Where was I ? Oh yes, random creativity and such: Following our self - published 'Inkhead', and my re-location to Big Bad London, I continued dabbling in media with reviews etc for an obscure magazine called 'Outlook', the brain child of a dedicated man called Simon before it went to the wall and the name was taken for a Guardian* thing, with a proper circulation.
We had reached about 6000 a month . Not much, but it was hardcore, without the usual commercial constraints.It had been good for me, as I got to do what I'd always wanted ; to vent my spleen at a variety of mainstream shlock. Music, video, comics. I always liked seeking out the underdog, giving column inches to non - commercial zinesters. It was fun - no pay, but free review copies, and a chance to stick it to the MAN, man. I'd cut my teeth as a copywriter at Trident comics back in the Eighties, although that was strictly working for the MAN*.
Even alternative Outlook had its enclaves, there was a permafrost between the hip film guys and my lowly trailer trash video column, but I didn't care. I could write pseudo - intellectual with the best of 'em, so fuck 'em.
So here we are in the brave new world, where almost everything is online - the new Alexandrian Library, or just a deposit box for cute cats and spam lol ? It has to be said that the sum of human knowledge must now be pretty much online, and that in itself is impressive, though you'd find it hard to believe wading through the endless selfies and 'clickbait' news fodder.
Nonetheless, from humble beginnings in Cern, and the vision of Tim Berners Lee, the World Wide Web has become an all encompassing monster. Before going any further, I must stress that I understand the distinction between WWW and the Internet , but I reserve the right to blur the boundary between the two.
So nyar.
Its growth rate has been frightening, and I'm pleased to see people manning the freedom of speech barricades and all that as the corporate overseers bear down, trying to reduce it to the level of a global market stall - Stack 'em high and sell 'em cheap!
This of course is fuelled by the human desire for new, shinier, noisier, more pointless stuff, so the blame is partly laid at the door of human nature.
But I digress - I'm also glad to see that it really is a force for change and the breaking down of cultural / social mores, etc. It certainly levels the playing field, allowing greater access to a wider range of creative tools for everyone, which is great - for instance I make beat - driven music - well, some sort of music. If you are a glutton for punishment, you can follow the link below;
http://electricrhubarb.bandcamp.com.
If you do go there, then I thank you ....feel free to buy some sonic oddities, and do your bit for eccentricity!
By the way, the above image is one I did for a spoken - word track. It was supposed to look like a cruddy dub album cover from the Seventies, and infact was done before the actual track, which contains no dub at all, apart from a couple of echo/effects.
Of course, the downside to the democratic principles of creation on the internet is that there is no real 'quality control'. Anyone can post half - baked nonsense with no redeeming values and proclaim it as the best thing since sliced bread.
Hence my music.
Although I don't compare it to pre-sliced bread. Because that would be an allegory too far.
The point is, it's as much therapy for me , and an exercise as anything else; and in that sense its wider popularity doesn't really bother me -although it's always great to get feedback, of course.
Before leaving the subject, I should mention that my formative years in London were spent making Punky Dubby music with my old colleague Piers. Many adventures were had in that strange twilight zone which we inhabited...adventures with a travelling circus, the seemingly endless soldering of wires into the monstrous console which committed Aural Dub Assault on allcomers - the search for cassettes of ranting preachers and the editing of George Bush seniors ' speeches into fiery petroleum - hungry rhetoric being just a few of them.
We loosely termed ourselves The Whores Of Babylon, making good use of a sample from the classic film 'Night of the Hunter', and along with our cyber - head conspiracy - fiend Gwynne , we played low key raves in the Mile End road, and spent time in The Church, Crouch End; no salvation, but all night remixing ...
The Whores of Babylon , due to their unrelenting hardcore anger (and somewhat challenging name) were never going to be a commercial success, however, and the often - cited ' creative differences ' soon reared their ugly heads. Piers went on to greater things as 'The Mountain Of Love'*, one of the founding members of the Alabama 3, and myself and Gwynne embarked on an experimental path fuelled by his love of computer technology**, and a mutual hankering for warped visuals.
The stills included here are taken directly from a VHS copy of 'Escape To Transcyberia' (in 1995 there was no DVD release), and the original high resolution images were lost in the mix ( last seen in the Berlin offices of Studio K7 ), so apologies - but here is our animation
Back then in the early nineties, the streets of South London seemed to rattle with an endless booming Sub - Bass Rhythm which seeped from the very pores of the Cooltan centre, the Fridge, the Vox and any number of raves - further afield, we loved the Megadog, the Rocket in Holloway and the Slimelight.
The Brixton Academy and the Fridge were regular haunts - later to include Mass and the Dogstar.
Having it large was the order of the day, and so it was, from New Cross to Brixton to Holloway to Glastonbury, The Big Chill and The Enchanted Garden, all of which introduced us to a world of difference.
