COLD LIPS: Recent Episodes
Kirsty Allison
Cold Lips began as a zine with parties internationally and now makes books and music releases. Founded by writer Kirsty Allison, her debut novel, PSYCHOMACHIA is out now. She is editor of Ambit, est. 1959, and performs as Vagrant Lovers with the musician, filmmaker and partner Cold Lips' co-director Gil De Ray.
www.coldlips.co.uk www.kirstyallison.com
IRVINE WELSH “the greatest cultural beacon this planet has produced”
TIME OUT: "Proving bookish folk are the coolest folk"
Dr John Cooper Clarke: "Cold Lips is artistic and fabulous"
Howdy, readers. Watchers. Listeners, Sunday. Monday. The days of the week, the months of the seasons, the cosmic words of the wild. All is set in the Northern hemisphere, as winter earth protects itself from the barking nights of snowfall. Slowly, catching breath, to speed up action, for Spring to save us with the flowers, and post-skeleton tree blossom, to hit the marks of the future.
Stars, planets. Poetry. Motion. Moving: forward into the NEW is NOW. I made this film 8-years ago, and found it recently. For your pleasure.
X
BE BRAVE and TAKE THE BEST CARE OUT THERE!
SENT I.M. MARIANNE FAITHFULL
“the best biography of Marianne I ever read” Judy Nylon
If you are a paying subscriber, please drop me a line, and I will be happy to send a free COLD LIPS PRESS publication (2021) about Marianne Faithfull’s life, with artwork from an original commission by Sam Jackson, from the UK shortly, and some available now in Europe.
The limited edition zine features rare photographs, artwork and foreword by myself, interviews with Warren Ellis & more.
Coming back at you very soon: recent interview by Kelli Ali x Martin Eder on a naughty rooftop in London’s Noho.
In the meantime, the cave studio is preparing to record the long-promised Psychomachia audiobook, and release the book digitally. Before the flowers burst their banks, and flood us with their summer scent. 🌸
Get full access to From the desk of Kirsty Allison at kirstyallison.substack.com/subscribe
Dear Readers,
I got what I needed Going for a Burton (that’s an English RAF term from WWII, like we’re going off to die). I’m at the press conference for the biggest show the Design Museum has ever hosted, with 32,000 tickets sold in advance. Much as I'm falling out of love with absorbing myself in the worlds of other people, I ask this most powerful man (who has maintained his independence through an autonomous style that stems from a wonderfully 20th-century cardboard clunkiness) a single question. I extend the invitation to enter his temple and listen to the wisdom of this master world-builder, the creator of Wednesday on Netflix, Mars Attacks!, Edward Scissorhands, and a canon of identity-inspiring creations, by pressing PLAY on the little film I've made reporting on the experience above.
He talks about techniques and emphasises that it's all about mastering these in whatever art we choose to deliver. The first rule of witchcraft is to keep a tidy house, but how we define "tidy" is up to us.
Living in other people’s worlds has been a habit of mine. Art activates, allowing me to find myself sitting opposite Tim Burton who is exceptionally rare. He is unique. He is special. A mega-talented embodiment of the gothic who articulates his critical mind in these onscreen dramas of G-pop's [general population/consumers] relationship with home duties in the sanitised Americana of 50s suburbia. Burton’s drawing descends from growing up in the suburban “Horrorwood” of California’s Burbank where he took an unpretentious revenge upon the superficial. I grew up in the suburbs too.
“Burbank made me want to make monster movies.” I get it.
There he sent his work into art competitions, which led him to be fast-tracked on a sponsorship into the Walt Disney-founded CalArts school where he was enabled to explore his interior world, with confidence, as an obsessional artist. This is his legacy.
“Each [film] leaves it’s emotional scars.”
Engaging with his work is like stepping into alternative, often scary, magical kingdoms. Speaking to Maria McLintock, the curator as she guides us around the show (a true privilege of being a war-torn member of culture press) her Vivienne Westwood skeleton earring swings with the same charm as her knowledge and integrity. “It’s about 60%” of what’s been seen in the World of Tim Burton shows which have shown everywhere from New York’s MOMA to Lafayette Art and Design Center in Shanghai over the past 10 years.
How does it differ to the Labyrinth shows I’ve seen advertised for Madrid? She’s dying to see them: “They’re more immersive,” says the former RIBA editor, whose knowledge of architecture creates the perfect ‘housing’ for a tunnel of Allison in Wonderland to walk through. “People keep on saying this is immersive. It’s not, it’s more of document.”
Whether Burton is a higher-res Edward Gore or an all-new Edgar Allan Poe, a tripped-out Goethe, or a Nick Cave of the Movies, it doesn’t matter in a graveyard. These characters haunt us with their sublimity, ultimately embodying rebellion. Goths are eternal because death is eternal (as far as we know), and death carries powerful imagery: headstones, spiders, skulls. It’s perfect that he pairs with Alexander McQueen, as proper goths canonise the act of not being mainstream cool. They embrace the coffin-cold fact that we’re all going to die, but they do it on their own terms.
Whether gaming is replacing movies or any art form or media is taking over is irrelevant, this is the show which views Burton as an all-seeing artist. This is why the big screen has allowed him to become an unusually family-friendly weirdo, defying the odds. His drawings of characters trap us in the simplicity of fairy tales, where children find solace in extremes. Although this show demonstrates versatility, this is a filmaker exploring the boundaries of victimhood, blurring the internal and external. The peripeteia of turning our wounds into badges of shame, then into medals of honour. It voices a universal truth. Do we walk through the broken vessels that smash to the ground around us, attacked and reacting? We can engage, ignore, sweep our house, or become injured. We all inhabit the houses of others, seeking answers from what has been missing, the art is to feel full of self (not full of oneself) and content in that rather than shamed or unworthy.
Yet, what we allow into our systems (or whatever is present) shapes our journeys. Be it unfiltered water, chemically-sprayed coffee, or the myths of others. I was married to a director, so can tell you they are the gods of their creations, little would get finished without them. We enter the temples of other people through literature, music, gaming, and we choose alt Heavens and Underworlds, immersing ourselves in Utopian fantasies where impossible romanticism reigns. But what we create, we can only create ourselves. Sure we collaborate, as is discussed in the film above. Yet I am here to make an inquiry. I seek escape through the ‘Burtonesque’ existential monochrome, mirroring a cartoon fear of darkness as a companion in the ironic danse macabre to the inevitable: death. I am here because the Burtonesque beats black like my coffee and heart. The gothic lifeblood channels life as an outsider. Yet I wish to belong. The dilemma of being a true rebel yet accepted by those we perceive to be “inside” requires a humble acknowledgment of our shared flaws as we walk towards the grave.
There is no dumbing down or fading out the "black jeans on the beach of life" joke of being here one minute and gone the next. We choose to enjoy the ride, striking a Beetlejuice meets Robert Smith hero’s pose against the paradox of beauty standards which true rebels are able to defy. (I am sure Cathi Unsworth and John Robb’s goth books say much of this, with far more detail.)
