Posted on May 24, 2011
Face II
I found a new face on my back, using mirrors. I don’t know how long it has been there, staring into my shirt. I wouldn’t have thought to look were it not for a strange sensation that somebody was behind me. It’s quite small, the new face, but perhaps it will expand. I suppose it can’t have been there when I was a child, as I used to go swimming, clad only in shorts; the earliest it can have emerged would be during my shy, retiring teenage years. How old am I now? I forget. But I bet HE knows. The face on my back must remember when he first opened his eyes.
I stand with my back to the window so that he can see the world. I wonder if one day he will speak, and what he will say. I wonder if there’s another brain in there.
Posted on May 17, 2011
Barborocentric?
The following article was posted on the music blog Ballen’s View, written by noted journalist Edgar Ballen. As you’ll note if you’ve clicked on the link, the blog no longer exists, due to flooding. Flooding that I may (or may not) have caused.
NOTE TO READERS: RUMOURS OF MY AGROMELIA HAVE BEEN GROSSLY EXAGGERATED
Toby Vok and the Eggs
I started to right this series of articles with the purpose of offering a reappraisal of Toby Vok’s early work from an academic musicologist’s perspective, but the more I listen to his surviving recordings and the more I research I do into his life story the more I am instead impelled to scribe what can only be labeled a de-appraisal.
In this article I want to challenge the commonly held misconception that Toby Vok was the first Post-Vok musician and re-establish the contemporaneous view that in fact he could be more accurately seen as the last Pre-Vok musician.
While much pitta has been made by the specialist music press of Vok’s early 80s experimations with cutting edge electronic instruments the real yeast of the matter is that the piece of technology with the greatest impact on Vok’s work was the faulty ducal ring in all 1962-3 model Albion Urqharts. If the ring in the Urqhart the seventeen year old Toby was riding in hadn’t failed, causing the crash that would cleave both his cheeks clean off, then the course his life took would have been very different. The botched cheek graft that led to his distinctive beardless aspect and unkind suggestions of agromelia from the ignorant undoubtedly led to his rejection by the then barborocentric ‘serious’ songwriting community in the former case and the ever more heartfelt misanthropy and sexism of his lyrics and melodies in the later.
In researching this piece I first turned, like most of the followers of Vok’s work (who tongue-twistingly refer to themselves as “the The Eggs-Heads”) to Julian Cope’s Vokrock sampler. Recommended to me by many people as “The” Book about Toby’s life and work, I only found out later that in fact it is literally the only published book on that subject and said recommendations were merely the result of accurate grammar. I soon realised that I had wasted my £34.95 (for a paperback!) when, having managed to get past the fawning almost hagiographic tone of the text, I happened to notice in the index that there were five surprise re-appearances listed for the seventies despite the fact that Vok was only reported missing twice and reported dead once in that decade.
Obviously some more first hand research was required on my side…
Posted on May 17, 2011
Fetch, Impossibly
If you were intrigued by yesterday’s write up of the IT IS IMPOSSIBLE story, but not quite intrigued enough to visit another website to listen to it, then I have some good news for you.
The good news is thus: You can now gain access to the album via the comfort of this link.
In addition, the music page has been updated with some more unreleased rare tracks from my deep and wonderful history.
Go now. Go, and be satisfied.
Posted on May 16, 2011
The Making Of “IT IS IMPOSSIBLE”
Back in 2005, I woke from a fearsome slumber and summoned The Eggs to my side with the traditional bugle fanfare that has announced my intentions since the late 17th Century. “We shall record again” was my declaration. And we did. Hiring an entire recording studio for our needs, I sent each band member into their own room to begin. Traditionally, it is said, musicians will write songs before heading into the studio to “lay them down”, but playing by the rules has never been my game. We would record the album first – with each band member working independently – and then write the songs afterwards.
