It seems that, no matter how many times we are warned about them, human beings cannot resist a creepy, dark, and empty storefront. We appear hardwired to look into the dusty and grimy abyss of a shop devoid of another person (or, at best, one so wizened that they may as well not be human at all) and immediately ascertain that, yes, indeed this is a place we must enter. Ladies and gentlemen, please, stop doing this. Should you be presented with such a choice, let me assure you that you will only bring upon yourself a swift, painful, and perhaps ironic end. Really, just walk away.

Alma, the titular main character in the short film by Rodrigo Blaas, received no such lecture, I’m afraid. Her parents were negligent in educating their child about the dangers of unmanned counters and stores with a distinct lack of helpful salesmen. Alas, Alma is naive and tragically ignorant of such places, a combination that, as previously mentioned, can only get one into trouble. All the more so when dolls are involved. No, dear reader, no good can come this. No good at all.

via Super Punch

At least, as imagined by the late illustrator Ed Emshwiller. A future in which a twisted and mutated Santa Claus, an extra pair of arms sprouting from the sides of his torso — no doubt due to prolonged exposure to radiation — looks down upon the horrible, alien carolers that have come to serenade him in his fallout shelter. A future where robots, those accursed machines, soil the holiday in another sick attempt to replicate their creators by erecting a cold, joyless approximation of a Christmas tree. It is a bleak, bleak future dear readers. Let us hope it never comes to pass.

via retro_futurism

FINALLY. Issue #04 of Coilhouse has taken corporeal form.

It’s haunted, you know. Or maybe it’s possessed. Or it could be we’ve got a grimoire on our hands.

All we know is, at some point during our editorial process—which normally involves very little cauldron-stirring or eye of newt, despite whatever “coven” rumors you may have heard—#04 took on a life of its own, and has since become a small, seething portal of the uncanny. It’s all a bit magic-with-a-k. We may giggle and wink (“O R’LYEH? IA, R’LYEH!”), but that doesn’t change the fact that these pages are spellbound. You will read of channeling and scrying, of shades and shamans, and phantoms both fabricated and inexplicable. You will meet reluctant oracles, occultists, and ghosts from the past.

Issue 04 is now available in our shop. For a limited time, you can purchase Issues 03 + 04 together for a discount price of $23! Click here to buy. Without further ado, the contents of Issue 04, below:

INFORM
This issue’s Inform/Inspire/Infect section headers, crafted by Zoetica, are all about communing with animal spirits. Below: the INFORM header, titled Stork Whispers. The section header below also contains almost all the design motifs that creative director Courtney Riot conjured throughout the issue: smoke, burn holes, aged paper and tattered lace.

The Tarnished Beauties of Blackwell, Oklahoma
In mid 2008, we were captivated by the imagery Meredith Yayanos shared in a post describing her visit to an obscure, careworn prairie museum in a small Oklahoma town. More recently, Coilhouse enlisted one of our wonderful readers, Joseph A. Holsten, to return to The White Pavilion, where he archived dozens of high res portraits of long-grown, long-dead children of pioneer America. They are reproduced here in an extended version of the original Blackwell photo essay.

Bernd Preiml’s Exquisite Apparitions
Bernd Preiml’s photographs describe a world filled with magic and mystery, often coupled with a disconcerting sense that sinister forces may be lurking. Through his dark and shining visions, he weaves haunting tales that encompass violence as well as transcendence, beauty as well as wrath. Interview by longtime Coilhouse co-conspirator, Jessica Joslin.

Children by the Millions Wait For Alex Chilton: A Fractured Memoir of the Counterculture
Joshua Ellis returns to Coilhouse with a whip-smart personal essay examining his experience with alternative culture. Beginning with an endearing description of adolescent initiation-by-music and ranting its way into present day’s monoculture, “Children by the Millions” is an incisive evaluation of the death of societal revolution in our “been there, done that” world. Josh draws parallels between counterculture and ancient mysticism, while eloquently articulating a premise that’s been gestating in all of our minds since we first started discussing the living death of alt culture here on Coilhouse.

Calaveras de Azucar
Courtesy of photographer Gayla Partridge comes this toothsome autumnal fashion editorial inspired by el Día de los Muertos, with a corresponding overview by Mer on the festival’s historical and cultural significance.

Hauntings: The Science of Ghosts
Earlier this year, our Manchester-based correspondent Mark Powell traveled to a “Science of Ghosts” conference in Edinburgh hosted by esteemed psychologist Professor Richard Wiseman and other leading experts. Mark shares what he learned about the history, pathology (and quackery) of hauntings and spiritualism. With fetching spirit photos, daguerrotypes, and other vintage ephemera provided by archivists Jack & Beverly Wilgus.

