Convened by The Guardian newspaper, and coinciding with the publication of Moore's short story collection, 'IIlluminations', this genial interview between author Alan Moore and comedian Stewart Lee explores the various stories within the book touching on recurring narative themes and strategies in Moore's writing as well as a quick discussion of the then unfinished 'The Great When', of authors, Arthur Machen, William Hope Hodgson, Alan Garner, M.R. James and Robert Aickman.
I'd previously avoided watching this because 'Illuminations' appeared during my long Covid doldrums and I never managed to read further than the first story and having now watched this I need to try again now that my brain is a bit clearer. There're a few conversations on YouTube between these two and they're all well worth a listen as they obviously greatly enjoy each others company and as ever this is both interesting and dare I say illuminating.
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Written by legendary Wyrd Britain screenwriter Brian Clemens - who really should have done better - 'Serenade for Dead Lovers' - the best song title Bauhaus never used - revolves around an old village hall, a 40 year old romance and, for seemingly absolutely no resaon at all, a dud German bomb. Travis and Connery do their best but there's too little here for them to really work with and what could have been a delicately poignant ghostly tale of love lost and found falls pretty flat.
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"I'm a doctor, but probably not the one you were expecting"
On 14th November 2013 - which also happened to be Paul McGann's 54th birthday - some seventeen and half years after he woke up in a New York morgue the 8th Doctor finally appeared on TV again just in time for the shows 50th anniversary and to regenerate into The War Doctor.
"Physician heal thyself"
Having not survived a crash from space when an attempted rescue goes awry, The Doctor is offered a chance to choose his next regeneration by the Sisterhood of Karn, who hadn't been seen in the series since the 4th Doctor serial 'The Brain of Morbius'. With a mind to stopping the 'Time War' between the Time Lords and the Daleks he chooses to shed the mantle of healer and instead become a warrior.
"Doctor no more."
It's always been such a shame that we got so few glimpses of McGann's Doctor - there's been a third since, where we discovered he's averse to wearing robes - but with a battery of Big Finish audios to his name and those few televised performances that show he's only got better as he's got older he remains the longest serving Doctor and the one most deserving of a revival.
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The video below is a short interview with Miller giving a brief overview of his life and work. For those of you who wish to delve deeper I can recommend this two part interview and discussion.
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On the 14th of November, Buried Treasure will be releasing, 'Leviathan Whispers' the deeply spiritual and majestically folkloric new album from Tim Hill.
From the press release:
Leviathan Whispers is an album of longings, laments, deleriums, and drones, both savage and sublime. Brass and woodwind instruments sing over and through autumnal netherlands, heralding ancient spirits and mysterious creatures. There are breaths, hums, and bone songs for shadows and flames to dance to.
Tim Hill is an inspirational figure within the UK arts, jazz, noise, and improv world. Since the 1980's he's operated as a shapeshitfing maverik, fearlessly exploring Britain's diverse musical traditions, from rough music to industrial folk, free jazz to dub, post-punk to avant-rock, incorporating electronics, hymn, noise and drone.
I've got to admit that, despite his formidable pedigree, Hill is new to me, but on the evidence of what I hear here, I need to rectify that.
The music, built using saxophones, tape loops, synths, woodwind and reed instruments, and with the assistance of Nurse With Wound's Colin Potter and drone maestro Jonathan Coleclough, maintains a deeply esoteric quality that exists in both the spiritual jazz realms of the likes of Pharoah Sanders or, more recently. Shabaka Hutchings and the mystical sidereality of the Blakeian Albion of the imagination expressed by the likes of Coil or Cyclobe. It's a fascinating combination, a uniquely British interpretation of spiritual jazz that's born from the hedgerows and holloways, and from standing stones and stories told, and it rewards deep, immersive listening that slowly reveal its more hermetical dimensions.
'Leviathan Whispers' will be released on "recycled and randomly coloured vinyl" and is available in stores from Friday 14th November.
Alternatively, preorders are currently being taken on the Buried Treasure Bandcamp here...
Additionally, to celebrate the launch, there will be a live performance and talk by Tim Hill on Sat, 15th Nov in the Victorian chapel beneath Royal Berks Hospital, Reading.
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Mark Valentine’s book-collecting began with classic supernatural and fantastic fiction and decadent poetry but soon included antiquities, folklore and the Arthurian legends. The first of these enthusiasms is reflected here in essays on Walter de la Mare, M.R. James, Arthur Machen, William Hope Hodgson and David Lindsay and on lesser-known modern ghost stories. There are also several essays on slim volumes of rare and strange verse.
