Le Guess Who 2022: Thursday

You know the drill. Le Guess Who is that festival of Wire-reader music that takes place each November in the picturesque Dutch town of Utrecht, with most concerts taking place in the Tivoli Vredenburg complex but many also happening in various satellite locations. I previously attended in 2021 and 2018. This year for crazy person reasons my beloved and I decided that rather than fly over we would travel by a combination of boat and train, so you'll have to put up with some yap about our travel arrangements before reaching the music festival chat.

The ferry and train journey to London were uneventful, notwithstanding the intermittent industrial action that had been taking place on the trains. Rather than risking a missed connection. we broke our journey in London. The check-in queue for the Eurostar in the morning seemed a bit more chaotic than I remembered but moved quickly enough, and soon we were on our way. The Eurostar itself is a weird combination of VERY EXCITING ("OMG we are going under the ocean!") and pretty mundane (it is just a train). I was nevertheless struck by how big and full it was. I've very little sense of how much human traffic there is between England and the near continent, but being able to zip in to the centre of a continental city makes this a far more attractive means of travel than flying. I was irked though by the fact that the catering car seemed to shut for an age before and after a staff changeover at Brussels, which was basically prime time for when you would want to be sourcing wine to drink at your seat like some kind of debauched plutocrat. By the time the bar was open again we were so close to our destination that it didn't seem worth it.

We left the Eurostar in Rotterdam rather than Amsterdam, as we thought it might be interesting to have a quick snoop through that famous town. It did not quite conform to expectations. Firstly, there was no gabba blaring non-stop over the loudspeakers in the station, with no loud voices shouting "FUUUUCK YOUUUUUUUU" to be heard either. Also the city centre had far less of the completely rebuilt after being bombed to shit look than I was expecting (the city was heavily bombed by both sides in the Second World War but they seemed to have missed a surprisingly large number of old buildings). However it did feel a good bit less shi-shi or dinky than Amsterdam and Utrecht, and the walk down to the river (a mouth of the Rhine, I think) gave good nautical feels. The hour or two we spent there might be enough, but I'm sure if circumstances brought you back (say for their film or jazz festivals, or the < href="https://www.erasmuscon.nl">2024 Eurocon) you would find things to amuse yourself.

From Rotterdam it was a short journey on a double-decker train to Utrecht, where we checked into our hotel (conveniently located right beside the station with a view of the platforms, while also being five minutes away from the Tivoli), ate our dinner in a branch of the famous Dutch restaurant Wagamama (where I saw a couple that I then kept seeing again and again over the weekend) and repaired to bed.

The festival started the next day, which was a Thursday. Following the crowd I found myself catching the very first performance of the festival, Sote and Tarik Barri performing together not in one of the Tivoli Vredenburg spaces but in the Stadsschouburg, a theatre space I had not previously made it to. Sote is an Iranian electronic musician while Barri is a Dutch visual artist. For this Barri was doing visuals live in response to Sote's plinky music, which made for a wonderfully immersive introduction to the festival.

After a quick beer and burger break we made our way to the Tivoli's Grote Zaal for a performance by the Master Musicians of Jajouka led by Bachir Attar (who split from the Master Musicians of Joujouka in the 1990s, for reasons). Hailing from Morocco, their music draws from Sufi traditions and would probably have originally been played at events where people were going into trances and getting close to the divine and stuff, as opposed to music festivals for whitey. Quite a few of their tunes began with long piercing blasts from their wind instruments, before the percussion instruments came in and a bit of to-and-fro ensued. I did find myself thinking that maybe the percussion instruments were a bit quieter than they should be, but that might be because the master musicians kept moving away from their microphones. My beloved meanwhile was amused by how the various master musicians were like a bunch of crotchety auld lads who seemed to spend their time grumbling about stuff.

In previous years it has been hard to move from gig to gig at Le Guess Who, with venues filling up to the extent that you needed to get to them half an hour or more before an act was scheduled to start in them. But I was nevertheless able to go straight from the Master Musicians to the Ronda (second largest Tivoli venue), where Divide and Dissolve were playing. They had played support to Low earlier this year but I arrived too late to see them on their Dublin date, so this was my first time catching them. They are a two-woman outfit, one on drums (Olivia, filling in for the usual drummer) and the other playing sax, guitars, and keyboards (Takiaya Reed). There were no vocals, though Reed did a lot of between song chat. Some of the chat was about the late Mimi Parker of Low, who Reed reported being very supportive of Divide and Dissolve's work. Colonialism, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, etc. were also discussed (the band are broadly against all of these things). The music meanwhile was quite in-your-face and in some ways contrasted considerably with Reed's vocal style, which was quite soft spoken and almost like what you might get from someone fronting an indie band. I liked her and sympathised with her struggle, but after not too long I felt like I had got the idea with D&D and did not really need to hear too much more of their music.

