REVIEWS 1
12 DEC 2008
CHEMICAL WEDDING
Aside from the same-titled 1926 silent
film adaption of W. Somerset Maugham's novel, The
Magician, directed by Rex Ingram, that starred a caricatured,
unnamed Crowley, this second offering to the gods, Chemical
Wedding, is the first-ever feature film in which Crowley is
the actual lead character. It was created by the unlikely
combination of Iron Maiden frontman, Bruce Dickinson and Monty
Python editor, Julian Doyle. Both of them wrote the script and Doyle
directed. A quick plot summary goes along the lines of Crowley dies
Moonchild 'born' 1947 Masonic virtual reality connection Cambridge
University 'Interactive Suit' time-warp Aleister Crowley back to
life to take over the world but the forces of good prevail at the
end, with the expected 'bad boy' drugs sex references. I could do a
longer review of this, using material from the DVD's Commentary and
Extras' content, but just see it.
Really enjoyed this on first watch, the novelty of it, its happy joy. It seemed 'good', but after deeper exploration I now realise it's strictly pop occult commercial territory; the same old story of annoyingly small budget limitations and producer money people interfering with the original storyline. Could have been a lot better without these dreary obstacles. A brave attempt at the impossible, this film is like a Paganised modern-day medieval Miracle Play or Pageant: a communal activity affording doctrine and mirth to all classes of society; crudely written religious scenes interspersed with occasional and unseemly, richly boisterous knockabout, where laughter intensifies the power to pray, as if the sublime can be best apprehended by those who are open to the ridiculous. Or it's akin to an ingenious piece of home-made furniture: initially we admire the man who has put it together out of the odds and ends lying about, but it's a burden too complex and heavy for him to lift; he bears it an instant, then it trips, falls on and crushes him, hopefully to press out wine for Lord Dionysus, who will inspire a more suitable vessel to craft a better Crowleyanian production in the future.
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David St Clair's pulp horror novel, Bloodline
(Corgi, 1989).
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This one here is still certainly worth a viewing or two though, especially in an altered mind-state, where Crowley's purple velvet suit has a lot to say. And should you crave a wider treatment of the material there's an accompanying tie-in book by Doyle & Dickinson also entitled Chemical Wedding (Matador, 2008), that, despite its alleged numerous typos and errors, expands upon the film's scientific (quantum physics) and esoteric themes, such as the actual ancient Chemical Wedding rite itself, the Parsons-Hubbard connection, an undeveloped sub-plot involving Leah's dead father, and what really happened in the cottaging scene.
After all the product glut oversell, etc., it seems that the ancient Hashassassin maxim: "Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted" is even more pertinent now; that today, "Everything really Is True", including all the ridiculous rumours. Crowley is Parsons is Hubbard is The Process is Manson is Polanski is LaVey is Kenneth Anger is Rolling Stones is Led Zeppelin. Alex Sanders is Black Widow is Black Sabbath. Not forgetting that HP Lovecraft is Austin Osman Spare is Kenneth Grant is Crowley is Gerald Gardner. Maybe this is indeed the Secret of Magick: Anything will work if you believe it correctly. You will know what to do. And by the way, "I Always Lie".
Chemical Wedding. Chemical Wedding Productions Limited, 2008. 50-51442 91702-4. 107 Minutes approx (the extras total 52 Minutes approx). PAL, Region 2 DVD. Certificate 18. £7.
25 OCT 2007
IN SEARCH OF THE GREAT BEAST 666
After many moons of celluloidal neglect, in recent
years Great Britain's perennial Alpha Male Mage, Aleister Crowley,
has finally hit both the little and big screen (for the latter film
see the review above this one). I suspected that this first
full-length documentary on him, entitled In Search of the Great
Beast 666, would be yet another "Dracula Spectacular" (i.e.
heavy on sensational spectacle; light on essential facts), and I was
proved right. The whole thing is off; I mean, it's
narrated by that "Mr Kipling does make exceedingly good cakes"
bloke, and is a plodding, ultra-bore mess.
