Random Gubbings

Hidden Town

2011-04-04T20:17:00.001+01:00

I recently took a bike ride exploring areas of Port Talbot; largely off the beaten and corroded tracks of a tearful town dying on its gangrenous feet. I wanted to visit the dark areas where the population at large avoid as if they were part of an exclusion zone around a spent Soviet atomic plant.

I traversed narrow back alleys, where sagging brickwork and burnt garage doors held each other up earnestly over discarded sofas and TV sets that were once considered luxury items.

Moving south, on the edges of the town I gravitated to an old deserted warehouse; a place I had long wished to visit to produce some suitably atmospheric and desolate shots to go with one of my suitably atmospheric and desolate albums. This tired raped old shell of a structure sucked me into its myriad corridors and rooms, before spanning out into a huge space where shafts of sunlight spread like radioactive fingers in the asbestos dust disturbed by fleeing pigeons through roofing apertures. I inhaled an almost overwhelming scent of acetone.

It was then that I came across numerous youths spray painting the empty plaster walls. The iridescence ascended from rubble-strewn floors like sinewy limbs of vibrant ivy holding up the swaying structures.

They were mostly six-form metal skate-punks, and at a stroke of the aerosol bucked the media stereotype for graffiti artists. These were no skunk-addled subway crazies or street hoods marking their turf; but ordinary kids using their urban environment as a canvas.

There appeared to be a delineation along class lines. The obviously more prosperous lads with their backpacks teeming with large pallets of coloured paint enveloped themselves in giant triptychs of detail and complexity, impervious to anything but the concept; whereas the lesser proletariat contented themselves with a small handful of primary spray, marking simplistic tags in the available space. There appeared to be an unwritten understanding that nobody shits in another artist’s nest. None of them appeared to notice or resent my presence; a ghostly visitor to an art project.

Graffiti artists (and artists they most certainly are) get a filthy press; pilloried as vandals and wanton destroyers. Yet the same people who vent such spleen on these kids blithely tolerate the nauseating bilge on billboards from Sky or Coca Cola. None of them bats an eyelid when the airbrushed horror of David Cameron promises to save the NHS. This town has choked its residents for decades, given them cancer, smashed their hopes, destroyed the very aesthetic and culture of their existence. If only people could comprehend the level of effort, commitment and talent that goes into such a sub-genre of art, one assumes attitudes would change. Don’t hold your breath.

For me, the discovery of such concepts are hugely enlightening, and every bit as (if not more than) exciting as a visit to the Tate or indeed some stuffy exhibition of Neolithic cave paintings. The smell, the colour, the ideas and the narrative are of now, and should be cherished.

Full gallery available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/geniaphobic/sets/72157626428679340/

Ground Zero

2011-02-24T21:15:00.001Z

I meandered across from my Swansea Bay office to view the demolition of the Vetch Field, which for the less-informed is the abandoned former home of my cherished Swansea City FC. This cathedral for the crushed optimist; this gathering place for the aspirant-cynic; a quiescent sentinel to penury yielding its soft concrete underbelly to giant excavators ripping away remorselessly at its bleeding soul like fireants in a termite mound.

I was not alone in my curiosity and desire for a last nostalgic glimpse. Several middle-aged men appeared singly and sporadically at the open North Bank gates accessed by the demolition crew, craning and elevating on tip-toes for a final look at the razing like paparazzi at a celeb autopsy. One could detect the sort of moistening of eyes and grating-throatiness associated exclusively with Welsh men at a funeral.

It then dawned on me: while events pass us by like vapour, it is structure that frames our existence and retrieval. To crudely paraphrase: if you build it, they will come …if you dismantle it, they will cry. Melancholy oozing from the sepia-stained back pages of memory and time. It took approximately three minutes for this wistful fog to clear from my eyes with the sight of several scampering rats, followed by a famine-riddled feline.

And let us approach this vision and sip a tonic of realism. Surveying the fingers of buckled corrosion reaching out through smashed concrete terracing, it’s quite clear that Vetch Field was a shit hole. All that bleary-cheeked yearning for a return to the stadium cannot mask memories of broken glass cemented onto perimeters, asbestos sheeting hanging from the Centre Stand flanks like the rotten dermis of a homeless leper; rusting barbed wire strangling the walls like knotweed; weeds growing out of turnstiles and crumbling plateaux yawning with deep canyons that could disappear children.

Observing the North Bank’s diminishing piss-reeking silhouette against the winter gloom, it could almost be a Balkan concentration camp or an abandoned site for wartime chemical experimentation; a testament to how much the owners of the club throughout the years actually cared for the fans, allowing them to fill their guts with mechanical slurry, wade shin-deep in overflowing urine and be herded like livestock into an enclosure that could have become their tombs.

It was refuge for the bigot; a haven for the profane; a recourse for those who wished to bathe in the fumes of danger. Not at any stretch a safehouse for families, women and minorities wishing to support their team untethered by fears of the violent stereotypes who haunting its confines.

I had staggering memories at the Vetch Field that wrought my childhood, adulthood and as a parent taking my son every week and watching his wonderment at the developing soap opera that was Swansea City FC. Those days will travel through my soul as the happiest times with my boy; and with every day that he is not here with me adds flavour and light to those priceless memories in times of gloom. The Vetch Field gave this to me, and my love for it will be locked in a frozen capsule of joyous reminiscence.

But let us not be blinded by nostalgia. How many of us have fond recollections of a kindly grandpa who regaled us with his benignity and colourful stories that filled our young imaginations? …only for the maggots of the ages to dine on his brain, leaving an embittered impossible man. Would we aspire to rekindle those halcyon days that long had long since died? Would we wish to stand in dog shit because of the pet we loved as a child?

Let it die in peace and dignity. Long live Liberty.

Down the Tubes

2011-02-07T20:10:00.004Z

Now that Jamie Oliver has been sent packing with his hostess trolley full of macrobiotic earnestness from US schools content to pack the pie-holes of the nation’s waddling blimps; the story brought back an olfactory whiff of rancid memories from my own days in state primary school. In this case the life-changing lunch villain was liver and mash This brown lump of organic compound came in square shapes replete with protruding tubes like some hideous gravy-covered road kill from a Quatermass movie. The dinner ladies, no doubt knowing a thing or two about presentation, slapped it onto our plates like a karate auctioneer.

The real cuisine trauma though was reserved for the ‘scraping bowl’; a large metal receptacle into which we would dispose our uneaten food in the knowledge that local pig farms could share in the misery. The sight of a 3 foot high tottering tower of liver haunts my taste buds to this day, to the extent that any attempt to serve me dishes consisting of organs would have to come as part of a package including a tranquiliser dart and three months of post-traumatic counselling.

But what is it about school dinners that provoke a sense of communal revulsion? Was it the thought of Mr Hedges, the maths teacher reaching first for the custard jug -only for the sight of an erroneous nasal clipping dropping into the yellow gloop? Was it the realisation that at some stage a pea with the outer strata of an asteroid would hit the fat girl tucking into her flame-seared gypsy tart? Was it the hirsute dinner ladies serving a rehabilitative programme decreed by the Nuremburg trials? Who cares? School dinners were a rite of passage alongside dropping a pen and looking up Miss Evans’ skirt; putting dogshit in the caretaker’s mop bucket and stapling the posh kids’ duffel coats to the desk. It’s what made us what we are in this country today: bitter, hopeless empty souls gazing out a window of despair as the clouds of hopelessness drift by, dripping tears of lost ambition. Turkey twizzlers? Kids today don’t know they’re born, etc….

Rue Morgue Radio

2011-02-06T22:27:00.001Z

An evocative throwback to the days when our imaginations were filled with the horror and fantasy from dark and futuristic worlds held within the pages of comic books or hidden in the shadows of haunted fairgrounds.

Rue Morgue seeps with the spirit of those great old comics ‘Uncanny Tales’ and ‘Eerie’. I remember, as a 5-year old, moving into our new house and finding a box containing a crumpled copy of ‘Eerie’. I was transfixed by the monochrome tales of monsters, and taken with high contrast inks that framed a story about Dracula; ending with our favourite vampire fittingly impaled on a large tree spike.

There is an aroma from those old comics that permeates out from the pages of ‘Rue Morgue’. Check out the radio stream, and absorb all the sights and sounds of this great web site. http://rue-morgue.com/rmp_rm_radio.php

Red Flowers from a distant memory

2010-11-19T19:27:00.001Z

November 2010 was the month that this nation indulged in a spot of angst naval-gazing; trembling hands hovering nervously over a collection tin, wondering if the poppy was still patriotically significant in this day and age. Marks of respect and solidarity nowadays come in the forms of garish rubber wristbands; and those unlucky enough to get contact dermatitis from wearing the bloody things would probably set up a Facebook page or something. The less IT literate amongst us may even hang a bedsheet from the nearest bridge with a crudely daubed slogan, leaving it to dissolve in the elements, with the painted letters running like the mascara of a drunken spinster.

