The Swimmer - Directed by Frank Perry & Sydney Pollack

On a sunny early autumn day in an affluent suburb in Connecticut, Ned Merrill (Burt Lancaster), a seemingly successful, appealing and popular middle-aged advertising executive, clad only in swimming trunks, runs through the forest. He walks out of the woods and into the backyard of some old friends sitting by their swimming pool. He chats with them, then he has a sudden idea: he tells his friends he intends to "swim" home across the county by dropping in on friends' swimming pools which form a consecutive chain leading back to his house. He dives into the pool, emerges at the other end and starts his journey.

At first Ned gets warm welcomes as he meets old friends, mostly upper middle-class, well-to-do people with homes in the upscale outer suburbs. However, there are hints that Ned has been away for up to two years, and he brushes off any questions about himself. Each stop brings him face to face with some aspect of his life. The first one is with his youth when anything was possible, while the last one exposes the current collapse of his family life and where everything seems lost.

As the day wears on and Ned sees those who have been closer to him more recently, the welcomes begin to sour. Ned's proud boasts about his wife, daughters and home are met with strong mixed feelings, jeers, suspicion and even anger - especially from women. In one backyard Ned meets a 20-year-old girl (Janet Landgard) who, years ago, had babysat his daughters. She leaves with him, at first thrilled to do so owing to an unspoken crush she had for him in her early teens. But when Ned rather clumsily tries to woo and kiss her, she flees. He carries on with his "swim," dropping by the pools of sundry other friends as it slowly unfolds that his life has somehow gone quite wrong. He crashes a party at one pool. While he is put up with at first, Ned is thrown out when he has an outburst after spotting a hot dog wagon he had once bought for his daughters, but which had recently been sold in a white elephant sale. He then shows up at the backyard pool of Shirley Abbott (Janice Rule), a stage actress with whom he'd had an affair several years earlier. She is still feeling bitter and hurt. When Ned tries to rekindle things, this poolside meeting ends badly for both of them.

As the day ends, Ned winds up in a crowded public swimming pool where he is shamed by local shopkeepers to whom he still owes money for unpaid grocery and restaurant tabs. When some of them comment about his wife's overall snobbish attitude and his out-of-control daughters' recent troubles with the law, he angrily flees. As the sun goes down, a shivering Ned at last staggers up a rocky hill, shoves open a rusted gate and walks through an overgrown garden with an unkempt tennis court. A thunderstorm begins as Ned knocks on the front door of a locked, dark and empty house. He then breaks down on the front stoop and cries.

Directed by Frank Perry & Sydney Pollack. Produced by Frank Perry & Roger Lewis. Written by Eleanor Perry. Based on a short story by John Cheever. Music by Marvin Hamlisch. Cinematography David L. Quaid. Editing by Sidney Katz, Carl Lerner & Pat Somerset. Studio: Horizon Pictures. Distributed by Columbia Pictures. Release date(s) May 15, 1968. Running time: 95 minutes. Country: United States. Language: English.

Burt Lancaster as Ned Merrill, Janet Landgard as Julie Ann Hooper, Janice Rule as Shirley Abbott, Tony Bickley as Donald Westerhazy, Marge Champion as Peggy Forsburgh, Nancy Cushman as Mrs. Halloran (nudist), Bill Fiore as Howie Hunsacker, David Garfield as Ticket seller, Kim Hunter as Betty Graham, Rose Gregorio as Sylvia Finney, Charles Drake as Howard Graham, Bernie Hamilton as Halloran's chauffeur, House Jameson as Chester Halloran (nudist), Jimmy Joyce as Jack Finney, Michael Kearney as Kevin Gilmartin Jr., Richard McMurray as Stu Forsburgh, Jan Miner as Lillian Hunsacker, Diana Muldaur as Cynthia, Keri Oleson as Vernon Hooper, Joan Rivers as Joan, Cornelia Otis Skinner as Mrs. Hammar, Dolph Sweet as Henry Biswanger, Louise Troy as Grace Biswanger & Diana Van der Vlis as Helen Westerhazy.

Further information here, here & here. Video content here, here & here.

