“Suggestion, that is the dream.” ~ Stéphane Mallarmé
Need an experienced creative for an interesting project outside the mainstream?
In lieu of any credo I carry a portmanteau of assorted beliefs that I have found to be indispensable when on active duty.
I am drawn to hermetic worlds that maintain their coherence due to arcane laws that confound the philistine observer.
Here are a few of my favourite things ~
A successful work of art occupies the territory between self and other. It infers a dream shared between artist and audience. Listen to something we made.
Refined dolour is the appropriate state for contemplation and creativity. Darkness is a fertile soil, and tribulation the food of champions.
I belong with the cool, subjective language of the imagination pioneered in the 19th century by Baudelaire and Huysmans.
The existence of the world is an aesthetic phenomenon. The hero with perverse skill opposes the banality that is the enemy of life.
Alex Staines created all the content on this website, and took many of the photos. Freshfields Design did a stellar job on the design; and the site was expertly developed by ThreePoint.
The music for Time of the Archons – an interview with composers Brad Jenkins and Steve Wolf, by Alex Staines. Steve Wolf – composer, piano As with Seclusion Data, the previous project he worked on with Alex Staines, Steve started with a handful of poems and thought about the approach he would use for composing….
Alex Staines interviews Steve Wolf, composer (and keyboardist) of the music for Seclusion Data – the album. The discussion winds through sly obscurity, Satie and The Stooges, jazz, guitarist Guy MacGibbon, and the influence of bogan covers bands. Alex: Steve, what’s the style of the music – how would you describe it? Steve: It’s dark…
Seclusion Data marks a significant departure from my two earlier books, in structure, manner of composition, subject matter, and tone. Whereas previous works (Warning, with Mike Eager in 1990, and The Slow Road to Gore, 2003, and second edition in 2010) reflected my preoccupation with a punk ethos, dionysian revelry, and live performance, Seclusion Data…
Tell no one that the road out of Corona Chicken Farm, going from left to right across land stripped bare of undergrowth on the Night of the Moth, is the passage to zero hour.
What shall we tell them?
“The magic power of a poem consists in its baptising with dark water all who gaze at it.” ~ Federico García Lorca