Scraping the Divine

A conversation with Savage Pencil

Savage Pencil

Scraping the Divine, my collaboration with Full of Hell, was released last week via Closed Casket Activities.

When discussing potential artist for Scraping the Divine my first choice was always Savage Pencil - nom de plume of Edwin Pouncey - who I originally knew from his work in the 1980s for NME and Sounds, and who is probably known to most for his art for Sonic Youth and Big Black, and his more recent work for Sunn and Swans. His cover art has been seen across releases as diverse as Masonna, Rocket From the Crypt, Coil, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and a Savage Pencil Presents dub and roots reggae compilation on Trojan records.

He’s done cover art for Masonna and King Tubby, of course I wanted to work with him.

Savage Pencil’s art is close to low brow artists and underground comix with some 60s and 70s style concert posters in the mix; think S Clay Wilson, Ed Roth, Spain Rodriguez, Robt. Williams as being in his lineage. But there is also a clear influence of Victorian decadence via Aubrey Beardsley and Sidney Sime, and the automatic drawings of Austin Osman Spare.

On a recent visit to the UK we were unfortunately unable to meet in person (he lives in London now and all of my time was spent in the north of the country), but we did talk for some time on the phone, mostly just shooting the shit, but also of our shared enjoyment of Arthur Machen.

These questions were answered via e mail in October 2024.

What was your approach to creating the album cover?

For the album cover I wanted to do an automatic drawing, using the techniques I have picked up over the years by immersing myself in the work of such artists as Austin Osman Spare, Jack Kirby, Basil Wolverton and Stanley Mouse, among others. All of these artists come from different artistic backgrounds, but to me they are somehow linked together through their individual imaginative and wholly original approach to creating images.

The main eyes section of the album art is an automatic drawing, sketched out in a semi-conscious state with graphite and later worked on in ink and computer to add the detail.

I can get into a rhythmic mantra-like state drawing eyes, to the point where I don’t even have to look down at what I am drawing as the images just seem to be building up on top of each other – like some kind of weird bacillus in a petri dish. I am always slightly astonished as to what has materialised on the paper.

The lettering for the title and tracks was slightly more thought out, using ruled ink lines and a computer to get the look of the words being scrawled out in an old grimoire.

Can you talk a little about the influence of Austin Osman Spare?

The visual work of Austin Osman Spare has definitely had a major effect on my work. I started off just liking the way he drew demonic forms, but as I got deeper into studying his art, I began to convince myself that I could take a similar direction with my own creations.

Early drawings had a strong Spare feel running through them but as I progressed, my own style began to take over and I now feel that what I learned from studying his line flows more naturally through what I am trying to achieve today. The demonic drawings I have done for Sunn O))) and this album cover all bear the hallmarks of Spare’s influence but, hopefully, cannot be completely attributed to his style. They are all my own work.

We’re both from Leeds, were you aware of or involved in any capacity with the chaos magic movement of the 1980s?

I was never really involved with chaos magic, so I can’t really comment, even though I realise that the teachings of AOS through his The Book Of Pleasure (Self Love) and The Focus Of Life books were an enormous influence. Leeds was a weird place for me to grow up in, though, and I was aware that something strange was going on there during the 20 years I lived there. I eventually escaped to go live in Colchester, Essex, only to find that East Anglia was even more witch haunted than my birthplace.

What was your first exposure to Arthur Machen and who else in the broad category of weird horror (I favour Mark Valentine's terms of borderland and otherworld stories) are you a fan of? Any contemporary writers you follow? As I get older I find Machen and Machen-esque writers more of a draw to me than Lovecraft and his descendants.

I was introduced to Arthur Machen’s writings through reading the Corgi paperbacks of his short stories. I became attracted to them because of the lurid cover art that usually had nothing to do with the stories inside, The Novel Of The White Powder being a particularly ugly example. After that I read his wonderful novel The Hill Of Dreams and became hooked.

For anybody out there who has yet to read Machen may I recommend the readily available Penguin Classics edition of his writings that includes The White People, a personal favourite and surely one of the finest supernatural stories ever written.

I continue to read Machen to this day, as well as being a paid-up member of F.O.A.M. (Friends Of Arthur Machen). Mark E. Smith from The Fall was also a member of this austere club.

Machen has since become more interesting than Lovecraft to me too. At the time I was reading Lovecraft in the late 60s everybody else was into Tolkien. I thought that Lovecraft, and the rest of the Weird Tales gang, was the obverse of all that so I went in that direction. I came to Machen through reading Lovecraft’s letters and, over the years, he has become my favourite author. As well as his supernatural stories I also enjoy his writings about London, where he discusses old inns and various, mostly demolished now, landmarks of the city that were once part of his stomping ground.

I can’t think of any recent authors in the supernatural fiction genre that I have recently really enjoyed. It feels like the last great weird fiction writer I became obsessed with was Robert Aickman, but I realise there are plenty more out there like the late Mark Samuels¹ and Ron Weighell. I’ll get round to reading them soon I reckon.

When did you first become aware of noise and industrial and what were your feelings towards it?

The first noise recording I ever heard was the title track from Weasels Ripped My Flesh by The Mothers Of Invention. It is just a huge barrage of squealing feedback-induced cacophony and I was immediately attracted to it. Later on in the 80s I discovered free jazz via the recordings of Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Noah Howard and numerous others. After that I ventured into the murky world of black metal, mainly through listening to the complete works of Abruptum – along with such noise favourites at the time as Merzbow, early Boredoms, Hanatarash, Hijokaidan, C.C.C.C.², Masonna, Borbetomagus, Ascension, early Swans, Wolf Eyes and Skullflower.

What I liked about noise and black metal from the start is that it abstracted music, doing away with any recognised form to create a more intense and interesting listening experience that you can physically feel vibrating through your body as well as your head.

They are very physical forms of music. You are also forced to use your imagination to fully appreciate what is being played. I am particularly attracted to guitar feedback manipulation, and with my friend sound artist Sharon Gal I have performed several times under the group name Meltaot. During these performances Sharon sings and plays electronics, while I accompany her using feedback on electric guitar and pedals. As with my drawing technique, these sessions are unpredictable and can go into some very interesting sonic areas where we both kind of trance out and surrender to the vibrations.

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Savage Pencil has a book published by Strange Attractor Press (distributed by MIT Press in North America). You should buy it.

Scraping the Divine is out now.

1. I feel like I mention Mark Samuels repeatedly when the opportunity arises. Read Mark Samuels.

2. C.C.C.C.’s Flash (Cold Spring, 1996) is in my top five noise releases of all time. Hijokaidan is the greatest live performance I’ve ever seen (London, Ontario, 2004, line up Jojo Hiroshige, Junko, T Mikawa, F Kosakai)