The Esoteric Underground of Britain

They were called the destroyers of civilization and blamed for all mortal sins. They truly knew a thing or two about sin and redemption. This book is about the people who overturned society's notions of creativity, mysticism, and extreme lifestyles... — about British experimenters who conducted experiments on themselves and their listeners. Coil, Throbbing Gristle, Current 93, Nurse With Wound — the history of music at the turn of the century is unimaginable without these groups, their traces are visible everywhere: from the underground to pop culture.
"The Esoteric Underground of Britain" is also a genealogy of the rich tradition of English eccentricity and visionary art: the pages of the book feature the great mystic William Blake, the obsessed otherworldly artists Louis Wain, Charles Simms, and Austin Osman Spare, director Derek Jarman, and many other seekers of the transcendent. It can be read as a saga of desperate creators, sorcerers, and madmen who blurred the boundaries of the real and the imagined. The fates of its heroes wove together incredible ambitions, resistance to the mundane, magic, the persecuted queer movement, struggle with oneself, and the search for light amidst the pitch darkness.
This edition of the famous book by Scottish journalist and writer David Keenan is based on the expanded edition of 2016 and includes the Supplement FurFur, which gathers new illustrations and interviews with participants of the esoteric underground.