fierce tribal ritual), Somewhere In Europe (soundtrack with electro-industrial noise), En Slave (kraut rock music reminiscent of Can with nice vocals reminiscent of Debbie Harry), That Summer (classical-film-ambient with piano), Orchis (strangely appealing blend of trad folk and industrial noise), Jutsu (murmured 'prayer' over ambient industrial noises), Andrew King (unaccompanied delivery of traditional song in style characteristic of English folk revivalists), Algiz (lively electro-mediaeval sound with driving rhythm: a personal favourite), Mellofonica (an instrumental of picturesque English whimsy), Sally Doherty (cascading lullaby), Loretta's Doll (ambient soundscape distinctly Kraftwerk-like in places), Shock Headed Peters (another unusual Karl Blake production), Arkkon (menacing sci-fi ambient), Tor Lundvall (laid-back vocals and synth with an industrial edge), and Tony Wakeford with L'Orchestre Noir (performing 'La Croix', taken from the 1995 concert in Nevers).

Wakeford has a reputation as the 'dark troubadour' but the music on this CD is in no way depressing. In fact, it's light without being light-weight and that goes for the content of the magazine as well. This production has to be worth buying for the magazine or the CD alone: as a multimedia combination it is irresistible. This review may sound like a sales pitch, but you can trust FluxEuropa to retain its objectivity. If we fail to criticise it's because we can't find anything to fault.

Rik Updated: 1 November 1996