Hat & Beard – förlag

Hardcover, 216 pages 8.5 × 11 in. 21.59 × 27.94 cm

At the heart of 1960s avant-garde New York was the convergence of Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Moe Tucker, heralding an unprecedented musical revolution. The Velvet Underground was a unique group for its time, fueled by the visual arts, poetry, and stage performance, as much by ideas of sexual transgression and the subversion of social norms.

Compiled from archival ephemera, unpublished photographs, films, album covers, posters, fanzines, letters, testimonies, and poems, this monograph gathers anew the Velvet Underground Experience exhibition that opened in Paris in 2016 for a US audience, recreating the sound, visual, and emotional experiences of the underground scenes in New York, where extravagances were always allowed.

This updated monograph explores the genesis and history of a group that, despite its colorful collaboration with Andy Warhol, was overlooked by success during its brief existence (1965-1970). Too radical, too transgressive, and too uninhibited for their time, the Velvet Underground has become a cultural phenomenon over the decades, one that continues to fascinate audiences around the world.

Editorial coordination:Christian Fevret and Carole MirabelloEditors: JC Gabel and Margot RossDesign: Change is Good, Paris

Hardcover, 224 pages 7½ × 10¾ in. 19.05 x 27.305 cm.

Acclaimed biographer and Bradbury scholar Sam Weller spent more than a decade interviewing Ray Bradbury, who admitted, “Sam Weller knows more about my life than I do.” Revealed in Weller and Bradbury’s conversations, collected in Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews, is a vivid portrait of the author. A creative genius, an opinionated and occasionally contrarian thinker, “and a nostalgic futurist,” Bradbury longed for yesterday even as he looked toward tomorrow.

During the process of conducting research for the book, noted Los Angeles photographer Zen Sekizawa photographed Bradbury’s home and decades of his accumulated possessions. Her photographs present an alternate portrait of Bradbury—one that is more poignant now that his personal possessions have been sold at auction and his home of more than half a century razed.

Listen to the Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews is the definitive collection
 of interviews with this American icon, illustrated with Sekizawa’s stunning color photographs (including previously unpublished images). Originally issued as a paperback in 2010 by Stop Smiling Books and Melville House Publishing, Listen to the Echoes is now available as a full-color, larger-format hardcover edition with a new final chapter by Weller about Bradbury’s legacy since his death in 2012, and dozens of new photographs from the Bradbury archive. Also new to this edition are essays by Margaret Atwood and Frank Darabont.

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012), the poetic and visionary author of such classics as Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, and The Illustrated Man, was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. Bradbury’s sway over contemporary culture is towering—Mikhail Gorbachev, Alfred Hitchcock, and David Bowie all counted themselves as fans, to name only a very few.

Limited Edition The limited version comes in an edition of 300, is printed on silver foil, and wrapped in a clear poly book jacket. It includes a “library card” signed by contributors Margaret Atwood, Frank Darabont, Black Francis, and Sam Weller.

Edited by J.C. Gabel Foreword by Black Francis Afterword essays by Margaret Atwood and Frank Darabont Designed by Benjamin Woodlock Original photography by Zen Sekizawa Hat & Beard Press #10

Hardcover, approx. 260 pages 8.8 × 11.8 in. 

Dublab: 20 Years of Future Roots Radio bends time and space through sound. Founded in 1999, Dublab has been streaming far-out music since the dial-up age. We travel back to the dawn of Internet radio—a pre-podcast/smartphone/social-media era with infinite potential and flash forward for premonitions of other worlds, other sounds.

Rising from the fertile Los Angeles landscape, Dublab enlisted the city’s visionary musical minds to broadcast to the world. This ever-growing collective of deep music heads are at the heart of the station’s algorithm-free, human music experience. The book-length 20-year retrospective details Dublab’s adventurous radio experiments and examines its grassroots approach to building an international arts radio network. Readers who approach the book with open ears will undoubtedly enhance their own adventures in the music frontier.

Dublab’s airwaves have provided an early platform for emerging artists, such as Flying Lotus, Animal Collective and Julia Holter, while hosting legends like Van Dyke Parks, Linda Perhacs, Egyptian Lover, and Lee “Scratch” Perry.

Dublab: 20 Years of Future Roots Radio springs to life with scenes from sad music parties, all-night ambient happenings, and multi-sensory underground events. Stories of sleepwalking DJs, thrift store album alchemy, and sizzling circuit boards fill these pages. Wise elders, optimistic youth, and receptive listeners share their sonic worldviews. By offering an alternative to mainstream music, Dublab aims to encourage rich life experiences through deeper listening. This book is a door to your destiny. Crack it open and ride these waves.

Edited by Alejandro Cohen, J.C. Gabel, and Mark "Frosty" McNeill

If you’ve caught a glimpse of a promotional movie poster in the last 15 years, chances are you were taking in the work of Akiko Stehrenberger, the Los Angeles-based artist you didn’t know you knew. 

Stehrenberger has worked on projects for some of cinema’s most important and influential filmmakers, translating their unique vision from screen to film poster. The list of names includes a long roster of trailblazers, among them Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze, Jonathan Glazer, Harmony Korine, The Coen Brothers, Sofia Coppola, David Lynch, Michael Haneke, and dozens of others.

Stehrenberger, a California native, imbues her unique brand of surrealism to the art of the movie poster utilizing various techniques, including painting, computers, and traditional forms of graphic design—all while conceptually dissecting the films themselves, which helps to illuminate why Akiko is such a vital visual artist. 

The book will put readers at the center of her process (from concept to execution), examining how her life and heroes influenced the special vision she brings to the world of film poster design. Akiko’s art making story will be told in a way that mirrors her process, utilizing analog and modern techniques (including film, film photography, and illustration), all in an effort to a better understanding of her creativity.

Having become one of the most respected movie poster designers and illustrators of her generation, she is now on the cusp of a major creative change in her life: She has begun to embrace her own fine art and has branched out into new mediums, with the hope of exhibiting her work in the future. This book will capture what she has so skillfully harvested from just one realm of her imagination so far.