INSPIRE
Frog Prince

Kris Kuksi: Sculpting the Infinite
A substantial editorial featuring meticulous, hyper-detailed monuments to destruction sculpted by Missouri-born artist Kris Kuksi. In the coming days we’ll be posting an exclusive interview with Kris where he shares his thoughts on time, fixing humanity, and what might lie ahead. Introduction and interview by Ales Kot.

Still In The Cards: Alejandro Jodorowsky on King Shot, Comic Books and the Tarot De Marseilles
An informative, zany dialogue with one of modern cinema’s most iconoclastic masterminds, Alejandro Jodorowsky. The filmmaker who brought us The Holy Mountain, El Topo, and Santa Sangre speaks candidly about his past, present and future… as well as the roles that tarot, spirituality and comics have led in his more recent life. Article by Mark Powell.

Through the Mirror into the Forest: Kristamas Klousch
Our stunning cover girl’s self-portraiture explores a dark, kaleidoscopic array of facets; Kristamas is at once wild forest creature, fetish vixen, tousled witch, Lolita, courtesan, silent movie vamp and Voodoo priestess. Her ethereal photos race to capture each incarnation, just before the next comes out to play. Introduction by staffer Tanya Virodova.

Grant Morrison: Embracing the Apocalypse
Groundbreaking comic book writer Grant Morrison blows our minds with a massive ten-page interview that will gently squeeze your reality’s underbelly until you’re ready to take the future seriously. Grant sat down with Zoetica Ebb and Ales Kot for a three-hour talk covering everything from superheroes and interdimentional parasites to personal transformation and 2012. Featuring new portraits of Grant and his wife, Kristan, by Allan Amato.

Larkin Grimm: Advanced Shapeshifter
In a time when our culture seems to openly scorn –but secretly craves– magic, the musician Larkin Grimm is an unashamed and forthright power to be reckoned with. Interview by Coilhouse collaborator Angeliska Polacheck, as well as a review of the Musicka Mystica Maxima Festival curated by Grimm in NYC last fall.

INFECT
Snake Charmer

Brave Old World
A  collaboration between Chad Michael Ward and  Bad Charlotte, this editorial takes the gorgeous model out of time and space, into a gauzy netherworld. With wardrobe by Mother of London.

CB I Hate Perfume: The Story of an Olfactory Architect
Christopher Brosius has been called “The Willy Wonka of Perfume” and is renowned for his eccentricity and passionate standpoint when it comes to both the art and the industry of scent-building. An intimate and inspiring interview about his work and philosophy, conducted by Angeliska.

Print to Fit: Mavens of Meatcake
What self-respecting, spellbound witchy-pooh magazine would be complete without paper dolls by Dame Darcy?! Featuring beloved characters from the darling Dame’s legendary long-running comic book, Meatcake.

Spanish illustrator and architect Vasco Maurao creates mind-bogglingly complex structures, rendered in stark black and white. Utilizing the thinnest and most uniform of lines he constructs sprawling buildings with hundreds of windows, eaves, and support beams. So large that they are rendered abstract, it almost seems that Maurao was doodling on a sheet of paper and simply zoned out, shaken out of reverie only to find that he had covered the entire table in those neatly inscribed lines, his subconscious having painstakingly assembled them in his absence.

via DRAWN!

You’d think that after the past, oh, six years on the internet, an image of human flesh mingling with cephalopods would scarcely register with a seasoned browser. It seems that time has finally proved that even the most devout of C’thulhu enthusiasts occasionally reach a tentacle limit. However, my deep, personal fear of web frigidity was dispelled with but a glance at the painting below.

Yes, I can still feel.

Monica Cook, a painter from Georgia, started out as a self-portraitist, moving on to other subjects several years into her career. Her earlier work is relatively sober, with solitary female figures peering and gesturing enigmatically from their canvas quarantines.  2009 marked a period of transformation for Monica, when she created a series of sexually-charged paintings for a solo show at Marcia Wood Gallery, titled Seeded and Soiled. Showcasing mostly-nude, slimy women in glimpses of bacchanalian orgies and a more commanding brush stroke, these paintings are in quite a contrast to the self-reflecting maidens of Cook’s earlier work.

Delightfully energetic and fetishistic, Seeded and Soiled covers everything from power exchange and food play to asphyxiation and foot fancy. Click the jump for two more pieces from the series and two bonus cephalo-phallic images by Monica Cook.

