Lost Transmissions weaves amongst brambled pathways to take in the haunted soundscapes of electronica, the rise of the occult in the 1970s, cinema and television's dystopian dreamscapes and hauntological work which creates and gives a glimpse into parallel worlds. It is a recording of a personal journey that delves amongst both the esoteric fringes and mainstream of culture, and which at times holds a shadowed scrying mirror up to the modern world and some of its ills, while also reflecting visions of a hopeful future in its depths.
Alongside other experimenters in electronic sound the book explores Boards of Canada's invoking of "the past inside the present"; Paul Weller's visiting of Ghost Box Records' elsewhere universe; work by Cosey Fanni Tutti, Hannah Peel and the reformed Radiophonic Workshop, and their collaborations across time with electronic music pioneer Delia Derbyshire; Dominik Scherrer and Natasha Khan's summoning of "pastoral spook" via a hidden language of angels; and takes a trip in the company of fairground and rural ghosts conjured up on records released by Castles in Space.
Alongside these it examines the paranormal and "worlds beyond" via the semi-lost supernatural-orientated television series
Leap in the Dark which included work by Alan Garner and David Rudkin, Sharron Kraus' contemporary investigations into the preternatural and the conjuring of modern-day phantasms in Luciana Haill's artwork.
The book also includes an intertwined consideration of the "deluxe dystopias" that can be found in films such as
Rollerball and Andrew Niccol's
Gattaca and prescient views of the future's past & media collusion in film and television including Nigel Kneale's work and the overlooked corners of science fiction.
* * *
Book chapters: Leap in the Dark, Alan Garner, David Rudkin, Fay Weldon and Russell Hoban: The Rise of the Paranormal
77 Posters/77 Plakatow,
Quest for Love &
The Man Who Haunted Himself: The Phantasmagoric World of Polish Film Posters and Other Celluloid Alternate Realities
Boards of Canada:
The Past Inside the Present
Andrew Niccol's
Gattaca, In Time and
Anon: Striving for the Stars and Tales of Near Tomorrows
Andy Votel's
Styles of the Unexpected & Bridge and Tunnel: Revisiting Hauntological Precursors
Rollerball,
Three Days of the Condor and
The Anderson Tapes: Deluxe Dystopias and the Cinema of Paranoia
Paul Weller's
In Another Room & Broadcast: Psychedelic Reimaginings & Signposts Towards Ghost Box Records' Elsewhere Universe
Luciana Haill's
Apparitions: A Modern-Day Conjuring of Dreamlands
Burial: Spectres of Spectres Awash in a Landscape of Static
Death Watch,
The Vision,
The Year of the Sex Olympics &
Network