Through "dramatically reconstructed period scenes" (i.e. some rather unconvincing jobbing actor, static and alone in a room reminiscing about Crowley's life; another one playing Crowley as an old man at Netherwood reminiscing about his own life), this film claims to explore "the boundaries" of the Master Therion, but its main research source is obviously John Symonds' hatchet-job biography, The Great Beast, and thus it only barely scratches the surface of the man's deep and complex magical philosophy. Documentary-by-numbers instead of painting-by-numbers. It also has factual errors throughout, for example: George Cecil Jones is confused with Charles Stansfeld Jones on two occasions, and Crowley says he had Liber AL "translated by the assistant curator at the Boulak Museum, on a stélé of the Priest Ankh-af-na-khonsu." They couldn't even get this right. These sort of glaring mistakes, and other uninformed highlights such as Victor Neuberg calling Crowley a "sadistic masochist" make it appear more like some crazy Christian expose (it even regurgitates the myth that Crowley could have been the grandfather of the ex-US President George W. Bush!), and it's not as if the accurate, verifiable facts are hard to find, should one consult the right, and easily-available, books.
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Aleister Crowley portrait by Frits Jonker.
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This lack of right attention to the details of such a great and fascinating man's (or indeed anyone's) life is unforgivable for something claiming to be a "biographical" film, and reveals its true nature: a carelessly thrown together, shallow, dull, banal, plodding, clueless, uninspired mess, designed to make a quick buck from the gullible masses. Rick "How the mighty have fallen" Wakeman's throwaway synth score perfectly complements the incompetent images and inept words of this standard sub-standard straight-to-video work that's destined for the £1 Shops, and seemingly specially designed for them, it has that look (the filmmakers can't show an original photo or document without superimposing a layer of cracked and peeling paint, presumably to impress upon the viewer the Age = Mystery equation, like those cringeful New Age posters). Old Crow must be spinning in his basilisk abode at this vulgar little peepshow. Avoid like the plague (of locusts).
In Search of the Great Beast 666: Aleister Crowley: The Wickedest Man in the World. Classic Pictures Productions, 2007. DVD5044X. 125 Minutes approx. PAL, Region 0 DVD. Certificate E. £9. Official website.
19 OCT 2007
AL AL WHO
Today seemed like a game of "Musical Dares". I did
what I sometimes do and bought the latest issue of the glossy alternative lifestyle Bizarre
magazine. Don't know why, as - like Fortean Times which I
also occasionally buy - this newsstand publication is always so full
of tedious 'weird shit': different but the same. Then went home was
surprised to find an unexpected suspicious package lurking on the
frequency desk. It was sent by Simon Morris, whose surname decodes
to the first name meaning of the Latin for 'dark-skinned': the
"Black Man" (Man-In-Black) master-spirit of the medieval witch
coven, inspiring ritual dancer of trickster skins and widely thought
to be the Devil himself.
Mysterious Mr Morris had kindly sent an "advance pirate yo-ho-ho copy" of AL AL WHO - the all-new song collection by Blackpool's premier derangement boffins the Ceramic Hobs, of whom he is chief vocalist and ideologue. Hob is a corruption of 'Robin', the name the Black Man often gave when summoned by his acolytes in sorcery or appearing unbidden in the midst of the unwary. Hob is also the early English term for a 'mischievous goblin', and, true to the word magic, the Ceramic Hobs have been unleashing their perverse and peculiar brand of subverto raucous punk menace experimentalism for over twenty years: outsiders on the outskirts of the music scene, like troublesome spectres glimpsed from the corner of the eye.
