The red and black artwork of the CD booklet is hard to forget and suits the uncompromising, overwhelming physicality of the recording quite well. Inside the booklet is an excerpt of an essay by Milan Kundera titled "Xenakis, Prophet of Insensibility" which has intrigued me since I first read it - waiting for the tram on the Utrechtsestraat if I recall correctly....

When I revisited the essay recently I started wondering about the "from" part, which seemed to indicate that the actual article is longer than Richard Toop's translation that was included in the booklet. After a little research I discovered that another translation of this essay was collected in a book with collected Kundera essays called "Encounter."

When I retrieved this book from the library two things struck me. When republishing the essay in Encounter, Kundera inserted reflections. But what struck me most was that, in the 2009 collection, Kundera inserted retrospective qualifications directly into the original essay rather than adding a separate introduction or postscript. The interruptions feel awkward, almost like marginalia absorbed into the body of the text. As translations go, the translation of Linda Asher is quite different from Richard Toop's text. More remarkable, however, is that the excerpt in the Etcetera cd booklet is actually longer!

In the “Encounter” book the original French title of the essay and its source is not mentioned but an internet search tells me that Kundera initially published his article “Xenakis, “Xenakis, prophète de l’insensibilité”, in M. Fleuret (ed.), Regards sur Iannis Xenakis, 1981, Stock, Paris.

Kundera was notoriously protective of his definitive bibliography. In his later years, he systematically went back through his older essays and articles, heavily editing, streamlining, and truncating them so that only what he considered his “essential” thoughts survived in authorized volumes like Encounter.

Because Richard Toop translated his version in the late 1980s directly from the un-excised 1981 French source text, the Etcetera CD booklet accidentally preserved a larger portion of the original essay than Kundera’s own authorized 21st-century retrospective collection did. Linda Asher’s translation in Encounter reflects Kundera’s final, heavily manicured, and shorter French draft.

To this day, a complete, unedited English translation of the original 1981 essay outside of specialized academic papers or old out-of-print liner notes remains elusive—making the old red-and-black CD booklet a minor literary treasure.

The Kelley Fox Vermouth has an interesting history as it originated in the aftermath of the 2020 Oregon forest fires that had many honest wine makers grapple with the question how to deal with the smokey grape harvest of that year. For this vermouth, the Kelley Fox 2020 Maresh Pinot noir was fortified to a brandy by distiller Lynsee Sardell of Big Wild Spirits. Stephanie Sprinkle carefully blended 35 locally sourced plants (including wormwood, rose, elderflower, Angelica, and chamomile) into the mix to make this exceptional vermouth, which, naturally, also shines on its own.

The Kelley Fox Vermouth is an off-dry, bitter, herbal, slightly tannic drink with a long and complex finish. Making this the main player in a spritz makes for a more effervescent, dryer, version of this vermouth.

Enlightenment Wines Dagger Mead is a potent barrel-aged botanical cherry mead from Bushwick, Brooklyn, that includes locally grown black cherries, hand-harvested fir needles, foraged hemlock, yarrow and chamomile. A spritz based on Dagger alone is still quite powerful and edgy, not in the least because it reveals a fascinating rust-like color held up to the light.

The most pleasing result (to my palette) occurred when I mixed the Kelly Fox Vermouth and the Enlightenment Wines Dagger in equal parts as the basis for the Spritz. This combination blended the sweet herbal notes of the vermouth with the more powerful Dagger notes.

The recipe for the Sprinkle and Dagger Spritz is basic:

1/3 sparkling white wine (dry)
1/3 equal parts of Kelley Fox Vermouth and Enlightenment Wines Dagger Mead
1/3 soda water
Ice
Optional: a slice of fruit or plant (!)

This recipe can be tweaked to make the drink more alcoholic (decrease the soda water), sweeter (increase the amount of Vermouth), or more aggressively botanical (increase the amount of Dagger).

There are a few clues. When the police cars enter the scene you can see that the street slopes uphill. Then there are the distinct wave-like colored brownstones. And if you watch the scene where Williams gets up the fire escape very carefully, you'll briefly see the Twin Towers above the roof of the building across the street. Inferring the street from that shot is easier said than done.

The honor for identifying the location goes to Jamie from the Facebook page Shot in New York. After fruitlessly searching in Manhattan for years he spent an evening looking for the distinct green copper window of the building (a firehouse) on the opposite side of the street. This search took him to Brooklyn Heights where the real location of the apartment was identified as 283 Hicks street!

