Patrick Lundborg’s massive tome Psychedelia – An Ancient Culture, A Modern Way Of Life has been out for a while now, and has received much praise and acclaim internationally. Totally in order. It’s a well researched and well written book about a subject you could potentially approach from many different angles. Lundborg has chosen a scholarly and informative one and has also done the subject a great favor by looking at the big picture – chronologically as well as in terms of impact. Not an easy task. Being the author of The Acid Archives, chronicling and cataloging psychedelic music from many decades, Lundborg is a world renowned expert in his field. To take the step into a much wider cultural-anthropological-chemical study of the same cataclysmic catalyst is brave. Very brave. Psychedelia is such an intelligent tour de force that any doubters can go sober up now. This book is perhaps the book to read if you want an initiated...

Music… A pretty good thing. Recently, there have been a few albums that have caught my attention and been on heavy rotation here. Try them out for size. They just might fit. Warpaint’s self-titled album was released late January and is the anticipated follow-up to the glorious debut The Fool (2010) and some EP work in-between. I don’t know what it is exactly but these LA girls create something undefined and totally beautiful in everything they do. It’s psych for sure but not in any way traditionalist. There’s also a loose slacker element in their output, but not in a crusty grunge kind of way. There’s also a distinct longing for the UK 1980s, when Martin Hannett ruled supreme and everything was rough and elegant at the same time. Intricate drumming, suave basslines, etheric guitar picks, licks and riffs and beautiful, almost angelic singing. That’s the Warpaint package right there. I have no idea what the songs are about and it...

John Szpunar’s hefty brick of a book Xerox Ferox: The Wild World of the Horror Film Fanzine takes you on a gloriously sticky memory lane trip to the golden era of Horror- and Sleaze film fanzines. It’s massive (800 pages!), packed with interviews with writers and editors and creates a longing back to an era of a relentless will- and passion-driven love of movies. As such, an invaluable book. Early 80s up until the internet buds of the early 90s. Postal networking and printed matter. The dawn and heyday of cassette culture and home video. VHS collecting and fanzine devouring. Tape trades and xeroxed xeroxes. Every little scrap of Entartete information and outsider esthetics was regarded as gold and jewels in a mainstream 1980s culture that was tasteless and truly horrible beyond belief. Sleazy diamonds in the rough buried deep in the pastel-colored and Stock-Aitken-Waterman-sounding fields of normality manure. It’s hard to describe what...