Leaving the Ronda I decided to make my way up to Cloud Nine to see OKI. The venue was pretty crowded, but I made my way up to the balcony and had a pretty good view of proceedings from there. But who or what is OKI? It turns out that he is this guy called Oki Kano and he is a member of the Ainu community (an indigenous people hailing from the north of Japan). He was playing with his wife and son as well as some other guy on bass. Kano and his family wore what looked like some kind of traditional garb, while the drummer was less traditionally attired. The instruments meanwhile hovered between tradition and modernity: as well as the bassist, there was Kano's son on a standard Western drum-kit, while Mr & Mrs Kano played the tonkori, the five-stringed harp of the Ainu, which they played almost like a guitar.

From reading about Oki Kano, I gather he is all about preserving the embattled culture of the Ainu, yet he is also surprisingly un-precious about it. His band's performance was not like some kind of stuck in amber reconstruction of a true well of Ainu music of yore but instead pulled in influences from all over the place, with dub and western pop being obvious points of reference (I read that he has also collaborated with Ireland's Kila, but then hasn't everyone). All in all this was a big pile of fun and one of the most enjoyable sets of the festival.

I made arrangements to rendezvous with my beloved in the Grote Zaal where she was planning to catch Alabaster DePlume but I arrived early and the previous ensemble of Mr Sarathy Korwar was still playing, joined by special guest star… Mr Alabaster DePlume! Confused? Not as much as I was when they all went offstage and I thought that the Alabaster DePlume concert was over before it had started.

But it was not too long before Mr DePlume returned with his band. Basically he is a jazz saxophonist but when he isn't playing his sax he treated us to either his wise sayings about the world (generally of the upbeat positivity variety) or else his beat poetry. It's the kind of thing that should be terrible but it all somehow worked. I particularly liked his "I Was Gonna Fight Fascism" poem, which was all about how he was going to fight fascism but for a variety of reasons he was unable to do so (he was a bit tired, he had a lot on, he got a bit annoyed with the other people fighting fascism, etc.); and then it was too late. We've all been there.

And that was that for me. Some of my buds went on to BASIS, Le Guess Who's late night club venue, but you don't want to wreck yourself on the first night of a festival.

More terrible Le Guess Who photos

More Le Guess Who action real soon.

Octocon 2022: two months on

Octocon is the Irish national science fiction convention, which takes place each year in October. After an interlude as an online con, Octocon resumed as an in-person event this year, with fans of science fiction and related genres gathering in a Croke Park conference facility. Others joined us online, as this was a hybrid convention. I have already written about some of the programme items that I unfortunately missed, so now it is time to look back at some things that I was lucky enough to witness or even in some cases take part in.

After a brief stint on the Octocon information desk (where I fear that every piece of information I gave out was incorrect), I found myself moderating a panel entitled Crafting Non-Human Worlds and Societies, with the panelists all being people who had created non-human societies in their own works. This was my first time moderating an in-person panel, so obviously there was the fear that angry attendees would take a dislike to the way in which discussion progressed, blame me for their disappointment, and then chase me from the venue with threats of violence. Fortunately the panelists (Máire Brophy, Michael Carroll, Peadar Ó Guilín, and Jo Zebedee) were all dream programme participants: the kind of people who could talk knowledgeably on the subject, illustrating points both from their own works and those of other writers (including Jack Vance, Piers Anthony, R. Scott Bakker, Adrian Tchaikovsky, & Ted Chiang (in particular for "Story of Your Life", which was adapted into the film Arrival). Discussion of animals that a writer might usefully adapt into an alien civilisation naturally turned to cats but also to the octopus and rabbits (with Richard Adams' Watership Down receiving a favourable mention).

Subsequently I sat in the audience for Movie Monster Mash, which looked at cinematatic monsters. I liked the discussion of how some monsters go through cycles of being seen as irredeemably terrifying before shifts present them as either sympathetic or comical before they go back to being terrifying again, with vampires being an obvious example here. I also agreed with those panelists who argued that the 1992 Bram Stoker's Dracula is an absolutely terrible film. I was not sure what to make of the revelation that there is now a revival of interest in werewolves, those most rubbish of monsters.

I missed the start of Fictional Words to Live By, a panel on the way in which fictional works of science fiction and fantasy can contain philosophical nuggets that gestate in our brains. I was interested by the point that much of SFF has now become contemporary myths, with superhero comics & films and Trek Wars being specifically referenced here; given that all of these have gone on far too long and fallen into cosy self-plagiarism I'm not entirely convinced of the quality of myth we are bequeathing to future generations.

And then two readings, firstly by RB Kelly and Jonny Nexus. Kelly's was from the recently published On the Brink, in which the characters are on a Dutch space station. Science fiction usually imagines US or sometimes Chinese controlled space programmes, so it was nice to see some of the smaller nations getting their go (I feel like I should go away and cobble together a series in which some technological breakthrough leads to Ireland colonising the moons of Jupiter). Nexus's first reading also gave us the space programme of a small-ish nation, in this case the United Kingdom in an alternate history where it somehow managed to get an exciting space programme going much earlier than anyone else did in the real world. The setting reminded me of Ministry of Space (by Warren Ellis & Chris Weston), though it felt tonally different, as befits his description of the setting as Dan Dare meets James Bond. The excerpt had an appealing retro-future ambience. Nexus also read a snippet from a work about the Olympian gods playing a table top roleplaying game, which was every bit as bizarre as that sounds.

