tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80597980348735580112024-03-16T11:53:07.264-07:00English HereticDr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.comBlogger171125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-76974499551354656902016-01-04T18:19:00.002-08:002016-01-05T15:40:10.688-08:00Houses On The Borderland - Last Broadcast At Boleskine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the conclusion for "Anti-Heroes", I noted, with respect to one of the celebrants, actor George Sanders, "… the archetypes continue to conflate, to line up on the platform to Tartarus. The Black Plaque candidates are like Russian dolls, one inside another. George Sanders leads to the even bigger cad Dennis Lorraine, serial womaniser and fraudster who fathered at least fifteen children and managed to dupe politicians and celebrities, including Sanders, into investing in his rogue sausage company. Part of the reason Sanders managed to evade prison was that the list of investors went from Charlie Chaplin and Jane Mansfield all the way to the future Prime Minister Ted Heath. If there is a Da Vinci type illuminati controlling the world then it's likely to involve something as ludicrous as a sausage company. Cosmic absurdity is the great weapon to dismantle our own Phil Dickian megalomanias"<br />
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The problem is that bathetic remark has come back to haunt me over the last month and I am more convinced than I would like to be that the word of the aeon is porcine.<br />
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At the end of November I took a much needed holiday and headed up to Banchory in Aberdeenshire for a friend's wedding. The hotel and its surroundings were pure <i>The Beast Must Die</i> territory. From Banchory we drove across to Loch Ness. If we were visiting the higher regions of Scotland then Crowley's Boleskine House would have to a site of pilgrimage and a place to execute some heuristic field recordings. Having booked in at the Loch Ness Inn, I was pleasantly surprised to find our room number - 11. Magick with a K, the augurs were with us. However, the sense of comforting serendipity began to warp into something more unsettling. <br />
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I was preparing for a talk at this year's <i>Exploring The Extraordinary</i> conference which was to discuss volcanic consciousness, UFOlogy and outre occultism, and going through the presentation realised that our intended visit to Boleskine House coincided with the date of Crowley's death - 1st December. This was not a consciously advised trip, but perhaps the subconscious has a greater calendrical awareness than we ascribe to it. I must have read that date many times. And here's where psychology reverses itself; it seemed odder that I didn't make the connection between the date of our visit. It's as if some kind of psychic fugue rendered me blind to the obvious. <br />
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In our room we decided to trawl through the various Boleskine documentaries online, and from the warm qabalistic assertion of our magickally propitious door number to the slightly confounding date with Crowley's death, I found an even more disconcerting loop with my Black Plaque researches. <br />
Browsing these documentaries, I discovered, incredibly, that the house had subsequently been bought by Dennis Lorraine, the serial fraudster who had duped George Sanders. Indeed Boleskine House was at the centre of the sausage scandal that rocked the 60s. One of Lorraine's sons, Clive Kristen has recently published a biography of his fraudster father, the wonderfully titled "Fucking On Fridays, My Old Man and the great sausage scam". It provides some insight into Boleskine House, its myths and its ominous spectre over Loch Ness, the locals and the houses' inhabitants. What struck me in particular, reading Kristen's account of family life at Boleskine House, is the curious interdimensionality of the place - it is a house on the borderland to borrow from William Hope Hodgson's surreal horror. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dennis Lorraine</td></tr>
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Dennis Lorraine bought Boleskine House for his estranged wife Molly in 1962. On the 29th November that year he set up a company Loch Ness Foods. Boleskine was to be the prototype for their pig rearing operation. The house had actually been chosen by Molly by a weird whim. She had seen a portrait in an Inverness art gallery of woman named Mary Lorraine who bore a resemblance to herself. Mary Lorraine had been a former occupant of Boleskine House and her husband had blown his brains out in the gun room. Perhaps Molly was aware that Boleskine was trapped in some Sapphire and Steel loop and that her role was to fulfil its curious animistic desires. She was also aware and excited by its occult connection with Crowley. According to Kristen's biography, Molly set up "a specially made circular bed with tailor-made black sheets" at the centre of the former location of Crowley's oratory room in the south-west section of the house. She also conceived and bore her last child in the bed.<br />
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Both Molly Lorraine and her new partner descended into alcoholism during their tenancy of Boleskine, the pilot scheme for the pig rearing operation proved unviable, the building fell into disrepair, and the animals starved in the fields adjoining the house. The next owner, a retired army officer, blew his brains out in Crowley's temple. Boleskine is not just a House On The Borderland, it's Polanski's vampiric and paranoid apartment in <i>The Tenant</i> - it forces recidivist impulses. Colin Wilson has suggested the prevalence of Loch Ness monster sightings post Crowley's Abramelin Working might be as a result of the magician trafficking with preternatural entities. In the whacked out world of remote viewing recent channelers have come up with a unique theory - the Loch Ness monster is the ghost of a dinosaur. But I would suggest that Crowley's tenancy was another recidivist impulse of the house itself. <br />
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There's a juicy psychogeographic memorat concerning a tunnel that supposedly connects the house to Boleskine graveyard. The graveyard sits immediately below Crowley's former abode and whilst a connecting tunnel seems feasible it is also a trope of the haunted house myth. That said Kristen's account of life at Boleskine hints at the possible veracity of this tunnel. Two of Molly's children, Richard and Laurence, discovered a some kind of secret passage leading from the cellar and partially collapsed. Kristen also claims that one of the boys, Laurence, developed a lifelong 'apostolic' devotion to Crowley, became addicted to heroin and followed the hedonistic philosophy set out in <i>Liber Legis</i>. Like Trelkovsky in <i>The Tenant</i>, Laurence assumes the Godform of the place's previous occupant.<br />
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The current owners of Boleskine House with justification post warnings that trespassers will be prosecuted. Aware of their desire for privacy, and intrigued by the possibility of this connecting tunnel, I decided to perform the recording session in the graveyard. It was sodden afternoon, the rain liberating in some way, smudging the camera lens and providing some interesting micro-rhythms I as wandered among the tombs. There is a mortuary house at the bottom of the graveyard next to a great fungus infested tree stump. Someone had propped stones against the wall of the building allowing me to lean into the interior top floor of the hut. I was able to record some vocalisations using the death space as an echo chamber. There is a sign at the entrance to the graveyard - "Please Close Gate". As I often do, I recorded the creaking of their iron hinges. A form of natural EVP, when time stretched the sound of sepulchral gates provide an effective tocsin from the underworld. <br />
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Following the session, we drove up through Farigaig Forest, with its giant moss stones, like the set of yet to be filmed documentary on the flora of Lovecraft's dreams. It struck me then that activities in the burial ground were a gate opening exercise to the future terrains of post-Crowleyean researchers. <br />
Lovecraft's interdimensional imagination owes so much to William Hope Hodgson's, <i>The House On The Borderland</i> - the uncanny house as architectural seal to cosmic horror. In Hodgson's utterly claustrophobic and psychotic horror, the strangest inhabitants of the nightmare are the humanoid swine creatures, that pursue the reclusive owner of the house across space and time. As the main protagonist searches for the source of ingress of the creatures he discovers a tunnel leading to a great chasm. The pigs come from the most outre pit of the fantastic. The image of the sight of dead pigs in the fields of Boleskine following Sanders and Lorraine's disastrous business venture echoes the visions of Hodgson's book. Like the lichen infested backwaters of Boleskine, the hero in <i>The House on The Borderland </i>succumbs to a voracious and luminous fungal disease. <br />
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Crowley's chose Boleskine House for its compliance with the ritual rubric laid out in <i>The Book of the Sacred Magic Of Abramelin the Mage</i>. Part of the protocol stipulated that the terrace area be covered in fine river sand, to capture the footprints of encroaching demons - forensic occultism of the medieval kind. But as I dig deeper into the circular history of Boleskine, I am more inclined to believe the house chose Crowley. On the 22nd December a few weeks after our visit Boleskine House was largely destroyed by a fire, but it's not the first time this has happened. According to local legend, and one promulgated by Jimmy Page, the house may have built on the site of a former church that burned down killing the entire congregation. Presumably the adjoining burial ground is part of the original constellation of the legendary church. It would seem the fate of Boleskine House is a circular myth, like the double house of William Hope Hodgson, now a literal ruin of a fabled ruin. The fire at the old church seems like rural legend, but it does at least prophesy Boleskine's recent demise. Perhaps the congregation trapped in the the church are the demons leftover by Crowley's abandoned working centuries later.<br />
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What's also interesting is the influence Hodgson's tale seems to have had on another modern paranormal tale, <i>The Amityville Horror</i>. In that book, the Lutze's daughter Missy develops an imaginary friend, a demonic pig-like creature with glowing eyes, hoofprints of an enormous pig appear on the snow outside. If Amityville and Hodgson's house in Ireland share the same cosmic estate agent, then together with Boleskine there's clearly a powerful consortium directing events at these locations. Jay Anson allegedly took the title <i>The Amityville Horror</i> from Lovecraft's <i>The Dunwich Horror</i>, though arguably it would seem he's excavating the influence of Hodgson for some of his building specifications. George, In <i>The Amityville Horror</i>, like Trevolsky in The Tenant begins to mimic the behaviour patterns of the previous occupant. Where Trevolsky inexplicably starts smoking <i>Malboro</i> reds in the café frequented by the Egyptologist, George hangs out at the Witches Brew, drinking hole of DeFeo, the murderous former owner of the possessed house. What we're talking about here is the ultimate nightmare of the mortgage contract - repossession. All the houses are available at knock down prices for the very good reason that they are owned by the devil.<br />
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In the Summer of 1904, following the reception of the <i>Book Of The Law</i>, Crowley remarked that Boleskine suffered an infestation of taxonomically unclassifiable beetles. Their distinguishing morphological feature was a single long 'horn'. They were sent to the Natural History Museum for identification. Similarly, Amityville is plagued by a swarm out of season flies. It would suggest that the provenance of Behelzeebub to these houses on the borderlands, is their local fauna of anomalous insects.<br />