It should not come as a surprise to anyone that a lot has changed since then; the fire escape is gone, the decoration around the door has changed, too, and sadly, the colored brownstones down the street now have a more muted color scheme. Interestingly enough, the distinct fire house across the street is still operational today.

It's an understatement to say that Fulci's bleak giallo takes us all over the place in New York City. DUMBO, Midtown and Times Square, the West Village, the piers, the Bronx, and we almost make it to Staten Island for the gruesome scene on the Staten Island Ferry. I am not aware of any scenes set in Queens but Jane's lavish residence at Sutton Square with its views of the Queensboro Bridge gets us close. Not to forget that Mickey Scellenda ends up dead on Roosevelt Island.

Apples and oranges are obvious ingredients and I added some peach as well. Sweeteners and brandy are optional (I opted to omit them). Give the mixture some time to take off the harsh notes of the original wine and serve. To remind yourself what this wine could have been, serve in a Zalto Denk’Art glass with ice and a metal straw.

The label shows a variation of the regular Grand Cru Bruocsella label, emphasizing a different drawing of the Town Hall of the Grand Place against a dark background. This beer was brewed in 2015 and bottled in 2019. Two barrels of old lambic were blended and refermented in the bottle to produce it, although it is not clear how this fermentation in the bottle was achieved given the old nature of the lambics involved.

That this is not your regular Bruocsella became instantly clear when it poured with a lot of foam despite a doing a gentle pour. The beer is orange gold, translucent, with some lacing that gradually disappears from the glass. Aromas of wood, brett, and oranges. Grand Cru Bruocsella is tart with bitter grapefruit notes, and quite astringent – noticeable barrel notes. Its finish is on the shorter end of the spectrum, with a tannic, bitter aftertaste. Not sure if this is an example of “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.” Not the most complex Cantillon but a very interesting spin on a classic.

One consequence of the COVID-19 appointment-only policy of the museum was that there were not many people in the museum.

The scarcity of people wandering the building even permitted me to be completely alone in the room with Vermeer's "Meisje met de Parel" for an extended period of time.

Art by Ping Lim

Natural wine making is often characterized as a style in which “nothing is added and nothing is taken away.” This definition might strike some as to restrictive as it would not permit a winemaker to implement even the most minimal modifications to a wine that prevents it from turning from an elegant expression of terroir into a one-dimensional brett bomb (not uncommon), or using subtle filtration to achieve a certain visual appearance of a wine. What such a strict definition would definitely would preclude is to add herbs to a wine to create an innovative product.

Adding hops to a wine, or more precise, dry-hopping a fermented wine, is the kind of wild card move that definitely constitutes “adding something” to a wine but also embodies the adventurous spirit of many (young) natural winemakers who have little reservations about straddling the boundaries between wine and beer culture.

Adding herbs, spices, or fruits to a (finished) wine is certainly not new but the practice is mostly associated with cocktail making or seasonal (mulled) wines. Blending wine into a (spontaneously fermented) beer, however, is now quite common and breweries like Cantillion have pioneered this practice in Belgium, followed by Wild Ale makers in the US such as Upright Brewing. Depending on the ratio between the two, and whether co-fermentation was pursued, the end results can be a beer that tastes like wine or a wine that tastes like beer.

The Field Recordings Dry Hop Pet Nat wine is definitely a wine that smells and tastes a little bit more like a beer due to the addition of hops. The choice to do this with a pét–nat wine further elevates the beer connotation because of its funky and carbonated character. So how does it all come together?

The Dry Hop Pet Nat pours a hazy, light yellow. A tangy, yeasty, aroma with some fruit, sweetness, and mild wet hops note. Medium carbonation and medium mouthfeel. Taste is quite clean with orange and lime notes, with a lingering bitter, “hoppy” finish. Some sediment was left after completion of the bottle.

A hopped pét–nat could be a good idea in theory but a disaster in practice, but the result here is actually quite likable and subtle. This opens the door to a plethora of experiments as there are many types of hops and dry hopping regimes. Cantillon has resoundingly demonstrated that spontaneously fermented beers and (dry) hopping can be a beautiful combination and there is a place for adding hops to (sparkling) wines as well.