The poppy has evoked a series of debates about the relevancy of it. After all, its primary purpose is to commemorate a war that happened over 90 years ago (with subsequent wars and conflicts bolted onto it for good measure like an old car supplemented with extra parts scavenged over the years to keep the rust bucket roadworthy). Media commentators and public figures questioned the validity of wearing a small paper flower -and the BBC edict to do so- likening the societal backlash to not wearing one as ‘poppy fascism’ …a stupid phrase given the circumstances. Perhaps the next annual Holocaust convention will be likened to a ‘roomful of gasbags’.

The problem arises from the expectation that you should wear a poppy, especially if you have a respectable job; i.e. teacher, nurse, civil servant, newsreader, lawyer (I made the last one up). To not do so would hardly result in a lecture about being bayoneted in the face while suffering the twin evils of mustard gas and trench foot, but probably result in a raised eyebrow and some huffing in those morning office meetings. This year I bought three poppies, simply because it was obvious that they were going to become detached by coats, seatbelts, etc. However, my third purchase was on the 11th November, and having a meeting that morning do you think I could find a bugger anywhere? The blind panic that engulfed me was totally unnecessary. If we don’t want to wear a bloody poppy then we shouldn’t feel guilty about it. Equally if we want to imitate some fatuous WAG on an ITV reality show, fork out 85 quid and become adorned with the latest jewel-encrusted designer effort, then that should be OK too. Shouldn’t it?

I’ve always been anti-war. The blood-soaked follies of Iraq and Afghanistan have proven that in certain given circumstances, war is a tool too-oft used to promote the vested commercial and imperial interests of national bullies. War is akin to a load of drunken lads gatecrashing a houseparty, raiding the fridge, pissing in the aquarium, shagging the host and beating up her boyfriend, before setting fire to the pet dog who trails a frenzy of burning shit across the lounge. They then up and depart, leaving a smouldering aftermath of chaos and emotional debris that takes aeons to repair.

However unavoidable war is, one cannot doubt the fortitude of those who have to face death. We’ve all had what we consider to be awful traumatic events in our lives that we’d all prefer to avoid and forget: car accidents, fights, relationship breakdowns, financial worries, Lenny Henry …but how can this even scratch the surface of a daily fight for survival in conditions that would pollute the Gates of Hell, surrounded by the bloated decaying cadavers of friends we once sat next to in class learning our ABCs, chasing around the yard, catching butterflies, climbing trees, swapping cards, nicking sweets from the corner shop? How could we even begin to fathom the sense of helplessness that young men feel when they are sent out each day with the thought that they may never return alive to feel the glow of woman next to them or enjoy the warmth of the summer sun on a quiet sunday afternoon in the garden?

My great grandfather stands as the reason why I wear a poppy every year. Private Sydney Hooper (‘Pop’) was a gentle unassuming man who liked to sing little limericks to a four year old boy with shiny eyes who sat on his knee and demanded to see the bullet wound in his right hand and examine the gallantry medal nestling in a small velvet-lined wooden case. These twin trophies were the consequence of his capture of a pillbox armed to the teeth with German machine guns.

He never spoke much about the Great War or the effect it had on him. A small child could never be able to comprehend PTSD or ‘shell-shock’. I remember those days at the height of the Summer of Love. He would take me up to Bethany Square, where there were lines of benches occupied by his comrades; many of whom had eye patches, empty sleeves where arms once were, refashioned bases of walking sticks to replace legs lost on the fields of Flanders, and faces spattered with a myriad of black and red holes. To a man they were rendered deaf from the constant artillery bombardment, and the local air filled with the high pitched whistling of mistuned hearing aids. Yet they still retained a sense of quiet dignity and perspective. Bitterness never entered the lexicon of their discourse. Every one of them oozed with the essences of enduring politeness, optimism and kindness. In the face of a sixties counter-culture that railed against the establishment and its tools of war, these old men never argued with the idealistic hippy youths that confronted them, preferring to agree with them that war was and is wrong; and despite the huge generational differences, won them around. The bizarre sight of iridescent long-haired youngsters joyously chewing the fat with old mutilated men who’d spat in the face of Satan will stay in my mind for always.

In the intervening months and years Bethany Square featured less and less of Pop’s friends; dissolving like the embers of a rain-soaked fire. In 1969, pneumonia took him to them. Even then he departed in quiet dignity. Bertrand Russell once wrote: war does not determine who is right - only who is left. I miss him, and can only wonder what he would think about my hatred of the sneering violent decadent something-for-nothing superficial rotten country we are living in today. He would probably take me to one side and lighten the mood with another limerick. Lest we forget.

Steve Tibbetts – Natural Causes

2010-10-28T18:07:00.001+01:00

This serene, unique composer has been absent from these fanatical ears for some time following his last highly-acclaimed series of travel-inspired vignettes ‘Man about a Horse’. No doubt since that time, Tibbetts has been further honing his concept of creating a soundscape reflective of the plateaux of Lhasa and the tranquillity of Buddhism.

The album is a collage of rolling acoustic guitar and kalimba with the new addition of piano elements (Tibbetts has clearly filled the time of his furlough learning to play the instrument), driven by the sensitive percussion of Marc Anderson, who having worked with Tibbetts from day one is more than attuned to the flights of guitar. All this feeds into a deep chasm of ambience resulting in a work that can be jumped into at any juncture, shuffled or looped without any disruption to the quiescent ebb and flow. There are signposts to earlier works such as ‘Northern Song’ (which Tibbetts purportedly hated) and ‘Big Map Idea’.

This is another beautifully crafted warm embrace in a Himalayan zephyr from a master composer and musician who remains an enigma in his life and work.

http://stevetibbetts.com/

Skidmarks on the Highway

2010-10-26T21:24:00.001+01:00

There comes a sinister virus blown in with seedlings from the right that has bestowed absolute power on a select few clawing their way through narrow apertures of naked ambition, pounding to pulp a wake of withered effigies that once burned with lights of integrity, and plunging the bollock knife deep into honest flesh - twisting it to maximize trauma. Look at the claret spurt. Fuck him, he deserved it. He got in my path. Anyone else want some?

Thoughts tailspin to halcyon days where opinions mattered, personalities feted, individuality for the purpose of goodwill cherished and decency feasted upon like ambrosia from a deity’s goblet. These aphorisms became separated from their families, herded into remote warehouses, strung up and butchered; and the mutilated corpses driven off late at night in a bus showing the destination: ‘My Way’. In generations to come social historians will discover mass graves, being able only to identify the wretched bodies of hope and sincerity through dental records. Carbon dating will construct a picture of when there was such a thing as society. And they will laugh.

Cynicism leaks like a pungent effluent from the pores of our streets. Take a look out of your window. You will experience lateral blurs from warped elliptical bodies stuffed in polyester crossing your sightlines. Puffing and swearing rotund shapes waddle towards benefit queues and credit agencies; years of self-neglect and abuse-by-proxy etched in scowls barely masked by ascending plumes of exhaled smoke. Faces reddened with injurious anticipation of another day spent getting something for nothing, with exertion and sacrifice long discarded in a graveyard of verbs; their yellowing decay strangled by the grubbing weeds of corruption and fraud.

Blood and Bonfires

2010-10-22T19:48:00.001+01:00

A collective nimbus of anaesthesia has engulfed the public sector in the toxic slipstream of the Government’s mobile abbatoir. Workers either use the onrushing death train to embrace the inevitable denouement to their careers and display the ‘fuck off’ tattoo they have been saving for that rainy day encounter with their boss before retreating into a hermetic Sudoku cryogenesis; or wander agape like the nomadic urban hippies who herbo-chemically tenderised their synapses to mulch, and now shuffle in the twilight hours motorised by Lithium …their grubby emaciated frames silhouetted in the halogen from a Currys doorway.

The concept is skewed like a kitten writhing on razor wire. A nation in binding, ready for rehab and therapy after a basket case diagnosis by baronets lubricated at Bullingdon, toasting crumpets on the thorax of the ignorant; peering from the turrets to spit semi-congealed ptarmigan onto the salivating masses below. Never was so much given by so many to so few.

Maybe the Tories are right. The Big Society will return. People will once more find that sense of togetherness that had fallen down the back of the settee. Maybe we will achieve the self-discipline from a diet of austerity. This will stand us in good stead at the snaking dole queues and landfill tors. The rebirth of a proud nation …identified by future anthropologists from what was found caked behind our fingernails.

