Pulp Librarian Profile picture
Apr 14, 2021 12 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Time for a pulp countdown now, so here's my top 10 book titles that would make great prog rock album titles!

Everyone loves a 10 minute drum solo, right?
At #10: Murdock's Acid Test! Side one is mellow acid jazz, but side two is all stream of consciousness poetry and percussion...
At #9: Into Plutonian Depths! A concept album where Chinese war gongs, the Welsh harp and nine detuned Hammond organs evoke the legend of Persephone...
At #8: Bluebeard's Seventh Wife! Reminiscent of early Soft Machine this album includes an underwater piano AND an electric glockenspiel...
At #7: Thongo At The End Of Time! Trippy free-form eclectic harmonies interspersed with chants from the Upanishads make this album ideal for meditation and/or hot yoga...
At #6: Don't Tempt The Hangman! Old school folk acoustic songs with perhaps more hurdy-gurdy than is strictly necessary or bearable...
At #5: The Light Of Lilith! Unkindly reviewed by Melody Maker as "barely listenable" this album has found a more sympathetic audience recently, and is now rightly hailed as the ur-text of drum & bass lounge music...
At #4: Conscience Interplanetary! Ambient dub soundscapes melding effortlessly with the whispered poetry of e.e. cummings form themselves into an alarmingly intense ASMR cosmic head massage...
At #3: Death Is A Ruby Light! I hope you like post-minimalist interpretive percussion because that's basically all this is, and it's in mono to boot...
At #2: Space, Time and Nathaniel. Recorded live in Antwerp as a War Of The Worlds sequel, the lyrical Moogs and clarinet swirls depict the reawakening of the Earth as the Martian red weed gives way to daffodils and dragonflies...
And at #1: Epitaph For A Dead Beat! A cacophony of jazz fusion harmonies in 5/4 time, undergirded by Mellotron and the bells of St. Oswald's church in Lymington. A classic...
More pulp countdowns another time. Stay cool cats...

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More from @PulpLibrarian

Aug 18
Today in pulp... a few covers by Reginald Heade. Image
Vice Rackets Of Soho, by Roland Vane. Archer Books, 1951. Cover by Reginald Heade. Image
Sinful Sisters, by Ronald Vane. Archer Books, 1951. Cover by Reginald Heade. Image
Read 16 tweets
Aug 16
Time once again for my occasional series "Women with great hair fleeing gothic houses!"

No, I hadn't forgotten... Image
Terror On Duncan Island, by Caroline Farr. Signet Gothic, 1971. Cover by Allan Kass.

Note: this is a sea-circled island. None of your oxbow lake nonsense here... Image
The Fortune Hunters, by Joan Aiken. Pocket Books, 1972.

When fleeing a gothic castle be sure to colour co-ordinate! Image
Read 18 tweets
Aug 13
If the spacesuit is the symbol of progress, the gas mask is the sign of the apocalypse. In popular culture it signifies that science has turned against us. It's the face of dystopia.

Today in pulp I look at the culture of the mask!
Image
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The first chemical masks were work by Venitian plague doctors: a bird-like affair, the beak stuffed with lavender, matched with full length coat and hat. It was a terrifying sight - the grim reaper come to apply poultices to your tumours. Image
But it was poison gas, first used at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, that led to the modern gas mask. At first these were cotton masks treated with chemicals. However their protection was limited. Image
Read 19 tweets
Aug 10
It's now over half a century since 1970, and I'm starting to wonder if we should bring back its concept of gracious modern living... Image
You see we've grown so used to Swedish-style modernism that we've sort of forgotten that maximalism, rather than minimalism, was once the sign of a cultured abode. Image
The 1970s in many ways reached back to the rich ideas of Victorian decor: heavy, autumnal and cluttered. Home was meant to be a baroque and sensual experience, rather than a 'machine for living in.' Image
Read 10 tweets
Aug 10
Today in pulp I look back at the book cover typefaces of 1975!

I know that's the content you come here for... Image
Now I know what you're thinking: 1975? Surely that was wall to wall Bookman Swash!

Well not quite... Image
We all know that the books of '75 were fond of a cursive font. Goudy Fancy was all the rage and even Cooper Black got a bit swashy.

But many newer typefaces were starting to appear too.
Image
Image
Read 15 tweets
Aug 9
Given how many people have left - or are thinking of leaving - Twitter, I thought I'd reshare an old thread: what on Earth is this platform good for? And should you stay on it?

TLDR: nobody knows. Image
Most people's tweets (if they're really people) are a stream of consciousness, and Twitter itself is a daily flow of 500 million of these across the surface of your phone. You are currently looking at the collective unconscious of the planet in real time. Image
And like any examination of the unconscious you will see things on Twitter that fascinate you and things that disgust you. This was always part of its sales pitch, though there used to be some enforceable guard rails. Image
Read 20 tweets

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