March 8th Newsletter
2
Torn Light Records
1855 N Milwaukee
Chicago, IL 60647
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  • The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music
    The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music
    $25.00 | , Add to cart

    Since it was founded in 1982, The Wire magazine has covered a vast range of alternative, experimental, underground and non-mainstream music. Now some of that knowledge has been distilled into [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda
    A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda
    $30.00 | , Add to cart

    The first major biography of the French filmmaker hailed by Martin Scorsese as “one of the Gods of cinema.” Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Kathy Acker & Paul Buck: Spread Wide
    Kathy Acker & Paul Buck: Spread Wide
    $30.00 | , Add to cart

    In this collaborative volume, the writer and artist Paul Buck works with the late Kathy Acker. Using as source the raw materials of their correspondence from the early 80s, a […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Giallo Fantastique
    Giallo Fantastique
    $18.00 | , Add to cart

    An anthology of original strange stories at the intersection of crime, terror, and supernatural fiction. Inspired by and drawing from the highly stylized cinematic thrillers of Argento, Bava, and [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Adam Pendleton – Pasts, Futures, and Aftermaths: Revisiting the Black Dada Reader
    Adam Pendleton – Pasts, Futures, and Aftermaths: Revisiting the Black Dada Reader
    $45.00 | , Add to cart

    The sequel to Pendleton’s acclaimed Black Dada Reader, compiling an anti-canon of radical experimentation and thought In 2011, artist Adam Pendleton (born 1984) assembled Black Dada Reader, [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography
  • The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death Of Danny Casolaro
    The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death Of Danny Casolaro
    $150.00 | , , Add to cart

    Probably the single greatest work of conspiracy literature. Needs to be read to be believed. Feral House, 2004 paperback edition. Some light corner & edgewear to the wraps. Writing on […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Terence McKenna – True Hallucinations
    Terence McKenna – True Hallucinations
    $12.00 | , , Add to cart

    “This mesmerizing, surreal account of the bizarre adventures of Terence McKenna, his brother Dennis, and a small band of their friends, is a wild ride of exotic experience and scientific [...]

    GENRE: Memoir, Non-Fiction
  • Get Even: The Complete Book Of Dirty Tricks
    Get Even: The Complete Book Of Dirty Tricks
    $8.00 | , , Add to cart

    “A hilarious overview of the methods people use to get even with big business, government and enemies. These dirty tricks range from the simple to the elaborate, including more [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • John Cage – Notations
    John Cage – Notations
    $200.00 | , , Add to cart

    “Notations is a book that was edited and compiled by American avant-garde composer John Cage (1912–1992) with Alison Knowles and first published in 1969 by Something Else Press. The book [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Modern Composition / Musique Concrete / Electronic
  • Charles Willeford – Cockfighter
    Charles Willeford – Cockfighter
    $20.00 | , , Add to cart

    Charles Willeford’s violently masculine southern noir, loosely modeled on The Odyssey. Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 1991 paperback edition. Creasing to front cover, along with some [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • What Lies Beneath #5 Zine + CD-R
    What Lies Beneath #5 Zine + CD-R
    $11.00 | , Add to cart

    Interviews with/writings on Troth, Warm Currency, Ritual Heaps & Minimum Table Stacks.   What Lies Beneath, 2024

    GENRE: Experimental / Noise
  • A Record Could Be Your Whole World: Vinyl Records as the Total Artwork Of The Late 20th Century
    A Record Could Be Your Whole World: Vinyl Records as the Total Artwork Of The Late 20th Century
    $50.00 | , Add to cart

    This is a book about records considered ‘in themselves’. It is not about musicians, or music, or design, or music history — though all those things are considered at various […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Greer Lankton: Sketchbook, September 1977
    Greer Lankton: Sketchbook, September 1977
    $20.00 | , Add to cart

    Sketchbook, September 1977 is an early journal by Greer Lankton written during her time as an art student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It offers key […]

