They were called the destroyers of civilization and accused of all the deadly sins. They truly understood sin and redemption. This book is about the people who upended society's understanding of creativity, mysticism, and extreme lifestyles—about British experimentalists who experimented on themselves and their listeners. Coil, Throbbing Gristle, Current 93, Nurse With Wound—the history of turn-of-the-century music is unthinkable without these bands; their traces are visible everywhere, from the underground to pop culture.
'Britain's Esoteric Underground' is also a genealogy of the rich tradition of English eccentricity and visionary art: the book's pages feature the great mystic William Blake, the otherworldly artists Louis Wain, Charles Sims, and Austin Osman Spare, the director Derek Jarman, and many other seekers of the transcendental. It can also be read as a saga of desperate creators, sorcerers, and madmen who blurred the boundaries of reality and imagination. The destinies of its characters intertwine incredible ambitions, resistance to the mundane, magic, a queer movement persecuted by the authorities, self-containment, and the search for light in the midst of pitch darkness.
This edition of the renowned book by Scottish journalist and novelist David Keenan is based on the expanded 2016 edition and also includes the FurFur supplement, which features new illustrations and interviews with members of the esoteric underground.