In the cult novel American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis describes, necessitating frequent book closing and book reopening for the faint of heart, the axe wielding, body dismembering, pre-mortem sex, post-mortem sex entailing serial sexual murders of its sociopathic protagonist, Patrick Bateman, with no lurid detail spared.
Enjoyment of satire and social comment aside, our disturbingly morbid compulsion for reading such books and watching (through the parted fingers of hands clamped fearfully over eyes) films of this genre arises partly from our fascination with the seemingly impossible and unfathomable. Sex and violence, even in this most gruesome of combinations, sells. Such acts, whether fictional, in literature and on the silver screen; or transposed, horrifically, into reality, on the front pages of the paper or the breaking news on TV, seem to exist in a malevolent fantasy world. They may be well within the realm of physical possibility, but the norm and value set up of society place them far from the boundaries of moral possibility.
As a result the prospect of developing and accepting a coherent theory of how a person can be driven to such a cold-blooded way of life is often an excessively daunting undertaking. Even accepting the idea that a human being could commit these crimes in the first place is too overwhelming for many. Faced with the task of comprehending the apparently incomprehensible, it is far easier to ignore the plethora of thorny questions they summon and simply dehumanise the criminals in question. Hence we read tabloid headlines screaming, ‘PURE EVIL’ or ‘MONSTER,’ when reporting such cases. Yet, however inhumane the acts they have perpetrated, ultimately we cannot deny the common humanity of these ‘pure evil monsters’. We eventually must ask and answer the question: how did this instance of humanity go so wrong?
The most convenient explanation for the phenomenon of the serial sexual killer is insanity. Again, the incomprehensibility factor and the fact that they unsettle the comforting notion of the world as a stable and predictable place inclines us to assuming the rule that perpetrators must necessarily be insane. It’s true that many cases of serial sexual murder do appear to lend themselves well to psychiatric analysis. This kind of criminal behaviour is often seen as a symptom of Psychopathic Personality Disorder.
Psychopaths dabble in only the most shallow of emotions. Empathy, guilt, and remorse are all lacking from their repertoire; they are easily bored; they are pathological liars; but they can also be disarmingly charming and very persuasive. The combination makes for a dangerous and, for Hollywood, rather seductive cocktail. But does the disorder go beyond illumimating the personality traits of the serial killer to answering the question of why these people do what they do?
The term ‘psychopath’ is flung about as an easily applied label for those individuals who we fail to understand. The term ‘psychopathic behaviour’ has become synonymous with ‘motiveless behaviour’. But while the motives of the serial sexual murderer may not be apparent to the casual observer – rarely are such crimes committed for externally evident grounds, such as jealousy, revenge or money – there is usually an underlying internal motive.
A common motivating factor is sexual gratification; many serial killers are paraphiliacs, indulging in necrophilia, compulsive masturbation, sadism, voyeurism, piquerism (sexual arousal resulting from stabbing), and coprophilia (use of faeces during sex). These paraphilias are often such a driving force in the mind of the serial sexual killer that murder becomes merely incidental to their criminal acts. The serial killer Peter Kurten indulged in piquerism, but only to the extent necessary to reach orgasm. Should sexual fulfilment be achieved after a non-fatal number of stabs the victim usually survived.
In some cases sexual dysfunction is to blame. The notorious American serial murderer Henry Lee Lucas engaged in necrophiliac acts because he was incapable of achieving erection with a living person. Murder became a necessary prerequisite for sexual gratification.
Psychopathy can then kick into the explanation of serial sexual murder as the mechanism which serves the murderer in justifying his crime, or even in voiding the need to justify his crime. Psychopathy explains the serial nature of the crimes – should the paraphiliac be engulfed by guilt following his first murder, he is unlikely to repeat the act.
We are now tempted into a regression of reasoning: how does one become a psychopath or develop warped sexual fantasies in the first place? Biology may have its part to play but so do developmental factors: a combination of nature and (a very unnurturing) nurture.