That took me to the end of Octocon's first day. There was a social event in the evening sponsored by the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon, but I couldn't face the prospect of trying to socialise while wearing a mask (unlike the rest of society, Octocon sees the Covid pandemic as very much still with us). Also I had a cat to feed. And I had to get up early in the morning, as I was appearing on a 10.00 A.M. online panel Monarchy and Nepotism in Fact and Fiction, looking at the fondness of SFF for narratives based around monarchy. Ably moderated by Cheryl Morgan, this saw Jean Bürlesk, Aliette de Bodard, Gillian Polack and myself grumbling that creators all too often misunderstand what they are bringing from the real world into their history, in this case tending to present absolute monarchies and never considering the kind of constitutional or constrained monarchy seen in Europe past and present (to say nothing of monarchies further afield). And while the panel generally felt that the absolute monarchies of SFF are generally not great, it didn't really turn into republics-are-best panel either, for all that I lean that way myself. Jean Bürlesk even went so far as to argue the case for constitutional monarchies, though maybe if I lived in the world's only grand duchy I might do similar.

After that I made the relatively short journey from my home to Croke Park, and somehow managed to miss all programme items until a post-lunch panel entitled A History of Irish Fandom. This to some extent turned into a history of Irish SFF cons, with zines and the like receiving relatively short shrift. There was a bit of talk about the now moribund Irish Science Fiction Association and how it performed a useful role, with Philippa Ryder suggesting that it would be great if someone were to revive it. Having an organisation for science fiction fans sounds amazing — I am imagining membership books, badges, secret codes, possibly uniforms — but I didn't really get much sense from the panel of what ISFA actually did. I should perhaps have a look at FANAC and see if there are any scans of ISFA publications there.

It was fun hearing about the cons of yore though, with the mention of the 1992 Trincon being a particular highlight for me as that was my first (and for a long time only) experience of organised science fiction fandom. One thing I don't think the panelists really touched on is that there was a definite arrogant Trinity student aspect to Trincon, which might have jarred with the wider SF community. It's been a long time but I remember there being panels at Trincon that you would never get at Octocon today (I can't imagine Octocon ever running panels on how Star Trek is stupid or how film science fiction is mostly just a facile dumbed down version of what appears in print). But the Trinity students got their comeuppance in 1997 with Trincon 2, which attracted so few attendees that there was one guest of honour for every five paying punter.

I arrived slightly late to Comics Is Literature, discovering subsequently that the cavalier approach to subject-verb agreement in the panel's title references an internet controversy. This explored the recurring SFF question: "why don't the squares in the literary establishment take our genre stuff seriously?" One thing I did like was the mention of how comics have always been a somewhat disposable medium, with the transition from print to online distribution not necessarily changing this: previously people bought monthly comics that had a tendency to fall apart, now they often view them on a website that might well disappear in the morning. There was also discussion of how comics have long been seen as primarily a medium for children, which undermines their acceptance as something adults can unproblematically enjoy or take seriously.

I was struck though by how the comics panel only really talked about comics in the anglophone world, as my understanding has long been that on the European continent and in Japan it is far less the case that comics are seen as things exclusively for the kids. It would be interesting to look at why there might be that divergence. Also, given that the kids' comic market has now largely disappeared (apart from The Beano), the idea that the problem with comics is their association with children might be something that will no longer hold in the future.

One other point made by the panelists interested me, the idea that comics are a form, not a genre. That is obviously true, with comics covering a range of subject matters, even if ones about guys in funny costumes punching each other are still rather dominant. But I think there is still an extent to which people who like comics and people who create them do kind of see them as effectively a genre. Even the fact that you can have a comics is literature panel without panelists saying "I've nothing in common with you guys because I write romance comics while you are writing crime comics" suggests a certain collective appreciation. There is something a bit circular here of course: regardless of genre, comics are sold in comics shops or in the comics section of bookshops, which reinforces the idea that they are a thing apart from true literary works like the latest Andy McNab tome.

For me though a gap in the comics panel was any discussion of what constitutes literature. Is literature anything with written text? Or is literature a qualitative term (something only becomes literature if it is… literary)? If you take the first approach then any comics that have text are literature, but there is a certain so-what quality to this as the same would be true of a shopping list. If you go down the second road then it becomes possible to argue that some comics are literary enough to be classed as literature, but this also implies that there will be some comics that will not make the grade.

The panel also has me thinking that it is really time I got back into buying monthly comics. It further reminded me that I should be checking out IrishComics.ie on a more regular basis.

I then took a break from panels to attend Half a Man in a Trenchcoat: Network Theory and Storytelling. This was a talk by Harun Šiljak, who took ways of modelling real-life human interaction and then applied them to works of fiction. He began with such mythic works as Beowulf and the Táin Bó Cúailgne, noting that the networks between the characters are statistically similar to those observed in real life networks, once the main characters are excluded (this had me wondering if real life social networks might look a bit unrealistic if mapped from one person's point of view). He then went on to the core of his talk, applying network theory to the first season of Twin Peaks. There was a lot to unpack here — the change in the way the character interactions work once Dale Cooper appears in the first episode (which in turn sees about half of the main characters appearing before and after Cooper first hits the screen), and then the way Cooper and Sherif Truman frequently appearing together skews the network in a way that can be resolved by treating them as one person. The thing I found myself wondering was whether in a show with a whodunnit element like Twin Peaks do the character networks provide clues to the killer's identity.