    GENRE: Art/Photography
  • Martin Wong: Footprints, Poems, and Leaves
    Martin Wong: Footprints, Poems, and Leaves
    $20.00 | , Add to cart

    A rich and engaging facsimile of the artist’s first visual poetry book, self-published in 1968 The paintings of Chinese American artist Martin Wong (1946-99) are celebrated for their [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Marcel Schwob – Spicilege
    Marcel Schwob – Spicilege
    $17.00 | , Add to cart

    Exquisitely crafted essays on medieval criminal slang, ancient Greek prostitution, laughter, anarchy and more from the endlessly influential Marcel Schwob “All over the world,” wrote [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction, Weird Fiction/Sci-Fi/Unexplained Phenomena
  • Marguerite Young – Miss Macintosh, My Darling
    Marguerite Young – Miss Macintosh, My Darling
    $28.00 | , Add to cart

    This novel is one of the most ambitious and remarkable literary achievements of our time. It is a picaresque, psychological novel—a novel of the road, a journey or voyage of […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Hamlet in Purgatory: Expanded Edition
    Hamlet in Purgatory: Expanded Edition
    $21.00 | , Add to cart

    In Hamlet in Purgatory, renowned literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt delves into his longtime fascination with the ghost of Hamlet’s father, and his daring and ultimately gratifying journey [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Propaganda and the Holy Writ of the Process Church of the Final Judgment: Process Sex Issue-Fear Issue-Death Issue
    Propaganda and the Holy Writ of the Process Church of the Final Judgment: Process Sex Issue-Fear Issue-Death Issue
    $32.00 | , Add to cart

    The rare and collectible Process Church magazines are back in print. Do you dare find out who rules you? The Process Church of the Final Judgement inspired fear and devotion […]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Kate Zambreno – To Write As If Already Dead
    Kate Zambreno – To Write As If Already Dead
    $18.00 | , Add to cart

    To Write As If Already Dead circles around Kate Zambreno’s failed attempts to write a study of Hervé Guibert’s To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life. In this […]

    GENRE: Memoir, Non-Fiction
  • Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism
    Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism
    $23.00 | , Add to cart

    The now-classic exploration of the role of women and the feminine in Buddhist Tantra The crowning cultural achievement of medieval India, Tantric Buddhism is known in the West primarily for […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Expanded Cinema: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition
    Expanded Cinema: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition
    $34.00 | , Add to cart

    Fiftieth anniversary reissue of the founding media studies book that helped establish media art as a cultural category. First published in 1970, Gene Youngblood’s influential Expanded Cinema was [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Erik Davis – Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica
    Erik Davis – Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica
    $23.00 | , Add to cart

    In these wide-ranging essays, Erik Davis explores the codes — spiritual, cultural, and embodied — that people use to escape the limitations of their lives and enrich their experience of […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Jonas Mekas: Scrapbook of the Sixties: Writings 1954-2010
    Jonas Mekas: Scrapbook of the Sixties: Writings 1954-2010
    $32.00 | , Add to cart

    Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag, John Lennon & Yoko Ono ― Jonas Mekas was well acquainted with a great many New York artists. Born in Lithuania, he came to Brooklyn via […]

    GENRE: Memoir, Non-Fiction
  • Jimmy Desana: Salvation
    Jimmy Desana: Salvation
    $20.00 | , Add to cart

    Salvation is a previously-unpublished artist book by Jimmy DeSana that he conceptualized shortly before his death in 1990. The publication contains 44 of the artist’s late photographic [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography
  • Stefan Aune – Indian Wars Everywhere: Colonial Violence and the Shadow Doctrines of Empire
    Stefan Aune – Indian Wars Everywhere: Colonial Violence and the Shadow Doctrines of Empire
    $30.00 | , Add to cart

    References to the Indian Wars, those conflicts that accompanied US continental expansion, suffuse American military history. From Black Hawk helicopters to the exclamation “Geronimo” used by [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization
    Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization
    $19.00 | , Add to cart

