Bureau of Lost Culture

This is the second part of a conversation with the poet, musician and thinker Penny Rimbaud, co-founder, with Steve Ignorant, of the anarcho-punk band and activist art collective Crass
 
Crass emerged as a band in 1977, but quickly became something more complex, rejecting rock stardom, record industry norms, releasing records on their own label and using their platform to challenge war, nationalism, consumerism, sexism, and state violence. 
 

In this second part of the interview, we about the events that led to Crass and hear more about Dial House, an old rambling farmhouse in rural Essex, a long-running experiment in collective life — part commune, part refuge, part creative hub. It was here, where he still lives, that Penny's music, philosophy, artwork, debate, and daily survival are entangled.

And we hear about the founding of the Stonehenge Free Festival and the death of Wally Hope, cultural terrorism, Penny's work since Crass, and his thoughts on art, spirituality and the self.

Music played: 
Futility and The Soldier’s Dream (The War Poems of Wilfred Owen)
So What (Crass)
The Song of Self (With Louise Elliot)
You Brave Od Land (With Youth)
 
For more on Penny and his work
 

#counterculture #crass #pennyrimbaud #anarchism #capitalism #dialhouse #artschool #wallyhope #stonehengefreefestival

The sea, its myths, and the supernatural is the theme of this special New Year edition of the Bureau when we leave behind our usual waters to set sail into the past of a very unusual counterculture.
 
For most of human history, the sea has been both a road and a riddle. It promises fortune and freedom — but it also swallows ships whole. And in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as Britain’s empire spread across the globe, the sea became seen, not just as a physical frontier, but as a psychic one  — a vast, perilous deep where faith, science, fear, and fantasy collided.

This is the story the British cultural historian Karl Bell tells in The Perilous Deep: A Supernatural History of the Atlantic, his epic study of sailors’ lore, ghost ships, sea monsters, superstitions, omens and uncanny maritime experiences.

We hear about 'the caul' - the protective embryo of an unborn baby said to keep sailors safe, the 'jonah', a scapegoat eyed suspiciously by those on board as responsible for the ship's misfortunes, H P Lovecraft, cross-dressing pirates and  more.

This is not a history of battles or trade routes, but of dreams, fantasies and terrors — of the sea as it existed in the minds of those who sailed upon it

The Perlious Deep: A Supernatural History of the Atlantic

In early 1990s South London — a time when rave culture was mutating and London’s squats were pulsing with creativity, Aphex Twin, Global Communication, Nightmares on Wax, Autechre,Andrea Parker, Scanner — could be found DJ-ing and performing in spaces where a strange new sound-world was blooming.

This is the story of Telepathic Fish, the ambient afterparty scene created by the Openmind Collective. Telepathic Fish parties and club rooms were DIY countercultural happenings with turntables, psychedelic installations, living-room lamps, photocopied zines and a lot of imagination, becoming a meeting place for bohos, ravers, multimedia explorers and a new wave of electronic musicians. 

Now, as a new vinyl compilation and a beautifully illustrated 20-page booklet, The Telepathic Fish has resurfaced to rave reviews, Kevin Foakes — DJ, designer, archivist and cultural custodian — returns to the Bureau to talk squat party ‘finstallations’, Aphex Twin, Mira Calix, illegal Roundhouse raves, ambient zines and what DIY culture can do when technology, community and youthful imagination collide.

The Telepathic Fish Compilation

For Kevin  / DJ Food

#ambientmusic #aphextwin #autechre #miracalix #orbital #theorb #counterculture #diyparties #diyculture #telepathicfish #djfood

There are figures in counterculture whose names appear only in the margins of the story — whose influence is eclipsed, overshadowed, even dismissed, by more mythologised personalities.

Alaura O’Dell — known to many under her earlier name, Paula P-Orridge - is a musician, artist, occult practitioner, and was a co-conspirator in the band Psychic TV

For a long time, Alaura was described almost exclusively in relation to her then-husband, the arch provocateur and musician Genesis P-Orridge but she joined us to talk about life before Genesis,  the formative years of Psychic TV: the chaos, the energy, the experiments with magick and media, the turbulent times of TOPY - Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth - the global network of seekers and outsiders, where she was not merely a participant but an organiser — the one who handled the workings,  the practical magic behind the grand metaphysical gestures. 

Alaura’s life didn’t end when she parted ways with the band, with Genesis, or with the Temple. In fact, in many ways, it began anew. We will be hearing more about that in the second part of our interview in a future episode.

For more on Alaura and connect with her here (as Mistress Mix) 

#psychictv #TheeTempleOvPsychickYouth #paulp-orridge #genesisp-orridge #throbbinggristle #satanist #satanicpanic  #counterculture #coseyfannitutti #occult

We are on the brink of a new nuclear age - the energy crisis, the push towards net zero and the gargantuan power requirements of AI demand it - or so we are told.  
 
But here in Britain, the old nuclear age isn’t just a historical footnote - it’s etched into the very landscape.
 

Tom Bolton went on an epic journey around the UK to explore the extraordinary, imposing locations in that landscape, from the 16 vast concrete cathedral-like power stations on remote coasts to the hidden nuclear missile silos that cast a long, physical, cultural and environmental shadow over Albion - past, present, and into the distant future.

His extraordinary new book, Atomic Albion: Journeys Around Britain's Nuclear Power Stations, not only maps the physical geography of Britain’s atomic ambitions, but also digs into their psychic, mythic and cultural impact. 

With great power comes great responsibility, as Spider-Man's Uncle Pete said. And of course, where there is state power, there has always been countercultural dissent, quite rightly in this case, because the power we unleashed by splitting the atom could bring us to the very brink of oblivion..

#atomic #atomicage #nuclear #nuclearpower #nuclearweapons #atombomb #powerstaions #albion #atomicalbion #counterculture