This is Jung’s conception of the tortured becoming torturers. To begin to empathise we must allow our imagination to transform criminal into victim, child or woman abuser into child abused. Physical and sexual abuse can act to increase the proneness to violent and sexually deviant behaviour. A disproportionately large number of serial sexual killers experienced physical, emotional, and sexual abuse during childhood. Lucas’ mother beat him, curled his hair into ringlets and dressed him like a girl to go to school, and forced him to watch her have sex with strangers. Obviously, these kind of upbringings are not conducive to the adoption of social norms against violent behaviour and disregard for the feelings and welfare of others.
Additionally sexual abuse often provokes victims to attempt to remove themselves from their miserable reality and retreat into a fantasy life. In an endeavour for emotional wellbeing, victims imagine the abuse is happening to somebody else. The fantasies often entail elements of power and dominance, elements severely deficient in the abused child’s life. The creation of this parallel fantasy world sets the stage for the gruesome fantasies the child may later act out.
In the preface to American Psycho, Ellis quotes from Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground: “Both the author of these Notes and the Notes themselves are, of course, fictional. Nevertheless, such persons as the composer of these Notes not only exist in our society, but indeed must exist, given the circumstances under which our society has generally been formed.” The reference could just as well fit the history of the modern Western world as the superficial, self-centred, hyper-consumerist, greed fuelled eighties which Patrick Bateman inhabits.
All too often socio-cultural theories of serial sexual killers are dismissed for the sake of preserving peace of mind, submerging the idea that the same society in which we are active partakers could have itself created something so terrible. But it seems that explaining the occurrence of serial sexual murder necessitates the employment, at least in part, of these society based models, for there are no records of serial sexual killers prior to 1888. This is a uniquely modern, Western male phenomenon.
Sexual violence was initially a way to exert control over women, to restrict them to an inferior place in society, and to vent frustrations encountered in the social sphere. More recently sexual violence has been eroticised. In the West violence has become a means of sexual gratification. A few examples of sexual murder have been recorded recently in other areas of the world, such as India and Japan – there this has been blamed upon Westernisation, here psychological deviance is held accountable.
Why should serial murder be peculiar to Western society? One school of thought links it to the Enlightenment and the predicament it threw up: man is simultaneously an object of science as well as being master of the universe, man is considered “free” at the same time as being the product of social forces and conditioning. Murder, the ultimate taboo, is therefore the very definition of acting freely.
Part of the story may lie in the culturally constructed idea of masculinity, which is closely tied to physical prowess. Violence is the epitome of this. The feminist political agenda analysis has reframed the problem of violence against women as one of misuse of power by men who have been socialised into believing that they have a right to control the women in their lives. Clearly, serial murder itself is not itself socialised behaviour. However, one might argue that relevant precursors, for example propensity for violence and male sense of entitlement to sexual relations are. So serial murder may not be alien to mainstream culture but, worryingly, may actually be expressive of it.
Alternatively, rather than the existence of immoral norms, amorality may be the issue. Durkheim related crime and deviance to the disintegration of social consensus on values. It’s possible that the phenomenon of serial killing was borne out of the anomie, or lack of norms in modern societies.
In all likelihood explaining what makes serial killers tick will entail weaving the stands of biology, psychology, upbringing and society into a macabre tapestry. So if we are willing to delve deep in attempting to understand their impetus we are liable to discover as many alarming truths about ourselves and the society we live in as we are the serial killers who inhabit it.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005

FIGS, “SAID my father to me once, emphatically, “are not fruit.”
“Are not fruit.”
“Are not vegetables… they are inverted flowers.”
“Inverted flowers?” was my puzzled answer.
“Inverted… inverted because the flower was too beautiful to put on the outside my boy…that’s right, they couldn’t put the flower the right way around else the bees and other pollinating creatures alike would spend all day on just the figs. That’s right, they’d be kissing and staring at them all day long so as there’d be no time for other flowers see. They had to make the fig inside out for other flowers to live.”