Burton discusses ‘the system’ that tells us we aren’t allowed to operate. What do you do? For me, seeking magic in others is a quest to find it within myself. In my worst of times I have had no protection against this. Hail the new witchery, the return to paganism, the need to understand and create order using more ancient traditions than this era of madness where we can see injustice in rising fundamentalism against females (I’m talking about Trump and the decline of western civilisation, mirrored in Jack Nicholson’s presidential performance in Mars Attacks! as we forward-march toward a dumbed-down spectacle the Salem-esque dumbed-down fear states of 'merica) but it’s so basic we can only loveheart a reaction. We are frustratingly disabled to affect geopolitics as we drop our mouths in awe at the online superficiality of the post-Covid 2020s. It's akin to the Wellness Dilemma, where justice is offered as the responsibility of the individual rather than as a responsibility of community management. The Wellness Dilemma is a mirror on consumer rights operating in carelessness for anything other than profit. We are facing serious issues of climate change, wars and over-consumption, walking hand-in-hand with trauma as victimhood flexing in a drama ritual, where space is taken up by injured parties, average accidents competing against violence rites of stabbings parading beneath a lack of societal management of equity. Everyone deserves a voice, and the power to use it, but in what system? Armies of protein-rich gym babies train for a war of healthy positivity against a past generation who self-medicated beneath banners of smiley faces or war-hangovers and first-generation struggles.
I sense this may be one of my last occasions where I need to confront the ghastly aesthetic of a world policed by beauty standards imposed by ‘beauty’ companies in the free-market warzone of brands, houses, offices, and entertainment institutions built to annihilate our financial empowerment. Subtle demands to comply with regimes that layer us with artificial masks of botox and filler that protect us from emotional empathy and the risk of deeper connections. Look at Madonna. Look at Robert Smith. We are symbolic parodies of the flaws of illogical systems in poorly designed worlds, we are perfect in an imperfect world, where it’s challenging to determine if these designs are intentional. In the end, does it matter? Culture is a natural defense system like hitting ouch on instant messaging, to receive an animal vid or guru-shared platitudes that feel (sleepy) hollow against the backdrop of authenticity solved in a world of Wednesday.
Sure, we manage our houses, filling our wells with what serves us, our revenge is to take space. To be nourished physically and metaphysically is essential, but it’s hard to compare these acts as great as the spectacle of the movies, the big screen paintings which allow us to escape. I vow to write more fiction (my most popular posts here). Navigating a landscape where choice is often intertwined with financial empowerment and cultures, we must invent our own, but when they’re symbols of the slavery? O Lord, yes, I would like an electric Mercedes Benz. Manifest!
We must remember we’re in a perpetual negotiation with the structures that seek to confine us, but not relive the horror of living in a world of overconsumption. And forgive ourselves for what we cannot afford.
Our power is how we boundary our responses to outer worlds that govern us. Sometimes that requires sitting in stagnant waters, plunging to the depths of our malnourished wells, and rediscovering our needs. For me, this journey has taken me to an Andalusian mountain, battling with my soul and demons to face the hermetic dawn. I still would like an electric Mercedes Benz. That’s my reaction to the Trauma Scale which operates universally; male, female, trans, everyone is entitled to suffer. Whether it’s rape on a refugee camp to the bullying on social media, or sharing micro-details of foodbank trauma as drama ritual of victimhood, where space is occupied by the injured and the injuring. How is there equality in these rubrics of competing for attention amid societal neglect? What we do with our injuries defines our agency, resilience, and leadership potential, applicable to all teams. We all engage with pain, and there’s a comedic tragedy in empathy, but black and white as Burton’s lens is, it does not patronise with guilt; instead, he explores these wounded vessels with a perception of agency and resilience. Like any creative act, we can criticise rather than celebrate (particularly under a Beschdel lens) but there’s an intimacy which the exposure-driven antics of contemporary pop culture are born from.
“If it inspires you, if it makes kids want to draw, then that’s a thing.”
Resilience is my new tidiness. I want to claim my power with the stories I tell myself, as I know it shapes our realities. We can become interdependent with the worlds which inspire us. This is the point in having successful figures, artists and ideas, rather than just pedestal creations as being better than us. Much of our system amplifies the celebrity culture born from movies, where the industrialisation of the Star Machine creates a Warhol-esque religion of gossip and behaviors, often driven by sociopathic tendencies, glorifying chaos. It’s like any dogma, astrological or otherwise, there is unlikely a single code. How we navigate the complex matrix of media and art as information in this digital age is on us. The lines between success and worthiness blur in a quest for ethical sameness. Burton is an outstanding artist in world where secretly, the weird are celebrated, because the world has gone weird, governed by dull tech bros and cartoon boardrooms with no control on government. Has it ever been different? That is what makes fairy tales eternal and keeps the town criers’ crying. The aspiration to conform, through patronage or substandard revolutionary rebelliousness, leads to feelings of low self-esteem and comparison, dragging us into voids of negative capability. If we harbour a damaging self-fulfilling lack of belief in our own houses, we merely assign our power to others.
“Do it from your heart because you want it, not what it leads to.”
This mantra speaks volumes. We have to own our own shadows, remember not relive, and know gossip or faux-concern of the Other, and what they do or think, rarely serves anyone, merely enabling averageness. We are in a tidal onslaught of individual ‘empowerment’ being exploited to sell things to or from, we owe it to ourselves to heavily police what content/art/entertainment/news/information/people/other is worthy of our short lives. This duality can be a terrifying preoccupation, the management of self-control when most of life can appear to be beyond our control. We are forced to be consumers, indexed by popularity. We have all smiled whilst being f**ked. I’m not getting into a feminist critique here, the self-portraits drawing clowns (on napkins) is a get out of jail card, from this distance. The personal, whatever (although I did enjoy the trooping of the mystery front-rowers backstage after the Q&A, who were they?!). I vow to watch Sophie Koko’s animations. There is so much to consume, to create, but for me, the tensions in myself have been preventative from doing what I need to do for myself, so to hear this God speak, gives palpability to the distractions of explaining the issues of the day being explained as art versus industry, or how the rational coexists with the irrational, or progressive philosophies versus conservative risk aversion. Our biggest challenge is building our own capacity to prove our capability, to hold our own houses strong, and be as fabulous as Edward Scissorhands.
Last day to enter Burton's World: April 21st 2025
https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/the-world-of-tim-burton
My news:
I’m proud to support one of the stars in my life, Pete Astor, with his THE ATTENDANT project on 21st November. I love the music, with Paul Weller’s bassist and Ian Button on keys, they’re also joined by the voice of fine London talent, Sukie Smith. Pete was one of the first signings to Creation Records (Oasis, Primal Scream, Jesus & Mary Chain), and we last played together when Psychomachia was first published.
It’s a really early show. I’m on by 7, so come early. Tickets are limited and available here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-attendant-tickets-1039379641487
I’m excited to build on what I’ve been doing over the past year, and I won’t keep you long.
I will be using the date to complete the audiobook of Psychomachia, and will be releasing it exclusively to paying subscribers here. I share these words for free to all, in the hope to inspire.