And then the closing ceremony saw the announcement that Sakura is stepping down as chair, with the new occupant of the hot seat being Paul Carroll. Onward and upward. I should also mention the trade hall at this year's Octocon, which was perhaps in a smaller space than the last in-person con but which felt like it was completely jam-packed with product. I came home with a pile of stuff. And I should note that I missed the non-appearance of the Golden Blasters and the Vault of Horror. The Golden Blasters was a short film competition and festival that always featured some amazing stuff, while the Vault of Horror saw John Vaughan playing clips from terrible films while drawing attention to their awfulness (this was way more entertaining than I am making it sound). Good things cannot last forever.

One great thing that was back at Octocon was the Lally Wall. This a wall featuring hand-drawn posters by Dave Lally outlining ways people can travel to other conventions happening in Britain and Ireland (and sometimes further afield). No online con has ever managed to replicate these successfully.

So that was that. It was great being back at an in-person science fiction con. Croke Park felt like the nicest venue I've experienced Octocon in (the right size, useful layout, convenient location), with the one caveat about the pretty terrible catering options (for vegetarians: the options were cakes of various kind (all of which ran out by Sunday afternoon), chocolate bars, crisps, manky pre-made sandwiches, and potato wedges (which rapidly ran out); I don't think the meat people did much better.

If you've got this far you might have noticed another thing about Octocon: everyone was wearing masks. This was mandated by the conrunners as an anti-Covid measure, to protect vulnerable attendees. That it was enforced for programme participants was non-ideal for attendees with hearing impairments. The mask requirement seemed a bit strange to me, as by the time Octocon took place almost nothing else in society was enforcing a mask mandate. Was Octocon being excessively cautious, or is the rest of society insanely reckless? I'm not sure how we could answer this question.

For another view of Octocon, check out this report on File 770 by James Bacon: Octocon 2022

More of my Octocon pictures (inessential)

Octocon: things I did not go to

Some things stopped during the Covid pandemic, but not Octocon, Ireland's national science fiction convention. It just went online for a couple of years, but earlier this month it made its triumphant return as a live in-person event in Croke Park. Or rather, a hybrid event, for as well as the programme items taking place in Croke Park there were ones taking place online, and some of the in-person events were also streamed for the benefit of the folks at home.

I was there in Croke Park and I attended programme items, even taking part in one or two. But I'm not going to start with those. Instead join me as I look at some of the programme items whose descriptions intrigued me but which I had to miss for one reason or another.

Abandoned Landscapes: As a secret goth I thought this panel sounded fascinating, whether it would be looking at ruined castles or crew-less spaceships orbiting dead planets. But alas, I was serving a stint on the Octocon information desk.

Colonialism in Science Fiction: In science fiction the idea of humanity expanding into space and establishing itself on other worlds is such a staple that it is hard to step back and wonder whether this kind of interstellar settler colonialism is perhaps a bit problematic. I'm not sure if the panel was actually going to look at this kind of issue (the programme notes suggested that it was more likely to be an emo panel in which people pondered their own place in the sinister history of terrestrial colonialism); it would nevertheless have been interesting to see what roads the panelists went down. Sadly this online panel also occurred while I was on the information desk (and while it was recorded and is available to watch online, I'm a great believer in never going back).

Unreliable Narrators and Other Tricks: Unreliable narrators are one of the great tricks of modernist literature (for all that they go back long before the 20th century), though I'm not sure they have been used that much in science fiction, so it would have been interesting to hear how the panelists talked about how this kind of device might be used in our genre fiction. But I was moderating another panel and so missed this.

The Storytelling Legacy of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television: There is something heroically ambitious about attempting to cover the entire 84 year corpus of TV science fiction in one 60 minute panel, for all that I suspect in practice it probably featured a lot of yap about Star Trek and Doctor Who. I was lunching while it was on.

Glasgow 2024 Book Club — Walking On Glass: I would have gone to this if I had read the book. I probably should read some of Iain Banks' non-Culture books sometime.

Nosferatu Watch Party & Zoom Social: I love Nosferatu, F. W. Murnau's brilliant but unauthorised 1922 adaptation of Dracula, the first film to bring a version of the popular count to the screen. In fact Nosferatu may even be the film I have seen the most as I rarely turn down an opportunity to view it. But I was a bit *tired* when it was being streamed and I had a sneaking suspicion that the Zoom social aspect of the screening might feature a lot of people chortling at the 1920s visual effects. Irish Horror Films: This panel sounded like it was right up my alley and I understand they did talk about Sea Fever (very good) and You Are Not My Mother (initially very good) as well as various other films. They probably didn't mention The Eliminator (very very good). I missed this in-person panel because it was on too soon after an online panel I appeared on from the comfort of my home.

Reading: Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan: I am fascinated by Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan's work on Cthulhu City and The Dracula Dossier, two next-level roleplaying game supplements, but I was lured away by the cheap thrills of a panel on the history of Irish fandom. I was nevertheless sorry to miss this and all the others I failed to attend, as readings are always one of the best things at SF cons.

