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Monday 25 April 2011

English Heretic - 2nd May, Live at The Toilet Gallery



Herb Robert Rises!

The Toilet Gallery
LOCATION: Nipper Alley, Kingston Upon Thames, KT1 1AD


Time To Rattle Your Scrotal Tambourines, Herb Robert of English Heretic will be making his debut performance in town. An idiot cunning man, Amprodias his sewer sentinel, a ritual muck spreader.


We headed over to Hurley and Bix on Saturday to capture essences from BOSC locations, finishing off with drinks at Oakley Court (The iconic studio of Hammer House).

Some pictures below:










Plan For The Kidnap Of Princess Anne LP.

New from English Heretic! A special commemorative Black Plaque for Ian Ball. 
Plan For The Kidnap Of Princess Anne (Picture Disc LP and mp3 download)



Using found recordings, a research group from English Heretic have reconstructed the attempted kidnap of Princess Anne by Ian Ball. On the evening of March 20th 1974 Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips were returning from a charity film event in support of The Riding For The Disabled Association, when their limousine was held up along the Mall, by Ball. Eventually tackled by police officers, Ball was arrested. In May 1975, Ball was convicted of attempted murder and kidnap. A diagnosed paranoid-schizophrenic, Ball still remains in detention under the Mental Health Act.

In 2005, Ian Ball set up a website from Broadmoor Hospital. On the site he explained that the kidnap was in fact an elaborate hoax set up by himself, offering 1 million pounds to anyone who could prove it was a hoax. Ball also paid £15 to the Anarchist magazine Class War for an advert to promote his cause. He later sent Class War a letter complaining of their cowardice in refusing to display the advertisement. Class War did actually run the advertisement in issue 90. There has been some suggestion that the Ball's website is really a clever piece of viral marketing by Channel 4 – as part of the promotion for the 2006 docudrama To Kidnap A Princess.

In his explanation, Ball claims to be 'the most dangerous working-class dissenter this country has ever had and is ever likely to have'. At the time of the attempted kidnapping Ball stated his intention was to raise a ransom of 2 million pounds for the National Health Service. While the ransom fee has the ring of a comedic anachronism, there is an ironic resonance with the current political climate, in the run up to the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.

The main sonic refrain on this release comes from an LP,  "Music For a Royal Wedding -A BBC recording from Westminster Abbey on Nov 14th, 1973 – H.R.H The Princess Anne & Captain Mark Phillips". We took a small section of the recital of The Lord's Prayer from the wedding ceremony – in Plainsong – and reversed it to create the mantra that plays throughout the reading of Ball's hoax explanation. Additional analogue synthesis has been provided by the English Heretic Electronic Workshop, together with manipulated field recordings taken from the Mall.

What are we to make of Ball's hoax. Is the hoax itself a hoax? If it is a piece of viral marketing, then the Channel 4 copywriter responsible certainly has talent to burn – either that or they have a supreme grasp of the logic of clinical paranoia. Ball's monologue vacillates between megalomania and persecution; an individual tortured by isolation to such a degree that all other players in his reality are merely weird servitors of his self importance. In other words it is a mechanically perfect model of a severe affective disorder. There are even hints that Ball seems to be displaying symptoms of Capgras Syndrome when he 'realises' that Princess Anne has been replaced by a double during the kidnap attempt. But Ball also reveals himself to be a master of tragic fiction – the logical descent into madness echoes Guy De Maupassant's short story A Piece Of String.

In presenting the kidnap from different angles: Ball's confession; Reggie Bosanquet's slurred ITN news report; and the mumbling gaucheness of Princess Anne and Captain Mark Phillips' recital on The Parkinson Show – what emerges is a Parallax View of the event. A cubist documentary in sound. Time conflates and distorts, the players exhibit distinct symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – flashbulb memories of trivial details magnify and the actual forensic truth smashes like a broken window in the back of Princess Anne's limousine.

“You can look at a piece of a puzzle for three whole days, you can believe that you know all there is to know about its colouring and shape, and be no further on than when you started. The only thing that counts is the ability to link this piece to the other pieces. The pieces are readable, take on a sense, only when assembled...” (G. Perec).

English Heretic, April 2011
Order from the souvenir shop

Wednesday 20 April 2011

Blood On Satan's Claw And The Triple Goddess


English Heretic will be performing a rare live event at the Toilet Gallery in  Kingston Upon Thames, on  Monday 2nd May. More details to follow but here is a brief synopsis:

As part of its ongoing research into the Sacred Geography Of British Cinema:

English Heretic present a comparative study of the classic horror film Blood On Satan's Claw in relation to Robert Graves' mythopoetic delineation of the May Eve Witch Cults of Northern Europe.

Featuring a screening of the film, annotated with a mindbending report extrapolated from location hunts to the key scenes.

The talk will discuss the palimpsest of myth and toponymy hidden in the film, the cultural climate of its making and incredible evidence of the possible reincarnation of a coven at Bix.

Following on from the talk, English Heretic will attempt to transcend Time And Space by means of ritual electronics to transport the audience to the very cult of a May Day sacrifice.


The Sacred Geography Of British Cinema.

Is it not beyond the bounds of credulity that a well staged, suitably ornate ritual portrayed through the visual arts may harness the power to tear the fabric of consensus reality - and with what results: the letting in of monstrous denizens from a fantastic and bloody celluloid nightmare? The blind atavisms of the preternatural realm may not know the difference between theatrical ceremony and the incantations of the supposedly initiated. The Sacred Geography Of British Cinema presents the results of a series of investigations and site visits to real locations that have been employed as the backdrops for some of the most powerful and frightening scenes in British film history. Focusing on sites of violent immolation and qliphothic invocation, English Heretic provide a series of guides to enable you to imbibe the troubled spirits that may now haunt these environs. With detailed scene synopses, walker's guides and field experiments for you to try out, The Sacred Geography of British Cinema aims to provide a tangible portal to fantastic and uncanny realms.


Wednesday 13 April 2011

Wyrd Tales 2

With the boys now, on Laundry Hill - At Ganges


Wyrd Tales 2 is reaching the final furlong, alas no Hippomania in this edition, that'll be a separate longer story, but here's the provisional outline:

Wyrd In Poetry, Theory And Practice
Planet Of The Spiders
The Dunwich Tapes
Stormtowers Of Atlantis (Ken Hollings)
Heuristic Catalogues I : The Delmer Institute
Heuristic Catalogues II: The O-Jazz Explosion
Skyline (Mark Pilkington)
At Ganges: Memoirs Of An English Aghora
Bleak And Solemn...: The Hauntological Landscapes of M.R. James (Mark Fisher)

Artwork by Lisa Cradduck, Dean Kenning, Phil Legard and more to be confirmed.

CD - full length, one single track: "Songs And Ceremonies Of The Elder Ones"


It was time for Wyard to release the songs and ceremonies of the Elder Ones




Clarice Qliphoth Dinner Plaques

For Kenneth Grant... (rough draft, plate to follow)


Plate, unglazed without text... Outside The Dinner Circles Of Time.


Tuesday 12 April 2011

Tuesday 5 April 2011

Plan For The Kidnap Of Princess Anne

Coming soon from English Heretic...
Plan For The Kidnap Of Princess Anne