But while French cities burn and Greek army recruits are pounded under the feet of angry pensioners, we give a collective shrug and tut a bolus of commitment as if we’d just seen a single mother light a cigar in Quiksave, and not a rabid assault on our pensions, the dilution of our societal gel and a future as uncertain as Pete Docherty trapped in an Afghan poppy field.

But we can gather up a few crumbs of contentment from below a gaping mouth of broken teeth and split lips. The coalition is likely to unravel as systematically in its death throes as Gregory Isaac’s dreadlocks. Hideous turncoats like Cable when wiping his bottom will be haunted by the Ghost of LibDem Past sneering back up at him from the u-bend. Clegg will turn up only to find that –like the unpopular kid in school- he was given the wrong directions to the party, and will sit there in an empty room holding a paper cup containing all his dreams. The day of reckoning will come …and then given the chance, we’ll all tut just that little bit louder.

Observation Point: Gallery

2010-10-18T22:38:00.003+01:00

One long mix of compositions spanning the archives of Observation Point albums. A large canvas of drones and atmospheres for contemplative thought and inspiration. A suitable accompaniment to art installations and the visual image.

Download here: http://www.archive.org/details/ObservationPointGallery

More music available at www.observationpoint.co.uk
Email: info@observationpoint.co.uk
Twitter: @observation_pt

Tippex lines in the Office sand

2010-08-14T08:27:00.001+01:00

Satisfaction can seep into our guises in various forms. Some require neural gratification through sucking on a crack pipe like a lungfish boiled in diesel; others resolve their neuroses by jumping on a cat’s head; some drink lager and jeer at female comedians. For many irrelevancies in work provide a sense of private battlefields.

To win these battles may mean nothing to most, but to us they are real. They are what defines us as humans. Beating down a bully can edge us slowly towards a personal Nirvana …even if it happens on our lunch break. To ignore them, to let them slide, gnaws away at our inner sense of worth and adds another link to that chain locking us into a personal hell. And as Marx once said ‘…you have nothing to lose but your chains’.

Above and Beyond

2010-08-08T22:59:00.001+01:00

The picture below was an attempt at one of those Ansel Adams efforts that us budding –but less talented and more time drained- amateur snappers try to emulate in our own worlds. Miles above the Afan Valleys in bleak wind-hewn plateaux unchanged since the days that God started shaving.

Sitting hypnotically in our warm car seats lapping at the runny taste-free ice cream from a rusting pink van. We can forget about the vastness out there: mountains as far as the eye dares to squint; precipitous crags stabbing down violently upon the civilisation at their feet; glacial bleakness carved in the stealth of time winds. The far distant peaks beckon our curiosities, gazing at us from a remote place that they know we’ll never dare cover on foot. It might as well be the moon, such is its barren vista. It is alluring, beautiful, silent and frightening in equal measure.

All this appears to be lost on the TWOC-fed junkie car thieves from Treorchy and Cymmer, who in their priceless idiocy steal a vehicle, strip it, set it aflame & roll it down the steep banks where it will reside as a smouldering mangled pile in an automobile graveyard. They then have to walk home.

Crimson Tide

2010-08-01T23:25:00.001+01:00

I was sitting on Exmouth Beach, largely surrounded by corpulent women in polyester shorts framing their sun-ravage cellulitis, and men in sleeveless tops emblazoned with a ‘wacky’ seaside thematic. I was watching the cheap pleasure cruisers cutting swathes of estuary when I noticed a solitary red safety flag flapping despondently in the Devonshire zephyr. Nobody seemed to notice it as they plunged into dangerous undertow from precipitous sandbanks.

I thought I’d give it a sense of purpose again. Framing it against the clouds it almost looks like a standard for a communist ancien regime or a last tribute to a fallen revolutionary (life)guard. All those years acting as a protective sentinel for dimwitted surf paddlers, and now for a momentary shutter second it became an emblem for a new world order. Bless its scarlet heart beating under layers of wind-torn cotton. It should be proud.

Michael Hoenig - Live RIAS FM set 1977

2010-01-22T10:27:00.027Z

A rare recording of a live performance of the title track to the astounding 1978 Warner Brothers album 'Departure from the Northern Wasteland' by electronic pioneer Michael Hoenig. The sound quality isn't of digital brilliance, but it provides us with an insight into the compositional complexities of Hoenig's work, particularly his intricate minimalist (Reich-like) sequencer phases; and makes us wonder why he was never regarded in the same light as his luminaries and colleagues, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, despite arguably displaying much more in terms of talent and imagination.

Download here:

http://www.archive.org/details/MichaelHoenigLiveRiasFm77

Additionally, here's a sampler of the album title itself, with suitable imagery...

Observation Point - Beachcamp

2010-01-15T00:28:00.011Z

Subtle ambience from the album 'Thought Paths Vol.2'. Available for free download at www.observationpoint.co.uk

Black Gold in the Heart of Darkness (Part 1)

2010-01-04T23:54:00.051Z

It's an incongruous feeling to view the foaming wave of misplaced nostalgia from those who seek a revocation of the 80's like some brain-perverting smell from last year's grass cuttings where we buried the cat. These nobodies who wish they were somebodies again, feed flesh to the parasites of a decades-dead culture in the hope of the fattened juices once again oozing out to shrivel our tongues in rancidity at the return of singing Page 3 girls, shoulder pads, yuppies, Tories and -worse- Duran fucking Duran.

The 80's smeared a shimmering veneer to the dark infestations bubbling rancorously beneath. While people in outlandish quiffs and thick red braces called Piers or Jeremy bellowed into their coffin-sized mobile phones, others endured years of unimaginable struggle and hardship, doomed to be picked off by the augeries of their demise, like harpies at KFC.

My dad was such a victim. His career as a crane driver in the local steelworks smashed against the rocks of 'restructuring'; his security and definition thrown onto a putrescent heap containing all his school friends, followed by a liberal sprinkling of quicklime to dull the rancour. I can recall him wandering in the garden, shuffling aimlessly in a soporific daze of disbelief that he was going to be made redundant. While never displaying the sort of militantism of some of his striking cohorts, he nevertheless was enraged enough to enlist on the picket lines, and emboldened by this unnatural rush of commitment, kick down the door of the fearfully abandoned payroll office. I don't know if he expected to find anything other than meaningless reams of printouts, discarded fag coupons and a saucy calendar, but he'll never convince anyone that it wasn't he who took a shit on the cashier manager's desk.

The dismantling of the steel industry by Thatcher and her chosen executioner MacGregor was akin to Victorian surgeons peeling at a wretched disparate strapped to a slab; excising all the healthy flesh and leaving behind a blob of writhing scabrous mulch. Thousands suddenly found themselves without a future, and although sales of betamax video recorders hit critical mass, so did the sight of grown men drunkenly staggering out of social clubs; their thousand yard stares framed in bloodshot eyes of hopelessness.

Taking on the steel (and rail) workers was Thatcher's little dress rehearsal for the miners. Like a precocious débutante about to perform at the Albert Hall, trying out her apocryphal talent on a front room of squeaking grannies too shocked or timid to denounce the nauseating display of selfishness before them. Consequently, hitherto horny-handed and grease-daubed hardmen wilted in a pathetic display of capitulation not seen since the day Charles Hawtrey was gang-raped by Hell's Angels.

Eulogised by the Sun-reading masses only too keen to devour spurious pictures -amidst the tits- of a UK pauperised by unburied dead children and sneering blackened faces sticking their unwashed cocks into effigies of the Queen; Thatcher drew a line in the coal where uniforms and riot shields assembled to beat a rhythmic Zulu incant, before caving in the skulls of men trying to save their jobs and the heartbeat of their communities. 1984: The last great battle for the soul of Britain's society had begun ...and things would never be the same again.

Biosphere: Cirque

2010-01-02T19:54:00.013Z

Biosphere - Cirque

Touch Records

2000

Unsurprisingly, the geography-oriented ambience of Geir Jenssen's Biosphere project proves a tight fit with Touch, the label launched by former travelogue writer Jon Wozencroft. Cirque collects 11 short Biosphere pieces, each evocative of a photo included in an accompanying booklet. Though the subjects range throughout Europe (from New Year's Eve on London's South Bank to a rocky meadow near Jenssen's native Tromsö, Norway, to rural Hampshire to a mountain on Crete), the music sticks mostly to either soft, textured rhythms -- if Jenssen were a drummer, he'd be using his whisks -- or deep dub/techno with soothing synthesizers over-arching most of the work. One of the highlights, "Black Lamb & Grey Falcon" is ambience of a dark, crackly nature with the melancholy repetition of a guitar and whispers of light classical music in the background. There's an ill-defined sense of understatement and subtlety that is inherently secret within the mix. It's difficult to tell whether Jenssen incorporated field recordings into Cirque, and if there are any present, they're in heavily processed form; except for a few vocal samples, there's no explicit environmental feel. In keeping with much Biosphere material, Cirque owns a sense of grandeur and quiet beauty that once again reinforces Jenssen's immense talent in creating evocative electronic music.