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Talking of Cryptozoology, it's finally worth mentioning a mythical creature confined to North East Scotland. It's called the Yird Pig, a dreaded subterranean swine that was believed to live in graveyards, burrowing among the dead bodies and devouring them. Sightings of the creature seem to be exclusively confined to Aberdeenshire and it's suggested that the beast or its myth derives from one particular kirkyard at Walla. Legend has it that the swine's teeth could be heard crunching on coffins by those who pass within earshot of its abode. I can't help but feel that on our journey from Banchory to Loch Ness we picked up the revenant of this occult pig and when I untwine the recordings from Boleskine Burial ground I will discover aural evidence of its hideous practice.<br />
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On the mourner's bench at Boleskine there's a plaque with an enigmatic inscription "Finally With Her Ancestors". Boleskine House is now the ruin in the nightmare of William Hope Hodgson, but very much an animistic ruin, a personification of place with a desire to manifest a primal story through the tribulations of its tenants and their atavisms.<br />
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The story of the Dennis Lorraine, George Sanders and the great sausage scandal reads like some weird pastiche of the recent allegations against the higher echelons of society. Ted Heath takes centre stage as the pinned political pawn compromised by his business relations with Lorraine. Kristen's memoir even suggests at a possible dalliance between Heath and Jayne Mansfield. Mansfield cursed by Anton La Vey, cover queen of Kenneth Anger's scandalous Hollywood Babylon. I can't help but think If I were scatter fine sand outside English Heretic's holy temple the footprints of the encroaching demons would match those of my Black Plaque recipients.Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com51tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-49715967642360863832015-06-28T04:20:00.002-07:002015-06-28T13:46:13.215-07:00How Beautiful are the Ripples of the Sand<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's possibly not irony but entropy that means after well over a decade of fecundating the imagination with England's diverse mythic structures, I find myself obsessing about the ultimate inert world; the realm of sand. Perversely though, the desert and by extrapolation the sea less beach appears as fertile if not more so than the concrete bunkers and ruined Hammer churches of previous research.<br />
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For many years I've been gestating on a correlating various visionary interpretations on red deserts; a conflation of Burrough's <i>Cities of the Red Nights</i>; Ballard's <i>Vermilion Sands</i>, Lovecraft's crimson Desert and Kenneth Grant's mauve zone. Grant's mauve zone might be a slightly off colour vision; that said, his pulsating oracular portal must be construed as tantric metaphor given the domination of menstrual themes in his work. Such a reading draws in Peter Redgrove and Penelope Shuttle's 1975 book <i>The Wise Wound,</i> a text that Grant uses as an anthropological marker for his wilder speculations. The desert at dusk in Grant's imagination populated by blood of the moon devouring hyenas.<br />
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Redgrove and Shuttle's <i>The Wise Wound</i> contains a fascinating deconstruction and menstrual reading of <i>The Exorcist</i>. It stresses the importance of Captain Howdy's obscenity, “the sow is mine...” It struck me recently that the mention of the sow has a fascinating ripple across the visionary and more particularly, the pestilent desert. Blavatsky envisioned Chozzar as a pig god of Atlantis and the name has been appropriated by the cults of Choronzon linking it Pazuzu. Of course literalists have debunked the speculative gematria that occultists apply to Pazuzu and Choronzon as evidence of their synonymity, but equally so, we are not in the realms of the literal – we are in the realm of twilight language, image and association the misrulers of its grammar. The important thing is to notice the appearance of the psychopomps – desert dogs and pigs.<br />
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For the gigs I played last October, I used a new unrecorded piece "Shugal-Choronzon". It was designed to be the theme music for a metafictional Western set in this visionary red realm. For the video backing I used the opening scene from <i>The Exorcist</i>, the unearthing of Pazuzu. It's one of my favourite pieces of cinema and a scene I would like to live in and maybe I do: a hyperventilating amateur archaeologist surrounded by omens. It struck me introducing the scene into the visionary equation more tightly tied the desert to a places of possession. Crowley's encounter with Choronzon in Algeria is perhaps his father's Plymouth Brethren bible coming back in Enochian; the last temptation of Anti-Christ.<br />
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John Waters once said his favourite actor was Wilhelm Defoe, 'a man who could play Manson and Christ with equal plausibility' to paraphrase Waters. Inevitably the dune buggy apocalypse of Spahn ranch races into this Western. Ballard cast Manson in <i>Hello America</i> as a desert borne leader. Seemingly though Ballard's <i>Vermilion Sand</i> stands out of the equation of a demonic reading, but I think it's important to trace the changing psychological terrain of this author's deserts. <i>Vermilion Sands</i> is a timeless and slightly decadent shangri-la. The people who inhabit <i>Vermilion Sands</i> are disaffected and parasitical, but not yet fully blown, giant cocked, leering Pazuzus. That would manifest in the suburbs, first with Vaughan and then in the form of shamanic priapus Blake in <i>Unlimited Dream Company</i>- a psychedelic death demon, the anti-christ neighbour of Sir Stanley Spencer's Cookham. If Cookham high street is a bucolic bethel then the prostitute causeways of the Heathrow approach are Chorazain.<br />
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One can also read Ballard's suburbia as desert, inert as sand, breeding grounds for tomorrow's psychopaths. Sand as a constituent of concrete. If in biblical doom say we return to dust and ashes, in the secular brutal realm we will return to sand.<br />
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Ballard's sands morph suddenly with <i>The Terminal Beach</i> into a considerably more pathological realm. <i>The Terminal Beach</i> was written in 1964, just after his wife's death (on holiday on the Spanish coast). It's undoubtedly a roman à clef, but also the point of some breakdown, where he introduces the condensed chapter fractured form.<br />
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By bringing the idea of the sea-less beach into the imagery, we can begin to see some very interesting and less obvious chimeras. At the more exotic end, the phantom form on Dali's paranoid beaches and in England, the demon spheres of M.R James' sands: of <i>Oh Whistle</i> and <i>A Warning To The Curious</i>. As I discovered a while back, Robert Graves alludes to the Latin riddle in <i>The White Goddess</i> and draws in a very intriguing connection to ritual whistles as well as is own short story The Shout, all of which add to the pestilential geographic. To briefly summarise, Graves explores the symbolism of the Marjorcan clay whistle called the <i>xuirrell</i>. The <i>xuirrell</i> can be cast in a number of anthropomorphic shapes: a mermaid, a bull-headed man, a coiled serpent or pregnant woman. Each of these forms signify a role in a harvest festival at the Autumn Equinox. The festival calls in the winnowing North East wind to soak the winter wheat planted earlier in the month. This is the only time whistling is permitted, at other the times the wind is feared like the devil and is ruinous to the agricultural year. Graves quotes <i>Oh Whistle's</i> dictum “furbis, flabis, flebis” as a warning; “whistle shrill weep long”.<br />
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In all this we begin to construe the possibility of our own supernatural sands and their relevant demonic conjurations through sound. The beaches of Norfolk were used to great effect in the 60s' and 70s' adaptations of MR James stories. The dunes of North Devon are the setting for <i>The Shout</i> (both the original story and the film adaptation). Crowley and Neuberg's Arabian nightmare returns to its Devon brethren, though the vision of Graves. The ripples of the exotic have local mirages for us to fantasise upon. Jerzy Skolimowski's 1978 adaptation of <i>The Shou</i>t made use of Staunton sands – the largest dune system in England. The psassomere eats away at the marram grass to create a particularly jarring collage of landscape. Staunton Sands was used as a simulacra of Omaha beach for training in preparation for the D-Day invasions. The ciphers Omaha and Utah are employed throughout Ballard's most brutal period of writing as icons of the terminal beach. These are subtle doubles of a fever dream, encroaching stains on England green.<br />
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It's not an arbitrary decision that Graves' narrative of the wondering shaman takes place during a cricket match in the grounds of a lunatic asylum. This is the pagan astral of Summerland, invaded by the perverse ceremonies of those liberated from sanity. The character of Charles Crossley has learned how to kill with a shout. He has learned this power during his years in the Australian desert living under the tutelage of aborigines. By a strange coincidence Blake in Ballard's <i>Unlimited Dream Company</i> performs an aboriginal mating ritual with the hole left by a cricket stump on his school playing field. In some ways <i>The Shou</i>t parallels Ballard's suburban sperm festival; a nomad priapus copulating with the sanctity of village mores. Crossley seduces Richard's wife by stealing a buckle from her shoe. A trivial possession in the hands of the magician allows him to capture her soul.<br />
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As with M.R. James' stories Graves' <i>The Shout</i> is allusive of its author's erudition; the piece is a fictive riddle with carefully placed clues and keys to a deeper gnostic mystery. When Crossley asks Richard if he is aware of a magic that causes death by means of a shout, the hero replies with an intriguing hint, that he has read of a dragon cry heard at May-eve.<br />
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Here Graves deliciously opens a Chinese puzzlebox to further apparitional realms. The shriek he mentions comes from a story in the Mabinogion. After Llud inherits Britain as his kingdom it is devastated on three occasions by plagues. The second plague is precipitated by an endless sky battle between two dragons, one white, one red. The shriek of the combat is heard on May-Eve. It causes women to abort their foetuses. Llud is instructed by his favourite brother Llefely how to cure this plague. The cure is clearly an overtly alchemical formula. He must gather the finest mathematicians to survey the land exactly and find the very centre of the country. At this point they must dig a pit and place a cauldron of mead within it. The cauldron is to be covered with a silk cloth. On doing this, the prospectors will be able to see the dragons fighting in the sky above. The dragons will eventually fall exhausted into the pit – no longer in the form of dragons but as piglets. They will drink the mead and full into a stupor, to be wrapped in the silk cloth, enclosed in a stone casket and buried beneath the strongest fortress in the kingdom.<br />