In later years (I'd like to say calmer, more mature years, following the birth of my daughter Ruby, but I'd be wrong )...
I used to get a vicarious thrill from doing projections for a couple of venues (and the occasional after show party) in Sarf Lahndon, and apart from happy chatty banter with fellow production people (and the thrill of watching peoples reactions to the visuals ), I preferred the low key approach.
It was in the Mass club on one such night in the late nineties that I crossed paths with Piers and the Alabama 3, and briefly took to the stage to rant hellfire and damnation to the loved up peoples of the club.
I projected a sleazy striptease film on the band as they played, but ssh! don't tell...
On another note, I'll never forget the moment of dissonance I had when I saw a video I'd compiled (for a fairly robust nightclub) from strange and obscene offcuts playing unexpectedly above a bar I entered in broad daylight...on the one hand, I felt proud, but at the same time, uncomfortable and embarrased - it was a defining moment for me.
My dalliance with the world of projections was short lived - thanks to the installation of variable voltage lighting rigs, and my old school film / slide projectors which slowly gave up the ghost, defeated by advances in technology and unable to compete with gobos and lasers and the like.
All the paltry money I'd made was used for equipment repairs, and it became too much of a labour of love.
Also, being stone cold sober at six in the morning when the house lights came up on the human wreckage was never a terribly edifying experience...***
My interests in visuals peaked when I was fortunate enough to be tutored by Jon and Dino (and set dresser extraordinaire Mel ) in the art of video, and their inspiration carried me through one of the darkest pits of my life.
My video apprenticeship also encompassed many Exploding Cinema events (before they imploded) and a year studying film at degree level before my personal life became a car crash of Prozac and darkness.
This is where the chronology comes unstuck - I only remember the tail end of filming two documentaries and doing voice over for one. One of the documentaries (concerning vampire subculture in the uk ) showed at the witching hour on Channel 4 back in early 2000, and then like scotch mist was gone without a trace. Infact, if I didn't know better, I'd say it was all a dream...one day I'll track it down...the second film was based around a fetish club (Whiplash) in Manchester , and I can think of numerous reasons for its mysterious loss...
* please note the 'Outlook' for which I scrawled reviews and stuff was in no way connected to the Guardian .
** G still works at the cutting edge of computer graphics, and is a genius who knows his way around algorithms better than I know my way around ...well, something small and not too complex.
*** I fully accept that I myself have been human wreckage in a variety of places too numerous to mention, but I digress...
*The Mountain Of Love fronts his eponymous dub outfit to this day- best to catch 'em live, lovers of the dubtastic!
![]()
 |
We had reached about 6000 a month . Not much, but it was hardcore, without the usual commercial constraints.It had been good for me, as I got to do what I'd always wanted ; to vent my spleen at a variety of mainstream shlock. Music, video, comics. I always liked seeking out the underdog, giving column inches to non - commercial zinesters. It was fun - no pay, but free review copies, and a chance to stick it to the MAN, man. I'd cut my teeth as a copywriter at Trident comics back in the Eighties, although that was strictly working for the MAN*.
Even alternative Outlook had its enclaves, there was a permafrost between the hip film guys and my lowly trailer trash video column, but I didn't care. I could write pseudo - intellectual with the best of 'em, so fuck 'em.
Nonetheless, from humble beginnings in Cern, and the vision of Tim Berners Lee, the World Wide Web has become an all encompassing monster. Before going any further, I must stress that I understand the distinction between WWW and the Internet , but I reserve the right to blur the boundary between the two.
So nyar.
Its growth rate has been frightening, and I'm pleased to see people manning the freedom of speech barricades and all that as the corporate overseers bear down, trying to reduce it to the level of a global market stall - Stack 'em high and sell 'em cheap!
This of course is fuelled by the human desire for new, shinier, noisier, more pointless stuff, so the blame is partly laid at the door of human nature.
But I digress - I'm also glad to see that it really is a force for change and the breaking down of cultural / social mores, etc. It certainly levels the playing field, allowing greater access to a wider range of creative tools for everyone, which is great - for instance I make beat - driven music - well, some sort of music. If you are a glutton for punishment, you can follow the link below;
http://electricrhubarb.bandcamp.com.
If you do go there, then I thank you ....feel free to buy some sonic oddities, and do your bit for eccentricity!
By the way, the above image is one I did for a spoken - word track. It was supposed to look like a cruddy dub album cover from the Seventies, and infact was done before the actual track, which contains no dub at all, apart from a couple of echo/effects.
Of course, the downside to the democratic principles of creation on the internet is that there is no real 'quality control'. Anyone can post half - baked nonsense with no redeeming values and proclaim it as the best thing since sliced bread.
Hence my music.
Although I don't compare it to pre-sliced bread. Because that would be an allegory too far.