Film review: The Devil's Rejects (2005)

2009-12-16T09:06:00.051Z

Horror movies are as rare as tarmac truffles in terms of delivering that sharp intake of 'fuck me sideways' breath. In most cases they rest on formulaic lines of tedium, sandbagging the flood of unimaginative storyline with layers of special effects that drive enthusiasm to distraction. Batons get passed on from previous genre-specific shockers to become clumsily dropped by ponytailed idiots with budgets bulking up the brain space where creativity has long left the building. Thus we get numerous staggeringly boring haunted house, summer camp and masked killer flicks, each in turn cheapening the memory of the original radical scaries that tapped into our primal neuroses. I can't recall any recent film (apart from 'The Blair Witch Project') that has created that chest-tightening sense of anxiety, or made you leave the cinema either in stunned silence or moist-pants adrenaline-shot wildness.

Rob Zombie recognised this. His work with White Zombie hinted at a world of tattooed freaks, ghouls and evil souls haunting the dark recesses of a deserted fairground. His music is littered with samples from old B-movies and newsreels of serial killers. It's clear that Zombie consumed horror and western comics with a gusto that could only come from a generation that fed off the post-war fears of nuclear oblivion, the bogeyman and UFOs. If you can recall the very first time as a child you rode on a ghost train, then Zombie will have distilled those tears.

'Devil's Rejects' is an unique horror movie. Rather than treading that familiar genre path, Zombie shoots us back to the 70s and mixes us up a collage of concepts where road trips, hillbillies, psychos, necrophiliacs, dysfunctional famillies, pimps, whores and maverick killer police collide violently in the dustbowls of California's ghostlands. The movie is littered with homages to old cop shows, westerns and monochrome comedies; splays out visions of backwater hick towns with their filthy whorehouses, shacks and rotten trailers, and challenges our allegiances to and from a violently sociopathic group of murderers. It also throws in some laughs along the way to allow us to catch our breaths from the carnage before our eyes.

The cast is inspired. Sid Haig dishes out a tower of demented wretchedness as the patriarch Captain Spaulding, a rotten-toothed cokehead giant in magicake who conforms to just about every fear we ever had about clowns; William Forsythe spews out sermons of psychotic revenge as Sheriff Wydell (including his own Travis Bickle mirror scene); Bill Moseley arguably steals the show as Otis, possibly the most accurate celluloid depiction of Charles Manson yet. His "I am the Devil..." last words to a dying Johnny Cash fan (whose head he is about to stave in) is apparently a direct quote of Chuck's and clearly the stuff of nightmares. Sheri Moon Zombie is passable, though an irritating verbal squeak can only be redeemed by a perfect derriere. The rest are pages from the worst lowlife freakshow you could ever be unlucky to stumble across: mutants, chicken fuckers, trailer trash hired killers. And Michael Berryman.

Zombie hones his craft well, combining the visuals (a sort of sepia chromatic lighting and scene slide-shifting, redolent of 70s TV movies) with an excellent and subtle rock soundtrack that embellishes the scenes rather than shoulder charges them aside (Michael Mann take note). The denouement achieves something I never thought possible: it makes us reassess our ingrained hatred for Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Freebird'. In fact the song should now only ever be associated with this movie, so well do the two mediums clutch each other in an incubus of sight & sound. Otherwise it should perish in the flames of an aircrash.

'Devil's Rejects' succeeds on many fronts. Whereas Zombie's teeth-cutting debut, the deranged 'House of 1000 Corpses' was in essence a series of ever-crazier vignettes that appeared to have little relationship to each other and left us with a blank taste of unfulfillment (a bit like a bag of Revels); 'Devil's Rejects' taps into our terrified and romantic personifications of serial killing desperadoes. It's obvious that Zombie has given us the Manson Family cult morphed into the Three Stooges. As a consequence we are appalled at the Firefly familly's wanton and somewhat comical disregard for human life, yet inwardly applaud when Otis cuts the face off an irritating city cowboy. At the end of the film we see what looks like 8mm home movies of the family, goofing about in the sun and acting just like any normal loving bunch of West coast hippy folks. This is a subtle mark of genius. Zombie is playing games with our morality, and it's difficult not to be enchanted. Tooty-fuckin'-fruity.

Film Review: Demons (1985)

2009-12-15T17:34:00.033Z

An absolute hoot from Lamberto Bava, and produced by our favourite first-person slasher Dario Argento. A somewhat less than ingenious take on the zombie one-bite-and-you're-history contamination fest, and probably the first movie to feature the undead that actually run, as opposed to gandering about slowly like an old inebriate on an escalator who's just soiled his underwear.

There is interesting currency in the storyline, whereby random individuals are given freebies (by a semi metallic-faced cyberpunk) to a movie premiere of some old hokum about a scratchy mask from Nostradamus's tomb that infects the hilarious prankster stupid enough to try and scare everyone by putting it on. Unfortunately for the movie-goers, the same thing happens in the cinema, whereas a latex-clad prostitute gets the fateful nick (which has us stroking our chins and discussing the metaphor for HIV in the sex trade). The interplay between what's happening on-screen and in the cinema (as those with the superficial cuts turn into psychotic flesh-eating ghouls) is quite impressive, were it not for the dayglo green fluid that spurts from demon mouths as if they'd been dining on a course of highlighter pens.

Plenty of demographic boxes are ticked: no-shit-muthafucker pimp Hagler clone with a switchblade; hysterical females and their heroic granite-jawed beaux who drag their pathetic limpid sobbing carcasses to ever more ridiculous places of safety; a blind man and his unpleasantly disloyal wife; sensible geek-types; a curmudgeonly old misogynist bastard. All are treated equally in demonland, to be mashed, scraped, chewed, beheaded, disembowelled and gouged. And why should it be any other way? Fresh meat is not subject to the Disability Discrimination Act.

Despite some staggeringly cheap special effects, including what looks like a fire-damaged shop mannequin with a rubberised tongue wiggling at the terrified throng for no reason and the mystifying inclusion of an Alien-like scene where a horned beelzebub bursts out through someone's abdominal cavity, the movie holds and builds a sense of choking claustrophobia like sitting next to a snoring fat madman on the bus; and one feels trapped alongside the victims as the body count rises. This is Italian shlock horror at its best: buckets of bright crimson; spurting putrid body fluids; sinews ripped from gaping necks and teeth twisted and popped out to be replaced by goblin fangs; and lavish hues illuminating the cacophonous screams of evisceration.

The let-down is the soundtrack. Goblin's Simonetti tries his best to give us a burst of electro-suspense, but then amidst the neon-lit gore we have to endure Go West, Saxon and Billy Idol, for fuck's sake. There are also some of the crudest product placements for Coca Cola; absurd methods of cocaine sniffing by carjackers and a crazed motorbike/samurai sword segment, as the same zombie gets sliced at least four times.

As with all Italian horror, there is that sense of rushed ending akin to doing an English exam, and with 5 minutes to go realising that there's another bloody page of questions to answer. Thus upon escape from the cinema, our remaining heroes discover that the world has been overrun by zombies and they hitch an emergency lift with a heavily-armed family who are escaping in their landrover to try and find a better life. Though where that could be in demon-infested Italy is anyone's guess; unless Portofino has got Neighbourhood Watch.

Nonetheless, it's an intriguing 80's chewer, which in effect follows the well-trodden familiar 'siege' movie path (and therefore another version of 'Night of the Living Dead'); and even features what looks like some Argento-filmed pieces, where as usual a woman gets knifed repeatedly and the murderer is the camera (Argento). This boy has got some issues. Apparently his loathing of women was spawned by early episodes of female abuse. I've had the shits from curry over the years, but I've never fed the urge to film myself burning down an Indian restaurant.

Film Review: Dead Man's Hand (2007)

2009-12-14T23:04:00.010Z

You'd have thought that a movie featuring the ever watchable Sid Haig (Captain Spaulding from 'Devil's Rejects') and Michael Berryman (of the same, but also the original Wes Craven's 'Hills have Eyes') combined with the synopsis of a derelict Vegas casino haunted by the undead spirits of the criminal underworld, would leap out of the shelves at you like a rabid marmoset, tearing at your attentive glands and filling your pants with excited droplets of uric acid.

