THE HAUNTED GENERATION
BOB FISCHER PRESENTS HIS FESTIVE ROUND-UP FROM THE PARALLEL WORLDS OF POPULAR HAUNTOLOGY...
“When I was about five, everyone else at school was heading in from playtime,” recalls Josh Merritt. “And I saw a black jaguar in the distance, just staring at me. An actual big cat. This was in Itchingfield, in West Sussex…”
At 33, film-maker Josh is at the younger end of the Haunted Generation spectrum, but a lifetime of fortean experiences (“My dad was obsessed with alien artefacts”) have fed into movies with a distinctly uncanny aesthetic. His latest short, Breathe, employs the residual trauma of 1970s Public Information Films to tell a story of toxic parenthood. Stuck in a claustrophobic bunker since childhood, a man called Emri (played with impressive physicality by Tigger Blaize) is trapped alone save for the authoritarian broadcasts of a post-apocalyptic TV service.
“A big reference for me was a Public Information Film called
Searching, from 1974,” explains Josh. “The camera pans through a burned-out house, and you can hear the sounds of children screaming.” For bonus disquiet,
Breathe has been produced by Simon Moorhead, whose TV credits include the notorious 1984 BBC drama Threads.
And a suitably austere synth soundtrack is provided by Chris Sharp, whose albums as Concretism have featured regularly in this column.
The location for Josh’s film also boasts impeccably dystopian credentials. Kelvedon Hatch Nuclear Bunker, hidden beneath a woodland cottage in Essex, was intended as the British Government’s secret underground HQ in the event of a Cold War-era nuclear exchange (see FT379:30-36
for HE Sawyer’s visit to the bunker). “It’s a museum now, and we shot everything there in twelve hours,” explains Josh. “We couldn’t close it off, so we kept having to stop for people walking through, looking at the exhibits.” Produced as part of the BBC’s New Creatives scheme, Breathe is an unsettling but touching piece of filmmaking, and is free to watch at www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/ p0crzjlg.
Equally familiar with Kelvedon Hatch is Alan Gubby, who – in 2017 – brought a host of electronic artists to perform live amid the cobwebbed dormitories, ancient Geiger counters and mothballed Telex machines. This immersive and occasionally alarming event was part of Alan’s long-running project The Delaware Road, a multi-media extravaganza focusing on the plight of fictional electronic composers Iain Parker and Cissy Wakefield. A new, beautifullyillustrated book of the same title tells their story in script form. Employed in the late 1960s by the “British Radio & Television Corporation”, Iain and Cissy’s chance discovery of an abandoned studio leads to their immersion in surreal occultism… with detours into both shadowy wartime propaganda and groovy psychedelic happenings.
“It’s only taken me 16 years,” laughs Alan. “It’s been an odyssey, a learning curve, an obsession, an albatross and a revelation.” The book, lavishly packaged with art prints, postcards and other charming curios, equally serves as the definitive document of the Delaware Road live experiences. It’s available from www.thedelawareroad.com. And Alan has been a busy man: he’s also the diligent detective behind the recent release of one of the 1970s’ most spinechilling TV scores. In 1977, the ritualistic wails of Children of the Stones traumatised a generation of young viewers, soundtracking sinister goingson between the ancient megaliths of Avebury Stone Circle. Forty-five years on, Alan and fellow label boss Jonny Trunk have joined forces, giving a sumptuous vinyl release to Sidney Sager’s gloriously weird music. As FT went to press, it was selling fast… but chance your respective arms at trunkrecords.greedbag.com, and say “Happy Day!” to them both.
On the flipside of the bucolic experience, I’ve been absolutely entranced recently by an album called
The Balloonist. By, oddly enough, The Balloonist.
It’s Staffordshire producer Ben Holton with a truly gorgeous collection of languid instrumentals, intended to soundtrack a gentle dirigible journey above a mythical, arcadian 1970s countryside. All inspired – be still my beating heart – by an episode of the BBC’s magical preschool animated series, Mr Benn. It’s currently floating across the Internet at waysideandwoodland.com.
I also recommend Hedges, an equally warm-hearted musical ramble with Cumbria’s Jonathan Sharp, in his guise as The Heartwood Institute.
Inspired by his favourite childhood Ladybird book of the same title, it’s the perfect record for anyone whose Proustian biscuit is a Mint Viscount, melting onto the tablecloth at a sticky childhood picnic. Find it snagged onto the hawthorn bushes at theheartwoodinstitute. bandcamp.com.
Similarly pastoral, but with a more mystical edge, is A Tarot Of The Green Wood, the new album by Glaswegian duo Burd Ellen. Weaving a collection of (mainly) traditional folk tunes into hypnotic electronic drones, Debbie Armour and Gayle Brogan employ the Major Arcana tarot to explore ideas of “transmission, memory and hidden meaning”. See what the cards have in store at burdellen. bandcamp.com. And, further south, one-time chart star Dean Honer – founder of Sheffield hitmakers All Seeing I – has been crafting the wonderfully odd spoken word soundtrack to a “dystopian TV series made for Yorkshire TV in 1978”.
