Vampires are crap. I’ve said it before and I’ll stand by that assertion, but allow me to clarify something first. The original literary notion of the vampire is undeniably appealing, and clearly serves as a potent metaphor for all manner of physical and psychic human interactions. But over the years all that potential has been ruined by every kind of Hollywood idiocy, and for me the nadir was achieved with the spectacle of Tom Cruise performing as Lestat with all the gravitas of Tim Curry as Frank. N. Furter. Buffy The Vampire Slayer didn’t help matters much either, and over the years we’ve had so much bending of the ‘rules’ and preposterous “reinterpretations” of the source material, that you cannot honestly argue that a creature that can be killed by sunlight, fire, beheading, holy water (or even sea water!) or warded off by a cross made from lollipop sticks or a clove of garlic represents any kind of significant threat. Ignoring, as I have up until now, the Twilight phenomenon, it’s only in recent times that writers and film-makers have begun to recognise once again what can be achieved with this age-worn archetype. True Blood exploits the sexual aspect of the myth to its full potential, but what’s been most appealing to me has been the novel (and subsequent film version of) Let The Right One In.

I read the novel before I saw the film, and this helps inform much of what the cinema version leaves unspoken. The author John Ajvide Lindqvist grew up in Blackeberg, the working-class suburb of Stockholm where the story is set, and given that the era is the early 1980’s and that the author is roughly my age then it’s not stretching credulity to assume that some of what the main protagonist Oskar experiences is drawn directly from Lindqvist’s own life. There’s too much of an accretion of minor details for it to not have been a directly-experienced environment, and the supernatural element of the story merely acts as the catalyst for all the other themes – bullying, drugs, petty crime, dole culture, poverty, the atomised family, and paedophilia – that seemed to be sat waiting, brooding in the darkness of 20-hour-long winter nights, to be brought to the fore. You sense that what befalls the cast of characters was waiting to happen all along, and all it took was the arrival one night of a young girl and what we assume to be her father.

Absolutely key to the success of both the book and the film is the locale, and how its depicted. I’ve always felt these nondescript urban wastelands, the housing estates thrown up with faint hopes of a better future and within a few decades turned to rot, are haunted in much the same way as the old gothic edifices of the 19th century. Emotional phantoms linger in the empty squares and abandoned playgrounds, under the subway tunnels and behind the chin-link fencing. Lindqvist evokes all of that potential in his sombre rendering of Blackeberg, with its empty snow-crusted streets and foreboding woods, and in its residents hiding behind their grimy windows, fearful of something they can’t even name. With the arrival of the ‘Ritual Killer’, whose first victim is found hanging from a tree, drained of blood, they now have something to justify their fear, and each character – from Oskar, the bullied teenager, to Tommy his older jaded compatriot, to Virginia the sad lonely drunk and Lacke the world-weary barfly – responds in their own way. Oskar, after meeting Eli the young vampire girl, finds the courage to stand up to the bullies that have made his life misery. Tommy seems to have his most cynical impressions of the world confirmed by the response of his mother and soon-to-be-stepfather, who is leading the police investigation. Virginia and Lacke, members of a group of aging, wasted pub wraiths who lose one of their number to the predatory Eli, decide to consummate their relationship before it’s too late. A sense of doom and ruined destiny persists throughout, and even when events turn gruesome (though never gratuitous) there lingers the impression that it’s the place itself – Blackeberg – angrily turning on itself for want of another direction in which to vent its bitterness.

Tomas Alfredson’s film version captures that perfectly, and he also recognises that a truly effective horror story must not place the supernatural element at the centre, and it’s easy to imagine this material adapted to work almost as well without any mention of vampirism. Alfredson understood when reading Lindqvist’s screen adaptation of his own novel that at the core of the story was Oskar and the anger he feels towards the world. Abandoned by his drunk of a father, smothered by his mother’s desperate love, and abused daily by the kids at school, Eli serves as a manifestation of all his pent-up frustration and anger, powerful emotions already threatening to spill out even before Eli turns up one night in the playground and sees Oskar stabbing at a tree, imagining it’s his hated tormentors that he’s mutilating. Oskar keep a scrapbook of murder stories clipped from the newspaper, and is a little powderkeg waiting to explode. His friendship with Eli lights the fuse, but keeps it at a slow burn as events set in motion when Eli had to feed for herself begin to spiral out of control.