You couldn't be more wrong if you were to wear the skin of Mick Hucknall in an Arizona sandstorm. This is a woefully bad movie that would soon have you multi-tuning to QVC for escape if it was aired on Zone Horror. As is traditional to hawk it to the bored younger attention span-deficit generation, we get the usual fare of irritating teenagers of various personalities, i.e. geek, foxy, rebel, good guy/gal, stoner, etc. Amazing how so many demographics end up as friends. The main protagonist, who inherits the casino from his dead mafia great-uncle has more plank on display than a whole aisle at B&Q. His simpering girlfriend seemingly spends the entire movie stuck to him like an icecube to a dog's anus. The rest of the cast would fail a screentest for a porn flick such is their inherent disregard for imparting dialogue with any enthusiasm.

The effects are laughably poor. At one scene the 'foxy chick' encounters an equally sexy female ghost who, prior to dispatching the hormonal annoyance, metamorphoses into a rotten fairground corpse, replete with -get this- eyeballs that roll like one-armed bandits, displaying two death skulls. The soundtrack is hideously inappropriate and seems to have been hived from the abortion floor of 'Diagnosis Murder'. As we'd expect, our plucky heroes & heroines consistently ignore the basic rules of not getting snuffed in a horror movie. Though for this watcher's eyeballs, thank fuck that none of them did, as it would clearly have prolonged the agonising torment.

Which brings to us to Haig. Clearly this was an easy payday for him, cashing in on his past travails presumably to refurnish his Fresno apartment. Although eminently watchable as always, Haig doesn't even appear to make any semblance of effort ...and he doesn't really have to, surrounded as he is by graduates from a drama school for the autistic. Sid's no doubt got a few pay days left yet, such is the cultish currency of his demented Spaulding from the great 'Devil's Rejects'. Anyone who's seen his terrifying warning to the small boy in a car he's about to jack will lament the day that he featured in this bucket of shit. Berryman is simply just himself, locked in that hanging prune of a face, with a lacklustre look that says 'I'm ugly, so what ...fucking live with it'.

In all 'Dead Man's Hand' is something that could (and should) have been circumcised without anaesthetic in order to fit an episode of 'Tales from the Crypt'. Possibly one of the worse and least scary horror movies of the last decade, to rank alongside the stupendously vile 'Catacombs' starring Pink. One can only lick our lips and think of the untold mayhem Rob Zombie could have wreaked with such a storyline. Then again, we probably would have been treated to another scene of Sheri Moon's gyrating bare bottom ...not that we're complaining, eh lads? I'm so sickened by this movie that it will be immediately returned to Poundland for a full refund, or at least Charles Band's severed head on a stick that's been prodding a fat woman's arse. Bastards.

2009-11-19T11:35:00.005Z

Morfa Beach, Margam 09.09.09
The last great deserted secret of South Wales. Miles of nothingness, just the crooked shapes of driftwood curled and contorted in pronation like the Chinchorro Mummies. Dunes rise above, sending their sentinel gazes across the bay, windblown reeds gyrating with green tongues that say 'stop being such a meandering dreamy fuckwit, and keep walking'.

Cry Me a River

2009-10-28T16:41:00.073Z

If anyone these days could actually be bothered to thumb through historical text, immersing in fusty chronicles (probably handled by an officious stern-looking man clad in snooker ref's gloves) one would be able to recount tales of triumph and misadventure bobbing in a sea of adversity. We would witness how historical failures would be treated in an almost casual shrug-shouldered acceptance that it was ever thus. When King Harold was about to be rendered into bite-sized kebabs on the field of Hastings I bet he pursed his lips and offered his arrow-sieved head for Norman butchers. When a mud and disease-caked tommy clambered out of some dysenteric Flanders foxhole to be gassed and bayoneted in the face by advancing Germans his last words were probably a cheeky "Cor blimey, Kaiser lad, yer've got me dead to rights -and make no bloomin' mistake."

Of course this is all bollocks. But the reason I mention it is to illuminate a contrast between the daring heroic sagas that filled the two-colour adventure pages of latter-day childhood comics, such as Victor and Eagle, in comparison to the blubbering effete milquetoast wastrels that haunt our society today.

We live in the lachrymose generation; a place in time where the tear duct has dominion. These days it's as ubiquitous as dogshit in a municipal park to witness grown men and women suddenly erupt forth with a whining outburst as soon as the TV cameras are pointed in the direction of their pointless self-indulgent stupid moist little faces. This odious display is designed purely to pull the public along on their pissy-pants cart of histrionics, seemingly expectant of a huge societal "Aw, blesssssss" as we huddle together blubbing in a huge saline lake of sentiment. Where indomitable spirit and a cheerful disposition kept us collective under the twin sieges of disease and war, now a sense of togetherness is fostered by the daily domestic anguish of a nondescript untalented reality TV reject who claws at our equilibrium by wiping away grizzled snot while publically exposing their hideous psychological entrails.

These hell riders of the emotional rollercoaster attack in various guises, and include:
a) The semi-literate talent show auditionee whose IQ and ability to hold a tune is in direct ratio to the amount of gold sovereigns on display. Upon the inevitable rejection they spontaneously inflate into something resembling the critical mass of a wailing marmoset's bladder, before erupting forth in a tsunami of repugnant self-pity, proclaiming "this is my life... it's all I've ever dreamed of", while clutching a small picture of a dead child. Oh yeah. What sort of life ambition can be measured by public ridicule from a sleazy millionaire in chest-hugging trousers, a hyperactive Irish gay irritant and two slightly movable female mannequins?

b) The sporting icon who, following an embarrassing and ill-conceived comeback, hastily calls a press conference to announce -to anyone still interested- that they will be retiring again. This is then punctuated by some clichéd platitude such as "I gave it my best shot, but it didn't work out..." before the statement trails off as the sniffling deadbeat croaks a barely audible "sorry", puts his/her hand over the microphone and dabs at a big girly tear. And, just in case there is anyone still interested who hasn't torn out their own spleens, the washout reappears in 6 months to hold another press conference to announce to a shocked world that they regularly took drugs ...and the whole rotten melodrama is repeated ad nauseam until they suffer a fatal coronary on UK Living while attempting a minority sport tenuously associated with their former selves.
c) The former c-list celebrity venturing to glean soulful catharsis by spilling their guts on a prime time chat show. This usually consists of a revelatory checklist featuring abuse, addiction, illness or the death of a parent. Major tabloid gold dust is mined if all of the above apply. Most of us meander about our lives marginally concerned about a bald tyre or if that third piece of toast was really necessary, our memory banks barely recalling that time we saw a tramp taking a shit in the bus shelter. Celebrities however drag themselves torn through mascara-stained battlefields of brutal gang rape, crystal meth rehab, recovery from terminal cancer and "I never got the chance to say goodbye to my mam...". Maybe if they had spent less days mewling to assorted TV hosts and magazines they might just have been able to pop into see their mother, presumably for a quick photoshoot from the death bed. Wankers.

Of course it hasn't always been like this. Our culture never seemed to yearn for a pick at the tender scabs and weep at every available opportunity like some hired mourner at the funeral of the psyche. We can trace this disease of the poignant gland to two significant events: the 1990 World Cup Semi Final, and the death of Princess Diana. Under normal circumstances we'd lampoon the moron Gascoigne, despite his staggering footballing talent. However a mis-timed tackle moved him out of the pantheon of great-but-flawed footballers and onto the laps of cooing maternalism. It's a widely held view that Gazza was crying for England when he received the booking that would potentially cost his team dearly. Bollocks. His shirt wrung out tears of self-pity because the dull twat wasn't going to be playing in the World Cup Final. He was crying for himself. However, as an almost weird echo of wartime propaganda, created to boost the nation's morale (such as the collection of metal items from households to help the war effort, even though it was all dumped in a large incinerator or ended up as Grace Jones), the press played on it as Gazza's Tears for Unlucky England. At the stroke of a journo's pen he went from drunken Geordie amoeba to some sort of deity who, as a man, was not afraid to shed real tears for his country. Gazza has a lot to answer for, because since that time we've had to endure the public nausea of a whimpering Tony Adams and a sniveling Paul Merson, banging on at length about their own self-inflicted obstacles with lager, horses and marching powder. And where exactly are we supposed to feel pity for a millionaire footballer so hammered that he passed out behind the wheel of a car and ploughed into a lamppost? Unfortunately, Kerry Katona was not frozen in the oncoming headlights, otherwise Adams would've been knighted for services.