From the desk of Kirsty Allison is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Get full access to From the desk of Kirsty Allison at kirstyallison.substack.com/subscribe
Dear Readers,
I got what I needed Going for a Burton (that’s an English RAF term from WWII, like we’re going off to die). I’m at the press conference for the biggest show the Design Museum has ever hosted, with 32,000 tickets sold in advance. Much as I'm falling out of love with absorbing myself in the worlds of other people, I ask this most powerful man (who has maintained his independence through an autonomous style that stems from a wonderfully 20th-century cardboard clunkiness) a single question. I extend the invitation to enter his temple and listen to the wisdom of this master world-builder, the creator of Wednesday on Netflix, Mars Attacks!, Edward Scissorhands, and a canon of identity-inspiring creations, by pressing PLAY on the little film I've made reporting on the experience above.
He talks about techniques and emphasises that it's all about mastering these in whatever art we choose to deliver. The first rule of witchcraft is to keep a tidy house, but how we define "tidy" is up to us.
Living in other people’s worlds has been a habit of mine. Art activates, allowing me to find myself sitting opposite Tim Burton who is exceptionally rare. He is unique. He is special. A mega-talented embodiment of the gothic who articulates his critical mind in these onscreen dramas of G-pop's [general population/consumers] relationship with home duties in the sanitised Americana of 50s suburbia. Burton’s drawing descends from growing up in the suburban “Horrorwood” of California’s Burbank where he took an unpretentious revenge upon the superficial. I grew up in the suburbs too.
“Burbank made me want to make monster movies.” I get it.
There he sent his work into art competitions, which led him to be fast-tracked on a sponsorship into the Walt Disney-founded CalArts school where he was enabled to explore his interior world, with confidence, as an obsessional artist. This is his legacy.
“Each [film] leaves it’s emotional scars.”
Engaging with his work is like stepping into alternative, often scary, magical kingdoms. Speaking to Maria McLintock, the curator as she guides us around the show (a true privilege of being a war-torn member of culture press) her Vivienne Westwood skeleton earring swings with the same charm as her knowledge and integrity. “It’s about 60%” of what’s been seen in the World of Tim Burton shows which have shown everywhere from New York’s MOMA to Lafayette Art and Design Center in Shanghai over the past 10 years.
How does it differ to the Labyrinth shows I’ve seen advertised for Madrid? She’s dying to see them: “They’re more immersive,” says the former RIBA editor, whose knowledge of architecture creates the perfect ‘housing’ for a tunnel of Allison in Wonderland to walk through. “People keep on saying this is immersive. It’s not, it’s more of document.”
Whether Burton is a higher-res Edward Gore or an all-new Edgar Allan Poe, a tripped-out Goethe, or a Nick Cave of the Movies, it doesn’t matter in a graveyard. These characters haunt us with their sublimity, ultimately embodying rebellion. Goths are eternal because death is eternal (as far as we know), and death carries powerful imagery: headstones, spiders, skulls. It’s perfect that he pairs with Alexander McQueen, as proper goths canonise the act of not being mainstream cool. They embrace the coffin-cold fact that we’re all going to die, but they do it on their own terms.
Whether gaming is replacing movies or any art form or media is taking over is irrelevant, this is the show which views Burton as an all-seeing artist. This is why the big screen has allowed him to become an unusually family-friendly weirdo, defying the odds. His drawings of characters trap us in the simplicity of fairy tales, where children find solace in extremes. Although this show demonstrates versatility, this is a filmaker exploring the boundaries of victimhood, blurring the internal and external. The peripeteia of turning our wounds into badges of shame, then into medals of honour. It voices a universal truth. Do we walk through the broken vessels that smash to the ground around us, attacked and reacting? We can engage, ignore, sweep our house, or become injured. We all inhabit the houses of others, seeking answers from what has been missing, the art is to feel full of self (not full of oneself) and content in that rather than shamed or unworthy.
Yet, what we allow into our systems (or whatever is present) shapes our journeys. Be it unfiltered water, chemically-sprayed coffee, or the myths of others. I was married to a director, so can tell you they are the gods of their creations, little would get finished without them. We enter the temples of other people through literature, music, gaming, and we choose alt Heavens and Underworlds, immersing ourselves in Utopian fantasies where impossible romanticism reigns. But what we create, we can only create ourselves. Sure we collaborate, as is discussed in the film above. Yet I am here to make an inquiry. I seek escape through the ‘Burtonesque’ existential monochrome, mirroring a cartoon fear of darkness as a companion in the ironic danse macabre to the inevitable: death. I am here because the Burtonesque beats black like my coffee and heart. The gothic lifeblood channels life as an outsider. Yet I wish to belong. The dilemma of being a true rebel yet accepted by those we perceive to be “inside” requires a humble acknowledgment of our shared flaws as we walk towards the grave.
There is no dumbing down or fading out the "black jeans on the beach of life" joke of being here one minute and gone the next. We choose to enjoy the ride, striking a Beetlejuice meets Robert Smith hero’s pose against the paradox of beauty standards which true rebels are able to defy. (I am sure Cathi Unsworth and John Robb’s goth books say much of this, with far more detail.)
Burton discusses ‘the system’ that tells us we aren’t allowed to operate. What do you do? For me, seeking magic in others is a quest to find it within myself. In my worst of times I have had no protection against this. Hail the new witchery, the return to paganism, the need to understand and create order using more ancient traditions than this era of madness where we can see injustice in rising fundamentalism against females (I’m talking about Trump and the decline of western civilisation, mirrored in Jack Nicholson’s presidential performance in Mars Attacks! as we forward-march toward a dumbed-down spectacle the Salem-esque dumbed-down fear states of 'merica) but it’s so basic we can only loveheart a reaction. We are frustratingly disabled to affect geopolitics as we drop our mouths in awe at the online superficiality of the post-Covid 2020s. It's akin to the Wellness Dilemma, where justice is offered as the responsibility of the individual rather than as a responsibility of community management. The Wellness Dilemma is a mirror on consumer rights operating in carelessness for anything other than profit. We are facing serious issues of climate change, wars and over-consumption, walking hand-in-hand with trauma as victimhood flexing in a drama ritual, where space is taken up by injured parties, average accidents competing against violence rites of stabbings parading beneath a lack of societal management of equity. Everyone deserves a voice, and the power to use it, but in what system? Armies of protein-rich gym babies train for a war of healthy positivity against a past generation who self-medicated beneath banners of smiley faces or war-hangovers and first-generation struggles.
I sense this may be one of my last occasions where I need to confront the ghastly aesthetic of a world policed by beauty standards imposed by ‘beauty’ companies in the free-market warzone of brands, houses, offices, and entertainment institutions built to annihilate our financial empowerment. Subtle demands to comply with regimes that layer us with artificial masks of botox and filler that protect us from emotional empathy and the risk of deeper connections. Look at Madonna. Look at Robert Smith. We are symbolic parodies of the flaws of illogical systems in poorly designed worlds, we are perfect in an imperfect world, where it’s challenging to determine if these designs are intentional. In the end, does it matter? Culture is a natural defense system like hitting ouch on instant messaging, to receive an animal vid or guru-shared platitudes that feel (sleepy) hollow against the backdrop of authenticity solved in a world of Wednesday.