When I was younger I often got God and my father confused.
“See,” he repeated, “the fig was sacrificed for the others. It had to be.” He paused and gazed through the wet black boughs of the tree he was sitting in, with me. I had grown up around these trees and their figs and their father. We shared that. “You see, the fig is a selfless flower but wretched and jealous as well. It’s all closed up, see?” He held a fig up at me; it seemed to be pulsing like an excited heart. “See? Beauti-ful little balls of emotion.”
It began to rain, thick warm syrup. I remember my father’s face more vividly in that moment than at any other point of my life. It was weathered, waxed by the sun and polished by the wind into an icon for me. Framed by ecstatic brown hair and lighted by two liquid blue eyes that seemed only to be made of two atoms each. A mouth stretched around thousands of moving conversations, a mouth broken by the disappointment of loneliness. I still get my father and God confused.
Seven years, twenty-three days and an hour after this moment my father died under that same tree. I was twenty-four feet away in the branches of another. He must have been lying there for a while. I worked long hours.
When I did get down and discover him lying there I remember feeling calm, mostly. Like that noise a telephone makes when you leave it off the hook, I was in quiet siren. I checked his pulse (not pulsing) and walked back to the cottage. I sat at the table with a large glass of water and a sandwich and waited for him to come in, like always. He always worked longer than me. He didn’t come in. I walked over to the phone and dialled an ambulance. I didn’t cry, I leant forward onto my uneaten sandwich, closed my eyes and went to sleep – it had been a long day. When the ambulance arrived they weren’t sure which of us had done the dying.
The hands of a clock are burnt matchsticks – perpetual reminders. But there is a place within the charcoal still contoured like a tree – that gold coaxes hope.
I find when I recall the first few days I had lived without my father that my memory has knitted for me a patch-work-quilt of days and years held together by a painful thread. Moments from long ago are placed alongside my immediate pangs. I began the process of assimilating my father’s life into my own. I began wombing him, entombing him and his legacy into my solar plexus. He would have wanted me to mourn on the hoof, I know it, but he knew I was lazy – like my mother. He loved my mother. He took the lump out of her throat and swallowed it for me – but one day it got stuck and he never spoke again. My father was better than adjectives. He was better than my mother’s death.“The sun is a clock. Remember that when you wake up.”
“Yes Dad.”The cottage was once idyllic but now it charms through the imperfect teeth of disrepair. The thatch is home to a multitude of chuckling birds and the walls to legions of termites that threaten its cancerous bones. The only stone floor is masked with sky blue lino that flinches and curls away from the skirting board, a plastic wave receding off dead rocks. The windows are filled with grime and glitter from old Christmas decorations. Surrounding these little walls of a house are hundreds of fig trees. Their black elaborate fingers, gloved in bark, touch. In the midst of these trees is a small green headstone baring my mother’s name Mary Pollock and a date twenty-one years and two hundred and thirteen days old. The inscription, embossed with moss, reads “Ripeness is all.” And below it “King (a word missing) William Shakespeare.” She was graceful, I know, I’ve drawn her photo. But I know I don’t look like my photo. You can’t colour a person in without going outside the lines.Sometimes the sun breaks through the clouds like an emergency exit slide inflating from the side of a gigantic white plane that has ditched in heaven. Sometimes the wind flirts with the leaves and you can hear the figs whispering – like lovers in all the urgency of dying. This is the gospel of a body – and just that.“As much as you’ll want to son – never write off anyone. No one deserves to be written off.” Don’t write off. Before I was born my mother and father would bear up in the hard rain as they harvested their figs together – their livelihood, their black eyes, their orchestra. They would talk about me. In all these constellations of beauty I find solace. Figs, Figures and Figureheads continues next week…ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2006

Emma Jenkinson
Magdalen College, 3rd Year
ActressEmma last starred in the Edinburgh Fringe’s critically acclaimed How I Learned To Drive, and played Titania in Merton’s Trinity production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.How much acting had you done before you arrived at Oxford?