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What's also interesting with Llud's dragon war is that it contextualises <i>The Shout </i>with a key concern of Graves' <i>The White Goddess</i>, the May-Eve fertility rites of Northern Europe. The more one explores <i>The White Goddess</i>, the more strange its structure appears – it's a baffling construction, but always compelling – it's also non linear and deeply set in dream time, a smithery of word reverb. It belongs a library of the waking dream, a speculative grimoire of bardic gnosticism. The truth is tantalisingly just out of reach like a levitating grail vessel or a castle in the sky.<br />
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In Skolimowski's adaptation of <i>The Shout</i>, Crossley, played by Alan Bates, gives Anthony (renamed from Richard in the story) a demonstration of the efficacy of his killing cry. It blights the immediate terrain, dead sheep fall from the marram grass down the dunes. The scene is curiously reminiscent of Werner Herzog's <i>Fata Morgana</i>, his 1968 documentary in search of Saharan desert mirage myths. In one famous scene the camera pans across the carcasses of cattle. I used this scene a few back as video back drop for a live version of <i>The Dagger Of Bou Said</i>, a track based on Crowley's cry of 10th Aethyr. Crossley in <i>The Shout</i> is the archetypal itinerant charlatan who feeds on scholarly naïveté and steals his muse. Think again the menage a trios between Kelly and the Dees: Dee trades his wife for an angelic language. Of course the overarching theme of <i>The Shout</i> is Graves obsession with the single poetic theme - the relationship between poet, muse and wyrd as a metaphor for the life, death and resurrection of the spirit of the year.<br />
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It appears that <i>Oh Whistle</i> served as a premonition for James during a poignant but platonic relationship with the widow of his friend James McBryde. James was, as ever, an asexual wyrd. What's often overlooked is the significance of the location of Parkin's' discovery of his demon whistle and its archaeological and anthropological possibilities. The whistle is inscribed with two phrase “QUIS ESTE ISTE QUI VENIT” and the aforementioned “furbis flabis flebis”. He unearths it at the remains of a former Templar preceptory. Though the fictional location of the Burnstow is based on the Suffolk coastal town of Felixstowe, the Templar preceptory of his imagination seems to be a premonition of another one situated at Garway on Welsh border. Following the death of James McBryde, the author was frequent visitor to Mcbryde's widow Gwendolene, who lived in Herefordshire. In a letter from 1917, it seems they had an unsettling visit to the Templar church at Garway. Of this visit James writes,<br />
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<i>"We must have offended something or somebody at Garway I think: probably we took it too much for granted, in speaking of it, that we should be able to do exactly as we pleased. Next time we shall know better. There is no doubt it is a very rum place and needs careful handling."</i><br />
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The church adjoins a farm also built by the Templars. The farmyard houses a huge dovecote also built by the templars and with a sinister qabalistic architecture. The dovecote contains exactly 666 windows. A tocsin shrills long across our desert. Crowley and Neuberg successfully summoned Choronzon by merely sacrificing three pigeons in the Solomonic circle at Bou Saada. God knows what entity the Templars might have been energising with a 222 times more powerful formula of blood sacrifice.<br />
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QUIS EST ISTE was spawned from a verse in Isaiah, “who is it who is coming from Edom, wearing the red garments of Bozrah”. What's very curious given Graves' mention of “furbis, flabis, flebis” in his chapter <i>Gwyion's Heresy</i>, is that he then proceeds to riff on the qabalistic cipher of Adam and Edom. He refers to Adam as “the red man” and states that Edom and Adam are one and the same. Graves draws on a record in the Talmud concerning an heretical sect known as the Melechizedekians – essentially an oracular cult that consulted with the shade of this “red man” in a Hebron cave. What can only be speculated is that somehow Graves' assertions occupy the same mythic headspace as <i>Oh Whistle</i>; and that possibly the whistle unearthed by Parkin was employed in the same Eleusinian mysteries that obsess Graves. Jesus as the corn king, calendrical ceremonies to honour his birth, death and resurrection. Gwion's heresy is that we have literalised our relationship with the mill of fate, that we are above nature, and in control. A whistle to propitiate the harvest wind blown at the wrong time would have the adverse effect of invoking a malevolent wind and its consonant murderous siren.<br />
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In the metafictional shimmer of overheated connectivity, our occult Western takes the form of a gnostic magnificent seven. Replace the bloody duels and sun glints off spinning pistols with killer sigils: of biblical curses on demon whistles.Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-56033818340512555082015-03-09T11:42:00.004-07:002015-03-09T11:42:45.214-07:00A Study Of Lunar Research Flights<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A Study of Lunar Research Flights was the codename for a US military operation to explode a nuclear bomb on the moon. The phallic lunacy of cold war weapon testing is the launchpad for English Heretic to meditate on the cosmic battle between sol and luna. The red and white of alchemy as primal landscapes and archetypes, designated by sun and moon. This release navigates a rich route from the solar temple of Bawdsey missile base via the utterly mysterious shrine to Astarte at Margate's Shell Grotto back to the cruel tophet of Carthage. Under the tutelage of Tanit and Ba'al, this is music for hermetic time and space travel: flight commanders Carl Sagan and Artaud. Comes with 24 page A5 illustrated booklet</div>
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Head over to the <a href="http://www.english-heretic.org.uk/EighthClimate/">Eighth Climate shop </a>to purchase this release.Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-44979557541935018472014-11-02T13:42:00.000-08:002014-11-02T13:42:21.349-08:00Weekend Other World, a letter of appreciation.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gyrus discussing Polar Cosmology and The Thing - photo by Jack Hunter</td></tr>
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Weekend Other World was a blast and I think everybody who attended and spoke had a great time.<br />
We will be looking to put together a publication of some of the papers in the near future.<br />
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I received a very nice and thoughtful email from Russell Cuzner which serves as a lovely appreciation of the day. Russell's kindly allowed me to quote his correspondence as a means of thanking all who took part:<br />
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Dr Riley's demonstration of the 'death of the sixties' was very nicely framed and emphasised the longevity afforded to the heady cultural mix of the time - I certainly don't expect anyone to be talking about the "terminal decline of the 1990s" or "...2000s" in years to come (sadly)!<br />
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Hannah's fascinating, anthropological lens on horror films has been stirring my head ever since as I consider other movies and the motives behind their manoeuvres. In a similar way to the folk horror demonstrating localised alienation, I wonder if class could be observed as another, similar facet - does the political wax and wain from Tory to Labour and back again get reflected by films whose threats are respectively, the secretive indulgences of the rich, or the wild, waywardness of disaffected youth and the poor? (stuck at work I can't think of many examples, though I'm sure there are many - maybe the perverse rich in 'Society' and the killer hoodies of 'Eden Lake', perhaps?)<br />
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The very dapper Mr Hunter covered areas I've only started getting into - to my shame - in fact I'd begun reading Machen's 'A Fragment of Life' just a few days before the weekend, and now greatly look forward to the 'Great God Pan' chapter; while my experience of MR James is, like many, limited to BBC dramatisations. I wish my RE teachers were as open minded when I was at school - all I seem to remember doing was trace maps of Israel and colour them in!<br />
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Evie Salmon's insights into the increasing influence of place confirmed the current of psychogeographic concerns that seem to making their way through much of modern musics. I'd like to think that part of this will flow into musicians becoming more concerned with actually playing and recording in specific places, or composing for particular environments even, so place and music become closer once more.<br />
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Gyrus' cosmic extrapolation of The Thing went far beyond (no pun intended!) the scope I was anticipating. I loved the way it resonated with Hannah's illustrations of fear of the foreign, but turned it on its head to suggest that we are the aliens we're struggling to understand within the context of the rest of nature (as we continue to pillage it).<br />
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John Doran's confessional chapters were as wryly humorous and affecting as ever and certainly cleansed my palate (although I was thoroughly enjoying all previous flavours!)<br />
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Lisa Cradduck's brave solo speech peaked (ahem!) my interest on yet another book that I've somehow managed to miss so far - to put things right Under the Volcano is now on order from eBay! (and then, weirdly, an unpublished manuscript of Lowry's was reported the same weekend).<br />
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Unearthing Forgotten Horrors was a revelation - Darren Charles' curation swiftly travelling from the romantic orchestrations through prog to more 'post-industrial' pastures deftly demonstrated the important changes in approaches to sonic scariness over the years. I wonder what he thinks is coming next?<br />
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For Will Fowler's summary of Jarman's more experimental (and, in my opinion, strongest films) - I particularly appreciated the way he emphasised how this work wasn't something that necessarily needed de-coding, and can be rewarding by merely letting the combination of images and sound flow over you uncramped by comprehension.<br />
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It was an ideal prelude to the actual thing which was simply awesome to behold - as I think I mentioned, the fact that the sound came from a separate source meant that the quality was likely better but also lent the showing a deft aptness - the 'tracking' of sound to image being slightly different, and so, unique to any other 'copies' - particularly given this was how Jarman showed the films originally to friends at home.<br />
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As ever, English Heretic's outline of approach to cinema and its use as a 'score' to inspire and guide recorded work I found dangerously catalytic.<br />
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Thanks also to Matthew Shaw, Teleplamiste (Mark Pilkington and Mike York) and the Pond Scum light crew (Jamie Sutcliffe and Jennifer Pengilly) for their audio visual extravaganza's on Friday night.<br />
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Here's a couple of them pics in action:<br />
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
Matthew Shaw (<a href="https://twitter.com/apollolaan">@apollolaan</a>)
locates the Spiritus Loci at <a href="https://twitter.com/apiarystudios">@apiarystudios</a> ... <a href="https://twitter.com/markopilkington">@markopilkington</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/EnglishHeretic">@EnglishHeretic</a> <a href="http://t.co/UHdqfTzD8u">pic.twitter.com/UHdqfTzD8u</a><br />
— MilesofSmiles (@MilesofSmilesUK) <a href="https://twitter.com/MilesofSmilesUK/status/525749371632365569">October 24, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
Teleplasmiste oozing from the walls!