Sure, we manage our houses, filling our wells with what serves us, our revenge is to take space. To be nourished physically and metaphysically is essential, but it’s hard to compare these acts as great as the spectacle of the movies, the big screen paintings which allow us to escape. I vow to write more fiction (my most popular posts here). Navigating a landscape where choice is often intertwined with financial empowerment and cultures, we must invent our own, but when they’re symbols of the slavery? O Lord, yes, I would like an electric Mercedes Benz. Manifest!
We must remember we’re in a perpetual negotiation with the structures that seek to confine us, but not relive the horror of living in a world of overconsumption. And forgive ourselves for what we cannot afford.
Our power is how we boundary our responses to outer worlds that govern us. Sometimes that requires sitting in stagnant waters, plunging to the depths of our malnourished wells, and rediscovering our needs. For me, this journey has taken me to an Andalusian mountain, battling with my soul and demons to face the hermetic dawn. I still would like an electric Mercedes Benz. That’s my reaction to the Trauma Scale which operates universally; male, female, trans, everyone is entitled to suffer. Whether it’s rape on a refugee camp to the bullying on social media, or sharing micro-details of foodbank trauma as drama ritual of victimhood, where space is occupied by the injured and the injuring. How is there equality in these rubrics of competing for attention amid societal neglect? What we do with our injuries defines our agency, resilience, and leadership potential, applicable to all teams. We all engage with pain, and there’s a comedic tragedy in empathy, but black and white as Burton’s lens is, it does not patronise with guilt; instead, he explores these wounded vessels with a perception of agency and resilience. Like any creative act, we can criticise rather than celebrate (particularly under a Beschdel lens) but there’s an intimacy which the exposure-driven antics of contemporary pop culture are born from.
“If it inspires you, if it makes kids want to draw, then that’s a thing.”
Resilience is my new tidiness. I want to claim my power with the stories I tell myself, as I know it shapes our realities. We can become interdependent with the worlds which inspire us. This is the point in having successful figures, artists and ideas, rather than just pedestal creations as being better than us. Much of our system amplifies the celebrity culture born from movies, where the industrialisation of the Star Machine creates a Warhol-esque religion of gossip and behaviors, often driven by sociopathic tendencies, glorifying chaos. It’s like any dogma, astrological or otherwise, there is unlikely a single code. How we navigate the complex matrix of media and art as information in this digital age is on us. The lines between success and worthiness blur in a quest for ethical sameness. Burton is an outstanding artist in world where secretly, the weird are celebrated, because the world has gone weird, governed by dull tech bros and cartoon boardrooms with no control on government. Has it ever been different? That is what makes fairy tales eternal and keeps the town criers’ crying. The aspiration to conform, through patronage or substandard revolutionary rebelliousness, leads to feelings of low self-esteem and comparison, dragging us into voids of negative capability. If we harbour a damaging self-fulfilling lack of belief in our own houses, we merely assign our power to others.
“Do it from your heart because you want it, not what it leads to.”
This mantra speaks volumes. We have to own our own shadows, remember not relive, and know gossip or faux-concern of the Other, and what they do or think, rarely serves anyone, merely enabling averageness. We are in a tidal onslaught of individual ‘empowerment’ being exploited to sell things to or from, we owe it to ourselves to heavily police what content/art/entertainment/news/information/people/other is worthy of our short lives. This duality can be a terrifying preoccupation, the management of self-control when most of life can appear to be beyond our control. We are forced to be consumers, indexed by popularity. We have all smiled whilst being f**ked. I’m not getting into a feminist critique here, the self-portraits drawing clowns (on napkins) is a get out of jail card, from this distance. The personal, whatever (although I did enjoy the trooping of the mystery front-rowers backstage after the Q&A, who were they?!). I vow to watch Sophie Koko’s animations. There is so much to consume, to create, but for me, the tensions in myself have been preventative from doing what I need to do for myself, so to hear this God speak, gives palpability to the distractions of explaining the issues of the day being explained as art versus industry, or how the rational coexists with the irrational, or progressive philosophies versus conservative risk aversion. Our biggest challenge is building our own capacity to prove our capability, to hold our own houses strong, and be as fabulous as Edward Scissorhands.
Last day to enter Burton's World: April 21st 2025
https://designmuseum.org/exhibitions/the-world-of-tim-burton
My news:
I’m proud to support one of the stars in my life, Pete Astor, with his THE ATTENDANT project on 21st November. I love the music, with Paul Weller’s bassist and Ian Button on keys, they’re also joined by the voice of fine London talent, Sukie Smith. Pete was one of the first signings to Creation Records (Oasis, Primal Scream, Jesus & Mary Chain), and we last played together when Psychomachia was first published.
It’s a really early show. I’m on by 7, so come early. Tickets are limited and available here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-attendant-tickets-1039379641487
I’m excited to build on what I’ve been doing over the past year, and I won’t keep you long.
I will be using the date to complete the audiobook of Psychomachia, and will be releasing it exclusively to paying subscribers here. I share these words for free to all, in the hope to inspire.
From the desk of Kirsty Allison is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Get full access to From the desk of Kirsty Allison at kirstyallison.substack.com/subscribe
Get full access to From the desk of Kirsty Allison at kirstyallison.substack.com/subscribe
The euthanasia party of Ambit. Celebrating winners of the Annual Ambit Competition for Poems, Stories & Art.
Stuart McPherson (poems, judged by Rebecca Tamás), Paul Currion (stories, judge by Jenni Fagan) and Robert Gillespie (art, judged by Danielle de Picciotto).
Established in 1959, the board opted to close down charity operations in 2023.
The final broadcast, presented by Kirsty Allison.
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More from us on https://vagrantlovers.bandcamp.com
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Dear ones,
My life is a fking magazine.**
Pages of projects, my life, twixting and twaining.
I’ve grown up in them. You are your experience, and in the same way that you are what you sleep with, you become what you do, I guess.
I wasn’t sure whether to hammer your inboxes daily with micro-content, a la Patti Smith, in the run-up to my biggest news to date (beyond Psychomachia) or to just throw it ALL down here.
Because what I really want to share is our. Beautiful. Single. (You can nab a pre-order of here).
But it feels more honourable to make a cover star award of Geoff Travis, founder of Rough Trade - arguably the most important indie label in the history of the British recording industry. We met as judges on the Doc n Roll Festival, he memorably said, “I bet you like performing,” as we hustled together for a group shot. He’s right. Just gotta stay away from manifesting drama in one’s personal life, and love you what you do - but like all those Wellness Live Ya Best Life aspirational platitudes - how do you jump off the cliff by a bungy rope if you ain’t stapled in financially?
