Strange Attractor Journal Two
Time Out (London),  June 29-July 6 2005
Reviewed by Gareth Evans

In the necessarily obsessive, hermetic, lo/no budget world of small press magazines, tone is everything. The often miraculous perseverance of unsalaried collectives, of garret individuals with too much passion and irregular access to fresh air counts for nothing if the voice of their beloved publication does not sing its own singular song. Think of <i>The Idler</i>, <i>Smoke</i>, <i>The Chap</i>, <i>Inventory</i>, and <i>Ephemera</i>, to name a five-finger handful of the most recently distinctive.

Now to their idiosyncratic ranks must be added this very special organ.
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Pilkington's triumphantly diverse and choicely illustrated collection of musings, speculations and ponder pieces (these are not the same thing) wonderfully fulfills its self-declared objective of celebrating "unpopular culture" while maintaining pleasurably high standards of printing and production. The positive indications start with the cover, the Kirlian image of a fly agaric mushroom suggesting a luminous prejudice towards novel ways of looking at material that itself is far from stale anyway.

Browse the extensive contents (420 pages) and there's no denying the quirky breadth and heartfelt advocacy of the enterprise. Where else (no, really - where else?) could one find entertaining, informative evocatively scripted takes on Nepalese shamanism, the secret history of the Temple Mount, robot pride, animism and underground London, or essays on such visionary mavericks as Richard Jefferies, Boris Vian, Waldo Sabine and Maya Deren. Rambling the weird paths that wind from psychogeography through the counterculture and on into edge science and arcana, <i>Strange Attractor</i> voices its concerns with leftfield reverence and wit. The chances are very high you will find yourself... strangely attracted.