3:AM Magazine

And now for a few words from Richard Cabut:

The phrase ‘writing about music is like dancing about architecture’, variously attributed to Elvis Costello, Clara Schumann and BS Johnson, stands as a warning to people who might want to write things about records like this is the shit. But, fuck it; the brand new release from Hiroshima-based crew Akatombo, called Unconfirmed Reports (Hand-Held Recordings), is the shit. It’s also mesmerising, hyper, and twisted. But mainly it’s the shit.

“Based on the short stories of Etgar Keret, and adapted for the screen by Etgar Keret and director Tatia Rosenthal, $9.99 is a stop motion animated feature which offers slightly less than $10 worth about the meaning of life…”

More at design: related (via HTML GIANT)

What you (may have) missed on 3:AM recently:

Fiction: ‘President’s Day Weekend’ by Susan Buttenwieser & ‘Better Things’ by Andrea Kneeland

Poetry: ‘Four Poems’ from Carlos Barbarito

Reviewed: Max Dunbar on Irvine Welsh’s Reheated Cabbage, Guy Delisle’s Burma Chronicles & Tom Reynolds’ More Blood, More Sweat and Another Cup of Tea

Music: Cathi Unsworth on BIG SEXY NOISE:

“Lydia was first given my number by a mutual friend,” says Terry, “who didn’t tell me he’d done so. She rang me out of the blue one night to play on a five-week European tour. You could say that I was surprised! But I think the seeds for this band were sown when Gallon Drunk and Lydia [Lunch] played consecutive nights at a club in Greece. It just makes sense for the four of us to be making this noise together.”

This Wednesday (from 6.30pm) at Rough Trade East off Brick Lane sees the launch of the Faber/Domino new music journal, Loops. The launch itself features James Yorkston live, Jon Hopkins on decks and a reading by Simon Armitage. As per the drill at RT East, if you want in then you need to show up an hour beforehand to collect a wristband.

Loops is something of an ideal pairing between Faber (who publish Jon Savage, Simon Reynolds and Nick Kent) and Domino (who brought the mighty Sebadoh and Pavement to these shores). The first edition of this ‘collectable’ bi-annual journal features Richard Milward‘s essay on Spacemen 3 and an unpublished piece from 1978 by Nick Kent. What with the demise of Plan B recently, it’s good to have cause for optimism about the state of the music press.

First up in this series, a tribute to Sleazoid Express editor Bill Landis, who died December last year. And as a bonus before the series gets started, with intros to clips posted by some of your favourite writers, here’s a clip of the 1973 adaptation of Iceberg Slim’s novel Trick Baby.

Alfred Hitchcock in East London, which documents the byways of Leytonstone and Stratford and the long-gone Walthamstow film industry, gets its world premiere fittingly enough upstairs at my local in Leytonstone next weekend. Frenzy, above, is based on the novel Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square, which was in turn influenced by the recent Jack the Stripper murder cases. However, the film was also said to be an affectionate tribute by the director to the Leytonstone fruit shop of his father, through the dying days of Covent Garden’s fruit market as shown in the film.