Diana's death was a vile illustration of moral panic. Almost as if we'd kept a whining grizzling genie that looked like Stan Laurel incarcerated under the stiffness of upper lip. When this pampered sloane (who was not averse to doing the well-eyed Bambi routine herself) became embedded in a Paris tunnel, a sudden surge of fervid lava engulfed us like the people of Pompeii. Drowning under a sea of Interflora and Elton John, we all enlisted to grab an even bigger slice of the sentimental pie than the next person. Thus, we saw crazy scenes of scuffles breaking out in Woolworths as grown men and women battled to grab as many copies of 'Candle in the Wind' like pickers at a doomsday harvest. Groups of complete strangers shared bodily fluids as shoulders were used to wipe away the mucosal discharge of a million dolorous group hugs. The most abhorrent facet of Di's death was the sense of societal compulsion to grieve for her. Overnight the country turned into the closing scene from a Romero movie as red-eyed zombies shuffled aimlessly about our towns and cities, moaning and dribbling. Shoot 'em in the head. It's the only way. My son had the right idea. He was five when Diana copped it, and the school insisted that all the children did paintings of remembrance, which would then be sent to Buckingham Palace. Whereas most kids concocted romantic scenes of an ickle Princess, with wings ascending to the heavens; my lad opted for the Francis Bacon approach and produced a melting coffin emblazoned with Rest In Pieces. I was later called for discussion with a 'concerned' headmaster.

But where do we go from here? Is the Maldives being systematically submerged due to global warming or the voluminous crocodile tears from a national outpouring of faux dejection? Can precipitation be blamed upon Michael Barrymore and Les Dennis on a self-help weekend in Snowdonia? Are the Tracks of My Tears about to be taken over by Network Rail? Please don't ask me anymore ...I feel as though I'm starting to well up ...er... (croak) sorry, I...er (sniff)....

Slapton Ley 24.10.09

2009-10-27T15:34:00.007Z

An intriguing place somehow measured by the vast haunted spaces of beach and lake separated by a thin strip of asphalt. There is a stark eeriness about the area, almost as if it is haunted by the tragic lost US Army souls who found their young lives torpedoed out to shore.

The above picture was taken shortly after bumping into erstwhile TV comic actor Rik Mayall, who I encountered outside the public toilets in a long mac, puffing heavily on a fag. When I said hello, he spluttered out a mash of tobacco vowels, followed by: "don't worry, I'm just another wandering paedophile."

Suey Seems to be the Hardest Word

2007-09-01T16:37:00.006+01:00

What is it about late-night restaurant soirees that bring out the basest instincts of humanity’s dreg-scraping animus? More often than not we’d quietly flat-line through the day, disturbing not hide nor hair in custom and tradition, saying sorry to random strangers we may impede on their own productive pathways. However, pollute our system with nocturnal alcohol, head off for a curry, and we suddenly turn into an overbearing invasion of obnoxious commentary, foul table manners and xenophobic disrespect for those employed to cook; not to mention those inclined to eat.

How many of us have ever, in a state of sobriety, and tucking into our midnight concoctions, shook our heads as some inebriated braggart entered the dining room and started bellowing: “Oi, Ghandi; I’ll have a big fuckoff alsation khorma, pronto!”?

The perplexing way that this behaviour is somewhat considered reputable as a ‘badge’ of masculine beer bragging and rite of passage tells us a lot about the society we live in. We curl back in revulsion when a piss-reeking tramp waves a can of costcutter cider in our faces. We look the other way and tut when someone staggers on the bus and whines a tirade of religious tongues while pointing menacingly at their own reflection. Yet somehow we let it slide when an intoxicated man with his belly flopping out of an open shirt hurls late-night insults at oriental food servants.

I must ashamedly admit to being party to cuisine terrorism in such a place once. In fact I should say that the night in question was of such low etiquette anarchy that I should really be hogtied and carted off to have my head immersed in the used disposal chute of a busy tandoori kitchen.

The venue in question was The Pearl Chop Suey House, an old established Chinese eatery in the main part of town. Despite tastes becoming more sophisticated as we embraced multiculturalism at the dying embers of the 20th century, the ‘Pearl’ remained steadfast against the invading tide of Cantonese fare; offering staple choices, including chips with eyes glowing in thyroid stares and a prawn curry that looked like the product of a home abortion kit. The ambience was of traditional mandarin folk harmony that hung in the fetid air lit by flickering yellow light bulbs, before running down the peeling flock dragon wallpaper and gasping its last breath prone on stained crimson rubber tablecloths. I swear that one of those cloths bore my name, engraved by a fork at least 3 years previously.

Every town and social group has incidents that, while memorable, become embellished to the point of legend in subsequent retale. Example: a simple scuffle outside a kebab house becomes the stuff of cinematic Kurosawa battles across urban planes involving sophisticated weaponry, arson of properties and a police tactical response unit supported by attack helicopters. This particular night at The Pearl was no exception. I’ll lead you to believe.

I was part of a group of seven (which included a dwarf, a Tourettes sufferer and a heavily tattooed skinhead) that descended upon The Pearl in order to replenish the monosodium glutamate diluted by a night of dense alcoholic osmosis. I suppose, given the skinhead reference, we could pay tribute to Yul Brynner, and call ourselves The Municipal Seven.

Anyway, picture the scene: a septet of boorish drunken freaks entered a packed restaurant to find only one table for four available. Those swift of foot (and less pissed) grabbed the opportunity in tottering haphazardness akin to musical chairs on a north sea fishing vessel. Those left behind would have to embrace the fusty purgatory of the upstairs ‘overflow’ room. I found myself in the former group. Nosferatu and Tattoo (to use crude descriptive noms de guerre for the skinhead and dwarf respectively) were sentenced to the latter. So far so good, I hear you mumble at this juncture. Wrong.

The problem is that The Pearl employed some of the most belligerent and rude waiters west of the Silk Road, including the owner, the diminutive Mr Hong, who sauntered around in a frayed tuxedo topped by such an ill-fitting cheap acrylic toupee that it probably required velcro chinstraps to prevent the inevitable migration from his miserable little cranium. In the lexicon of local witticism, it came as no surprise that he was universally known as ‘Wiggy’. He always kept the same furrowed brow expression and sucking lemon mouth puckered like a little cat’s arse. He, and those in his employ, barked out rapid firing squad discourse. “You order food!”. “No drink beer ‘til order food” …and so on. This didn’t help matters in a night that was about to turn sour.

No sooner had we sat down than a squeal filled the fetid air. “You steal knife fork!”. One of the waiters had insisted that he’d laid the table and we’d half-inched the Wiggy family silver. What bollocks. Soon we were surrounded by minuscule men in black waistcoats, pecking at us in cartoon Jackie Chan voices to “give back knife fork! Give back knife fork!”. Problem is, Mr Tourettes was at our table. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck” came the admeasured retort like an idling truck with a fractured exhaust. With that we were ‘invited’ to turn out our pockets to prove our innocence of such a heinous felony. Big mistake.

“Cock to that!” came the rejoin as Mr Tourettes clambered up onto the table and commenced disrobing as the rest of us provided a suitable soundtrack via that old 70’s stripper tune (Da da daaa, dada da daaa …if that’s any help at all). Uninhibited by such a cacophonous theme, off came the shirt and trousers, and the socks were given the twirly finger tassle treatment before being catapulted across the room, presumably in some unfortunate’s sweet’n’sour. Other diners started joining in with a resultant crescendo of noise, and just as the ill-fitting y-fronts were about to be peeled south, Wiggy screamed “You stop! Get dressed! No clothe! No knife fork! No food!”

Unwittingly in attempting to prove our innocence in the dark underworld of cutlery crime we’d broken urban rule No.1: never misbehave before the meal arrives. Otherwise: a) it’ll not get delivered, or b) will have the chef’s salivatory emissions mixed in with sauce. Anyway, Wiggy, bruised by the impromptu lap dance, and the realisation that his waiter was indeed an idiot, started to push and prod. “You get out! You trouble! No food! No food!” He was clearly distracted, as the next event was unfolding.

Punters began starting to complain that something was dripping onto their heads and plates from the ceiling above. Wiggy despatched a minion to investigate upstairs, fearing a burst water main. Suddenly a high-pitched "Noooooo!!!” echoed down the flight as everyone stopped eating in curiosity. Was the waiter engulfed in a first-floor tsunami? Had the giant tank of ornamental carp burst its glass banks? No, the situation was much worse, as an ashen waiter threw himself down the stairs, fell at the last two steps, and staggering on his knees, grabbed at Wiggy’s cummerbund, gasping: “Bald man …bald man …bald man pass water….”

Consider for one minute the incongruent potential for savage dismemberment here. I’m not talking about the average kicking, but the planned use of rendering skills by ninjitsu chefs with jagged kitchen implements. The key was to act fast to save our follically challenged bladder exhibitionist on the first floor. Wiggy was in the throes of yelping an adjure to his kitchen assassins (and if you’ve tasted the food, you’ll respect this as a valid description), and we were poised to produce a deft strategy of containment, when a completely random punter appeared from the bamboo shadows and snatched off Wiggy’s hairpiece before racing out the door and down Station Road, waving his prize like someone who’d just thumped in the extra time cup final winner. There was momentary silence followed by a huge uproar of mirth, which swept across The Pearl like a cloud of mustard gas. Ovation and table-banging ensued as women fell off their chairs in mascara-coated delirium. Men, doubled-up in tears, attempted to stop their floating ribs from convulsing Alien-like through abdominal cavities of glee.