The film downplays the paedophilic tendencies of Håkan, the man who everyone assumes is Eli’s father, but there’s only one thing that sends him out into the night to kill strangers and drain their blood, and that’s the promise of a glimpse of Eli’s naked body. Håkan’s back story is typical tabloid fodder – a disgraced teacher fired for advances on his pupils and forced to live on the streets – until he meets Eli. Håkan is not so much pitiful as pathetic, useless to the world and sorely unqualified as a serial killer. He botches the second murder and before he can be apprehended he pours acid onto his head, hoping it will kill him. It doesn’t, and when Eli’s attempt to put him out of his misery is thwarted, he falls several stories to his death, but rises again as the most disgusting vampiric slug you’ll ever witness, the complete antithesis of the buffed fairy-boys of Twilight. He is appetite in its most reduced form, shambling around Blackeberg, scaring the locals and killing cats as he hones in on his sole quarry: Eli.

I won’t spoil the ending for those who’ve yet to see it, suffice to say that it’s a satisfying resolution that offers a kind of ruined hope to the survivors. Predictably enough, a US remake is now in the works, a totally unnecessary move for anyone who has sufficient schooling to be able to read a subtitle. It says plenty about the Hollywood mindset that they feel they have to make this more digestible to the multiplex hordes by removing the inconvenience of having to pay attention, but also lost will be the unique atmosphere evoked by Alfredson’s sensitive and intelligent adaptation, and the sublime score by Johan Soderqvist, not to mention the perfectly-pitched performances by Kåre Hedebrant as Oskar, and Lina Leandersson’s fragile and disquieting depiction of Eli. I enthusiastically recommend both the book and the film to everyone, especially those who – like me – had thought the horror genre had been drained of its vitality long ago.

Mercury Rev – Vampire Blues

“Don’t crap out” – Aaron Horkey

Aaron Horkey is ten years my junior, and waaaay ahead of me in terms of his artistic career. Not for the first time, and undoubtedly not for the last, do I feel that I have squandered whatever opportunities I might have had come my way over the years. Aaron Horkey hasn’t, and his time has very much arrived, with his gorgeously-rendered illustrations raising the bar for poster artists and illustrators everywhere. He’s done posters for most of the key bands of our times – including Mogwai – and designed the excellent album cover for the U.S. release of SunnO))) & Boris’ Altar. In an art world overrun by slapdash “Will this do?/Just call it ‘punk’” charlatans, his thermonuclear exactitude is the perfect antidote.

He resides in Mankato, Minnesota, where they get proper weather, proper snow, several feet deep. Unlike many of the up-and-coming artists you see championed these days, he’s far enough removed from the east and west coast scenes to be unaffected by their worst aspects, instead revelling in the fresh air and, as he puts it, the “glorious, glorious desolation.” There’s also the total lack of any kind of social scene, partly down to geographic location and also the climate, which helps focus the mind somewhat on getting The Work done instead of great mates/great times distractions. As Horkey points out: “It’s much easier to focus on work when any impulse to go outside has been completely extinguished by a biting gale force wind.” Not that he’s looking for a scene, and it’s at this point that I really begin to relate to him, when he says: “I might as well be living on the fucking moon. Human interaction beyond my family and a handful of close friends is all but unthinkable. I’m terrified of crowds or even small groups of people so it’s rare that I attend any sort of event or go out in public at all if I can help it.”

A man after my own crispy little black heart. Now over the past few years he’s established himself as one of the premier poster artists for the modern rock scene, almost single-handedly exorcising all those Kozik and Robert Williams clones, and introducing a more considered aesthetic that draws on decades of classic illustration. One of the obvious influences on his work is that of Chris Ware, whose appropriation of early 20th Century mass culture packaging design and ornate graphics has clearly fed into Horkey’s work, though Ware never dared take it as far as this. You can also see Robert Crumb in there, especially late-period Crumb when he left no part of the drawing’s surface un-cross-hatched. The level of detail in Horkey’s drawings is, at times, bordering on insanity, but it’s exhilirating to see in the age of electrickery a man prepared to do it all by hand.

The crisp blacks, and delicacy of line recall Barry Windsor-Smith at the peak of his powers on Conan The Barbarian, while the bizarre chimera he creates are reminsicent of Terry Gilliam’s animation. There’s also shades of Geof Darrow and Charles Burns in the accretion of detail, to the extent of drawing each blade of grass folded over a gravel floor littered with bones. However, he’s done what all serious artists do and that’s to succesfully assimilate all those influences and use them to forge his own distinctive style, one that is rightfully bringing him praise and the paying work he needs to support his family.