He also explores the origins of the Red Lion inn sign, the enjoyable wanderings of 1930s antiquarians and ramblers, and the keen weather-watchers behind the irresistible title British Thunderstorms, Continuing Summer Thunderstorms. The author speculates on the secrets behind an interwar listing of obscure periodicals and on the odd finds at a village hall flea market. Readers will find in all these essays a delight in the obscurer byways and an engaging interest in the unlikeliest places
I'm a bit of a whim reader of non-fiction these days, I used to read lots but now, with very few exceptions, I rarely find myself picking up anything other than fiction. Those exceptions tend to be an occasional music study, a random curio and any and all of Mark Valentine's explorations of forgotten books and underappreciated authors, with intermittent digressions into the likes of pub signs and barometric observations.
'The Thunderstorm Collectors' is not the latest of Mark's collections from Tartarus Press, I still have that one waiting on my shelf. This one came out a year or so ago and got lost amidst my long-COVID malaise but is still available from the publisher as one of their lovely paperback editions.
I love these books although my bank balance is less keen as Mark guides us through a tantalising and often irresitable array of goodies interlaced with fascinating and typcally erudite examinations of those authors of more lasting reputations such as Walter de la Mare, Arthur Machen & William Hope Hodgson.
There's much to entice here and several things have, inevitably, been added to the wants list. Additionally, some of the most interesting pieces here are the ones dealing with Mark's love of ephemera and of the edges of his main focus as he takes us into various Earth mysteries, landscape records and the vagaries of collecting.
As ever, with Mark's books - both fiction and non - we heartily recommend this and suggest that those wishing to try out his work would be well advised to grab one of these fabulous collections and to check out his Wormwoodiana blog.
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Born 4 November 1951 in Hull, Yorkshire, England as Christine Carol Newby, in 1969 the redefined Cosey Fanni Tutti joined her then partner Genesis P-Orridge (Neil Megson) in the musical collective, COUM Transmissions, pushing them into a more performance art focus.
In the video below Cosey talks about COUM's time in Hull.
COUM reached their peak in 1976 with the 'Prostitution' installation at the ICA in London in a show that included images from Cosey's work in the sex industry and which got the group denounced in parliament as "Wreckers of Western civilisation", which they really should have put on a business card.
The demise of COUM following the ICA show meant a shift of focus back towards music in the company of Peter 'Sleazy' Christopherson and Chris Carter as Throbbing Gristle. Over the next six years TG's boundary and genre pushing music, imagery and performances instigated a new and ever expanding genre of music.
On the collapse of TG in 1981 the various members split initially in two, Genesis and Sleazy forming Psychic TV before the latter left to join John Balance in Coil, whilst Cosey and Chris formed Chris & Cosey and, since the turn of the millennium, Carter Tutti. In those guises the couple further developed the ideas they'd formulated as part of TG often incorporating pop and dance elements alongside the avant garde.
In 2017 Cosey, via Faber & Faber, published her autobiography, 'Art Sex Music', to significant acclaim and this was followed in 2022 by 'Re-Sisters: The Lives and Recordings of Delia Derbyshire, Margery Kempe and Cosey Fanni Tutti'.
The long interview below, dating from 2010, features Cosey in conversation about various aspects of her life, the tools she uses and about creativity in general. Slightly frustratingly, the music has been removed but it makes for fascinating listening and is a genuine pleasure to be invited, however briefly, into Cosey's world.
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West Country Tales was an early 80s BBC 2 series that, at least in it's first series, purportedly dramatised stories of encounters with the supernatural submitted by the public. Episode 2, aired on February 1st 1982, 'The Poacher' tells of the unnamed titular character's meeting with the God Pan in the wood where he plies his trade.
Told primarily - as is the rest of the series - via a narrator (Douglas Leech) with minimal dialogue from the on-screen cast, the Poacher (Dave Royal) walks us through a life spent wandering the fields, woods and rivers of his locale, often, but not exclusively, under the cover of darkness, he is shown as an independent and fair minded man atuned to the rhythms of the woods, never taking more than he needs - we witness his disgust at the wasteful pheasant shoot - and as a repository of old lore. When he meets the Wild God (Michael Venner) it's a meeting marked with the characteristic fear that a meeting with Pan induces and presented in an appropriately oneiric manner that changes the Poacher in the most profound of ways.
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