I’d personally favor other herbs to be the dominant player in such efforts but this might be just a matter of time. This is a good wine, not a great wine, but I suspect that great wines can be achieved through the addition of herbs.

The wines of the Jura have held an enduring interest to me. I was pleasantly surprised to read about Cantillon’s Vin Jaune barrel aged beer experiments (after all, like lambic, Vin Jaune wines also generate a pellicle to protect the wine from the surrounding environment). I attended a Jura tasting with Jean-Francois Bourdy at E&R wines in 2017, which featured a 1976 Chateau Chalon and 1915 (!) Rouge (the oldest wine I have ever tasted), and introduced me to Bourdy’s Côtes du Jura Savagnin, my favorite, despite it being a Vin Jaune “reject.” I think it was at this tasting that I also procured a bottle of Benedicte & Stephane Tissot ‘s 2012 Savagnin Amphore, which I did not have an opportunity to taste until early 2020. I prepared myself for this tasting by reading Wink Lorch’s excellent book on Jura Wine.

Benedicte & Stephane Tissot are natural wine makers so it is not much of a surprise to see skin contact white wines, or experiments with amphorae fermentation, making an appearance. However, such methods were, to my knowledge, quite the departure from Jura traditions but were pioneered by the Tissots. Some of their reds are also available in amphore releases. My understanding is that this wine was macerated on the skins for 6 months in amphorae, used endogenous yeast, and was bottled without sulphur.

I cannot say that I am sufficiently familiar with the savignin grape to fully appreciate how it expresses itself through skin maceration, but I have tried a lot of other orange wines that I used as a benchmark when tasting this.

Visually, Savagnin Amphore pours like a cognac with a clear rusty amber. There is a slight sediment in the bottom of the glass. The aroma is somewhat closed initially but starts to give notes of malt, leather, (dried) lemon, pickled fruits and ripe apple as it warms and opens up. This is light-bodied and a very dry wine. Naturally, after such a prolonged period of skin contact tannins are noticeable. Another feature that stands out to me is how smooth it is. The finish is slightly bitter and short. Its profile also reminds me of a straight lambic, which bring this review full circle because it was Guinard’s book on lambic that drew my attention to the Jura wines in the first place. Clearly, this is not a traditional Jura wine but an ancient interpretation of a traditional Jura grape.

Identifying the location of this club (or pool hall), and the prominently featured subway stop, has been a non-trivial challenge.

The fourth track on Francesco de Masi's seminal movie soundtrack is named "Puertorico Club" but this hardly constitutes a specific indication where this club might be (provided we can take the title literally).

In his excellent audio commentary for Blue Underground's 4K restoration of The New York Ripper, Troy Howarth identifies the scene as set in "Spanish Harlem." This impression might have been intended by the script writers but, to my knowledge, Harlem never had an above-ground subway line like this, unlike some areas in Brooklyn and Queens. The subway station in the movie scene is highly characteristic and, one would think, offers some definitive clues. Unfortunately, the signs on the subway are not featured prominently enough to nail down one specific station. For a considerable period I was reasonably convinced that this subway station was in Astoria, Queens and even visited some, only to come back disappointed. I was confident that a true New York City subway fanatic could solve this riddle and entertained contacting one online.

What finally enabled me to crack the case was a very close study of my set of Dutch lobby cards. As can be seen in the image below, a business name and address in the Bronx can be seen on one of the cards: 869 Longwood Avenue. This street happens to be in the South Bronx near the Prospect Avenue subway stop.

High on anticipation, but not in possession of a Porsche, I took the New York City subway. Upon exiting the Prospect Avenue station it became evident that the area around the subway entry on Westchester Avenue was the location of The New York Ripper's "Puertorico Club" scene.

There is no club or pool hall at this location today. A close view of the exterior windows in the movie indicates that this scene might have been shot on-site and not in Italy, which is an intriguing premise.

An unexpected surprise of this discovery was that this location was not only the setting for Jane's club scene, but was also around the corner from the historical Prospect Theater, where Fay was attacked by the killer and to which Fay returns again later in the movie.

The location of the Prospect Theater has also been a subject of speculation and people have suggested addresses ranging from Main Street, Flushing to Brooklyn. The actual location is at 851 Prospect Avenue in the Bronx. This theater has a long and fascinating history and opened on November 12, 1910. It was restored in 2000 and re-named the Olympic Theater for live performances. It was later closed and its interior gutted in 2006 and sadly looks like this today (2019).

