Rowland S. Howard - Autoluminescent

[Dr. Bantham]

I cannot recommend this artist more heartily, and I daresay this documentary pays a worthy tribute, though the world owes much greater than will ever be granted.

Autoluminescent Rowland S. Howard (2011) - Official Trailer [HD] - YouTube

Autoluminescent Rowland S. Howard (2011) - Official Trailer [HD] - YouTube

[Dr. Bantham]

Last night I was reading the interview with Rowland S. Howard within Feeding Back: Conversations with Alternative Guitarists from Proto-Punk to Post-Rock, and to my delight I came upon the following statement by Rowland:

Quote

The other guy I discovered recently is Thomas Ligotti. He's American, and he only writes short stories. And they're genuinely the strangest things I've ever read. They're like horror stories, but there's no morality, no good versus bad. There's just these really bizarre scenarios.

This interview occurred shortly before Rowland departed us. Perhaps he visited TLO at some point. So few things warm my heart these days, but oddly enough this notion does just that.

	TLO THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE

[RaleC]

I don't know if you'll find this interesting but I met Rowland Howard at the Melbourne Arts Center in 2008, where he'd come to meet up with Mick Harvey for the Nick Cave talks and exhibition. I was writing an article on the exhibition for Diesel (yeah the clothing folks) and we somehow ended up with all of Mick Harvey's passes. Mick was a very genuine guy with absolutely no posing, Nick Cave was Nick Cave and Rowland Howard was pretty much as you'd expect him to be. It seemed like an unlikely event that most of the remaining members of one of my favorite bands as a teenager would ever be in the same room again so I took advantage of it and got them to sign something. All I had on me of any interest as something to sign was the "Stories" book from the exhibition that included numerous pictures of The Birthday Party and their lyrics. His response "Oh, great another opportunity to sign someone else's work." To which Mick replied. "That's us, man - we're in there too."

Afterwards I sent through my scanned notes to Diesel and some graphics to show I'd done more than abuse my nervous system the whole weekend and they... to my horror published them exactly as is. Imagine the House Of Leaves book (written on bar napkins, envelopes, the backs of stamps &c.) without a total narrative coherence - it was worse than that. In retrospect, the barking, stumbling prolixy, and pretentious word soup of those notes was somewhat reflective of the whole event, and certainly almost an unintentional pastiche of the show itself, almost like an article on the exhibition from the contrived perspective of the exhibition. Boy, that sounds pretentious - but it's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Anyway, I'm not sure how to put its turgid yellowed mass up on here, but if anyone's interested in reading it let me know and I'll either post it here or email it to you. The relevance to Rowland Howard is largely in the anecdote above, though he was drawn for the splash illustration.