All you SLEEP fans out there listen up – tomorrow, Saturday July 7th, at 1pm Pacific Time/4pm Eastern Time/20:00 GMT, creative cosmonauts David D’Andrea and Arik Roper are releasing their end-of-tour poster for Sleep’s Marijuanaut Tour, which touched down on Earth’s surface on June 5th, 2012, at the Fox Theater in Oakland. These two artists are a couple of my favorites when it comes to entering stoner fantasyland, and this poster does not disappoint. I don’t think I need to give you one of my flowery descriptions to communicate the epicness of the Marijuanaut poster – just check out the pictures below and after the jump, and you’ll know this is something you need to get your hands on! There are only 100 of these available, signed by both D’Andrea and Roper and hand-numbered, so they are going to go fast! Don’t wake n’ bake tomorrow, because you’ll have to have all your faculties to get online and pick up your poster HERE.

FULL DETAILS AFTER THE JUMP…
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by Oliver Sheppard

Visual artist Aeron Alfrey has furnished illustrations for books about horror authors like HP Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Thomas Ligotti. Alfrey’s meticulously detailed nightmare worlds are crammed with denizens of all varieties, densely peopled with black and white monsters like an unholy mash-up between the medieval apocalypses of Heironymus Bosch and the spooky imagery of Stephen Gammell (Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark). Although Alfrey has primarily provided artwork for horror fiction, he’s had dozens of exhibitions over the globe in the past few years, and has recently started doing artwork for bands. I recently asked Alfrey about the inspiration behind his morbid fantasies, the process he uses to create them, and what his plans are for the future. Included are samples of his artwork as well as links to check out more of his nightmarish creations.

Check out the CVLT Nation exclusive interview with Aeron Alfrey and more of his art after the jump below!

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Story Source BoingBoing

Written by Klint Finley

You don’t play the ANS synthesizer with a keyboard. Instead you etch images onto glass sheets covered in black putty and feed them into a machine that shines light through the etchings, trigging a wide range of tones. Etchings made low on the sheets make low tones. High etchings make high tones. The sound is generated in real-time and the tempo depends on how fast you insert the sheets.

This isn’t a new Dorkbot or Maker Faire oddity. It’s a nearly forgotten Russian synthesizer designed by Evgeny Murzin in 1938. The synth was named after and dedicated to the Russian experimental composer and occultist Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin (1872–1915). The name might not mean much to you, but it illuminates a long running connection between electronic music and the occult.

You can find traces of the occult throughout the history of electronic music. The occult obsessed Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo built his own mechanical instruments around 1917. The famous Moog synthesizer made an early appearance in Mick Jagger’s soundtrack to Kenneth Anger’s occult film Invocation of My Demon Brother in 1969. And in the late 1970s Throbbing Gristle built their own electronic instruments for their occult sound experiments, setting the stage for many of the occult themed industrial bands who followed. The witch house genre keeps this tradition alive today.

It’s little the surprise otherworldly sounds and limitless possibilities of synthesizers and samplers would evoke the luminous. But there’s more to the connection. The aim of the alchemist is not just the literal synthesis of chemicals, but also synthesis in the Hegelian sense: the combination of ideas. Solve et Coagula. From the Hermetic magi of antiquity, to Aleister Crowley’s OTO to modern chaos magicians, western occultists have sought to combine traditions and customs into a single universal system of thought and practice.

Electronic music grew from similar intellectual ground, and it all started with Scriabin.

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Ixaxaar Occult Literature, Finnish purveyors of all things occult and to do with Satan, Qayin, Cults of the Dead and Death, and everything witchcraft has been featured on CVLT Nation before, in a post Braydon did about Liber Falxifer I: The Book Of The Left Handed Reaper. Their literature covers a broad range of subjects pertaining to the occult, but they also run The Calvary Cross Botanica, a “shop” of sorts where one can purchase fetishes and statuary for ceremonies involving Brujeria, the Cult of Qayin, Quimbanda and Magia Negra. All of the items for sale are certified by their team of witches and socerers, and some are even handcrafted by Brujo and Bruja Pactada in places like Guatemala or Bolivia. These items are not only real, and not to be handled by the inexperienced, but they are also beautiful in their construction, a perfect example of beauty in darkness and magick. After the jump, read The Calvary Cross Botanica’s mission statement, and check out a gallery of their fetishes, statues, rosaries and more…
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by Oliver Sheppard

Christopher “Ilth” Erickson has sung for Chicago punk bands like the Functional Blackouts and Daily Void; the latter was a band that was often compared to Rudimentary Peni. Nowadays he plays bass in the dark punk band Cemetery. What fans of these bands may not know is that Ilth is a prolific artist who works with a variety of media: collage, sculpture, and various assemblages that all somehow recall the weird fiction of HP Lovecraft, the alternate and surrealistic universes of Max Ernst, and vintage sci-fi/horror. Ilth has had six exhibitions of his work in the past year alone. His visual work is a fine complement to the strange and dark music he’s been involved with, but it’s also sufficiently remarkable to be taken on its own and completely separate merits.

