Tuesday 23 December 2008

a bellyful of anarchy – rob plath – epic rites press

Massively honoured to have been invited to do the cover art (scroll down a bit) and design for Rob’s forthcoming book – a bellyful of anarchy.

Briefly paraphrasing what is being said over at Epic Rites (‘cos they say it so much better than me):

“This book is going to be an absolute monster: 250 pages that are going to jump from your bookshelf and kick the shit out of every other book in your library - THIS is Robert Plath at his very best.

Rob and Wolfgang Carstens have carefully sewn together each monstrous limb. They plan to unleash their monster in March 2009...

...but this motherfucker is tough and it may very well break free of it's shackles before then. You have been warned!

A percentage of all book profits will be donated to H.O.W. (helping orphans worldwide) which helps children worldwide that have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS.”


Well, what I say is this fucker is going to be one awesome collection – impossible for it to be anything else. And I’ll be sure to be saying more when the book becomes available. For now, just very bloody excited.

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The image is constructed like a Frankenstein’s monster from the work of artists/anatomists andreas vesalius, govard bidloo, gérard de lairesse and juan valverde de amusco.

You could say the rope/noose like Rob’s thin vertical lines of poetry. Or something about the cadaver inside waking up. Or books/knowledge/aspirations/order/etc all pointing to the final destination of us all. Or maybe pointing to the guts of man, and the guts of the book. Certainly the dissected horizontal man is not going to be ferried across to the other side (below is just the void). Hell, you can even see the abc’s on the guy’s ribs – still fresh with blood…

But you can’t judge a book by its cover (although I’d be somewhat sceptical of any book with a Norman Rockwell cover) – and it is the guts of this beast that are going to do the ass kicking. !!!!BEWARE!!!! & !!!!BUY!!!!

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Massive thanks to Wolfgang and Rob for inviting me along for the visuals – I am very proud to be involved.

And big thanks for the nice shit said about me on the last Rob and Jack radio show of the year – including an awesome reading of my piece – The Great Religion – by Wolfgang.