Account of a dream I had several weeks ago
The dream is a long, rambling one. My recollection of it picks up while I am inside some kind of computer game set in an urban neighbourhood. In the game you play a superhero, but instead of performing the usual superhero feats you instead collaborate with other players and in game characters in fairly low key ways to police the neighbourhood against villains. I play Tarzan (who is evidently counted as a superhero for the purposes of the game). While this is going on (there being no break between game and ‘real life’), I have on my conscience the fact that my family have managed to misplace a sort of pet, and the burden has been laid upon me to find it. The creature is like a large eel, but if it has a body then it has been bunched into the cavity of its head (the reason being that it has been imprisoned in a globe of liquid big enough for the head alone). To make matters worse, despite its fishy appearance there is some doubt as to whether it is able to breathe in water at all. When I finally find it – in a drawer or behind a curtain – I know it has been there for days. Set close by there is a huge bowl of cloudy liquid in excess of a metre high and positioned on some kind of pedestal. I have by now freed the creature from its prison and set it on the surface of the water. Now it definitely only consists of a head and gills, but ironically it turns out to be an air-breather after all. I watch in some horror as the creature gasps and gulps air on the water’s surface. I marvel that it is still alive at all, but the spell is short-lived and it expires. It disintegrates almost instantly into the liquid, making it cloudier still. I manage to overlook the horrible event, however, by considering the globe itself and thinking how cool it would be if I were to purchase a smaller version and set up a diorama of miniatures inside. My friend Chris has joined me by this point, and he hints that I should even think about buying the big globe itself.
Now the dream changes gear, as Chris and I start rampaging around what appears to be a medley of Edinburgh and an imaginary North American city. Chris is on a bicycle and I am running, but we fairly fly up hills and hurtle round corners, upsetting many a pedestrian (about which I feel only slightly guilty). Intermittently we have to evade huge machines, which some malign intent has set in motion to destroy certain zones of the city. Later we pass through a serene area of lofty concrete architecture, with great connecting arches that range over our heads. I declare it to be ‘beautiful’ and ‘comforting’, somewhat to Chris’ amusement and bemusement. Afterwards, and still high up, we come abruptly, and incongruously, to a shoreline. Our mutual friends Simon and Gordon, besides others, have joined us by now. I stand by to watch as they all plunge recklessly into the sea, bordered as it is by huge blocks of rough concrete.
No one seems hurt. We are just retreating from the water’s edge through a cavernous stone tunnel, however, when a harsh voice instructs us to stop where we are and put our hands on our heads. We pause on a bridge as a group of gun-toting, black-clad policeman catch up with us. Although I believe at first that they are simply apprehending us ober the aforementioned ‘rampaging’, I am gripped by icy fear as the leading cop informs us that we have been charged with the murder of a fellow policeman. Smugly he asks us how we feel about dying; with some effort I control my horror and fear. He goes on to say that only one of us is to be charged with the actual murder and executed; the rest are ‘accomplices’ and, he hints darkly, will not be welcome in America again. Despite the seemingly foregone verdict, the policeman informs us the trial will last somewhere in the region of six weeks. Somebody explains that we are on holiday here for only a week; the policeman deliberately does not respond, so irrelevant is this fact evidently. We are still on tenterhooks regarding the identity of the murderer, but the police produce some rather clear underwater footage of Chris using a harpoon gun to shoot a policeman, who was in the act of menacing a girl in our party.
We are left to ponder our fate. I comfort Chris as his parents phone, at what has turned out to be just the wrong time, to tell him that they are back from holiday. With some difficulty he relays a significantly modified account of what has just happened. The picture is grim, but several things lead me to think that our story will have a happy outcome and that Chris and the rest of us will emerge victorious. Firstly, it now seems apparent that we are definitely in some kind of US crime drama. Although not usually associated with the genre, the dinosaurs and sea monsters that dwell on the coast – signifiers of good and wholesome nature – are outraged at our fate. Also, a figure twenty imposed on the ‘screen’ tells me that we are only twenty percent of the way through the story (it would be far too much of a ‘downer’ for the protagonists to be convicted one fifth of the way through only to be definitely sentenced at the end).