This curiously-titled, professionally-made audio CD is surely their magnum opus, crepuscular and dripping with authenticity. It's a paragon of unreason, symbolic to the point. The royal disturber, destroyer of unseen snares. Yea, obviously the "stars were right" for this recording, for the sounds possess that enigmatic sense of 'effortless genius' when it all comes together without seemingly trying to. AL AL WHO is joker's wild, going places. You can feel a presence... Witches into wolves, a black angel's egg waiting in the wings, tripsy to the max. Its dense dark demented frenzy knocks all the currently-in-vogue frightmare solemnites, pseudo-underground pretenders to the throne and arse-licking indie light entertainers into a cocked hat, with bells on, for the Hobs are the heavy artillery, the farthermost formula. This is the glamorous and dangerous world of border crossings, pyramid hats, brainstorm militias, messages from out of town...
I haven't specifically described the music here as this material is about far more than juke-box pleasures in any location. Suffice to say that Old Mr Toad must be hopping mad by now, considering how yet more of Secret Squirrel's Blow Codes have been outed by the rebel faction who've smashed right out of Looking Glass World to fashion yet another antidote, this time in the form of a warpedly enjoyable overpowering record of mounting tensions exposing the dastardly deeds of iniquity perpetrated by the masters, toadies and their kin, whilst wilfully offering no substitute.
The Ceramic Hobs, AL AL WHO. Pumf Records, PUMF 567 (2007). Pro-duplicated CD. Price unclear. It seems to be avaliable direct from Pumf. You can check out where the (human and otherwise) Hobs are coming from and going to at Mr Morris' blog.
16 OCT 2006
OTATO - HUFF
This is a very watchable compilation documentation covering the first Hamilton Underground Film Festival (HUFF), that took place in New Zealand. It features independent movie-makers from all over the world, far away from the hype-hypodermic stanchion bolt so beloved by the sordid, slumberous mass. Nineteen shorts covering about an hour and a half in all. Structure: cut/ups media decontrol to more storyist scripted manifestations. Low to Higher budget and Fi. Themes: occult, conspiracy, suicide cults, door poetics, other dimensions, unclassified. This is a great promising showcase by and for all the genuinely artistic people who MUST create, for the sake of it, before all other reasons.
Especially good are Remote Viewers Part One [Edit] by Snake Beings which concerns a psychic guerrilla group using device technology to subvert the mass-media message, Tape Two by the OKOK Society about paranormal entities being conjured up in secret experiments, and End by Natalie Good which is like a particularly strong LSD trip, perhaps one's first, that mixes stimulant paranoia with ecstasy gates. The rest are certainly not filler though and worth your attention, the whole shebang being far more original, inventive, vibrant and interesting than the oppressive bog budget professional rubbish that's spoon fed over the normalist airwaves, that won't shew more material like this as it's afraid of people already having or somehow getting an alternative vision and voice. Mass dissent cannot be allowed by the Remote Controllers and the revolution won't be televised unless we do it ourselves. DIY or DIE!
So far the Hamilton Underground Film Festival is an annual event, for it happened again in 2007 and 2008, plus it's open to all filmists with no fees payable to enter, so if you have any original films you think are suitable to be shown this may be your chance to get the material/immaterial more widely seen. All entrants also receive a DVD that contains all the films shown at the particular festival.
OTATO. Region 2 PAL DVD. HUFF, uncatalogued (2006). Not sure if this is for sale; contact the HUFF curators here or here - a wild collective who appear to be connected to New Zealand's Cult of the Dead Light-Bulb, formed "by chance encounter in a Bingo Hall" and populated by "Time Monks" who worship electricity pylons and create religious reliquary shrine machines that run off "phantom power" and effect the surroundings.
29 AUG 2006
THROUGH THE MAGICK MIRROR
A recent inspiring 'chance meeting' I have had the pleasure of was with the Magick Mirror, the personal website of Eugenia Macer-Story, the respected American writer and professional psychic. This is deep occultism, investigated and documented by someone obviously "touched by the hand of ?" Her Yankee Oracle Gazette (Touché Edition, 2006), available as a free PDF on the website, contains many truly fascinating accounts of real strangeness, augmented by her poet-playwright's sensibilities.