I didn’t do too much actually; LAMDA exams, some school stuff and Am Dram musicals. I can’t sing so always played the evil people; some say I was typecast but I beg to differ. What were your first experiences of Oxford Drama?
I did Cuppers with some friends. We weren’t very good but it was so much fun. I then auditioned lots and lots, before being cast as Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.What are your fondest memories of thesping?
Cast parties are always a lot of fun; very drunken and almost always sordid. As for stories, I find that when retold they always sound a bit weird, in-jokey, and very uncool. There have been a few ‘interesting’ moments though. Once while rehearsing Harold Pinter’s The Lover in a freezing cold barn in South Wales, we did a particularly intense scene to the delightful sound of rutting pigs. What was it like taking a show to the Fringe?
What I liked about Edinburgh was that there are no expectations. It’s a complete unknown in terms of acting – there are no previous reviews, or productions, so you are judged solely on your performance in that play at that particular time. Of course if it goes badly then there are no other shows to turn back to as evidence of your acting ability, so it can also be quite daunting. But, as a break from the Oxford environment, it’s a refreshing, and I think, very constructive change. I loved it. It gave me such a rush. Also Edinburgh is just very very cool, and inexplicably full of extraordinarily good-looking men.Where do you see yourself in 5 years time?
Oh, married, three kids, house in the country, chickens and a gin habit. Or more hopefully, standing on a stage somewhere – it’s my favourite place to be.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005

Orestes
dir Pippa Needs
11 to 15 October
Oxford PlayhouseThis term’s staging of Orestes marks the 125th anniversary of the first Greek play to be put on in Oxford, Agamemnon. In hindsight it proved a landmark in Oxford drama, spawning OUDS in 1884, and so establishing the Greek play as a tri-annual tradition. Its Ronseal concept is simple and uncompromising: to stage a play entirely in ancient Greek. This is an enormous feat, particularly when leading cast members have no prior knowledge of Greek – certain among them spending eight hours a day in rehearsal for the weeks leading up to performance. A dedicated company of actors and extensive crew are prerequisites for making a project such as this a success.
Given its moment, the choice of Orestes seems at first rather surprising. It is not the tragedy Euripides is perhaps best remembered for among scholars. Its plot, endlessly twisting and turning, is seen as too diffuse: Orestes (Matthew Trueman) has murdered his mother and her lover as retribution for their murder of his father, and now faces both exile and condemnation to death; Electra (Rose Heiney), Orestes’ sister, also confronts execution for encouraging her brother in the act. Each scene introduces a new breach in family state politics to explore the margins of human volition and behaviour. Ultimately, Orestes becomes embroiled in the quasi-murder of his aunt, Helen of Troy (Kannayo Okolie), a hostage-taking, and the potential razing of the ancestral home.
Euripides sets rolling a ball that he pushes further and further beyond characters’ control, triggering finally the peremptory appearance of Phoebus Apollo, a part well suited to the statuesque Benjamin Cartlidge, an award-winning declaimer of Greek. As the sun god his enigmatic figure at once illuminates totally yet blinds utterly when descending at sunset. His condescension provides the play’s resolution without the answers to those questions it has raised. Greek myth, so important in contemporary dramatic understanding and interaction, is paid relatively little exacting homage in Orestes. Perhaps this is why the play was admired by antiquity as one of the greatest; it asks of its audience a dynamic mythological knowledge.
By the same token, however, the masterful complexities Euripides proposes up the stakes for the Greek play. Inherently the tradition runs a risk with its audience. The pattern of Orestes is not instantly recognisable in the way that Oedipus Rex’s motif has been reactivated in the twentieth-century mindset through the work of psychoanalysis. So at a basic level, simply getting the message across places a heavy and unusual burden on the actors, though at least some of the strain is relieved by surtitles that provide a running dialogue précis.