Chris is to be taken into custody and the rest of us each have to stump up bail money for ourselves. Amidst the curious architecture of this city, we are now standing on a large balcony at the top of an encircling flight of stairs, like that of an opulent hotel. A fresh detachment of police arrive and inform us that our bail will be eighteen dollars each – a fee which we will have to pay everyday as long as the case is ongoing. As I give my money to a helmeted police officer, he makes some fatuous taunts towards me. I respond by saying that his “comments are irrelevant”, and instruct him to hand over my parole pass straightaway (I can tell by the ensuing atmosphere that I have gained a small victory here).
Finally, Matt Smith [the actor who plays the current Doctor Who] appears at the top of the staircase, ahead of yet another detachment of sinister black-clad figures now occupying the substantial balcony one flight below opposite us. For the moment at any rate I am relieved to find anyone British in authority even if they are, as seems to be the case, in league with the detestable US police. The new arrivals represent an obvious cross section of some secret society of wicked ‘elves’ from the UK. Their leader, sprawled on a bed, is a curious fusion of patriarch and matriarch: bearded, but with breasts and a mermaid’s tail. What the elves have to with situation, beyond an evidently sinister intent, is unclear and unfortunately unrevealed as my recollection of the dream ends here.
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Review of Tangerine Dream's 'Phaedra'
Phaedra (1974)
1) Phaedra (16:45)
2) Mysterious Semblance At The Strand of Nightmares (10:35)
3) Movements of a Visionary (7:55)
4) Sequent ‘C’ (2:17)
Along with both sides of the follow-up album, 'Rubycon', Phaedra's title track is Tangerine Dream at their standout best – before the insistent melodies and, later, beats became their stock-in trade. The salient features of their best works are the incredibly evocative washes of amorphous sound, the odd semi-melody played on the melllotron by lead member Edgar Froese, and the hypnotic pulse of Chris Franke's mutating `Berlin School' synthesizer lines. My own listening tastes where such music is involved are for literally drifting off in bed: I shut my eyes and picture a visual accompaniment in my head.
While the remaining three tracks on the album merely serve as an adjunct in the context there is a definite consistency of tone to this short album. Overridingly it is cold and sparse (whereas Rubycon is largely lush and warm). Turning to the individual tracks themselves, there seems to be much praise for `Mysterious Semblance At The Strand of Nightmares' in other reviews I have read, but for me it does not live up to the promise of its intriguing title and is the weak point of the album. It seems to be principally a Froese work, and consists essentially of a single mellotron line accompanied by slow whooshing noises; which is all well and good, but doesn’t go anywhere! Essentially, it’s not strong or varied enough to be successfully sustained over ten minutes.
`Movements of a Visionary' is more satisfying, with the reappearance of the pulsing synthesizers. Many of these are highly evocative of the quasi-elastic motion of water surfaces. My favoured vision for this track is therefore that of a floating clump of seaweed seen from below as it bobs in sun-flecked water. (Such flotsam can become a temporary haven for fish in open water.) In counterpoint, Froese's work on the mellotron suggests fiery lights, perceived dimly, emanating as from some mystic forge.
‘Sequent ‘C’’ is again a very simple track, consisting of few interweaving flute lines, which have been processed in a way that could best be described as ‘ethereal’. Unfortunately it is also exceptionally short for a TD track of this period; it seems to have so much more going for it than prolonged and unremarkable ‘Mysterious Semblance’. The image it invariably brings to my mind is that of a decimated woodland landscape, blurred and instinct, as if shrouded in an almost tangible fog. The unvarying colour is turquoise faded to grey, with all hues drained out of it: mournful, lost. Like the rest of the album, there is a powerful sense of fantasy here. For those who have seen Lucio Fulci's ‘From Beyond’, I also like to imagine that this would make the perfect accompaniment to its denouement scene of fossilised corpses half fused into another desolate and mist-shrouded landscape (though the rocky soundtrack also works in its own special way).