I was greatly impressed by her knowledge of ancient
pirate sorcery lore; admired her bravery and ingenuity in dealing
with her "dual with the shadow operatives," which involved an
ominous incidence of "CELL PHONE DIVINATION . . . the situation of
'omens and signs' delivered by cell phone"; and was especially
interested in the way she lucidly describes the peculiar phenomenon
of dimensional interpenetration, evidenced by some of its usually
hidden and unsuspected twilight language clues. Her article 'Woven
In The Wallpaper' gives one such example (reproduced left), an image
of an otherworldly entity embedded into the wallpaper, which made
itself known in "a digital photo of a sitting room stairway nook in
the Players Club near Gramercy Park in New York City just prior to a
performance of the one woman play 'Jane Austin' by Karen Eterovich
on April 11, 2006." (This sentence seems to be coded, containing.)
In a later article she exhibits another example, this
time in magnified detail (reproduced left), that was delivered to
her from its clandestine source via a neighbour in Woodstock, NY,
just before Easter 2006, in the form of an unusual
political-religious flier featuring a collage of snapshots and news
photos and much subliminal occult symbolism, including the visage of
the US Afro-American Army General, Colin Powell, resplendent in a
white judicial and/or movie starlet wig. Concealed within the
leaflet's design was a devilish imp peering around a corner in the
midst of the crowd. Ms Macer-Story deduces that the "three-pointed
jester's hat" and the "dark goggles or sunglasses" that this
"signature image" sports may reveal that the attempted "sorcery"
and/or "behavior modification" effort of this tiny "Jester" is being
directed by "the odd alliance between wealthy 'Third Wave' (Fascist)
individuals from Germany and other jet-set VIP individuals, such as
the family of Osama Bin Laden, who are of Mideastern descent. An
alliance is seen by these people in terms of a shared, ancient Aryan
heritage dating from the lost civilization of Atlantis." Stranger
things have happened...
I salute Lady Eugenia Macer-Story as a bastion of Curiosity, a teller of the story-within-a-story, and unreservedly recommend her work to all those brave, kindred souls who dare to look beyond the mask.
04 AUG 2006
NUDE ON THE MOON
The stage is set for this genie-arse
early colour nudie-cutie film (1960). Directed by the veteran
exploitationer Doris Wishman (billed here as the opposite-sexed
Anthony Brooks), the plot, acting and camerawork ain't gonna win any
Oscars soon. Looks like it was made quick and cheap to generate the
maximum profit. None of this really matters. Unfocus from the usual
watch and this is some groovy eye candy, the whole thing mucho
oddball camp and rather marvellous really.
It is bright America. The offices have fresh air. The sky is blue; the Dream payoff due. Perplexed due to his lack of government funding, a stud scientist conveniently inherits three million dollars, so along with his father figure builds the first rocket to the Moon. When they finally get there, they (and us) are surprised to discover that it's non-barren, strewn with rocks of gold and populated by friendly, mute, nearly-naked females and Tarzan-like men with telepathic antennas on their heads and magic trance-wands. The Moon also looks somewhat like Earth, because all the lunar sequences were filmed at the zing-incredible Coral Castle (originally called "Rock Gate Park") in Homestead, Florida, USA, that was built singlehandedly from scratch by Edward Leedskalnin between 1923-1951 using nothing but home made tools salvaged from junk parts.
He only worked at night in secret and made the world's only Moondial for his living fortress. There is no record of anyone observing Ed as he carved and sculpted over 1100 tons of coral rock, and he never divulged how he managed to move the massive blocks. Ed would only say that he knew the secrets used to build the ancient pyramids, and if he could learn them, you could too! Coral Castle is more restrained visually than the Ideal Palace concrete wonderland also built singlehandedly by Ferdinand Cheval in France, but is just as fascinating, and far more occulto-cosmica, if you can dig it. (No apologies here for this review as the large black one-eyed rat who controls my life edited the text by walking on my keyboard.)
