Forms NFTs

 

Had this in the back of my mind as a fun idea for ages. Forms NFTs.

The "S" Word

This very geeky book about the covert strand of spirituality in alternative music is now ready for ordering.

Under half of it is comprised of articles once posted here but no longer available anywhere online: Eastern Philosophy and The Cosmic Sound, Psychic Pop Relics (which has been extensively rewritten), Dub, His Tender Heart (on Neil Young), and Hip Priest (on Mark E. Smith). I've added my article on Chris Blackwell too because it works well here.

Over half of the book is made up of totally new material. There's a literally massive 18,000 word piece on what is called New Age, but really covers a whole range of New Age, Ambient, Minimalist, Avant-garde, Drone and Eastern musics. This is built around a survey of 50 albums. Unmissable! A book in itself really. Then there's a piece on Prince in the same vein as my viral-hit on The Fall. There's a chapter on Roedelius (of Cluster and Harmonia fame) which includes an interview with the great man himself. Finally, there's a thing on my Tibetan LPs. By the time you've finished it you will be a new person or your money back (Terms and conditions apply).

I've got five amazing endorsements from the big people:

“Intensely researched, latticed with surprising connections and correspondences, these essays expand and deepen our awareness of the links between music and the numinous. The S-Word is an illuminating book about illumination.”
Simon Reynolds,

author of Energy Flash and Rip It Up and Start Again

“You'd nearly mistake it for an uncomfortable topic instead of an invisible one, but Matthew's book confronts it head on:  even in the hands of secular musicians who strip their practice down to pure aesthetics, what we're responding to in so much of all of this new music is devotional.  Or it could be, if you're interested in listening.”
Jon Leidecker,

Wobbly

“Discussing the spiritual connections and interpretations of music can be something daunting for both readers and writers — where does one stop and one end? The collection of pieces that make up ‘The ‘S’ Word’ show that Matthew Ingram can balance his own particular perspective and experiences with wider considerations of what the spiritual can mean, casting new, unexpected light on deeper areas and suggesting paths of further exploration for the curious.”
Ned Raggett,

AllMusic 

"...an amazing book..."
Erik Davis,

author of Techgnosis and High Weirdness

"What an amazing overview. You covered it all! I will definitely recommend to everyone."

Ramón Sender,

co-founder of the San Francisco Tape Music Center 

It is available as an eBook globally here and is for sale as a paperback book. The price reflects the fact that it is 260 pages long and has cover-to-cover colour photography, so is costly to print.

Send one of the following to my Paypal account: alias@hollowearth.org

UK Recorded Delivery: (£30 book + £5.50 postage) = £35.50
Outside the UK: Email me.

UK only. Copies will be signed. Include your address!

FINAL REPRINT SOLD OUT [16.1.26]

TPM

 

Buy here.

Presenting my latest piece of work the comic book "TPM".

This is an eighty-page long "graphic novel" which tells the story of one Dennis Overton who finds himself drawn into the shadowy world of psychic marketing.

I first had the idea in April 2018 when I went to interview Stan Grof in Basel. Grof has a fascinating conviction in the reality of the psychic experience; to the degree that one starts to ponder whether certain things might be possible. In my working notes TPM stood for "Transpersonal Marketing", "Transpersonal" being the Grof-ian buzzword, but it morphed into the name of the agency itself with only echoes of this original meaning remaining. I suppose this is akin to how the acronym KLF always meant a number of different things: Kopyright Liberation Front, Kings of Low Frequency, Kevin Likes Fruit, etcetera.

The comic was also inspired by the research that I did after finishing "Retreat" around the areas where New Age thinking collided with business - that fascinating nexus of self-help, therapy and marketing. If you're interested in a full reading list look at Myers' bookshelves in the comic - it's all there. EST, Werner Erhard's cult, was obviously of interest here; but also the British therapy cult Exegesis run by Robert D'Aubigny which, remarkably enough, I came within a whisker of getting involved with in the late eighties, aged 18.

My nanny had been involved with the group, then trading as Programmes Ltd, and had told me that she thought she could get me work with the record producer Tony Visconti who allegedly had connections with them. I remember visiting Visconti's studio at the time and marvelling at a tiny transistor radio perched on the mixing desk through which they would test the music. I spent a week waiting around at said nanny's house for the call to come (classic cult strategy apparently), visiting Exegesis' HQ in the mornings where they would do a "Positive Telephony" dance before starting the day's telemarketing.

And obviously there's a healthy dose of insights from my twenty years working at the coalface of advertising. Any similarity to persons living or deceased is purely coincidental...

Writing and drawing a comic book as large as this is no mean undertaking. To start off one has to block out the entire script in boxes. Then there's the character design; I needed all the characters to look very different so as to make the complex story as clear as possible. I started by only being able to execute one page of eight frames a day. I thought this was slow, but I found out recently that comics legend Alex Ross works at a speed of ten pages a month. Eventually I got this up to two pages a day. It was difficult putting aside clear days to dedicate to the process and in total the whole production took two years.

The comic's biggest formal innovation is the absence of speech bubbles - this is something of a feat as, you will notice, apart from a few place and time cues, the book is 100% dialogue. That's what comics are innit.

There is a digital copy available for immediate download at Amazon. This was built in Kindle Comic Creator and works very well. You can see a preview there too. [No longer available at Amazon.]

There is also a small first edition print run. Signed naturally! I've had very favourable feedback from everyone who has seen the comic, it's funny and full of surprises, so I hope that you will buy one.

Send money to Paypal address alias@hollowearth.org. Prices for one copy as follows:

UK

Standard: £13.61
Tracked: £18.79

EU

Standard: £16.30
Tracked: £21.17

USA

Standard: £19.46
Tracked: £23.91

Very limited copies remaining.  FINAL REPRINT SOLD OUT OCTOBER 2022.