Two New Books

Electric Boy Scout:: Guerrilla Typewriter is a largely non-fiction book dealing with the pressures on Control and the possibility of using art and literature as methods of social resistance. Part essays, part interview, part stories, and part something else, this book takes you on a trip to the future and beyond.

Get a copy of the book from Amazon here or email lachlan.mcdougall@gmail.com to order direct from the publisher

File Folders: Painting in Ephemera is a brand new book of art featuring stunning paintings from a personal collection made during 2022. A great way to bring home a thrilling series, you can get copies of the book from Amazon here or email lachlan.mcdougall@gmail.com to order a copy direct from the publisher.

Thee Grey Book

Thee Grey Book is a startling new treatise on modern magickal practice and you’ll be swept away on on a tide of new ideas.

Cut-ups, sigils, breaking through the unconscious barrier, learn all this and more when you tap into a copy of Thee Grey Book.

Get a copy from Amazon here or email lachlan.mcdougall@gmail.com to order a copy direct from the publisher.

Systems

Systems is ten images based off the idea of an image processing system. We take a verbal cue from out in the aether and we transpose to the picture language. We distort what is through our lens of system. A rigorous system no doubt but what remains is another matter entirely. These photographs represent the functional world reduced to mere repeating patterns. Things are brought down to a simple gridwork or a fantastic kaleidoscope and move further and further away from that thing which they are. The physical world is no longer recognisable and the representative function of the photograph is nullified.

All images, bar one, were produced by taking a photograph of a thing then using a standardised procedural system to overlay image and distort functionality. The thing no longer remains although it has been multiplied ad infinitum. The odd image out was produced by abstracting photography away from the object and moving towards the infinitesimal—the thing becomes blind to our looks and takes on a textural quality like trees on a distant hill. I’ll let you decide which image is the odd one out.

Systems distorts the commonplace by repetition and abstraction. Nothing remains when you see a thing multiplied beyond the point of counting. The ocean is not a glass of water, a roll of paper is not a tree—these images are not their preceding form, they are something new that stands outside of function and time. They often take on a stark minimalist quality—the thing which looms so large is reduced to a mere pattern that stands in for the entire universe—or else they explode in kaleidoscopic mandalas where the thing loses itself in the monumental ebb and flow of time. Systems is the point of departure, even the name loses meaning.

Each image is on offer in a limited signed and numbered edition of 10 per photograph. For affordability and accessibility there is also an unsigned ‘print on demand’ option. Prints can be purchased from artpal.com or email lachlan.mcdougall@gmail.com for pricing and details.

System #1

System #2 (Fish Eyes Bug Out)

System #3 (Viper’s Nest)

System #4

System #5

System #6

System #7 (Keyhole Lights)

System #8 (Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn)

System #9

System #10 (Future Proof)

Submissions Open for D.O.R issue 2

SUBMISSIONS CLOSED

Hi all,

I’m happy to announce that the LJMcD Communications literature and arts magazine, D.O.R, is opening up for a fabulous second issue.

I’m looking for poetry, prose, and art on the edge of sanity. Bold new experiments in text and form. Anything that pushes the boundaries of what we can do with language and symbol. Full details below.

POETRY: Send up to five poems as a single word document. No restriction on form or subject matter, just make it interesting. You’ll find I’m more interested in experimental poetry than I am in traditional sonnets and the like, but I’m open to anything. Up to a million lines, but make them count!

PROSE: Up to 5,000 words in a word document. Short stories, prose poems, essays on contemporary magick, whatever ya got, just make sure you’re doing something new with your words. I want my head to spin with the modern world.

ART: Send up to five high def images in a single email along with any additional information you want published like titles and media.

Send all submissions to lachlan.mcdougall@gmail.com. Please include a brief third person bio in the body of your email to accompany your piece if it is accepted.

Unfortunately, I cannot offer payment for accepted pieces, but all contributors will get the option of a print copy of the magazine at printing/shipping cost.

You can check out the first issue of the magazine in pdf or print copy here

Now, go forth and send me your best and weirdest work!