Nude on the Moon. Region 2 PAL DVD. Village Entertainment, VLG003 (2003). It's £12.99 for 69 minutes so you must decide if the magnet's strong enough. Maybe find a few stills and dream what's going on there.
16 JUL 2006
THE UNDERGROUND UNDERGROUND
"God created the world but the Dutch created Holland", as the saying goes, and these strange flatlands exert a fascinatory pull upon many susceptibles, such as in the "madness of crowds" mystery that was the Tulip Mania, whose potent bulbs continue to grow profusely throughout the spirit-level lands of Holland, with its known and otherwise canal ways, coffee shops, fantastic fungi and doORS, which is one reason why I keep such a close eye on this emanating citadel of the Orange Ray. I am greatly assisted in this strident task by the irrepressible Dutch philosopher-artist, Frits Jonker, who has recently come up trumps once again with his new cool personal website called Showcase, that as the name suggests is a showcase for Frits' multi-form art and ideas, found items, far obscure cultural manifestations and more, all in an upbeat frame.
Frits also recently sent me another welcome batch of his excellent publication, the samely-named Showcase (a third of A4 in width and A4 high), Issue 505 of which contains the revelation: "Art Mix is an anagram of Matrix", which has more meanings than you can shake a stick at, ma being the English childish or colloquial shortening of 'Mamma' (Mother) and the Sanskrit root: 'To make, produce, create', suggesting the Mother Goddess Creatrix not the Father God Creator, mixing up reality raw ingredients in Her magic cauldron for our delight and use.
Perhaps most curious of all however is Issue 516, in which Frits relates how, around 2007, he visited some friends of his who had bought an old farm in the middle of nowhere in Friesland, Holland. During the 1980s it had been used as a brothel and as such had been converted into a murky labyrinth of small cubicles. Amongst the discarded items of worn-out furniture, junk stereo equipment and rusty tools left behind by the previous owners, seventeen audio-cassettes were discovered. Whilst most of them contained the usual found tape fayre that is the uninteresting chimes of chart pop songs, one of the tapes had a "so far unexplainable mix of instrumental music on it," and also sported an unusual photocopied sleeve (reproduced above), that is equally, if not more-so intriguing. What on earth have we stumbled upon here?
Frits Jonker's ShowCase is a comprehensive book of nearly 2000 issues of Showcase, published by Uitgeverij Xtra in 2012. ISBN: 978-9490759353. A good video featuring Frits and his Showcase work can be watched here.
25 JUN 2006
AGUIRRE: WRATH OF GOD
I had a good night of dreams then awoke with a strong feeling something art-good was going to happen later, and lo-&-behold, that afternoon, whilst browsing through the tempting shelves of the RSPCA charity shop, I discovered the DVD edition of Aguirre: Wrath of God (1972), my introduction to Werner Herzog, who wrote and directed it. A classic, magnificent, explosive epic about Everything, dangerously shot in amazing hallucinatory intensity and enhanced by a great soundtrack from German prog gods Popul Vuh. This motion picture tells the story of a band of Spanish noblemen, conquistadors, their priest, women, animals and slaves who all go up the Amazon on scary rafts in search of El Dorado, the fabled lost city of gold. But the madness and megalomania of Aguirre (played by the mesmerizing Klaus Kinski) steadily increases, warping the expedition into a death trip as the malevolence accompanying the journey unfolds and grows. The perilous situation is not helped by the frequent attacks by cannibalistic natives, who gradually pick off the party - invisibly from the jungle with poisoned arrows - as the hapless party travel deeper and deeper into uncharted territory towards the very heart of darkness (yes, this film was a strong influence on Francis Ford Coppola's own cinematic epic from 1979, Apocalypse Now). A proper work by a proper man.