Wiggy’s expression was akin to that of a Sunday school teacher who’d just discovered porno mags amidst the tambourines. In what seemed like only seconds, yet probably decades for the Wigmeister, he fumbled through the coat racks and grabbed his trusty old pork pie hat, donning it quickly as if it was full of priceless liquid & polystyrene bits. We all have this inexplicable trait of doing something –anything- to cover up an embarrassing situation, despite everyone and his bloody dog seeing it. Example: how many of us have had our feet up on the desk at work only for the boss to walk in, resulting in us sharply swinging them down? How many times have we pretended we haven’t fallen or badly twisted our ankle, despite a whole city of people witnessing it & wincing through their teeth? This assumes that everyone but ourselves drift into an amnesiac catalepsy whenever events befall, allowing us to escape, dignity intact. This of course was Wiggy’s rationale: basically we hadn’t noticed that the fucker was balder than a terrapin’s scrotum because we were too preoccupied with piss dripping on our heads. Thankfully the toupee thief had delayed the inevitable carnage.

Well, not quite. There was still an incontinent skinhead to deal with. Three waiters, armed with cloths, and Mrs Wiggy, armed with a broom ascended the stairs with trepidation at the watery funeral that awaited. The earlier frivolity had subsided to a grave hush, which was akin to a Leone western climax as chimes, jangling guitars and close-ups of nervous twitchy faces heralded the inevitable denouement. Metaphorical buzzards circled overhead and tumbleweeds billowed across plates of uneaten food. Suddenly it erupted. A crash, followed by “fuck you!!” as Nosferatu came tumbling into the stairwell, his jeans matted with urine and Mrs Wiggy lunging behind, wielding a spinning brush like a majorette with ADHD. Who can underestimate the incredible bravery of a pocket-sized lady against a six foot toothless hairless oik who’d just relieved himself over her customers? A few more whacks with the broom and he was out through the door and into the gutter outside, half-laughing, half-agonising. She turned to us, our faces ashen. “Now yooo get fucky out of restaurant!!”. We slowly rose in unison, our gazes shifting side to side to each other and back to the armed banshee about to do us some damage. Time to leave. Quietly. While we still had teeth.

Just then, another aberrant noise erupted from the top of the stairs. “bllooooaaar!! I’m gonna be sick!!!…..” Our dwarf friend had obviously become too tired & emotional, and the heady cocktail of beers & rich sauces had finally pushed his equilibrium above the plimsole line of temperance. We looked up to see Neil (the hitherto unmentioned member of our troupe) carrying Tattoo under his arm, staggering down the stairs while the latter vomited over the side of the banister. Try to imagine someone walking off with a ventriloquist’s dummy that’s suddenly losing its innards and you’ll be half way there to the weird scene now being played in your mind. Needless to say, the place was no longer in uproarious mood. There was an almost psychedelic solemnity. As if one had just witnessed the passing of a UFO with Elvis on a bungee.

At this stage it was clear that the proprietors had lost the will to live. Wiggy was waving and gesticulating like a points duty official who had just dropped a tab of acid; the waiters were propping each other up in obfuscation and mental exhaustion, and Mrs Wiggy was using the broom to scoop up the lumps of dwarf chunder that had rebounded off walls and light fittings. There was a sense of bewilderment of the sort that you’d see in the faces of captive monkeys who masturbate.

But why spoil the good night without a climax? Exultantly, Mr Tourettes shouted: “Runner!!”, and with that we took off towards the door. Urban rule no.2: when someone shouts “Runner!” you have no option but to surf the wave of rapid exit strategy or otherwise you’ll be saddled with paying for a set meal for eight. It’s wrong, but I’ll be fucked if I’m going to cough up because of my moral compass.

So out we surged, hopefully content in the knowledge that Wiggy & co. were too strung out to even care by now. Unfortunately Mr Tourettes decided that a more decorative exit would be appropriate, and grabbed the tablecoths of three tables as he run past, dragging everyone’s meals in a huge slipstream of noodles & hoi sin. As we got to the door, we couldn’t slip the bloody latch. This is a typical example of how panic can render the easiest objects impossible (try operating your seat belt or opening a childproof paracetamol bottle when you’re in a rush). As we shanked at the hitherto unsophisticated yale locking mechanism I peered back into the restaurant to see several kitchen staff tearing out at pace, holding bamboos that were as thick as my arm. “gerra fuckin move on!!!” We managed to open it and burst out into the street, running like the wind (or maybe gambolling unsteadily like a slight breeze) pursued by screaming chinamen waving the deadly implements of our demise. Combat tactics always suggest throwing hunters off your trail by splitting up. Deciding this was the best policy I broke away from the peloton and headed down a back lane. Unfortunately the punishers decided to take my scent. 100 yds into urban darkness and I could not run any more. Adrenaline is a fast-burning chemical that lays waste to energy over a short period, combusting and leaving an empty shell. Basically, I was shagged out. They were upon me.

Rather than put up a fight and get a large hollow stick across my beautiful face I determined that the best policy would be to drop & roll, and curl up into a foetal position. As I hit the damp tarmac corrupted by domestic waste & old men's snot, I was surrounded by four oriental enforcers, who decided to beat seven colours of shit out of me as if they were putting out a small forest fire. Wave upon wave of wretchedness arrived. Then nothing. They had disappeared into the night. The only ambience was a feint ringing in my ears providing an evocative soundtrack to the searing pain across my arms, legs and torso.

Eventually I was reunited with my group, who staggered in astonishment at the welts from a painful retribution. Some laughed, and I laughed with them. Then someone said: “Tom, why the fuck did we run? We’d already paid for our meals!!”

Miasma Generator

2006-11-25T14:37:00.000Z

I once entered a side street shop in a Norfolk town, stalactites of peeling paint hanging from its façade like a leper playing chance with Newton. Garish ill-matching blinds peered out from seared windows. Masses of filled jars and ephemera beckoned me in through doors that would ensnare the unwary in its beaded hangings and invoke tinnitus with a chorus of mezzo forte wind chiming. ‘Hobgoblin’s Garden’ I think it was called.

The first thing that struck me was that familiar smell. The aroma from university gigs; the tang of musty halls of residence; the passing whiff of a mad woman with unkempt hair; the stink of some feminist batik class; the pungency of old metal pans stained with the veneer of overcooked pulses. The place was empty. Or so it seemed.

A feint humming sound permeated the hollow random peals as a mad woman with unkempt hair materialised from behind a stack of posters that had long given up the fight to keep their vibrancy and submitted to yellowing in the passing seasons. The rustling of her cheesecloth grated my teeth in approach as she fiddled with the loose arm of her spectacles. She too had yellowed in the passing seasons as her sepia tint dissolved into the gauche patterns of her clothing and splayed out wildly into warped angular fingers of greying hair. The sense to recoil was strong, but like an erection or a forthcoming yawn when in delicate company, in time one develops the strength of will to beat it down. She loomed towards me, framed eyes bulging like globes herniating from an Auschwitz lampshade, and stopped momentarily to elevate her sandaled foot and vigorously fondle a shedding fungal nail disorder.

By this time the recoil had surrendered to the welling desire to heave. Yet there was a homely reassuring quality to her. A sense that you could leave your dying incontinent dog and return to see her covered in liquid canine faecality, retaining that faraway buoyancy and caring wry smile. You could visualise her droning softly while tending to a limpid cactus. Yet with all primeval male impulses you’d sooner bleach your sinuses with sarin than pleasure her.

“Hi, is there anything I can help you with?” came the words, in the Doppler effect of a passing gnat’s ambulance. I’d only entered the shop out of inquisitiveness at seeing a stuffed kitten in a jar playing a kazoo, and a hat shaped out of an armadillo. “Well, I, er, was just, er looking around and….” Trailing off with little conviction, I had involuntarily left the conversational door ajar, allowing her to wedge her besandaled hoof into the gap. “Well, you look like you’re into music” came the retort as she craned forward, spying my disintegrating Led Zeppelin t-shirt. Into music? What the hell did that mean? Did I have some caterwauling seraph hovering above my head? My face admittedly is shaped not unlike a plectrum, but that doesn’t mean that I’m Jimmy fucking Page. Perhaps like Robert Johnson, all those delta decades ago, I had the essence of a hellhound on my tail.

Her comment reminded me of those awkward moments when an old aunt gave me a £1 record token for Xmas, or the time that my nan thought that I would like to take ownership of her clapped faux-walnut cabinet the size of a coffin that cunningly concealed a radiogram …just because I was into music.

