The Great West Road, captured by me in January's snowfall

So I am leaving my temporary abode in West London and returning to my native North-East London. Along the way, I’ve checked out a number of country manors that are down the road from me, all of which look deeply desolate in the winter. Osterley Park and House, for example, where the band The XX will inexplicably be playing in June (right next to that cool bookshop I mentioned in my previous post).

There’s also Syon Park & House, which looks like the kind of thing you’d see in Oxford or Cambridge or York rather than West London just beyond the Hammersmith flyover. You can imagine Vikings attacking its forts in 850 or whenever it was England was under King Canute’s Danelaw:

But what’s been most if interest to me is a rather fascinating, deeply dystopian-looking, art-deco edifice right near me – The Gillette Building, which happens to be a Grade II listed. In case you’re wondering, yes it is named after Gillette the razors, but Gillette aren’t there anymore. So what’s it used for?

Like Battersea Power Station, it’s all a bit of a mystery. Some of the scenes from the entirely forgettable Rowan Atkinson vehicle Johnny English Reborn were shot there. Other than that, who knows? There’s hardly any activity inside except for the occasional sinister photoshoot that you can spy taking place in the basement. Those forbidding red wavy grills on the windows (left) make it look like something out of 1984 or The Handmaid’s Tale (the latter of which I’ve just finished reading) – you can imagine the Ministry of Truth or the Headquarters of the Republic of Gilead in there. It also reminds me of some of the decaying art-deco buildings that you see in pictures of Detroit, right down to these slightly creepy statues in front of the entrance:

Meanwhile, at night, it’s only lights come from the neon clocktower above, which – and this is extremely Orwellian – always has the wrong time. Perhaps secret plots are being hatched up there, a bit like in Hitchcock's Vertigo? Or...maybe not.

What a place it would be to have gigs and art happenings; you can imagine Godspeed You! Black Emperor squatting a decaying building like this in recession-blighted Montreal in the mid-90s and playing songs about the end of the world. Sadly, there is a manned entrance at the side to the car park at the back, which is pretty much the only way you can get to the building. So it's clearly guarded in some way. Well, you could put a ladder over the fence…but I won’t. Just like Battersea Power Station (even with the ludicrous current plans, which will probably lead to another housing crash when everything goes wrong - you read it here first!), it’s an example of another amazing building in London left to rot. Whether or not you like Tesco's, at least the Hoover Building is being used for something.

Near where I’m living at the moment in temporary digs, across the expanse of motorway, there’s Osterley Bookshop - a cool old second-hand place, the kind that you don’t often get in London anymore. There’s the kind of musty old smell in this place that you don’t get in Waterstone's. Paperback novels are piled up to the ceiling, often haphazardly on the floor; to get to the counter, you have to go through a maze of bookshelves reaching to the ceiling, all crammed with frequently crumbling books and esoterica. Everything’s slightly badly organised (but in a good way). To call the attention of whoever’s running the shop that day (it always seems to change), you have to ring a bell, and while s/he takes your money, they sell various kitchen tea sets and jumble sale stuff in an adjacent room. In the fantasy section, I couldn’t help but notice some Fighting Fantasy titles – and straight away they brought back lots of memories.