And so to the title track: it seems to matter not that Phaedra is a character of Greek legend (locating her in much warmer climes than the eponymous track or any other on the album bring to mind). The ‘Ph’ of the title recalls ‘phantom’ and ‘phantasmagoria’, and Phaedra sounds like ‘hydra’, the microscopic tentacular, water-dwelling creature . . .
. . . named after the many-headed water serpent, also of Greek legend.
The track is a rich source of evocation and like all best ambient tracks in my opinion takes us on a ‘journey’, best experienced while in a semi-dozing state. Fading in, the opening segment genuinely brings to my mind the process of condensation, as a mist of water on a pane becomes voluptuous globules. Very swiftly the scene shifts to that of a great lake in a crystalline mountain cavern. The pearly liquid is undulating with its own weird motion . . .
(my photo, 'Glass Water')
. . . and the whole scene is illumined by the clear white light put forth by the cavern walls themselves. (As a side note, I love the sense of unreality one gets in computer games, or say the kids show ‘Knightmare’, when underground scenes are illuminated without there being any light source present.)
Three and a half minutes in, a sinewy half melody of combined mellotron and synthesizer swoops veeringly into the piece, like a seam in rock or a twisting line of luminescence. Thereafter we return to the water’s surface, where the atmosphere grows steadily more aggravated and claustrophobic. When at last the frantic synthesizers expire, the piece hovers for a while in an icy void. A few icicle-like stabs are heard, before presently a new scene resolves. This is much like that which I described for ‘Sequent C’: alpine, but desolate – a cold and lonely world beset, this time, by strange, semi-earthly calls. Finally, another swooping, semi tuneful, yet more magisterial line is introduced to conclude the piece.
1) Phaedra (16:45)
2) Mysterious Semblance At The Strand of Nightmares (10:35)
3) Movements of a Visionary (7:55)
4) Sequent ‘C’ (2:17)
Along with both sides of the follow-up album, 'Rubycon', Phaedra's title track is Tangerine Dream at their standout best – before the insistent melodies and, later, beats became their stock-in trade. The salient features of their best works are the incredibly evocative washes of amorphous sound, the odd semi-melody played on the melllotron by lead member Edgar Froese, and the hypnotic pulse of Chris Franke's mutating `Berlin School' synthesizer lines. My own listening tastes where such music is involved are for literally drifting off in bed: I shut my eyes and picture a visual accompaniment in my head.
While the remaining three tracks on the album merely serve as an adjunct in the context there is a definite consistency of tone to this short album. Overridingly it is cold and sparse (whereas Rubycon is largely lush and warm). Turning to the individual tracks themselves, there seems to be much praise for `Mysterious Semblance At The Strand of Nightmares' in other reviews I have read, but for me it does not live up to the promise of its intriguing title and is the weak point of the album. It seems to be principally a Froese work, and consists essentially of a single mellotron line accompanied by slow whooshing noises; which is all well and good, but doesn’t go anywhere! Essentially, it’s not strong or varied enough to be successfully sustained over ten minutes.
`Movements of a Visionary' is more satisfying, with the reappearance of the pulsing synthesizers. Many of these are highly evocative of the quasi-elastic motion of water surfaces. My favoured vision for this track is therefore that of a floating clump of seaweed seen from below as it bobs in sun-flecked water. (Such flotsam can become a temporary haven for fish in open water.) In counterpoint, Froese's work on the mellotron suggests fiery lights, perceived dimly, emanating as from some mystic forge.
‘Sequent ‘C’’ is again a very simple track, consisting of few interweaving flute lines, which have been processed in a way that could best be described as ‘ethereal’. Unfortunately it is also exceptionally short for a TD track of this period; it seems to have so much more going for it than prolonged and unremarkable ‘Mysterious Semblance’. The image it invariably brings to my mind is that of a decimated woodland landscape, blurred and instinct, as if shrouded in an almost tangible fog. The unvarying colour is turquoise faded to grey, with all hues drained out of it: mournful, lost. Like the rest of the album, there is a powerful sense of fantasy here. For those who have seen Lucio Fulci's ‘From Beyond’, I also like to imagine that this would make the perfect accompaniment to its denouement scene of fossilised corpses half fused into another desolate and mist-shrouded landscape (though the rocky soundtrack also works in its own special way).