<a href="https://twitter.com/apollolaan">@apollolaan</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/apiarystudios">@apiarystudios</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/markopilkington">@markopilkington</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/EnglishHeretic">@EnglishHeretic</a> <a href="http://t.co/xGTEVciQVI">pic.twitter.com/xGTEVciQVI</a><br />
— MilesofSmiles (@MilesofSmilesUK) <a href="https://twitter.com/MilesofSmilesUK/status/525784052297912320">October 24, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
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Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-32773895131164009772014-10-08T12:22:00.003-07:002014-10-08T12:22:53.093-07:00Gigs and Events<h3>
October 10th - Bournemouth, Shelley Manor</h3>
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<a href="http://absoluteelsewherebournemouth.wordpress.com/">http://absoluteelsewherebournemouth.wordpress.com/</a><br />
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October 24th - Apiary Studios, Hackney</h3>
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/843456652361001/">https://www.facebook.com/events/843456652361001/</a><br />
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October 25th - Weekend OtherWorld talks and music (Cinema Museum)</h3>
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October 30th - Folk Horror, Let's Dance, Sheffield</h3>
<a href="http://www.99mary.st/events/folk-horror-lets-dance/">http://www.99mary.st/events/folk-horror-lets-dance/</a><br />
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November 8th - Brugata, Oslo</h3>
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<br />Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-79459810103212536302014-09-03T23:51:00.001-07:002014-09-04T00:20:57.906-07:00Out Now: The Underworld Service <div class="separator" style="background-color: #fff9ee; clear: both; color: #333333; font-family: Neuton; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.6000003814697px; text-align: justify;">
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The Underworld Service available now at the shop or in digital format from Bandcamp</div>
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<a href="http://englishheretic.blogspot.co.uk/p/souvenir-shop.html"><b>Go to the shop</b></a></div>
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Go to Bandcamp</div>
<iframe seamless="" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=841426622/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/tracklist=false/artwork=small/transparent=true/" style="border: 0; height: 120px; width: 100%;"><a href="http://englishheretic.bandcamp.com/album/the-underworld-service">The Underworld Service by English Heretic</a></iframe>
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After a decade of toil in the blood drenched, worm eaten, occult battlefields of Albion, English Heretic takes a well earned holiday... in Hades. The Underworld Service is a 70 minute radio broadcast from Tartarus, where every song and news report is an intimation of our mortality. The Underworld Service subverts the culture show format and celebrates the hard hitting documentary format. Scanning a waveband of Corpse Oriented Rock, Philosophical Stoner, Field Trip Hop, Horror Folk, and Funereal Disco, The Underworld Service is English Heretic’s most death enhancing release to date.</div>
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The Underworld Service comes with a 48 page colour guide to accompany your voyage. Informed by the work of James Hillman, English Heretic undertake a series of ritual descents and movements towards the seas of the unconscious.</div>
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We survey Greek Horror fads of the 1970s. We look at the eschatological warnings of the fabled alchemist Fulcanelli and follow his trail from a church in London to the irradiated coasts of Suffolk. We travel to the white cliffs of Sussex to meet an occult beachcomber. The living dead are unearthed in the beautiful limestone ravines of the Peak district and traced to their necromantic origins in the Black Temples of Atlantis. We raise a glass to the enolic mornings of Malcolm Lowry, inside a giant mausoleum. We travel to Hiroshima to record the voice of Kwannon and transmit haunting military experiments from the jungles of Vietnam.</div>
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<b>CD track listing</b></div>
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<b>* Inside The Mausoleum</b></div>
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<b>* River Of Black Rams' Blood</b></div>
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<b>* Invisible Canon</b></div>
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<b>* The Alchemist Of Saltdean</b></div>
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<b>* The Pherenike</b></div>
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<b>* Let Sleeping Corpses Lie</b></div>
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<b>* Video Anxieties</b></div>
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<b>* Peregrine</b></div>
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<b>* Transmutation At Sizewell B</b></div>
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<b>* Operation Wandering Soul</b></div>
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<b>* The Underworld Service</b></div>
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<b>48 page colour A5 book</b></div>
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Price £11 (UK) £13 (Rest Of The World) </div>
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Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-33956685416348418502014-07-20T16:09:00.002-07:002014-07-22T12:56:02.497-07:00The Underworld Service - track notes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The next English Heretic release, <b>The Underworld Service</b> is due for release at the end of August. Over 70 minutes of new music. The Underworld Service is a holiday in Hades. It subverts the bouffant intellect of Melvyn Bragg culture and celebrates the hard hitting documentary investigations of World In Action. The Underworld in our vision doubles as an hermetic process. We look at the eschatological warnings of the fabled alchemist Fulcanelli and follow his trail from a church in London to the irradiated coasts of Suffolk. The living dead are unearthed in the beautiful limestone ravines of the Peak district and traced to their necromantic origins in the Black Temples of Atlantis. We bathe in the enolic mornings of Malcolm Lowry, Under The Volcano, inside a giant mausoleum. Informed by the work of James Hillman, English Heretic undertake a series of Katabases: ritual descents and movements towards the seas of the unconscious. <br />
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Musically, we scan a waveband of Corpse Oriented Rock, Philosophical Stoner, Field Trip Hop, Horror Folk and Funereal Disco . Radio broadcast from Tartarus, no matter what station you tune into, where every song, news report and culture show reminds you of your own mortality and the hermetic ciphers embedded in pop culture. Music genre as a form of word play, honouring the cabalistic punning tradition of Fulcanelli.<br />
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<b>Inside The Mausoleum</b></div>
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In honour of the katabatic alcoholic tragedy of Malcolm Lowry. The track began with an improvisation carried out inside De Grey's mausoleum near Clophill in Hertfordshire. It's my argument that fictions should start at the point of death. Lowry's <i>Under The Volcano</i> is an example <i>par excellenc</i>e of this process. The track evolves into an evocation of an hermetic journey, a paean to the universal solvent of inebriated lyricism. The situationists paid homage to Lowry by carrying a series of psychedelically informed derives to the Paris suburb of Sarcelles. They were high on mescalin at the time. Sarcelles by a curious coincidence was the location of the alchemist Fulcanelli's legendary transmutation in 1922. </div>
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<iframe frameborder="no" height="450" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/159582490&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true" width="100%"></iframe>
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<b>River Of Black Rams Blood</b></div>
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Kereyni's description of Hades re-imagined as the main theme to a Greek horror film. The track was composed from snippets of "Land of the Minotaur" theme together with field recordings from a corpse road at Walsham Le Willows in Suffolk. As I recorded the church bell peels, a child could be heard playing on a swing in a neighbouring garden. The creaking of the swinging was oddly melodic and when processed back in the studio created a perfect imitation of a folk rock flute riff. Vocal wise, Alan Vega or Andrew Eldritch (depending on your critical angle) down the Greek discotheque backed by an ageing English Lit. Professor – the types you'd meet on an horrific Mediterranean holiday. <br />
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<b>Video Anxieties</b></div>
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This forms part of the research I've
being doing into constructing a private inner cinema. The track is an attempt to remap the locale of zombie Horror flick – <i>Living Dead At
Manchester Morgue</i>. This infamous video nasty set bizarrely enough in the Peak District, gives the film a gory beauty. Our interpretation is folk horror soundtrack part documentary of a
vaguely anxious travel guide, the dialogue abstracted from <i>Living
Dead At The Manchester Morgue</i> – to recast the script as a paranoid
holiday outing. A sinister documentary element is added by
an Italian voice over reading an extracts from Kenneth
Grant's <i>Nightside of Eden</i>, In <i> Nightside </i> Grant makes the
claim that the Altantean Priesthood employed sexual necromancy in their the
creation of zombies. Hardcore horror and hardcore occultism meet in the mid 70s.<br />
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<b> Let Sleeping Corpses Lie</b></div>
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Horror folk. The song is
a traditional Derbyshire ballad concening the
infamous Winnat's Pass Murders. Sound affects are taken from<i>
Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue,</i> of the zombies' curious
gurgling sound. Director George Grau based the sounds of the zombies on his memory of hearing his own father's death rattle. </div>
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<b>Transmutation At Sizewell B </b></div>
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The Greek concept of the Katabasis –
a ritual descent – can also mean a journey toward the sea. The
track is derived from recordings made during a serendipitous katabatic
journey toward the Suffolk coast. The journey began
at the infamous Blythburgh church (where the devil is said to have visited in
the middle ages). While there, we recorded a local choir were rehearsing <i>Office
Of The Dead</i>. We then drove to Sizewell B and recorded the ambience,
to be later processed into an imaginary geiger counter sound. The
lyrics come from the final chapter of Fulcanelli's <i>Mystery Of
Cathedrals</i>. <i>Mystery of Cathedrals </i>is an alchemical warning against the
misuse of atomic chemistry. Most curiously, opposite the entrance to
Sizewell B, is a pub called the Fulcan Arms. The
pseudonym Fulcanelli is thought to be derived from the name for
the Roman God of fire and forge – Vulcan.</div>
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<b>The Pherenikos</b><br />
Philosophical Stoner Rock: in which we tackle the ancient veneration of the severed head in the figure of the Gorgon contrasting feminine tenderness with US servicemen's abuse of VietCong in the process of trophy skull adornment. The track that exposes heavy riffs whilst also considering serious gender issues encompassing religion, war and masculinity.<br />
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<b>The Alchemist Of Saltdean</b><br />
An extract from an interview with south coast hermeticist - Haunted Shoreline<br />
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<b>Peregrine</b><br />
Field Trip Hop - the predatory cousin of Fleetwood Mac's Albatross - A setting for a reading from J.A. Baker's shamanic nature book, <i>The Peregrine</i>.</div>
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<b>Invisible Canon</b></div>
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The piece began with two field recording on a visit to Hiroshima. The first, the sound of the thousands of cicadas near the ruin of the Atomic Dome, the closest surviving building left standing after the bomb. The second field recording taken on video on my Cannon camera was of myself striking the peace bell.<br />
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The piece includes the choir of Gyuto monks. This was inspired by a dream recounted in Michael Horwitz Hill's book <i>Dreaming the End of the World</i> in which one of his subjects experiences a nightmare where sound of B52 bombers has been replaced by a choir Gyuto monks.<br />
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For the structure of the piece, I wanted to create a track in the style of apocalyptic DJ Shadow - DJ 'Falls The' Shadow - a reflection on an incredible exhibit in the Peace Museum at Hiroshima. The museum contains the steps of a local bank with the shadow of a body, evaporated during the explosion: the most haunting and violent sculpture, one can imagine.<br />