Dead dog: This was basically people who had been at Octocon going to the pub on the day after the con finished, presumably taking off their mandatory masks and coughing in the face of Octocon's strict Covid rules. But I was doing an Irish class that afternoon and somehow convinced myself that the event would be over by the time my class finished.

Join me real soon for an account of some programme items I managed to actually attend.

images:

In the zone (Guardian: "The powerful resonances of Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker")

1938 BBC production of Karel Čapek’s R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots (Den of Geek: "The Legacy of Rossum’s Universal Robots")

A symphony of shadows (NDR: "Nosferatu - das Original")

They also make music in Ireland: three Irish records reviewed

Michael McHale Moonlight (2022)

This release on the Ergodos label sees pianist McHale tackling Beethoven's Appassionata and Moonlight sonatas, interspersed with shorter pieces by Linda Buckley and Áine Mallon. Despite my interest in contemporary music, I mainly bought it so that I could have a copy of the Moonlight Sonata to listen to. McHale's performance of this feels a bit non-standard, with the playing seeming to be a bit more delicate than other versions I have heard. I am not familiar enough with the Appassionata to judge this rendition, but the playing seems a good bit more in your face than on the Moonlight Sonata. The two short contemporary pieces meanwhile function effectively as introductions to the Beethoven sonatas, with Buckley's piece played with the diffidence of the Moonlight Sonata, while Mallon's "Raindrop Prelude" has the more aggressive playing of the Appassionata; it could also be said to have notes invoking falling rain.

Overall an enjoyable listen but I think I would need to listen more closely to a standard performance of the Moonlight Sonata to appreciate the deviation here. You can check it out yourself on Bandcamp: https://ergodos.bandcamp.com/album/moonlight

Cormorant Tree Oh Cormorant Tree Oh [2018]

You will recall how impressed I was by Ms Cormorant Tree Oh, the mysterious balalaika playing lady who played support to local gothgazers A Ritual Sea. It turns out that Cormorant Tree Oh is actually a stage name, and her real name is Mary Keane. On stage she came across as a bit of an outsider artist weirdo, albeit one with clear musical talent and application, but here we have a record that is much more form the world of spooky weirdo folk, with songs about werewolves and stone circles, while the music is a mix of electronic and acoustic instruments. There is not much in the way of credits on her Bandcamp page, but I suspect this is something she knocked up herself, and extremely impressive it is too. Its eerie, ritualistic sounds have been on repeat here in my brane and I suspect they would be in yours too if you give this a listen. I see she is releasing another album in September… which may mean that she will do another live show. Exciting. Check out her stuff on Bandcamp: https://cormorant-tree-oh.bandcamp.com/music

Fears Oíche (2021)

Fears is the recording name of Constance Keane. I bought this after liking a track on a friend's compilation of their favourite tunes of 2021. This album, whose title must surely be unpronounceable to anyone who has not been through the Irish education system, is a collection of downbeat electronic sounds over which we get Keane's delicate vocals. The lyrics touch on Keane's mental health issues, which on occasion saw her in psychiatric institutions, but just letting the beautiful music wash over you stops this being a harrowing trudge. You can listen to it yourself on Bandcamp: https://fearsrecords.bandcamp.com/album/o-che-2 images:

Moonlight (Bandcamp)

Cormorant Tree Oh (Bandcamp)

Oíche (Bandcamp)

Quick ones: some short record reviews

v/a Stax Gold - The Hits 1968-1974 (1991)

So this is a collection of Stax classics from Ace Records. It's a great selection of southern soul sizzlers, but you probably know that already.

LoneLady Nerve Up (2010) & Hinterland (2015)

You will recall that I went to see Ms LoneLady earlier this year, at what was basically my first proper gig after the menace of Covid was vanished from the world. I picked these up at the concert. If you've listened to the LoneLady track I included on my 2021 compilation you'll get the basic idea: nervy vocals over a somewhat retro accompaniment of electronics and edgy guitar lines. LoneLady's Julie Campbell plays almost all the instruments on both records. Nerve Up is a bit more guitar-oriented than the later record but they are both broadly of a piece. There are Tim Burgess listening parties for both of these (Nerve Up & Hinterland), which I keep meaning to play back while listening to the record. Probably should have done that before writing this.

You can buy these and other records by LoneLady in record shops or from Bandcamp: https://lonelady.bandcamp.com

The Anchoress [2022 covers]

In an effort to rake in the $$$s, the Anchoress has been posting cover versions on Bandcamp for short time periods. I keep downloading them. The first one here is a cover of "The Tradition" by Halsey. I have no idea who Halsey is so the song has no prior residence for me. It's nice enough. The second one is "These Days", originally from Nico's debut album Chelsea Girl. I have a troubled relationship with that album: while it is certainly pleasant enough, I feel like it is basically False Nico, in that she is singing a selection of nice songs written for her by other people. It is also from before she acquired her harmonium and started writing her own songs of subterranean doom. "These Days" was written by Jackson Browne, reportedly when he was about 16. While it was not written for Nico, she appears to have been the first person to record it commercially. The Anchoress croons her way through it; divorced of my difficulties with Chelsea Girl it's hard not to listen to it here and conclude that this is in fact a beautiful song with appealingly wistful lyrics about loss and regret.