Unbeknownst to most giallo and Fulci fanatics, there exists a set of 30 (!) Dutch lobby cards. The Dutch lobby cards are authentic and were made available by the now-bankrupt Dutch film distribution company Concorde Film from Den Haag for the release of the movie.

What is interesting about the New York Ripper lobby cards is that many of them show much wider shots or different angles than seen in the movie. Even more intriguing are the lobby cards that feature set photos, or even takes that were not used in the movie, such as Faye walking around the Prospect Theater area, or Jane wearing a tweed jacket with leather elbows while conversing with her husband. The lobby cards also feature subtle clues about New York locations that are hard to infer from watching the movie.

Their home at the end of E 58th street, 7 Sutton Square, formerly known as 1 Riverview Terrace, has a long and fascinating history. Unlike many other cities, the New York City waterfront was traditionally not considered a desirable place to live for wealthy people. During the 20th century, however, the neighborhood known as Sutton Place increasingly became an attractive and secluded place to reside. The residences on Riverview Terrace even enjoy a private, gated, waterfront park.

If one would go out and search for the building with its distinctive white brick and lemon shutters that is seen in The New York Ripper, one would have a hard time locating it since the house was restored back to its original red brick colors. Also missing today are the two sea creatures (modeled after the gates within the Giardino di Boboli in Florence, Italy) that sat on top of the entry gates to Riverview Terrace.

The choice of 7 Sutton Square as the couple's residence in The New York Ripper is suggestive because the decayed and corroded sights of the Queensboro bridge behind it draw attention to the neglected and dangerous New York City that is so prominently featured in Fulci's American giallo classic.

The Sutton Place neighborhood is no stranger to murder mysteries, as evidenced by the cover of Robert George Dean's "The Sutton Place Murders", a novel published in 1936.

My expectations for Lindemans were modest as even their “traditional” lambics always seemed a rather bland affair to me. I had been intrigued with their botanical lambics releases, though, and was surprised how potent and fresh the SpontanBasil smelled and tasted, reinforcing my impression that the green notes in these lambics are fragile and fading.

We were also able to blend and bottle our own geuze, which permits designing a geuze with a higher proportion of old lambic.

Boon remains a great destination for a longer stop and their sleek black “Vat X” bottles intrigue and beg for side-by-side comparison. Hanssens remains as rustic as ever and the to-go-to destination for lambic lovers who like a little acetic acid in their lambic.

I had never been to visitor center De Lambiek in Beersel and their great selection of regional lambics for sale presented a good opportunity to start the second day by comparing fruit lambics and purchasing other bottles without dealing with the longer lines at other locations.

I have always respected the Oud Beersel history and blending activities but their bottled lambics always seemed somewhat basic to me. Oud Beersel has ventured on some serious experimentation now and their offerings included such gems as rose- and tea-infused lambics (Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong), geuzes aged in wine barrels, and blending 3-year old lambics to create a more mature geuze. This trend towards “deeper” and “greener” lambics is totally to my liking.

If you want to explore the rich history and traditions of lambic at a measured pace, and enjoy these drinks in splendid isolation, Toer de Geuze is no longer a good vehicle for this but there is so much going on during the event that attendance remains a must. Maybe next time we skip the buses and opt for a do-it-yourself itinerary.

Stefan Dziemianowicz about Jack Williamson’s novel, Darker Than You Think (1948) in Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares.

"Throwbacks are born...Not often-so long as nature is left alone. It's all a matter of probability, and you can see the odds. But every man alive is a carrier, and most throwbacks are only partial. Literally millions of variations are possible between pure Homo sapiens and pure lycanthropus... Those born with a stronger inheritance are usually better aware of their unusual gifts - and more careful to conceal them. In the Middle Ages- so long as the Inquisition kept alive the ancient arts of witch-hunting-they were usually found and burned. Nowadays they fare better. They're able to realize their gifts, and organize, and plot to regain their lost supremacy...The throwbacks have begun to gather into secret clans. By mating among themselves, they have upset the random odds, and increased the probability of reversion...They are finding the carriers and using the modern science of selective breeding- with doubtless some improvements of their own- to filter out the dominant genes of Homo sapiens and so give birth to this powerful leader they're waiting for- the monstrous Messiah they call the Child of Night."

Sam Quain in Darker Than You Think (1948)