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<b>Operation Wandering Soul</b><br />
The early 70s as the underworld, a report on the documentary roots of <i>Apocalypse Now</i>. A homage to ITV's <i>World In Action </i>and its expose of rebellion in the ranks of U.S grunts and the use of sound warfare to create imaginary Viet Cong ghosts. Operation Wandering Soul was conceived in the echo chambers of the US military.<br />
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<b>The Underworld Service</b><br />
A unique new music service: English Heretic Music Thanatology ®. The first prototype will be used on the death bed of English Heretic. We have identified a market for a more edgey listener who would like something more terrifying than the platitudinous harps of conventional Music Thanatology practices.<br />
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Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-45469319902151946942014-07-17T02:21:00.000-07:002014-07-17T02:21:36.524-07:00Film And Its Double live set<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="400" mozallowfullscreen="" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/98320071" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-20020149672813011472014-06-10T07:45:00.000-07:002014-06-10T07:55:30.056-07:00Update on Activities<h3 style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
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<b>Live In Sheffield, Thursday 12th June</b></h2>
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Doors 8pm</span><br />
<span style="font-weight: normal;">Riverside, 1 Mowbray St.</span><br />
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I'll be playing at this wyrd folk night at The Riverside, in Sheffield. It's part of a series of monthly events put on by the Heretics' Folk Club. The aesthetic I dig very much.</div>
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Details: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/307456856074014/">https://www.facebook.com/events/307456856074014/</a></div>
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<b>Commission For The Liverpool International Music Festival</b></h2>
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English Heretic have kindly been invited by the LIMF and The Quietus to contribute to a project commission called Minor Characters. For more details on this fascinating concept - which I am delighted to be part of - go over to the festival site.</div>
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<a href="http://www.limfestival.com/limf-commissions/minor-characters/">http://www.limfestival.com/limf-commissions/minor-characters/</a></div>
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The character is a very EH figure and has serendipity would have it, was someone in some form I had wanted to commemorate since the project's inception.</div>
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Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-5229287124021053352014-03-09T18:48:00.002-07:002014-03-10T05:23:45.605-07:00Death To Fascist Insect That Preys Upon The Blood Of The People!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In the liner notes to <i>Anti-Heroes</i> I explained the conceit for the remixed extract of <i>Plan For The Kidnap Of Princess Anne</i> that appeared on the album. The remix was called <i>The Mallian Timeslip </i>as a nod to the Phil Dickian nature of what I perceived to be Ian Ball's cosmic paranoia. The addition of sparse drum machine and Floydian guitars was to re-imagine the track as the off kilter attempt of some out of touch prog rocker to get down with the kids – a spaced out anarchist protest song. In terms of the song's languid structure, I was very much thinking of Peter Gabriel's <i>Biko</i> - I song (and sentiment) I love, and as a child Biko's death left a big impression on me. He died a few days before my 9th birthday. I was an avid radio listener as a kid and I still remember the news reports. Weirdly, Biko's death also fused in my memory with Marc Bolan's death - which happened a few days later, on my 9th birthday. These morning radio news items remain burned into the valves of the hippocampal transistor.</div>
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Since writing those liner notes, I've discovered an interesting connection between Ian Ball and Steve Biko, as well as some strange insinuations regarding the kidnap that suggest Ball was a cog in a grand master plan to initiate World War 3. As for my original assertion - that Ian Ball was a paranoid schizophrenic embroiled in a fantasy of revolution - I am not so sure now! The red sands of Martian conspiracy seem to be shifting beneath my feet, revealing a delirious sub plot in which I am not so sure of my own role.</div>
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It turns out that Ian Ball was defended by Sir David Napley, a very high profile "celebrity solicitor" of the 60s and 70s. Napley, as is perhaps is normal with solicitors, had a curiously ambivalent resume. He defended the Rolling Stones against their drug charges in the 60s, a London gallery for exhibiting nude photographs of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, and most famously Liberal party leader Jeremy Thorpe in his trial for the conspiracy to murder Thorpe's lover Norman Scott. If ever Alan Moore's <i>League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen</i> needed a solicitor to defend themselves in some hideous occultural miscarriage of justice, then I would recommend Napley. However, Napley also appears to have been a champion of the underdog and the less attractive defence case, of which Ian Ball must be included. He defended Jeremy Bamber, who, in common with Ball, still protests his innocence via an obsessive website hosted behind the firewall of a high security prison. And most serendipitously, given the conceit of the track on "Anti-Heroes", Napley served as an independent witness into the inquest of Steve Biko. His report was instrumental in laying the blame on the South African police; Napley concluded, <i>"I was left in no doubt Mr Biko died as a result of brain injury inflicted on him by one or more unidentified member of Security Police."</i></div>
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Just to seal Napley's credentials as the perfect participant in some wild forensic metafiction, he also worked on a miscarriage of justice case from 1967, involving a Newcastle gangland killing, by two Londoners - Dennis Stafford and Michael Luvaglio. The crime centred around the syphoning of profits from one arm bandit fruit machines. Stafford and Luvaglio traveled from London to kill one Angus Sibbett, who had been robbing from machines, set up in Newcastle nightclubs, by London "business" men. Sibbett's bullet ridden body was discovered in the boot of an MK 10 Jag. If the crime sounds like an underworld cliche, it is because the case provided the basis for Ted Lewis' book <i>Jack's Return Home </i>which was made into the film <i>Get Carter</i>. But not content with dipping into the murky world of pulp archetypes, Napley's career extends as far was the icy waters of the Illuminati. He worked for the family of Roberto Calvi, God's Banker, whose assisted suicide still haunts the stanchions of Blackfriars Bridge, in London. Two images fuse: <i>Get Carter – </i>Michael Caine pursued over the high level bridge by henchmen in their doorless red Jag, and the police photographs of Roberto Calvi on the deck of Blackfriars, pockets laden by Masonic stones. </div>
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<i>"St. Peter's not very happy about his car, he's going to shit all over you."</i></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Angus Sibbett, clearly a big man and out of shape</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Roberto Calvi, St. Peter's not very happy.<br />
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And if you're feeling unnatural pangs of sympathy for this champion of justice, Napley also defended General Pinochet - moral compass out of control...</div>
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Where this legal jackanory starts to get even stranger is when we get back to Ian Ball. In the booklet for English Heretic's last release, <i>Mondo Paranoia</i>, I discuss the hoaxed missing chapter from William Manchester's <i>Death Of The President</i>. This infamous hoax was published in the deeply subversive magazine <i>The Realist. </i>This magazine became a primary vehicle for the fascinating work of one Mae Brussell. Brussell is an example <i>par-excellence</i> of what I was trying to highlight in <i>Mondo Paranoia</i>: that the assassination of Kennedy was like some traumatic occult event that appeared to awaken a paranoiac pineal gland, and enabled certain folk to insight a frightening and amorphous new reality. It certainly seemed to serve that purpose for Mae Brussell: it is stated in her biographical notes that the,</div>
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<i>"Complacent Beverly Hills housewife Mae Brussell had quite an awakening in 1963 when President Kennedy was assassinated, and again when she read and cross-indexed the massive 26-volume Warren Commission Hearings. She saw that the international terrorist network that had made up the Axis powers during World War Two had gone underground and continued their world-wide fascist campaign, overthrowing one country after another. America was not exempt."</i></div>
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Brussells' C.V. reads like a cross between a cookie baking homemaker and an industrial culture Nostradamus:</div>
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* On May 29, 1968 she confronted Rose Kennedy at Monterey Peninsula Airport, handing her a note telling her that Robert Kennedy would soon be assassinated. A week later he was executed by Sirhan Sirhan.</div>
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* Two weeks before Patty Hearst was kidnapped, she addressed a Syracruse Univeristy audience informing them that the Symbionese Liberation Army's murder of school superintendent Marcus Foster was the beginning of a terror and psychological sabotage campaign, orchestrated by the government, and similar to that instigated in Nazi Germany during the 1930s.</div>
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* In August 1977, discussing the recent relocation of Jim Jones' move to Guyana, she speculated that it might be a training camp for assassination teams.</div>
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If Napley was a forensic everyman of some countercultural yarn, then Brussell was its prophetess.</div>
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The Symbionese Liberation Army was much the focus of Brussell's obsessions. In 1974, she wrote an article for <i>The Realist</i> in which she laid out the argument that the SLA was in fact the CIA, or rather ,a fictional terrorist group set up by the CIA to bring a fascist revolution in the United States. It's a frightening theory, especially for one cooked up by a once complacent Beverly Hills housewife. Analysing the kidnap of Patty Hearst, Brussell lays out the elaborate project of the fabricated SLA:</div>
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<i>"The end goal of the SLA – World War III – is to plunge the Third World masses into starvation and slavery. We have accomplished this through the CIA in 77 countries. The Third World inside the United States is the next selected victim."</i></div>
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Then most incredibly, Brussell brings Ian Ball into the equation stating,</div>
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<i>"Every kidnapping since February 4, 1974, should be carefully investigated. The kidnappings may be real, but the circumstances surrounding them are questionable.</i></div>
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<i>The Secret Service, for the first time in U.S. history, presented an award outside the United States. It is no surprise this was delivered to Inspector James Beaten, the man who was wounded March 30 [sic] when Ian Ball was supposed to "kidnap" Princess Anne.</i>
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<i>Was there any relationship between this altercation and the earlier abduction of Patricia Hearst? The Secret Service knows the answer. Were they acting accordingly, apologizing for a near victim in a provocateur-inspired event?"</i></div>
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<b>So Brussell makes the fantastic insinuation: that Ball was a patsy or a brainwashed agent for a secret service operation on foreign land, and the copper inadvertently caught in the crossfire received an award from the United States as a covert apology!</b>
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And what of Princess Anne? If Ian Ball's kidnap been successful and, if it was an operation based on the blueprint of the Patty Hearst case, would Princess Anne later have appeared on the security cameras of a branch of <i>Lloyd's Bank</i> - presumably on horseback - yelling at the tellers and brandishing an AK47. Would she later appear on some pirate radio broadcast intoning the paradoxical mantra of SLA leader, Donald DeFreeze, <i>"Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the blood of the people!"</i>
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I would sincerely like to think so.
