In the mid 90s - the exact date is relevant, as we'll soon see - one of my friends gave me a mixtape. He, my cousin and I swapped records all the time: we were into the blossoming forms of electronica that the early 90s gave birth to, and every other week it seemed a … Continue reading Ambient search – help needed
Childhood is weird, isn't it? Weird in a good way: weird in that the world is more full of wonder than at any other time in our life. As we age, depending on our cast of mind, we view this openness as something silly, and rightly confined to the past, or else envy young children … Continue reading First Frights: Ghosts, ghosts, and ghosts
Around the same time I was watching Close Encounters for the first time, BBC2 were showing, in a weekday tea-time slot, a series of 1950s science fiction classics. This was my first exposure to older sci-fi, i.e. things that pre-dated 1977. I'm sure if I dug around the internet the evidence would contradict me, but … Continue reading First Frights: 50s Sci-Fi!
A hobby of mine when I was a teenager was birdwatching. I'd go for walks up the hill behind my parents' house with binoculars and field guide; if I was lucky Mum and Dad would take me to RSPB Vane Farm (now Loch Leven), a half-hour drive away; or I'd go with my cousin Colin, … Continue reading Not birdwatching
TV shows had scared me before. But nothing had ever given me the true sense of awe that Close Encounters did (and, largely, still does) the first time I saw it. That's awe in the Romantic sense of the sublime, in which it borders on terror. Every time I watch the film, there's some new … Continue reading First Frights: ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ (1977)
Books last. Okay, some books last. Some books are hailed upon publication and instantly attain 'classic' status; the reputation of others grows only slowly; still others appear and just as quickly vanish. Reputations, too. In the 'Horror Rewind' series I've looked at a selection of horror fiction from the 70s and 80s to examine how … Continue reading Horror rewind #7 – ‘Skeleton Crew’ magazine, July 1990
For my eleventh birthday, in 1985, my parents bought me a home computer. What I wanted was an Amstrad CPC464 (because it was black and green and had a built-in cassette deck for loading games). What I got was a Commodore 64. Within minutes of booting it up, all thoughts of the Amstrad were forgotten. … Continue reading Oliver Frey 1948-2022
Or, me on about memory again, and not really football. First, a bit of football history context. In the late 70s and early 80s, the so-called "New Firm" of Aberdeen and Dundee United briefly upset the traditional domination of the Scottish game by the Glasgow "Old Firm" of Rangers and Celtic. The reasons for this … Continue reading The boy in the crowd
Bob Fischer's The Haunted Generation - both his blog and monthly article for Fortean Times - is required reading for anyone interested in the whole arena of hauntology & creepily "wrong" nostalgia. One of his current strands is "Felt Trips", unearthing artworks created by kids in the 70s and 80s. Some of these are homages … Continue reading The Haunted Generation – “Felt Trips”
Let me start this extremely digressive review with a long digression. My 18th birthday was in May 1992. Eighteen is a rite-of-passage birthday, though of course different teenagers arrive at it with differing levels of maturity. I've previously written about the way we have different "selves" - co-existing within us are personas that can differ … Continue reading Review – “Amorphous Albion” by Ben Graham (2018)
Into the Gyre 