Coil ‎– Hellraiser Themes

Hellraiser Theme:



The Hellbound Heart:



Box Theme:



No New World:



Attack Of The Sennapods:



Main Title:

the answers to the questions of the future lie in the past, or vice​-​versa EP#1 by t/e/u/

"The traces of past experience are continually playing in upon our perceived world. Now, to get hold of that in the organism which answers to this stage of our conduct, to our remembering, to our intelligently responding to the present in terms of the past, we set up a parallelism between what is going on in the central nervous system and immediate experience. Our memory is dependent upon the condition of certain tracts in our head, and these conditions have to be picked out to get control of processes of that sort" - George Herbert Mead (1863–1931).

1st in a series of archival EPs. Culled from a larger herd of material recorded on DAT, cassette & reel to reel tape, between 1983 & 2012. Pieces are incomplete versions of incomplete pieces. Apart from 'anticlockwise'. In all likelihood, never to be completed.

Edited & arranged, with additional instrumentation & digital adornments, between 2000 & 2013. Analog mastering, transfered to 24 bit Wav, by Optimum Mastering, 2013. Alternative versions of some of these pieces, plus additional pieces, will feature on the forthcoming 'greytape' cassette.

Bandcamp - Soundcloud - Facebook - Blogger

"Not even Lee Perry puts delay/reverb on everything!" Jon Tye - Lo Recordings.


merge visible (version)



essence of winter sleep is on the night and held against the world of hoary grass (version)



anticlockwise (systems-music)



i cast spells (version)

Marat/Sade - A play by Peter Weiss / A film by Peter Brook

Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade

"Man has given a false importance to death. Any animal plant or man who dies adds to nature's compost heap, becomes the manure without which nothing could grow, nothing could be created. Death is simply part of the process. Every death, even the cruellest death, drowns in the total indifference of nature. Nature herself would watch unmoved If we destroyed the entire human race. I hate nature, this passionless spectator, this unbreakable iceberg-face that can bear everything. This goads us to greater and greater acts..."

Whether reading or watching a performance, Marat/Sade is neither a comfortable nor an immediately enjoyable play. The work, whose full title is The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of The Marquis de Sade, is more commonly known by its truncated name. The play was first performed in West Berlin at the Schiller Theater in 1964 and directed by Konrad Swinarski. It was not until British director Peter Brook staged an English language version in London, however, that Weiss and his play received wide acclaim. That production, staged in 1964 at the Aldwych Theatre, brought Marat/Sade to the attention of the world as critics and audiences hailed the play's unique style and structure.

Swinarski's direction was tame compared to what Brook would do to the work in London and, the following year, in New York. According to David Richard Jones in Great Directors at Work: Stanislavsky, Brecht, Kazan, Brook: "Most audiences experienced it as powerful. Viewers showed that they were strongly affected by its magnitude, whether they walked out in anger or stayed seated, shaking, at the end. The show usually had a similar impact on critics, other theatre workers, and the actors themselves".

Audience members did storm out of performances of Marat/Sade; some viewers reacted so strongly that they became ill. "At least one spectator, the German actress Ruth Arrack, died in the auditorium during a performance", reported Jones. The fever pitch of the play's emotions, combined with its frank violence and brutality, led many of the play's detractors to label it as nothing more than "shock theatre".

Debate existed among critics about the value of the play. Some suggested that the real meaning of the play was perhaps ambiguous. The majority of critics, however, felt that the ambiguity of the play was intentional and a means to force the audience to assess the proceedings and come to their own conclusions. Despite what some perceived as a lack of resolution in Marat/Sade, all who viewed the production agreed that it was a spectacle the likes of which the London and New York stages rarely saw.

Drama for Students, © 2013 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved.

Marat/Sade is based on a German language play by the avant-garde playwright, writer, and painter Peter Weiss. In Weiss’ play, he imagines a play being performed under the direction of the Marquis de Sade while he was imprisoned in Charenton asylum. In actual fact, de Sade did write and direct plays while in this asylum. The play within a play format is used to establish a dialogue between the real-life French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat and the Marquis de Sade himself. In this format, Marat represents the visionary polemicist of the ideals of the revolution and de Sade the cynic hedonist who shuns these ideals as false and impossible, advocating a philosophy of individual pleasure to social engagement. The fact that the so-called play is being performed under the decadent, post-revolutionary regime of Napoleon III just adds to the irony of Marat’s own pleas for the ‘revolution’. In the play, Weiss is able to issue a strong condemnation of war, man’s inhumanity to man, and show how the ideals of any revolution are often turned on their head – as happened in the Reign of Terror. The play is a sobering look at politics, philosophy, and de Sade’s own corrupt hedonistic view of life.