When I went back to university at 25, bounding in all Educating Rita, like a spring daisy from another nervous breakdown/rehab (again), I did a BA in New Media Journalism and Radio, it taught me to be pretty self-sufficient and DIY, editing across media, coding, I was working in BBC Radio as a researcher by the second year, reporting at celeb parties and on September 11th, before making radio documentaries for 1XTRA, R2, etc. Authenticity has become more and more apparent to my sanity over the years. I’ve taught Media Ethics, Broadcasting, Pop video courses, loads of zine workshops with victims of torture, and minority groups, after school clubs - that sort of thing before getting more and more quasi-academic, and wannabe Doctor, shifting between teaching vocational media work to City & Guilds, B-Tec, undergrads and some Masters (in a particularly sketchy institution). I’ve also consulted internationally for cash. I’ve become more and more capable over the years, but it also means I am pretty multi-skilled and good at problem solving, but it also prevents me from working to true calling. As life does for most people who have to earn a living. The reality of being a writer and performer is that without compromise to industry demands, you’re on your own.
Which flips me back to Geoff Travis - there was a crossover period when I was still trying to lecture and edit Ambit (Ambit won in the end, despite it being a charity, and the money not being as good as teaching, I felt more committed to the responsibility of helming this great institution).
I invited Travis to give a guest lecture when I was leading a class on the Music Industry to American undergrads (employed by the brilliant writer, Heidi Dunbar James). I was surprised what I knew, despite having written about music since my early days, DJing etc, you may know from PSYCHOMACHIA, which examines the patriarchal nature of the 90s music industry as fiction, I’ve been around it forever - before editing Ambit I was the “Off The Floor” editor of the arts on DJMag, but have never felt part of the boys club - despite knowing so many of the wheeler dealers who have hustled through life making money from music - we all feel like outsiders sometimes. My DJ moniker took a non-female angle, K-Rocka - a nickname, and it was through doing a series of lectures about the music industry in the UK, I kinda realised that actually I’m likely qualified as much as anyone else - but the guest lecture from Geoff Travis was landmark - I hope you may have time to listen to this founder of Rough Trade, I’ve added the lecture as a podcast here. It’s a masterclass in independence. He’s very cool, casually reeling out how he didn’t sign The Stone Roses, and being at one of The Strokes first gigs, and not knowing that one of The Libertines was going to end up a heroin addict. There’s also the pain of board meetings, not really being in it for the money, and the backend of the music industry. It’s solid - thank you to the students of that class for their questions…
Gil and I started sharing our work live in 2018. He’s what one may call a “professional musician”, his first A&R was John Niven and he’s been signed to major labels and produced John Martyn among others. He was performing with Little Barrie when we met, at a book reading for Tony O’Neill (who also used to work in music, playing keys for my friend Kelli Ali, but also Kenickie, Marc Almond and others. His first book, Digging the Vein was published by Wrecking Ball Press who put my novel out). Gil and I became friends after that signing, and in the maelstrom of our relationship, his band with Little Barrie imploded - as bands do - despite their only single as Pet Weapons being loved and played by Lauren Laverne.
Gil commenced on The Long Road of who am I, why am I, etc. The important road.
We collaborated before we got together - co-writing a poem that introduced him at Red Gallery, 15 December 2015. And by NOLA, 2018, we were making a film for Jeffrey Wengrofsky’s festival in NYC, me writing a poem, chalking it up in the streets, filmed, and Gil then made music to accompany it. We later showed it at the Liminality show at Gallery46, first performing together there. We then played other galleries, like the Bomb Factory in North London. In Berlin, The Social, Pikes Ibiza. We’ve now done a couple of tours.
Our friend Martyn Goodace did the Das Wasteland compilation which was our first release, on vinyl, from Berlin days…
We met Blang! Records boss Joe, who works with Paul and Jules, Beth and La, with his wife, after the first show we did out of lockdown, in Sheffield at Sidney & Matilda, a great venue, supporting Band of Holy Joy. (There’s a documentary about Blang! Records which is worth finding - about antifolk and why they started)
The sound guy at Sidney & Matilda was good, turned me onto local hip-hop poet Otis Mensah - but in the basement, people were conditioned to not stand close to each other and it felt like we were defo sharing air. By the end of the tour - it was a futile underground party of sweat-filled sardine dancing in venues in Edinburgh and North Shields. But that first night, it was that kinda romantic dream: a record label coming up to you after a show and showing interest. Blang! Records were later doing a residency at the Hope n Anchor is Islington and asked us to play. We filmed the shows for them, and they offered to put out a single. Initially it was suggested we did it with Pink Eye Club on the flipside, but we played them Rock n Roll Is A Deathwish, after they’d chosen Paradise Burns - that’s what’s coming. There are 50 lathe-cuts. The artwork’s by the brilliant Bert Gilbert - “northern Marina Abramović” - who’s showing at the forthcoming Horror show at Somerset House, curated by Jane Pollard and Ian Forsyth (who directed 20000 Days with Nick Cave). We’ve done a beautiful UV spot bespoke print and they really are limited and beautiful. Bert used Gustave Doré as her main influence on the piece. A modernised rising of a new enlightenment, we can but dream.
David Erdos has been super-kind in his review of the single in International Times. Comparing us to everyone between early Dylan (the first record I ever DJed was Subterranean Homesick Blues), and my vox being halfway between Wendy James and Siouxie Sioux. (It’s in that link…he’s a genius, love his acting too…)
I would like to invite you to our single launch at Rough Trade East on Wednesday - there are some free tickets, but they are going fast…Jonny Halifax Invocation, Sharon Gal, Savage Pencil, Gil, some poets, we’ll all be celebrating the first look of The War Issue of Ambit, which coincidently is equinox (the end of summer) and World Peace Day. I began talking about this “War issue” of Ambit back in 2020, with a submission that stood out, and went public on it in April. It’s resulted in 50+ international contributors selected by myself and my brilliant co-editors in Beirut, Sarah Chalabi and Zeina Chamseddine of Dongola Books. We launch in Beirut, supported by British Council Lebanon, 18 November.
There’s so much to say about this issue - and the magazine does it. Order here. It’s a reaction to the spectacle of War we receive in mass media through mainly direct experiences from Poets, Writers, Artists. For me, it says more than most news orgs.
If you sneak onto our Bandcamp - you’ll see the artwork, but as there’s a holiday tomorrow, perhaps I’ll have time to make a lil video.
x. Love n light.
Please come on Wednesday if you can. A few free TICKETS HERE.
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Jón Sæmundur Auðarson of Dead Skeletons with his paintings at Icelandic Embassy talks about the impending volcano explosions, HIV, Hep C, strong tea with Kirsty Allison.
There is a film version of this online made by Gil De Ray Insta @coldlips_ and Cold Lips website and Gil De Ray and Cold Lips YouTube.
Kirsty Allison speaks with legend DJ Martin Green about the 90s. Without Martin Green, would there be Britpop? His weekly club night Smashing, defined an era in underground culture, and was the coolest club of the 90s.