For those who are either too young or never read them, these enormously successful books, which probably reached their pinnacle in the mid to late 80s, were single-player role-play gamebooks created by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone (who I think run Games Workshop now), loosely based around a Lord Of The Rings-style fantasy theme (although it cast its net wide, embracing sci-fi, horror stories, pirates, vampires, and Mad Max-style Scorched Earth apocalyptic post-disaster themes). Each book would have 300-400 numbered ‘Sections’, through which the reader would progress, starting at Section 1. The reader’s protagonist would be given a choice of which subsequent Section to turn to at each one (“turn to Section 140 to fight the orc with your Sword of Gravalan, or turn to Section 320 to run away!”). To ‘win’ each book, you needed to get to Section 400. Along the way, you would know that your protagonist had lost, and needed to start the whole thing again, if you got to a Section where there was no subsequent Section to turn to (with your protagonist’s death usually described in melodramatic language: “Your will snaps. You scream in anguish and despair…You cease to exist. You are a Slave Warrior, a mindless minion of the Warlord of the Portal”. Or: “Dwarven Slave Warriors meet you as you run for the doors. Your adventure ends here”). Of course, you could always just cheat, but that’s sort of beside the point. Skill, Stamina, and Luck would also be a big component of the protagonist’s make-up, dictated by much dice rolling (in a similar manner to Dungeons & Dragons), and would be particularly important when fighting foes, whose Skill and Stamina would be pitted against yours. The most famous was undoubtedly the first in the series: The Warlock of the Firetop Mountain (pictured above). However, my personal favourite was Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! series, which was essentially one long adventure spread out over four books, with the whole thing a bit Lord of the Rings, right down to the climax taking part in an evil castle in a bleak, treeless Mordor-style environment. In between, the reader navigated cities, deserts, forests and Lord know what else. I discovered this site recently, which lists every single one of them (so someone was even more obsessive than me), original 80s edition Puffin covers and all, and those front covers brought back so many memories. These books were my lifeblood when I was about ten, when I would go down to WH Smith in Wood Green (the highlight of glamour, I know), and head straight to the fantasy bit of the book section. These are the ones I’m pretty sure I played, but there were probably others in the collection I tried out, too (including the Island of the Lizard King, which definitely wasn't about Jim Morrison). Who else remembers them?

 

 

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And, of course, the afore-mentioned Sorcery series:

Images: jammajup.co.uk/fantasy-books.html

Movie still from Static Mass Emporium

  Following on from my post focusing on Sight & Sound magazine’s 2012 list of ‘The Greatest 100 Films of All Time’, with my own nominations in the form of a list of ten films, it’s been interesting revisiting two that I chose, both sci-fi classics based on sci-fi classic novels: 2001: A Space Odyssey and Blade Runner. Just like reading Orwell’s 1984, both these films are fascinating to watch now for their predilections of what would come in the future at the time they were shot, when that time depicted has either now happened (as it 2001) or will happen soon (Blade Runner, set just seven years away, in 2019). Both, in fact, while mostly being hugely off the mark, contain some prescient moments. In 2001, while the predilection of habitable space stations orbiting Earth turned out to be broadly true, those space stations certainly haven’t turned into the kind of ‘orbiting hotels’ (pictured below) - replete with a receptionist - as depicted in the film, in which members of the general public are seen visiting.

Movie still from The Final Take

Popular Mechanics stills (above and right) from Retronaut

The ISS, as with the other current space stations, remains a cramped, stressful place for those fleet crew staying there. The closest mankind will get to anywhere near that depicted in the film at the time of writing, eleven years on from predicted, has been with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, set to launch next year. That, however, will only take certain members of the public (all paying to the tune of a mammoth £128,000 each) for a short duration, rather than the potentially long time period depicted; furthermore, the environs are still unlikely to look anything like Kubrick’s extraordinary retro-futuristic vision. Indeed, the only semblance of reality is with the scene where Dr. Heywood Floyd communicates with his daughter via a ‘conference’ or ‘videophone’ call, which today is commonplace.

 
More unrealistic still is the film’s depiction of the US’s outpost on the moon, called Clavius Base. At the moment, and despite NASA’s rhetoric about one day having one, the notion of any permanent base on the moon, never mind terraforming, seems ever more remote. Where the film is especially implausible, though, is the notion that by 2001 we would be able to send manned spaceships to Jupiter, suspending human life in cryogenics part of the way. Again, while NASA has mentioned vague plans one day of sending a manned mission to Mars, it seems pretty clear that it won’t be for a good while yet, what with the American Government unable to send a manned probe even back to the Moon, never mind any other planet in our solar system. And even with any planned trip to Mars, huge logistical quandaries in getting human life to the Red Planet – from mental through to physical issues (arising from long-term weightlessness), as well as radiation – would need to be overcome.
Indeed, looking back on the film now, it’s reminiscent of some of those amusing Popular Mechanics magazine articles (pictured above and right) from the 1950s, imagining the future as way more advanced than it’s actually turned out to be, from flying cars – which have been pretty much a staple of any film set in the future - to Buckminster Fuller’s floating communities, and onwards. That’s not to deny that sheer wonderment of the film, though, which brilliantly realises Arthur C. Clarke’s vision in the novel of the evolutionary progress of man as having been initiated by the alien’s ubiquitous, perfectly designed Monoliths (all famously with that precise ratio of 1:4:9).