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In trying to retain a rational perspective on of all this, it's probably worth pointing out the following clipping from an American Daily on March 23rd 1974, in which the kidnap of Princess Anne appears on the same page as news coverage of Patty Hearst.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_VUN75bwTdb5fSVvkBN0q2m4kHqYy0-nmu-H0Fc8JpGMnJQCfQLKNPHXObHjA9SpQeHVSWRvOHDCxtbgi6ERRWqEK0450BCbbbCdoMzjx42DddCppOBb3tgqpmzhiDGFsUqEH7abTznM/s1600/newspaper.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_VUN75bwTdb5fSVvkBN0q2m4kHqYy0-nmu-H0Fc8JpGMnJQCfQLKNPHXObHjA9SpQeHVSWRvOHDCxtbgi6ERRWqEK0450BCbbbCdoMzjx42DddCppOBb3tgqpmzhiDGFsUqEH7abTznM/s1600/newspaper.PNG" height="207" width="400" /></a>
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Finally, let us apply William Burroughs' technique for the paranoid reading of newspapers, which entailed scanning across the page so that the unrelated news items would fuse to reveal a new narrative... Cut across reality and future conspiracies leak through. The headlines, cut across, read thus:
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<b>"Army Guards Hearst Kidnap Message: 'Probably Royal Family'"</b>
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Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-1996383554554263022014-02-28T16:23:00.001-08:002014-02-28T17:33:41.643-08:00Oh Xiurell And I'll Come To You<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've been looking at various mermaid myths recently and while doing this, started looking at references in Robert Graves' "The White Goddess". I am not sure how widely disseminated this is, but thought it worth sharing. Anyhow it's very interesting to me, being Suffolk based (where M.R. James based 'Oh Whistle'), and offers some intriguing connections between M.R. James, Graves, as well as further interpretations of the story, and some nice cinematic doubling.</div>
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To summarise, in a chapter of "The White Goddess", called "Gwion's Heresy", Graves discusses winnowing feast mysteries and makes mention of a Majorcan artefact of this harvest festival. It is called the xiurell, and is a white clay whistle, decorated in red and green. The whistle is handmade and cast in various shapes such as a mermaid, a coiled serpent, or a full skirted woman rocking her baby in her arms. According to Graves the whistle figured in an ecclesiastical festival that took place on 12th of September. The festival entailed the villagers of Bonanova, near Palma, perambulating up the hill, presumably blowing these whistles. The object of the whistle, posits Graves, "must originally have been to induce the North-East winnowing winds which, according to the local almanack, begin to blow at this season and which at the end of the month summons rain clouds from the Atlantic Ocean to soak the winter wheat planted earlier in the month." </div>
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Graves says that the mermaid, locally called a 'siren', evidently represents Aphrodite (also represented by the woman and baby shaped whistle). The serpent is represented by the wind (presumably denoted by the coiled serpent whistle). He maintains that "this is the only time when the wind is welcomed by the Majorcans, who... fear the sirocco as they fear the devil". The whistling is not heard in the island except in the xuirell season. Then most curiously Graves injects the following <i>non sequitur</i>:</div>
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"The ploughman sings as drives his mule and the schoolboy as he runs home from school; for the rest <i>furbis, flabis, flebis</i> - 'whistle shrill, weep long' ".</div>
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The <i>fur fla fle bis,</i> is of course, one of the inscriptions on the whistle excavated in M.R. James' tale. I am not sure what to make of this. Were James and Graves drawing from a similar Mediterranean custom, or was Graves merely injecting James' story into his mythopoesis - which is an interesting insight into the mechanics of his creativity. I haven't read any accounts of Graves studying James' stories. It also adds another aspect to 'Oh Whistle'. I've always considered to the story to have strong succubal or incubal overtones, as well as being a quite strong evocation of sleep paralysis, but it could be drawing from Greek mythology too, though Jacqueline Simpson in her essay on folkloric elements in M.R. James draws on Jutland customs to possibly explain the roots of the story.</div>
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As well as Graves' account of the harvest time ritual, there's also a festival in the municipality of Llubi on Majorca, which takes place on the Saturday before Shrove Tuesday. It's called the "Fiesta of the Xiurell" and during the ceremony a giant xiurell or demon-shaped whistle is burnt. Presumably this is to mark the beginning of the agricultural year.</div>
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I also wonder whether there is a connection between the film "The Shout", which came out in the late 70s, and "Oh Whistle". "The Shout" was filmed in Devon among the dunes and starred Alan Bates. He plays a madman who infiltrates a couple's lives, seduces the wife and plays mind games which her husband, played by John Hurt. Hurt's an electronic music composer and Bates claims to have learned from aboriginal shaman how to kill with a shout. The coastal location and the demonic use of the shout bare some resemblance to M.R. James' "Oh Whistle", but most interestingly, "The Shout" is based on a Robert Graves short story. In a weird twist of cinematic fate, John Hurt was recast as Parkin in the recent TV remake of "Oh Whistle".</div>
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In Graves' story the husband and wife begin to experience telepathic dreams in which the husband is seen walking on the sands with a strange man who is discussing the whereabouts of the soul. The woman in her version of the dream runs from these figures. Graves' "The Shout" is quite clearly also a conceit for his preoccupation with the story of the poet, muse and wyrd. But there are certainly some intriguing overlaps between the folkloric roots of Graves' and James' research.</div>
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Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-164574181782092512014-02-23T13:43:00.001-08:002014-02-23T13:43:17.229-08:00The Pherenike<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I finally managed to get to St. Etheldreda's church in the heart of London. The church houses a wooden sculpture depicting St. Peter holding a veronica of Christ. The Alchemist Fulcanelli, in "Dwelling Of The Philosophers," discusses this very statue and its hermetic meaning. The Pherenike is a baffling conundrum: the Christian reading is that it is the remnant of a cloth used to bathe Christ's face - an acephalic turin shroud. But there are obviously allusions to the cult of the severed head and stranger still - Christ's thorns more resemble the coiling serpent hair of the Medusa.</div>
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I'll be exploring this mystery and much more in the forthcoming release "The Underworld Service". "The Underworld Service" extends and extrapolates some of the ideas set out in the "Weekend Other World" event last April. "The Underworld Service" pitches some Melvyn Bragg like culture vulture deep in Hades - what I term sepul-culture. Over the last two years I've been visiting and recording at a wide range of venues from: Hiroshima to Blythburgh, Sizewell B, De Grey's Mausoleum, and finally St. Etheldreda's. "The Underworld Service" builds on these locations to create a concrete irrational documentary: taking the mid 70s obsession with Greek Thrillers, the atomic alchemy of Fulcanelli, Victorian Funeral customs and their cannibalistic antecedents; the potentials for misuse in the field of music thanatology; the hermetic journeys of The Haunted Shoreline; James Hillman's Revisioning Psychology and much more. Musically and thematically, "The Underworld Service" is English Heretic's most death enhancing release, covering a wide genre of styles, philosphical stoner, corpse orientated rock (where adult orientated yacht rocker's sail to); chiliasm music and many other puns.</div>
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The album will feature 8 new tracks.</div>
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The provisional track listing is:</div>
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* River Of Black Rams Blood</div>
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* The Invisible Cannon</div>
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* The Pherenike</div>
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* Inside The Mausoleum</div>
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* Under Vulcan Skies</div>
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* Why I Should Never Become A Music Thanatologist</div>
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* The Alchemist Of Saltdean</div>
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* Biscuits For The Funeral Of Mrs Oliver</div>
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I am hoping to have the release available around mid 2014. </div>
Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-64085318119523956572014-02-16T16:15:00.000-08:002014-02-16T16:28:22.503-08:00Coming soon: Film And Its Double<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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When the thrill seeking anthropologists of the English Heretic field unit set out to investigate the locations of what appeared to be a merely harmless video nasty from the 1970s, they got a lot more than they bargained for. Winnats Pass in Derbyshire, England –a beautiful limestone ravine reveals its deeper and disturbing history. From Spanish Italian zombie horror “Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue” to the brutal regimes of industrial slavedom, the mines beneath tell a story of lead poisoned, schizophrenic labourers, the savage murder of eloping lovers and gruesome karmic retribution. Might the caves that scar this once submarine coral reef, lead to hell, the devil's fundament, or further … to the black temples of Atlantis where the priests themselves infused their soul controlling rites with diabolical and tantric methods.<br />
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English Heretic present Film And Its Double: "Let Sleeping Corpses Lie" – an excursion to the most dangerous vales of reason, a deep history lesson taking in film, folklore and the outlandish theories of voodoo gnosticism.Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-44931601646497505952013-11-21T13:07:00.001-08:002013-11-21T13:18:16.738-08:00Mondo Paranoia: Out Now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Mondo Paranoia: A Medieval History Of The Early 1960s</b> explores the thanatological synchronicities of the 22nd November 1963: the simultaneous deaths of JFK, Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis. Paradoxically 22nd and 23rd November also witnessed the activation of two mind bending Pop programmes: The Beatles' world conquering second album and the first episode of Dr Who.<br />
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Mondo Paranoia serves as an initiatory and analeptic voyage into the deep mind of the 60s: further katabatic excursions to its queasy and oleaginous core are planned for 2014.<br />
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Wrapped in a crime scene linocut cover by Lisa Cradduck, comprising of a 33 min documentary and 12 page essay, Mondo Paranoia, English Heretic’s 11th release beckons in the coming fimbulwinter and honours with relish the diabolical release schedules of our media cabals.<br />
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CD - With music constructed from forensic sampling of JFK's funeral, amplifications from ancient television transmissions, and field recordings from the Kennedy memorial at Runnymede.<br />
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Track Listing:<br />
1. Mondo Paranoia<br />
2. Motorcade Taurobolium<br />
3. Forensic Spiritualism Today!<br />
4. The Injectors<br />
5. Hymns For The Fimbulwinter<br />
6. Runnymede 68<br />
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Booklet - The accompanying document is an unofficial report on the taurobolium in Dallas and its ramifications for reality, extending as far as the previously undisclosed sex laboratories of time and relative dimensions in space.<br />
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Mondo Paranoia is available as a limited edition CD and booklet, with free digital download of both.<br />
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Available at <a href="http://englishheretic.blogspot.co.uk/p/souvenir-shop.html">the souvenir shop</a>Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-70351427711453551922013-11-02T02:17:00.001-07:002013-11-02T02:17:37.446-07:00Unearthing Forgotten Horrors - 9th November, Star and Shadow, Newcastle<br />
English Heretic will be performing at "Unearthing Forgotten Horrors" next Saturday, 9th November. Iam very much looking forward to playing in Newcastle. The event has been lovingly curated by Darren Charles and Victor Janos. Alot of work has gone into it, so do coming along if you're able to, this deserves support.<br />
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For our part English Heretic will be performing a collision of material from <i>"Anti-Heroes"</i> along with a brand new piece from the forthcoming <i>Mondo Paranoia</i>.<br />
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Bringing together rare film screenings of key works from the golden age of UK horror, with an exclusive line up of musicians/bands influenced by them, Unearthing Forgotten Horrors is a celebration of horror in music and film.<br />
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Presenting North East (and English) premieres by outsider artists who operate on the occult fringes of the musical underground, Unearthing Forgotten Horrors, draws together a very special bill of eerie drones, psychedelic noise, and classic horror films rarely screened in cinemas featuring:<br />
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Black Mountain Transmitter<br />
At an impressionable age Northern Irish musician and visual artist James R. Moore was drawn to a diet of late night TV horror double bills, VHS video nasties with pulsating electronic soundtracks and the Weird Fiction of H P Lovecraft. These influences now pervade the eerie sound world of Black Mountain Transmitter, most notably on cult releases "Black Goat Of The Woods" (2009) and "Playing With Dead Things" (2012), the first two instalments of a loosely themed 'Trilogy of Terror'.<br />
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Black Mountain Transmitter albums have been released by US label Auris Apothecary (aurisapothecary.org), Aurora Borealis (aurora-b.com) and Moore's own Lysergic Earwax ( www.lysergicearwax.bandcamp.com ).<br />