Krautrock: The Rebirth Of Germany. Part 1 of 6. Parts 2-6 posted under the cut.

Produced for BBC Four, this excellent hour-long documentary offers an engaging and comprehensive overview of the 60s/70s experimental music scene in Germany that came to be known as Krautrock. Here’s a fascinating glimpse of what it meant to be part of a generation of radical young musicians, artists and filmmakers struggling to redefine themselves in the rubble of post-war Germany. These kids were drowning in a sea of Schlager pop and classical schmaltz– arguably the music of cultural guilt and denial. Meanwhile, they had the most horrifying historical specters imaginable hanging over their heads. They were isolated, rebellious, and deeply disinterested in “traditional” anthemic western guitar rock. The synthesizer was newly invented, and electronic music as we know it today didn’t really exist yet. They breathed life into its lungs.

Featuring the works of Popol Vuh, Amon Düül, Can, Cluster, Neu!, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Faust and others.

Directed by Sugimoto Kousuke. Music by Manabe Takayuki. (via Ben Morris)

“The TV Show” animated short is one of those super condensed, frantically paced, ultra action-packed, hall-of-mirrors-ish, infinite-loopy, style-mashing, color-clashy, genre-fusing, worlds colliding, fractal braingasm-inducing kinda sorta thingies that most folks will probably need to watch multiple times in a serene, zen-like state before they begin to absorb everything that’s going on.

It was independently produced by director Sugimoto Kousuke, who sees many things. He sees plans within plans.

These hypnotizing animated collages were created by Greek animator Aggeliki Vrettou. Her biomechanical creatures appear to be propelled into motion by everything from electric kitchen appliances to living doll parts. In many cases, the animals’ anatomy is completed by other augmented animals, such as the rat “tail” of the horse above and the breathing apparatus on the muzzle of her animatronic seahorse. Her web presence consists of a MySpace page, where this series can be found, and a YouTube channel where she hosts some mesmerizing animated music videos created for the Greek indie electronic band Ion. Vrettou’s stunning animations vaguely remind me of the haunting animation/artwork associated with Mer’s musical project, The Parlour Trick, created by Scott Spencer (this itself may appear reminiscent of a Beats Antique cover, but predates it). If you’re looking at this post in an RSS reader, the images may not appear to be animated. Click here to see these animals (and others from this series) in full swing!

When I went to art school you could always tell the graphic design majors. They were always the well-dressed, well-groomed ladies and gentleman. Their clothes were unwrinkled and unstained; devoid of paint, charcoal, or bodily fluids. They had it together. It was only upon speaking with them that one was made aware that they had not slept in days, spending every waking moment creating a book of fonts that, they assured you were all quite different, despite what your eyes may tell you, Philistine.

Needless to say they were not the sort that would associate with a ne’er-do-well cartooning major like myself. These people had goals; they were going to get jobs, jobs that actually pertained to their field of study. They would be the ones who would pick the typeface for the books I read and insisted upon the inclusion of a short biography of said typeface near the back so that I would know just how this amazing evolution of the printed word came to be. They would lay out the magazine and brochures. They would make actual money. They would be able to eat on a regular basis. They may as well have been aliens.

It is for you, then, that I link this video. You will understand that this is no simple parody of Lady Gaga’s “Pokerface”, a performer who is a parody already, thereby making this only a part of a Moebius strip of parodies. No, this is truly a love letter to the subtle, almost mythical realm of typeface; a realm whose various shades are so subtle that only the true master can decipher the alchemy involved. It is a fabulous ode to mean lines and baselines, descenders and ascenders, serifs and the lack thereof; replete with bow-ties and beards.

To the rest of you I apologize for the graphic design and Gaga, but not for the beards and bow-ties.

via Bioephemera

Polish artist Szymon Klimek creates startlingly small models out of paper thin sheets of brass, which he displays in glass goblets. Even more astounding are his lilliputian, moving engines powered by the rays of the sun with the use of tiny solar panels. I have a raging nerd-on for work like this. I spent much of my youth attempting to hastily construct various types of models and miniatures. My lack of patience was a considerable hindrance, meaning that I left a long trail of shoddily painted plastic and wood behind me; amorphous piles of acrylic, enamel, and glue that in no way resembled the images that adorned their respective packages. One really must enjoy the process in order to construct magnificent pieces like Klimek’s and I, like many, am much more interested in the destination than the journey. I suppose that’s why they invented money.

via The Automata