Movie still from Movie Photographs

Kubrick captures this notion perfectly with the famous match-cut from an ape – the precursor of man - millions of years ago, newly emboldened with a conscious intellect thanks to the arrival of the Monolith, throwing a bone/weapon in the air; the camera juxtaposes the fall of the bone in the air beautifully with a modern-day (2001 in the film) orbital satellite moving in space, implying the slow progression from one to the other.

Blade Runner, released in 1982 but based on the book written by Philip K. Dick (as “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”) in the same year that 2001 was released in the cinema (1968), envisions some form of terraforming taking place on other planets (which we never see), but dispenses with any notions of extra-terrestrials (though keeps interesting metaphysical notions with its idea that androids could be ‘just as human’ as humans). Instead, BR remains extraordinary in its visionary film noir realization of Dick’s dystopian vision of Los Angeles in 2019, where the city has become a fire-breathing vision of Hades (below).

Movie still from The Blog of Big Ideas

We also see it reflected in the huge watchful eye at the start of the film (picture top of blog post)  - shades of 1984, perhaps, also reflected in the constant surveillance lights that penetrate into buildings. While the aforementioned flying cars also remain a staple, repeated through most futuristic films – a trope that’s never been replicated in reality - BR does capture more accurately how big world cities have become globalised, with the film’s depiction at street level of cultural and religious mixing, as well as neon signs in Japanese and Chinese. Furthermore, it brilliantly predicts the use of moving advertisements (now commonplace on the London Underground). There’s also the omnipresent rain, which the film suggests is the result of industrial pollution in a similar manner to global warming; although set in LA, it feels strangely prescient to here in the UK, with the rainiest year on record. The permanent rain and film noir feel to the film also seems apposite in reflecting how many cities now feature a mixture of the hi-tech and shiny alongside decay and rotting (just check out the area around the Shard if you don’t believe me). Of course, for all the paranoia about corporate power embedded in not just these films but other sci-fi classics – from the Alien quadriology through to The Terminator franchise – what these films all failed singularly to predict was what has been one of the most technologically important developments in the last twenty years: the Internet, which would be just around the corner.

In case you're wondering where the links have gone - annoyingly the new template upgrade has automatically deleted them! Rest assured that they will return, though...

The rain seeps into everywhere at the moment, from the buildings I’ve entered, to buses, shops and cafes. Poor bedraggled tourists in the centre of London shield themselves from the onslaught from the sky. If the current floods are set to be a regular blot on the landscape here in the UK, it’s a sign that global warming is here to stay; and the implications for London are one of ever more wet weather and misery.
It’s followed me around everywhere as I’ve moved for a few months to entirely new environs: West London (hence my delay in a new post). The landlord sold my last abode in East London to an unnamed new owner, so I had to move. Getting used to my new (mostly unfamiliar) settings, the last few weeks have been spent living under huge, sheet grey monolithic rain clouds, moving at fast speed with the wind, only the faintest tantalises of blue sky peeking out every now and then. Indeed, there have been some days where no blue sky has appeared at all, just a windswept, colourless, sheet-grey vista above. Fog occasionally permeates the landscape too, reducing visibility.
Combined with the dystopian environs of the Hammersmith overpass nearby, and surrounded by a futuristic skyline of corporation skyscrapers and industrial warehouses, I’m beginning to feel like something from a Godspeed You! Black Emperor song, full of urban decay and dread (there’s even a hilarious ‘Inspired by Godspeed You! Black Emperor’ Flickr group of evocative post-industrial looking photos).
Speaking of Godspeed, it’s great to have them back after a nearly ten year hiatus. The last time they were a going concern, it was before the financial crash and the tumescent implications for the global economy. In a month where revelations of endemic tax avoidance are everywhere while Government cuts bite (at least in the UK), Godspeed somehow feel as relevant as ever. They still sound like the end of the world too, of course. A while ago, I wrote praise of an album by theirs, released at the dawn of the last decade. Twelve years later, it’s been great to see them live, first at ATP at Butlins (an incongruous setting if ever there was one) and recently at the Forum, along with an entirely new album, exactly ten years after their last one. At the former set of concerts, they even played the majestic track in the YouTube vid above from their 2002 album (was it really that long ago?) Yanqui UXO – all twenty glorious, extraordinary minutes of it. I could link to the whole song elsewhere on YouTube, but some guy (presumably the annoying small portrait of someone on the right of screen) has come up with a pretty good video which , dissapointingly, only features the second half of the song. But still, what a second half. Watch in the full screen version. Of course, thinking about that video, what Godspeed really need to soundtrack is Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi (or better still, 2001: A Space Oddysey), despite Philip Glass having already scored a famous original score for it. Now that really WOULD be something.