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Unearthing Forgotten Horrors marks the first live performance of Black Mountain Transmitter in England (and indeed outside the island of Ireland).<br />
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English Heretic<br />
English Heretic is a creative occult organisation dedicated to the reification of malefic energy spectres and the adumbration of a modern qliphoth. In operation since 2003 English Heretic has ploughed the topsoil of horror film locations to reveal a delirious substrata of mythic truths. They have reported back their findings through numerous CDs, books, talks and performances of ritual electronics.<br />
https://www.facebook.com/EnglishHereticOfficialOrgan<br />
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Culver<br />
Lovers of drone and brain frying noise should need no introduction to Lee Stokoe's prolific Culver project. A member of Skullflower, Inseminoid and Indian Lady, Culver's sound perfects pitch black, tar-thick drones and crushingly heavy soundscapes which are genuinely sinister.<br />
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Through many releases, often micro-editions on seriously cool labels, a consistently macabre approach is applied sound and visuals across a mind-boggling body of atmospheric and horror obsessed work.<br />
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Psychogeograpical Commission<br />
The Psychogeographical Commission was formed at the start of 2008 to explore the many interfaces between the built environment and the people who inhabit it through d←rive, magick and sonic experimentation. http://psychcomm.bandcamp.com/<br />
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The Dead End Street Band<br />
Drawing influence from the experimental scores to Jon Pertwee era Doctor Who, thirty year old horror soundtracks and with massive splurges of psychedelic noise, The Dead End Street Band pull no punches delivering their scum noise dirge. Fixated on the sleazier end of 70's horror cinema, this elusive three-piece rumble through some genuinely nightmarish soundscapes and hellish synth drones.<br />
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Several handmade editions on their own imprints and on Indiana's Occult Supremacy label have seen the band develop from home-made electronica through to pitch black, ultra morbid soundtracks from non-existent scuzzfests found in the darker recesses of underground cinema.<br />
www.facebook.com/scumelectronics<br />
<br />
Joseph Curwen<br />
Joseph Curwen makes HP Lovecraft inspired ambient evil drone, based on that weird bit between life and death the day after a big party. All digital noise intended.<br />
https://www.facebook.com/JosephCurwenDrone<br />
http://josephcurwen.bandcamp.com/<br />
<br />
The Tempel of Sekhmet<br />
Ooft! Born in the ashes of the first Psychoheliophysics workshops, the subsequent asymmetric awakenings of the Bacchanale Operation and weened on esoteric apophenia. A supergroup of Newcastle//Glasgow//Ipswich-based sunworshipping occultists' suckled by the bitter lactations of M R James, China Mieville, Kaneto Shindo and Jean Painlevé. Spiked with the synaesthetic experimentation of the pre-stalinist soviet union. Developing Solar//Tellurian Circuits to carry out cthonic soil experimentation in search of buried suns and waning solar temples. With the intent to destabilise human neurophysical function over distance. The Tempel of Sekhmet issue a new warning to the curious: unleash your curiosity for all that is eldritch or else die the cold, cold death of doxic submission...<br />
nb. Semantic meltdown may occur when taken in significantly large doses, Tempel of Sekhmet take no responsibility for any sensory or cerebral overload or awakening... Ooft!<br />
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Unearthing Forgotten Horrors will feature rare cinema screenings of classic English horror film Blood on Satan's Claw, and Peter Sasdy's masterwork of supernatural television The Stone Tape.<br />
<br />
Andy Black Forest (Radio Black Forest) will DJ.<br />
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Saturday 9 November from 4.00pm at The Star and Shadow Cinema, Stepney Bank, Newcastle upon Tyne.<br />
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Tickets: £9.00 in advance from We Got Tickets: <a href="http://www.wegottickets.com/event/230122">http://www.wegottickets.com/event/230122</a><br />
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The first 50 tickets include an exclusive handmade CDr mixed by Melmoth the Wanderer, featuring all of the artists on the Unearthing Forgotten Horrors bill.Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-12924802732548589102013-10-15T10:45:00.002-07:002013-10-15T10:45:42.485-07:00"Anti-Heroes" talk and film 19th OctoberTalk and film at Volcanic Tongue Store 19th October, 7.00pm<br />
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The English Heretic occult roadshow takes to Volcanic Tongue. Expect an evening of revved up readings, films and soundtracks from their new project “Anti-Heroes”: a collision in the suburbs somewhere between the clinics of JG Ballard and the kitsch gnosticism of the Hellfire Club. “Anti-Heroes” is the result of a 5 year investigation into dangerous mangers constellated around the locations of Ballard's Crash, taking in its intersection with the scuzzy cult of Psychomania, suburban warlocks, and host of pop culture chimeras. “Anti-Heroes” also weaves in the poetic paradigm of Robert Graves' White Goddess to reveal its tendrils in the work of Ballard, the lives of tragic figures, and the folk horror of Blood On Satan's Claw.<br />
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English Heretic is a creative occult organisation, in operation since 2003. Over 10 years, English Heretic has set out to explore a new approach to ceremonial magic and archetypal psychology inspired by the outre work of Kenneth Grant, James Hillman, situationism and pop culture signifiers. English Heretic attempts to manifest a deliciously troubled soul of our world, through ludic and heuristic engagement with horror film, pulp fiction and the esoteric arts. They have released and reported their findings via numerous books, CDs and events.<br />
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More details and directions over at the <a href="http://www.volcanictongue.com/events/">VT site</a>Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-12109624989188892022013-10-08T15:43:00.001-07:002013-11-21T13:08:12.072-08:00Mondo Paranoia: A Medieval History Of The Early 1960s<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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The next English Heretic release <i>Mondo Paranoia: A Medieval History Of The Early 1960s</i> will explore the thanatological synchronicities of 22nd November 1963: the simultaneous deaths of JFK, Aldous Huxley and C.S. Lewis. Paradoxically 22nd and 23rd November also witnessed the activation of two pop mind bending Pop programs: The Beatles' world conquering second album and the first episode of Dr. Who.<br />
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With music constructed from forensic size sampling of JFK's funeral, amplifications from ancient television transmissions, field recordings at the Kennedy memorial at Runnymede and much more, <i>Mondo Paranoia</i> returns in style to the creeping ritual electronics of our first release<i> Curse Of The Conqueror Worm. </i><br />
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<i>Pop culture considered as a vast necromantic spell book, life as one long katabatic voyage.</i><br />
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<i>–</i> the ideal companion for unraveling the plague of conspiracies that ravage our media landscapes.<br />
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<i>Mondo Paranoia</i> will be available as a limited souvenir edition CD and essay, or as a digital download.<br />
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<i>Excerpt from 'Mondo Paranoia'</i><br />
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Our mythic inner life is the double of our literal life and to bear witness to a myth in reality is to kill that myth and start a new myth cycle.<br />
<br />
By definition myth only exists as a metaphor, so when we act out myth and or bear witness to myth, our soul's journey move to another orbit, concentric to our previous trajectory, distilled with the essence of the experience before.<br />
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This process of deepening is analogous with the alchemical process and reflects much of the work of archetypal psychology – particularly the dalliance between literalism and “seeing through, or revisioning”.<br />
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With the assassination of President Kennedy 50 years ago on the 22nd November 1963, the mythic sphere crashed to earth leaving a debris of mutant pop Gods, fertilising with bizarre flora, our innocent fields, and opening the eyes of our inner cinema to a new reality, where memory could be directly burned upon by mediated experience. The kennedy assassination became the gold standard for studying the phenomenon of flashbulb memories.<br />
<br />
The entire planet received news of the king's killing by violent intrusion into their mundane radio programme schedules. Orson Welles' <i>War of the Worlds</i> prank was merely a rehearsal for the shock tactic neural photography of the cataclysmic new bulletin. The power to apply darkroom techniques to the human psyche.<br />
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J.G. Ballard in his autobiography <i>Miracles Of Life</i> likened the assassination to the death of the corn king, J.G Frazer's agricultural christ and, like the death of a tribal king JFK's assassination re-energised us all and brought life to the barren meadows.<br />
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The high velocity Shakespearean psychodrama in the days following the assassination, the acting out of biblical justice by the killing of Oswald and the gothic state funeral gave the public their enactment of the crucifixion. The blood on Jackie's <i>Chanel</i> suit a turin shroud for the future. She refused to change her clothing for the swearing in of LBJ stating she wanted the world to see what <i>they</i> had done to Jack. Her only regret was washing the blood off her face.<br />
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In 1895, The symbolist poet Alfred Jarry turned the crucifixion upside down by portraying it as the bull sacrifice of Caesar Anti-Christ, a Taurobolium, a blood bath in a cesspit. Replace Jarry's <i>Pompe Rouget</i> with brain stained upholstery of the back seat of Kennedy's Lincoln convertible. Jarry also identified the doppleganger of myth exposed by bearing witness to such an event and the paradoxical awakening of the soul that had previously slept.<br />
<br />
That the assassination of Kennedy was in fact the crucifixion of christ is ancient history, a medieval woodcut from a quaint but tired manuscript, that day when the 1960s will be along time ago is now.<br />
<br />
Its Bayeux tapestry has faded.Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-33657567989705698202013-09-17T15:59:00.001-07:002013-09-17T16:18:53.746-07:00Psychotic Geography<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This weekend 20-22nd sees the 5th conference of Hannah Gilbert and Madeleine Castro's wonderful <a href="http://etenetwork.weebly.com/">"Exploring The Extraordinary"</a> event. There are plenty of fascinating talks lined up: Iam particularly looking forward to Mark Valentine discussing book hauntings, and to James Riley exploring William Burroughs' use of the tape recorder as a magical instrument.</div>
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My talk is entitled <i>Fiction And Its Double</i>. The title is a homage to Artaud's <i>Theatre And The Double</i>, and I'll be attempting to explain some of the intentions behind the last ten years of psychotic peregrinations and hyperbolic extrapolations. I'll be looking at the synchromysticism of James Shelby Downard as a key conceptual influence, Bob Black's polemic against the leisure complex as the moral molotov cocktail for English Heretic and James Hillman's psychology as a possible therapy for all this psychotic geography. I'll be using the latest project "Anti-Heroes" as a case study. My argument is that just as Artaud called for theatre to rediscover its proximity to 'another archetypal and dangerous reality', we need to extend this call to arms to the theatre of our realities, and that we can do this by investing in the fictional charging of place, particularly by horror film and dystopian fiction: to up the ante on the civil war of historical sanity; in fact to up the ante on sanity itself.</div>
<br />Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-37419049129126682882013-08-22T14:43:00.004-07:002013-08-23T03:19:55.298-07:00Autumn Roadshow<br />
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A number of gigs and talks coming up this Autumn<br />
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* 23rd August - MotherLive supporting Orryelle Denefestrate Bascule & Akoustic Timbre Frekuency<br />
details here: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/487457244658594/">https://www.facebook.com/events/487457244658594/</a><br />
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* 20-22nd September - I'll be talking at Exploring The Extraordinary 5<br />
details here: <a href="http://etenetwork.weebly.com/fifth-conference.html">http://etenetwork.weebly.com/fifth-conference.html</a><br />
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* October - with Matt Shaw and John Bowers, venue and date to be confirmed<br />
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* 19th October - English Heretic Present "Anti-Heroes" at Volcanic Tongue<br />
details here: <a href="http://www.volcanictongue.com/news">http://www.volcanictongue.com/news</a><br />
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* 9th November - Live appearance at "Unearthing Forgotten Horrors" - The Star And Shadow, Newcastle<br />
details here: <a href="http://www.starandshadow.org.uk/on/event/1163">http://www.starandshadow.org.uk/on/event/1163</a><br />
<br />
more on each event as they approach.<br />
<br />Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-31550106071687213062013-08-13T01:28:00.001-07:002013-08-21T15:37:27.753-07:00The Poisoned ChaliceA short post to really thank Gavin Semple for providing inspiration for the track <i>Two Hundred And Forty Hours</i> on our latest release. I read Gavin's excellent booklet on Robert Cochrane a few years back. It's called <i>The Poisoned Chalice</i> and is an incisive and well researched investigation into the end days of the Slough magister. Gavin's also been very helpful and supportive in discussion over this part of the project.
