The Sound of Hz (Main compilation)

I'm currently listening to Robert Hampson's post-Loop isolationist project Main, and I’m reminded that one of the tracks on the group’s 1996 collection Hz, is dedicated to sound designer extraordinaire Alan Splet. I’d actually forgotten about this until I went looking in the CD notes for something and came across the dedication. This is more than idle name-dropping, as the music that Main were making during this era was very much in the vain of Alan Splet’s work – all hissing, gaseous drones, clanking metallic reverberations and ominous rumblings – the kind of nightmarish sounds Splet created for Eraserhead, Elephant Man, Dune, Blue Velvet and Mosquito Coast among others. I’m pleased that I dug out this Main collection, a double-CD no less, because it’s an album I don’t listen to enough, requiring headphones and a quiet room to fully appreciate all those delicate, lowercase sounds. The packaging on this collection is rather lovely too, instead of the fuzzy video and computer screen textures of previous Main releases, the Hz album is adorned with striking images of rock and lichen textures, plus graphic symbols which I presume relate to the music in some way. There’s a kinship here with the design concept of Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II, and I see on the credits of the Main album, another David Lynch reference, the images credited to one Frank Booth…

The Tin Drum (1979, dir. Volker Schlöndorff)

I watched Volker Schlöndorff's film last night as a sort of fitness test for watching The Painted Bird, a film I made up my mind not to see when it first emerged, but in a cruel irony, a friend gifted me a copy of the Eureka Blu-Ray over Christmas, and it now stands on my shelf daring me to watch it. I think I wanted to see how I felt about things after watching The Tin Drum, and while Schlöndorff's film is not an especially disturbing film, it has its moments of cruelty and unpleasantness. But what a remarkable performance by David Bennent as Oskar, and while I knew him best from Ridley Scott's Legend, I really couldn't guess his age watching The Tin Drum, so much so that the scenes where he expresses his sexual maturity were quite uncomfortable to watch. I've since discovered Bennett was 12 or 13 during the making of the film, but these scenes in the film remain difficult to measure even as an afterthought. This reminds me that I must watch Gary Rhodes's Banned in Oklahoma documentary on the Criterion DVD before it gets retuned to the shelf.

Whatever about The Tin Drum as a sort of litmus test for watching The Painted Bird, there may be one unforeseen consequence of revisiting the film for my book reading plan for the year ahead. I recently picked up, and was looking forward to reading the critically acclaimed 2020 book The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World, but after seeing that queasy scene in The Tin Drum, where a swarm of eels emerge writhing from a purified horse head, I think I’ll be putting Patrik Svensson’s book on the long finger…

The Stone Killer (1973, dir. Michael Winner)

Charles Bronson in The Stone Killer, most likely trying to figure out Gerald Wilson's deliriously convoluted screenplay...

Another film watched over Christmas, Michael Winner's 1973 film is a rollicking big-budget exploitation picture with Bronson supplying serious star wattage. His Lou Torrey is short on subtleties, but the physicality of his performance is impressive, whether he's crashing his car through market stalls in pursuit of a motorcycle, or scrambling up staircases blasting everyone in sight. Gerald Wilson's screenplay had me tied up in knots from the get-go, and for the most part the film was barely comprehensible, but Winner knows how to deliver the thrills and spills and one can at least enjoy the breakneck outrageousness of it all. In fact the film is genuinely bizarre at times, as if two or three other films were intruding upon it, and afterwards I had to wonder if I did actually see a scene where Bronson visits an Easy Rider-style hippie commune (complete with camel) and did I really spot Angelo Rossitto perched on a hotel reception counter ? It seems I did...

Richard Burton on the joy of a book collection...

Found during a random page selection from the Richard Burton Diaries...

Saturday 4th October 1969

"Yesterday I spent most of the day unwrapping the books. By some lucky guess the bookshelves, measured by guesswork on my part, accommodate the books almost perfectly, leaving half a shelf spare for any additions that Dent-Dutton may dream up. Now comes the task, looked forward to, of putting them in order, either alphabetically or by subject matter. Alphabetically by authors is probably the most practical, though E would prefer them in colours. I protest that they will look like a pretty wall-paper, a decoration reminiscent of those shops in London where one goes in and orders two yards of books without knowing or caring what's inside them. We have mild side-bets as to who has the most volumes under his name. It's probably Dickens but there are a quite a few dark horses like Walter Scott, Gibbon and Grote (History of Greece). Shakespeare is in four volumes so he's out. The tomes are all beautifully bound in velvet green calf, red and blue calf, black and maroon morocco, grey calf. A sensuous delight just to hold and touch. There is a section for children, an encyclopedia, dictionaries of all kinds, history geography art science romances essays and all. The room when finished is going to be a dream and I shall probably spend most of my time there. There is a beautifully rough stone fireplace, log-burning, and the outside door leads directly into the garden. A couple of easy chairs, a small bar, a sofa, a desk and a chair and a couple of rugs thrown about the floor and a painting or two on the walls and you have the best cell ever for a literary man. It's so particularly delightful to have the time and the leisure (and the money) to do it without having to rush off in 10 days to do some ghastly film chore..."

Still watching the skies ?

