David Keenan Books

An expanded edition of the classic exploration of the English esoteric musical underground—with the first biography of Coil, Current 93, and Nurse With Wound. This newly expanded edition of England's Hidden Reverse, the classic exploration of the English esoteric musical underground that includes the first, and only, biographies of Coil, Current 93, and Nurse With Wound, is based on exclusive interviews and unprecedented access to all three bands’ personal archives. Together, these genre-defying bands and their circles represent the English underground in all its cultural, artistic, and sexual variety. Over four decades, the three intertwined groups have maintained a symbiotic, yet uneasy, relationship with the mainstream of popular culture, even as their music, beliefs, and practices have repelled them from it. Theirs was a clandestine scene whose work accents the many occulted peculiarities of Englishness that flow through generations of outsiders, channeling personalities as diverse as Aleister Crowley, Arthur Machen, Joe Orton, Shirley Collins, Björk, and Marc Almond. The story of this Hidden Reverse has, necessarily, remained a secret. Until now. This new volume contains almost 100 pages of extra material culled from Furfur, a collection of interviews with musicians and artists whose careers intersected with the bands’, initially published alongside Strange Attractor's first limited edition of the book.

But when punk rock arrives and the hard edge of the decade starts to reveal its true paranoid colours, Sammy finds himself increasingly isolated, especially after bizarre and gruesome away days in Glasgow and London.

The new novel by one of the most exciting and entertaining writers to have emerged from Scotland in the past decade

A short explosive novel about Russia, Scotland, sex and singer-songwriters.

The prequel to the critically acclaimed and award-winning This is Memorial Device

Wenn man von einer lokalen Musikszene spricht, muss man wissen, dass eigentlich das große Ganze gemeint ist. Auch Airdrie, ein Kaff irgendwo zwischen Glasgow und Edinburgh, hatte seinen Syd Barrett, seinen Brian Jones, seine Nico. Die Sache mit so einer Musikszene ist ja, dass sie definitiv zum Glauben beiträgt. Sie macht Mut, das Leben beim Wort zu nehmen. Weshalb es auch so viele Leute gibt, die die Sache wesentlich ernster nehmen als ihre Vorbilder selbst. Schließlich ist es gar nicht so einfach, in einer westschottischen Kleinstadt Iggy Pop zu sein. Dafür braucht es schon eine Menge Engagement … Willkommen in Airdrie, Heimat einer langen Reihe von Schulversagern, Außenseitern, Träumern und Möchtegernkünstlern – und der Band Memorial Device, die es sicher bis nach ganz oben geschafft hätte, wäre da nicht ihr beschissenes, maßlos überzogenes Selbstverständnis als Legende des Undergrounds gewesen.