Gavin recently pointed out a fascinating synchronicity in the death of Cochrane... Cochrane passed away on 3rd July 1966, after ten days in a coma. On 3rd July 1969 Brian Jones drowned and two years later on the same day, in 1971, Jim Morrison passed away in his bath tub. Of course the chalice in Tarot is synonymous with the cups and water. Perhaps this is the<i> Poisoned Chalice</i>. I made the allusion between Cochrane and Ian Curtis, but these synchronicities make it all the more "oo-ee-oo" to use Ed Sanders' phrase.<br />
<br />
You can check out Gavin's<a href="http://orspectral.wordpress.com/"> blog</a>, which includes a bibliography of his other work and news of a release from his sound project <i>Spectral</i>.<br />
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Cheers Gavin!<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="400" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/72228187" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> <br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/72228187">Two Hundred And Forty Hours</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/user11941026">English Heretic</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-17370985421637524622013-07-24T15:05:00.000-07:002013-09-06T09:10:38.714-07:00"Anti-Heroes" CD and Book out now.<div style="margin: 0px;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_0e-GjIHQ5ziXiev5P3Cl4rayWZ6q7gcBs145Pu0dwN1y2IwXaJrXt1ncU-ho43UCEfRSmL2XPBUKxtsyuhRCd1tPS_wUnBImecxA07N1nBN5pUw4tq86WgrC2IE0PA3FKNutMHewEGs/s1600/anti-heroes-cover-nocircle1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_0e-GjIHQ5ziXiev5P3Cl4rayWZ6q7gcBs145Pu0dwN1y2IwXaJrXt1ncU-ho43UCEfRSmL2XPBUKxtsyuhRCd1tPS_wUnBImecxA07N1nBN5pUw4tq86WgrC2IE0PA3FKNutMHewEGs/s200/anti-heroes-cover-nocircle1.jpg" width="142" /></a>English Heretic present the results of a five year report, with a portmanteau of Black Plaque commemorations constellated in the suburbs West of London. “Anti-Heroes” excavates the intersection between the clinics of J.G. Ballard and the Hellfire Club's kitsch gnosticism, disinterring the suicide cult of <i>Psychomania</i> and celebrating the nihilism of George Sanders. Conjuring a host of clown demons congregated at the periphery of sanity’s goetic circle, necromancy and pop culture collide in the fast lane to create a casualty list of self-sacrificing warlocks and paranoid would be assassins. Unbuckle your seat belts and experience a near death trip along the luna corridors of Ballard’s <i>Crash</i>, accompanied by a litany of pathological spirits and pulp chimeras, remnants from a yellowing mashup of forensic fiction and cinema grimoires. Apprehend the aesthetic conspiracy of place as we unearth startling evidence of a May-Eve coven near Henley-on-Thames and realise the elements in your psyche that pertain to be poet or blood brother, mother, maid or pucelle.<br />
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<b>Commemorating:</b><br />
Dr Robert Vaughan - Hoodlum Scientist of JG Ballard's <i>Crash</i><br />
Angel Blake - Child coven leader in Blood On Satan's <i>Claw</i><br />
George Selwyn - Monk of Medmenham<br />
Ian Ball - Dangerous working class dissenter of Uxbridge<br />
Robert Cochrane - Suicidal witch-cult leader from Slough<br />
George Sanders - Patron Saint of misanthropic cads<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEobWXAAKrxm-pLpdeg12D8sJaLs02veTptH2mOV7Unm3bng_JTQrBfIU-uMOnVWCO5xRvNg-HIXKth4Zy6TNS5BQg7xoXFKaj_JXflHqGHrTgnkoNqSIc6mq3mhLS8OV9jQEFy54oQnw/s1600/IMG_2260.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEobWXAAKrxm-pLpdeg12D8sJaLs02veTptH2mOV7Unm3bng_JTQrBfIU-uMOnVWCO5xRvNg-HIXKth4Zy6TNS5BQg7xoXFKaj_JXflHqGHrTgnkoNqSIc6mq3mhLS8OV9jQEFy54oQnw/s320/IMG_2260.JPG" width="320" /></a><br />
<b>8 track CD</b> of feel bad songs to accompany your eternal journey to Tartaus<br />
<br />
<b>60 page book</b>, to while away time at the termini of life’s tragedy.<br />
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<strong>CD Track Listing</strong></div>
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<b>1: The Dangerous Gift</b><br />
<b>2: Hell's Angel Blake</b><br />
<b>3: Goetia AD 72</b><br />
<b>4. The Mall Timeslip</b><br />
<b>5. Heart Burial And Soul</b><br />
<b>6. Vaughan To Lose</b><br />
<b>7. Fungi From Suburbs</b><br />
<b>8. Two Hundred And Forty Hours </b><br />
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<b>Available at the <a href="http://englishheretic.blogspot.co.uk/p/souvenir-shop.html">shop</a></b></div>
Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-14730059932636005682013-06-20T14:38:00.000-07:002013-06-20T14:38:07.875-07:00"Anti-Heroes" Chapters<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
A preview of the chapters in the "Anti-Heroes" booklet<br />
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1. Prologue<br />
2. The Mangled Destinies Of Carriages And Men<br />
3. Rex Mundi In Action: George Selwyn<br />
4. Names That Widdershin Around The Mega Therion<br />
5. Gnostic Doctors: Vaughan And Evans<br />
6. Fungi From Suburbs<br />
7. Northolt - World Heresy Site<br />
8. The Luna Corridor<br />
9. Constellation: Broadmoor with TRL Ascending<br />
10. George Sanders: The Patron Saint of Misanthropic Cads<br />
11. The Self Sacrificing Suburban Warlock: Robert Cochrane<br />
12. Hell's Angel Blake: An Annotated Guide To A Coven Near Henley-On-Thames<br />
13. Rituals In The Park<br />
14. The Aisthesis Of Psychopathology<br />
<br />Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-55242216840280439512013-06-02T12:38:00.001-07:002013-06-02T12:39:36.084-07:00The Summer Feel Bad Album for 2013<br />
Hey kids,
The black sun is finally here - it's nearly time to unwind the roof of the convertible, head out to the Heathrow Flyer and traject your car at a coach party of holiday makers. <i>"Anti-Heroes"</i> is mixed and mastered, 8 summer feel band songs and a booklet packed full of psychopathological characters to compound your misery.
Provisional release date 3rd July, anniversary of self-sacrificing warlock Robert Cochrane's endless sabbatical in Hades...<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqzHA7uO0rO1P0vSVLJeyAFzqEF8NxbaIXchG8n9rVVXJ0i2d2bpKZD326FA3lOeDCu5wyJn-AS8wl8sl3JgeNeYvZhJiIRu8T8PyOdwOVrF4sn_Zt0Z1XNSCAW7pftRnsHRolzjQoe3M/s1600/AntiHeroesCDPurple.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="350" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqzHA7uO0rO1P0vSVLJeyAFzqEF8NxbaIXchG8n9rVVXJ0i2d2bpKZD326FA3lOeDCu5wyJn-AS8wl8sl3JgeNeYvZhJiIRu8T8PyOdwOVrF4sn_Zt0Z1XNSCAW7pftRnsHRolzjQoe3M/s400/AntiHeroesCDPurple.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Artwork for the CD - featuring fantastic photo etching cover by Lisa Cradduck.</td></tr>
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Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-46582800709206489442013-05-15T13:21:00.007-07:002013-05-15T13:50:40.139-07:00Documentary EvidenceFollowing the recent Weekend OtherWorld event with Goldsmiths, here are a few links offered by participants. Splendid contributions to enjoy.<br />
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<b>Tristam Adams - <span style="text-align: justify;"><span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>As Sonorous Murmurs Rise</i></span></span></span></b><br />
<iframe frameborder="no" height="166" scrolling="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F90699087" width="100%"></iframe>
<a href="http://roadgroup.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/asmr-as-sonorous-murmurs-rise.html">More background on the piece here</a><br />
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<b>Dean Brannagan - <i>Weekend OtherWorld Interlude</i></b><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="200" src="//www.mixcloud.com/widget/iframe/?feed=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mixcloud.com%2Fantechamber%2Fweekend-other-world%2F&embed_uuid=0ecf12b0-25a7-4567-842b-140f1d535dd3&stylecolor=&embed_type=widget_standard" width="200"></iframe><br />
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<a href="http://www.mixcloud.com/antechamber/weekend-other-world/?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=base_links&utm_term=resource_link" style="color: #02a0c7; font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">Weekend Other World</a> by <a href="http://www.mixcloud.com/antechamber/?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=base_links&utm_term=profile_link" style="color: #02a0c7; font-weight: bold;" target="_blank">Antechamber</a> on <a href="http://www.mixcloud.com/?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=base_links&utm_term=homepage_link" style="color: #02a0c7; font-weight: bold;" target="_blank"> Mixcloud</a></div>
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<b>John Cussans and Roberto Peyre - <i>Ponto for Banbha Mooira</i></b><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="300" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/65048098" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe>
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<a href="http://codeless88.wordpress.com/">More background and research for the piece here</a><br />
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<b>Dean Kenning - <i>Prospects For Growth</i></b><br />
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<b> Nicola Woodham - <i>The Gift Experience</i></b><br />
<iframe width="100%" height="166" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F91732852"></iframe>
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<a href="http://www.nicolawoodham.com/p/works-2013.html">More background on the piece here</a>Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8059798034873558011.post-14990401552429668452013-05-08T12:36:00.001-07:002013-05-08T12:38:48.704-07:00May ActivitiesGrant and Machen At Treadwell's<br />
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I'll be talking on <a href="http://treadwells-london.com/events-and-workshops/">9th May at Treadwell's</a> on the magical geographies of these two mystics. More details over at Treadwell's - only a few places left. We had gorgeous time exploring Wentwood, climbing Grey Hill and visiting the stones that inspired<i> The Novel Of The Black Seal</i>. Returning home, I experienced some very weird hypnagogic images consisting of confabulations of some of the architecture we had seen. I had this once before after a day in Rome. I need to explore this more!</div>
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Night of Esoteric Music<br />
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English Heretic will be playing on a bill put together by Orryelle Defenestrate Bascule. This'll take place on Sunday 26th May at <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/370799563039897/">The Aces and Eights in Tufnell Park</a>.<br />
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The blog has been a little sparse this year, mainly due to being ridiculously busy with work, events and my darling family. <i>"Anti-Heroes"</i> is coming close to conclusion. We showed a 30 min film recently which went down very well. CD and Booklet probably be out between July and September. Works already started on <i>Wish You Were Heretic</i>, Iam hoping we'll showcase the genesis of a track from there on 26th May - imagine Fulcanelli's mystic cow and Pink Floyd's <i>Atom Heart Mother</i> floating over Sizewell B...Dr. Champagnehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14125586855770102802noreply@blogger.com0