 "I've been getting messages from outer space, they spiral like a finger in the sky" says the paranoid narrator of Yo La Tengo's song Deeper Into Movies... I've been listening to YLT's 1997 album I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One this morning, and it's sent me down an unexpected path, looking at vintage UFO photographs. Not exactly a subject I'm terribly interested in (I've never seen an episode of the X Files), but like Ossian Brown's Haunted Air book, which collect old photographs of Halloween celebrations, some of these pictures have a genuinely eerie quality if one can look past the fakery. I wonder has the UFO subculture waned over the years, now that people are photographing and recording the world 24-7 with their phones ? I'm not looking to go down the rabbit hole of UFO Facebook groups and so on - these things become tedious very quickly, but I remember many years ago watching a program on one of Sky's public access channels about a UFO convention and it was weirdly fascinating to see so many nuts gathered in one place. Or perhaps, I misread the situation, and all these people were knowingly indulging in a fantasy. I'm not sure...

The Collection

Just over twenty years worth of film collecting in 2,400 lines... I finally completed updating my DVD/BR list for 2020, with the newest entry on the list, Arrow's pedal-to-the-metal turbo-charged BR edition of Crash closing out another excellent year of film collecting. We still haven't got BR editions of The Devils or Renaldo and Clara, but they will come... I'm something of a list junkie and I find keeping an inventory of my titles very beneficial, especially now that my collection is fairly large and sometimes difficult to keep a track of. A few years ago, I started compiling everything I have on an Excel spreadsheet, and it's proven very useful. On more than one occasion, it's saved me from buying a title I already own, such is my faltering memory, and the list also comes in handy for nights where I don't have a film in mind (I usually pick my film early in the day), and a quick stroll thru the list usually inspires something, and much more effective I find, than standing before a riot of spine names. If you want an alternative to logging your titles on a tracker program, and if you have access to Excel or one of the free Excel clones out there, it's something I'd recommend...

Bruce Wightman's Dracula

I rediscovered this drawing earlier this morning, found inside my copy of The Dracula Centenary Book (1987). This book was part of a clutch of books that have outlived their usefulness and were being relegated to the top shelf of a wardrobe to make space on my main bookcase. I only spotted the illustration by chance, as I flicked through the book one last time before it being put out of reach. I'm reminded that my annual reading of Stoker's novel (which I've done these past 4 years) and my intention to read it back to back with the Icelandic Powers of Darkness variant never happened this year, like so many things planned at the top of the year. So, it rolls over to 2021, and as soon as I finish the Titanic book, I will pick up Joseph O'Connor's novel Shadowplay which reimagines the relationship between Stoker and Henry Irving. Things to look forward to…

Swastika Girl

British quad for Lili Marleen, Fassbinder’s 1981 film, another gorgeous piece of artwork by the great Tom Chantrell. I spotted a very affordable copy of this poster last week on eBay and almost pulled the trigger on it, but ultimately let it slip in a final moment of indecision - I don’t have the wall space to display it, and perhaps the swastika and suspenders are just a little too provocative for something that would be seen by visitors. I popped back onto eBay this evening in the hope that it was still there, but of course it’s gone. Hanna Schygulla looks fabulous here, and I love the 80’s flavor of the illustration, the Warlord-style blasting tanks, and there’s a nice bit of British video history courtesy of the Alpha logo on the bottom left. The film was released on VHS the following year on Alpha’s Intervision label.

Barbarella

Watched and filed away for another 20 years... Some talk of Jane Fonda on FB earlier prompted a revisit of Roger Vadim’s 1968 film, a film I have not seen since the early days of DVD, and perhaps with good reason - apart from the joy of watching Fonda at her loveliest, the film seems a waste of talent: Vadim’s direction is pedestrian, Terry Southern’s script is unfunny, the production design by the same man who designed The Leopard is unattractive, Marcel Marceau’s given nothing interesting to do, and Anita Pallenberg loses her voice to an indifferent dub job. I wonder what a great stylist like Mario Bava or Fellini might have done with the film - an injection of Sayricon weirdness would have helped. Everyone knows Duran Duran lifted their name from the film, but I’m assuming Drew Daniel’s Matmos did likewise...

On A Sea of Glass

Currently reading this detailed and comprehensive 2012 account of the life and death of the Titanic… In contrast to so many other Titanic reports, where the first few days of the voyage are merely a preamble before the disaster, Tad Fitch and his co-authors have furnished the book with so much fascinating detail about ship’s business and its passengers, that one wishes the Atlantic crossing had been longer. This is a Titanic presented with all its imperfections – behind the grand opulence of the first class spaces, there was unfinished décor and incomplete fixtures and fittings throughout the ship, and a malfunctioning heating system that had passengers shivering in their beds. There’s a wealth of compelling detail about some of the 2,240 souls on board the ship, from industrial magnates returning from holidays in Europe and Africa, newly weds on their honeymoon, and Irish and European emigrants seeking opportunity and adventure in the New World. There were disgruntled passengers, like the mother and daughter who complained incessantly to the stewards about their genuinely cramped 2nd class accommodation, and there was the poor woman who slipped on a wet staircase on her first day and broke her arm. There were seasick passengers that never made it to the dining hall, and travelers whose nerves could not be calmed by the flat sea and the oft repeated assurances that the ship was “unsinkable”.

At the point in the book where I am, the eve of the disaster, the fate of these people has yet to be determined. One crew member mentioned in the book, and I find myself frequently thinking about him, is one John Coffey, a 23 year old Irish engineer who accompanied the ship from Southampton to Cobh, and there jumped ship for reasons unclear – perhaps he had some premonition of disaster (as did many on board the ship, after Titanic almost collided with another ship as she left Southampton) or perhaps he simply wanted to get home to Cobh and stay there. But what of that extraordinary moment when he first heard about the disaster ? One could scarcely imagine having that much luck…