Flippin' heck, SFD! Those rock. Here's mine (completely mild in comparison) from two nights ago:
I'm visiting a mountain-top music library with a group of friends (most of whom seem to be amalgams of past and present acquaintances, even people from infant school included in mix) and the whole thing is being broadcast live, which gives it a kind of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' feel. Our attention is directed to a group of shop-style racks full of vinyl which are lined up beneath a row of picture windows overlooking the rocky valley below. The official demonstrator man is picking albums out willy-nilly from the racks, holding them up for a frustratingly brief time for the camera before letting them fall back, all the time explaining something that's meant to be hugely important, but which I ignore because I'm only interested in getting my filthy hands on the LPs. Most of the stuff he's pulling out looks like charity shop fodder, big photos of archetypal crooner types, but presently - and this is sad, okay - he hoiks out a Fall record, one I've never seen or heard of. Man alive! Somehow I manage to get hold of the thing, and as I'm examining it (turns out it's a 4-track ep featuring tracks like "Innovation Management" and "Hampshire County Council") I start to pick up on what our guide is saying.
He explains that the library is infested with "hostages" - aliens whose normal state is invisible, non-corporeal and harmless, but which are revealed to us and given physicality by music. He demonstrates this by directing our attention towards the centre of the room (which is large and apparently empty apart from pillars and racks) and playing a brief snatch of one of the records. As it plays, and the music fills the air, we see the hostages materialise - great long pods, 3 or 4 foot in diameter, hang from the ceiling to the floor. The pod casings are translucent, and through them we see the contents - big wriggly maggot things, which writhe completely out of time with the music. These things fade in-and-out in a pulsating stylee as you'd expect, becoming progressively more solid as the music is allowed to continue. Our guide switches it off, and they disappear. "As long as there's no music, we're perfectly safe."
Obviously, it turns out we're to live here, sharing the place with a psychiatrist/mad doctor type who uses sounds to examine his patients. I'm knocking about in the bathroom, feeling anxious, when I hear noises coming from his office. They start off as occasional, disconnected electronic squonks and glurps, but gradually it develops into something that sounds - I realise with both horror and fascination - exactly like some 20th Century avant garde 'classical' composition, like Stockhausen or something. It occurs to me that this is an opportunity to answer once and for all whether or not that kind of thing qualifies as music - hostage materialisation = yes, no-show = no. However, a tune starts to develop, and I realise we're on for a definite show. "The fool!"
I rush up to the psychiatrist's office to warn him only to see that he is, himself, a hostage in human form. He has morphed into a Mr Hyde type character. He briefly sets about his patient with fangs and claws, before leaping back to examine his work; the patient
stands, and I see that his eyes have been ripped out (they look like they would if his face were a 2-d image and someone had cut them out roughly with scissors, before pasting it onto a flat red background). He half smiles and shouts:
"I CAN SEE!" |