The line-up of The Eggs has received much scrutiny over the years, and while the late-90s personnel are considered “classic”, I personally believe that any musician is a qualified Egg-in-training. They just need to open their mind’s eye and let me inside. On this occasion, everybody had those additional eyes open so widely that light streamed forth from their foreheads. Baron Von Sneer (drums) flailed his limbs like a robot warrior; Sandhor Vermiliad (keyboards) put aside his contempt for being indoors to gently caress the oscillators of my rare synthesizer collection; Mioceles Tuberforce (bass) was at his perfunctory best. The list of musicians that took part is lost, and my memory fails me (the above names are made up, and have no basis in reality), but I do remember that everybody who took part in the “It Is Impossible” sessions outdid themselves entirely.
It Is Impossible will be available to download from this website soon. In the meantime, you can hear it over at the primary fansite. A track-by-track synopsis follows…
Read More
Posted on May 10, 2011
The Winter
It was winter and the snow was falling, and the children were allowed to stay home from school, so they roamed the streets at random. Wrapped in so many coats and scarves that they could not be identified by their own mothers, they hurled handfuls of ice at unknown adversaries and took cover behind amorphous white lumps that may have once been cars.
I stayed indoors when the snow fell, paranoid about icy roads and boots that had long ago lost their grip. In my mind I saw a footstep coming down and not gaining friction, a half-graceful slide from front door to roadside that would end with a clattering fall and smashed bones.
So, I stayed in. Stoked the fire and bashed away at my typewriter, hoping that the madness would lift and I could embark on a slow, careful voyage to the local market, to look at the dead fish and hanging racks of pork flesh. The snow eventually stopped sometime after dark, though it can’t truly be said to have been light at any point in recent memory. I wrapped strings around my most watertight shoes for extra grip, held my jacket around myself and stepped out into the cold.
The streetlights flickered as if the power running to them was reluctant to traverse the frozen wires, and at first I didn’t see the massed shapes that filled the lane. Turning to lock the door with shaking fingers, my eyes began to adjust, and as I rotated back and took my first step, they loomed into view; hundreds of man-size shapes with crooked, thin arms and vile, sharp noses. I gasped, the air frosting in front of my face like a physical incarnation of my terror.
Every snowman had the same face. Wide-eyed coals and uniform carrot noses. The children had been busy.
Posted on May 9, 2011
The day it rained so hard my glasses were washed from my face and swept down the street like a paper boat lost on the seas
I was standing in a street that was infinite in every direction, even up, and quite possibly down. I hadn’t looked there because I was scared of heights, especially infinite ones. My mother had always said that I was being foolish, that you couldn’t die from an infinite fall, but she also once said that I shouldn’t be frightened of bees, and look how that turned out (I was once stung by a bee).
Anyway, as I stood there, under that thunderous sky, the road stretching up into it, somehow, and I swayed to a rhythm that seeped up through my shoes and into my knees, where my filters and springs dampened its spirits and it barely even reached my spine, as I stood there it began to rain with a fury I had long suspected of the sky.
The spots battered against my metal skull and my glasses were washed from my face and swept down the street like a paper boat lost on the seas. I watched them go, and let the rain weep down my cheeks and into the tray of my jaw, my tongue flooded into a silence I maintained for some time.
Posted on May 9, 2011
The Goldfish
He’s still swimming around in the aquarium, but it doesn’t feel the same anymore. He goes back and forth, up to the surface and down to swim through the open doorway of a small ornamental castle; it’s just like it always was, and yet somehow completely different.
I used to spend days watching him. Days that could, probably, have been spent doing something more productive. But it never felt like wasted time; his shimmering scales seemed to hypnotise as he explored every inch of his small domain, and time would pass quickly, more quickly than it had any right to.
Then, one day, it happened. He turned to look directly at me. With eyes on the side of his head, this shouldn’t have been possible, but somehow he fixed me fully with a stare that seemed to say “what now?”, that seemed to say “who ARE you?”, that seemed to say “THIS ENDS HERE”.
And it did end there. I slumped to the floor, dejected. Staring into the aquarium never really satisfied after that – I would quickly become bored and irritable, and begin scratching at my stomach. I stopped feeding him after a few weeks, tried to convince myself that I had forgotten. This wasn’t murder, it was just absent-mindedness. Deliberate absent mindedness.
It was no good, though. Despite my underhanded attempts to end his life, he keeps on swimming. And I could swear that he’s growing larger.