Today - I’ve recorded my unscholarly translation of Prudentius’s Psychomachia for you. Originally written in Latin in the fifth century, I was thrown out of Latin for making up stories about Orphelia in the Underworld, so it’s hardly scholarly. But Praise Be to the miracle of Google Translate, a dictionary, and other translations, the tools I’ve used for translations of Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Verlaine. The result is likely as wild as the cartoons of the illuminated manuscript (c.1016) which attracted me to steal this “War of The Soul”, or “Battle of Vice and Virtue” as the title for my novel, I needed something better than the various working titles since I began drafting back in 2005: Medicine, Old Street Eagles, De-railed, The Dublin Notes, The Icarus Project, So Fist, and Papershoes. Psychomachia felt like a heavenly intervention and the perfect allegory for a girl who wakes up all Jean Genet, in the 90s, unsure if she’s murdered the arch patriarch of rock n roll.
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I also wanted to let you know, dear subscribers, who have pulled me through to our new Covid dawn, before I share it on social media, that there are a handful of signed Psychomachia posters up on my Bandcamp. They’ve been pasted up all over town, and I’m sure it’s partly why I continue to receive amazing messages, daily, from people enjoying the books - thank you.
Paying subscribers, happy to send you a free poster for your support, and my lack of action here for a while…
And if you haven’t made the break into FULL SUPPORT yet - please remember I’ll send you signed first editions of the novel too.
💖
Also, we have shows in London on Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday at the Hope and Anchor in Islington for Blang Records, and Thursday at the Powerhaus.
We’ll be celebrating our debut physical release, on the Berlin Vol. 1 & 2 compilation with Das Wasteland. Also on Spotify.
“Patti-esque post punk collision” ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Mojo
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Each poster is £10, or £25 for three. They’re designed by Stephen Barrett who has redesigned Ambit.
The typewritten translations appear in the end pages of my novel.
ORDER A SIGNED BOOK HERE.
Psychomachia
The War of the Soul
Prudentius d.@413AD, Spain
Luxuria: flowershod and swaying from the wine cup. Every fragrance steps to Beauty and Pleasure, her attendants, her weapons, rose-petals and violets.
The army of Virtue surrenders, before defeat.
Idolatry and the vices struggle against Faith and virtue.
Spirituality
Religion
Kings of Barbarian bondage stand against our hero/heroine
Faith squeezes the dead grey eyes from the bloody soul
Her fans wear robes of flaming purple
Chastity’s virgin armour. Lust’s shining torches.
They fight: Chastity’s eye is hit with burning pine knot, dipped in sulphur and tar.
She pierces Lust’s neck, stinking fumes clot with black blood, foul breath from her throat pollutes the air.
The hammered sword stained red, a defiled lustre of filthy Lust plunging into Tarterus.
Patience, the long suffering soul took over from Chastity when she retired, tranquil.
Wrath’s black mouth foams. Patience’s eyes don’t flicker.
Wrath’s spears of words attack from beneath the shaggy plumes of her helmeted head. A frenzy made real till nothing remains.
Wrath dies in her own fury, after throwing all her spears.
No virtue lives without Patience, and she passes through the ranks with Good Job, Hope and Humility about to challenge pompous Pride who rides in upon a lioness pelt on a high spirited horse. Pride has big hair, fine linen cape - and rises mad to Lowliness and her motley crew of waifs and strays, penniless upstarts against Pride’s fame.
Lowliness’s cheap Spirit, surrounded by a band of maidens, among the ever-needy Justice, impoverished Honesty and parched and dry Sobriety, fasting their pasty faces. Modest Purity and her bloodless cheeks. Simplicity exposed to injury. All to be trampled feeble. Deceit, inventor of fraud, builds a trap for Lowliness, the meek Queen, which Pride falls into, and it is her true companion, Hope who rescues her, with Humility, demure and self-composed watching as Lowliness drags the sword of vengeance from Hope, and bends Pride’s neck back, and cuts it.
Luxuria, trampling flowers underfoot, blows trumpets to Indulgence belching perfume and warm in puddles of wine. Reputation means nothing for it is long lost. She lives for pleasure and weeps as everyone surrenders to her party of banqueting, flowing tankards spilling on silks, belching up the feast of the night, dawn’s trumpet is dragged by Wantoness and Drunkeness - throwing balsam violets at enemy lines. Dazed by the chariot of radiant jewels - the axle of gold, abandon this den of embers, under the flag of Sobriety. Sobriety leads the Falernian wine-covered ladies, and hurls a rock towards the foul Luxury, fought with the honeyed staff of Chance, who found the stone, smashing the red lips of Luxury, so her teeth loosen in her bloody mouth, broken bones melt, lacerations consumed, she vomits.
Sobriety: “Drink up! Enjoy your morsels. Your stomach can taste your body.”
Indulgence dies.
Her drinking friends throw their cymbals and scatter. Lust also flees, pale. Vanity, stripped naked, leaves, her robes in a pile with Allurement’s garlands. Strife and Pleasure depart in trails of hairpins, ribbons, buckles and veils. Sobriety and Co trample on the sins, into the gutter.
Greed then folds her robes and picks through the dirt for gold. She strips her pals corpses of their wealth.: Care, Hunger, Fear, Anxiety, Perjury, Corruption, Dread, Fraud, Fabrication, Sleeplessness, and Sordidness. Greed grows strong, her infamous pestilence is followed by Pride of Possession under-sated, and Gluttony who robs her own children. In the wake of Greed’s wrath, all living things turn to s**t-fired furnaces, bleeding with gold. Vessels inlaid with silver are held worthless and seized by Greed, only Reason can save.
Greed puts her weapons down in the name of Avarice. In the form of austerity, she becomes the virtue of Thrift. A zealous frugality. Bellona, goddess of War steals her look, but hides plundering the ivory and miserly hoarding of stolen goods beneath this commendable name.
Gullible men fall to the monster, shackling themselves to her fiend. Good Work comes to the aid of the faultline in the battlefield. She had been heavy with money and riches which she scatters among the poor, despite the moneybags being eaten by worms. Looking to Faith in Heaven with the accrued interest of her toil, Greed strikes her with lightning. Numb, her neck is iron but she retaliates, turning on Greed, no wound - the body is strangled in the agony of death. Nuggets of gold, gems, decaying cash leak to the poor. Good Work claims the desire for gain is gone. With ascetic chants, she says to leave not thinking of tomorrow because daily bread will come with sunlight. Birds, fouls, sparrows will not perish.
Their troubles end.
Suffering, Fear, Violence, Crime and Fraud lay their bugles down and Thunder smiles.
Concord reigned after the chaos, a miraculous highway opened up for all, a storm troubled peace. Discord joined Concord, imitating a friend, yet she carries a knife and a whip. Soon caught, she announces: “Belial is my teacher, and sees God, and mocks him.”
Faith takes a spear to her tongue, pinning her to the ground of bloodshed. Discord’s flesh is ripped and torn to the ground, to gutters, sewers, the mouths of dogs and the animal chain to earth and air and fish to fire.
Faith and Concord sit en high, watching the settling skirmish of their work over Vice.
The entire camo camp awaits with tents open, no niche of body closed. To the remaining army, with equal command, Concord speaks first: “What will Faith offer now? Victors to the savages! Your home must be united or we will be divided.”
Virtues produce peace.
Peace is the end of labour.