Thankfully, there is no shortage of stage presence, though the cast’s dumb show work pays the greatest tribute to their application. Matthew Trueman smoulders and sporadically spits fire in a characteristically energised performance. His brother-mother/father relationship with Electra is secured by Rose Heiney’s brooding and dishevelled collaboration, transformed by make-up into something of an androgynous Electra. Himanshu Ojha captures well the rather oleaginous quality of Menelaus’ sea-sailing rhetoric as he sells Orestes down the river.
Musically the play offers rhythmically mesmeric Chorus parts (think Aztec, for the uninformed) and centrepiece arias, thanks to Hugh Brunt’s bespoke musical contributions. Consequently, Sheridan Edwards dazzles during his twenty minute aria as a Phrygian slave; Brunt’s composition matches the emotional and syntactical meltdown of this episode, providing glimpses of beauty during a distraught atonal climax.
Indeed, the Chorus, so famously difficult to deliver palatably to a modern audience not accustomed to such excesses, is deployed to provide instalments of choreographed narrative and reflection structured to exploit the multi-level grave circle set. It breathes across the stage like a chilled smoke. Fundamentally, both Chorus and set are kept stylish yet simple, and remain highly effective for it. Nothing about this play or its production is made easy for its audience. But equally one takes from it as much as one will. This is an extremely significant production not only for choice Classicists. ω ποποι? Not at all.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005

Puppetry of the Penis
dir Simon Morley
27 September
New TheatreEngland’s Ashes victory is under discussion. British Woman: “Loser!”. Australian Man: “Thank you, madam, but you’re the one who paid to see my cock.”
Simon Morley and David Friend have got it made. Their show, Puppetry of the Penis, can’t cost much to take on the road: they get three puffs of dry ice; they need someone to work a video camera; they’ve got two capes, no costume changes to worry about. (There’s no programme, so I didn’t catch the name of the warm-up act.) They ape a double-act in the tradition of the music-hall, Simon performing as if he’s doing a sarcastic stand-up routine, and David playing the younger hapless puppyish stooge who’s more likely to run about, to disappear off-stage and re-enter with a comedy prop.
Simon has short-cropped dark hair; David is a vaguely messy dirty blond with comedy sideburns out of the latest Pride and Prejudice. Simon calls David “monkey boy” and bosses him about. They banter, they show affection, they watch each other’s backs. It’s not a particularly great example of the double-act, but it works the audience to heights of hysteria most comics can only pray for. Why? They happen to be naked save for plimsolls and socks. Neither is buffed. And both their penises look as though they have been rolled out with a rolling pin and then fretted with elastic. They contort them into wince-inducing shapes while keeping up a running patter in offensive stereotyped misogyny.
And that’s why, on a one-off gig on a Tuesday night, the New Theatre is playing pretty much to capacity and predominantly to an older-than-student-age female audience. There are hen nights in, and 21st and 40th birthday parties, as well as a retirement do. “Are there any gay men here?” One couple bravely admits to it and is the butt of jokes thereafter. Repeat after me: comedy is cruel. Here it is really cruel.
Fresh from a successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe, these two guys rub their penises like boy scouts with so much kindling, and then stretch them into likenesses of the Eiffel Tower (with dark clouds obscuring the tip of the tower, so we’re told, though I wasn’t convinced) or Uluru (“Ayer’s Rock,” Simon explains. “Any Australians in the audience? Bet you feel homesick.”)
A hamburger shape takes a starring role as does a chicken nugget (“I’m a big fan of the Colonel’s work,” says Simon; “Smell the magical spices!” says David, sniffing amazedly at his fingers) or Gonzo from the Muppets or the Loch Ness Monster (complete with realistic bobbing head movements). With the addition of a champagne cork-guard, the penis becomes a greyhound eager for the off and then morphs into a frightening Hannibal Lecter.
Somewhere, of course, the line is crossed. But it’s hard to say where. Maybe it was being rash enough to agree to review the show at all. Maybe it’s the woman who, fifteen seconds in, shouts, “Show us your nob!” at the warm-up act. She gets a reproving ticking off.