However, he’s not all that pleased with the work he’s created, and seems to serve as his own worst critic. He’s obviously a very good artist, who’s clearly still got plenty to say, but all he can see are the mistakes, the botched compositions. Best of luck to anyone trying to spot flaws in his work because I can’t. He’s one of the best drawers I’ve ever seen and, as he says, “in a time such as we’re in where digital short cuts and perfect mechanical sterility rule the roost”, his adherence to the classical techniques is admirable and a lesson to all those who adhere to the idiotic argument that: “Drawing should be like Chinese cooking. If it takes longer than five minutes, you’re doing it wrong.” No, some things take time, and deserve to be taken time over. Resist the blipvert imperative wherever possible.

Breaking news! Headpress, Britain’s and indeed the world’s premier journal of the unterkulture, will be publishing some of my paintings from Project Mogwai in their next issue. Editor and publisher David Kerekes has been a long-standing supporter of my work, and I think something of mine – be it an illo, an article or a review - has appeared in every issue since the mid-1990’s. The first issue I ever saw (#8, cover shown above) totally blew my mind and made me, with all my strange obsessions, feel a little less alone in the world. Over the years contributed to several of their books, including: ‘Ted’, the story of serial killer Theodore Robert Bundy as performed by teddy bears, in Killer Komix 2; ‘Messiahs of Voltage’, the definitive story of The Stooges that Mojo said “outbangs Bangs” in Lovers, Buggers & Thieves; not to mention decadent lesbian illo’s for Martin Jones’ Psychedelic Decadence and cover art for Ghastly Terror, and The Hunchback of  East Hollywood. Still to see light of day is my art & design work, and two major articles on Manson/Beausoleil/Zodiac and Altamont for Saturn In Retrograde: Counter-Culture Murder, Bad Trips and Demon Fantasies, and my monolithic study of sixty years of British murder and mayhem: The Hangman’s Breakfast. Looking back over it all, it reminds me what a busy beaver I’ve been over the years, and yet I still feel that there is so much more still to be done…

In the meantime, and still on the subject of Project Mogwai, I’ve just made my first sale from that series – ‘Batcat‘ has sold to a Mogwai fan in Austria. That’s the first painting I’ve sold all year, and hopefully the start of an avalanche of prospective buyers.

Here’s my latest painting, completed last night as the awesome sounds of the song that inspired it reverberated through my psych skull. Bristol and indeed England’s premier freak rockers The Heads have been at it for twenty years now, damaging brains across western Europe with their unique brand of sonic oblivion. Earlier this year Rocket Records unleashed a mightly slab of vinyl, with The Heads and White Hills sharing a side each and acting as a pincer movement attack of the heavy, heavy monster sound. As undoubtedly good as the ‘Hills are, on this occasion The Heads level them with a monolithic blast of WTF that a Times reviewer aptly described as “going nowhere brilliantly.”

When I first heard the track I got this image in my head of a head bursting open and all this day-glo Biryani sludge pouring out, and I knew I was going to have to commit it to canvas. I’m sure it’s meant to represent something, and I could give you all kinds of art-speak drivel to justify it, but all I really hoped for was to give the viewer the same jolt to the senses I got when I first heard the song. I’d encourage anyone even slightly inclined to get a copy, and if you’re still unaware of The Heads and what they can do for you, then try this:

The Heads – Widowmaker

Wednesday 25th November 2009, I found myself back in my home town of Morley, trudging o’er hill and dale (alright, some muddy fields at the back of the housing estate) towards the woods that held within their shadows a heavy secret. It was a place I’d stumbled across earlier in the year, one that I’d not visited since I was fifteen years old. My mind had been blown and I was determined to return with a camera to try and capture the distinctive atmosphere of the place. Unlike last time, there’d been plenty of rain recently, and the going was boggy to say the least. I came over the back fields and across the motorway bridge, unwittingly on the tail of a young female walking a dog who I later realised was probably under the apprehension that I was “doing a Ted Bundy.” She later passed me at the top of the path into the woods, and saw me seemingly lost, and asked if I was looking for something. “It’s alright, I’m just going to take some pictures of the old railway tunnel.” “Oh aye”, she said, “there is something strange down that way…”

Something strange indeed. The Gildersome railway tunnel was closed in the late 1960’s and finally bricked-up sometime during the 1980’s. It runs beneath land upon which now stands an industrial estate, emerging in the stygian sprawl of Dean Woods. The woods slope down steeply to the level ground above the tunnel entrance, so steep that you need to hold on to any stray branch or root otherwise you are plummeting 30 feet down into years of undisturbed leaf-rot and who knows what else. Once atop the tunnel entrance, you look down into… the abyss.