The temple is our Kingdom, begins the queen, instructing wolves in soft white lambskin to guard Concord against the hurt Faith defended. Her golden measuring rod rules the twelve names of a new senate, inscribed at the gates of the temple with a single stone entry. Three paths lead to a fourfold force cold to the north of pious devotions.
Precious stones embed the same number of walls. The temple pours with her love and coloured light. Peridot, chrysolites with gold veins, set between a sapphire and beryl light disco. Agate flashing with its amethyst neighbour, crimson striking the sardonyx, jasper, topaz, carnelian arcing. Scattered fresh cut grass emerald Chrysoprase as bright as stars. The inner temple had several crystal columns. A crane weighted heavy with a crown, tossing it to the side, while the stone centre with a shell holds a pearl. The pearl the prize pure base of Faith, paid for with a thousand talents. Wisdom lies, enshrouded. A sceptre of live wood. And the madness of solstice wrote the writer, that wander in ink. Lo.
The wander years.
The stem never wilts. It sprouts roses and willows. Red as blood on lillies.
Here we worship.
Sin falls.
The throes of rebellion for flesh.
This is what represses the spirit. Yes, the prison of our heart, its bondage rejecting the filth of flesh.
Light and Dark, that is what builds our temple. The soul, an ornament to delight Wisdom, who reigns glorious, now upright in the threads of this trial in her throne.
💖
And don’t forget - Thursday - we support these legends:
Love x
(and also, Ambit are offering a subscription for £30 till midnight, with Ambit Pop 243 (the one guest edited by Lias Saoudi of Fat White Family, and 244, and the next year of quarterlies…)
Get full access to From the desk of Kirsty Allison at kirstyallison.substack.com/subscribe
Some people earn the tag of legend - and for five decades Derek Ridgers, the London-based photographer has captured the Dark Carnival of the British underworld in our most radical club nights, from Blitz and Skin Two through to today’s Wraith Club. Growing up in the 60s, and making his name photographing punk clubs, and taking rock shots of the world’s greatests, he is a hero to many working photographers and fans of subculture, alike. Humble, brilliant, and with a rock n roll gallows humour to match his dark lens, now 70, in this Goth Shop X Cold Lips podcast, it’s a pleasure to have a conversation attempting to span his archive, and talk about voyeurism and documenting the cultural politics of the underground.
Derek Ridgers stands alone in his preservation of the fleeting expressions of the night. His limited silver bromide and C-type signed and numbered Derek Ridgers Editions are available via the wonderfully curated Goth Shop:
gothshop.co
Recorded September 2020, on a balcony in the east, looking down towards the spree river with Berghain between. I’m sitting with Rob Doyle, the author of my favourite book so far this year, Threshold. It's published in the UK and the US by Bloomsbury, so he takes throne as a leader in a new school of digital existentialist modernists, who take a post-millenial ego, and ask questions about the Author’s physical space on the page.
Rob Doyle is very tall, he appears at the door wearing a black polo neck and black pegs, looking total jazznik, because later tonight he’ll be on stage with a strain of the Fat White Family in Neukolln, playing percussion at a reassuringly fun evening, where the super-spreading qualities of the flute can be ignored, as we travel in an alt reality, away from the claws that birthed us all. Ex pat life, where universal globalisms of Me Too, BLM, Terf-wars, squish in the Q-Anon malestrom of denial and manipulations of the maleducated grip for sense and logic mean the novel has not felt as relevant and required in counterculture in my lifetime.
Threshold sits as a hologram, in an era where the individual is manipulated into the spectrum of hashtag identity politics, and good/bad - like/dislike polarisations mean we are the product, smashed beneath a data-driven duvet in a privatised society. 80% predictable, asking if that too is corrupted as any other statistic,the novel remains relatively data-proof, its nuance its strength, the unsearchable, between the lines facts being far truer than any single sentence or status update.
Thanks for listening. I’m making this on Sunday 27 September in Berlin. The music is by Gil De Ray. We’re on a residency in Mitte at the Neurotitan Gallery as guests of the wonderful artist Danielle De Picciotto - whom you can hear a past conversation with in the trenches of all your favourite podcast outlets, via Anchor, Spotify, iTunes, many more, and our own coldlips.co.uk. I also share these on kirstyallison.substack.com, where I gratefully send out thank yous of my new poetry book, Now Is Now, a collection since 007, to paying subscribers.
Rob Doyle's Threshold is out now, and the film This Is Ritual is coming soon. Follow him on https://www.instagram.com/skullhotel/
https://coldlips.co.uk/2020/09/12/modern-poetry-live-in-berlin/
Recorded February 2020, at Studio 65 in Wedding, Berlin, when Cold Lips released Martyn Goodacre's Whos Fuckin Planet book to accompany his exhibition as Das Gift
Released in anticipation of Danielle De Picciotto's GESAMTKUNSTWERK show at Neurotitan Gallery, Berlin. 12 September > 03 October where Kirsty Allison will be artist/writer in residence with Gil De Ray
Please do support these efforts by subscribing to kirstyallison.substack.com
Have you heard this?
Don’t be scared - it’s just a few trophy bruises.
Mehmet Sander is radical, revolutionary, extreme and 100% punk - here we talk about his forthcoming collaborations - and past. Training on stages full of Rauschenberg and Warhol - bunking dance school for the Bat Cave and streets of Soho - to recently being picked up for The Pop Group’s Marc Stewart’s debut solo record - he also spills about a new work with pioneering producer Youth (of Killing Joke).
Subscribe to more of these podcasts (on Spotify, Apple, Anchor etc)
Read more on Mehmet Sander on Cold Lips.
instagram.com/sandermehmet
mehmetsander.blogspot.com
Photo of Kirsty participating in Mehmet’s workshop by Gaynor Perry at the Chisenhale Dance Space
Get full access to From the desk of Kirsty Allison at kirstyallison.substack.com/subscribe
Kirsty Allison took part in Mehmet Sander's life changing workshop at the Chisenhale Dance Space. His world-class 'action architecture' defies EVERYTHING in contemporary dance. Punk, hardcore, radical, revolutionary.
https://coldlips.co.uk/2018/07/05/mehmet-sander-dance-company/
https://youtu.be/K3RIteQb5p4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR50gEdpKwc
Dave Randall is a brilliant mind. This interview was recorded in St Giles churchyard in Camberwell, London, 3 July 2020.
Dave Randall is the author of Sound System – The Political Power of Music (Pluto Press 2017) and guitarist, producer and composer.
His own critically acclaimed albums released under the name Slovo feature international collaborations with artists including Iceland's Emiliana Torrini, West Africa's Maezah and US jazz legend Max Roach.
He has contributed to Grammy Award winning albums by Dido and has toured the world performing with UK dance act Faithless, for more click here.