Electric Boy Scout:: Guerrilla Typewriter pre-order and proof copies

Hi all,

The largely non-fiction book from Lachlan J McDougall, Electric Boy Scout:: Guerrilla Typewriter, is comin out in June and pre-orders for the print book are now open.

The book deals with language and symbol and how we can manipulate these to bring about a social artistic revolution and end the influence of Control in our day to day lives. Let’s see what the Amazon blurb has to say.

The future is now and there’s nothing left but the recordings.
This book is a program for taking on the world at large. A step by step guide to bringing about the revolution from within. You may try to fight the change, but when the Scouts come calling, there’s nothing else you can do.

A deconstruction of the role of language and a prescient dissection of the modern Control virus, Electric Boy Scout is full of helpful and practical tips for circumventing the Control narrative and substituting your own. Learn to take control of your life. Learn the limits of what you are doing and how to push them ever further. Learn a few tricks from the master at work.

You can pre-order the book by emailing lachlan.mcdougall@gmail.com with your order details and a print copy will be sent to you soon after release date in June. Or, to get the book sooner (as well as getting a limited collector’s edition), reach out and see if any of the limited proof copies are still available. In addition to your proof copy, LJMcD Communications will send you a free pdf of the book so you can get reading straight away.

So, get in touch and order your proof copy, or pre-order a print copy today!

Review: ‘The Book of Breeething’ by William S Burroughs

A sort of scattered set of musings on language and symbol mixed with a thrilling collection of illustrations, this book is a short, wandering piece that reads like a knowledgeable ramble. Burroughs certainly has a point, but he refuses to make it, allowing it to grow organically out of abstract, dreamlike prose.

The illustrations are just gorgeous and Robert F Gale has done a fantastic job bringing the strange prose to life. Without the illustrations, this book would not work. With them, it is lifted to a high plain of fancy and wonder.

It is not Burroughs best book, and certainly not his clearest, but it is an interesting little addition to the cannon. For a collector like me, it is a must, but if you’re looking only for content, you can find these thoughts better expressed in other books. Still though, it is a fascinating excursion.

New publication in Var(2x)

Hi all,

I’ve just had a suite of poems and an asemic artwork published with the fabulous people over at Var(2x)

You can read the poems here

Enjoy!

Review: ‘<Reboot> More So… Disconnected’ by Wayne Mason

A tight and electric little book of poetry topped and tailed with a forceful prose introduction and coda, this book was a quick but powerful read. The poems run on a theme of technological and industrial manipulation of the soul and self and move from prophetic abstraction to a near concrete scream.

I very much enjoyed this book and it will be reverberating with me all day. There is a joyous despair that pervades these pages and a stark disconnect manifesting between myself, the page, and reality.

These poems are image, but image abstracted into the unrecognisable. What is a person if not their image? In the act of reading we too are abstracted, torn out of place and shown the thin dividing line between inner and outer space.

I recommend this book thoroughly and you should get yourself a copy. It’s a favour you will love yourself for for a long time to come.

Diaries 2022

Hi all,

My diaries for the end of 2022 have just been released as a full colour volume to read and cherish. You’ll get a wealth of abstract musings as well as titbits of writing, a behind the scenes look at the artistic process, daily photographs and other images, and a day to day view of what life is like in the creative world of McDougall.

This will be the first in a series of diaries I will be releasing and is a good place to get to know me both for fans and newcomers to my work.

You can get a copy of the book here

Happy hunting folks!

Review: ‘The Western Lands’ by William S Burroughs

Third in the ‘Dead Night’ trilogy, this book follows the same formula of rambling fragments tied together with a loose sort of thread. Part hazy remembrance, part Egyptian mythology this one might be the best and most cohesive of the three books.

Once again Burroughs’ skill with language shines through making this a delight to read. Even when you are lost, the words paint such a definite picture that you feel you must be somewhere heading in the right direction. Cold and ugly this book also has its moments of love and tenderness—usually reserved for the author’s cats. I think too, this book might serve well for the uninitiated in Burroughs’ style. You can really get to know the work and it doesn’t ask too much of our gentle reader.

In summary, a brilliant end to a glittering trilogy of novels. Perhaps the best and brightest. Well worth the read if you are so inclined and I hope you are.