It’s a good 30-40 foot drop, into filthy neck-deep water, under which festers all manner of detritus. The slope down to one of the old access doors is suicidally-steep and muddy and one slip would have sent me hurtling over the edge of the wall and down into the pit below. I made do with a photo, and moved along the wall to get down from the other side, which is no-less-dangerous. Pausing for breath I noticed once again how Auschwitz-silent it is down there, with just the eerie trickle of running water echoing up through the maintenance shaft that offers the main access into the tunnel. Looking over the edge of the wall I noticed that since my last visit the gate into the tunnel has been forced, and hung slightly ajar. There’s no way you could get in there unprepared though – you’d need a wetsuit at this time of year. I got down to the slope that passes under the pooled water, and took these photos. As great a site as it is, it was hard to find a vantage point that suitably conveys the atmosphere, which is unique to that locale. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, if something bad hasn’t happened there before, it soon will.

Blair Witch vibes soon followed as I went back up to the top of the tunnel, and followed the ‘valley’ deeper into the woods. It’s flat, cut through by streams, and populated by the weirdest looking trees you’ve ever seen. Some have tattered old rope swings hanging from them, others have been burnt or have dead branches hanging down. All around the steep hills bear down, cutting out what was bright sunlight and casting the entire place in shadow. Up ahead I saw a fallen tree that was twisted and mangled and scorched from repeated burnings. Empty beer cans and squashed cider bottles were strewn all around it and spilled down into the undergrowth like alkie vomit. Walking on my instincts were rewarded by the sight of dumped freebie newspapers, shit-streaked tissue paper, and a copy of the teenage tugger’s favourite Zoo Weekly, shredded and rain-stained. It’s heartening to see that even in the age of the internet such ancient traditions are still being upheld.

Ugliness abounded, in terms of both spectacle and the impulses that had been exercised there, and yet it’s a compelling place. It will never be tamed, and it has an admirably-uncompromising attitude that begs to be used in the next decent low-budget British horror film. Just call it The Hell Hole, rope in some local hoolies to start fires and a couple of wild-eyed teenage street witches to smash bottles and howl at the moon. And use this for the soundtrack:

John Zorn’s Moonchild – Hellfire

Reanimator…ah, what a film, the kind they just don’t make anymore. Horror is more popular than ever these days, but the vibe is completely different to what it was back in the 1980’s. The ’slasher’ fad had run it’s course and freaks of the genre were looking for something more, something that went far beyond what they’d already witnessed. Enter Stuart Gordon, with an overload of passion and energy to compensate for his absence of morals and basic human decency. Adapting (very loosely) the original H.P. Lovecraft story Herbert West: Reanimator, Gordon and his gang of imps decided to see just how far they could go… and as each minute of the film unfolds and the body parts start to multiply, you sense that you are in the company of genuine madmen who simply do not give a shit. And just when you think they’ve gone as far as they can, along comes the scene that once witnessed you can ever forget, the one where a strawberry blonde cheerleader is laid nude on the slab and molested by a leering decapitated head. It’s gratuitous, indulgent, and yet totally hilarious. The first time I saw it my mouth was hanging wide open, as I pounded my fists on my thighs with sheer glee. Alright, I was seventeen at the time, but the memory of it has never left me, and it was at that point that I realised that the art I was most inclined to respond to was that which came from The Beyond. Nigh on twenty five years later and that much at least hasn’t changed.

Grails – Reincarnation Blues

Being able to draw a connection between the most foetid imaginings of Odilon Redon and the insane racket made by Melt Banana is how my mind operates on a daily basis.

Melt Banana – Spider Snipe

Everything I see about me is sowing the seeds of a revolution that is inevitable, though I shall not have the pleasure of seeing it. The lightning is so close at hand that it will strike at the first chance, and then there will be a pretty uproar. The young are fortunate, for they will see fine things.
Voltaire

I look around the world today, certainly the this sliver of the Western world which I experience daily, and feel the same way that old Voltaire did about the circumstances being ripe for revolution. Sadly, these days with the wearing of a Che Guevara t-shirt regarded as the zenith of revolutionary ardour, it’s clear that it’s never going to happen. People are pissed off but they know there’s no point in rising up like in the days of yore, as the Stormtroopers of the Black Gas will just stomp them into the asphalt. Different tactics are required. Those inclined are out there, and know what they have to do. And if they ever needed a rallying cry, here it is:

Mudhoney – Urban Guerilla (Hawkwind cover)

And does the girl imitate the woman
or the woman imitate the girl?

Ah, Bill, the eternal question…

Smog – Little Girl Shoes

When I was on the cusp of my teenage years, some thirty years ago now, a combination of 2000AD, Men Only, Iron Maiden, and films like Escape From New York and Mad Max had convinced me that the above picture was an accurate representation of what the future held in store for me. And, despite all the experientiary evidence to the contrary, a small part of me still clings to the hope that this might yet be the case.

Monster Magnet – Slut Machine