It’s called Frogman, and it’s terrific… it stars longstanding Pulp guitarist Russell Senior and The Tomorrow People actor Richard Speight in a gloriously arch tale of sci-fi strangeness set amid the rolling hills of the Derbyshire Peak District. Radiophonic Workshop fans of a certain disposition will also immediately recognise the evocative squelches of a vintage EMS Synthi keyboard. Find it at castlesinspace.bandcamp.com, and – while you’re there – also check out Districts, Roads, Open Space, by Warrington-Runcorn New Town Development Plan. It’s Gordon Chapman-Fox’s latest synth exploration of Brutalist town planning and it’s easily the best album I’ve heard this year to feature a genuinely touching homage to Buzby, the Bernard Cribbins-voiced bird famously pressed into service as the face (and wings) of British Telecom’s 1970s TV adverts.
Other recommendations: Howlround’s experimental album Trespass & Welfare is “twelve bursts of hypnotic tape mulch, molten techno loops and asynchronous machine noise” by Radiophonic Workshop obsessive Robin The Fog, and is available from buriedtreasure. bandcamp.com. Brazen British Beauty is a “Birmingham Odyssey” by Famished For
Blonds, using utilitarian synths to evoke memories of a 1970s West Midlands childhood. Bostin’! It’s at famishedforblonds.bandcamp. com. And sticking with all things Brum, what a delight to hear the first album in over a decade from the Modified Toy Orchestra. For the best part of 20 years, Brian Duffy has been stripping the sound chips from discarded childhood Christmas presents and turning them into splendidly evocative (and bleepy) anthems. The new opus Silfurburg has an epic, cosmic feel and is chirruping away merrily at modifiedtoyorchestra. bandcamp.com.
Meanwhile, recent recruits to the hauntology support group often bemoan the unavailability of some of the movement’s earliest artefacts. Thankfully, the benevolent rectors of Ghost Box Records are addressing the problem. The totemic label have ambitious plans to reissue their entire back catalogue, beginning with Belbury Poly’s 2005 EP, Farmer’s Angle.A beautiful collection of gentle synth instrumentals by label cofounder Jim Jupp, it’s entirely redolent of BBC2 test cards on drizzly Thursday afternoons, and will be swiftly followed by a reissue of The Focus Group’s Sketches and Spells, also from 2005. This collection of striking sound collages was the debut album by Jim’s Ghost Box compadre Julian House, and both should now be available from ghostbox.co.uk. While you’re there, check out Full Circle… it’s a new album from Cate Brooks’ gently sinister outfit The Advisory Circle, and it’s a delightful nod to the label’s earliest years.
And, as its Christmas, forgive this modest chronicler a rare moment of self-indulgence. William Fowler of the British Film Institute is a regular reader of this column, and invited me to introduce an evening of vintage Public Information Films at London’s BFI Southbank. Entitled Haunted Generations: The Lingering Legacy of the Public Information Film, it’s on Friday 2 December, and tickets are available from whatson.bfi. org.uk. That’s probably too short notice for many readers of this edition of FT, but the evening’s screenings are being repeated – minus my words of wisdom – on Wednesday 21 December. It’s all part of the BFI’s ongoing Peter Greenaway celebrations, the acclaimed director having begun his illustrious career with the Central Office of Information. Also included, however, are more recent films inspired by vintage PIFs, including those of deeply eccentric Youtube sensation, Sean Reynard.
Sean’s immaculate spoof of the titles to 1970s lunchtime programme Picture Box went viral (see FT383:67) and introduced the world to his alter ego: the bearded, foul-tempered, crumhorn-loving TV presenter, Quentin Smirhes. Since then, Quentin’s world has expanded into his own TV channel – QTV – and characters that include the appalling Uncle Barrington and the filthy, floating “Comfrey”. The latest episode of nightmarish afternoon show Lunction sees Quentin and Comfrey using a mysterious magic wand to swap bodies before being overcome by a swarm of Comfrey’s pet wasps. Sean, speaking exclusively to this column, gleefully reveals a Christmas QTV special is in the offing. “It’s Quentin and Comfrey on a camping expedition, searching for the Dirty Divil of Kathmandu,” he explains. “He’s been banished from the village so he has to live up in the hills in a place called Nicky Nacky Noo…”
Search Youtube for Quentin Smirhes, and be strongly advised that his programmes are best experienced with a plentiful supply of Advocaat close at hand. Merry Christmas, everybody.
Visit the Haunted Generation website at www.hauntedgeneration. co.uk, send details of new releases, or memories of the original “haunted” era to hauntedgeneration@gmail. com, or find me on Twitter… @ bob_fischer