Aguirre: Wrath of God. Region 2 PAL DVD. Stonevision Entertainment, SVD5014 (2000). English subtitles, fullscreen, 95mins. Also recommended is Werner Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small (1971), a full-on black-&-white nightmarescape whose entire cast consists of (human) dwarfs trapped in an institution on an eerie remote island. They gradually descend into demented anarchy that culminates in violent revolt as they attempt to overthrow their oppressors.
18 JUN 2006
THE TRIUMPH OF TIME
This beauty of an LP is by (now Sir) Harrison Birtwistle, a composer more known these days for his serious works in a traditional vein, opera screamers lapped up by posh people and that. This however is a far more playful out-there earlier affair done in the mid-seventies, that shocking era of cusp-chance-taking, which explains this good old vinyl album in a good old gatefold sleeve, which features a fine allegorical engraving by the 16th Century artist Peter Bruegel the Elder (or Pieter Breughel the Younger) entitled 'The Triumph of Time', which inspired the audio composition of the same name here in the spiral groove.
It's not so much 'The Triumph of Time' title-piece that has the wonder, slick though it is and professionally sculptured by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by the very capable Pierre Boulez, its three recurring themes always undergoing pleasing and intelligent metamorphoses. No, yes, it's the other side, 'Chronometer', which stands out on the genius map. Realised by aristocratic sound-lover Peter Zinovieff at the EMS Putney Studio, 'Chronometer' is an astounding tape montage totally constructed from all sorts of time-measuring devices transformed into instruments. This is a brilliant idea: to reach beyond the vision of Time's relativity by transforming the mechanical divisions of Time into the timeless space of music. Really hypnotic, the ticks and chimes drift in and out of consciousness, forming an enchanting dreamlike-removed atmosphere. The Old Curiosity Shop of the Mad Inventor, whose crazy as clockwork sex-automatons dance a shatterjack witches jig dictated by their polished brass minds influenced by magnetic fields from outer voids.
Harrison Birtwistle, The Triumph of Time/Chronometer. Argo, ZRG 790 (1975). Released as part of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Series (8).
07 JUN 2006
THE HOFFNUNG MUG DRUG
Thankfully, three cream cakes arrived just in time to dispel the irksome combination of opinions I was holding about the two Gerard Hoffnung LPs I had recently acquired for the princely sum of 10p each. I'd only heard snippets of this eccentric composer of "extravagant symphonic caricature" before, so was looking forward to a full helping. The sleeve notes to The Hoffnung Interplanetary Music Festival 1958 (World Record Club Limited, T 701, 1958) say that: "the first discussions about the 1958 Festival took place (I am not inventing this!) in the Hippopotamus House in the London Zoo with the chief occupant making waffling contributions which Hoffnung alone could interpret and communicate," which was certainly a promising lure toward the Expectation Trap, as unfortunately, most of the record is on an opera theme, although I did enjoy 'Punkt Contrapunkt', a pisstake of twelve-tone composition and its pompous intellectual champions, introduced by two great-accented, deliberately overacting "teutonic musicologists." Their discussion and the following playing of this short work before an assembled audience who didn't know what to expect was a most satisfying discombobulation, an effect heightened by the fact that this supposed musical parody actually sounded a lot more interesting than the so-called 'authentic' material it lampoons.
The Hoffnung Astronautical Music Festival 1961 (World Record Club Limited, TP 717, 1961) - made after the composer's death as a tribute - also had its moments high, with 'Horrortorio', an oratorio form starring Edgar Allan Poe as narrator, with Count Dracula and his daughter, and Dowager Baroness Frankenstein and her son, as the players. I didn't go much on the music, but it's always pleasing to hear these evocative gothic names spoken through amplifiers into echo halls. And then 'Ballad of County Down, mostly in D major', something to do with space music via a vulgar boat song, an opus viridian firing off an effective sound-art-collage section where two young bees, dislodged from their hive by intercontinental rocketry, go bumbling about in a confused dance until they fall in love and live happily ever after. This, and their resulting wedding music was quite nicely disorientating sonics, especially on headphones, as they crossed each other's paths through the mind's ear (both LPs are in Stereo).
