Coloured by death, but beautiful. Jeremy Reed & Karolina Urbaniak. ALTERED BALANCE – A Tribute to Coil (Infinity Land Press, 2014–2015)

As Infinity Land Press mentions (https://www.facebook.com/alteredbalance/info?tab=page_info), “Reed's close personal friendship with Balance is explored in an acutely detailed and moving sequence of poems, in a prose memoir recollecting his frequent visits to Chiswick and Weston Super Mare, and in the facsimile reproduction of a selection of highly idiosyncratic hand written letters of Balance's that comprised a part of their regularly sustained correspondence over a period of eight years. The book is complemented throughout by Karolina Urbaniak's highly empathetic, mood-sensitive photos that resonate with Reed's charged imaginative writing.”

Famous musician Thighpaulsandra says: “Altered Balance captures Geff's life perfectly. It sometimes makes for uncomfortable reading but that was very much what knowing Geff was like.”

Jeremy Reed (www.jeremyreed.co.uk) is called by the Independent ‘British poetry’s glam, spangly, shape-shifting answer to David Bowie’. He has published over 40 books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, winning prestigious literary prizes like the Somerset Maugham Award, and his biggest fans are J.G. Ballard, Pete Doherty and Björk who has called his work ‘the most beautiful, outrageously brilliant poetry in the world.’

Karolina Urbaniak (http://karolinaurbaniak.com) is a visual artist, graphic designer and professional photographer based in London. Manager of Pond Street Studios and cofounder of Infinity Land Press (http://infinitylandpress.com). Infinity Land Press provides exclusive, clandestine publications which are inoculated against the circulatory system of the established book market. Infinity Land Press provides exclusive, clandestine publications which are inoculated against the circulatory system of the established book market. Founded in 2013 by musician Martin Bladh (IRM, Skin Area, http://martinbladh-vf.blogspot.com, interview in Lithuanian – http://www.radikaliai.lt/radikaliai/1661-irm-kurinys-pavyksta-tik-tada-jei-turiu-jegu-vienu-metu-pakirsti-sau-jegas-ir-sugundyti-save-video) and Karolina Urbaniak, Infinity Land is a realm deeply steeped in pathological obsessions, extreme desires, and private aesthetic visions. Having disappeared over the horizon from the nurseries stocked with frivolous babblings of apologetic pleasures, Infinity Land is foundationally a geography configured by the compulsive, annihilating search for impossible beauty. In the words of Yukio Mishima, “True beauty is something that attacks, overpowers, robs, and finally destroys.”

The book ALTERED BALANCE – A Tribute to Coil, in my humble opinion, deserves to be not only in every Coil’s fan’s home, but also should be adored by those who love Karolina Urbaniak’s and Jeremy Reed’s creations, and aesthetics in general. The book is a masterpiece by two geniuses to the third one, and it’s a rare combination.

The Tribute is made from Poems (“Altered Balance”), Prose (“Love is here and now you’re gone”) and Letters (“To poet in residence”). The Letters are especially interesting, John Balance wrote them from Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Coloured by death, but beautiful (Elegy for John Balance, by Jeremy Reed).