Really enjoyed the ‘Architecture Tour’ of the Barbican complex, which is currently running (I’ll also be checking out the ‘Hidden Barbican’ tour this week). It’s incredible to think, walking through its endless walkways and lakeside walks - or rather running, as I'm there three times a week jogging to an app - that the whole area was one big flattened bomb site just after WWII. The Barbican Estate as a whole is vast: it feels like an elevated mini-city in its own right, hermetically cut off from the rest of London, with tunnels and passageways leading off in all directions. More interesting still, listening to the tour guide, is the revelation that the phrase ‘brutalist architecture’ – which also applies to the Southbank Centre, of course – doesn’t actually literally refer to something that’s ‘brutal’ but instead comes from the French béton brut: raw concrete. The term was first coined by Le Corbusier in a neutral manner to describe many of the post-war buildings he was involved with, and whose ideas were hugely influential on the design of Barbican (although he was never directly involved in the project); there was even an exhibition on his work right in the Barbican gallery at one point, which I mentioned here in a previous post that also brought up the writings of JG Ballard. The gallery should really have an exhibition just on the Barbican complex itself, showing all the architectural plans and photos of what the gutted area looked like directly after the war and just before building work began. 

Just as with the likes of Habitat 67 in Montreal, the Barbican was designed to bring the middle-classes back into the centre of London at a time when they were moving in droves to the suburbs (a process that is now generally reversing). With its endless “walkways in the sky”, it feels like a futuristic version of paradise, albeit one made of weather-stained concrete. It's possible to glimpse in the Barbican Estate the original prototype of the council estate, an ideal that people actually aspired to at one time before many of the shallow imitators of the Barbican became notorious areas for crime and bleakness. The prototype setting of JG Ballard's High-Rise, in which the residents of a posh luxury forty-story tower block slowly go insane, indulging in carnage and death, is most likely the Barbican (though the Barbican's residents haven't engaged in an orgy of destruction such as in the book - though I could be wrong...).
Anyway, the real jewels are the various lakes (below) and the Conservatory, the latter of which is only open on Sundays. 

Walking around its vaguely tropical-looking plants, nested inside an enormous conservatory surrounded by huge skyscrapers, you feel in the Conservatory (pictures below) like you’re in something of a sci-fi novel (or even the film Silent Running, which I’ve just happened to watch - though admittely the Conservatory isn't floating in space).

Brutalist architecture has become something of a much-used term, of course. Despite the Barbican being voted “London’s ugliest building” in 2003 in a poll, it’s actually been Grade II listed. And despite its controversy, writers such as Own Hatherley have championed the site in Militant Modernism, a book that yours truly is currently reading.

More posts will be coming soon, but in the meantime, here's another night hosted by myself down south of the river in association with Pennyblackmusic...

Live:
Willard Grant Conspiracy (Solo)
Rotifer
Bromide
NOW
Tickets and description of bands here.
8pm
The Half Moon, 10 Half Moon Lane, Herne Hill, London, SE24 9HU
Saturday 3rd November 2012
A preview of the night will be coming up shortly on Pennyblackmusic.