Here’s a couple of nifty limited edition chapbooks from the brilliantly named multimedia outfit, Omnibucket.
Brainchild… a Collection of Artifacts - presents the creative output of 15 contributors in an anthology exploring ‘undead’ themes, mixing horror stories, genre prose-poetry, and nonfiction, with many garishly appropriate paintings and striking drawings – and quite surprisingly, the colour artwork far outnumbers the b/w stuff. I particularly enjoyed Mia Epstein’s critical essay My Zombie Girlfriend, which considers the evolution of un-ladylike human-flesh-eaters in movies like George Romero’s quartet of shockers, and their ghastly femme fatales’ sometimes-tenuous but often profound links to various otherworldly women in genre literature.
Eleventy Billion Miles Away by the band Blackcat Revival offers a lively CD of notable prog rock with strong jazz influences, accompanied by a heavily illustrated digest-sized lyrics’ book. The tracks deliver catchy melodies, discordant riffs, flavoursome arrangements, and imaginative lyrical content (with a rich vein of humour), unrestrained by the message-in-a-bottle intent of this quasi-concept album. Another limited edition product, this is hardly the simplest or handiest format for releasing music. And yet, its novelty value works in favour of acceptance by or at least interest from a different audience, as the publisher targets readers as much as listeners. With stunning art and slick designs generally superior to Brainchild, this attractively packaged multimedia item is a happy event indeed.
Despite the occasionally haphazard creativity, mismatched themes, un-harmonised fonts and page layouts, and the clearly intentional clash of artistic styles on display, these titles are among the very best looking small press items I have seen in recent years, certainly on a par with amazing modern classics like William L. Ramseyer’s self-published Jellyfish Mask (Buy Yourself Press, 1993).
With forthcoming titles like God’s Acre - book one: The Ravens & The Rhyme (due June 2006), Omnibucket is definitely a producer-of-quality to watch!
No comments:
Post a Comment