Britain's Esoteric Underground

"They were called the destroyers of civilisation and accused of all the deadly sins. They really knew a thing or two about sin and redemption. This book is about the people who turned society's ideas about creativity, mysticism and extreme lifestyle upside down - about British experimentalists who experimented on themselves and on their listeners. Coil, Throbbing Gristle, Current 93, Nurse With Wound - the history of music at the turn of the century is unthinkable without these bands, their traces are visible everywhere: from the underground to pop culture. "Esoteric Underground Britain" is also a genealogy of a rich tradition of English eccentricity and visionary art: the pages of the book include the great mystic William Blake, the otherworldly artists Louis Wain, Charles Sims and Austin Osman Spare, the film director Derek Jarman and many other seekers of the beyond. It can be read as a saga of desperate creators, sorcerers and madmen who mixed the boundaries of the real and the imaginary. The fates of its heroes are intertwined with incredible ambitions, resistance to the ordinary, magic, the queer movement persecuted by the authorities, the struggle with oneself and the search for light in the midst of pitch darkness. This edition of the famous book by Scottish journalist and writer David Keenan is based on the expanded 2016 edition, and also contains the FurFur supplement, which contains new illustrations and interviews with participants of the esoteric underground."