    A landmark work that demystifies the rich tradition of Indian art, Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization analyzes key motifs found in legend, myth, and folklore taken directly […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Arkady & Boris Strugatsky – Hard To Be A God
    Arkady & Boris Strugatsky – Hard To Be A God
    $17.00 | , Add to cart

    Arkady and Boris Strugatsky are widely known as the greatest Russian writers of science fiction, and their 1964 novel Hard to Be a God is considered one of the greatest […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Jose Donoso – The Obscene Bird Of Night
    Jose Donoso – The Obscene Bird Of Night
    $20.00 | , Add to cart

    Deep in a maze of musty, forgotten hallways, Mudito rummages through piles of old newspapers. The mute caretaker of a crumbling former abbey, he is hounded by a coven of […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Carmelo Bene – Our Lady of the Turks
    Carmelo Bene – Our Lady of the Turks
    $20.00 | , Add to cart

    Carmelo Bene (1937–2002) was a notorious Italian actor, writer, and director who inaugurated his theater in 1959 with Camus’ Caligula then exploded onto the artistic scene with his outré Christ [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Heather Lewis – Notice
    Heather Lewis – Notice
    $18.00 | , Add to cart

    A classic queer text of trauma, written by one of the most talented novelists of her generation. The reason it’s never just once is the same reason money’s only a […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Networking The Bloc: Experimental Art In Eastern Europe 1965-1981
    Networking The Bloc: Experimental Art In Eastern Europe 1965-1981
    $15.00 | , , Add to cart

    The story of the experimental zeitgeist in Eastern European art, seen through personal encounters, pioneering dialogues, collaborative projects, and cultural exchanges.Throughout the 1970s, a [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Non-Fiction
  • Mike Collino – Come The Maker Carcass
    Mike Collino – Come The Maker Carcass
    $10.00 | , Add to cart

    January 6, 2024 Edition of 100 Alien Passengers #97

    GENRE: Art/Photography
  • We Jazz Issue 05: Amaryllis
    We Jazz Issue 05: Amaryllis
    $15.00 | , , Add to cart

    2022 release. The fifth issue of We Jazz Magazine, Amaryllis for Mary Halvorson. All articles presented in English. Stories include Mary Halvorson by Peter Margasak, Pi Recordings by Will Layman, [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive, Jazz / Fusion / Free Jazz
  • Laird Barron – The Imago Sequence
    Laird Barron – The Imago Sequence
    $17.00 | , Add to cart

    To the tradition of eldritch horror pioneered and refined by writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, Peter Straub, and Thomas Ligotti comes Laird Barron, an author whose literary voice invokes the […]

    GENRE: Horror Fiction
  • Harald Voetmann – Sublunar
    Harald Voetmann – Sublunar
    $16.00 | , Add to cart

    A great mind and a formidable personality, Brahe is also the world’s most illustrious noseless man of his time. Told by Brahe and his assistants–a filthy cast of characters– [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Denis Johnson – Angels
    Denis Johnson – Angels
    $17.00 | , Add to cart

    The most critically acclaimed, and first, of Denis Johnson’s novels, Angels puts Jamie Mays–a runaway wife toting along two kids–and Bill Houston–ex-Navy man, ex-husband, [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith
    Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith
    $31.00 | , Add to cart

    What our staff has to say: “The Harry Smith resurgence is upon us.” – Jack He was an anthropologist, filmmaker, painter, folklorist, mystic, and walking encyclopedia. He taught [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Folk / Country, Non-Fiction
  • Marjorie Muir Worthington – The Strange World Of Willie Seabrook
    Marjorie Muir Worthington – The Strange World Of Willie Seabrook
    $18.00 | , Add to cart

    Literary Nonfiction. This is an intimate, stunning look at the torturous relationship of two writers: Marjorie Worthington and William Seabrook. A renowned writer on the exotic and the occult, [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Fernanda Melchor – Paradais
    Fernanda Melchor – Paradais
    $10.00 | , Add to cart

    Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor—an [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Noel Meek & Mattin – Homage to Annea Lockwood Book + CD
    Noel Meek & Mattin – Homage to Annea Lockwood Book + CD
    $21.00 | , Add to cart

    Recital presents a book and CD homage to the New Zealand-born American composer Annea Lockwood (b. 1939). The unique concept for this album was conceived by artists Noel Meek (New […]

    GENRE: Experimental / Noise
  • Michel Leiris – Aurora and Cardinal Point
    Michel Leiris – Aurora and Cardinal Point
    $25.00 | , Add to cart

    This volume collects two classics of Surrealist fiction, both long out of print, by the writer and ethnographer Michel Leiris (1901–1990). Close to Georges Bataille, Picasso, Jean-Paul Sartre and [...]

    GENRE: Art/Photography, Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Louis Aragon – Anicet or the Panorama: A Dadaist Novel
    Louis Aragon – Anicet or the Panorama: A Dadaist Novel
    $18.00 | , Add to cart

    This novel, much of it written amidst the horror of the trenches when Louis Aragon (1897–1982) was a medical orderly during the First World War, demonstrates the chasm that separates […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Pyschedelic Folk
    Seasons They Change: The Story of Acid and Pyschedelic Folk
    $12.00 | , Add to cart

    In the late 60s and early 70s the inherent weirdness of folk met switched-on psychedelic rock and gave birth to new, strange forms of acoustic-based avant-garde music. Artists on both […]

    GENRE: Art Rock / Krautrock / Prog / Psych, Folk / Country, Non-Fiction
  • Pierre Clastres – Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians
    Pierre Clastres – Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians
    $22.00 | , Add to cart

    Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians is Pierre Clastres’s account of his 1963–64 encounter with this small Paraguayan tribe, a precise and detailed recording of the history, ritual, myths, and [...]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Count Stenbock – The Shadow Of Death
    Count Stenbock – The Shadow Of Death
    $12.00 | , Add to cart

    Here, presented for the first time in paperback format, and limited edition hardcover, is an unabridged edition of Count Eric Stenbock’s third and last collection of poetry, which was originally [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Who Cares Anyway: Post-Punk San Francisco and the End of the Analog Age
    Who Cares Anyway: Post-Punk San Francisco and the End of the Analog Age
    $32.00 | , Add to cart

    Late ’70s San Francisco. The Summer of Love is a hazy memory, the AIDS crisis is looming, and nearby Silicon Valley is still an obscure place where microchips are made. […]

    GENRE: Post-Punk / Goth / Darkwave / Minimal Synth / Neofolk
  • Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992
    Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992
    $28.00 | , Add to cart

    Hold On to Your Dreams is the first biography of the musician and composer Arthur Russell, one of the most important but least known contributors to New York’s downtown music […]

    GENRE: Non-Fiction
  • Islamic Mystical Poetry
    Islamic Mystical Poetry
    $10.00 | , Add to cart

    Written from the ninth to the twentieth century, these poems represent the peak of Islamic Mystical writing, from Rabia Basri to Mian Mohammad Baksh. Reflecting both private devotional love and [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Maggot Brain #12
    Maggot Brain #12
    $12.00 | , Add to cart

    Crazy Doberman ? Erick’s Bradshaw delivers an epic, well-illustrated tour diary of a brief jaunt with these noise greats. Composer TAYONDAI BRAXTON by Katy Henricksen! A meaty, beautiful [...]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive
  • Ahmad Shamlou – Born Upon the Dark Spear
    Ahmad Shamlou – Born Upon the Dark Spear
    $13.00 | , Add to cart

    Chasm. Mist. Dark Song. Hour of Execution. Behind the Wall. These are just some of the poetic titles of Ahmad Shamlu (1925-2000) that together form the cipher to one of […]

    GENRE: Fiction/Poetry/Essays/Criticism/Transgressive