Brook’s film transforms the play into an acting tour-de-force. He has at his disposal some of the finest Shakespearean actors of his day playing the roles: Patrick Magee as de Sade, Ian Richardson as Marat, and also features a young Glenda Jackson. In the film, the play is seen being performed by a group of inmates suffering from various stages of mental illness – all played for comic/ironic effect. The play employ mini musical interludes to add ironic commentary on the action ‘on stage’ (like a comic, manic Greek chorus) and Brook uses these most effectively. In the film, he has a group of the new aristocracy watching the play – as again happened in de Sade’s own performances. The bemused new gentry watch and giggle at the absurdist performance, as we the viewers act as another ‘audience’ to the performance. He opens the play up, presenting us a multi-dimensional work of art, with each component adding to the other.

The film is truthful to the intent of the play and the hot-house asylum atmosphere is creatively caught by the camerawork of cinematographer David Watkin – one of the greatest of British cinematographers. We have then a great absurdist epic, which allows neither Marat the idealist or de Sade the hedonist realist/cynic to have the last word. A complex feast for the eyes, with a rich tapestry of colours, and brilliant ensemble acting from all concerned. This is one of the great filmed plays and works at every level. A stimulating film to see, enjoy for the acting, and think about how it reflects and resonates on today’s political/social realities.

Brook also did a very effective film of Lord of the Flies (1963 – from William Golding’s novel) about a group of young boys stranded on an island, who revert to savagery and turn on one another – much like a bad night on the auteurs. He also did a fine adaptation of King Lear (1971) with Paul Scofield. The other film of his I have seen is his stunning Mahabharata (1989), which was filmed for television... BOB STUTSMAN.

Video content here, here & here.

Foehn - Insideout Eyes - sf016 cd - 1998

"Foehn is the working alias of Bristol-based Debbie Parsons, who formerly partnered Matt Elliot in Third Eye Foundation. Like Third Eye Foundation, Foehn’s music is cut-up and sprawling, defiantly low-key, abandoning any desire to easily please, and instead searching out / attempting to describe an often more awkward, uncomfortable reality; a dark, unique vision of unexplored territories, haunted dreams, lingering desires". Selected Audio...

I Don't Find You Very Funny



Just A While Longer



Sleep - Goodnight



Looking For Something Real



Numb Silence



Sailing In Oval Rooms



We Fell

DJ Spooky: Songs of a Dead Dreamer. Asphodel 0961

DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid (born Paul Miller, 1970), is a Washington DC-born illbient and trip-hop musician, turntablist and producer. He borrowed his stage name from a character in a William S. Burroughs novel.

Growing up in DC, Spooky became interested in punk and go-go music, and attended Bowdoin College in Maine, earning degrees in French literature and philosophy. He began writing science fiction and formed a collective called Soundlab with several other artists.

In the mid-1990s, Spooky began recording a series of singles and EPs. His debut LP, “Songs of a Dead Dreamer”, is now widely regarded as a formative influence on illbient. “Riddim Warfare” was an underground hit that include collaborations with Dr. Octagon and other cult figures in indie rock.

He then worked with several other artists on various collaborations and mix CDs, returning in 2002 with “Modern Mantra”. That same year saw the release of “Optometry”, a widely acclaimed collaboration with avant-jazz players Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Guillermo E. Brown and Joe McPhee. This album also features portions of a breaks record by Billy Martin of Medeski Martin & Wood.

DJ Spooky also composed the score for the 1998 film SLAM, featuring poet/actor Saul Williams in the lead role. The film went on to win both the Cannes Camera D’Or and the Sundance Festival Film Festival Grand Jury Prize.


The Terran Invasion Of Alpha Centauri Year 2794



High Density



Outtro




Further information here, here & here.

This is my unsuccessful submission to The Royal West of England Academy's Open Exhibition in September 2012 (detail).