Cover art from Epic Illustrated

One of the Web's greatest resources, The Grand Comic Database, has cover scans of Epic Illustrated's full 34 issue run. Artists include Frank Frazetta, Barry Windsor-Smith, John Bolton, and Arthur Suydam. The end of Epic heralded the closing of magazine-sized American horror/science-fiction comics, a missed genre for sure.

And while you scan through the covers, enjoy the krautrock/psychedelic goodness of  the new release by Gnod/White Hills, a perfect soundtrack to images of swords, rocket girls, and otherworldly beasts (courtesy of Raven Sings the Blues.)

Emblems at Archive.org

There is a great collection of old texts on emblems over at archive.org. A current highlight is the Devises et Emblemes Anciennes & Modernes, Tirees de plus Celoebres Auteurs (1699), which I cannot read a lick of, but has lovely emblems all throughout.

During the Renaissance, the emblem was used to illustrate moral and spiritual truths, often within the context of hermeticism and alchemy. By meditating on the images, a kind of narrative consciousness unfolded. Emblems are particularly important, because they served to emphasize the allegorical nature of these "sciences."

The loss of the emblem in spiritual teachings has in some ways removed the ability to let the symbolic nature of these ideas act on the unconsciousness. We are often presented with ideas as being phenomenal or literal, rather than existing in the nouminous, where the only way to really access them is through these deeper and subconscious kinds of understanding. 

Woods: At Echo Lake

Last year I described Woods first (and wholly remarkable album) as a kind of rural esoterica, music for a woodland secret society. Their new endeavor, At Echo Lake, brings them out of the grove and into the sun. While not devoid of bemushshroomed elements, At Echo Lake is a pop record that reaches beyond the known towards something just slightly off-kilter and is all the more lovely for it. There is some traditional psychedelic noodling, but it's earnest and playful.

What is most impressive here is the optimism. It's a testament to how the underground is capable of eschewing the predictable and easy reflection on dark and apocalyptic images in favor of something hopeful while also maintaining an authentic melancholy. We live in a time when we need our artists to do something more than just mirror the state of things. There are dark elements here, but they don't wallow in it. There is no sudden crushing drone for underground cred. Woods always seemed in awe of something, and on their first record it was some ineffable vague thing haunting them around the campfire. On At Echo Lake they are in awe of life, on the preciousness of other people, on how bountiful joy can well up unexpectedly.

Buy it here---