Maybe it’s the gleeful playing to type as macho ’Stralians who can abuse women and still be loved for it. It could probably be drawn at the warm-up’s characterisation of all Germans as either obsessed with sex acts involving urination or Nazis. It’s definitely the warm-up’s gag about how you’ll never find a man complaining about having his drink spiked, and then miming drunken appreciation of oral sex. There’s offence aplenty for the taking.
If this is the male answer to The Vagina Monologues – as the warm-up seems to suggest – it’s a worrying look-out, but a bit of fun, nonetheless.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005

Thank the Lord for Scottish opening hours. As the body clock slowly begins to get back to normal and daylight hours once more become familiar, I find myself increasingly nostalgic for my nocturnal existence in Edinburgh; the early morning taxi rides back home, the late-night comedy shows, the late-afternoon breakfast bars, and of course the almost 24 hour-a-day programme of theatre.
As a Festival newbie, I arrived with high hopes of glamorous theatrical experiences. The reality of Edinburgh is a lot grittier – a cut-throat battlefield where the weapons are staple guns and sellotape, the ammunition many thousands of posters and flyers, the target the foolish punters who innocently stroll down the Royal Mile every day.
The quest for an audience isn’t helped by the fact that there is an awful lot of rubbish put on at the Fringe, not least the endless all-singing, all-dancing adaptations of Shakespeare, which means that audiences flock to big-name shows. The Odd Couple, featuring Bill Bailey and Alan Davies, was perhaps 2005’s equivalent of the hugely successful One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, also directed by Guy Masterson. Tight, funny and professional, it deserved its sell-out audiences, Davies’ dodgy American accent notwithstanding. The stand-up comedy big-hitters were similarly up to scratch. The vitriolic deadpan of Stewart Lee’s tirade against the Christian attitudes that condemned his Jerry Springer – The Opera, Tommy Tiernan’s energetic brand of Irish cheekiness and Jason Byrne’s quite brilliant exploitation of the foibles of his audience were all highlights.
While few of these big names disappointed, there is much to be said for trying out the less obvious productions. A Night of a Thousand Jay Astons, a four part drag-act of lip-synching to Bucks Fizz songs, may sound an unlikely hit, but it became a firm favourite with certain Oxford students. The Fringe programme was characterised by a high number of professional burlesque shows, like La Clique, which treated its late-night audience to outrageous turns which included a string of pearls pulled out of a vagina. Similarly, Spank!, a comedy showcase at the Underbelly venue, featured a nightly naked promo, an opportunity for some extreme marketing techniques.
Thankfully, none of the Oxford shows needed nude stunts to win over good audiences and a plentiful smattering of four and five star reviews. Though Burlesk perhaps found itself a little out of its depth in such risque company, Starting Here Starting Now, How I Learned to Drive, Boston Marriage and Catch 22 all had successful runs. I Was a Rat! coped admirably with an eleven AM start, offering a vibrant, colourful show enjoyed by children and adults alike, while The Tragedy of Richard Duke of York, despite small audiences, was a clever, imaginative piece of theatre. The Oxford Revue produced strong new comedy sketches, and the Oxford Imps added youthful verve to the thriving improvised comedy scene.
Now the hangovers have finally worn off, we can expect a year of high-calibre Oxford performances from these companies, before Fringe madness begins afresh.