And then a cover of Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence", the electropop banger slowed down. It's fine but not revelatory. Continuing the trawl through goth-adjacent tunes of yore, the next one is The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love". I've never liked this song and the switch from the uptempo poppiness of the original to the slower and sparser version her does not change my opinion that this is one of those fundamentally bad songs that everyone in the world bar me loves.

The last track is "Pennyroyal Tea", originally be Nirvana and released by the Anchoress after the US Supreme Court's revocation of the Roe v. Wade judgement (pennyroyal has history as a herbal abortificant of variable efficacy). The cover is fine but again, not revelatory.

In fact I think all of these covers are inessential, with the exception of "These Days"; none of them leap out at me like her 2020 covers of "Wicked Game" or "Martha's Harbour" did. But I'll probably keep chasing the buzz by downloading whatever covers she releases next. You can do the same by keeping an eye on her Bandcamp page: https://iamtheanchoress.bandcamp.com

Confidence Man Tilt (2022)

I feel like I bought a Roisín Murphy album by mistake. This is fine as far as it goes and the songs would probably be great live if you had Janet Planet and Sugar Bones dancing in front of you, but there aren't enough lyrics about how Ms Planet is amazing and everyone else is a loser. Some of the tunes also sound a bit over-reminiscent of other tunes by other artists. Howard Blake "The Moon Stallion" (1978)

This is the theme from this now quite obscure TV series that is now completely unavailable on home media and has never been released on English-language DVD. Its unavailability is a shame, as anyone who remembers seeing it will recall it as a classic of spooky 1970s kids' television. Its use of the Uffington White Horse and Wayland's Smithy interspersed with a plot mixing up Arthurian myth and Graeco-Roman paganism would make it highly relevant to our current revived interest in all that folk horror stuff. If you've seen it you'll remember its late-Victorian setting and its spooky plot based around the mysterious white horse of the title, with anyone who catches sight of it being doomed to die in the near future (conveniently the story's heroine, played by Sarah Sutton, is blind).

The theme, downloaded from YouTube, is of short duration, but in its 50 seconds it manages to evoke the stallion's untamed gallop while hinting at the esoteric content of the programme. The theme isn't even on YouTube (the "Moon Stallion" hits you find there are for a completely different programme), but it can be listened to here. Give it a go, but don't blame me if next thing you find yourself meeting a spooky white horse and then dying in an unfortunate accident.

images:

Stax Gold (Ace Records)

Hinterland (Bandcamp)

Diana (Sarah Sutton) and the Moon Stallion (Bradley's Basement: "The Moon Stallion")

Recordings of weird folk music from Britain and France

v/a Lammas Night Laments Vol.1

I saw a copy of this and later volumes in the series while we were out in Kimmage visiting a cat whose owners were away. As a series of CD-Rs compiling weirdo folk tunes they looked very much like my kind of thing, and it was all I could do not to gently slide the discs into my bag and claim ignorance regarding their existence. But they don't call me Honest Ian for nothing, so I left the discs where they lay.

Nevertheless, I did search online for the series to find more information about them, and discovered that information is easily found. The discs seem originally to have been put together from 2005 by some guy called Mark Coyle for a now vanished website called The Unbroken Circle. Since then the series has become much prized by those who take an interest in esoteric folk music. I also discovered that some cursory googling serves up sites from where the collections can be downloaded. Resisting the urge to scoff the lot, I stuck with just the first volume, which I found in what claimed to be a remastered format (implying that previous uploads of the collections have been characterised by poor sound quality).

And it's beautiful stuff. Some old friends (Vashti Bunyan, Dr Strangely Strange, Magnet, & Anne Briggs) and a pile of tunes from people I had at most heard of. Stone Angel's "The Bells of Dunwich" boasts a beautifully clear female vocal,C.O.B.'s "Spirit of Love" is like something from one of those Welsh Rare Beat compilations, for all that it is in English, while Dulcimer's "Caravan" sounds like they lured in Richard Burton to help out with narration.

I will eventually move on to later volumes in the series, but this one makes a great start.

Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U. F. O. La Nòvia (2000), Vox Bigerri "La Nòvia" (2013)

My beloved and I had the great idea of learning "La Nòvia" for an Unthanks singing weekend: not the full on Acid Mothers Temple throat singing guitar rock freakout version but something closer to its Occitan folk origins. That got me thinking about how I'd like to have versions of this popular tune on my iPod so I could listen to them and stuff. These are both rips from YouTube (I already own a vinyl copy of Acid Mothers Temple's La Nòvia, but it seems to be impossible to legally acquire either a CD or MP3 version of it).