With a multispeed semi-circular sweep of her hand like a bi-polar gay on points duty drying his nails, she beckoned my attention towards a haphazard row of vinyl squashed between some hand-painted bras from Bolivia and an ashtray hewn from the scrotum of an Inuit. “Have a look in there. See what takes your fancy.” I sensed a fleck of spittle projecting from her excited lips. As with all vinyl junkies, second invitations are as superfluous as a nosebleed in an abattoir. I stretched across the objet d’art, and using the unique dexterity evolved from years of browsing, fingered through the stack with clockwork gusto. It was mostly 70’s tat. Redundant effects albums (featuring church bells, cars and wildlife to herald ‘the superb wonder of stereophonic sound’) and trashy Hawaiian guitar adaptations of popular hits of the day (complete with suitable sunset beach sleeve art to enhance the exotica). All probably considered relevant and innovative for the time, but like a Vesta curry, now languishing in a distant memory cupboard marked: ‘tasteless shit’.

Nostrils flared, I felt that familiar thread of dissatisfaction starting to writhe in my stomach. I always get this when leafing through vinyl collections. So much so that it is assured to have a dysenteric effect every time. If ever I needed urgent colonic investigations I could save the NHS a few quid on chemical bowel preparations. All I’d require is a nurse wheeling in a rack of old albums to thumb through, and hey presto; gravy time.

So, there I was rummaging through 12” purgatory and needing a shit, when I came across a lavish-looking platter with a 4-page coloured gatefold sleeve, presumably designed by one of those ‘visionary’ album painters (Roger Dean, Rodney Matthews, etc.) that influenced sixth form art students to paint their common rooms in garish hues featuring nymphs on giant misshapen fungi. The album was called “Seven Caves to the Ice Palace” by Icarus Descendents. There is an obvious formula to this that runs as naturally as the climates, and can only be detected in the radar of old musos. You could wager your left kidney that it would (a) feature ex-university chums; (b) have band members called Nigel or Tony; and (c) consist of cleverclogs prog meandering, where half-way through the overlong concept based on some obscure Pratchett fable, the music would degenerate into a free-for-all of accapella sea-shantyism and the worst type of pointless flute parping. Great stuff I reckon.

But I digress. As I picked up the thick card cover and perused the gatefold, I looked closely at the band photos. These contrived snaps will always give you an idea of the type of music therein: moody youths chewing & leaning against lampposts will usually gob out an image of punk; sneering moustached men surrounded by the paraphernalia of Satanism –yet preening through flowing blow-dried locks- would suggest heavy metal; sepia-tinted confederate mock-ups always conspire to exhibit the worst type of country rock; and in this case a cabal of eccentrics, including a balding professor-type holding up a cor anglais with a gnome peeking out of the end, a lanky man in a gaudy tank-top trying to look bemused, and a bespectacled woman in a kaftan, wild fingers of greying hair…..

Hold on. Rewind. I did one of those Oliver Hardy double-takes and swallowed hard. To complete the set, all I needed was to step back into a large bucket of paint and receive a loose shelving unit full of large tins in my face. I rubbed my eyes, looked again. It couldn’t be. As I pondered such, I felt a waft of moist fetid breath on my nape. “Yes, that’s me” came the voice, and I turned to view a chilling rictus replete with bulging eyes as she jabbed her finger towards the sleeve in a staccato rhythm as if trying to punch a hole into worlds beyond. Rooted to the spot, a gurgling mash of vowels tripped from my lips as my focus came to and fro the photo and the shopkeeper. “I played the hurdy gurdy and fingerbells on most of the tracks. We were considered to be the big thing in Norfolk and Suffolk, and once supported Steeleye Span at the Ipswich Gaumont”. I dropped the album and ran out of the shop trailing air croutons as my sphincter slammed shut in fear. I tore down the road powered with adrenaline at the pace of a relay anchorman with a ralgexed arsehole.

Years later I drove through the same town and hung a left into the street of ‘Hobgoblin’s Garden’. It had been replaced by a charity shop for spastic donkeys. I urged to look inside to see if a whiff of memories past would hang in the air. It was mostly run by old jam mongers and middle-class teaching assistants, and had that familiar sense of order interspersed with chaos that one gets in a charity shop. However, I spied something familiar. It was a stuffed kitten in a jar playing a kazoo, with a price tag of £3 attached to it. As I reached in awe, a crinkled whisper hanging in the shadows behind broke the bustle: “you look like you’re into music….”

Beached

2006-11-10T19:40:00.000Z

Childhood can sketch memories that race from cloaked corridors of the psyche to the forefront of your thoughts with the random unpredictability of an old drunk in a bus shelter. You could be sitting on a deckchair, and a distant waft of obscurity will bring back a picture of time and place. Your first fight; your first kiss; or even the time you got lost, and as the sun started its descent, the fear that you might never make it home for tea. Your heart starts to race and you could almost be in that place again.

Whoever could associate Tesco with such powerful memories of childhood? The corporate bastards have crushed any sense of cohesive society and community under their jackboot of consumerism. I hate the smugness of their commercials and feel a bolus of vomit whenever I see people misguided in the zombified stupor of using self-service checkouts -without realising the implications of it. Yet I cannot stay away because of a specific reason: memories of happier times.And it’s all to do with the fish counter.

Psychologists have long recognised the link between olfactory senses and memory: cut grass, burning wood, brand new plastic footballs, the rain on summer tarmac, etc. …but the bloody fish counter in Tesco? This has its genesis with a memorable summer spent at the local beach in the days when 10 year olds were allowed to wander for miles in the wilderness unshackled by parental fears of predatory pederasts, and free from the threat of an asbo. Older generations will always spout on at increasing revisionist length about how all summers were long and hot. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to disagree.

This particular season seems burnt onto my brain with a solar stencil. They may very well have been different summers, but to assist the embellishing of reminiscence when I’m finally chained to a commode dribbling a mulch of toast from the side of my abusive contorted mouth, I will put it in one pigeonhole: summer 1974. A million UV-scorched events: getting bitten by an adder; being chased by a tramp we caught wanking in a shed; climbing the ropes of a huge deserted marquee; getting a sly grasp of an older girl’s breast; hiding out in haystacks; building tree swings that would propel you through small forest fires. And a dead whale on the beach.

The latter episode featured an unfortunate creature who had presumably found its sophisticated sonar corrupted by a sargasso of industrial oil, used condoms and domestic sewage, and stranded itself on the deserted beaches behind the local steelworks. Word soon got around, and an army of delirious locals headed in rabid anticipation to the rare sight like a public hanging. Only thing is: we got there first. Nothing could best a Raleigh Chopper propelled across rough terrain by excited schoolkids.

Our imaginations spiralled with visions of a giant leviathon that would swallow the town whole; a maritime monster with the souls of lost seafarers imprisoned in its belly. Reality was a 12 ft pilot whale in an early state of decomposition being picked at by seagulls like some huge moulded smorgasbord. Of course the seeping oils and liquefying blubber didn’t put off a load of panting kids who couldn’t believe the sight before them. We climbed over the demised demon, slid down its brow, used its tail as a trampoline and attempted the fosbury flop over its spine and into the sandpools formed by its once-thrashing bulk. Meanwhile, the summer sun was calling in its debt and turning the poor bastard green. A noxious aroma curled at our noses and concocted pits of nausea. The novelty was beginning to drop off like the barnacles that had accompanied the beast on many cross-Atlantic journeys. And the adults were coming, with their earnest faces of disapproval.

I took one look back and realised that there was one area that we hadn’t exploited for our novelty. We couldn’t get at the teeth, and the gulls had harvested its eyes. Armed with a pointed piece of driftwood, I jumped onto its back and with a roar like the best pantomime Ahab, plunged the stick into its spout. A sickly squelch of twisted sodomy echoed from its midst. Removing the shank I bent forward to view into the aperture and was showered in a vast geyser of putrid mammalian lung water. It was the smell of death. No, the stench of a holocaust. I started to vomit, and those close by who were splashed with the spittle of beached doom also started retching. But we were laughing. Laughing at the stupidity and the idiocy and the retribution of disrespecting one of god’s great and gentle creatures. We were covered in cadaverous stagnation and we didn’t give a fuck.

It took days to rid that acrid stink. Dozens of baths and clothes changes. I can still smell the putrefaction it to this day. It’s a reassuring smell. A smell that tells of better times of no worry, no pressure, no responsibility. And sometimes this smell comes to me at the Tesco fish counter. Almost beckoning me to leap into the midst of dead wall-eyed swimmers & crushed ice, plunging a great stick into the void and heading back to the summer of 1974.