This past month Psychogeographic Review has been reading:

John Rogers – ‘This Other London: Adventures in the Overlooked City’ (2013)

Ten walks to some of the lesser known parts of London in the ever-engaging company of writer and film-maker, John Rogers.  Many of John’s obsessions will be familiar to Resonance FM listeners who followed his Ventures & Adventures in Topography show with Nick Papadimitriou.  This is a great fireside read for a dreich winter’s evening, but it is also a book which makes one want to get out and walk, preferably in the company of someone as knowledgeable and entertaining as John Rogers.

Fleur Adcock – ‘Glass Wings’ (2013)

Taking as her muse the frail, see-through beauty of the wings of flying insects, Fleur Adcock digs deep into memories from her early life in New Zealand and thoughts from her current home in London.  Nature, family, love and loss are all explored in this collection.  Though traditional in her form, Adcock’s poems ooze warmth, humour and psychological insight.

Maureen Duffy – ‘Capital’ (1975)

This early work of Maureen Duffy is, in my opinion, a lost classic of London fiction.  I first read it when I lived in the East End in the 1970s and its mark has remained with me ever since.  Duffy is an accomplished novelist, poet and playwright and a long-time activist for LGBT rights.  Her novel burrows deep below the surface of London, uncovering the influences of temporal layer upon layer, anticipating by many years the later works of Sinclair, Self and Ackroyd.

Meanwhile, we were listening to:

Broadcast and The Focus Group – ‘Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age’ (2009)

Take the otherworldly electro-drifting pop of Broadcast and mash it up with library music experiments of The Focus Group, aka Julian House, and something magical happens: they create an outstanding 23-track album of a style neither act could have achieved on their own.

Boards of Canada – ‘Tomorrow’s Harvest’ (2013)

An eight-year gap since the Scottish brothers’ last release and, quite possibly, Psychogeographic Review’s favourite album of 2013.  With electronic sounds, rhythms and beats of warmth and expansiveness, this is like drinking whisky-laced coffee sitting on a rock in a cold desert night.

Tim Hecker – ‘Virgins’ (2013)

In this, the fourth album under his own name, Hecker presents a series of delicate melodies and rhythms, much of it channelled through a small orchestral ensemble.  The overall effect, though, is far from soothing.  Like the best kind of horror film, Hecker’s latest creation is deliciously disturbing.

And watching:

‘Accident’ – Joseph Losey (1967)

With a screenplay by Harold Pinter and outstanding performances from Stanley Baker and Dirk Bogarde, Accident is one of the treasures of 1960s British cinema.  I first saw it in the 1970s, and it continues to reward with every subsequent viewing

‘Alice Doesn’t Live Here Any More’ – Martin Scorsese (1974)

From the days when Hollywood still made grown-up, emotionally perceptive films, Scorsese coaxes performances of real quality from his two leads and creates a movie that is at once romantic, funny, painful and profound.

‘Nebraska’ – Alexander Payne (2013)

The point of a road movie is not so much to take the audience to another location, but to ease them out of the familiar and from there towards seeing the world in a different way.  Alexander Payne (About Schmidt and Sideways) is becoming something of a master of the form. Bruce Dern’s grumpy pensioner, Woody, travels from Montana to Nebraska to claim a sweepstake prize he is convinced he has won.  He is accompanied by his middle-aged son, David (Will Forte).  As they journey across a wintry, monochrome middle-America we come to see how both men carry their own individual burdens of sadness and disappointment.