Just in case you do not already know all about this, "La Nòvia" is a folk song from the south of France, sung in the Occitan dialect. I think it may originally have been a children's song or even a lullaby, and it definitely has that kind of repetitive progression children love. The title translates into English as "The Bride" and the lyrics describe her ornamentation, with first verse being thus:

La nòvia qu'a nau brilhants suu cap

La nòvia qu'a nau brilhants suu cap

Nau brilhants suu cap,

L'anèth au dit

Which translates more or less as:

The bride has nine diamonds on her brow

The bride has nine diamonds on her brow

Nine diamonds on her brow

A ring on her finger

Subsequent verses are the same except the number of diamonds reduces by one in each verse until the impoverished bride is left with just one diamond.

If you've ever seen Acid Mothers Temple live you'll know their version, which features throat singing and electric guitar soloing of a type not commonly seen in the mediaeval Languedoc. It also goes on for ages, starting a capella and then bringing in the instruments before looping backwards and forwards between accompanied singing, a capella singing, and pure instrumentation. The Vox Bigerri version is short and unaccompanied, apart from a church bell at the start; on YouTube you see them singing as they walk around a deserted town that may or may not be in the south of France. Their harmonies are pretty full on, but I think they are a vocal folk group so that's not too surprising. The Vox Bigerri version is an impressive showcase of their talents. I would pick up one of their albums if it had a recording of it on it; sadly it does not appear on any of their albums' tracklistings. The Acid Mothers Temple version is however the one I heard first and it will always be my favourite. The original record sleeve contains material on the Cathars, a religious community who lived in the Languedoc until they were exterminated in a thirteenth century crusade; the last two hundred of them were burned at the stake after the conclusion of the siege of Montségur. In the hands and mouths of the Japanese freak rockers the simple children's tune becomes an elegy to the Cathars, whose extermination is symbolic of northern France's subjugation of the Languedoc. With the passage of time it is also en elegiac evocation of a now-vanished phase of Acid Mothers Temple's own history, when their line-up was large and had room for weirdos like Cotton Casino.

images:

Lammas Night Laments (Its lost its found: "VARIOUS ARTISTS - LAMMAS NIGHT LAMENTS VOLUME 01")

La Nòvia (Discogs)

Some short gig reviews

I'm a busy man so I don't have time to review every concert I go to in great depth, but maybe if I throw together several unsatisfying short reviews (with pictures I took myself) they will add up to one semi-satisfying big thing.

Sparks (Vicar Street)

I took no pictures of the popular Mael Brothers, whose concert I was only able to see because Covid struck down successive owners of a ticket. "So May We Start" from Annette makes for a great opener, while the best songs of the night were either "The Number One Song in Heaven" or "This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us", the latter very much gaining form having a full band performing it (last time I saw Sparks it was just Ronald and Russell).

Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets (Convention Centre Dublin)

It was great being back for the first time since Worldcon. This saw early Pink Floyd tunes played by Nick Mason (as you know, drummer and founding member of Pink Floyd) and some of his musical buds (Guy Pratt, Gary Kemp, Lee Harris, and Dom Beken). The setlist featured songs from early singles and1967's Piper at the Gates of Dawn up to 1972's Obscured by Clouds. Like proper oldarse musicians they took a break in the middle of the concert, with things really ramping up in the second half as they opened with the double whammy of "Interstellar Overdrive" and "Astronomy Domine". The light show etc. was all amazing. The tunes were great too. I have a considerable fondness for Pink Floyd, but I maybe go in different directions than other people, tacking considerably towards the early stuff (Wish You Were Here is the latest I go, and I've never really warmed to Dark Side of the Moon), so the selections here were right up my alley. It is worth noting however that the music of Pink Floyd seems to have a negative effect on men's hair. And I was unfit to operate heavy machinery for a long time after the concert concluded.

Luzmira Zerpa (Cafe Oto)

She came from Venezuela to play music in Cafe Oto, which I saw with my bud Colin while I was over for that Nigel Kneale centenary thing. Everyone loved the Latin grooves of Ms Zerpa and her band, which reminded me of music I heard in Cuba for all that Venezuela is a completely different country with its own musical traditions.

Low (Vicar Street)

A date with the new crunchy music iteration of Low. Top notch stuff. I did hear the outlandish claim advanced that the bassist on this tour is one of their sons, but cursory research revealed that the bassist is in fact one Liz Draper. She acquitted herself well, though I do wonder about how many former Low bassists there now are.