And so to the title track: it seems to matter not that Phaedra is a character of Greek legend (locating her in much warmer climes than the eponymous track or any other on the album bring to mind). The ‘Ph’ of the title recalls ‘phantom’ and ‘phantasmagoria’, and Phaedra sounds like ‘hydra’, the microscopic tentacular, water-dwelling creature . . .
. . . named after the many-headed water serpent, also of Greek legend.
The track is a rich source of evocation and like all best ambient tracks in my opinion takes us on a ‘journey’, best experienced while in a semi-dozing state. Fading in, the opening segment genuinely brings to my mind the process of condensation, as a mist of water on a pane becomes voluptuous globules. Very swiftly the scene shifts to that of a great lake in a crystalline mountain cavern. The pearly liquid is undulating with its own weird motion . . .
(my photo, 'Glass Water')
. . . and the whole scene is illumined by the clear white light put forth by the cavern walls themselves. (As a side note, I love the sense of unreality one gets in computer games, or say the kids show ‘Knightmare’, when underground scenes are illuminated without there being any light source present.)
Three and a half minutes in, a sinewy half melody of combined mellotron and synthesizer swoops veeringly into the piece, like a seam in rock or a twisting line of luminescence. Thereafter we return to the water’s surface, where the atmosphere grows steadily more aggravated and claustrophobic. When at last the frantic synthesizers expire, the piece hovers for a while in an icy void. A few icicle-like stabs are heard, before presently a new scene resolves. This is much like that which I described for ‘Sequent C’: alpine, but desolate – a cold and lonely world beset, this time, by strange, semi-earthly calls. Finally, another swooping, semi tuneful, yet more magisterial line is introduced to conclude the piece.
Saturday, 21 May 2011
Body Horror Dream Films
The old title of this blog. It proved too narrow for me to have much ongoing success with: there are only so many recollectible dreams inspired by horror films that one person can have (even someone who at times goes by the title 'Dark Mystic'). The following, however, provides a guide to the previous posts.
Body Horror?
Body Horror is a loose sub-genre of mostly late 70s and 80s horror films, in which the horror in question lies in the fantastic and frequently surreal morphing, or else violation, of the body. See Body Horror, the genre (posted Sunday, 29 August 2010) for a slightly more detailed overview.
Dream Films?
This blog is intended primarily to be a record of my dreams with a body horror theme. The majority of these are typical of a particular kind of dream of mine in which I find myself 'watching' scenes from a film. I do not dream that I am sitting in the cinema or in front of a TV: the film is the dream, but I only experience it vicariously. Usually the 'dream-film' will be a version of a real-life film but, if not, it will tend to resemble a mishmash of other films. Those dream-films which feature body horror elements need not be based on real-life films of the genre, but may instead incorporate grotesque elements from elsewhere. Where there are specific visual influences I will show them next to the post. I also intend to include my musings on the subjects of dreams and horror, reviews of Body Horror films and other tangentially related subjects. Each post has a 'Severity' rating to reflect how gross and disturbing I think its contents are!
Body Horror?
Body Horror is a loose sub-genre of mostly late 70s and 80s horror films, in which the horror in question lies in the fantastic and frequently surreal morphing, or else violation, of the body. See Body Horror, the genre (posted Sunday, 29 August 2010) for a slightly more detailed overview.
Dream Films?
This blog is intended primarily to be a record of my dreams with a body horror theme. The majority of these are typical of a particular kind of dream of mine in which I find myself 'watching' scenes from a film. I do not dream that I am sitting in the cinema or in front of a TV: the film is the dream, but I only experience it vicariously. Usually the 'dream-film' will be a version of a real-life film but, if not, it will tend to resemble a mishmash of other films. Those dream-films which feature body horror elements need not be based on real-life films of the genre, but may instead incorporate grotesque elements from elsewhere. Where there are specific visual influences I will show them next to the post. I also intend to include my musings on the subjects of dreams and horror, reviews of Body Horror films and other tangentially related subjects. Each post has a 'Severity' rating to reflect how gross and disturbing I think its contents are!
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