Although this duo of black twelve-inch polyvinyl discs perhaps wanted to, and indeed occasionally did remind one of delectable midnight portals, overall these stodgy twins constituted a rather unwanted, control bed, cringe-provoking, excruciatingly annoying exercise with no time for Tiger Balm. They're strictly a safe mode, Establishment-friendly, BBCissy-approved brand of moron humour, a very punchable Goon Showesque unfunny drone quaquaversal quagmire detention irritatingly contrived dry humping Boy Scout string-vest moral straightjacket slippers and pipe; i.e. a sensible shoes right stuff jovial family favourite designed for the middle-classes to let off a very measured and controlled burst of steam before rubbing their noses back up the chafing arse of the grindstone. What's with the skunk?
06 JAN 2006
SPACE BUS ANTHEMS
Last & least on the current review pile - courtesy of the Descended Masters via their earthly vessels the Shady Lady and her consorts - comes Space Bus Anthems (2007), a repulsive compact disk by the Hallucination Generation, containing sixty extremely tedious and torturous minutes of stereotyped rave/trance/techno/whatever-you-call-it dance music muck-spreader machine dirge, of the sort that has that awful unrelenting monotonous rapid computer pus bass-drum doom-loop beat that comes through the wall to annoy countless neighbours across our fair country.
Who on Earth would want to listen to this rubbish? But of course, it's the perfect soundtrack for today's shallow, miniscule attention-span, novelty-obsessed younger (and some of the older) generation whose finer abilities of mind have been destroyed by computer games, cell phones and internet; the latter's Myspace (Ha!) etc. networking websites making everyone think and act the same, just as TV did before. If brains were gunpowder they couldn't blow their baseball caps off. (But it's strange and well-backed also, possibly a State-sponsored mass-programming social experiment like the whole Acid House craze was. It's definitely eerie when 'straight' accountants, hairdressers, etc., drive past in their cars listening to some of this stuff that's arguably more grating and warped than the professed weirdo 1970s-1980s industrial music pioneers Throbbing Gristle and others.)
Way back in 1949, George Orwell predicted the emergence of this horrible mind-control plastic voodoo brick wall music and the warlike cultural environment in which it would flourish in his uncannily prophetic novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four (Penguin Classics, 2000, p.155):
The new tune which was to be the theme-song of Hate Week (the Hate Song, it was called) had already been composed and was being endlessly plugged on the telescreens. It had a savage, barking rhythm which could not exactly be called music, but resembled the beating of a drum. Roared out by hundreds of voices to the tramp of marching feet, it was terrifying. The proles had taken a fancy to it, and in the midnight streets it competed with the still-popular 'It was only a hopeless fancy'. The Parsons children played it at all hours of the night and day, unbearably, on a comb and a piece of toilet paper.
The hair-rake and bog-roll instrument is of course a real sonic metaphor for the intensely annoying, tinny-sounding ipods and MP3 players carried by the masses and played on the streets and public transport like insidious, latter day telescreens, churning out the endless death propaganda of the Party. On the last page of his perfectly hopeless awful horrifying Big Brother book, Orwell warns us that the final and full adoption of Newspeak - the official mass-control language of psychic dictatorship - has been fixed for 2050, which seems about right, the way things are going. People get concerned about "air pollution" but what about "airwaves pollution"?
If you value entertainment over sanity this fandangle fanfare CD is now available, but who the flip is gonna pay thirteen squid for yet another brick in the norm wall? Suppose a sucker really is born every minute, but even so, I can in no way condone such a rash transaction foolish act as this. There's no room here. Enough of "The Meddling Coast"!