Below is an interview I conducted with Ilth recently, as well as a visual essay of his amazing artwork.

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Art comes in many different forms, and is created for many different reasons. I have a rich love for history of many kinds and the the stories that are connected to the past. One thing that I have always been into is the way that the Catholic faith has been altered by native cultures as a part of their traditional way of life. Look at the way the Haitians created vodou, or the way Mexicans have weaved it into their culture. A perfect example of this is the existence of Santa Muerte aka Holy Death. Santa Muerte is powerful to those who believe in her, and she brings hope and luck into their homes through altars in her name. The worship of this Saint is not sanctioned by this corrupt fucking Vatican (a place that is pure evil in my book). The poor and those on the outside of the law look towards Santa Muerte for power. What interests me is the beautiful, artistic altars that are created as a celebration of the Holy Death. Today CVLT Nation has put together a photo gallery of some of our favorite Santa Muerte altars. Dance with death and peep these flicks after the jump!

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I get so many art submissions, I get a little behind on posting them. Now I feel kind of dumb, because when I opened an email from South African artist Adele van Heerden, and followed the link to her work, I was stoked to discover the beauty and depth of her work, and then dismayed to realize that I had failed to put the post up in time for her show last month, “Return to Nature.” But better late than never to showcase her delicate, cold, yet intimate portraits of still humans and pensive animals. Her human portraits have an element of corpse about them – not necessarily because of their expressions, more because of the way she shades them with a bruising texture. She draws animals with a sensitivity that belies her dark imagination, but when you look closely at the details you see the bones, the third eye, the crushing jaws. One of her exhibitions that I found the most intriguing is her “Bloedlyne,” or “Bloodlines” piece, where she took a ballpoint pen and a vial of her own blood and drew the path of her Voortrekkers ancestors on the walls of a gallery. The result was a map of both her DNA and their journey through South Africa, and to me, shows a dedication to her craft that can only be paid in blood. Apparently she has another upcoming exhibition in Cape Town, check her Facebook page for more details. After the jump, check out more of her work…

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Grafitti has existed on this planet since humankind landed. I know that I have been into scrawl on walls ever since I saw my first gang tag in the 70′s. The writing on the walls has so many different meanings to everyone. For some, it’s a political statement or an expression of art, for others, it’s vandalism. Street art has started to gain respect in the mainstream in the last decade, but cops are still assholes, so there is still that outlaw factor. Another interesting thing about the grafitti subculture is that it transcends gender, race, class, nationality and musical preference. A good example of this is heavy metal-loving NECKFACE. This Stockton-bred latino skater-turned-artist has taken the New York streets and the art world by storm over the past five years. It’s been killer watching this cool dude spray paint his demented imagination all over the world and make a living while doing it. NECKFACE has been able to balance his street cred while maintaining a presence in the art universe that is full of oversized egos. I dig the way that his art has almost a child-like quality, but at the same time it deals with our darkest thoughts. My personal favorites of NECKFACE are on the walls of Tokyo’s alleys, or on top of New York businesses. Today, CVLT Nation wants to celebrate our favorite grafitti creep NECKFACE with a huge gallery of his work. Stab your eyes out and have look at death itself after the jump!

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One of the illustrators who put us on the path to CVLT Nation is Doomsday Graphics – his art has an intensity and a punk rock spirit that resonated with us as soon as we saw it. His wife and partner in crust is Acid Witch Produxions, and she handcrafts some very unique and stunning etched brass jewelry using Doomsday artwork. This is taking punk artwork to another level, immortalizing it on brass with her own special hand-made acid etching technique. Acid Witch’s collections feature occult jewelry in beautiful shapes with macabre images burned into their surface, as well as extremely awesome metal patches that can be attached to one’s vest with screws. In my quest for rad and disturbing jewelry, Acid Witch Produxions is one of the most inspired set of pieces that I have found. After the jump, check out a selection of her work, and make sure to go to her site to see what she has available for sale.

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