The point is, it's as much therapy for me , and an exercise as anything else; and in that sense its wider popularity doesn't really bother me -although it's always great to get feedback, of course.
Before leaving the subject, I should mention that my formative years in London were spent making Punky Dubby music with my old colleague Piers. Many adventures were had in that strange twilight zone which we inhabited...adventures with a travelling circus, the seemingly endless soldering of wires into the monstrous console which committed Aural Dub Assault on allcomers - the search for cassettes of ranting preachers and the editing of George Bush seniors ' speeches into fiery petroleum - hungry rhetoric being just a few of them.
We loosely termed ourselves The Whores Of Babylon, making good use of a sample from the classic film 'Night of the Hunter', and along with our cyber - head conspiracy - fiend Gwynne , we played low key raves in the Mile End road, and spent time in The Church, Crouch End; no salvation, but all night remixing ...
The Whores of Babylon , due to their unrelenting hardcore anger (and somewhat challenging name) were never going to be a commercial success, however, and the often - cited ' creative differences ' soon reared their ugly heads. Piers went on to greater things as 'The Mountain Of Love'*, one of the founding members of the Alabama 3, and myself and Gwynne embarked on an experimental path fuelled by his love of computer technology**, and a mutual hankering for warped visuals.
The stills included here are taken directly from a VHS copy of 'Escape To Transcyberia' (in 1995 there was no DVD release), and the original high resolution images were lost in the mix ( last seen in the Berlin offices of Studio K7 ), so apologies - but here is our animation
 |
| 'Chiphenge ' we dubbed it, was part of an anim we created |
 |
| The warped image of the sun in the central altar - |
 |
| - is what they are set on |
Back then in the early nineties, the streets of South London seemed to rattle with an endless booming Sub - Bass Rhythm which seeped from the very pores of the Cooltan centre, the Fridge, the Vox and any number of raves - further afield, we loved the Megadog, the Rocket in Holloway and the Slimelight.
The Brixton Academy and the Fridge were regular haunts - later to include Mass and the Dogstar.
Having it large was the order of the day, and so it was, from New Cross to Brixton to Holloway to Glastonbury, The Big Chill and The Enchanted Garden, all of which introduced us to a world of difference.
 |
| The Cooltan Arts centre 1994 |
In later years (I'd like to say calmer, more mature years, following the birth of my daughter Ruby, but I'd be wrong )...
I used to get a vicarious thrill from doing projections for a couple of venues (and the occasional after show party) in Sarf Lahndon, and apart from happy chatty banter with fellow production people (and the thrill of watching peoples reactions to the visuals ), I preferred the low key approach.
It was in the Mass club on one such night in the late nineties that I crossed paths with Piers and the Alabama 3, and briefly took to the stage to rant hellfire and damnation to the loved up peoples of the club.
I projected a sleazy striptease film on the band as they played, but ssh! don't tell...
On another note, I'll never forget the moment of dissonance I had when I saw a video I'd compiled (for a fairly robust nightclub) from strange and obscene offcuts playing unexpectedly above a bar I entered in broad daylight...on the one hand, I felt proud, but at the same time, uncomfortable and embarrased - it was a defining moment for me.
My dalliance with the world of projections was short lived - thanks to the installation of variable voltage lighting rigs, and my old school film / slide projectors which slowly gave up the ghost, defeated by advances in technology and unable to compete with gobos and lasers and the like.
All the paltry money I'd made was used for equipment repairs, and it became too much of a labour of love.
Also, being stone cold sober at six in the morning when the house lights came up on the human wreckage was never a terribly edifying experience...***
My interests in visuals peaked when I was fortunate enough to be tutored by Jon and Dino (and set dresser extraordinaire Mel ) in the art of video, and their inspiration carried me through one of the darkest pits of my life.
My video apprenticeship also encompassed many Exploding Cinema events (before they imploded) and a year studying film at degree level before my personal life became a car crash of Prozac and darkness.
This is where the chronology comes unstuck - I only remember the tail end of filming two documentaries and doing voice over for one. One of the documentaries (concerning vampire subculture in the uk ) showed at the witching hour on Channel 4 back in early 2000, and then like scotch mist was gone without a trace. Infact, if I didn't know better, I'd say it was all a dream...one day I'll track it down...the second film was based around a fetish club (Whiplash) in Manchester , and I can think of numerous reasons for its mysterious loss...
* please note the 'Outlook' for which I scrawled reviews and stuff was in no way connected to the Guardian .
** G still works at the cutting edge of computer graphics, and is a genius who knows his way around algorithms better than I know my way around ...well, something small and not too complex.
*** I fully accept that I myself have been human wreckage in a variety of places too numerous to mention, but I digress...
*The Mountain Of Love fronts his eponymous dub outfit to this day- best to catch 'em live, lovers of the dubtastic!
 |
| A sketch I did for a 'stalled' project... |
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