More concert photos

Concert: Tangerine Dream

This took place in Dublin's Liberty Hall about a week after Putin invaded Ukraine; sitting in my seat enjoying the electronic sounds I felt like I was Nero fiddling while Rome burned. The concert was billed as being centred on Tangerine Dream's years with the Virgin record label, so a bit outside my own main area of familiarity with the band's oeuvre (which is centred on Alpha Centauri and Zeit, though I do admittedly have a copy of Phaedra, which I have not listened to so much). Before the concert I did some investigations and discovered that Edgar Froese, the main guy from Tangerine Dream, died some years ago, leading me to wonder what class of gig I was going to. What I got was a performance of electronic music by a band consisting of three people: a woman on violin, a guy on electronic stuff, and a younger guy on other electronic stuff. There also were lights and images projected on a screen. The music was a bit more full-on than the early Tangerine Dream stuff I am familiar with, at times heading towards what might appeal to young people in a "night club". That was funny because the concert was all seated and you got the impression that many of the attendees were in such a relaxed frame of mind that they would have been unable to dance even if they had wanted to. I think I recognised a track from Phaedra, but apart from that it was all new to me. I have no idea whether they were actually playing tunes from the Virgin era (possibly jazzed up) or pieces from their career to date, but it was all very enjoyable and I would be happy to see them again at a future concert. Afterwards I carried out some further investigation into the band's current line-up and discovered that the older of the electronic musicians is a fellow named Thorsten Quaeschning, who was not even born when Tangerine Dream formed and is in fact a good bit younger than me. He has been Tangerine Dream's bandleader since Froese's death. He has a side project called Picture Palace Music, who among other things do scores for old silent films that they perform live and release on record. And I have one of those records, Three Easter Nights at the Babylon - Music for Bunnies and Fallen Capitals, with tunes composed for soundtracks to Metropolis, Nosferatu, and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, which I bought when I saw a screening of the latter with live musical accompaniment in Berlin once. Small world.

"Petite Maman" (2021)

This is a charming French film that begins sadly. Marion goes with her husband, and daughter Nelly to clear out the house of her mother, who has just died. It all proves a bit too much for Marion, who returns home to leave her husband to the task at hand. Nelly goes wandering in the nearby woods and meets a little girl her own age. Going back to the other girl's house she realises it is her grandmother's house, but in the past, and that her new friend is her mother when she was a child. Because she is a small child she is able to roll with this far better than an adult would.

In the hands of an American director I suspect Petite Maman would be a terrible confection of twee sludge, but thanks to Céline Schiamma's understated direction and subtle but impressive performances by twins Joséphine and Gabrielle Sanz as the two girls it remains something gentle and quietly poignant. I recommend this one highly. There is one odd musical bit. Eventually Nelly explains to little Marion what is going on. Then at one point she is listening to music on headphones and little Marion says "is that the music of the future?" and then asks to hear it. We then get this sudden burst of euphoric electronic music, which might be the only music heard in the entire film (Schiamma does not do soundtracks), which continues playing while the two girls paddle off in a little boat around some weird concrete structure in a lake. For the first time it becomes possible that the bit with little Marion is actually our present and Nelly is living in the future.

As a timeslip fantasy, Pettie Maman was eligible for this year's Hugo Awards. I nominated it in the Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) category, but due to biased political voting it failed to make it onto the list of finalists.

image:

Nelly & Marion (Guardian: "The 50 best films of 2021 in the UK, No 3: Petite Maman")

Film: "Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: a History of Folk Horror" (2021)

This is a documentary by Kier-La Janisse about all that folk horror stuff, starting off with the big three (The Wicker Man, Witchfinder General, and Blood on Satan's Claw) before heading on into weirdo TV of the 1970s (typically written by Nigel Kneale) before travelling around the world and on to the present day. Howard Ingham, who wrote the book on folk horror, features as one of the talking heads, possibly being the first voice heard in the film. The guys who set up the Folk Horror Revival group on Facebook also make an appearance.

The film is good but maybe goes on a bit. It loses focus a bit when it starts talking about folk horror from places other than Britain. That section felt a bit "Around the World in 88 Crazy Folk Beliefs", coming close to offering little more than a superficial listing of the films.

My sense of unease with the folk horror around the world section did get me thinking about what this folk horror stuff is all about. I lean towards the idea that is fundamentally a very British thing, based on the country, particularly England, having a continuous history that has rolled on for hundreds and hundreds of years without the disruption of invasion and the like. That sense of long history means there is a lot of past from which things can resurface. And despite the name, there is more to folk horror than horror featuring elements from folk traditions (e.g. leprechauns exist as threatening entities in Irish folk tales but Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood is not folk horror). Some of the non-British folk horror films in Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched did just seem to be taking some monster from folk traditions and having it eat people, which to me is not what true folk horror is about.

I also found myself taking issue with the claim by one of the commentators that folk horror asks "what if the old ways were right?". I don't think any of the great folk horror narratives pose that question. Rather they ask "what if there were nutters who believed the old ways are right?", e.g. people on a Scottish island who think that human sacrifice will guarantee an abundant harvest or East Anglian peasants who think that their neighbours are practising witchcraft and should be executed. Folk horror sometimes presents the followers of the old ways in an almost appealing manner, but you'd have to be a right weirdo to think that their ways are better than the ones science has to offer us.

That's a lot of grumbling and caveats from me, which is unfortunate and might give the wrong impression that I did not enjoy the film. It is a great piece of work and I think it functions well as both an introduction to the genre and something that triggers debate and thought for people who have more engagement with it. I think it is available on some online streaming patterns and possibly also DVD. I encourage people to seek it out. This might actually be a better film to see at home rather than in the cinema, as you may well find yourself wanting to note down films to check out later.

I nominated Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched in the Best Related Work category in this year's Hugo Awards, but it did not make it to the list of finalists, due to biased political voting.

images:

The Unholy Trinity (The Kim Newman Website: "FrightFest review – Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror")

Warwick Davis and friend (Nathan Rabin's Happy Place: "Exploiting the Archives: Control Nathan Rabin: Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood")

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched (Rotten Tomatoes)