I Said Never Again (But Here We Are)
Rachel Stevens
out now
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You’d be forgiven for thinking this sex-with-your-ex ditty is the comeback single from (an albeit far saucier) Abba, with its retro swing beat and familiar vocals. But no, it’s the new lead single from everyone’s favourite pop sex-siren Rachel Stevens. The record company blurb for the track announces it as an edgy return “to the glamour of pop synonymous with Rachel”, complete with a video filmed in what looks like a mock-up women’s prison. In reality it’s about as edgy as a bouncy ball and the only thing Rachel is synonymous with is… actually we had better not go there. But we still love Rachel all the same, and the single’s not bad either. She should get back with Jeremy Edwards of Holby City fame. Now there was a power couple to be admired.High
James Blunt
out now
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On to more serious stuff. Ok maybe not, but pop music’s very own bona fide ex-admiral action man James Blunt deserves to be humoured as much as he wants. In all fairness however, this single is a rare thing: it’s a case-in-point for a subsequent release that actually improves on the album’s lead single. Whereas the ubiquitous smash of the summer, You’re Beautiful, made you want to literally smash the television screen when it appeared on MTV Hits for the zillionth time for want of a subtler sentiment, here Blunt’s trademark softly, softly warbling slowly builds around an acoustic guitar that yearns for another play. A soaring chorus follows, and we’re sold. Well done Blunty, you’ve done it again you wonderful, multitasking, NATO peacekeeping crooner.I’m In Love
Audio Bullys
out now
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Going all soft worked for Mike Skinner and The Streets last year on the beautiful Dry Your Eyes. The same really cannot be said for this attempt at breaching the sensitive side by beat freaks Audio Bullys. The retro kitsch that made the otherwise unimaginative 90s remix act on Shot You Down a bearable exercise is totally extinguished by the lacklustre production. In the place of a pop sensibility is the most annoying synthesiser loop recorded since A-ha discovered the joys of computer technology. A droning vocal which repeats the same three words (try and guess which ones) completes the insufferable experience. Just count yourself lucky it clocks in at under three minutes.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005

Alice In Ultraland
The Amorphous Androgynous
out now
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The Amorphous Androgynous may not be a band that many people have heard of. This is because they are anything but mainstream. Merely the complexity and artistic merit of their name should give that away. Former Future Sound of London duo Garry Cobain and Brian Dougans formed the psychedelic electro-ambient outfit three years ago, and Alice in Ultraland is in fact their second album under this guise.
The sound of this band is something the likes of which hasn’t been heard too frequently since the 60s and 70s. That doesn’t however mean that it is archaic or limited in its musical accomplishment. The two band members have taken some quality elements of classic rock bands such as Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones and Dire Straits and infused them with some reasonably appropriate ethnic and electronic touches. This creates a very worldly album, with some real atmosphere.
The opening track Emptiness of Nothingness draws obviously upon Pink Floyd’s finer works, using sound effects of crows flying over an impressive piano lead and specialised keyboard effects to combine “the beat with the beatless”, as their members claim. There is even a buxom warbling singer present to further parallels with songs that include The Great Gig in the Sky. It is an epic opener for sure, with hints of a jam session about it, strong vocals and a memorable piano riff that makes for a promising start.
This is immediately followed up by a spaced out, sitar-filled throwback to free love, The Witchfinder. Its didgeridoo, pan pipes and psychedelic George Harrison influenced strands give way to smooth but powerful African style vocals that grab the attention. When the drums finally make their appearance, it completes a very powerful progressive piece of music.
Having started with such a wealth of influences and a decent pace, the album then continues quite well through various moods, from all corners of the earth, be it saxophones leading a jazz movement, Spanish guitars, violins or chilled out electronica.
But if there is a problem with this album, it is precisely the fact that it is more a collection of movements rather than distinct tracks. Some may find this a good attempt at gelling many different styles together, but it feels a little like the energy that the album began with wears slightly thinner it moves towards its end. The album is sadly a touch too long to be an immediate winner, with fourteen tracks all pushing a weighty five or six minutes.
Tracks further down the listings such as High and Dry, replete with Jagger-style hip shaking or Billy the Onion – which will make anybody feel like they are road tripping through the desert – are definite highlights. However, by the final track, Wicker Doll, there isn’t enough left from The Amorphous Androgynous to create the tearjerker that it could and should have been.
Alice in Ultraland is musically strong and those who enjoy harking back to the good old days of psychedelic rock or feeling nostalgic over far off travels and experiences will not want it to end. For first time listeners, however, it will prove an acquired taste that may not hold their attention all the way until the final track.ARCHIVE: 0th week MT 2005