Notably, as part of the 1 Giant Leap project, Dave appeared alongside Baaba Maal, Michael Stipe, the Mahotella Queens, Neneh Cherry and others. Recently he has toured with Sinead O'Connor, and teamed up with Big Dada artist Mike Ladd, clarinet player Carol Robinson and drummer Dirk Rothbrust to create the Paris based improvising quartet Sleeping In Vilna. He's currently performing live with Roland Gift (Fine Young Cannibals).He has also produced music for the feature length documentaries Rebuilding Hope (set in the US and Sudan), Witness Bahrain and There Is A Field (set in the USA and Palestine). He has also composed music for the contemporary dance/juggling company Feeding The Fish, the acclaimed Palestinian dance company Al Zaytouna and the Robert Swinston dance company. He lives in Brixton, South London.
https://twitter.com/davidrrandall
Dave is in conversation with Cold Lips' editor, Kirsty Allison.
https://twitter.com/kirstyallison
https://www.instagram.com/kirstyallison_/
https://kirstyallison.substack.com
The podcast is edited by Sebastian Bowden.
Get full access to From the desk of Kirsty Allison at kirstyallison.substack.com/subscribe
This interview was recorded in St Giles churchyard in Camberwell, London, 3 July 2020.
Dave Randall is the author of Sound System – The Political Power of Music (Pluto Press 2017) and guitarist, producer and composer.
His own critically acclaimed albums released under the name Slovo feature international collaborations with artists including Iceland's Emiliana Torrini, West Africa's Maezah and US jazz legend Max Roach.
He has contributed to Grammy Award winning albums by Dido and has toured the world performing with UK dance act Faithless, for more click here.
Notably, as part of the 1 Giant Leap project, Dave appeared alongside Baaba Maal, Michael Stipe, the Mahotella Queens, Neneh Cherry and others. Recently he has toured with Sinead O'Connor, and teamed up with Big Dada artist Mike Ladd, clarinet player Carol Robinson and drummer Dirk Rothbrust to create the Paris based improvising quartet 'Sleeping In Vilna'. He's currently performing live with Roland Gift (Fine Young Cannibals).
He has also produced music for the feature length documentaries 'Rebuilding Hope' (set in the US and Sudan), 'Witness Bahrain' and 'There Is A Field' (set in the USA and Palestine). He has also composed music for the contemporary dance/juggling company 'Feeding The Fish', the acclaimed Palestinian dance company Al Zaytouna and the Robert Swinston dance company.
He lives in Brixton, South London.
https://twitter.com/davidrrandall
Dave is in conversation with Cold Lips' editor, Kirsty Allison.
https://twitter.com/kirstyallison
https://www.instagram.com/kirstyallison_/
https://kirstyallison.substack.com
The podcast is edited by Sebastian Bowden.
Hey - this is subscriber’s preview of an hour conversation with Martyn Goodacre - he’s a Quiet legend. More short fiction from me coming soon. I’m writing about jackals of Baalbek, they’re hungry to lose their fleas.
You probably know Martyn Goodacre’s photographs - THAT photo of Kurt Cobain, with the bleach bowl cut and the eyeliner. His pictures have graced the covers of many many magazines, and I’m lucky to have written stories in the same publications.
The podcast is also available on iTunes, Spotify and many other platforms. Click here for those links.
When I heard Martyn was doing an exhibition of his early photos at Das Gift in Berlin, I wanted to publish a book around it. It was his first exhibition, and also his first book. It’s my first photobook.
In record time (about 2 weeks), we turned around this 68 page book. It’s got a velvet laminate, and feels like rubber. The photos are DOPE.
You can buy it here. The book is limited to 100 editions, with a hand-printed belly band that I stayed up for a few nights making. It’s laid out by Anne-Cathrin Saure, who’s based in Berlin, and also laid out Cold Lips 02, and our first book, Dark Entries by Richard Cabut.
The radical photobook, which is A5 landscape, is called WHOS F****N PLANET - for reasons which are explained on the podcast. The book catalogues his exploits in South London, shadowed by punk - squatting at the Fire Station on the Old Kent Road, which hosted the first London gigs for Psychic TV, Jesus & Mary Chain, and many more. He later turned his lens on horse travellers, and the New Age movement. The book features photos of Billy Bragg, Madness, and stars of the underground scene.
It’s a radical autobiographical photobook with the most enlightening introduction written by Goodacre. For me, this is the story of free land before the Criminal Justice Act (1994).
We recorded this conversation after the opening night in Neukölln, Berlin. Pre-covid. It is edited by Sebastian Bowden.
I’m going to be posting a new short story soon - so stay tuned. Stay safe. And enjoy the words.
x Kirsty Allison
Get full access to From the desk of Kirsty Allison at kirstyallison.substack.com/subscribe
Photographer, Martyn Goodacre is perhaps best known for his iconic shots of Kurt Cobain. But in his first book publication, WHOS FUCKIN PLANET, limited to 100 editions, with a belly band lino cut by Kirsty Allison (available on www.coldlips.co.uk), he tells the story of free land before the Criminal Justice Act (1994), and how music led to him squatting the Fire Station on the Old Kent Road, which hosted early gigs for Psychic TV, Jesus & Mary Chain and many more.
In this meeting in Berlin's Neukölln, following the opening of his exhibition curated by Stephanie Hamer, he and Cold Lips' editor, the writer and performer, Kirsty Allison, catch up on a few more LIFE details.
Listen now | More short fiction coming soon, but in the meantime: I’m very pleased to share this insightful recording with the good Doctor John Cooper Clarke
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Berlin legend, Mark Reeder - moved from working class Manchester in the late 70s, to rep Factory Records, and put on illegal punk gigs in East Berlin, which led to him being recruited as a GDR producer, after being grassed by Stasi friends. In the seminal film, B-Movie - he explores the 80s in Berlin, but here he speaks candidly to Kirsty Allison about his McLaren-type Svengali effect on subculture, shaping the sound of New Order, trance in the 90s, and how he's currently impacting China with his new act, Stolen.
https://mfsberlin.com
https://kirstyallison.substack.com
https://coldlips.co.uk
Edited by Sebastian Bowden
Recorded on the rooftop of The Union Club in London's Soho, accompanied by martinis, before a Polaroid session, which adorned the second edition of Cold Lips, prior to headlining the legendary launch party at Hoxton's Courtyard Theatre in 2016, the mighty Dr John Cooper Clarke raps with Cold Lips' founder and editor, Kirsty Allison
https://kirstyallison.substack.com
https://coldlips.co.uk
Artwork by Luke McLean
https://www.iamlukemclean.com
Edited by Sebastian Bowden
TRICKY IS THE OLD SCHOOL OVERLORD OF BRITISH HIP-HOP - his new book Hell Is Around The Corner is out now - and it is splendid.
It's rare to meet iconoclasts on the level of Tricky - born Adrian Thaws - mother dying of suicide/epilepsy at 4 - and it’s an honour to learn and be infected by people like this.
I’m a huge fan, and I remember first meeting him for DJMag in a flat, opposite Sketch, he answered the door in a white dressing gown, and I was in a bluesman palace - with as much dope as a Howard Marks' green room.
The other time I interviewed him was for the BBC, he took me on a golf buggy all around the back of a festival before flaming up a dressing room, and doing a hypnotising performance on the level of Iggy Pop.
You can read the feature I wrote on kirstyallison.com. BUT GET ON THE BOOK. HERE IS HIS COMMS CENTRE: http://www.trickysite.com/