England`s Hidden Reverse – A Secret History of The Esoteric Underground 2e

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Stapleton was an obsessive record collector who journeyed to Germany to meet some of his musical heroes, before finally recruiting a couple of friends to make a noise album. Christopherson was part of the Hipgnosis art collective, but after meeting Cosey Fanni Tutti and Genesis P-Orridge - formed proto-Industrial group Throbbing Gristle. England’s Hidden Reverse is an impressive, illustrated, hard backed volume coupled with a CD of music by Nurse With Wound, Current 93 and Coil. Theirs was a clandestine scene whose work accents the many occulted peculiarities of Englishness that flow through generations of outsiders, channeling personalities as diverse as Aleister Crowley, Arthur Machen, Joe Orton, Shirley Collins, Björk, and Marc Almond.

Tibet, Sleazy and Balance all start off in Psychic TV, Genesis’s post-TG project, contributing the intellectual scaffolding and musical direction to PTV’s best and most iconic albums Force The Hands Of Chance (1982) and Dreams Less Sweet (1983), before becoming disillusioned with the direction Gen was going in and starting out on their own. His debut novel This Is Memorial Device (2017) became a cult classic, and drew on some of the same energy as England’s Hidden Reverse in its fictional portrait of a band and the Airdrie avant-garde music scene, and his incredibly ambitious latest novel Monument Maker (2021) displays the same love of experimentation, occult secret histories and Weird fiction that drew him to this music in the first place.I read the original 2003 print, published by SAF, but I understand there is an updated and revised edition available. From there it moves further back and faster; to eye witness accounts of early Whitehouse performances; to the formation of Throbbing Gristle and the birth of industrial music; to the last moments of the visionary painter Charles Sims; to Angus MacLise, ex-of the Velvet Underground, casting his poem Year as a work of elementary magic; to Shirley Collins, AE Housman and Denton Welch’s visions of England in eternity. An expanded edition of the classic exploration of the English esoteric musical underground - with the first biography of Coil, Current 93, and Nurse With Wound.

in 2003 when the book was first published, all those involved seemed like they were in a pretty good place. Long out of print and with the first edition demanding serious money from collectors, this much-anticipated expanded edition comes completely redesigned, with many new and previously unseen photographs and ephemera. A new revised and expanded edition of David Keenan’s seminal secret history of the UK’s esoteric underground. Alongside these names, it also folds Throbbing Gristle, Whitehouse, Shirley Collins, Charles Sims and AE Housman into the esoteric narrative, making for a book that has become highly influential and increasingly pertinent to a lot of music and literature produced in recent years, such as that by Grumbling Fur, English Heretic and Kemper Norton.

i've always been attracted to these musicians and learned years ago about this book, which was sadly oop at the time. Somehow I got the latter, but missed out on the original run of “England’s Hidden Reverse” - rock critic David Keenan’s continuation of the story so to say.

This new volume contains almost 100 pages of extra material culled from Furfur, a collection of interviews with musicians and artists whose careers intersected with the bands', initially published alongside Strange Attractor's first limited edition of the book. England Hidden Reverse is a celebration of the UK's esoteric underground, written by Wire contributor David Keenan. David Keenan’s England’s Hidden Reverse: A Secret History of the Esoteric Underground was first published in 2003.

An expanded edition of the classic exploration of the English esoteric musical underground-with the first biography of Coil, Current 93, and Nurse With Wound.